Christmas won't be Christmas... Miriam Halahmy

 ...without any presents, “ grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

Growing up reading Little Women is one of my most enduring memories of Christmas. My mother gave me her copy when I was nine. It had been a birthday present to her from her siblings when she was a child before the war and I passed it on to my daughter.

Mum’s book even appeared in The Independent. They did a feature on lists by well known people and then invited readers to send in their own. This is mine.

Five things I can’t live without (The Independent 26.8.04)

My polar library

Twice daily reflux pills

Tap water – yes, London vintage

Mum’s pre-war copy of Little Women

with a single black and white plate

him indoors

Which character were you? I was Jo, climbing trees in ankle length skirts, getting into scrapes, reading all day on her bed with a bag of apples, my head full of dreams about becoming a writer. I couldn’t be good little Beth, Amy was far too pretty and spoilt and Meg was a woman!

Little Women were my surrogate sisters. In real life I was the sandwich between two lively brothers. Probably that explains a lot of the appeal of tomboy Jo. I used to follow my brothers up every tree, usually falling on the way down.

At nine I marvelled when Jo was told off for using slang by Amy, “we are a pretty jolly set....” Crikey! But fortunately when Jo and Amy scrap dear sweet Beth is there to make peace. “Bird in their little nests agree,” sang Beth.

I loved the narrator who spoke to us in the voice of a kindly aunt. “As young readers like to know how people look we will take this moment to give them a little sketch of the four sisters, who sat knitting away in the twilight, while the December snow fell quietly without, and the fire crackled within.” Totally absorbing, I wouldn’t raise my eyes from the page until Mum yelled at me to lay the table.

Little Women takes us gently through adversity, poverty, separation through war, love, friendship, sibling rivalry, sibling loyalty and death. I still remember the first time I read about Beth’s brush with death and of course the terrible death of the Hummel baby. Through it all we learn to be a pilgrim with our packs on our bags. The religious stuff went over my head but I loved the challenge.

And then of course there is the boyfriend - gorgeous, funny, attentive, rich Laurie next door. He even has a piano for poor Beth! I never really understood why he and Jo didn’t get married but of course silly little Amy had to morph into sensible and mature before the dear reader would accept her as Laurie’s good wife.

If you have time over the festive season, join me in Christmas with the Little Women.

SEASONS GREETINGS EVERYONE. HAPPY READING and  HAPPY WRITING!!

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Nelson Mandela...Poem and Peace by Miriam Halahmy

In 1952, the year I was born, Nelson Mandela opened his law firm and became involved in  ANC defiance activities. All my life he has gone before me as a beacon of hope and reconciliation. In the 60s as my political consciousness was developing I became more and more aware of  apartheid.

As a student in the 70s I helped to swell the tide of demonstration in Trafalgar Square. 

In the 80s I took my seven year old son to the vigil outside the South African Embassy and we signed the demand to release Mandela and end apartheid.

I could never buy a Cape apple.

In 1994 I sat and watched Mandela vote for the first time in his life. The most extraordinary smile broke over his face, almost shy, yet beaming, as he posted his slip of paper into the slot. That smile lit up the world.

The next day I went to the supermarket and proudly bought my very first bag of green Cape apples. Now it felt safe. Mandela was not only free but he had cast his vote. 

I went home, dumped the apples in the sink, turned on the tap and as I began to peel off the stickers a huge smile spread over my face.

I sat down and wrote this poem :

Washing Apples

Like Mandela casting his vote, I smile

and peel Cape stickers from green apples,

reel back the years, vigil, marches,

taking my small son to sign.

He knows now why I said,

at street stalls and supermarkets, 'Not those or those'

why it was never just an apple.

 © Miriam Halahmy

 As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison.

Nelson Mandela   1918-2013

This is the mark of the man and this is his legacy. Peace and reconciliation can be achieved between neighbours, peoples, countries. We are all citizens of the world.

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What is the theme of your novel? Miriam Halahmy

I have just finished reading 'Boys Don't Cry' by Malorie Blackman and as I read through the book I automatically decided on Malorie's main theme - Taking Responsibility for your Actions. Why did I do this?
Because in the summer of 2009 I did an Arvon course with Malorie Blackman and Melvyn Burgess. One of the most significant statements Malorie made - for me anyway - was to make sure you are clear about the themes of your novels. This will help both to focus your writing and tighten the  focused pitch to agents/editors/ other gatekeepers once your opus magnus is ready to fly.

