Jennifer Pickering

I can’t write what I mean because the words are absent.

I begin, I try, I falter, I stop. I press backspace again and again and finally I close the page until tomorrow.

Or the next day…

Or the next…

Or until I get so far away from my last attempt that I forget that I failed and start again.

I can’t write the voices in my head into characters in yours.

They are all screaming so loudly. They are adventurers and rebels and heroes and villains and they are just so eager that I stop.

I save the idea of the pirate Princess for another time. The astronaut superhero has to hang up his cape.

I can’t write until I can.

I guess it seemed right that I began to write (rhyme unintentional) because yesterday I literally got the word made a permanent feature in my life, or at least the Cornish translation of it! My favourite place, my biggest passion, and my favourite symbol all now represented it 2 tattoos. They also look hot off the typewriter and that is just another bonus childhood memory thrown in.

We used to spend every summer in Cornwall. My gran lived there from when I was born and until she died (she had a great life venturing from one thing to the next but she was always in Cornwall for me) and so we would visit. We’d head Down St Agnes Way which isn’t the real name of the place but it’s what we called it and I couldn’t tell you the real name if I wanted to. We’d have cold, blustery walks on the beach each winter (the beaches mostly allow dogs then and we are a dog family). We’d visit Big W and the market next to it. I bought Blue socks (the band not the colour) and I’d religiously wear the Simon or Duncan ones, my fist great loves. We walked the abandoned mines, the rubble piled remains of buildings, we did it all.

One of my favourite things of all was to rummage about under my gran’s stairs and pull out her typewriter. I’d sit for hours tapping the keys and writing stories. If think of things to write just to use it.

That’s why it’s in Cornish. That’s why it’s in a standard, mechanic font.

I’m obsessed with them.

– Jen.