In a land far, far away Picture this: a thirteen hour boat ride from Aberdeen to Shetland, and then another three hours crossing over the rough waves in a very pokey and very much delayed boat...all to reach a tiny place called Fair Isle. For some of you, this paints a picture of a little piece of Heaven – isolated, hours upon hours of nothingness and miles away from hustle and bustle. For others, due to those exact same reasons, it sounds positively like Hell! Either way, this precise voyage was the adventure Ann Cleeves embarked on when she was about my age. She went to work as an assistant cook in a bird observatory on Fair Isle, a place which I have discovered (thanks to Google Maps) is pretty much in line with Oslo and famous for its knitting patterns. Cleeves confessed that she knew nothing about birds and couldn’t really cook, though said that at the age of 19/20 “anything seems like an adventure!” Ann Cleeves is a lady who has written numerous crime fiction books, thirty to be exact. She has conjured up many criminal plots, solved lots of murders and told tale after tale, some of which have even graced our TV screens. Yesterday, however, Cleeves told us some of her stories. She shared with us a bit about her life, the journey to creating the hit TV series Shetland and Vera, and some of the details that go beyond the covers of her books. One of my favourite stories she told (aside from her sixteen hour sail as mentioned above) was that of how Vera came to be on TV, simply through someone picking up a book in Oxfam as a holiday read. It happened to be just the right person, at just the right time, choosing just the right book! We even got a short reading of a dramatic extract from Cold Earth, which caused a gentle ‘Oooo’ of intrigue, tension and appreciation to sweep across the room. These very British-sounding murmurs from the audience entertained me throughout, and were especially prevalent when Cleeves mentioned having lived on Hilbre Island. An ‘Ahhh’ of excitement at the familiarity bubbled up in the front few rows. In fact, that island is where she started writing her first novel...(a claim to fame for West Kirby!) So it sounds like cold, solitary specks in the sea are the key to adventure and creativity! As a teenager, I love hearing how people older than me have lived life and the journeys they’ve gone on along the way. So never mind backpacking in Bali, who wants to take a leaf from Cleeves’ book and have a gap year of knitting and bird watching near Shetland? It sounds good to me! When I'm travelling, I don't write postcards or take photographs. I write short stories. I don't plot in advance. If I knew how it was going to end, there wouldn't be any point in writing the book. Part three of three of three on its way!
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AuthorMegan Kate Chester Archives
June 2017
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