To Be Someplace Else

Have you ever wanted to be someplace else? 

Of course you have.  I have.  We all have.  What makes for fun and fascinating discussion is to ask each other, where specifically? Usually one will mention a favourite holiday spot, or an experience in a foreign country, or having just watched a movie and decided that yes, I too would quite like to sell up and move to a dilapidated manor house in Tuscany that just needs a little elbow grease. Every so often, one might go as far as to suggest another time or place in history. To be there on the streets of Paris or London on V-E Day perhaps? Or at the coronation of your favourite royal? The sealing of the Magna Carta? To watch a Shakespeare play the same year it was written?

Well, have I got the YouTube video for you! But, I get ahead of myself. Let’s rewind a little.

The noise. That smell.

I’d been struggling to picture a scene in the current Work in Progress, title undecided. Essentially, my contemporary protagonist, Emma, has a bit of a meltdown, leaves her friends, and stumbles along the riverside away from the Tower of London where they’d gathered for an event. Now, that part is easy. It just so happens I recently spent a few hours wandering that same area. Took many photos. Picked out the exact riverbank steps Emma escapes the crowds in. But then, and just to make things challenging for both Emma the character and Jess the author, she nods off, tear-stricken and wrung out, and wakes up, not in her own world, but another, stranger place. It’s familiar but not really. She looks out across the Thames, and Tower Bridge is not there. Nor is the London Bridge she knows well. In its place, another bridge. Similar to the famous one she’d seen a few years back in Florence, but this one was bigger. There was a heck of a lot more going on. There were many buildings, higgledy-piggledy, hanging over the edges. And the river itself, full of boats. Old boats. Little row boats, bigger sail boats. The noise. That smell. The sun was out, but there seemed to be a grey miasma over everything.  

What would Emma have done then?  Where would she go?  Try and find a familiar landmark? Walk towards the edge of what could only be an elaborate movie set, and find her way to the nearest tube station to get home?  

So it got me thinking. What would London Bridge look like back then? Or even St Paul’s Cathedral, another famous landmark that I knew was in existence in the year I’d plonked her in. Naturally a deep dive into the internet brought forth some terrific answers. Paintings and drawings by famous people. Cannaletto. de Jongh. Visscher. Alright, the last two might not be as famous, but worthy of a look, I promise. There’s also a fabulous model of Old London Bridge within Magnus the Martyr church, which is just alongside the Thames and the new London Bridge. It’s astoundingly simple yet vibrant, complete with small scale people, going about their business. 

And St Paul’s. If Emma had decided to make a beeline for St Paul’s, would she be searching for the famous dome? Well well, dear readers, she wouldn’t find it. In its place, a spire, large, yes, but one of several church spires in the area. And in my little dive into researching what St Paul’s looks like (yes, I know, how easy it is to be distracted) I came across this fabulous model done by the clever people at The Virtual St Paul’s Cathedral Project to feast the senses on. Now, my protagonist may not have been able to see St Paul’s from her spot between the Tower of London and London Bridge, but I imagine the spire would have been visible. Because, it’s important to note, that St Paul’s had a spire, not a dome. Ah, but the spire fell down during a fire in 1561. In 1621 restoration work had begun, but the spire would never be rebuilt. Another topic for another day. 

And then we come across this YouTube clip, created by a group of Game Art Design students at DeMontfort University, Leicester. And I was immediately transported, just like Emma. I could imagine more fully what she would have seen, stumbling along those streets. Very clever, thank you Pudding Lane Productions. 

And one last clever tool, perhaps you’ve also come across it, is the Agas Map. What we can view today is a map copy done in 1633, of the original woodblock print of about 1561. What I love about this website is that you can isolate different businesses, markets, topographical features.

Ok, before I sign off and get back to Emma and her predicament, check out this very cool Guardian piece, showing Visscher’s engraving of the London cityscape and the ability to compare it to now (2016 to be exact). This clever technique gives us a real sense of how little, and how much, has changed. How frightening it would be for Emma, once she realises, there is no movie set. 

Tools we have available today make the act of ‘creativity’, in my case writing historical fiction, so much fun, if not a little distracting perhaps?

Thank you for indulging me in this little research escapism, I hope you enjoyed the dive as much as I did!

Bedside reading: Self-Help, by Lorrie Moore. I’m loving short stories at the moment, you can easily finish a story in one sitting, and still have that glorious, ‘I’ve read today’ feeling. Auckland Libraries loan.
What’s on Audible: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. A man, a spacecraft, and an alien spider thing, on a mission to save the world. Believe me, it is spell-binding story-telling.
What’s on Podcast: The Coldest Case in Laramie – a murder cold case from what some consider the meanest town in Wyoming. Brilliant reporting from Kim Barker and the excellent team at Serial Productions makes for a riveting episodic listen.