(This is what the top of the world looks like)
I’m on my eighth chocolate digestive and still nothing. I’ve drunk so much tea I can hear my tummy sloshing each time I reach for another biscuit. I’ve checked the weather, read the headlines, opened Facebook, by mistake of course, but it took me a good half hour to close it again. Still, I haven’t written a single word. I’m still stuck.
Last night, just as I was dropping off, the whole lot came to me, it was beautiful, poetic, perfect and clever. I remember thinking, get up, get a pen and jot that down. This morning, not a word, can’t remember a thing, except that I’ve forgotten it all. Nothing is working, I am wordless, the page is still as blank as my imagination. This calls for trainers.
And the trainers took me over the hill, through the woods and right to the top of the world. For me, running empties my brain of all the crap that’s blocking thought, proper, creative, arty thought, not the I-must-do-the-hoovering type thoughts. Actually, I’m pretty sure I’ve never had a must-do-hoovering thought. So when I got to the top of the world, caught my breathe, I was finally able to ask what I should write.
“What would you say Dad? And what should I say, where should I start?”
Make it simple he said.
“Thank you Dad,” I said and blew him a kiss that the sunny breeze took. I ran on, right across the photo above, back through the wood and over the hill.
I sat down at my laptop and started to write:
When I woke up yesterday morning, I opened the curtains, looked out at the view. A view Dad loved, out over the farms to the Prescelis…
Chocolate digestive,
A favourite of Dad's
1936-2018
Now running with me