I hadn't really thought about my novels in terms of central themes before and so I spent some time that week thinking about the three novels in my Hayling Cycle and crystallising the themes. It was a very worthwhile experience. I had always known these themes but they had remained in the background, not clearly articulated. I had come up with clear and crisp one-line pitches for each book but these were not the same as themes. Once I had decided on the themes I then put them at the top of each synopsis or outline for the third as yet unwritten novel.
It was just in time really  because the Summer of 2009 was when all the editors suddenly sat up and decided they loved the first novel, HIDDEN, that my agent had been submitting. The year before it was all rejection including two on a single Friday afternoon - that made for a great weekend as you can imagine!
Here are the themes to each of my three novels in the cycle, followed by a bit of plot summary to show the role of the theme in the book. My publishers are Meadowside Books.

HIDDEN, March 2011
The theme of this novel is the courage to stand up for what you believe in, against the crowd.
The main character, Alix, sticks up for Samir, the foreign boy in her class, who is the victim of racist bullying.
Her courage is tested when they find an illegal immigrant washed up on a beach and Samir pleads with her to help hide him, to save him from being deported.

ILLEGAL, February 2012
The themes of this novel are identity and independence. Lindy is looking after Cousin Colin's cannabis farm which is fine. But then he forces her into pushing cocaine which terrifies her. She doesn't want to end up in prison like her brothers. 'I'm better than my family,' Lindy tells herself and the only way she can prove it is to free herself from Colin's clutches and find her own salvation.

STUFFED, September 2012The theme of this novel is loyalty : loyalty tested and loyalty reaffirmed. . As this is work in progress, I'll leave it at that.

When I was called in by editors and then as we went forward with Meadowside who ultimately became my wonderful publishers, having clear themes in my head which I could trot out and illustrate with bits from the books, clarified the whole cycle and certainly helped towards the offer of a three book contract.
It has also given me a much firmer base to build on when talking about my books.

My Hayling Cycle is not based on a theme, it is based on a landscape and a group of young people. This is intentional; I wanted each book to be stand alone, with specific links. However, clarifying my themes strengthened my concept of writing a cycle as opposed to a trilogy or a series.
And if my publishers want to continue with the cycle there are plenty more themes to build plots around that I can explore.

What are the themes of your novels?

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A child's Jane Eyre by Miriam Halahmy

 This year is the centenary of the publication of The Secret Garden which the British author and friend of Frances Hodgson Burnett (FBH) called, 'a sort of child's Jane Eyre.' There are lots of interesting parallels; Yorkshire, an isolated house, an absent owner and a girl who turns up, orphaned and alone.

I’ve just been on a wonderful study day on The Secret Garden, held by the Children’s Historical Book Society.  I received my copy of the book as a prize when I was nine and someone else on the study day had exactly the same version with her, for the same reason.

I fell in love with the book straight away. We often visited Yorkshire as we had family there and I loved tramping over the moors. We also visited Haworth and marvelled over the tiny handwriting of the Bronte sisters, viewed through a magnifying glass.

I found Mary and Colin so strange and compelling, Martha was like the big sister I never had and I was probably in love with Dickon. The book has remained a favourite ever since.

On arriving at the Study Day someone showed me a handwritten, undated letter which had fallen out of a second hand book she had recently acquired. Here is the transcript :

Maytham Hall

Rolvenden

Kent

Dear Mrs Parkes,

I should come with the greatest of pleasure now that I know that I shall not be a pariah and an outcast.

Yours sincerely,

Frances Hodgson Burnett.

Two of FBH’s biographers were next to me, Ann Thwaite ( who also wrote a biography of A.A. Milne) and Gretchen Gerzina, from New York. The letter caused quite a stir and according to the experts, probably referred to FBH’s  unhappy relationship with her second husband, Stephen Townsend and the problems these caused her socially.

The day was filled with talks by some of the world’s experts on FBH and her books and was full of the most marvellous insights. Ann Thwaite had met members of the family as well as former servants when researching for her book, including a man in his 80s, Harry Millam, who was a 12 year old stable boy at Maytham. I asked if he might have been the inspiration behind Dickon. Both biographers responded with, Oh, interesting, yes, well never thought about it before. Afterwards someone said, ‘Well done for asking the best question, you electrified them!’ It was like winning the school prize all over again.

