I'm refilling the well by reading...

I’m rereading The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea by Randolph Stow, and I’m loving his gorgeous descriptions and subtle humour.

First I should explain how I rediscovered this book. Yesterday we were driving back to Townsville from Tarzali (E has business, and son had been visiting, so he came with us too) and we stopped off for lunch at our favourite little lunching place, Off the Rails, at South Johnstone. It's the most out of the way little place in an out of the way street in an out of the way town, but you can buy the most amazing cheese and spinach pie there and their pot luck platters are to die for! And it's called Off the Rails because sugar train tracks run right down the street past the cafe. You can see them in the photo.

Anyway, I always browse their shelves of used books for sale and invariably I buy...
So last night, tucked in bed with a scrumptious read, I came across this passage about roses…

The white roses had taken over one side of the veranda. They engulfed shrubs at the front of the house, and clothed the dead stump of an old palm. The fragile scent of them was everywhere, mixed with citrus and eucalyptus. The flowers, the dark neat leaves became the boy’s image of perfection.
He held the flowers in his hand: small white flowers, opening up on a small green heart. The petals were faultless, crisp with life. They were almost too faultless to be real flowers, too alive: faultless as china or marble, alive as a painting. The flowers were a scented painting he held in his hand.

And then, further down on the same page…

Didi was about nine months younger than the boy, which was a vast gulf, but not unbridgeable; and although she had golden curls and long white socks, she was as good as a boy any day. Not that Didi would have wished to be a boy. Her ambition rose higher: she wanted to be a horse.

Sinking into the work of incredibly gifted writers who "speak" to me is the best way I know to inspire and lift my own writing.