The Tulip Festival

 The Istanbul Tulip Festival 

The arrival of Spring is greeted each year by a Tulip Festival. Great banks of brightly coloured tulips fill the flowerbeds in  public spaces and the major parks of Istanbul. 

Gulhane Park, formerly the royal garden to Topkapi Palace, has a wonderfully peaceful atmosphere. The banks of  flowers make a delightful carpet of varied types and colours under the mighty ancient trees and flowering shrubs. 

Beyond the park there are glimpses of water: the Bosphorus busy with huge ships plying to and from the Black Sea; and the Golden Horn with ferries skimming across from north to south or up to Fener and Balat and then Eyup, the last stop, where you can take a cable car up to Pierre Loti's cafe. 

Part of Gulhane Park

Emirgan Park  Situated on the European side of the Bosphorus at Sariyer, this park was once a private estate. The site is hilly, with many cypress trees, a small lake and a waterfall. There are splendid views of the Bosphorus and the hills of the Asian side. 

The former wooden palace has long since disappeared but there are still three royal style pavilions- one pink, one yellow and one white. And in Spring, along with trees in blossom, the park is filled with tulips.

Tulip Festival in Emirgan Park  [picure courtesy of Wikipedia]

The Yellow Pavilion in Emirgan Park [picure courtesy of Wikipedia]

 

My least favourite of my own stories

Even the Author has favourites among her own stories. 

 All the characters who appear in my Regency Tales are real people to me, especially as they tend to embody memories, attitudes or events from my own life.

Each story is a pleasure to create but at some point the characters take over and develop the plot according to their own wishes. The setting also imposes certain conditions. I'm fond of all my fictional families but some of their stories please me more than others.

                                                                In All Honour

My least favourite is my second story, In All Honour ......but only because I wrote it in a hurry .......and most of the characters are sick, injured or poisoned.  One other reason is that the villain turns out to be a really vile fellow. He gets worse as the story goes on.

The tale - unsurprisingly - takes place in Bath. 

The Pump Rooms, Bath [Image courtesy of Colin Smith via Wikipedia]

Greg Thatcham the hero, starts off with his arm in a sling due to a bullet wound sustained in the Battle of Salamanca. Coming home because his older brother has died in a riding accident, Greg finds his father Sir Thomas, in very low spirits, so the two of them go to take the cure in Bath.

Richard, the youngest brother arrives in Bath with dispatches from the Ministry. In no time, he gets poisoned and poor Sir Thomas is frantic.

Sarah and her friend from schooldays Lizzie, manage to stay in better health but Lizzie must look after her Uncle Charlie, suffering from gout. Uncle Charlie [General Gardiner] thinks he's looking after her. 

Sarah and Lizzie make friends with youthful debutante Lavinia Keating and her brother John, who falls for Sarah, but in vain. That makes him another invalid if we count heartsick as a malady. 

Throughout the tale Greg suffers accidents, from being pushed under a fast-moving carriage to having the wheel on his curricle damaged. 

Everyone is under some kind of threat from the Nasty Villain Lord Percival. In addition to his dark deeds he means to have Sarah by hook or by crook. He nearly manages it and against all the rules of the independent heroine, Sarah does have to be rescued. Even an independent heroine could not survive a leap from the second floor of a house in The Circus onto stone paving.

Happily, all the invalids recover by the end of the tale.

It makes me proud that some readers consider Greg to be a worthy book boyfriend.

Also there has been praise for the setting as readers enjoy the different aspects of life in Bath.

The magic of Silk

 

SILK, originally spun only in China, 

was gradually traded as far west as Persia, before Medieval rulers managed to acquire silkworms and mulberry trees to set up their own silk industries - in Lebanon, in the Byzantine Empire and much later in Europe. 

The trading routes from China to the Mediterranean and into Europe soon became known as the Silk Roads as silk was the main product. 

Valued for its lustre and texture, silk rapidly became a symbol of luxury, wealth, power and social status. It was a major industry, bringing in much wealth.

The city of Bursa was the first capital of the Ottoman Empire. It was the centre of silk production and trade from early medieval times. 

    In 1490, Sultan Bayazit ordered the construction of a caravansaray, called the Koza Han, in Bursa.

The vaulted corridor around the courtyard of the Koza Han

[photo courtesy of Wikipedia]

This caravansaray provided lodging for merchants and their animals and goods, as well as workshops for the weavers and offices for business. In the 16th Century the commercial agent of the Medicis of Florence had his office in the Koza Han

Nowadays there are 300 small shops in the corridors of the han, plus this little mosque and a cafe.

In an absolute Ali Baba's cave of beautiful treasures in the Koza Han I bought this silk scarf. It's one and a half metres wide but the silk is so fine the scarf slides easily through my wedding ring. 

       

And then there are the Huguenot Silk weavers of the Cevennes - but that's for another post.

Remembrance Sunday

 

Armistice Day

Writing advice from C S Lewis

 C.S. Lewis responding to a letter from an American schoolgirl asking him for some writing advice. [1]

Which points do you consider most useful?

For me it's numbers 3 and 5

[1] credit to creator of the clip - although it has been shared many times.

'Know your characters,' they said....

Advice to New Writers : "Before starting to write your novel 

you must know all about

 your main characters " 

That advice seemed very helpful. 

Back in the day when I was a beginner at novel writing, I diligently wrote a profile for my two main characters, mentioning all the items suggested in the advice.

pet hates, favourite activities, any strengths, flaws, relationship with family, and so on - and on. 

Well, that novel was written long ago but although it earned praise from editors and critiquers, it was never accepted for publication. Other stories fared better but one day I came back to this tale, my first and most precious to me. 

Now a seasoned writer and editor myself, it was easy to see ways to improve and polish the story.

I dug out the folder of notes and information for the tale. And in amongst all the plans, pictures, buildings etc, were the notes for the main characters. 

The heroine's notes ran to eighteen A4 pages, all handwritten. It was almost a mini-novel in itself. And like all research, very little of that went into the actual novel.

                                           

 The hero had sixteen pages of notes about his life, etc. 

     

Maybe I know more about these two than about members of my own family.

Now I smile at my earnest innocence. But it brought them to life for me, and their hair-raising adventures make a thrilling read, even if the story remains unpublished.

A Summer Holiday at the Seaside

              It's summer -  so time for sea air 

- and where else but Brighton, especially when the Prince Regent is in residence at his Summer Pavilion. 

Little does he know that his fondness for sweet cakes could be the end of him. 

Among the visitors is Anna, rushing from one near-disaster to another, and Lord Giles Maltravers, the ton's most dangerous Rake, who by mischance has to act as her chaperon. 

An amusing frothy tale with cricket, races, concerts and fashion - and more besides.

                                                   The Rake's Challenge    

Sea bathing on the ladies' beach - but note the men with telescopes.

The Steyne, Brighton.
Donaldsons shop and library at left, the Pavilion in the background .
The Prince Regent on horseback [white trousers].