New Header Picture again

I'm a photographer as well as a writer. I enjoy taking, and hoarding, photographs, so I may as well use more of them here as headers for the blog.

In this picture there's a family in the Amazonian rainforest, crossing a rope bridge over a small but busy stream that rushes down a gulch between cliffs, on its way to refresh, just slightly, the turbid Amazon miles downstream. Are the family in danger of falling prey to a lurking jaguar, or an undiscovered dinosaur left over from the last great extinction? Are they on their way to meet a friendly local tribe... or is one of their number doomed to become lost in the jungle, having to revert to the wild, eating fallen fruits from the massive branches above, learning to catch fish from the stream and compete with the jaguar for prey?

Or are they just at the Eden Project in Cornwall, enjoying the experience without the travel, or the potential danger.

Every picture tells a story. Writers can tell any story we like, we don't have to use all the information in the picture.

Pictures are definitely a great provider of stimulation and sometimes even inspiration for me as a writer.

Signing Petitions.

In the past month I've signed ten petitions. I've been sent a request to sign about twice that number, but I'm selective. I have to be, I can't become a petition junkie like at least one person I know.
It's the environment, it's the NHS, Brexit and the atrocities happening because of the arms trade which I try to concentrate on.

Should I feel guilty not signing petitions about the plight of individuals, whether they're murdered journalists, sick children or people imprisoned for their beliefs? I don't believe I should really, I try hard to look at bigger pictures.

I do try to take part by signing and sharing if I feel the petition may have a chance of :-

A) Reaching and being read by the person it's addressed to. Any petition addressed vaguely to a government or corporation will undoubtedly find its way to the bin/delete button without anybody senior having to bother with it.

B) Not be disregarded, because I'm not in the USA, or Saudi Arabia, or wherever the topic of the petition relates to. Foreign signatures may devalue a petition in the eyes of the people it's aimed at, particularly if it's on a local issue.

Pareidolia; I learn something new every day

Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon in which the mind responds to a stimulus, usually an image or a sound, by perceiving a familiar pattern where none exists. Common examples are perceived images of animals, faces, or objects in cloud formations, the Man in the Moon, the Moon rabbit, hidden messages in recorded music played in reverse or at higher- or lower-than-normal speeds, and hearing indistinct voices in random noise such as humming machinery or electric fans.

Hence Surrealism I suppose, for the visual effects at any rate.

Saturday by Ian McEwan - book review

This is why Ian McEwan is one of my favourite authors, when he is good he is very very good, the writing here is completely gripping. I don't mean in the thrills a minute takes you on a roller coaster kind of gripping. I mean the kind of gripping which takes you right into the nuances of character, situation and emotion so you can't shake them off. This is why it took me a month to finish the book. I reached the climactic scene and didn't want the journey to begin to unwind, I didn't want the cast to have to react to a terrifying situation, I was afraid they would act out of character, or worse that I had misinterpreted their characters.

I stopped reading the book, I would look at it by my bed and keep thinking, I'm not ready to go back there, not yet. The story takes place during one day, it took me a month to finish reading.

I hadn't misinterpreted anything, the denouement for the main character was entirely appropriate while not being flagged up. The ending worked perfectly, the final scene mirroring the opening pages, but with the added frisson of what has gone between. 

So remind me again why McEwan won the Booker prize for 'Amsterdam', with its unremittingly dislikeable characters and silly ending, and not for 'Saturday'? 

No spoilers, I won't describe the plot. Read it for yourself and enjoy.