What does Ned hate? He hates being told what to do. A feisty fifteen, he does everything for himself with stubborn pride. When his mother fusses over him, he rebels angrily, shouting at the top of his voice and thundering up the stairs, the door booming behind him.
A poster announces: NED'S KINGDOM. Forbidden territory for all except his cat, Zac. The kingdom is a dream factory. Walls are plastered with pictures of the Arctic. Fantastic landscapes, each a window onto a fascinating world of icebergs, glaciers and abstract shapes that a pitiless wind creates with the ice and snow. There are photos too of walrus and seal, polar bear and fox and the infinite array of wild birds that inhabit this savage but free world.
Ned's other hate can be summed up in one word 'oil'. Oil gushing out of a busted rig like some evil geni out of a bottle. Oil spreading itself like a sinister plague. Oil banishing the light and life of the sea grasping at the fish , smearing the birds, leaving them to languish and die.
Ned hates the engineers and miners, the servants of the genii, who invade pristine places armed with bores and drillls, bulldozers and pipes ready to release this dreadful scourge. As he sits on the edge of the iceberg with Nochoska watching the ship on the horizon coming steadily closer to his kingdom, the kingdom of Ned, he vows to fight them.
Yeah! I love this already Peter. This is turning into a novel that everyone who cares about our environment will want to read. Can't wait for the next instalment.
ReplyDeleteI think this is clever - you move from the bedroom world into the fantasy world with no transition, as testament to the power of Ned's imagination - in fact you make us believe that the imagination is so transformative as to mould reality itself. Bedroom world and Arctic world are overlaid, mutually contradictory yet completely convincing - no explanations such as 'he moved his thoughts into the world of his dreams', which would be cheesy, are necessary. The reader does the work and is happy to do it. What Ned hates are summed up in two entities - his mother's interference and oil - and here you haven't actually inflicted either on him, yet, so I look forward to seeing what happens when you do. A fine piece of writing.
ReplyDelete