Archives as a writing resource

Leicester University is an amazing local resource for writers. With one of their research library tickets (free of charge as long as you’re happy to research on site) you can enter the most amazing worlds, research the most obscure areas, discover the most exciting things.

Yesterday I attended a session run by Simon Dixon and Selina Lock from the Leicester University Library Archives. The aim was to encourage writers to use archive materials to inspire their writing. There were many tables of fascinating items for us to look at, handle and hopefully write about. 

A note about the furniture: The chairs in the Archives Department were older than some of the exhibits and they made their presence known... loudly! They came from the original University College, shown in the photograph on the left as it was in the 1920s. It is now the Fielding Johnson Building. The chairs were rickety, creaky and provided a continual source of distraction and amusement which we were happy to overlook in deference to their age!

Following my earlier post about the decommissioned church of St Peters in Belgrave, I now have a mission to read up about leper windows in general and the leper window at St Peters Church in particular. With this in mind I chose to begin the session at the table with local history books. Burton’s History of Leicester published in 1622 told me nothing that I did not already know about the Burton Lazars leper colony and nothing at all about the church at Belgrave.

I temporarily dismissed my mission and threw myself into the session proper. I became absorbed by an account of a highwaywoman, called Jenny Fox, who choked, bound and robbed her victims mercilessly. She was even recorded to have committed the same “handsome frolick” on her husband. She was finally caught in 1655, was sentenced to hanging but poisoned herself and died a terrible death. Cheerful stuff!

There were exhibits from Joe Orton's archives and from Sue Townsend's, but the final table that I chose to work at had a rare copy of the Wicked Bible on display. This book provides such a fascinating story that I will save it for a whole blog post of its own. But an equally fascinating event happened at this table. I found myself sitting next to a woman who, it turned out, is a Friend of St Peters Church. One of her co-members knows quite a bit about the leper window and she is arranging for me and my co-researcher friend to be allowed into the decommissioned church. How’s that for synchronicity?

Being a Nosy Adam...

...why should Parker have the monopoly on nosiness?

I was taking Josh the dog to the park the other morning when I noticed a red ribbon on a neighbour’s hedge. It made me think about Joanne Harris and her red ribbons in Blackberry Wine. I wondered if it could be some sort of a sign, a talisman. This gave me an idea for a story so I scribbled it into my notebook.

Further down our road there was a small group of people pointing at something out of my line of vision. No self-respecting Nosy Adam could have walked on by, so we made a detour to watch a large digger turn a perfectly good house into a pile of bricks. This was to make way for a road and houses in the backlands but what fascinated me were gardens that I had never seen before. There were bushes, trees, an old fashioned garden shed... or was it a Wendy House where generations of children had played or maybe it was a bolthole for Dad with a radio and cans of beer or better still for Mum with a mug of coffee and her mobile phone. Another idea and I was scribbling in my notebook again.

Josh was pulling at his lead. ‘Aren’t we supposed to be going to the park?’ he said. (OK, so he didn’t actually say it.) We resumed our walk. A cat who was watching Josh from the top of a fence, didn’t know that dogs can’t climb. She panicked. She lost her balance. A pair of claws grappled and disappeared down the back of the fence, followed by a clatter, a hiss, a meow. The Nosy Adam in me wanted to go and investigate but I knew that it would only make things worse so I jotted it down in my notebook.

The red ribbon was still caught on the hedge when we returned from the park. I knew that red ribbons have something to do with charity. The Internet said that it is the symbol of the World Aids Campaign. They are calling for nominations for the 2010 Red Ribbon Award and the closing date is 28th February. Well there’s a coincidence, I thought, bearing in mind last week’s blog post and I began to type this post...

But when I looked up the link for the Red Ribbon Award I was surprised to see that there is a Burgundy Ribbon for Amyloidosis Awareness... come to think of it that ribbon on the hedge was kind of a burgundy red and I have a husband who suffers from Amyloidosis. So it’s not a coincidence. It’s synchronicity. I started out writing about how being nosy gives you ideas for creative writing and now I’m reading a website about raising awareness of Amyloidosis as early diagnosis can save lives, I’m planning how I can get involved and I’m right back with my last week’s blog post about coincidence versus synchronicity. Isn’t life strange?

I don't believe in coincidences...

or do I?

I often start to say something to a friend only to hear them saying it first.

‘Creepy!’ I think. ‘Am I psychic or was that a coincidence?’

Surely the most logical explanation is that we spend a lot of time together and so have similar thoughts and experiences. Likewise a phone call from my mother will often coincide with me thinking that I really must ring her.

I would like to think that serendipity* is not a coincidence but some sort of divine intervention. When I first joined Twitter I tweeted just the once and my name was seen by the Chair of Lapidus. This is a lady who never normally uses Twitter but she recognised me and invited me to a local Lapidus meeting. It was fortuitous, serendipitous, and I’ve gained a lot from that reunion, but why should divine intervention be bothering itself with my Lapidus membership?

Can synchronicity* be explained in a logical way? Have you ever read or written a story only to see the same scenario reported in the news shortly afterwards? When I interviewed Pippa Goodhart last month she told me that she had recently read in the paper about an aristocrat whose wife had given birth to twin boys by Caesarean section and they had to decide which of the two should become the heir.

‘That was almost exactly the dilemma I'd put into my Cake Test story where triplet girls get muddled by the nannies and they have to devise a test to choose which of them would make the best Queen. Isn't life strange?’ mused Pippa and it gets stranger...

Several years ago I was sure that I heard a voice as the phone began to ring. It was my father-in-law’s voice. He’d been dead for many years but I heard him tell me that I was going to have to be strong. In the few seconds that it took me to answer the phone I became convinced that something must have happened to my mother-in-law. I was relieved to hear my best friend on the line but she had called to tell me that her husband had died and I really did need to be strong. So was this a coincidence, because I’m not sure how comfortable I feel about any alternative explanation?

And now I’m faced with another coincidence. Rod has just finished his 3rd month of chemotherapy to control his Amyloidosis. I said in an earlier post how well he was coping with the Melphalan and Prednisolone but that was before he developed blurred vision. Eye Casualty said that his optic nerve is inflamed. They sent him for an MRI scan, lumber puncture, field vision and all manner of tests. Last Thursday he saw an Ophthalmic Neurologist, a Neurological Ophthalmologist and a Haematologist. Three ologists in one day - is this a record? None of them could say what is causing it. It came on shortly after he finished his 2nd dose of Melphalan but apparently blurred vision is not a known side effect... and so it must be a coincidence, or is it?

If you’ve experienced a coincidence without a logical explanation then I’d love to hear about it. Please share it in Comments below.

If you’ve had any experience of Melphalan and blurred vision then we would both be interested to hear from you. If you don’t want to post a comment then I can always be contacted through my website at www.rkawriting.co.uk.

I get mixed up with these two words and so have put the definitions here for myself as well as for anyone else with a similar serendipity/synchronicity confusion issue.

* Serendipity: when events coincide with a positive outcome

* Synchronicity: when a series of coincidences appear to be related