Love reading your diaries Eleanor. They always make me think about what I could write because you make so much of your 'everyday' so interesting with the fewest of sentences and intricate details. And yet, in each post there is a 'whole' 7 days where we do 'live' through your eyes and senses and which I can resonate and relate to from my world. Thanks. Hope you're better.
Love that you come with me in the reading - I find the practice of it, observing, observing and then writing what I remember without notes, really useful.
Not everyone gets the chance to extricate chewing gum from a teenager’s hair on a speeding train. Maybe the rest of us need to carry scissors and seek out proximity to teenagers. A wonderful moment, to live and to read.
I have never been a fan of creepy underground car parks - and even less so since reading a short fiction by Sally Reid a little while ago! But grave yards and empty churches and glorious libraries, well - that’s another matter all together.
I can't tell you how much I love that you were the one with scissors and that they were the scissors they were.
I have, at various points, in my life been the one with the random things people need tucked into a pocket here a zippered compartment there. Less so these days--unless of course we're somewhere near to where the van is parked. And then I most likely have whatever it is you need on hand.
Oh Eleanor, so much love and longing and intrigue hiding inside your moments. This one said especially tugged on me:
…one lonely chestnut leaning for its friends in the distance. I am against postwar crop farming methods. I am saying that for the record. There’s no need to till the soil or rip oaks away from each other. As we sped towards Crewe and Churchill’s cry to dig for your country laid out a tattered land of fences and fertiliser I wondered how long it would take for human’s to recognise en masse that we can talk to trees.
You paint what you observe so beautifully, Eleanor.
I can see and feel the lonely chestnut leaning for its friends in the distance. Your writings are always a trove of such vivid images and insightful commentary.
I love reading them.
Internal correction. I like that phrase.Useful ability to remember I have found!
These diaries are always so damn enjoyable to read.
I wonder if you pulled a Hemingway, meaning changing names and some plot details but basically writing autofiction and calling it a novel, if you wouldn’t maybe take over the world.
Hmm. Thanks Willow. It’s a thought. Imagine. Maybe I’ll try that for the next novel and see what happens. *takes over world. Willow credited in acknowledgements 😊❤️
Quite a rich trip all round and lovely to read about - and you loved it too! I gather we are a fierce minority of defenders of that film. Could quibble about this or that in the pacing and plot later but during the actual movie I was FULLY immersed, and that is a primary reason I love going to the pictures.
By contrast - don’t start me on Hamnet 👀 Not that one has to compare but we saw them in proximity and at the same cinema and maybe even sitting in the same seats and. And and and.
I really loved it. Emerald Fennel seems to draw a rare kind of hater toward her, for what? Her theatricality? Her fast and loose with text? She understands the impact of the big screen and uses every inch. I dream of her taking one of my novels and transforming it like this.
I think it’s hostility to posh - there is an accusation of privilege in many of the criticisms I’ve seen. Auteurship judged by the maker rather than the style of what’s made. I loved Saltburn too. I found a lot of humour in both, and a sense of DARING and flamboyance. Tbh I didn’t care about loyalty to the source text - it was very much about making the film its own thing.
The film I should LOVE to see her make is Madame Bovary (fave classic novel).
Oh YES Mdm B - she would do wonders. And those I know whose job it is to translate to the screen know that medium grants new and original life. To her credit, this is what Maggie O’ F said about the film version of Hamnett.
I guess that’s self-translation then! And what I felt were the limits of the film were there in the book too.
Adaptations are so interesting. I often find the ones I enjoy least are the ones that are slavish in their devotion, and the ones I enjoy most take more liberties.
I really enjoy these, reminders of that wonderful word ‘sonder’ and the lives that carry on in parallel to our own. Adore your observations, a skill I would love to refine. We see those other lives through our lens without ever knowing them through the living of their moments. Fascinating. I wrote a short fiction about it. I’m drawn to those entangled moments. Anyhoo, sorry about the travel sickness. Barley sugar and sitting on newspaper worked for my daughter way way back in the day. Thank you for sharing your daily doings. Take care.
