The year gets underway

A voice from the other side on my radio programme this week - a book dealer rather than a book writer for a change. I can never pass a secondhand bookshop without diverting in and, living not too far from Hay on Wye ("the town of books"), I'm rarely short of an opportunity to indulge myself. Joanna Chambers from Broadleaf Books in Abergavenny provided an interesting perspective on the life of a bookbuyer / seller; she spoke of the challenges new technologies and shopping habits have brought but also very engagingly of the enduring hold that physical bookshops still have over so many of us. 

My second guest on the programme this week was John Murray from Newport U3A Creative Writers. Again I was struck by the wealth of life experience that older writers bring to bear in their work; John's personal journey has encompassed life in an orphanage (narrowly missing designation to the child migrant scheme), fifteen years in the armed forces, work in a variety of different capacities, building his own home in a remote area of Scotland. So much from which to find inspiration, from which to conjure real and imagined tales - and John's were certainly captivating.

It was good to have such an enjoyable programme on Thursday after a less than successful day on Wednesday! With the weather forecast quite promising for early January, we'd decided to start the Usk Valley Walk, the 48 mile trek through some beautiful countryside that we'd been thinking of doing for some time. No problem for the first few miles other than slightly hazy visibility (see the above photo); then we hit Wentwood Forest. Fond memories of childhood picnics there will now be forever overlaid by far from happy ones of useless waymarking and (this may sound familiar to some readers) an intransigent partner insisting they were taking us in the right direction and getting us thoroughly lost. The light fades early at the beginning of January ...

But the whole episode certainly reinforced how the setting of a story becomes a character in it. No wonder so many chilling tales are set in dark, silent forests - the sense of isolation, the absence of sound and orienting features as night falls and envelops you in an alien environment, the shivers of fear that the close set trees engender. Not that on Wednesday I thought much of the potential for writing - how we reached civilization and in one piece is quite another story - but when I can review the situation more coolly (and feel more charitable towards my partner!) there's certainly some potential there.