07/9/21

The Best Souvenir

Sometimes I snap up a travel souvenir that makes me go, ‘Aaah… s’lovely, that.  It’ll look ace on my mantlepiece/bedside table/dangling from the ceiling.’  But I long ago gave up buying objets de crap just for the sake of bringing something home. It’s obvious when you think about it. You’re in a tourist spot and you’re looking for something gorgeous. It’s not going to end well.

I recall hopping from shop to shop in the pouring rain in Taormina in Sicily looking for presents.  Unable to afford or carry any of the colourful swirly ceramics crowding the shop windows, I was looking for something delectable and bijoux. Richly coloured eggs made of marbly onyx type stuff were pleasingly smooth to the touch but what’s the point of an egg that you’d break your teeth on?

Many of the souvenirs in Taormino were made out of bits of volcano. Sicily isn’t short of volcanic stone, it positively

Egyptian glass, women's travel blog

Glass bauble from the Khan el-Khalili Market in Cairo

explodes with it, in fact, so it’s forgivable that somebody probably picked up a fistful of the black, prickly lumps one morning, examined them closely with a furrowed brow and gave an excited yell of, ‘Eh, Elizabetta! Bring that box of googly eyes!  These’ll make great ladybirds!’

Over the years, I’ve amassed Egyptian glassware, a Turkish rug, an Ampleman tee-shirt from Berlin, a carved fruit bowl from Poland, batique clothing from Australia, a fancy metal-worked camel incense holder from Jordan, and a malachite bracelet from Tanzania which disappeared 30 years ago and resurfaced last week in a carrier bag of Lego.

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02/28/18

Using Memories and Senses to Evoke Atmosphere in Creative Writing

The Beast from the East has barged into East Lancashire and it’s bloody freezing. I’m really glad I don’t live in one of those countries where the only water is in icicle form, your feet freeze to the pavement and you have to go outside and chop up sticks to feed the fire that keeps you just the right side of death.

This morning, a woman walked past my house pulling a small child on a sledge. The sledge was the traditional kind, wooden slatted top with curved metal runners, same as the one I got for Christmas as a six year old. Mine had blue painted runners and a rope for steering. That was the idea anyway, more often than not I’d end up in the bushes or wrapped round some other kid on a sledge.

This kid knows what she’s doing. Photo credit: Pezibear/Pixaby

Watching the kid being pulled along earlier, didn’t just evoke visual memories. The feelings came back. That sudden sense of weightlessness, of sliding away downhill and the unforgiving bumps to the bones under the buttocks, shooting up the back, jarring it, dodgem style. It’s an unlikely combination – the smooth sliding and unpredictable bumping.

More sledgy feelings: watering eyes, fingers and toes numb yet smarting; the tops of your ears stinging as though they’ve been sliced off. A bitter assault on the nose as the cruel wind causes the hairs in your nasal passages to crackle like splinters of ice. Creeping wetness from snow which has sneaked inside the folds of your scarf, down the tops of your boots and into your gloves. Continue reading

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08/17/16

Gussets and Me. Tights Stall Saturday Job.

Larry was a lavishly coiffured, shiny-suited chap who sold tights and stockings in our local market hall. He paid partly in cash, partly in boxes of chocolates. Nice chap but misguided enough to give me a Saturday job. hosiery, tights stall, market, disastrous job

He also employed Dora and Elsie, two older ladies who, despite their slavish devotion to the application of makeup, had never quite mastered the art although they were rather more successful in their attempts to emulate Larry’s extravagant perms.

My experience of tights -or pantyhouse as our American cousins call them – was limited. As with many dalliances that seem like a good idea at the time, but end in disaster, I had approached them with gusto and discarded them just as quickly.

You pulled a tiny, scratchy scrap of something brown, black or grey out of a packet, stuck a wiggling hand down one of the legs (the only entertaining part of the process) then you sat on the bed and stuck your legs in the legs. So to speak.

This seemingly simple act presented a myriad of possible outcomes, all of them uncomfortable. Continue reading

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04/23/15

Mackerel and its Part in my Downfall – Part 1.

Until the day we went fishing in Tenby, my infantile palate had been accustomed to, and welcomed with great enthusiasm, cosy comestibles such as roast lamb, soft boiled eggs with marmite soldiers and bags of sherbet lemons after Sunday school.

Then I met mackerel. Continue reading

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