Melissa Shales - award winning travel writer and Essex University PHD student led the session. She gave a fascinating talk on travel writing and on her life experiences connected with it. After that, she led us through an interesting exercise, which involved selecting a souvenir, which another member of the group had provided.
- First of all, we wrote down an imagined travel story, inspired by our own perception of the object.
- Second, we wrote down what our own souvenirs meant to us and what the story behind the object was.
- Third, we shared the real story of our item with the person that had chosen it.
- Finally, we combined our imagined story with the true story behind the object, to create a new piece.
Travel writing is not something I have tried before but I wanted to give it a go, as I find it very interesting to see what I can write, given a prompt that I might not otherwise have thought of.
The object I selected was a beautiful oval shaped pebble. It was white with grey and black marks on it and it was remarkably smooth, without being shiny.
Here is the piece I wrote:
Heatwave
I reached into my pocket and held my favourite pebble; felt the smooth surface caressing my fingers. It comforted me: bringing me back to the moment when I first laid eyes on it.
It was an unusual pebble - at least it was, if you looked closely at it. At a glance, it was a generic grey rock but much more attentive viewing revealed a micro-landscape of white, dappled with grey and interspersed with almost universally sized hair-like, black rock fibres. The surface had been worn flat by years of bumping and grinding between the waves and the ocean floor.
Every time I see or pick up the stone, it takes me back - right back to that day on the beach.
Charmouth - Summer of 2006. Hideous heatwave: totally unexpected for a UK Summer. When we booked the beautiful caravan with sea views for a holiday with our three children, we pictured lazy days on the beach and in the caravan park, splashing in the sea, kicking a football about, building sandcastles and searching through the tidal debris to see what treasure we might find.
That summer was too hot for such energetic pursuits. Picture us - sweating and lobster-tinted, attempting to keep the kids cool in the water of the outer reaches of the English Channel.
Dave spent most of the holiday, struggling to battle heat and hayfever in equal measure. Little Harry refused to take off his jumper, despite the fact that he has baking hot - Little Jacket Potato Man we called him. Lucy complained that the pebbles hurt her feet and the seaweed was trying to trip her up all the time.
All the while, we tried to escape the scalding furnace above us, until the cool night would ease our pain and suffering and our oven of a caravan would return to temperatures a human could tolerate.
In the midst of all this heat and chaos, I picked up a stone: a little pebble, just large enough to fit in the palm of my hand and just heavy enough to be pleasing to hold. It gleamed at me through the surf and the seaweed and I plucked it from its resting place, not realising, then, the significance it would hold.
Now, I hold it in my hand and I examine it: a dappled grey reminder of the fleeting moments of my children's youth, before adulthood swept them away, to create their own adventures.
WriteNight meet on the 4th Monday of every month, 7:30 - 9:30pm at Colchester MakerSpace. The next meeting is tomorrow, led by the very talented Doug Smith. Please click the link below for more details.
https://www.facebook.com/events/2369254296730535/
© Annie Bell 2019
A beautifully written piece, which evoked memories of taking my own children to Charmouth on holiday. Thank you Annie for awakening such precious memories.
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for your kind comment. I'm really pleased you enjoyed it so much.
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