Sailing on Stories

I am here again.

I am on the ferry travelling from Holyhead to Dublin, but this time I’m sitting next to a Chinese family preparing lunch in a portable rice cooker. They’ve asked me, several times, if I want to join them, but I’ve politely refused each time. Instead, I’m eating a dry cheese sandwich, and I would prefer to eat their food because it smells very delicious.

The Chinese family have just watched me come back from the Duty-Free shop and they asked me why I have three pairs of reading glasses.  I tried to explain that one pair is for reading books and my mobile phone; one pair is for my laptop screen, and one pair is for reading the prices of goods in shops, or the numbers on the buttons you find on cookers, and washing machines.

The Chinese family have no idea what I’m talking about.

It took me five visits to Specsavers to explain my visionary needs.  On the final visit the optician simply put his head in his hands and asked, “what is that you want?”

Oh, gentle eye man, if only I knew the answer to that question.

The Chinese family tell me that they spent the Lunar New Year in Shrewsbury, and I am not clear if they are going back to Dublin to visit family, or if they are flying back to Sichuan.  One of them lost their mobile phone earlier, on the car deck, and I’m trying to explain that they should ask one of the ship mates to announce this over the loudspeakers.  I’ve suggested that perhaps the Captain might be able to help.

I’m not sure, but I feel like Jessica Fletcher on the verge of unravelling a mystery.

I am currently only five years younger than Jessica Fletcher was when she started fighting crime in her free time in Maine.  Like her, I used to be a teacher and have a passing interest in local politics.  Like her, I don’t have children and can give disappointing looks to strangers on cue.  But this mystery of the missing phone on the journey of the Chinese family, will have to wait, because I am busy writing.

I write, ergo I am a writer.

I love to write.  Any words and in any formation and for any reason at all.  I write a daily journal and postcards, letters and flash fiction.  Recently I’ve started writing poetry and I send my stories off to be read at magazines and publishing houses.  Typically, they thank me and say that my piece was good, but that they received a particularly high volume of submissions this time, and that I mustn’t be despondent.

I write for many reasons.

Firstly, to make room in my head for all the new thoughts and words that rush into the space like ice-skaters without helmets or knee pads.  If I didn’t manually remove all the words from my brain, there would a traffic jam of letters, and they would all get loose and be mixed up like this:  x e f ggggg h k v b fffff

So here I am scribbling in public.

I write about what I ate for dinner and who my main enemies are.  I write about the weather and how happy and sad I felt during the day.  I write about my plans and then reflect on what really happened after the plans turned into rainwater.  I make myself laugh sometimes, with the absurdity of the thoughts as they dash about like gold, or copper or vomit.

I love to write in public.

Look at me!  Look at me just writing about it all…maybe I’m writing about you, gentle stranger.  You there with the leather jacket that’s a bit too small for you, who’s been drinking the Duty Free since we left the port and is probably an outlaw.  Or you, dressed in hemp dungarees with the children and the two dogs.  Or you with the older parent in a wheelchair, who probably can’t fly anymore. 

I write because I must.

The only writing I don’t enjoy is work emails.  I remember years ago, when I still worked at the British Embassy in Copenhagen, and we were going to start using this new thing called, “Email”.  One woman I worked with, a woman I liked very much, asked if this new email meant we wouldn’t have to manage the regular mail coming into the office.

Oh no, said the IT Guru.  We would still have to manage regular mail, but we would also have to manage these virtual inboxes as well.

Ah, said the woman.

Ah, indeed.

And so, we write a million emails to people who read a million emails and somewhere in between, we find the time to write something more interesting.  Like about a mystery on a ferry concerning a Chinese family, who are on the move, or that time we went ice-fishing. What about that evening when we watched the new moon move around the sky, and it felt like it was playing hide and seek? 

Then when the moon was as bright as could be.

A mystery worthy of Jessica.