Hancock, thanks for that. Here is that link again with the gubbins to activate it: Hypertext Poetry Workshop. It looks interesting.

On the question of comments, I have added Squawkbox's free user comments system to the template here. Readers can now post their responses. To see how it works in practice, I added some comments to the this: the dog lists.

Note: they display I.P. address etc. alongside the messages.

There are issues with the links and archiving not working reliably here. I have opened a case with Blogger about them.

last night's dream corrected

oh bathsheba two words of house.

her dusty feet sprinkle golden surgical openings.
greta garbo is not my sister.

a door opens and i enter like someone who--he

sits in a chair, reading a book, unaware of my theme music, turning crispy pages back and forth, compromising passages.

greta plays with her toy boats. she uses the rug as the ocean. her sunlight pasted above a map of the medulla oblongata.

"i have to take off my dress or the rain will stop", she says.
"yes, that is true", i say.

i follow her onto the grass, where i paint the lingo.

it is me.

but,

"beautiful" i hear. "beautiful".
"how did you do that?". "we didn't know you could".

it is unfinished.

greta, my sanguine hypothesis, your flag is an opiate dress the marching band salutes. it is a painting of you and your country (by this lake) the room is brighter and better for reading the lattice pitch of children covered by folds of

happening.

it is a testament to the conceivable.

but,

"remarkable".

greta?

i can't paint.

post&publish something puts it in that nice place, right?

where am i?

Somebody I know stayed in the Cumberland Hotel. It's near Marble Arch, right? They were moaning about the lack of air conditioning. That was a few years ago. They paid about £500 a night, and they were part of a family that owns one of the biggest hotels in the world, in the Far East, as well as loads of other things. Only fifth wife part. It's like that over there. Have you noticed how nice rich people look? They have a glow. Their children are darlings of politeness and eloquence.

Poor kids are so disappointing. Couldn't they stop saying "y'know" and "he goes this" and "she goes that." They should learn how to spend two hours making up their faces. Well the girls anyway. Mind you, the boys paint their nails too over there. Actually, they have people do them with clear varnish.

Some people here do that. I was amazed. There I was out on the razz with this diamond geezer, and he's knocking back pints, with one or two chasers lined up. Next minute the light catches his nails and nearly blinds me. What the? Is that clear varnish on your nails? Oh yeah, he says, he's only had them manicured. Flippin' loadsamoney like.

I am thinking of changing the heading to "Literary Rotgut". Literary Finings sounds a bit la-di-dah, dainty hand covers the mouth, "pardon me," ooooh, woolly wooftery, hark at me, love-a-duckie, dear oh law. I can swear like Kathy Bates in Misery if required, you know. What was her expression, "cockadoodie," yes, what a load of cockadoodie. See.

There is a recipe here: wild sloe wine. Is there a winemaker in the house? (That's winemaker.)

Ian, thanks for Chapter 3, wonderful stuff. Turn of the century 1899 / 1900 I presume you meant, not millennium. I got a real sense of the storm, the household and a sense of adventure. Great descriptions and narrative. I wondered if anything was going to happen for a while but I was content to read about the domestic life and circumstances. If I might make a suggestion, I would say it could do with a dash of colour and possibly other sensual references, warmth, cold, smells. It's hard to find any colours mentioned in the text - a little would go a long way. The doll is mentioned a lot, but I don't know what colour it was. (Maybe I missed something.) There is the white water, but white water is almost a compound noun (if that is the term) in a way. The passage about the visit of Queen Victoria seemed a bit lumpy as if it was outside the story, or point of view. I didn't doubt the authenticity of the dialogue, assuming people spoke in a more formal way than we do today. How true that is I don't know. I was wondering whether more bits of dialect could be thrown in, without turning it into an impenetrable D. H. Lawrence style. I balked a bit at Mr Johnson's description of how the carriages got bogged down; it sounded more like narrative. The rescue is exciting and touching.

Hi Ian, welcome to the Sloe Wine, a literary review growing wild like "the small dark globose astringent fruit of the blackthorn." You are the fifth member.

If anyone who has received an invitation would like one under a pen name instead, please email me.

Thanks Cheryl. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

If anybody who knows me starts a weblog, please send me a link or an invitation.

I want to invite the best writers online to contribute to this "rolling literary review." I will add links soon, when I find out how! Please add a link to Sloe Wine to your websites. Things will happen. It will be great. Trust me, I'm a blogger.

Welcome to Sloe Wine.