Memories collide to create the inspiration for The Museum of Lost Umbrellas
Back in 2020 I woke up one morning with a dream still swimming in my head: an isolated island … a strange museum full of magical umbrellas … The Museum of Lost Umbrellas. It was one of those lightbulb moments when my brain delivers an idea it has been working on unbeknownst to me.
It took a while to work out which memories collided to create this particular spark, but I think I’ve figured out a few of them. Memory number one is definitely a sign I spotted once in the window of an ordinary house on a small island. The Umbrella Cover Museum is closed for the season, it said.
Memory number two is of emerging from a gig at the Three Arena. A huge storm had passed over the city and the quays were covered in broken umbrellas, mostly black. They looked like dying creatures crawling out of bins, sprawling pathetically in gutters, skittering under benches.
Memory number three goes further back, all the way to me, aged eight. I’m on a day out in Kilkenny with my parents. As we sit down to lunch, they casually inform me that the restaurant – Kyteler’s Inn – once belonged to a witch. They don’t have any idea how this lands on my wee ears. Mam and Dad – not at all fantastical folk – believe in witches? It’s my first indication that once upon a time people believed that witches existed in the real world. Till that moment I’d been sure witches were a made-up thing, existing only inside stories and books. Dame Alice Kyteler has been on my radar ever since, and now she has found her way into one of my books, featuring as the ancestor of my book’s heroine, Dilly Kyteler.
Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick is an award-winning children’s author and illustrator. Her most recent book is a magical adventure for nine to twelve-year-olds called The Museum of Lost Umbrellas. The Museum of Lost Umbrellas is the first book in The Cloud Witch Chronicles.
