Pushing through the snow leaves look bright and new and even greener than usual.Recently I came across d a Waterman roller ball pen that had fallen into disuse because I couldn't find a shop in Tunbridge Wells which sold refills. It is beautifully weighted, solid and made made to endure. But it is useless until it occurs to me that the Internet will provide a solution. I live beside it but sometimes forget its utility. A moment on Google and up come a number of sites which sell Waterman pens. The next day a parcel of refills arrives. I feel that I have a beautiful new pen, but better than that, a pen that isn't new but which I can use again.
Today a big and wonderful surprise. Lucy Kempton some years ago illustrated with her photographs a series of 50 sonnets which I had written called Handbook for Explorers. The result lies dormant in our Compasses blog and is hard to follow. The last-in, last out blog form, which means that anything in a series and of lasting value must be consumed backwards, doesn't help. And it is not easy to see on screen how well the photographs complement the text. The surprise? By special delivery today comes a parcel containing a book of the sonnets and photographs which Lucy has put together and edited on Blurb.com, where it has just been published. She gave no hint that she was thus engaged. So I feel like a child is supposed to feel on his birthday or at Christmas - overwhelmed by a delight he experiences less and less as he gets older when he cannot easily be filled with amazement or joy at the unexpected. So much becomes predictable or malevolent or both; so little astonishes with kindness and invention.
5 comments:
What an amazing surprise indeed! How I wish I could see it. Please take some photos and show us!
I would echo M-L's request.
Say three separate dp-spreads using some form of augmented lighting. It'll probably need several experiments to get it right (conventional incandescent bulbs throw an orangey cast that may need correcting). Try not to crop it so that we can double-click enlarge it.
It is available at blurb.com.
This is great news! I wonder whether you can see it or some of it in Blurb in preview mode. This gives a glimpse of the article, although not the experience of the real thing.
As a member of the Blurberati myself I will check this out.
It's not often one has the opportunity these days to surprise someone so agreeably!
There are a few minor imperfections with it, which of course I didn't notice in either the on-line or the print proof copies, but they are only in small matters of spacing, not in anything essential in the text.
It was nothing but a pleasure to do it; I'll perhaps say more about it over at mine, now I'm not having to keep it secret!
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