I do hope you’ll forgive me hooking my own work in as an answer … no need to read the flash fiction but there’s a definition up front. I love the realisation that there’s a word for it!
However ... as an apprentice speaker of Afrikaans (actually 'Kaaps' but that's a long story, and it is full of references to Adam Small's work), 'sonder' in Kaaps/Afrikaans means 'without' or 'absence' - which resonates with the coffee-shop story (for me) about the stains (of life?) that stubbornly don't fade and are not amenable to cleaning.
Reminds me too of something I recently wrote (in draft):
It’s an odd thing about ghosts / memoires ...
sometimes people / characters / spirits
fuse / split apart / re-fuse
of their own ‘accord’
like Charl / Charles / Charlie / Charl / – what a dance!
Respect (with tears on the side) . /..
There are so many ‘twins’ in these stories . /..
They leak ... gloriously ... all over ... Just Dance!
(From a longer piece, "Sometimes I can see, quite clearly" ...)
Love reading your diaries Eleanor. They always make me think about what I could write because you make so much of your 'everyday' so interesting with the fewest of sentences and intricate details. And yet, in each post there is a 'whole' 7 days where we do 'live' through your eyes and senses and which I can resonate and relate to from my world. Thanks. Hope you're better.
Love that you come with me in the reading - I find the practice of it, observing, observing and then writing what I remember without notes, really useful.
Not everyone gets the chance to extricate chewing gum from a teenager’s hair on a speeding train. Maybe the rest of us need to carry scissors and seek out proximity to teenagers. A wonderful moment, to live and to read.
It was a beautiful moment in time 😊
Love this rambling amid the graveyard, the trains, roads, zoom, and in your kitchen. You always bring a breath of fresh air.
❤️
I have never been a fan of creepy underground car parks - and even less so since reading a short fiction by Sally Reid a little while ago! But grave yards and empty churches and glorious libraries, well - that’s another matter all together.
creepy underground carparks are the worst.
I can't tell you how much I love that you were the one with scissors and that they were the scissors they were.
I have, at various points, in my life been the one with the random things people need tucked into a pocket here a zippered compartment there. Less so these days--unless of course we're somewhere near to where the van is parked. And then I most likely have whatever it is you need on hand.
✂️💛
It was one of life’s beautiful moments ✂️💛
Thanks Em I ould feel that hot heat of sickness arriving UGH Hoping you feel better now xoxoxox
Thanks doll. xx
Next time we meet, remind me to tell you how I am *virtually* a Brontë…
Ah ha! Of course you are. Good. Can’t wait to hear. xx
Ah ha! Of course you are. Good. Can’t wait to hear. (and so nice to hang out. You strongly reminded me of my friend Melissa, same planet xx)
This is brilliant Eleanor 👏 💖
thank you 🙃
Oh Eleanor, so much love and longing and intrigue hiding inside your moments. This one said especially tugged on me:
…one lonely chestnut leaning for its friends in the distance. I am against postwar crop farming methods. I am saying that for the record. There’s no need to till the soil or rip oaks away from each other. As we sped towards Crewe and Churchill’s cry to dig for your country laid out a tattered land of fences and fertiliser I wondered how long it would take for human’s to recognise en masse that we can talk to trees.
Yes, and thanks. It never fails to make me rant and cry. (Also just noticed a pesky apostrophe grr, will correct! #Iambadatgrammer 😂)
You paint what you observe so beautifully, Eleanor.
I can see and feel the lonely chestnut leaning for its friends in the distance. Your writings are always a trove of such vivid images and insightful commentary.
I love reading them.
Internal correction. I like that phrase.Useful ability to remember I have found!
I hope you are feeling better now.
Thank you Kay
These diaries are always so damn enjoyable to read.
I wonder if you pulled a Hemingway, meaning changing names and some plot details but basically writing autofiction and calling it a novel, if you wouldn’t maybe take over the world.
