Sunday 28th January 2018 - Make Strangers A Source Of Inspiration

On Sunday 14th January, I posted a piece entitled Struggling for Inspiration.

https://thereluctantdiarist.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/sunday-14th-january-2018-struggling-for.html

One of the options I put forward was to "Make strangers a source of inspiration".

Here's an example. She's not an interesting character but if you were to rock her world, all kinds of possibilities could be imagined.

The Bobette

The Bobette is characterised by shoulder length, cut too thick hair and tinted but only to preserve neutrality and cover any early grey strands - no reds, blues or greens for this girl.

Safe, comfortable, middle class, boring without realising it & married to Mr Dependable who leaves the house at 8 a.m.every morning and walks back through the door at 6 p.m. prompt. Typically aged 30-50, though sometimes the condition's onset is earlier, she's advertising that Mr Right has been found and the only flattery or attention she desires now is from her female friends.

She may keep a house cat but is wary of dogs - she heard some could be dangerous. The small car that ferries her around probably has a given name, rigidly obeys speed limits & all other road signage & is checked over by Mr Bobette every weekend at her behest. Naturally risk averse she 's never made a bungee jump, pillioned on a motorcycle, smoked, drunk more than 2 glasses of wine, visited a tropical country or driven without fastening her seatbelt.

She dresses neatly for comfort - trouser suits, knee-length skirts, blouses (not too clingy) and twinsets. She doesn't own a pair of jeans but has a cupboard full of low heeled, scuff-free shoes.

Her home is clean, neat & sparsely decorated. The lounge is functional with a plain wool mix carpet & seating pushed back against the walls.A nest of tables sits in a corner of the room and if there is sufficient space to allow the room to remain uncluttered, a coffee table beset with the obligatory cookery books, coasters & a small vase of dried flowers will rest on a neutral rug in the centre. The table will be just beyond arms reach of the sofa sitters but form prevails over functionality here. On the longest wall a tasteful, conventional, posed, professionally-taken A3 photograph of her nuclear family takes prominence. A smear-free glass fronted display cabinet houses more silver-framed family portraits - none of them show the subjects engaged in activity, just dutifully staring into the camera lens with their vacant smiles and safe haircuts.

The kitchen is rebuilt every few years with a contemporary but not bold design. Full sets of cutlery and crockery are neatly stored - loss or breakage demands replacement and a trip to the charity shop with the perfectly serviceable old sets.

The fitted bedroom is feminine, pastel and floral with functional, formal lighting and no allusion to a temptress's boudoir. Bathrooms are polished and fragranced with neatly arranged toiletries & a small bottle of after shave the only indication of a male presence.

When the kids are collected from school - which, of course, they must be given all the dangers of suburban life - she stands with the other Bobettes & talks proudly of Mr Bobette's promotion to deputy bean counter in accounts receivable and the fish pie that she's prepared for dinner.

The rest of her days are filled with cleaning, tidying, shopping, a flower arranging course and weight watchers.

And such will be her life. So long as the basic security & comfort she feels isn't rocked, her limited imagination & intelligence will permit a definite contentment with banality and good luck to her. It's not a life that most would choose but the malcontents amongst us might just hide a tiny bit of envy for an unremarkable, uncomplicated existence.

Please feel free to leave comments.

Life & Biography Writing for Friends, Family History & As A Personal Historian

Some time ago, when I was devoting much time to researching my family tree, I produced some documents that I intended to use for information gathering purposes.

These were initially intended to serve as skeleton questionnaires for the interviewing of older family members and would inform both about the individual & hopefully prompt recollections of other, perhaps largely forgotten about ancestors. As is the norm, this initial idea quickly expanded and I thought about developing them further so that I might become a Personal Historian and produce biographies for others to leave for their own families.

With the development of Information Technology, the production and publication of professionally printed & bound biographies for the 'unfamous' is now available to many at reasonable cost.

Whilst I didn't take the project all the way to fruition at the time, save for one family member, a lot of hard work & a little plagiarism went in to the production of some pretty solid questionnaires amounting to in excess of 400 questions. Many of these serve well as prompts for supplementary questions that enable a deeper insight into a life story.

Have you started or thought about putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard & immediately got stuck? We all have those moments when a long forgotten memory suddenly springs into our consciousness & lives again. This will often happen during a conversation but is frequently triggered by sensory stimuli. To aid recall, consider trying to aid the recall process sights, sounds & smells fom your past.

Sights might include that box of old photographs in the attic, some cine film (which is easily converted to digital these days), an old movie you watched or a visit to a gallery etc.

Sounds could be a favourite piece of music from your youth, the clackety-clack of a railroad, a ship's horn in the harbour or something from the natural world.

Smells that are useful include those of food cooking. Consider preparing something that grandma used to make you. Or, maybe it's flowers or pine-cones or a camomile lawn or the fish market or an open fire.

If there are any readers who would like assistance with writing, proof reading and/or publishing their own life stories, please use the contact form to the right of this page & I will be happy to help.

Alternatively, I can email you copies of the structured questionnaire & some more handy hints and advice. If they are of use and any value to you and you are financially able a click on the donate button to the right would be greatly appreciated. I would wish you well anyway with your endeavours.