Thursday, October 29, 2009

Postcard from Chesil Beach



I admit it.  I'm catching up on a backlog of 'postings' from a few months of visits to the South West, and this photo is a few months old.  Am just trying to get ahead of the Royal Mail and their inevitable backlog...
 
My time spent on Chesil Beach was inspired by the fact I was reading the novel of that name and thought I'd try a little co-location of the reading experience.  Not all of Ian McEwan's settings are real, but the suck and draw of the pebbles resisting the tide on this breakwater certainly are.  Attempting to hold pages open while the wind whipped them about, losing my place, wasn't easy but did add to my appreciation of the difficulty of the characters' situation.  And the physical effort of walking over those stones would leave anyone with scant energy to pursue more difficult, emotional goals.
 
I don't intend to get obsessive about visiting the locations I read about (I'm currently reading a book set in London.  1920s London.  Can you imagine the difficulties that would arise?), but as an experiment this was a successful one.  There are many more reasons to go to Chesil Beach though.  Well worth a detour any time.

2 comments:

Lexi said...

If you'd taken a short film of the beach, we could have listened to the suck of the pebbles. May I put in a request for an upgrade?

(Not that I don't like the photos; I do, and like to imagine walking into them.)

Katharine D'Souza said...

It's a good idea, Lexi, but it was so windy that day I'd have needed professional sound recording equipment to have caught you just the sound of the tide. The camera I'm using is certainly not up to the job. And I'd have to rename the blog 'Short Films from K' and before you knew it I'd just have spent a lot of effort recreating YouTube.

Nope, the Postcards blog will stick with its old fashioned ways. No tweeting, no txtspk. Just random thoughts and pretty pictures. All yours to imagine walking in to.
K