Wednesday 8 March 2017

THE ACCOLADE


It's great to have a pat on the back every now and again. Last year I discovered the passage below in a book, Channel Shore, written by the bestselling author, Tom Fort, and published by Simon and Schuster in 2015. It pleased me too much not to blog it. In the family we call it the Accolade.

“There is a fine chronicler of Exmouth and its estuary who calls himself Wayland Wordsmith. I have no idea who he is – except that he is a poet, a historian, an antiquary of the old kind, a sailor, a fisherman, an explorer, a lingerer over sunsets and dawns, a fierce enemy of the enemies of his town, a philosopher and a gifted writer of a terrific blog. From it I gather that he is around my age, early sixties; that he used to do some netting for salmon when there were still enough salmon seeking the Exe to make it worthwhile; that he has a boat and a family; that he spends a good deal of his time hunting out arcane stories and nuggets of information from piles of old newspapers and books. I confess that I have borrowed freely from him, and without shame, because I am pretty confident he won’t mind. I’d like to meet him and tell him what a debt I owe him.”

Tom Fort got most things right although maybe he overdid the compliments and I am a decade older than he thinks. He, and anybody else, is always welcome to borrow from the blog. I'm working up the courage to contact him and tell him that the debt is all mine.

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