The instruction for Day 15 of the 30-Day Writing Challenge reads:
Today, you have a choice of two different activities related to point of view. When I say point of view, I mean the perspective used to tell the story. Think of the location of the camera when filming a movie. You can tell a story from inside a particular character's head, showing what that character sees, thinks, and experiences.
• Option 1: Think of an argument or uncomfortable encounter you had with another person. Tell the story of this encounter from the other person's point of view. Or...
• Option 2: Rewrite a story you have written previously, but write it from the point of view of a different character.
Unlike the previous task, this one is not so easy. I think I will use the Day 14 subject of the blind man, the tent and the train, which used the young Adam Smith as the “camera”. In contrast, I will try to relate the situation as it may have been understood and experienced by Harry Rickson, as related by the author, a third party observer… – Option 21 above, if you will.
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“Hi there, Mickey. We will be arriving at Brito in twenty minutes or so. I will wait at that muffin place, as usual. Yes, and I’ll have a choc muffin and a cappuccino while I wait,” chuckled the greying seventy-five-year-old man via his Samsung mobile to his daughter Michelle from his seat 12B on the KiwiRail Northern Explorer from Wellington.
Born a Scotsman, but now a New Zealander, Harry Rickson is violin virtuoso from the Edinburgh philharmonic orchestra. At the age of 18 he started military training just after WW2 but was tragically injured in a freak gas accident at his very first camp, which led to his permanent blindness. Like Harry usually says when asked, “Playing the violin professionally is the natural choice for me – It will never make you a millionaire, but I have never come across a good violinist who plays with his eyes, we all use our ears…”
For the past few years, Harry has been resident in the inter-island ferry terminal town of Picton on the South Island. Today he has been on the North Island day-trip train from the capital to Auckland to visit daughter Michelle. On previous visits, he has used for the speedier air-flight, but the rail option has proved to be a pleasant change.
“Thanks for the advance warning, Dad,” Michelle was genuinely pleased to hear her father’s voice, “I’ll catch you there shortly, depending on the afternoon city traffic. Love you, bye for now…” She had naturally never known her father as anything other than visually impaired, and did not even consider his lack of vision an impairment to his way of life. She had lost her mother and he his wife Matilda some fifteen years earlier, when she was killed by a hit and run driver, while the couple had been back to Scotland on holiday.
Half an hour later, Michelle arrives at Brito Mart railway station, near the entrance from Queen Street. There she spots her father at what they know as the Muffin Place. She can see from that distance that he is wearing the earpiece to his iPod. Listening to some of his favourite music, she muses.
As she reaches his table, she gently taps him three times on his left shoulder. This is their “secret” greeting, which lets Harry know that it’s his daughter.
“Did you have a good trip, Dad?” Michelle enquires, as they leave the parking at the station and head for her home in the suburbs.
“Actually very good, thanks, Mickey. For more than half the trip, as far as Hamilton I believe, I had a young man as company. He even gave me a full commentary of the place where we got off at lunch-time. Youngster off on a camping thing, called himself Adam Smith,” Harry offered her.
“And, what does a 75-year-old violinist speak about to a teenage in-betweener?”
“Oh, mostly this and that, Mickey. He told me a bit about himself, what he was planning to do with his life ahead, and I told him about my music, about Scotland, and that sort of thing…” Harry’s voice faded a bit, as he pretended to look at the passing scenery, “So, what’s for dinner, tonight? I’m fairly famished!”
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[ The instruction for Day 16 is: Put on music in the background today while you write. Write a scene that captures the feeling of the music... ]
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