Eye Eye! -- RUTH LEIGH

Today I’m being silly. My blog is the equivalent of an unexpected cream horn, or a Fruit Shrewsbury with a nice cup of tea, or a toasted cheese sandwich with home made chutney. Something which I trust will give you a warm glow and a bit of a chuckle in the face of increasingly worrying news on the world stage. 

 

I can absolutely guarantee that you will not learn anything about writing technique or the Oxford Comma or marketing strategies for the self-published, or anything else about which we writers often pontificate. I am simply going to share some Funny Stuff with you. 

You’re welcome.

This blog is coming to you from the Palace of Creativity (see photo), my lovely writing studio in the garden. I share the Palace with an elderly armchair for visitors, a bookcase full of research volumes, whiteboards with my 'To Do' lists written upon them and two neat piles of boxes containing my books, The Diary of Isabella M Smugge and The Trials of Isabella M Smugge. Now they’re doing no one any good sitting here with me in the Palace. They need to get out there and find new homes. I get a steady stream of orders from eager Smugge-ers, but as I am now a full-time writer, I have taken the bull by the horns and booked myself on to a number of events around East Anglia this year. 

Last week, Mr Leigh and I attended a craft fair on the outskirts of Ipswich. We sold some books, made some new friends and networked like crazy people.  Yesterday, we were at Eye Town Hall, and again, it was a most successful day. 

Which brings me to the point of this blog.

Eye. What a great name for a town. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, it’s located close to the border with Norfolk. It’s got a ruined eleventh century castle, more listed buildings than Lavenham (and believe me, that’s saying something), a Grade One listed parish church and lots of little independent shops. Its name is thought to come from the Old English word for “land by water.”

That being so, having a town like Eye up the road tickled my creative fancy. Mr Leigh and I amused ourselves by working out what the shops on the High Street should be called. It was a rich vein of creativity which took us through the set up (humping a huge box of books and props up the steps of the imposing Town Hall) to the quiet bits in between chatting and selling books. 

Here then is Eye High Street, as imagined by us, shop by shop.

Optician. Eye Eye

Wedding dress shop. Eye Do

Greengrocers. Eye Pod

Stationers. Eye Pad

Ferry Company. Eye Liner

Posh art gallery. Eye Brow

Car show room. Eye Kia

Sweet shop. Eye Candy

Record shop. Eye Tunes

Dominatrix (if there is one. I have no proof). Eye Lash

Outerwear emporium. Eye Mac

Telephone exchange. Eye Phone

Shop selling playing cards. Eye Deal

Game butcher. Eye Deer

The Laundrette. Eye Wash

The local solicitor. Eye Will

The tea rooms. Eye Tea

Those were all the ones we could come up with, but I’d love to hear your ideas (or Eye Deers).

100% silly today, but sometimes we need to take five minutes to remember what it is that makes us human and to have a laugh. I hope this made you chuckle.

Eye Did.

Images by Pixabay

Ruth is a novelist and freelance writer. She is married with three children, one husband, assorted poultry and a kitten. She is the author of “The Diary of Isabella M Smugge”, “The Trials of Isabella M Smugge” and is currently writing “The Continued Times of Isabella M Smugge”. She writes for a number of small businesses and charities, reviews books for Reading Between the Lines and blogs at ruthleighwrites.co.uk. You can find her on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok at @ruthleighwrites and at her website, www.ruthleighwrites.co.uk.