I didn’t blog yesterday because, frankly, I had nothing to say and very little to report. I didn’t do nearly as well yesterday at chronicling the trial, but still managed to reach day 3 of 6. I’m far behind schedule but yesterday I did complete a task I’ve been putting off for weeks, so that’s a tick.

My combined effort of yesterday and today, despite not doing as well, has still totalled over 1000 words. I went a bit rogue and added a more imaginative section into the middle of the trial. I would share it here, but I had to send it off to an author friend for a second opinion before it’s read by anyone. The subject was delicate, or at least I felt it was, so I wanted a second opinion first.

As of now, 1am on December 12th, Dancing with Edith (that’s the title, don’t think I’ve ever actually mentioned it) is officially 50,000 words!! I am very proud of myself, and I think I’m allowed to be.

Anyhow, extract time. This is from April when we stayed in Edith’s house in Shanklin.

Shanklin Again

We’ve been wandering around Shanklin all day, literally, I walked 16,000 steps. Edith came too of course.

When Edith, Percy, Freddy and Avis holidayed in Shanklin, it was far more exciting than it is now. They spent most of their time going to plays (The Merry Madcap, Fairer and Warmer) and dancing. They attended a concert in Rylstone Gardens. The Marine Hotel, no longer in existence, was host to one of their dances. They also went to events in the town hall, now Shanklin Theatre. The Playhouse Theatre is now flats, but still recognisable by its upper window. The Summer Theatre on the Esplanade has been replaced by an arcade, which makes me sad, but Edith still permeates the very air of Shanklin, particularly down at the Esplanade and outside Osborne House. The owners of the house (now Pink Beach but which I will always call Osborne) know about her. There is an old mirror in the entrance hall and I like to think it has been there since Edith’s day.

We went to the Rylstone Gardens and Keats Green and antique shops and through the chine. We walked back through it in the dark and it was lit up and looked like Peter Pan’s Neverland hideout or something, dotted with light like little fairies.

The owner of the house let me have a peek into one of the sea-facing rooms, I really hope it was Edith’s. Strangely, it was coming out of the restaurant tonight, into the lit-up street of the Old Village, that I felt closest to her. We were going to go back through the chine and I told her to come along, “Come on Edith, you’ll like this.”

June 15^th 1921 saw the four Londoners go on a charabanc tour round the Island. On the last night, the 17^th, they went to the theatre where they heard the song ‘One Little Hour’, which for Edith, so full of romantic notions and now ardently in love with Freddy, would come to represent their affair [listen here]:

One little hour of happiness divine
One posy from the garden of your heart;
One dream alone – that Heav’n had made you mine:
And then to part!
And then to part!

One little hour of joy – a life’s regret!
A world of thorns for one elusive flow’r
And after all to treasure dearly yet
That little hour!
One little hour

One golden hour! for that eternal pain!
Yet could you stand to-day where once you stood
And ask me if for you I’d live again
That little hour – I would.

That the lyrics of the song would come to mirror their affair quite so literally, with the exception of the end verse because when the end came Edith wanted ‘simply to live’, is I think, one of the saddest parts of the whole business.

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