Look at moi! Standing – in my usual awkward pose – “on Chesil Beach”.
Ian McEwan is my Literary crush so, unsurprisingly, a tear or ten escaped soon after this pic was snapped. I was similarly moved years ago when I discovered I had followed in McEwan’s footsteps when visiting Bruny Island in Tasmania.
I had heard McEwan chose the quiet solace of Bruny over the red carpet of the Golden Globe Awards and I was moved poetically. My [long-winded] article, published in the Bruny News, included this:
Missing Ian McEwan
I arrive, seedy, on a blustery grey morning
after swells and white caps and bitter instant granules,
to disembark breathless on this necked island
that has figured wide and mammoth in these late days;
but you have gone
I wanted to show you that I can write
I, too, would evade the Globes. I’d tramp the bush here,
rather than schmooze down rich red-carpet paths
if I had been invited, if there was a film;
but I’m too late
I’ll try to plant my feet where yours have been
and imagine the words you might have imparted
if I’d arrived last week, if we had met,
if you had read my work and thought highly of me;
if you were here
If I remain quiet and still inside
I might catch faint echoes of McEwan-esque prose
Inspiration might carry on the wind
and land literary fertility at my feet;
because I am here
Then next time you cross to these narrow shores
you will know the paths I have traversed, by my words.
You might have read my work and been impressed
and you might wish you had arrived sooner
when I was here
Atonement? Perhaps.
I have not written anything to commemorate my trip to Chesil Beach. Maybe I will; or perhaps I will hug the thoughts and savour them secretly.