Hello everyone who reads these pages,
The last time I posted anything on here was in early March. An optimistic & upbeat post that, in hindsight, was a little premature. Spring came & went, turning slowly into summer with some beautiful sunny days in April, May & June. Early summer has now turned into high summer with extreme weather here in North Northumberland. Occasional bursts of sun, torrential rain, high winds & cold nights.
But enough of climate change. During the intervening months I have experienced some rather unsettling events in my health. Back in early March I I thought it was improving after a rather challenging winter but.......my body ran into a bizarre mix of minor & moderate strokes, atrial fibrillation & general all round exhaustion.
I am now out the other side thanks to the wonders of modern heart drugs, hawthorn berry powder and daily Tai Chi/Chi Kung. I'm gradually beginning to realise/accept that I could feel this well for some time to come. A real relief after the reality of more major heart surgery seemed to be drawing closer. Not something I look forward to with any enthusiasm.
So I'm back in the editor's/publisher's/co-ordinator's saddle but without William.
A few days ago I received the email below from William followed a few days later by a recorded delivery package posted in Singapore containing an 'edited version' of his travels in Southeast Asia, notes & more suggestions about the development of characters & narrative, a number of completed chapters & a postcard of Haw Par Villa gardens in Singapore (which I visited often when I was a child growing up in Singapore ) with a few words written on the back saying simply:-
"You're on your own for a while kid. I'll be in touch"
Since then I have heard nothing more from him. I've tried contacting him via email, text, Messenger & even WhatsApp but with no response. So for the moment I'm taking creative charge/control of decisions around the unfolding of Albions Children. (Not sure whether I like the hyphen in Albion's which is why sometimes it's just Albions).
In the email he mentions his 'paraphrase' with bullet points (which I've referred to above as the 'edited version') of his 'longer email to me'. This paraphrase or edited version is actually no shorter, certainly more complex & possibly even longer than the original email he sent me back in February. So once again I've done some editing/rearranging and the first section of his account of this journey from Bangkok to the North of Thailand and across into Myanmar will appear on these pages soon.
In the meantime I'm publishing 3 more chapters in the ongoing narratives of Albions Children. I hope you enjoy reading them.
Go well
Hello Gordon,
I'm still in Singapore enjoying the ambience of this extraordinary modern city with all it's wonders, beauties, ugliness & other contradictions while writing more material for our novel, if that's what it is.....?
I see you're about to publish 3 more chapters but haven't yet posted your edit of my epic email concerning my journey through southeast Asia. Actually quite a relief as I've realised that even if seriously edited by you I really don't want our website to become a journal about my travels, interesting though some of those excursions may be.
On my recent trip into China (as part of that longer journey) I got confirmation from a poet I met that "may you live in interesting times" is indeed a Chinese curse. The Taoist ideal is to live in tranquil & peaceful times. Qualities that our "interesting" & self obsessed society is sadly lacking.
But I digress. What I am sending you now is a paraphrase of that long email compressing my 5 month journey into a number of bullet pointed short paragraphs. Maybe at some time in the future I will revisit the journey & the notes I sent you originally in that email. It may even make a worthwhile piece of travel writing.
So please post the whole of this email on our new website.
As I mentioned above as well as enjoying my stay in Singapore I've been writing new chapters. Some of them from threads & ideas that I created over a decade ago & can now see/realise how they fit into the wider narrative. Particularly the graphic novel sequences with Pig & the other animals. Sometime we need to find ourselves the right illustrator....
The creative process is an extrordinary thing. I'll post my output to you before I leave here. Not sure where I'm heading, though Oz is definitely calling.
I guess that you're enjoying the arrival of Spring in Northumberland, a memorable time of year & an experience that I had many years ago after a long hard winter in Scotland on my way south when I stayed on Lindisfarne & in its surroundings. How lucky you are to live in such a beautiful part of the world.
I also hope your health is improving & you're still doing those chi kung exercises I suggested. I'm sure they'll help.
Love & strength to you
William
And that is the last I heard from William in mid August last year. I've emailed him a number of times since then with questions about his health (he is well into his 70s), his whereabouts & the practical details/challenges of typed.com closing & us finding a new host/home for Albion's Children. (Typed.com are another casualty of the intense online competition for users in the world of self build websites, blogs etc. A real shame as their simple & easily understandable interface was perfect for our kind of publishing.)
But so far (as of mid-February 2018) I've heard nothing from him. Being who he is it's possible that he could be anywhere on the planet right now. My guess is that he's returned to Australia and is somewhere in that vast continent possibly living for a while with his aboriginal friends in the interior.
My sense is that if he had become very ill or even died I would have heard by now.
For the last 6 months or so, given the imminent closure of typed.com, I've published no new Albion's Children chapters, though there are a number ready to go out there. I've done some research/searching for a suitable new website.........& finally landed here on Squarespace.
Not the cheapest, but for what we need almost perfect. Giving us the immediate text based site we want with the possibility of adding graphics, audio & video when we're ready.
I will be publishing my edit of William's account of his travels through Southeast Asia in 2017 on the Communications pages in the next few weeks.
In the meantime thanks for browsing the correspondence I hope you found it interesting.
For Williams account of his long loop from Bangkok to Phnom Pen you can click on the TRAVELS link below or you click on the other link below & start to read Albion's Children.