SERENDIPITY or CHANCE DISCOVERIES by Lynne Benton

 I almost called this blog TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED, but for people of a certain age who remember the television series of bizarre, rather uncomfortable stories by Roald Dahl, that tends to mean something rather different.  So I’ll stick with SERENDIPITY, which is such a lovely word, and conveys exactly the right meaning.

The dictionary defines Serendipity as “The occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy  or beneficial way.”  But then I made a further serendipitous discovery: the dictionary went on to say it was “a word coined by Horace Walpole, suggested by The Three Princes of Serendip, the title of a fairy tale  in which the heroes were always making fortunate discoveries.”  How delightful is that?

And how apt.  Because it has increasingly occurred to me that something I find I miss in Lockdown is the chance of coming across things/places/people by accident.  At the moment we (in England, at any rate) are, effectively, locked in at home.  Which is fine, up to a point.  And that point is – sometimes we all need to get out and about and make chance discoveries away from our own familiar surroundings.

Take shopping, for instance.  Yes, we can shop online at home, whether via a supermarket (if we can get a delivery slot) or via a website – but if we do that we need to know exactly what we want to buy before going online to buy it.  Although it can happen sometimes, there is less likelihood of “coming across something by chance”, as we do if we’re browsing in a real, “non-essential” shop (remember those?)  So often, in the old days, when I was out shopping (either on my own or with a friend – remember that?) I would spot something I’d not even thought of, maybe in a shop I didn’t normally go into, and realise it was exactly right for X’s birthday present, or that it would perfectly match a top/jacket/skirt etc. that I already own, or that something I never knew existed would be so useful in my garden/kitchen/study.  Or I might bump into an old friend or acquaintance, someone I hadn’t seen for ages, and we’d stop and chat and both come away feeling cheered.  Or it may be seeing something beautiful/bizarre/unusual that makes us stop in our tracks and look, or take a photo, to store in our memory for future reference.  This is particularly likely when we’re away on holiday, of course (ah yes, holidays!  Remember those?)  On holiday we often make chance discoveries – a secluded cove, an amazing view, a delightful café, or simply something very unusual, which we can photograph and send to our friends or keep to remind us of what we found. 

Stanley Park, Canada

Writers, of course, are extremely good at spotting the unusual and storing it away.  How often have we been asked “Where do you get your ideas from?” and you’ve replied “Everywhere, all the time, we notice things that could spark the idea for a story.”  But at the moment I’m finding myself having to look inwards, because all my ideas are coming from within me, not from outside discoveries.  And although of course my imagination can come up with a lot, I really miss looking outwards.

Of course I can come across things by chance while reading the paper, a magazine, a book, or watching television, that gives me an idea, but I maintain that it’s not the same as getting out into the real world and seeing things for myself.

It’s the same with research.  Writers need to research all sorts of unlikely things when writing their books, and sometimes they need to experience these things first-hand.  For example, you may need to find out what it was like to travel on a steam train, or to row a boat against the current, or how to work a hot air balloon.

CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index/php?curid=65970

Or you may need to see for yourself how a watermill works, or feel how bleak Hadrian’s Wall might have felt to a Roman soldier suddenly posted there, or how much beach is left in a particular place when the tide comes in.  Without the ability to research all these things, we may have to rely on second-hand accounts, which, although factually correct, will lack the immediacy of experiencing them at first-hand.

As I write this I know many of you will point out that when out walking the dog you are always spotting interesting things, and many of you post pictures of them online so we can all appreciate them.  Which we do.  So maybe it’s my fault that I haven’t made so many chance discoveries. However, without a dog you tend not to just walk for the sake of it, especially if the weather isn’t enticing.  Just walking round and round your local park doesn’t quite cut it.  The trees do change, of course, with the seasons, and that’s lovely, but I still miss being able to go a bit further afield and seeing something different.  Surely I’m not alone in this?

And I’m sure I’m not alone in longing for the end of Lockdown, when we can all leave home from time to time and see the world outside.  And maybe make some chance discoveries!

See my website: www.lynnebenton.com