‘So, on 6 May when I flew from Sydney (where I live) to London, I didn’t know I’d be getting an email that same day inviting me to contribute to a blog train about the upcoming publication of Volume six of SapphFic Eclectic.
I almost always travel with my laptop, but, heading off on a four week holiday (three in the UK, one in the Czech Republic, various time zones and seasons involved) I’d decided to ration my luggage. As far as I knew, no writing would be involved in the next month: most writers of my acquaintance, faced with the need to put something in writing would merely go to the nearest stationary store and pick up a notepad and pen: but my brain content seems most accessible when sliding directly down my 10 fingers straight onto that qwerty keyboard, (except I have no keyboard! See luggage rationing above).
“I’m pretty sure there’s a business centre on the lower ground floor,” my wife says, always ready to help out.
But when I venture down there and spend an hour familiarising myself with the ancient computer that OBVIOUSLY no one ever uses (evidenced by the various documents I find saved to the desktop, several years old. Interesting but disappointingly written in Czech), I finally work out how to type a document, but, not wanting to save it to the desktop and have some other hapless tourist discover it in 10 years time, I figure I’ll type it, print it and read it onto (into?) my phone.
After all, if Behrouz Boochani, the prize winning Iranian refugee author of “No friend but the mountains: writing from Manus prison” can write an entire book on WhatsApp, surely I can squeeze out 500 words.
So, sitting in my tasteful art noveau hotel room (spell check had that as ‘aunt Neville,’ by the way) in the old part of Prague, staring across the internal courtyard that my room opens onto, where the old cat from the apartment opposite sits in a netted (spell check- ‘knitted’) balcony staring at me as openly as a six month old human, only more bored, I get started.
“The grief I explored in the piece (‘peace!’) was real: just the characters have been changed to protect the grief struck.”
Sharryn Ryan
So, to my part in the anthology, Cafe Mysterious. How spooky to have noticed the cat across the way and also to have walked past an establishment just yesterday in Prague called Hotel Mysterius. My story was inspired by real life Cafe Mysterious (maybe they just like being mysterious here in Prague?) discovered last time I was in this beautiful city. Even though the kind waitress and cat of the story exist only in my imagination, the grief I explored in the piece (‘peace!’) was real: just the characters have been changed to protect the grief struck.
To me that is the essence and importance of storytelling: to pull together the scattered threads of life and make something coherent and meaningful, that we can all relate to. I hope I’ve done that.
And finally, a note to future travelling self: don’t leave home without that laptop ever again.
Sent from my iPhone (really!).
Check out Sharryn Ryan’s story, Cafe Mysterious, in SapphFic Eclectic, volume 6!
Butterworth Books 