Relish

Life My dissertation got all on top of me. Even though my back's working again, as usual with any of these things I reached a point were I get so twisted up in theory and the panic of it all that I lose sight of what the thing is about and what I should be writing. So I'm going to take it easier this week just to get my head back into the mood. I've written 5,700 words already for a 4,000 word long chapter most of which is salvagable for other places. It just needed a clear direction and in the cooler weather today I think I found one. I've even mapped out chapter two. Amazing. It's all to do with chaos theory and Carl Jung's theory of synchonicity. I'm doing a film course. Oh yes.

I think the trip to Shrewsbury yesterday helped a bit. I needed to get away and give my eyes something new to look at and my feet something other than carpet to be walking on. Shrewsbury has cobbles. There's something about going to a place you don't really know and just walking about, discovering. I visited some lovely old churches, the castle and the impressive Abbey as well as the museum with its millenia old rowing oats and helmets and armour. The town itself is quiet though, unsettlingly so. Even the engines of the cars seemed to whisper as though they knew something important but thought it best not to mention it. It's the kind of place too that has shops called 'Aroma' that sell things that smell nice like jams and coffees or that have a business plan built around the sale of a single item like rugs or curtains.

If there was one disappointment it was the lunchtime burger. I last visited Shrewsbury as a child on a holiday in Shropshire. My Mum reminded me on Sunday night:
'Ooh remember that day you had constipation and we had to go to Boots to get you some stuff.'
'Yes, I do. And thanks.'
The thing I remember vividly was a lunchtime visit to a pub that sold something called a New Yorker burger which to some pallets might not have been all that impressive but to my young tastebuds was a glimpse through the clouds into heaven, with the bacon, the cheese and the relish the songs of angels (have I stretched that metaphore?). Of course all these years later there was no way the place would still be there. But I did find the pub. It's a chain now, called 'The Hole In The Wall'. I had one of their burgers. It had cheese and bacon and moist patty but it just seemed -- bland. But I still have that taste memory of the past to keep me going though. Hmmm...