Ann Thwaite’s husband, Anthony Thwaite, edited Larkin’s Letters to Monica and found a letter about The Secret Garden which Larkin read for the first time in 1953. He found the book ‘astonishingly good..calls on everyone to live life to the utmost....masterly ( about Yorkshire).’

Larkin observed how technically clever it was to depict two children, neither of whom had ever seen the spring. I hadn’t really thought about that before. Wonderful.

Snippets about FBH and The Secret Garden (TSG) you may or may not know ( taken from notes made on the day, so any errors are mine)

1.      FBH wrote 53 novels, mainly for adults, out of print now.

2.      There is a memorial to TSG in Central Park in New York.

3.      FBH wrote TSG in America where she lived for many years.

4.      FBH was considered one of the top five novelists in America and was ranked with Henry James.

5.      She crossed the Atlantic 33 times ( by sea) and was met by paparazzi every time, both sides.

6.      She was one of the highest paid authors, ever.

7.      The robin in TSG who showed the way came from Maytham, her home in Kent.

8.      Dickon was originally called Dick but FBH was told this was a silly name. She felt that Dickon was a good country name.

9.      TSG didn’t become famous until the 1930s after her death in 1924 aged 75 years.

10.   FBH would be most surprised at the celebrations all over the world this year for the centenary of The Secret Garden.

I could write more on Mrs Sowerby and the politics of The Secret Garden but I think that will be a whole new blog. I do hope you share my enthusiasm for the enduring fascination of this author and this book.

What is the soundtrack to your landscape?

My landscape is Hayling Island off the south coast of England, next to Portsmouth. Hayling is 25 miles square and completely flat. When the tide goes out it drains right round the Island revealing wonderful mud banks which are a haven for many different birds.Around two thirds of all birds in the British List are here, including Common Tern, Little Tern, Little Egret and the Brent Geese which winter on Hayling from the Arctic Circle.
So my soundtrack begins with the cry of the seagulls and the call of all the different birds which populate my landscape.

Behind the cry of the birds is the sound of the wind. Did you know that windsurfing was invented on Hayling Island? In 1958 a schoolboy called Peter Chilvers attached a tent flap and a curtain pole to a piece of wood and launched from the beach into the wind. The wind blows hard across the Island coming in from the Solent. Trees bend over in agony and the tall pines groan and creak. Thousands of yachts are moored around the Island and the wind plays a merry tune as it jingles their shrouds.
My soundtrack is underpinned by the wind.

My first book, HIDDEN, is set in February in a freezing cold winter and part of the story is set during a deep sea mist. Fog horns sound out on the Solent making my character, Alix, feel cold and lonely, like the illegal immigrant, Mohammed, she has rescued from the sea. Fog horns sound more than once through my landscape and are a metaphor for the huge and difficult task my two teenagers have set themselves, in rescuing and hiding Mohammed to save him from being deported.

My soundtrack contains many more sounds across the three novels; the crash of the waves on the beach in a storm, the dragging of the tide across the pebbles, the splash of my characters falling or jumping into the water, alongside the roar of motorbikes and the revving of motorboat engines. Bicycles whirr down the back lanes of the Island and car brakes squeal in a spin.

There is the clump of boots across the limestone edges of Derbyshire as my characters  in the third book take off for a rock climbing weekend.
Ropes creak and quickdraws snap and click. Someone yelps as the rope runs through his hand burning the skin on his palm and there is a sickening crunch as a helmet crunches into the rock during a terrifying fall.


I have developed my soundtrack over four years, writing the three novels, visiting the Island several times a year to take notes and photos and to write with the wind in my ears. I have also revisited my old climbing haunts and reminded myself of the sights and sounds of the climbing community. I've hung around friends with motorbikes and I've been out on a motorboat in Chichester Harbour, tracking the desperate journey of my characters in the second book. Just as it takes time to develop the landscape of our writing, so it takes time to enrich the soundtrack. I just wish I could record it and put it on a CD.

What is the soundtrack to your landscape?

