"I think I'll call you Johnny. You are trapped in your world."
The bus I was taking into the city centre this afternoon nearly ran a guy down on Carrs Lane. I was stowing a book in my duffel bag when it turned the corner and jolted to a stop. I looked up and there was a man sprawling in the road. He hadn't been hurt; the driver had braked just in time, thank God. Driver got out and offered to phone an ambulance, but he refused, getting up and walking jerkily to the other side.
My parents are having a new porch and bedroom window fitted. The story about smallpox cultures being found in a Maryland laboratory from a few weeks ago prompted me to remember the isolation hospital that once stood down the road from us in Catney. It's a luxury housing estate now, but it saw the last recorded death from smallpox in the late seventies. Predictably, I was mulling over the story potentialities of it, when yesterday afternoon the elements came together in my head. Of course, it'll be a ghost story. I went downstairs to ask my dad what he knew about the place, and it was pretty sure that it had also been a maternity hospital. (He was right, as it happens; it saw births - including my brother's, apparently - up until the mid-sixties, then reverted to its former status.) I'll need to do some digging in local history. And medical research.
My current reading list: Colette's Chance Acquaintances/Julie de Carneilhan (translated by Patrick Leigh Fermor); Gavin Pretor-Pinney's The Cloudspotter's Guide; Derek Jarman's Sketchbooks. (I opened it up at random to find a subject line for this entry.) The Jarman is sumptous - virtually every page is a collage. Exquisite golden handwriting on black, pressed flowers, production sketches, the ten pound note he was paid for directing War Requiem.
I saw fade_2_black for drinks last night. It seems we both like rhubarb cider, even it tastes more like cinnamon. I may have turned her into a fan of the writer Saki. Also, sovay gave me the heads up on the Kickstarter for this film on John Clare. Ian Sinclair? Toby Jones? Straw bears? Electric Cinema, you'd best be showing it...
My parents are having a new porch and bedroom window fitted. The story about smallpox cultures being found in a Maryland laboratory from a few weeks ago prompted me to remember the isolation hospital that once stood down the road from us in Catney. It's a luxury housing estate now, but it saw the last recorded death from smallpox in the late seventies. Predictably, I was mulling over the story potentialities of it, when yesterday afternoon the elements came together in my head. Of course, it'll be a ghost story. I went downstairs to ask my dad what he knew about the place, and it was pretty sure that it had also been a maternity hospital. (He was right, as it happens; it saw births - including my brother's, apparently - up until the mid-sixties, then reverted to its former status.) I'll need to do some digging in local history. And medical research.
My current reading list: Colette's Chance Acquaintances/Julie de Carneilhan (translated by Patrick Leigh Fermor); Gavin Pretor-Pinney's The Cloudspotter's Guide; Derek Jarman's Sketchbooks. (I opened it up at random to find a subject line for this entry.) The Jarman is sumptous - virtually every page is a collage. Exquisite golden handwriting on black, pressed flowers, production sketches, the ten pound note he was paid for directing War Requiem.
I saw fade_2_black for drinks last night. It seems we both like rhubarb cider, even it tastes more like cinnamon. I may have turned her into a fan of the writer Saki. Also, sovay gave me the heads up on the Kickstarter for this film on John Clare. Ian Sinclair? Toby Jones? Straw bears? Electric Cinema, you'd best be showing it...