From
My English Country Garden
By
Builder Michael
There
are often times
in life, it can be said, when the gift of inspiration tends to leave
one high and dry
and breaking
one’s head
for ideas! This is a common complaint amongst part-time writers of
small and unimportant local newspapers. And, one such contributor to
such irrelevant
rags
is a friend of mine’s wife from South Wales.
Writing
articles
for Welsh newspapers isn’t an easy thing to do. First of all, one
needs something to say, secondly, it has to be interesting, thirdly,
it has to be relevant to local-affairs, fourthly, it has to be simple
so as to be understood by the people who read it, and, lastly but not
leastly, one has to be able to write! And, it was concerning this
very last point that my friend’s wife phoned me last week.
I
told her that
there is one very important thing about writing, and, that is, one
has to be able to describe the same event from at least 4 different
angles at once. This, of course, as anyone who knows the slightest
bit about basic journalism will tell you, is to arouse
and stimulate
the interest of every type of reader that exists; and, for my
friend’s wife this shouldn’t be a problem at all, in fact it
should be an extremely simple matter!
My
friend’s
wife writes exclusively about christenings and weddings - and, in
each case the dynamics are more or less the same. At every wedding
there are two major players and, at christenings, too! The only
difference being, that a christening involves a third party who is
too young to know anything at all about what’s going on, and in the
case of the wedding, he or she (the baby) was probably, in all
probability, the cause of the whole thing in the first place.
From
the point
of view of the bride, a wedding is the happiest day of her life
(which doesn’t say much about the rest of it!), whilst, for the
groom, it is a very proud occasion, and, according to the status of
the guests it can be anything from the loss of a daughter to the
gaining of a son, or an excuse for a party, and, most importantly an
event for meeting all of one’s relatives who, in the course of
normal life, one normally never sees, and so-on, and so-on.
So,
how
does one combine all of these things in one simple sentence?
To
begin
with, like all good journalists, one has to decide what to miss out
and what to invent, and this is achieved by the simple asking of
simple questions. The important thing is what comes out in black and
white in Saturday’s paper. And the most effective way of going
about this is say everything about everything without saying anything
at all. Such a brief report could be as follows,-
Last
Saturday afternoon,
Roger X led Mary Y down the aisle of St. James’s church in Bodmyn.
It was a beautiful afternoon with one or two clouds, and the mood of
the guests was likewise. Mary’s dress was long and white, and, in
his speech Roger not only thanked all those present, but also said
that both he and Mary were very much looking forward to their new
life and the forth-coming changes.
There
you have it,
a perfect account of a perfect wedding without even mentioning the
word “wedding”, but, at the same time, revealing all about the
circumstances - and the feelings of the guests. What’s true and
what’s invented – and who can prove it, anyway?
See
you next month – BM.
Language
Notes
Builder
Michael's English is full of puzzles and word games and unusual
expressions, and, therefore needs some “thinking about”! The
following words and notes are meant as a simple guide! Good luck!
…
tends to leave one high and dry
… - finding oneself in the position of not having any idea of
what to write about.
.….irrelevant
rag … an unimportant local newspaper. Have you seen
the local rag? - Have you seen the local newspaper?
breaking
one’s head for ideas – thinking very hard
arouse and
stimulate - to awaken and stimulate interest
