These are the first words of my blog - biological logarithm   This concept interests me as we must consider   are we all   diametriacally   different   or do we come within   a few feet or cables  of   each other on occasion?    

Many of you    I suspect   feel an affinity with people from the past    Take Swift - he was writing   A Journal of the Plague Year    in  the confident knowledge  that   he that he would survive.

The Sea Daffodil   explores on one level this feeling of kinship with earlier generations. I was thinking this morning that I had supposed that mythology might shift. Sisyphus, the eternal pusher of a stone: he might make it to the top of his hill, Empedocles  might survive Etna, Icarus might land with a parachute and survive. There's no need to be bound by the past.

Our perspective is changing from day to day, from moment to moment. One day infections are rising and we notice new restrictions. Then we realize how absurd much of this is. We revolt against the supposed ownership of our fate by the state. That is a solecism which our generation must attack and replace. And the extremely inadequate pseudo scientific premises of life which are up for grabs in the early new millennium.

Today there was heavy rain in BOLNISI FIELDS and I only managed to do my running by putting on far too many clothes. All the same, it was better than nothing at all. Two ladies with half-masks and umbrella were apparently herding cows.

My film interview about THE SEA DAFFODIL is now edited. Initially I will put it on YouTube complete. After that I will cut it into three films and place on this page's video gallery. I had fun putting portarits of Baudelaire, Valery and Proust at the head of these films! From that you will see where my tastes lie!

The section of the video not included (for operational reasons) reads as follows:

What is the situation with this book at the minute, I mean who is reading it and is it for sale?

Well, it is online now, so in a while, I guess a few people will start reading it. The book is just the explosion. What really counts is the reception, the half-life. Art is very mysterious, and if anything is any good at all, it will have a strange and magical half-life. I mean – not everything gets noticed. I found a piece of music by Beethoven the other day – a short fugue for string quintet – which is absolutely unknown.  But in years to come it is certain to get better known and to be honest, I would like to arrange it.

 Who is your favorite character in your book?

 I prefer the marginal characters I have half-invented and half taken from real historical events, like Volusenus, one of Julius Caesar’s military officers. And the Greek philosopher Empedocles, maybe about to jump into a volcano – although in my story he seems to save himself – is very exciting. I got that from a bookshop I saw once in the French town of Besançon, it was called, ‘The Sandals of Empedocles’.  Empedocles was a philosopher before Plato, maybe from the fifth century BC, and is supposed to have left one bronze sandal behind when he jumped into a volcano, maybe because he wanted people to believe that he had just disappeared, like a god. I quote several pages of his true words in his speech – and to be honest, I think it applies quite nicely to the virus and our current difficulties. Of course these are deeper philosophical ideas and the children’s story aspect of ‘The Sea Daffodil’ disappears for a few moments at this point. But I had fun with that.

He leaves one sandal behind, just like Tom!

 Exactly. But I am not sure Philippa Pearce was thinking of Empedocles. But it’s a striking parallel!

 And why, ‘The Sea Daffodil’.

 Well this was amazing, I found it quite by accident. It grows in Crete, near the sea, it is white, it is endangered and a protected wild flower, it is not a healing herb but it is that sort of thing. Its whiteness is a symbol of purity and healing and its springtime grace is very romantic and lovely – although it flowers all through the long hot summers in Greece and Turkey. The symbol, the idea, the word, the title – all of this together was so compelling that I suddenly had to stop and decide that I had finished Volume 1. Art is like that, full of unexpected twists and turns. If it lacks them, well then maybe it is not art!

Martin – good luck with the rest, thanks you for these explanations, and I hope that many people will buy your book!