AUTHOR'S CORNER;

BLOCKED IN SIBERIA

So the snow has finally arrived and I am sat at my desk which is in front of a big window which looks out onto my front garden!  It is snowing and the ground outside is covered in a peculiar shade of white!  I use the word peculiar freely, as white is normally quite a normal colour and usually there is absolutely nothing strange about it.  However on this occasion, the white seems to be quite offensive and somewhat disturbing.  I would go as far as to call this shade of white aggressive, but then I would only appear quite neurotic and a little disturbed!  And since my sanity has long been questioned by my husband and other members of my family, I shan't make a song and dance about the shade of white which seems to present itself in a rather challenging manner outside my window!
I shall instead tackle the matter at hand; my sudden and unexpected writer's block which has managed to take hold with the first flake that cheerfully glided past my window and settled happily upon a twig!

The snow, being my enemy since adolescence; whereby I lived in central London amongst the pollution and grime and crowded streets, was presented to me in a slushy, icy, slippery, dirt ridden, traitorous manner.  I found making my way back and forth in it quite a painstaking task, and after a few nasty slippery, grime-covered falls, developed somewhat of a phobia!  There was nothing delightful about the snow, nothing enchanting or amusing about London snow.  It was not pure white and fluffy, instead, left for a day, and it turned a sort of chewing gum grey, stiff, sharp and icy!  And mother did have a damn long shopping list whenever it snowed, and sent me out in stages to purchase her necessities! Why mother, why?  she has ingrained complexes in my mind which will last with me forever!

 For memories of traitorous roads, falling and skidding along a slippery pavement whilst the sounds of anonymous laughter filled the air from neighbouring flats as    shopping went flying in all directions, still haunt me to this very day!  How cruel people can be!  Not to mention the state that I was in by the time I arrived home, with frozen fingers and chaffed eyelids!  Only to be sent out again some half an hour later because MOTHER needed some milk!!

I try very hard to get myself in the writing spirit, but fail miserably; my senses are injured by the sight of the snow and somewhat blocked as the offensive white stuff keeps falling outside my window, promising days of misery and landlocked delight!  I try very hard to be inspired and think of various scenarios to my novel; but I am failing.  It is a shame, as my novel was going really well, and the twist was about to come and the ending was near!  

I make myself a third cup of coffee and sigh hopelessly at the snow!

But wait, something has happened, I shall air on the insanity of my madness and share with you ... My heroin has just come to me, all fierce and fired up; she is as sexy as ever and looks positively evil!  'Come on Sam,'she says as she slithers up beside me.  'Look at all this magnificent snow,' she blows hot breath in my direction.  'We could have a lot of fun in this snow.  We could get revenge on that ex-lover of mine; I could kill him behind a snowy bush and cocoon him inside a snowman, no one will be any the wiser until the snow melts!' she cackles wickedly.  'Come on Sam,' she coaxes.  'Surely you can write me a great plot, I can finally get revenge on that love rat, you wrote so yourself!  I could skin him alive in the cold icy snow and bury his carcass in the snowy ground!  Or better still I could push him down a slippery hill and break a few bones!'  My heroin sat upon my desk and crossed her legs, she leaned over and looked me dead in the eye.  'We could leave him out in sub-zero temperatures and let him freeze to death, slowly and painfully!'

'I shoo my heroin away, if I start to engage with my characters out of books than I'll really have to worry about my sanity, (though my husband would urge me to worry now) and all sorts of wires will be crossed and the barrier between reality and imagination will open up and all hell will break loose!  I shoo my heroin away, but she persists, 'Don't you know that snow is evil?' she asks as she winks at me.  'Snow brings things to a halt, it makes what is warm cold and icy and mutes the planet, the aggressor of mankind, it is the taker of life, it is the fallen angel that spreads its wings and engulfs the world in hollow fear!  Don't you know that snow is power, white, icy dynamite?'

I shoo her away and this time I am forceful, she pops out of sight (though I can sense she is upset) and I take my coffee in my hands and look out of the window as I sip.  But wait, there, just there, in the corner of my garden, there is a man....I focus in and see clearly.  He is my heroin's ex-lover, stood in the snow shivering in the cold, he wears a thin shirt and his feet are bare.  He looks back at me with fearful eyes and his lips quiver as he pleads his rescue.  She's only gone and done it!  I can hear her muffled laughter in the back of my mind and I know that she has got her own way, (I should have never trusted her)  and now she is mocking me!  Her ex-lover is captured and is a sitting duck.  And now all that remains is to but word to computer screen, so to speak!  I look back at him and contemplate his fate, perhaps I ought to help...