THE WATERCRESS NOVELLA - PACKED WITH NUTRIENTS
It's a modest vegetable with a fine pedigree is Hampshire watercress.
You just have to look at it to know it will do you the power of good, packed as it is with a dizzying array of GOOD STUFF.
You just eat it. That's what you do. And it does you good.
It has a characterful taste and people swear by it for all manner of reasons.
And so do I, so much so that I've put it - along with a swarm of nightingales - at the very heart of my new novella, IN THE ROOM WITH THREE DOORS
Three kids in a, ahem, menage a trois, quit the super-acidic success-driven lifestyle of London for a gentler, alkaline way of being, in lovely Hampshire - which actually offers them far more than all the material success of any career in the me-me-me fast lane.
So, we are talking coming of age, breaking away, and better living.
Rhiannon Smith has a vision of a greener way to be, with watercress at heart of her outrageous dream and her machinations to make it a reality.
You all know of the legend of the Green Man of yore, much loved of medieval craftsmen as evidenced by the wood and stone carvings they left behind them in the fabric of some of our most venerable buildings.
Well, Rhiannon Smith is a Green Woman for out times, a reworking of an old and worthy idea at the core of England's spiritual and cultural life.
The Green Man reflected our pagan past and our relationship with nature. Perhaps we are gradually reverting to some aspects of ancient ways. Most of us - the wiser ones that is - like to think of ourselves as green in principle, if not entirely so in practice. We do our best. We recycle diligently and eat our greens.
It is no accident that the cover of IN THE ROOM WITH THREE DOORS is a lovely shade of watercress green because the story could not be greener in its underlying philosophy. I am a Green Man. So there.
I believe we all need to at least think about stepping back from the barbarism of our success-driven materialism. It is difficult for us to change our ways, to abandon destructive habits. But it is possible. The first step is to open our minds to why we need to do it.
Green is good. It is healthy. If you look at a food chart you will see that all the acidic foods tend to be red in hue, while the alkaline foods - like watercress - are a rich shade of green. The acidic foods tend to shorten our lives. And it is not just about eating green, but thinking living green, too.
So IN THE ROOM WITH THREE DOORS is a rebellious little rascal of a read. Though it is also a gentle read with absolutely N O car chases, meth labs, gang rapes, BDSM fire and ice play, guns, aliens, vampires, zombies, war, intellectual weirdness, or other overworked devices in its pages.
You will, however, find a thread inspired by John Keats' ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE. His poem is actually more about the human condition than our place in broader nature. Just a little teaser for you. By the way, John Keats was the same age when he died as Rhi and her guys are, just 25.
Back to the watercress. It's the Arlesford watercress festival in 12 days time, on May the 18th. Arlesford is a small town in rural Hampshire, England. There are many prosperous watercress farms in the region, formerly a part of Wessex in Anglo-Saxon times. And before that there were Roman villas dotted around the place. And before that Celtic shrines. IN THE ROOM WITH THREE DOORS is set on the waters of a little known tributary of the River Itchen, which runs through the heart of watercress country.
Some of the water irrigating today's watercress had already been in the chalky ground gathering nutrients way before all those time which seem so ancient to us.
Such is the timeless nature of watercress. And such is the nature of the philosopy behind IN THE ROOM WITH THREE DOORS Perhaps it's been marinating in the chalky parts of my soul for an aeon or two.
The Tyranny of Fact Based Reality does not have all the answers for us. We need dreams and romance and we need to treasure our connections with Nature. I capitalise the word deliberately. I'm not saying we should worship it, merely that we are a small part of it and that it deserves to be capitalised.
And so to Avalon.
Our human soul still craves the state of heart that was and is Avalon - a dreamy notion of something better than our actualities. Tales of fantasy have an enduring popularity, much to the chagrin of many a swivel-eyed intellectual with a low IQ - Imagination Quotient.
That is one reason we read, I believe. We are all looking for a brief mental flight to Avalon in one or other of its many guises. We read to, 'Open wide the mind's cage door.' So, yes, Rhi Smith was looking for her own personal Avalon when she persuaded her two fellas to throw up their jobs, turn their backs on London, and chase a dream with her.
How could they resist? They couldn't, as you will read anon.
In Stevie Nicks' haunting song, Rhiannon, the lyric goes 'Rhi-an-on, Rhi-an-on, will you ever win?'
I hope you will find that the question is artfully answered in the pages of IN THE ROOM WITH THREE DOORS
I commend my story to your eyes and hope you will find nourishment in the reading of it. It's reet peppery, as we say in Lancashire.
Your author *bows*
You just have to look at it to know it will do you the power of good, packed as it is with a dizzying array of GOOD STUFF.
