Importance ~ Maressa Mortimer

I love travelling. Especially if the place I’m going to is different from where I grew up. The views across forested hills, the sight of some bird of prey gliding in the air, the sound of huge waves crashing on a beach...

I recently discovered a wonderful website that shares Live travel with the world. You simply choose the tour you want at a time that you can attend, get yourself a drink and sit back whilst the tour guide shows you around. It’s free (tip enabled) which to someone Dutch is remarkable in itself, as we have a saying, “Only the sun comes up for free.”

There are too many tours to choose from, and some of them are at ridiculous times, but the ones I look for are the ones that include stories, legends, information. I’m not keen on guided tours, as my attention span is normally only a fraction of the guide’s, so by the time we have left the first exhibition room in some castle, the guide is just warming up, and I want to get to the next room already. On the Virtual travel site, I pick tours with this in mind.



I love the tours of Iceland, as the guide is brisk, pours out information on all kinds of subjects and most of his tours include some incredible story. Like the one about poor old Snorri. I love the St Petersburg tours, for the same reason. There are Romanovs, Bolsheviks, some starving people in charge of the seeds who never touched one during The Siege, as well as amazing buildings.

Then there is the tour of the Australian Wilderness, with huge vistas, cockatoos and caves. It’s all breathtaking, wishing I was there kind of stuff, and then it struck me when the guide showed us some beautiful flowers. It’s not all about the big stuff. It’s not about the soaring heights or dazzling depths. There are sweet, fragile flowers, found hidden in clefts of stunning rocks, still part of the scenery.

That’s what I feel about writing. Some poems take my breath away with their depth, their imagery and clever word arrangements. There are books that I read where I need to re-read every other line to get the meaning of the text. So clever and overwhelming. Then there is my writing. The fun I have when I sit down at my laptop and think of my awful character Genevieve and the misunderstandings she struggles with. Her ridiculous desire to be a Private Investigator, or Public Eye, as she calls it for she feels she’d be serving publicly.



I sometimes write poems, like the one I did for Mom’s Favorite Reads, about Wales. There’s nothing intricate, delicate or soulful about it, but you know what? I had a wonderful time writing it. When I write, I write for pleasure. I write to give myself a break, to do something different than washing up, checking schoolwork or reading Enid Blyton to four little people. It might not make people gasp and grab their cameras, but I’m happy to be that little flower in a corner, that funky pebble or small waterfall. Because they are needed too. Together they complete the views and vistas, add extra colour to the whole, and complete the scene.

So whether you’re the momentous writer, or the one adding that little bit of colour almost out of sight, you are needed. Of course, reach for the sky, by all means, those flowers in Australia did too, but be aware that we can’t all be the ginormous rock with myriads of colours. We’re all in this together, all seen and special. All part of an intricate design that needs the breathtaking as well as the breath-giving.

I live in the beautiful Cotswolds, England with my husband and four (adopted) children. My debut novel, Sapphire Beach, was published December 2019, and my first self published novel, Walled City came out on December 5^th 2020, as my own St Nicholas present to the world! You can buy your very own, signed copy at www.vicarioushome.com.

 I’m a homeschool mum, so my writing has to be done in the evening, when peace and quiet descends on our house once more. I’m Dutch, English isn’t my first language, so I’m using that as an excuse for any typos or grammatical mistakes.