This week I have been holed up in bed at my friend’s house in Hartford, recovering from Covid. This has meant enforced rest. With little capacity to concentrate on reading, I submitted to the world of movies and Netflix. I chose to watch Ann with an E, the latest rendition of the 1900’s classic Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery.

I never read the Anne books when I was growing up. So it was a delight to encounter this vivacious orphan with red hair and pigtails and become acquainted with her author who introduced feminist issues into the context of a conservative rural landscape setting.

This compelling story told as a Netflix series has kept me enthralled for days, reminding me of how fiction can lead us into deeper truths about ourselves and society than the mere reporting of the facts can do. Storytelling is a powerful medium, in whatever form it takes.

I believe that art makes unpalatable truths more easy to access. It directly touches our heart through empathy and wonderment. Writing, making art, dancing, singing, performing are all creative acts we do first and foremost for ourselves, to help us transform our experiences into something greater. Art in its many forms builds connection, brings hope and can change social perceptions.

This feisty young girl Anne in the series became an advocate for social justice and through her and her determined desire to love and be loved, transformed the community around her. The film writers were able to build on the author’s feminist story line, widening its scope to include social issues of injustice and racial discrimination which are still relevant today.

The view from my bedroom window is of hollyhocks and roses and I take my meals outside in the back-garden looking over the fence line to the trees beyond. While these are my physical reality, my heart and mind are in Avonlea with Anne, righting the wrongs of the world, blundering through the days making mistakes, apologising, but never giving up. I keep moving through the episodes as the hours and days slip by punctuated by my backyard meals in the sunshine of an English summer.

I write this as a testament to my days, how I spend my time and what I witness. I feel lucky to have a blog in which to voice these thoughts and musings. Blogs are neither short stories or poems nor do they have the structure of an essay or diary. They fall somewhere between the formal constraints of literature and journalism, becoming a literary expression all of their own making according to the style and whim of the author.

I love the freedom that writing a blog gives me. It is in many ways a story that continues to be told as I live my life and muse on what I see and the insights these experiences may bring. I could make up a story about that overgrown stretch of paddock between the fence and the tree line, or instead I could draw you back inside into this little room and my laptop computer with Netflix which brings me stories right to my bed. And I am grateful.