To dream of writing

Dan kneeled down and took a drink from the spring. He felt good. He knew he was going to be a great writer. It wasn’t how he first intended to spend his life. From a small child he was going to be a soldier in a red uniform and round pith helmet, like his Mum's father and grandfather. He was tall enough and strong enough but when he went to the magic lantern show in the village hall last year one of the scenes made him change his mind.

The officer in charge, a Colonel Abram, had just returned from many years in Africa where there had been several uprisings. One picture was taken in a market place where red coats were shooting natives, running them through with their bayonet. It turned Dan’s stomach. He knew soldiering could mean killing people. He wasn’t a sissy but if he had to kill someone he wanted it to be his decision, not having to act on someone else’s orders.

The Colonel was recruiting in the village. The slide show was supposed to tell everyone how exciting life could be in the army. Several young men took the King’s shilling. Luckily Dan was still too young so the sergeant passed him by once he knew his age.  

The soldiers marched off the next morning and most of them weren’t seen again in the village. Dan was the one who had to read their letters and write others for his grandmother and other women who had trouble with book learning. Gran had been blind for many years but could still do her bit to help from her chair in the corner of the kitchen. Mum said she was too busy bringing up children to have time to learn to read and writing was just a set of squiggles on a piece of paper .

It was a travelling preacher who taught Dan to read and write. Said it was a sin not to be able to read the Word of God; to write and figure too.  He was poor like everyone else, the preacher, so he spent one long, cold winter helping with the hedging and ditching in return for a bit of food and a place to sleep next to the fire.  He left once the footpaths dried out in Spring but now Dan could tell his Dad how many eggs the white hen laid, how much the pig was eating and what rent money the Land Agent wanted for the seven acres to be put into corn next Spring.

There wasn’t much time for writing, not with having to help out on the farm every day. Winter was easier, but the lack of heat in his bedroom meant his fingers were too stiff to hold a pen and besides, where was the ink coming from, let alone something to write on? Any paper they found was cut into squares to hang in the privy. No space for writing there, no time neither not with Nelly always banging on the door, telling him to hurry up because she wanted to go.

Then one day he was talking to Seth, the rector’s stable boy. Told him how paper was scarce and Mam wanted a letter written to her sister, Grace, over in Throckmorton Lane. Seth said he’d seen the housekeeper throw out a whole pile of books and papers for the gardener to burn on the next bonfire. The rector’s son was off to serve in Africa with the Queen’s Royal Hussars so his schoolboy things weren’t no use any more.

Amongst the pile were two notebooks, hardly used and a whole pile of clean paper for letter writing. The Gardener agreed there was no point in burning what could be used by someone else and let Seth give them to Dan. He showed the writing paper to his mother and that night, by candlelight, wrote down the message she wanted sent to Aunt Grace.

The notebooks he kept hidden. Mam wouldn’t understand what he needed them for, let alone agree he should waste his time putting thoughts down on paper. Normal folk didn’t write they worked. If they were had music running through their veins they might sing songs and learn new ones but you didn’t write stuff of your own just for the sake of it. Only the gentry wrote.

Dan took the notebook out of his pocket along with the pencil he’d found on the road. His hands were clean after drinking from the spring and the full moon gave him just enough light to see the page. It was such a beautiful moon, shining down on him, cloud kissed. He licked his pencil, took a deep breath and let the words begin to flow across the page.

A bit of fun for tonight's SWW

This piece was written as part of an exercise for tonight's meeting of Solihull Writer's Workshop.

Speeding granny sends Clarkson to jail

Magistrates sitting last Thursday in Solihull found Joan Brown (93) guilty of speeding in the pedestrianized portion of the High Street on her motorised disability scooter. Mother of four, Joan, was discovered by police to be travelling at 35 miles an hour. The maximum permissible speed for a disability scooter is 4mph on the pavement and 8mph on a road.

Mervin Merryweather, (63) counsel for the defence , said Mrs Brown was not aware of the true speed of her disability scooter since modifications had been made to the speedometer by Jeremy Clarkson, presenter of BBC TV’s Top Gear programme. The modifications enabled the scooter engine to travel up to 70mph on roads whilst showing a speed of only 10mph.

He said his client was used to travelling at speed since she was a pilot during the second world war, delivering all kinds of aircraft to British airfields, including spitfires from the Castle Bromwich factory.

