… Think I see my way out of the immediate Catraeth problem, though there are still plenty ahead …(Diary, 30/5/88)

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May 30th Monday. Another Bank Holiday! Yesterday’s wind got up again. The pups have spent the whole day yelling to be let out & chasing squirrels. Betty S came in for a while, chiefly to catch Sheila for a chat this morning. Think I see my way out of the immediate Catraeth problem, though there are still plenty ahead.

The “Catraeth problem”, which is a rare diary comment about her work-in-progress, first surfaced in Rosemary Sutcliff’s diary on 28/8/88. It relates to a battle which features in her novel The Shining Company.

… riding the rocking horse and playing with the doll’s house … (Diary, 29/5/88)

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May 29th Sunday.  Ants & family for the day: all went very happily. Dommy riding the rocking horse and playing with the doll house, both of them playing with Ants in the garden in intervals of bright sunshine between sounds of rain, and Rowy bringing in a handful of somewhat wilted daisies to make a daisy chain on the hearthrug & (a great breakthrough) playing with Sebastian. Sheila produced a really traditional Sunday Dinner.

‘Ants’ is me. The references are to my two children, Dominic and Rowan. The ‘breakthrough’ reference is to both children, and my wife, being terrified of Sebastian the chihuahua – who did yap noisily and was prone to nip all and sundry!

… wish I didn’t feel so muzzy and vaguely unreal … (Diary, 28/5/88)

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May 28th Saturday. Diane washed my hair for me this morning. Great relief. Head beastly – not of course improved by hair wash. Wish I didn’t feel so muzzy & vaguely unreal. Have hit all kinds of complications at the moment with Catraeth, too

I was unsure for a good while about the second last word. Was it the name of a character and thus part of a rare comment in Rosemary’s diary about her writing work? Was it ‘cathedral’ – she wrote some community play or plays at some point.

excerpt Rosemary Sutcliff diary 28/5/88

I have however, I think, worked it out. It is a point about her writing, but about an event not a character. At this time Rosemary Sutcliff was writing her award-winning book The Shining Company, her young adult and children’s novel which included the Battle of Catraeth (which is believed happened around or a little before 600AD). The battle is commemorated in Y Gododdin, a medieval Welsh poem. It is a collection of elegies to the men of the kingdom of Gododdin and its allies who died fighting Angles at Catraeth .

Can Science Explain Why We Tell Stories? | The New Yorker

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In the New Yorker, an intriguing article about the science of telling stories.

The interesting questions about stories, which have, as they say, excited the interests of readers for millennia, are not about what makes a taste for them “universal,” but what makes the good ones so different from the dull ones, and whether the good ones really make us better people, or just make us people who happen to have heard a good story …

… Good science is more like Proust than Mr. Popper’s Penguins; its stories startle us with their strangeness, but they intrigue us by their originality, and end by rewarding us with the truth, after an effort. It is the shock good stories offer to our expectations, not some sop they offer to our pieties, that makes tales tally, and makes comtes count. The story that tells us only that we like all kinds of stories lacks that excitement, that exclusionary power, which is the only thing that makes us want to hear stories at all.

Source: Can Science Explain Why We Tell Stories? | The New Yorker.