As it's National Poetry Day, I thought I'd share a few thoughts on Byron. The celebrity cult of Lord Byron began while he was still alive, boomed when he died, and still continues today. He remains an object of fascination, scandal, and appeal. I've been interested in him since I first read about him in a "Famous People" encyclopaedia. It was a children's book, so it did not explore the more infamous aspects of his life. But it was enough to inspire me to delve further into research on the man and the myth - including the puzzle of the mirror . Ultimately, Byron went on to become a major inspiration for my first published book Day's Dying Glory , right down to its title. His early poems (generally my favourite ones) feature heavily in the book, and I enjoyed weaving in lines and references which Byron-fans would spot where others might not even notice them. Poets and poetry have inspired hundreds of writers. It is fascinating that language can be so power...
My brief for this blog was to make it spooky - it being nearly Halloween. I then trawled the internet for the best historical spooky tv series and found one - The Living and the Dead - which really piqued my interest. The main character, played by Colin Morgan of Merlin fame, is a farmer who is driven to explore what happens after death. It was made for the BBC in 2016.Unfortunately, for some reason I have not been able to fathom, it is not available on iPlayer. So, there went that idea.
That left me back at square one, with the Historical and Spooky guidelines not really helping. None of the others caught my interest quite enough. Perhaps, after I'd found The Living and the Dead, I didn't really feel like anything else was going to be as good. So Virginia suggested Ghosts.
Ghosts?
Spooky - of course. Historical - not really!
But she pointed out that there is a multi-timeline which happens in the series, as we continue to discover more and more about the individual ghosts and what led to their very personal unfinished business.
Although it makes perfect sense to see the series as Halloween viewing, for me it will always belong in May. On my birthday, in fact. That's because, when I turned 30 during full lockdown in 2020, we celebrated the day by watching back-to-back episodes. After that, each birthday we'd watch the next series, until the series finished and that tradition ended on my 34th birthday.
This really links to one of the most fascinating things about Ghosts: that everyone who watches it makes a personal connection. Friends and family who had also watched the episodes, would warn of a "really sad one" coming up and, when I watched it, I would find a completely different one tugged at my heartstrings.
Of course, all the ghosts have sad backstories: that's why they're ghosts in the first place! The series (and, in fact, much of popular culture) puts great weight on the idea that people become ghosts because they have unfinished business. Unfinished business almost certainly means something which is a good way south of jolly.
The backstory which most tugged at my heartstrings was Kitty's. She was an annoying little soul - especially for a teacher who spent most of their time surrounded by little children exactly like her! But the other ghosts' obsession with the idea that she had been murdered really made me think about the conclusions people jump to.
As a writer, it also made me think about twists. I love twists. Virginia is the master (mistress?) of them. I am not so much. I get so interested in the twist that I want to develop it and develop it until the only reason why someone would be surprised by it was because it was so blindingly obvious already!
But it also made me think about the definition of a twist. Is it an anti-climax if a story ends sweetly instead of scarily? Having just read the longlisted stories for the Crowvus Christmas Ghost Story Competition, I was so pleased to find a mixture of the gentle and the eerie. Sometimes, perhaps a twist can just be - as it was for Kitty - the fact that life and circumstance are harsh enough. Sometimes people don't need to be.
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