HIDDEN, the first book in my Hayling cycle, March 2011, Meadowside Books.
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Preserving the Word by Miriam Halahmy

I have always owned a dictionary, from the little alphabet beginner books as a very young child right through to the Oxford tomes of my university years.

 I also like to collect dictionaries and so I have my son’s huge German dictionary and my Harraps shorter French which took me through a year in France, The Oxford Dictionary of new words which my brother bought me for my 40th, as well as Spanish and modern Hebrew dictionaries, etc. etc.

I take it for granted that I can find any word, in any language, somewhere in a book. And in these so modern of times, somewhere on the Net too. But of course it wasn't always like that.

Until Samuel Johnson’s English dictionary, which was the first to contain definitions  - albeit rather whimsical at times – words floated around unhinged, unboundaried, unrecorded in an accessible and agreed manner.

I just can’t imagine going through life without a dictionary. But even more remarkable, I now cannot understand why it took me until this summer to visit the home of the man who taught us how to preserve the very foundation of the writer – words.

If you haven’t visited Samuel Johnson’s house http://www.drjohnsonshouse.org/  you are in for a veritable treat. Situated behind Fleet Street, in a beautifully preserved 18^th century square, the first thing you see is the statue of Hodge, Johnson’s beloved cat. Take a good camera (which I didn’t, so my photos are from my phone) because you will want to snap and snap.

Entering Johnson’s house is like entering another world. It is so homely, so beautifully preserved, with so many amazing features. Like this custom made chain for the front door to prevent London rioters breaking in. Sound familiar?

I went with the writer Sue Hyams, who writes historical children's fiction and is also Membership Secretary for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. 

Sue is so knowledgeable and enthusiastic about this period in history. She even googled a complete Johnson dictionary and suggested we bought it between us - for around £1500.00. (Crikey!)

Here are some original copies of the dictionary - talk about massive undertaking!!

The whole house has such a warm, lived in atmosphere and of course Johnson had a reputation of mixing with all sorts and bringing people to live with him. But for writers and all lovers of words, the greatest joy is to go up to the room where Johnson wrote his dictionary. Here I am sitting at the actual table he worked at. Apparantly he had a whole row of tables at the other end of the room where scribes stood and laboriously copied out the dictionary for him. And everyone used quill pens!! Put that in your laptop and grind it!

Johnson's house is now top of my list to take visitors to London to see and I do hope you get round to visiting one day.

What is your earliest memory of a dictionary?

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Research Rocks! Miriam Halahmy

The first club I joined at college many moons ago was the Rock Climbing club. I'd always been the adventurous type, climbing trees, riding bikes, rock scrambling.But now in my fifties I have to take things a bit too easy for my liking, ( arthritis and a couple of hip replacements haven't helped) and so I take every opportunity to relive my days of risk taking through my writing. In my Hayling Cycle of three novels I have my teenagers riding motorbikes, entering dangerous seas and racing around on motorboats. I am currently writing the third novel in the series, STUFFED and I decided to send my teenagers rock climbing.

There's plenty of climbing all over London, providing you don't mind climbing indoors on synthetic rock. Personally I always preferred outdoor climbing on the grit stone edges of Derbyshire or in North Wales. But I had to start my research somewhere, so I interviewed Mark 'Zippy' Pretty, one of the top UK climbing coaches today. Here he is route-setting on the climbing wall at the Swiss Cottage Sports Centre.

Mark  helped me to develop my scenario involving my teenagers climbing on The Roaches in Derbyshire, in November. An accident happens and they have to do a rescue - just as it begins to snow! "White out," grinned Zippy. Well that fits the plotting technique of things getting worse and then even worse.

 I was quite overwhelmed by the amount of equipment used today. When we climbed in the 70s we just tied a rope round out waists and went up. Today they wouldn't even dream of leaving the ground without a professional harness, a rack full of nuts, quickdraws, etc., and a helmet. Quite right too. We were completely nuts.

Mark explained about the importance of setting an anchor for the rope, which in climberspeak is 'Bombproof.' I don't think we always understood that in my students days particularly as I was dropped once almost fifteen feet onto my back because the anchorman hadn't heard of Bombproof.