Hmm. Thanks Willow. It’s a thought. Imagine. Maybe I’ll try that for the next novel and see what happens. *takes over world. Willow credited in acknowledgements 😊❤️
Hmm. Thanks Willow. It’s a thought. Imagine…
🫶🏻
Quite a rich trip all round and lovely to read about - and you loved it too! I gather we are a fierce minority of defenders of that film. Could quibble about this or that in the pacing and plot later but during the actual movie I was FULLY immersed, and that is a primary reason I love going to the pictures.
By contrast - don’t start me on Hamnet 👀 Not that one has to compare but we saw them in proximity and at the same cinema and maybe even sitting in the same seats and. And and and.
I really loved it. Emerald Fennel seems to draw a rare kind of hater toward her, for what? Her theatricality? Her fast and loose with text? She understands the impact of the big screen and uses every inch. I dream of her taking one of my novels and transforming it like this.
I think it’s hostility to posh - there is an accusation of privilege in many of the criticisms I’ve seen. Auteurship judged by the maker rather than the style of what’s made. I loved Saltburn too. I found a lot of humour in both, and a sense of DARING and flamboyance. Tbh I didn’t care about loyalty to the source text - it was very much about making the film its own thing.
The film I should LOVE to see her make is Madame Bovary (fave classic novel).
Oh YES Mdm B - she would do wonders. And those I know whose job it is to translate to the screen know that medium grants new and original life. To her credit, this is what Maggie O’ F said about the film version of Hamnett.
Update: watched Oliver! last night. Now, *there* is a great adaptation!
Also: what musical should Emerald Fennell make?
It’s got to be Cabaret, hasn’t it?
But didn’t she also write the screenplay 😬
Oh (retreats from last comment into hedge)
I guess that’s self-translation then! And what I felt were the limits of the film were there in the book too.
Adaptations are so interesting. I often find the ones I enjoy least are the ones that are slavish in their devotion, and the ones I enjoy most take more liberties.
yes. ditto
Ditto, Sally. That Spanish Opera composer (whatever his name was) said once: give me a shopping list, and I'll set it to music. You too. :) Brilliant.
Ha! love that.
I really enjoy these, reminders of that wonderful word ‘sonder’ and the lives that carry on in parallel to our own. Adore your observations, a skill I would love to refine. We see those other lives through our lens without ever knowing them through the living of their moments. Fascinating. I wrote a short fiction about it. I’m drawn to those entangled moments. Anyhoo, sorry about the travel sickness. Barley sugar and sitting on newspaper worked for my daughter way way back in the day. Thank you for sharing your daily doings. Take care.
Barley Sugar and Sitting on Newspaper is the title of my next novel. Top advice.
(Curtsies) … you’re very welcome! And I’m pre-ordering that! ~B
"entangled moments" - love it / them.
'Sonder'?
I do hope you’ll forgive me hooking my own work in as an answer … no need to read the flash fiction but there’s a definition up front. I love the realisation that there’s a word for it!
https://justwriteright.substack.com/p/its-a-sonderful-life
Thanks for the link. Superb.
However ... as an apprentice speaker of Afrikaans (actually 'Kaaps' but that's a long story, and it is full of references to Adam Small's work), 'sonder' in Kaaps/Afrikaans means 'without' or 'absence' - which resonates with the coffee-shop story (for me) about the stains (of life?) that stubbornly don't fade and are not amenable to cleaning.
Reminds me too of something I recently wrote (in draft):
It’s an odd thing about ghosts / memoires ...
sometimes people / characters / spirits
fuse / split apart / re-fuse
of their own ‘accord’
like Charl / Charles / Charlie / Charl / – what a dance!
Respect (with tears on the side) . /..
There are so many ‘twins’ in these stories . /..
They leak ... gloriously ... all over ... Just Dance!
(From a longer piece, "Sometimes I can see, quite clearly" ...)
Language is endlessly fascinating. And you play with it very well in your short piece … Charles Dance et al!