The Eleven O’Clock: Tea, toast, and Dublin, 1798 Thursday 26th June, 2025

Each day for the remainder of June, I’ll post The Eleven O’Clock and aim to answer the following three questions in short sentences and/or very short paragraphs.

1. Where am I?

2. What am I doing?

3. What am I thinking about and feeling?

Of course, I would welcome any comments, humorous, poignant, serious, or otherwise.

1. Physically at my desk, writing and enjoying a brief break, armed with a colourful mug of Tetley tea and munching two pieces of buttered toast. Mentally, it’s dawn and I’m alone on a horse en route to Dublin in May 1798 in the form of an Irish girl with a lot on her mind.

2. Thinking. As the character, mostly thinking, dispelling anxious thoughts by forming a detailed plan of action. As the writer, weighing up what it must be like for this fictitious character to be caught in a combination of competing loyalties, and facing a very uncertain future. And wondering whether all this writing is some unconscious form of autobiography; whether the characters we form can ever be truly ‘not me? Perhaps, through our imaginations, we do invent original creations that are not us, in order to dis-cover who we truly are?

Feelings. There are times when you become immersed in a character’s mental, emotional, or spiritual state. As yet, this character isn’t pondering spiritual matters, but is thinking deeply about the various moral dilemmas she faces – one step removed from the spiritual? Her romantic feelings towards the protagonist are embryonic and subject to her other dilemmas. Whatever feelings she may have lie hidden, held just below the surface. Maybe by 11.30, I’ll be there.

I’m also aware of just how tasty the rescued bread has turned out to be when toasted.

Licking my lips.

Back to 1798.