Drop-Seat Pyjamas: Sifting Through Fantasies and Sieving Thoughts

There have been several comments emailed me recently regarding my infrequent posting of late. The thing is, my view is that a blog should be a work of enthusiasm - something driven by inspiration and carrying at least some modicum of an enthusiastic air about it; hopefully infectious and inspirational in its turn. The trouble with all of that is that is infinitely difficult to be enthusiastic about anything when one is a depressive and going through a phase of plumbing the depths of despair. Not that I am permanently depressive; my mood can go up and down with the coming out of the sun or the clouding over of the sky. It's why I drink so damn much - I am nearly always 'up' with a pint or two of the realist of real ale in me - and that's more often than not when the real work gets done! But conversely, there are days I can barely get out of bed. The gym works too in elevating my mood (which at least keeps me fit – I'll have to show off my abdominals one day on here: remind me), but I have to get there first! So, although the blog is sort of bobbing along, I have not been able to update it as often as I'd like. I have been in various pubs a lot since getting back and although I can write well enough in a pub (actually a few beers are good for the imagination) updating the blog is another question entirely, because of the pictorial element to it and the need to view the blog itself in order to judge the final result (the layout often differs substantially from the preview, which on Blogger seems to be largely useless). There are too many prying eyes peering over the shoulder, and too many judgmental views likely to be expressed here in London – as I have intimated before.

While on the subject of my bulging (I wish) email box I totally love these drop-seat pyjama pics I was recently sent - very juvenile. In terms of story telling; in an institutional setting I'm not so sure it works. But if introduced within the more intimate, personal atmosphere of the domestic environment I love the idea. In fact I have already invoked such a scenario within a piece I have part-completed - but whether I use it in the upcoming volume or in the 'true' volume 3 (which continues on directly from where volume 2 left off) - if it ever gets written) I have yet to decide. I'd love to use the idea in vol 3 but as you will have read (I hope) at the culmination of volume 2; although it is a sort of 'domestic' arrangement the two girls concerned in that scene are about to enter, it is a very strange one indeed. Without giving too much away: basically volume 3 was planned to revolve around a sort of faux-Victorian world constructed within an English country manor house and so complete that the girl's two new 'siblings' – two pretty teenagers already in residence and completely under the thumb of their stern governess and nanny - have become convinced that they really do live in the Victorian era - albeit with a little psychological persuasion – with all the restrictions, petty rules and possibilities for discipline that brings to mind. The thing is: do drop-seat PJs really fit into what amounts to a Victorian boarding school scenario? The other possibility is that our young Lavinia - the girl left behind in the institution at the end of vol 2 and who's previous pre-institutionalisation life forms part of the new volume I am currently working on - was put in drop-seats by her aunt when resident in her aunt's home. Even better, if the institutional discipline scene is favored, is the possibility of their imposition in the church-run charity home for wayward and runaway girls that also features in the upcoming volume.

Such considerations form part and parcel of the type of problem currently holding me up. Generally put; it the issue of putting together the various chunks of writing I have completed into some sort of logical flow and deciding what to put in (and where) and what to leave out. For example; some of the ideas I had while away on holiday are more suitable for inclusion in the true volume 3 - which at one time I was uncertain I would even bother to write at all. But I am loath to brush over those ideas and have been trying to get them down on 'paper'. Actually, while reading through various bits and pieces and scenarios I have finished recently, I have begun to wonder as to whether I might not be too far from being able to split the work in two, with a little extra effort, and produce two books for the price of one, so to speak.

To keep you up-to-date: I have just returned to a section that I was working on and abandoned earlier in the year and that involves a perfectly healthy teenage girl becoming convinced that she requires leg calipers. Later on she is encountered as a residential 'volunteer' subject in an experimental psychology study that involves the deliberate induction of stammering, dressed in a very strict school uniform and with her leg calipers, now each kept fastened by a series of padlocks set along its length. Obviously I have mentioned it before but any ideas along these lines anyone?