Monday 17 October 2011

A Poxy Week

The last few days have been pretty poxy.

Three weeks into my bursary period and M, 4, has come down with a much more severe case of chicken pox than her brother, J, underwent two weeks ago. Net result: gone through a whole roll of cotton wool; slept really really badly; watched too many episodes of the Mr Men than I care to remember, and feel more connected to my daughter than I have done for a long time, especially since she started school.

However, it does mean that I hadn't felt at all connected to my creative work - until last night, with the kids fast asleep, we happened upon a fascinating documentary on iPlayer about the reclusive author of To Kill a Mocking Bird, Harper Lee (only 13 hours left to watch, at time of posting this!).

What interested me in this documentary was how the presenter increasingly discovers that this novel was based heavily on the author's life, and on the events surrounding her Alabama hometown of Monroeville. I'm no scholar of the author's work, though like many teenagers now, I suspect, I studied the book for my GCSE. I've been digging through the dusty wine boxes of books in our spare room trying to find the heavily annotated copy that I once owned. It will be interesting to see what spoke to me then and what, in this classic text, will speak to me now...

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