I'm leaving for the airport with my family to go to Turkey at three o clock this morning.
Seeing as it's the summer and there's no school, my sleeping pattern's changed and I've started going to bed later and waking up later also. So seeing as it's only adding 1-2 hours onto the time I would normally go to bed at the moment, I decided to just stay awake until 3 tonight.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. I am bored already and the internet is lonely.
Um... so on the off chance anyone reads this, feel free to email me? lizzie.hudson@hotmail.co.uk
I started writing a novel today. This is how the idea started.
My grandfather died last week. He isn't my biological grandfather, but he's been with my grandma since I was born and it always felt like he was. On Thursday, the day of his funeral, I got to my grandma's house slightly earlier to bring a tray of brownies for the wake.
There was nobody there except a tall man, I'd say aged about sixty, but I'm really bad at guessing ages. My grandma introduced me to him. "Oh, this is a complete stranger," she said, and laughed.
This man, Dan, his name was, had turned up at the door that morning and told her that the deceased's brother, who was supposed to read a poem, was ill and is friend had come to do it instead. Nobody had heard from Clifford at all, just sort of automatically trusted this man because humans trust other humans, it seems, unless they are slightly odd and eccentric or under eighteen or possibly German.
He was an awkward man, tried hard to join in conversation and fit in, and didn't have much of a sense of humor (A distant great aunt or something to my mother: "You're Robin's wife? I've never met you before." Dan guy: "Well, I've never met any of you before today. Heh.") He had very pale blue eyes and a frowny serious expression and the way he moved and acted reminded me slightly of a football manager.
Throughout the funeral, he was gradually bumped up to the point that he was... let's call it part of the main procession. If it were a wedding, he would have been bordering on best man. Whilst my grandma's friends and neighbours kept distance whilst close family comforted her at certain times, the stranger Dan would instantly by her side, squeezing her hand, reassuring her as if he were a close friend or a brother or something.
The part that scared me the most was at the wake, I heard my grandma say to a group of her friends, "Dan's been great, hasn't he? I feel as if I've known him for years."
The polite brownie making grandaughter I was stayed quiet and smiled and acted like you do at funerals.
The writer inside me was driven crazy with excitement. She dragged my body to the bathroom, with a napkin and a biro I'd fouund at the bottom of my handbag. Together, we spent a hurried two minutes scribbling on both sides of the napkin and along the parts of my arms that were covered by my cardigan.
I have a lot to thank him for, the creepy man that arrived from nowhere and got under everybody's skin. The exaggeration of Dan in my head has hopped straight from reality onto the page, but the rest of the characters in my novel, some made of flesh and others imagination, were born this morning. I was too excited to wait for NaNoWriMo, I have laptop and an empty notebook and a five hour plane journey to write with during tomorrow, as well as being in a strange place for two weeks.
I will leave you now. Here is a picture of a ketchup bottle I took in Key West last year.
