Is Hornsea, Is Good

I have been having a brilliant time thrifting of late. I've been casually looking for Hornsea pottery for some time, having already acquired my first piece from my parents - a salt cellar which was an engagement gift of theirs from 1967. Then, a couple of years ago, I found the gorgeous brown and black flour barrel (below) in a local op-shop. But not much happened after that. Then, in the space of a couple of weeks, I found the wonderful blue and green owl mug (above) and, on Saturday, the cow mug. Love the rather surreal and oh-so-70s designs on them all. The cow mug is especially quirky - the cow is printed with unrelated  newsprint-style words and sitting behind it is a fish?? Dali meets British pottery...perhaps. 

As well as Greenwitch (see yesterday's post), I have also just started Haruki Murakami's After Dark. I have been meaning to read her books for some time and last week during another great op-shop jaunt, I found that one. Have you read her books? What do you think of them? This one reminds me so much of our trip to Japan and the slightly seedy world that was hinted at as we walked briskly past Tokyo's many alleyways at night...!

Down the Rabbit Hole

This original cover of A Wrinkle in Time is sourced from Wikipedia

Hello! It's nice to be back in the Yellow Wood. Hope you've been keeping well.

One of the questions that has come to mind while I've been having a crack at writing a novel is how to tell a story. This sounds pretty elementary for a budding writer, I know, but the mechanics of it is - for me at least - a little more complex than you might imagine. How do I make the story engaging? How do I make the reader want to turn to that next page?

So I have been reading all sorts of things to try to see how other people tell stories. Going back to children's stories has proved to be a particularly interesting source - especially those children's stories that involve the fanastic or the magical. How is the reader encouraged that the plot is just possible enough to keep reading? I've just finished Madeleine L'Engle's lovely A Wrinkle in Time and I've just now started Susan Cooper's Greenwitch. I've been watching Children of the Stones and The Tomorrow People on You Tube too. Funnily enough, I didn't read books like this when I was actually a child - they scared me! And I couldn't watch Doctor Who either, for the same reason.

What did you read when you were little? Do you remember these books? What makes a good story for you?