Day One

I'm starting this new blog because the previous blog pulled in a lot of viewers who were obviously only passing by. I think it was because I used a title that was eye-catching to the zillions of people who are interested in "writing". It's a bore to get lots of one-off hits, pushing one's readership count up for no good reason. So I'm starting again with a very individual title, which should not attract the idle flickers-through-blogs-about-writing crowd.

I will be posting every day and some days will be more interesting than others.

And because I like a blog with pictures, I'm adding one now.

Above is an example of rampion, a plant of the bellflower family: it's a biennial plant grown as an annual vegetable for it leaves and roots. It has beautiful flowers, though there's something spikey and maybe a little unfriendly about them, which makes me slightly uneasy.

That may be because the German name for this plant is Rapunzel - the name of one of the Bros. Grimm's most famous and odd fairy tales I read a as a child.

For that reason I have used rampion in the mystery book I'm writing at the moment, to point up something mysterious and worryingly odd about the heroine.

In the fairy story, Rapunzel was a beautiful girl with enormously long golden tresses, who was imprisoned in a high tower by an wicked enchantress. The tower had no door and no staircase, just one small window.

When the enchantress wanted to take food to her prisoner, she would stand beneath the tower and call "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your long hair." Rapunzel would let down her thick golden locks and the enchantress would climb up.

One day, as in all good fairy tales, a handsome prince rode past and saw the enchantress calling and climbing up the tower. When she had gone, he did the same, and, of course, rescued the beautiful girl - and naturally they both lived happily ever after.

Tho' I suspect Rapunzel never cut her hair, just in case. One never knows, with an enchantress!