I went to Lord’s, the “home of cricket”, on Saturday. I picked the wrong Saturday. It was the start of the school holidays. Just as I remember from the start of the school holidays in my youth, it was heaving down with rain.
The rain was forecast to pass through, and fortunately, it did. I thought about how frustrating it must be for the players, all wound up to play their sport, then thwarted by the weather. But perhaps, for England, it was an opportunity to deploy some match tactics. In “Heroes and Traitors”, Yonnis incorporates the Kimalloan weather into his military planning, and I can’t help thinking that England were helped to victory against impressive India by the late start and subsequent break in play for a thunderstorm.
I admire anyone who can make the unpredictable manageable, because I am hopeless when stuff happens to disturb my equilibrium. Just one unexpected event can make me panic. And if the washing machine breaks down within an hour of having to deal with the call centre of any service provider, my heart rate will pound, and panic is not far behind. I might be pacing and clenching for the rest of the day, unable to return to a normal task. It is challenging enough to get up and check that I’m managing all my 26 various health conditions to get through the day, without anything added on top!
So, I might start a day full of enthusiasm to meet a target of 1,000 words of writing, which I read somewhere was George Bernard Shaw’s target, but I would not have the resilience to complete it if “stuff happened”.
When I do get a day of calm, I relish immersion in another world, walking with my characters and making things happen to them. Of course, I could never deal with the harsh world of early modern Kimalloa, but I can make sure that my favorite characters survive, which is some comfort.
At the moment, I’m reading “Now is the Time”, by Melvyn Bragg. It’s a historical novel, based on The Peasants’ Revolt in 14th century England, and I’m wondering about having something similar happen in Osiran in the sequel to “Heroes and Traitors”. And I’m also wondering when I am going to write it. I want to do more planning than I did with my first novel in the vain hope that I will not have to do so much re-drafting. May the Eternal Spirit bless me with some calm days…
Photo: Rainclouds over Lord’s cricket ground, North-west London, UK.
