June Roundup
Welcome to my June Roundup! Hope you all had a good one. This year’s going by pretty fast, eh? But thank you so much to the new subscribers that joined me this month - it was quite a busy one, with a whole range of new life experiences, so I’m going to launch straight in.
I visited a film studio!
But that’s probably all I can say about that. After that exciting morning, we had a great family day out at the nearby Painshill Park, a place that’s been restored to its former folly-filled exploratory landscape-view glory since the eighties.
Then the next couple of days I worked as an air source heat pump installer, assisting a friend of mine on a job in his van. It was a fantastic experience, and I learned a lot, and it was great to work with my hands and spend time with him. A couple days after that I was back working on the film studio-related project. I do hope I’ll be able to talk about later on…
Midway through the month we headed to Hever for a walk around. Having been there a lot, it was nice to look back at the above spot, where they actually filmed a scene in The Phantom Menace on Naboo (I think I noticed the split-second moment that was wasn’t a deleted scene in my cinema rewatch in May.) And they filmed some of Andor Season 2 on that same spot which was exciting, imagining Diego Luna or other cast members walking where I walked on the loggia by the waterside.
For Father’s Day, we… got caught in a lot of traffic that scuppered our day out. But, we did pop to Devil’s Dyke, an amazing dry river valley that’s highpoint was once a hillfort. The exciting part for me was seeing this field again, though.
Later on in the month, it was time for my first two days volunteering at North Leigh Roman Villa near Oxford. We turned it into a bit of a holiday, visiting Oxford before then heading to see family further north. So, we went to an area of Oxford we hadn’t yet walked, Jericho.
I also popped back in the Ashmolean to look at a few small temporary displays. I ended up taking way too many photos of ancient statues (that I won’t bombard you with).
Plus, I looked round their collection of paintings (again, many I could share). Seeing Uccello’s The Hunt was special though, as I did a school project on the artist and his works (plus the painting also features in a later episode of Morse!)
The Wilton Diptych was also specially on display, quite a rare artefact made for King Richard II.
I especially liked the right panel, with the blue, gold, many wing feathers and there’s even a miniscule image in the orb atop the flag, a white castle on an island in a sea of silver with a sailing boat. If it is a representation of England - it sure was nicer back then!
But there are still idyllic scenes, like the sweeping Evenlode valley where the remnant of North Leigh Roman Villa lies. (Was that a good segue?) I volunteered at the free English Heritage site form 10.30 to 17.00 on the Saturday and then to 15.00 on the Sunday. But the time really flew by and again I learned a lot and had a good few new experiences that’ll prepare me for the future.
Number one, it was great working as part of a dedicated team that all valued the same things I do. All the more experienced volunteers were very accommodating to us newbies, letting us shadow them in the different roles. Because of that, and because I’d researched the villa a lot already, I found that my comfort zone had melted away and I was just in the zone.
The site’s always open, but on open days we let the public into the mosaic house, an old structure put up to protect the surviving mosaic of what would’ve been a gorgeous courtyard complex surrounded by an extensive and varied farm. On the Saturday, as well as learning what went where, I managed to deliver the spiel all about the mosaic four times to the public that afternoon.
Sunday was much busier and I was instead on the gate, personally welcoming 42 visitors, doing my best each time to get the information across, tailoring it to the different groups. Something like that would’ve petrified me before. It’s a small win but as Tesco say, every little helps. I also shadowed and helped out the finds table with artefacts and replicas from nearby. And perhaps the most rewarding part for a writer whose normally cooped up, was just standing around and chatting to the variety of old and new volunteers, and actually talking to them about my writing and interest in many historical eras.
I feel I got so much from the whole experience, am now fully equipped to set up and help out at any station, and am really looking forward to July when I’ll be there on our first proper Conservation in Action Wednesday (July 17th) with an English Heritage van, and the following weekend when we may offer tours.
