Time warp and apologies !

How did it get to be April the 25th?  I checked the date of my last post and it was in mid January.  What is my excuse??? I was abducted by aliens... No that's not it.  My cat ate my homework... Nope that one has not worked since third grade.  I'm a lazy git... Not in general no.  So what put the pause on my big idea?  Well truthfully life got in the way and us creative artist types are often distracted by shiny things.  Yep that's my answer and I am sticking to it.  However getting this idea out of my brain and in a place where I can share it with likeminded folks and perfect it is important to me.  So from here on out once a week there will be a post on Monday.  I am putting the alarm in my IPhone to remind me every Sunday.  I have a general story arc in my mind and most of the characters ready to play there bits, but I'm not ready to churn out the whole thing.  It is an intimidating process for someone who is not a writer.  So I will start with the little flashes I get in my head of bits of the story. These come to me while I am working on other things or painting or even unloading the dishwasher.  I will to start to write little vignettes of scenes trying to capture the essence of what I thought before my focus shifts elsewhere and the idea is lost forever.  These will be the posts for a while.  Descriptive little scene setters I will use when I start to string chapters and themes together.

In the form of a reminder of the big story I have in mind.  It starts in 1930's Oxford when then Professor Tolkien discovers a talisman that allows him to discover another land.  One he discovers called Middle Earth.  Tolkien is a Member of a literary club called the Inklings.  They meet weekly and share new work for fun and critique and from time to time make fun of other writers they don't like.  C.S Lewis is also a member of the Inklings.  When Tolkien tries to share his secret other world with Lewis something does not go as planned.  Lewis finds himself in Narnia... They also discover that their actions in the other lands have an impact on our own world.

It seems I have a lot of work to do as I have not read the Narnia books since jr high school and I need to know a lot more about Oxford.  For now I can start on the little descriptive paragraphs and set them down like washes in a bigger painting.  So with Apologies to Messrs. Tolkien and Lewis here we go.

April, 2015
We spent a chilly, rainy week in London.  I loved it.  Wendy was there for work and had meetings all day and dinners at night.  What is an artist and photographer to do with a week in London?  I wandered everywhere!  I walked and took the underground all over the place.  I found some of the filming locations from the Harry Potter movies,  I did a portrait session with a young music student in the Leake Street graffiti tunnel.  I wandered around Camden for two days.  I do love the parts of cities where the eccentrics come together and form their own sub city that celebrates their weirdness.  Camden is great fun and I would have loved to have seen it in the 1950's and 1960's in the recent post war era.  Today it is a bit of a disney version of itself, much like Time Square is a cartoon version of itself for tourists.  That said Camden which was saw the birth of the punk scene and still has echoes of its rebellious past is fun and a treat for the eyes and ears.  Everywhere I went I listened to accents.  Not just English accents.  The whole world seems to be living and working in Camden as visitors wander up and down the High Street and on the bridge over the river.  At Camden Lock you can get a sense of its industrial past.  It is a mix of Gypsy vendors and startup manufacturing concerns.  In all honesty since that trip I have had my eye on a little item from the Camden Watch co. but I digress and since I have three watches in my nightstand I never use I'll move on.  Why am I writing about Camden for a book about Oxford and London?  Well here's the thing no matter how you think a story is going to go when you are thinking about it where your mind goes when you put fingers to keys is a whole other story.  I just had a thought... The story already shifts between worlds (ours, Middle Earth and Narnia), should it also shift between times?  It would complicate the story and I may not want to do that but for the purpose of this post I am going to introduce you to a character I met in Camden and very much want to photograph him and his troupe of actors on my next visit to London.  I will put off the the description of our ride from Bicester (for us Americans that pronounced Bister like blister without the L) to Oxford for next weeks post.  Funny but I'll never be able to smell a sweet spring rain and not think of that beautiful countryside and Oxford again.

Okay so back to Camden... About a block or so up the High Street from the underground station is the office (OK a street Corner) of Wonder London where Alice's Tea Party is all set up.  This troupe of actors dressed as characters from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland hold court on this corner and ham it up with tourists who pose with the characters at the Tea Party for tips.  The Mad Hatter is the jovial host of this wondrous tea party that does not seem one bit out of place in Camden.  Behind his grease paint and orange wig his eyes are alway scanning the crowd.  To a photographer like me used to observing the world and capturing the details others miss in street photographs I assume he is looking for the next tourist who will take the seat at the tea party and have the troupe fawn over them until the photo is taken a  pound or two is dropped in the collection jar.  In this case I am completely wrong  The mad hatter is a man wanted in at least three lands and waiting for his contact who can bring him home so he can correct the mistakes made long, long ago that set this world on a downward spiral.  he is a man hiding in plain sight in costume as a street performer and nobody notices him or the real him.  Just the crazy, fun, Mad Hatter who is adding to the local color in Camden Lock.

Next week four adults drive a Mini Cooper (AKA Hobbit Car) from Bicester to Oxford.