I was going to set my story in the Home Counties between the wars<\/p>\n
Possibly in Kent or Surrey or even Hampshire<\/p>\n
It would be the era of picturesque villages and bucolic railway stations<\/p>\n
My characters would come from the upper middle classes<\/p>\n
And have names like Toby Bunny Polly and Winnie Blue<\/p>\n
It would be a mannered story quite innocent in places<\/p>\n
But full of erotic overtones and secret thoughts<\/p>\n
There would be no unpleasantness between my characters<\/p>\n
And each day would be yet another deep summers day<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But I suddenly realised that I would be unable to write it<\/p>\n
As I had been born some years after the war<\/p>\n
My experiences were in no way similar<\/p>\n
And my background was totally different<\/p>\n
I was the son of a fish and chip shop owner<\/p>\n
Who happened to be clever enough to go to Oxford<\/p>\n
I had mixed with the Amanda’s and Toby’s at college<\/p>\n
But my name was Colin Smith which was hardly exotic<\/p>\n
I might have written under a pseudonym<\/p>\n
But that would have dishonoured my father<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I tried to start my novella many times<\/p>\n
But ended up wiping my thoughts<\/p>\n
As there were no foundations to my story<\/p>\n
My characters would now be considerably older than me<\/p>\n
And would have experienced things that would not fade<\/p>\n
The war was over and I knew that there would be no further wars<\/p>\n
So this rather staggered poem will be my only record<\/p>\n
Of an inhibited attempt to write a slow burning novella<\/p>\n
Which I had intended to call A Cinnamon Cake<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was going to set my story in the Home Counties between the wars Possibly in Kent or Surrey or even Hampshire It would be the era of picturesque villages and bucolic railway stations My characters would come from the upper middle classes And have names like Toby Bunny Polly and Winnie Blue It would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8200"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}