Introduction to a teenage love story

I don't like this blog a whole lot lately. I haven't given it a great deal of thought, but I have realised that I read a lot of theology and Christian-living/instruction kind of blogs, which subconsciously have influenced the way I have started to write on this blog. And while I have an interest in such things, which is the reason I read the blogs, and could perhaps have something to say if I applied myself to it (I will confess that one of my personal achievements in 2006 – was it really that long ago already? - was Mark Thompson giving me full marks for an essay when I went along and did the Moore College Evening Course doctrine subject - just at a time when I was feeling a little unstimulated and thought my brain was rotting, it reassured me that my brain and understanding still worked if I actually put them to use), but I don't think I am doing that particularly well on this blog, and there are a great many people doing it better and with greater consistency, thoughtfulness and thoroughness.

So, I think I shall rid my subconscious of that sort of expectation of blogging and do things a little differently. I also have no great compulsion to write at any great length about what is going on in the world (and notice Karen says something similar over here). I actually relate to CS Lewis in Surprised by Joy when he writes “Hence while friendship has been by far the chief source of my happiness, acquaintance or general society has always meant little to me, and I cannot quite understand why a man should wish to know more people than he can make real friends of. Hence, too, a very defective, perhaps culpably defective, interest in large impersonal movements, causes and the like. The concern aroused in me by a battle (whether in story or in reality) is almost in an inverse ratio to the number of the combatants”. I’m afraid that’s somewhat true of me.

So, what is left, that is the question? Frivolous twittering about girlish fancies?

I have been cleaning out a lot of "stuff" lately, in an attempt to liberate myself from it, and to go through life from this point forward a little less encumbered. In the process I came across my English notes from Years 11 and 12 at school and found a story I did quite well in, with this written on the bottom of it by my inspirational English teacher: “Great story, well told and clever interweaving of the poem, Alison. You are a talented writer with a good perception of human relationships.” That piqued my curiousity as I wondered what I could possibly have really known about anything at 16, so I read it. Anyway, I have decided that it can't be worse that those New Idea serial stories that seem to keep (some) people coming back for more, so, for a bit of fun, and because it’s not theology, Christian living or world news, you really are going to get a teenage love story, in installments, just as I wrote it at age 16. (It’s actually disappointingly sort of ordinary, with a Laser instead of white horse, and no other terribly great flights from reality, but I do mention the Princess Bride). The idea of this story was to weave into it the words of love poem, which unfortunately I have lost. However, I am going to blame all the corney and cheesy lines in the story on that poem, which from memory I thought rather silly and counteracted in my story, and will italicise the phrases which I believe came from it (it looks like we’d been studying John Donne and then modern love poetry). So here goes (see next post).