Yesterday & Today: 18th July

Day 200 of consecutive posts – and thoughts about immortality!

Yesterday saw me finally complete the first read-through of pieces submitted to New Contexts: 5. 25% have been immediately selected, with 35% in the ‘long-list’ pile to be re-read and a binary ‘in or out’ decision made on those. So, pretty much on-track to finish this part of the process around the end of the month.

What else yesterday?

I also managed a little drafting of ‘Z’. T think one reason I’ve been struggling with it was that the portion I have just finished was focussed for too long on a single character and I may have become bogged-down. It certainly wasn’t as dynamic a section as the rest thus far. Hopefully when I move on I’ll be able to pick up the pace again.

Today I have a ‘Write-on Ripon’ session this afternoon where I’m leading a short fiction-writing exercise. Looking forward to that! Other wise it should be NC:5 and ‘Z’ in some combination or other.

And immortality?

The other day – and for no discernible reason – I happened to think of the actor Sidney Tafler who played the spiv bookmaker in the 1949 Ealing Comedy classic Passport to Pimlico. Tafler (1916-1979) was a stalwart of Engligh movies and made over sixty films, usually given small parts. His credits include The Lavender Hill Mob, The Cockleshell Heroes, Fire Maidens from Outer Space (must try and find that!), Carve Her Name with Pride, Sink the Bismarck!, Alfie, and the Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me.

Whenever I watch Passport to Pimlico I see Sidney Tafler alive, as a living breathing person; he seems real enough that it wouldn’t surprise me if he knocked on our door. And he will always be so. Perhaps it’s the suspension of disbelief, I don’t know. Film does that of course, and in doing so it somehow regenerates its casts. Do any of us watch an old film and think “he’s dead; she’s dead; he’s dead”..? [I use Tafler as an example, but it could really be anyone from Pimlico or any other old movie.]

Then I wondered whether the same might be said for writers i.e. when someone reads our words long after everything has gone black for us, we might be thought of as still scribbling or tapping away, living and breathing just as much as Tafler.

Fanciful I know, but there could be something there to hang on to…

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