But I wanted to revisit my old rock climbing grounds in Derbyshire, so I took myself off to the Roaches and came across this school party on a day out. Mark had told me that a lot of kids climb today, on the indoor walls especially. Its become part of the curriculum in many schools and so he thought there would be a lot of interest in my book. That was very cheering as I wasn't sure how wide an appeal my enthusiasm would have.

I hooked up with Richard Hogan and his trainee instructor Stephanie and got a really good idea of all the equipment, as well as a good reminder of what is involved in climbing. Climbing is a problem solving sport, thinking about your next move, weighing up the possibilities and the difficulties. But there is also the risk taking. You just have to go for it, not think too much about it or you'd never make the next move. Look at your feet, keep three points of contact at all times, build your muscles and develop your flexibility. Going up vertically on rock walls with the tiniest of holds for feet and hands is one of the most exciting and demanding sports - other than base jumping I suppose. ( No, not on my list.)

The climbers all recommended I read Touching the Void by Joe Simpson. I'd already seen the film. Its an amazing climbing story and an incredible act of survival. Simpson says, "You've got to keep making decisions, even if they're the wrong decisions, or you're stuffed."
My epigraph I think. I'll have to write and ask his permission.

I have a notebook filled with thoughts, descriptions, ideas and an album full of photos, I've watched Cliffhanger and Touching the Void again and I've been back to the famous Roaches of Derbyshire. My climbing friends have said they'll read and comment on my chapters. A good summer's work I reckon.
How do you do your research?

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Helping the book become its Best Self by Miriam Halahmy

All writing requires editing. Very occasionally a piece of writing will arrive pretty well complete, as a gift. I have written one or two poems like this and passages in fiction. But everything will need some sort of revision process. Editing is the process by which writers develop and grow.

My editor, Lucy Cuthew, recently wrote an article about how she edits a book. Lucy’s process is to ask literally hundreds of questions. Her purpose is to try to understand, “What it is a book wants to be.” Lucy writes dozens of comments on a manuscript, including lots of those attractive little bubbles which appear in the right hand margin. “I edit a book,” says Lucy, “by trying to make it the best version of itself it can be.”

I can think of no greater goal for editor and writer than helping the book to become its ‘Best Self’. I want all of my writing to be its ‘best self’. To me this means that I am always striving to improve my writing, always challenging myself to work harder, learn more, take on something I haven’t tried before.

I was very impressed by Hilary Mantel when, after winning the Man Booker Prize in 2009, she was asked what was next and she replied, “To write a better book.”

Sue Gee, prize winning author of nine novels and Head of Creative Writing at Middx University, states, “All writers are apprentices all of their lives.”

In my cycle of three novels set on Hayling Island, I set myself a new challenge for each book. I have used the first person POV, the third person POV and two different POVs, moving between two characters. Each book presented me with the opportunity to try something different - different viewpoints, different dilemmas and different characters, such as characters who don’t speak much English or a major character who doesn’t actually speak at all!

Karl, the second main character in ILLEGAL ( Meadowside, March 2012), is mute for a large part of the book. I have taught children who are mute. Yet it still took me more than a year to work out how to portray this complex character on the page. Karl is one of my favourite characters in the cycle.Setting myself new challenges keeps the writing process fresh and exciting for me.

One of the beauties of language is that we are constantly developing our ability to express ourselves, to describe what we are trying to do. Lucy has given me the phrase, ‘Helping the book to become its Best Self’. This is what I have always tried to do. Now I have the vocabulary to express the thought concisely.

What have you learnt from the editing process?

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You can read Lucy Cuthew’s article about her editing process here.

http://www.winchester.ac.uk/academicdepartments/EnglishCreativeWritingandAmericanStudies/publications/write4children/Documents/w4cissue2vol2june11.pdf

FIVE THINGS A WRITER CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT - Miriam Halahmy

A few years ago the Independent put out a call for lists and there were some nice examples from well-known people. So they decided to throw it open to anyone.This was my contribution.

Five things I cannot live without ;

my Polar library

twice-daily arthritis pills

tap water – yes, London vintage

Mum’s pre-war copy of Little Women

with a single colour plate

him indoors

This was my inspiration for my contribution to our Ten Year Anniversary Edition of ABBA this month.