You just eat it. That's what you do. And it does you good.
It has a characterful taste and people swear by it for all manner of reasons.
And so do I, so much so that I've put it - along with a swarm of nightingales - at the very heart of my new novella, IN THE ROOM WITH THREE DOORS
Three kids in a, ahem, menage a trois, quit the super-acidic success-driven lifestyle of London for a gentler, alkaline way of being, in lovely Hampshire - which actually offers them far more than all the material success of any career in the me-me-me fast lane.
So, we are talking coming of age, breaking away, and better living.
Rhiannon Smith has a vision of a greener way to be, with watercress at heart of her outrageous dream and her machinations to make it a reality.
You all know of the legend of the Green Man of yore, much loved of medieval craftsmen as evidenced by the wood and stone carvings they left behind them in the fabric of some of our most venerable buildings.
Well, Rhiannon Smith is a Green Woman for out times, a reworking of an old and worthy idea at the core of England's spiritual and cultural life.
The Green Man reflected our pagan past and our relationship with nature. Perhaps we are gradually reverting to some aspects of ancient ways. Most of us - the wiser ones that is - like to think of ourselves as green in principle, if not entirely so in practice. We do our best. We recycle diligently and eat our greens.
It is no accident that the cover of IN THE ROOM WITH THREE DOORS is a lovely shade of watercress green because the story could not be greener in its underlying philosophy. I am a Green Man. So there.
I believe we all need to at least think about stepping back from the barbarism of our success-driven materialism. It is difficult for us to change our ways, to abandon destructive habits. But it is possible. The first step is to open our minds to why we need to do it.
Green is good. It is healthy. If you look at a food chart you will see that all the acidic foods tend to be red in hue, while the alkaline foods - like watercress - are a rich shade of green. The acidic foods tend to shorten our lives. And it is not just about eating green, but thinking living green, too.
So IN THE ROOM WITH THREE DOORS is a rebellious little rascal of a read. Though it is also a gentle read with absolutely N O car chases, meth labs, gang rapes, BDSM fire and ice play, guns, aliens, vampires, zombies, war, intellectual weirdness, or other overworked devices in its pages.
You will, however, find a thread inspired by John Keats' ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE. His poem is actually more about the human condition than our place in broader nature. Just a little teaser for you. By the way, John Keats was the same age when he died as Rhi and her guys are, just 25.
Back to the watercress. It's the Arlesford watercress festival in 12 days time, on May the 18th. Arlesford is a small town in rural Hampshire, England. There are many prosperous watercress farms in the region, formerly a part of Wessex in Anglo-Saxon times. And before that there were Roman villas dotted around the place. And before that Celtic shrines. IN THE ROOM WITH THREE DOORS is set on the waters of a little known tributary of the River Itchen, which runs through the heart of watercress country.
Some of the water irrigating today's watercress had already been in the chalky ground gathering nutrients way before all those time which seem so ancient to us.
Such is the timeless nature of watercress. And such is the nature of the philosopy behind IN THE ROOM WITH THREE DOORS Perhaps it's been marinating in the chalky parts of my soul for an aeon or two.
The Tyranny of Fact Based Reality does not have all the answers for us. We need dreams and romance and we need to treasure our connections with Nature. I capitalise the word deliberately. I'm not saying we should worship it, merely that we are a small part of it and that it deserves to be capitalised.
And so to Avalon.
Our human soul still craves the state of heart that was and is Avalon - a dreamy notion of something better than our actualities. Tales of fantasy have an enduring popularity, much to the chagrin of many a swivel-eyed intellectual with a low IQ - Imagination Quotient.
That is one reason we read, I believe. We are all looking for a brief mental flight to Avalon in one or other of its many guises. We read to, 'Open wide the mind's cage door.' So, yes, Rhi Smith was looking for her own personal Avalon when she persuaded her two fellas to throw up their jobs, turn their backs on London, and chase a dream with her.
How could they resist? They couldn't, as you will read anon.
In Stevie Nicks' haunting song, Rhiannon, the lyric goes 'Rhi-an-on, Rhi-an-on, will you ever win?'
I hope you will find that the question is artfully answered in the pages of IN THE ROOM WITH THREE DOORS
I commend my story to your eyes and hope you will find nourishment in the reading of it. It's reet peppery, as we say in Lancashire.
Your author *bows*
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message 1:
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R.J.
(new)
May 06, 2014 12:55PM
So have any of you actually read this far, me lovelies?
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Ah, so you DID get this far! Well done, you! Have your say. What did you think? And you don't have to spare my feelings. I can take it. Authors go to all manner of extreme mental contortions for want of an eye.
