Barry Walsh

Thinking out loud here…

Daughter (Children?) of Shadows

Daughter of the Shadowland(s)

The Time Stealer’s …… (Adversary/Daughter/Enemy)

I like that way of putting it. Helpful.

I haven’t seen ‘Downsizing’ but it sounds like a film that is a bit overloaded with ideas and ends up getting lost among them.

You talk about bonds and use the term ‘enmeshed’ so I’m going for The Untangling.

I like the ‘Here Ends…’, but what to say is ending.

…the Seven Years of Pain
…the Seven Years of Separation.
Why not something like Seven Years Apart or The seven years of separation. The End Begins Here…? Just playing now!

I also wonder if some of the other themes are more relevant to the title? There are an awful lot of themes going…[Read more]

Interesting one. Titles can be hard. Sometimes a really perfect one will just present itself. Other times…

I was looking, as I’m sure you have, at a thesaurus to see if it was possible to simply replace ‘abduction’. The best I could do was ‘Here Ends the Absence’, or possibly ‘Here Ends the Departure’ which I’m not sure really does it.

One of those moments that tend to restore your faith in human nature. And yes, very moving.

Yes, Thea – that ‘never apologise, never explain’ – I read, many years ago, that to do so was a sign of immaturity, but it’s one I haven’t always managed (not so much about my writing, I’m glad to say).

Felt the pressure building up as I read and the dam burst at this line ‘Within twenty four hours enough people from Mousehole had volunteered to form a new crew…’Not a good look when you’re in the restaurant car park waiting for your sister.

Seriously, there are no other group of people who earn this much of my respect.

I can understand how this man feels, but I also remember that the coxswain turned away some of those who did make it to the lifeboat station. Who’s to say he might not have been one of them?

If you want to experience the full admiration for the courage of those men, you need to watch that BBC film and listen to Russell Smith’s eyewitness account…[Read more]

Another possibility is that the waves were so big that in a trough the Solomon Brown literally hit the seabed. If I’m ever up Whitby way I’ll definitely see about a ride on their Watson lifeboat.

There’s a decent collection of historic lifeboats at the dockyard at Chatham. I’ve a feeling they have a couple of Watson-type boats there but it seems…[Read more]

The BBC documentary gives the false impression (without actually saying so) that the moment that transmission broke off was the end of the Solomon Browne. That makes for an emotional moment in the programme, but was not the case, since it was seen afterwards. For what it’s worth, I believe that it suffered another violent impact with the Union…[Read more]

Superb blog tinged with tragedy, and, as always told with clarity and sympathy. For all the improvements in hardware and technology, RNLI operations can still be phenomenally dangerous. Operating in those conditions, that close to shore… Reading the account reminded me of The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger (great book, but don’t bother with…[Read more]

Interesting. I think sometimes, ‘It’s not quite there yet’ can sound like an apology, when it’s actually the admittance of a mature (by which I mean you know yourself and your writing) author, who realises that something created in such a short space of time needs more work. I’ve done it myself!

But of course it takes time to build that…[Read more]

Excellent, Richard.

Phillippa: that sounds a very good attitude to develop,thanks.

I realised that, when in the habit of being ready and willing to apologise, I was giving myself an excuses to fail.
Joining groups such as the Cloud, partaking in story challenges – stretching myself so as not to embarrass myself, judging my work against the very varied submissions of others, and trusting that my peers will give it the respect t…[Read more]

You have to blow your own trumpet, no-one is going to blow it for you.