THE RAM’S HEAD REVIEW

June 17, 2007

Five of us convened here Thursday night to honour the Muse. Ann said she’d had a dream about me, so she took that as a sign to come to the meeting. And our regulars of Ellie, Bob and Margaret were all here. Margaret even told her son, whom she hadn’t seen in 5 years, that she couldn’t stay home and visit as she had a meeting to go to. Now that is a dedicated writer!

Margaret read first from the Peabody collection. Marie, the housekeeper, and Constable Constable are chatting about the missing Rev. Peabody. Marie thinks he’s dead and is trying to write his obituary. But the Constable doesn’t think he’s dead. Marie brings out the whisky and they drink till 4:00 a.m. At 4:30, Rev. Peabody comes in. He had been playing chess with Rev. Peasly, and he wasn’t lost at all. But he goes outside to rescue Joey, the parrot, and he falls and passes out. He is later found and taken to hospital, everyone thinking he had been unconscious the whole time he was missing.

Ellie read another untitled piece about 3 travellers who had been told to take the right hand path each time they came to a fork in the path through the caverns. At one point they encounter a very foul smell. They light a torch and see an immense spider in front of them, blocking the passage. But they are fleeing huge slug-like creatures. They spot a ledge above them that they hope will let them get by the spider.

Ann wrote a piece for her creative non-fiction course that she read to us, called “Iceland Reverie”. It is an interior travelogue where the scent of “Fire And Ice” evokes scenes of her great-grandmother, Helga. In Helga’s home, Ann felt at home and accepted. She sees the inside of Helga’s home, and shares a meal with her. There are many books in Danish, German and Icelandic, that are stacked all the way up the stairs. A geyser erupts and the people evacuate on fishboats as lava destroys the village. Helga returns 6 months later, but the little kitten never did. Ann said writing this was an attempt to discover her own identity.

Bob is thinking of changing direction in how he is writing his history of the jewellery business in B.C. He started off by reading a synopsis of the business in downtown Vancouver, before going into any detail about any specific jeweller.

I read the piece about my Father that I had sent Sonny for our website. Unfortunately, he hasn’t been ablt to do a recent update, so I don’t know when I can say the site will be current again.

Our next meeting will be Thursday, June 21st, at 7:00 p.m. and we plan to say our farewells to Susan as this will be her last meeting before moving back to Newfoundland. Hope you will come out and join us that night. May the Muse be your constant companion till then.

Lisa