I also had an amazing conversation with a young couple that I should’ve converted to newsletter subscribers because they wanted to know more and more about my writing and were so congratulatory and kind - they knew all the same historical TV shows I did, and they had a writer friend themselves so knew the struggles, even commending me for just going for it and self-publishing when I was younger and pursuing writing straight out of school instead of getting a creative writing degree. (It works for some!)
The wildlife continued with a family day out at Knepp to see their Purple Emperor butterflies - we spotted at least twenty! Plus there were loads of other butterflies, birds and horses. Knepp is a rewilded estate that I’d recommend everyone visit. The black dot in the photo below is a stork.
Writing Update
While talking about my writing was very rewarding (and hopefully preparatory for things to come), there was some actually writing to be done this month too!
I’ve reworked my comic script after receiving kind and helpful feedback from the two writers who offered at MCM, Matt Garvey and Richard Perry. Their suggestions really added to the script in multiple senses of the word. I’ve also had some kind words from the artists who offered to glance at my script - they’ve confirmed they’ll both get back to me but not yet.
Speaking of not yet, I won’t say much about the comics anthology that I submitted to - other than that I submitted to a comics anthology for the first time! Its theme was right up my street and I knew straight away which story in my head I wanted to rework into an eight-page comic script. Everybody keep your fingers crossed that the editors like my idea and hopefully I’ll be letting you know in July what you can be doing to help get my first comic project made!
Then there’s been the amazing process of emailing back and forth with the author Sebastien de Castell, for more than a month! He’s been so helpful but I won’t jinx anything by telling you much about our over forty emails. Just go and support his work!
Of course the major writing thing this month was the proper announcement that I’m writing for Star Wars Insider. By the end of that day I was so full of gratitude for the flood of support from friends, Star Wars fans and established authors and other Insider contributors welcoming me to the family. Like at North Leigh, I really felt a part of something, but this was something global and I was humbled by the kindness of others that day and every day since actually.
(Another writing-ish thing I did was create a linktree for the first time. So, all my links: https://linktr.ee/harveyhamer)
Plus my article and I now have our own pages on Wookieepedia (the massive Star Wars Wikipedia) which is pretty surreal!!!
And as you’ll have seen in your inboxes (including earlier today!), I’ve been continuing to enjoy talking to you all about my passions of Star Wars and ancient art. Here’s the links to this month’s releases:
This month's books
This segment showcases the new additions to my research and fiction collections.
There was another great delivery of Star Wars comics, with many series continuing but also two special comics on the middle. A Place in Space, the business that I get my comics from, managed to send the May 4th Free Comic Bok Day special issue Star Wars/Darth Vader issue in the middle top row. Then there’s the exciting Phantom Menace special, with short tales celebrating 25 years of that film.
Then this shipment of comics came through, the three different covers of each of the first issues of comics based on jacksepticeye’s characters, published by Bad Egg. They also sent through digital copies, so I have yet to open even the base covers but these are perfect stories for fans of the two characters, a magician and a superhero, that have been around on Jack’s YouTube channel for over eight years.
These foil covers were a real treat! (You can’t really see the shininess but still…)
This last section of books contains a sneaky record too. Under the Road was a gift from a family friend (and reader of this newsletter - thanks!). It’ll be a fascinating read about all the layers of history beneath a road. The bottom two items came from that day in Oxford. It felt right to get that Pullman while in Oxford - it’s a lovely edition that I will get to when I eventually commit to a His Dark Materials read-through. The Depeche Mode single was a bit of an impulse buy - but it contains two non-album tracks that I really like and have never seen in physical before. It was from Riverman Records, a lovely little shop packed to the brim with so many great vinyls.
And that's the end of this month’s roundup. Thank you so much to everyone that reads these. Please share with your friends and family and ask them to subscribe - that would mean the world to me as I do love sharing my various exploits with you all, and would treasure having more people with me on my writing (and life) journey, especially as things are really taking off here.
Cheers,
Harvey