Iain: Hello {{ subscriber.first_name | capitalize() or "friend" }}, is the pandemic lockdown easing where are you? Are things trying to
return to normal?
Heide: Will they ever be normal again?
Iain: True. But, for example, I’m returning to my normal daytime job from this coming Monday. It’s weird really.
Heide: I know. Remembering the get dressed and go places and act normal. Phew!
Iain: When we have to re-join the human race it will be quite a challenge.
Heide: Like a real life yoga class. I’ll need to remember to not laugh and make comments all the way through like I do on the Zoom yoga lessons.
Iain: Good point. No more muting people in meetings and talking about them behind their backs.
Heide: Real life sounds like hard work. A bit like cabbage.
Iain: What? Cabbage is great!
Heide: Yes. In moderation. Our family has a bit of a looming cabbage problem. Mr Goody has taken to gardening in a big way this year.
Iain: Cool! He’s growing all the things then?
Heide: Except that he unwittingly fell into the trap that awaits many gardeners. The neighbours offered him some spare cabbage plants. He put them all in and there was no room for anything else.
Iain: Oh, I see what your looming cabbage problem might be.
Heide: Yes. It’s starting now. I have to keep trying to think of ways to prepare cabbage that aren’t just, you know, cabbage.
Iain: Anyway, in terms of the real world not matching expectations, I read a social media discussion in a book group the other day —
Heide: Our book group?
Iain: No, not our book group (which is amazing and you should all join). It was a different book group and the readers were discussing whether they preferred books set in real places or books set in fictional places. I don’t mean Middle Earth or Vulcan but fictional places on our
world.
Heide: Ah, you mean choosing whether to set a story in a real place like our Clovenhoof books are set in Sutton Coldfield or in a fictionalised place like Dylan Thomas’s Llareggub or Stephen King’s Castle Rock.
Iain: So, one person argued that you should set your stories in a real place and give it an air of authenticity.
Heide: Verisimilitude.
Iain: That’s a long word for you. And the other said that if you use a fictional location then it requires less research and that you might never find a real place that suits your needs.
Heide: The real world never lives up to our expectations.
Iain: It’s like that comedy crime thriller we’re currently writing.
Heide: Are we allowed to talk about that yet?
Iain: I don’t know. It’s set in the very real town of Skegness and, also, in the real stately home, Gunby Hall. But I felt during the planning that the real Gunby Hall wasn’t big enough to match the expectations of our story. The ballrooms, the chandeliers…
Heide: The Viking raiding party.
Iain: We haven’t agreed that bit’s in it, yet. So, we couldn’t use the real Gunby Hall and so borrowed the interiors from the much posher Hatfield House instead. I think, sometimes, you have to make things up. Here's the real Gunby Hall with the plans for Hatfield House.