FIVE THINGS A WRITER CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT

1. Inspiration

Mine involves staring which is ok when you are on a deserted beach but can give rise to some tricky moments when you are staring at people in Costa cafe  (where I often work) and they start glaring back. Picasso said, "Inspiration is there but it has to find you working." So I write and I grumble and I do displacement stuff and then I find myself going into a stare and there I am - in the wonderful zone of inspiration.

2. Chocolate

I nearly  enlarged this picture and those of you who know me will understand why and probably everyone else as well. If inspiration starts with staring then it certainly can be fuelled by chocolate

Don't believe me?

Give it a go!

3. Paper

It has to be the right type. My husband has been perfecting the art of buying me the correct notebooks for over 30 years and trust me, he is the current world expert. Mainly because he can't think of anything else to buy me for birthday presents. I have notebooks to fill from Harrods, the Metropolitan museum of Art and Muji. I don't care if my notebooks are expensive, cheap, falling apart, hard cover, soft cover, BUT!  I hate rough paper with woodchip in it, I hate lined paper with huge gaps between the lines and I hate the squared paper that French schoolchildren seem to want to write on. I LOVE  yellow paper but absolutely no other colour except white of course and perhaps cream, but it has to be exactly the right shade of cream.

Difficult? Me? Never!

4. Somewhere to write

I wrote my first novel on the kitchen table while the kids were asleep. Later my husband divided our bedroom and built me a place for the computer my darling dad bought me. By then the kids were doing homework so they commandeered 'mum's space' regularly. Even later my husband built me a proper study on the end of the house. He calls it a shed, ( wooden walls mostly) but iits really quite integral to the house. I love it. But my favourite places to write? Coffee bars. I've been writing in coffee bars since I was sixteen and read about Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre and the coffee culture of 1930s Paris. I never got over it. Here I am in Starbucks at Camden Lock.

5. A writing implement.

I was inkwell monitor in Tudor Road Junior school when I was in 4A. We wrote with nibs dipped in ink. We learnt Marion Richardson handwriting style and I won prizes. I've written with quills, charcoal, tailor's chalk, Stephenson's ink, calligraphy pens, gouache and HB pencils sharpened by my father with the bread knife. My favourite pens today are Muji thin fibre tip pens, navy blue colour. What do you write with?

That's my top five things I can't live without as a writer. What would you put on the list? Look forward to reading your comments, folks.

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HIDDEN, Meadowside books, March 2011

Lord of the Flies ..... by Miriam Halahmy

                                 
Lord of the Flies was probably my first teenage, young adult, post-childhood novel and I read it when I was eleven years old. It shocked me to the core. I had just started grammar school in the 1960s and it was a rather old-fashioned place. The girls had their own separate little playground around the side of the school. We were not supposed to make friends with the older girls. But somehow Barbara, who was in the fourth form and I gravitated to each other because of our love of books.  Lord of the Flies was Barbara’s set book for English. Lucky me!

Image: AKARAKINGDOMS / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
We sat together on the back step, every playtime (there were three a day in those days) and shared the book, waiting quietly for each other to finish before turning the page. I don’t remember how long it took us to read and I don’t remember us discussing the content. But I do remember the profound effect the book had on me.

 I couldn’t stop thinking about what happened to the boys on the Island and how their behaviour changed so dramatically. Why had this happened, could it happen to my brothers, what if it had been a plane full of girls?

Lord of the Flies has remained one of the most profound reading experiences of my life because it shook my little world and the values I had been brought up, values of fair play and pulling together in a crisis – the values of the Blitz. I was a Londoner and so were my parents. They had fought in the war and this novel felt like a slap in the face after all the heroic black and white films we grew up on, where John Wayne and John Mills won the war almost single-handedly. They would never have allowed the merciless teasing of Piggy or the kicking to death of Simon. My goodness – it just wouldn’t be cricket.

I recently took my daughter to see the new production at the Regents’ Park Open Air Theatre and she loved it and is reading the book again. This is a modern version, with an entire crashed plane on the stage but the concept remains the same. It takes very little to strip away the veneer of civilisation.

I might have been a little young for this book but it certainly challenged me to think independently in a way that all the lessons in the world probably couldn’t have done, certainly not in those days when we weren’t encouraged to think for ourselves. This is contemporary gritty fiction about boys on the edge of the teenage years and stands alongside the best of YA fiction still today.

And haven’t you always wanted to find your very own conch shell?