Sarah's writing journal

I was teaching a dayschool yesterday on using setting in writing, and we came to the conclusion it was impossible to be neutral about place. Interesting then to see this project about a very different map of London, organised through the Museum of London. Londoners - and presumably visitors - are being encouraged to write in with their memories of a particular road or place in London, and these are then mapped and categorised under different emotions - so you can take a virtual walk through a London seen through a focus of Beauty/Horror or Joy/Struggle to take two examples. One of my favourites is from the guy who remembers building a treehouse in Bolton Gardens with his school friend, from which they used to fire waterpistols at passers by. They thought they were safe because it was a private garden but one man they soaked apparently jumped over the fence to get them because he was so incensed. I love this - it makes me want to go to Bolton Gardens and write about those boys. I can just imagine the mixture of fear and excitement they must have felt when it happened...