Mr Clarkson (52) was asked to explain why he had undertaken the modification to Mrs Brown’s scooter. He said he realised that making changes to a speedometer were illegal but it annoyed him to travel behind old people who drove very slowly. He recently undertook the same modifications to a car as part of a recent Top Gear programme and drove it on the road. After the programme was aired on Sunday, 24 February 2013, he was inundated with requests to perform the same modification to other vehicles which he was happy to do.

Asked by the magistrates to identify the person who requested Mrs Brown’s speedometer to be modified, father of three, Clarkson, said he couldn’t remember the name. He said, “Some old biddy in a blue cardigan appeared in my workshop waving £100 notes under my nose. She didn’t give any details and I wasn’t going to ask any questions. I just took the money and made the changes.”

Mr Merryweather told the court his client believed a Belinda Hoggetts of 22, Whitehouse Way, Solihull, was responsible for the modifications to her disability scooter. Mrs Hoggetts worked for Age UK (Solihull) and managed the scheme for loaning scooters to Solihull residents who wished to go shopping in Solihull pedestrianized area.

When questioned, Mrs Hoggetts (46) admitted she had paid Mr Clarkson to modify Mrs Brown’s scooter. She said, “My husband, Trevor, is a great fan of Top Gear. When he saw the changes Jeremy Clarkson made to his motor vehicle to make it more convenient for older adults, he suggested I should approach Mr Clarkson to make similar changes to our Age UK disability scooters. Mrs Brown’s scooter had recently come back to us for a service, so I took it to Mr Clarkson’s workshop in Chipping Norton and paid him for the modifications.”

In sentencing Mrs Brown, magistrates agreed she was only partly responsible for her crime. She was fined £400 and ordered to do sixty hours community service. Mr Clarkson was remanded in custody charged with making illegal modifications to motor vehicles.  He was also bound over to keep the peace after shouting at the magistrates calling them “Country buffoons without an ounce of common sense” and declaring he was immune from prosecution because he was a BBC presenter. Mrs Hoggetts was also fined £400 and ordered to do 500 hours community service.

The above is a work of fiction!

Book review: Proof of Guilt by Charles Todd

Creating a believable story in a historical setting is hard work. Setting it in a country which is not your own takes care and a great deal of research. At least it does if you don’t want to make glaring errors which trip up your readers.

Proof of Guilt  is the 15^th investigation of Scotland Yard Inspector, Ian Rutledge, set in 1920's London by mother and son team, Caroline and Charles Todd. Their hero is an upper middle class graduate detective with sufficient independent means to own his own flat and run a motor car whilst suffering from claustrophobia and shellshock which had him hospitalised for six months following the end of the war. He is also dogged by the Scottish voice of a corporal he was forced to execute for refusing to lead his men into battle from the relative safety of the trenches. Hamish MacLeod is a very useful ghost as he helps the inspector ask pertinent questions and always knows when a suspect is lying.

The publishers of Proof of Guilt, William Morrow, want to expand Charles Todd’s literary exposure into the UK. After all, the stories are set in south-east England and East Anglia so they should appeal to a UK market. If that is their aim, it was a shame they didn’t ask someone from the UK to proof read the manuscript before it was published, then maybe they could have flagged up some of the more obvious linguistic and grammatical errors.

I admit I’m a pedant. I also had the advantage of going to a good grammar school where I was taught Latin and given a grounding in English language as well as literature. I understand few Americans have these opportunities but most of the American authors I admire appear to have grasped the fact you don’t start a sentence with “And” or “But”, names should be enclosed by commas on both sides (because this is the vocative case) and you never put a comma before “and”.

I do realise the UK and America are divided by a common language. I’ve lived in America and have argued until I was blue in the face with an American editor who tried to tell me my use of commas was wrong. (It’s not when you write English.) I understand Americans can’t read books unless they are printed with their concept of spelling but if books are going to be marketed the other way across the pond, then our spelling habits should be considered.

Charles and Caroline Todd have spent many happy holidays in the UK. They’ve obviously noticed that we don’t all live in single-room cottages with roses growing around the door. All their prestigious houses in “Proof of Guilt” have three stories. I know every building has its own tale to tell, but I really thought when you added another floor to a house it was a storey. Maybe I’m wrong.

It’s also probably unfair to expect an American to understand the complexities of using the correct verb for the action they are trying to express in a culture which is not their own. Chapter three begins, “It wasn’t an enquiry that Rutledge relished. A man had been killed in Chelsea, not far from the house where Meredith Channing had lived.  It was closed now.”   

Sorry? What was closed? Chelsea? Oh no, he meant the house. Maybe someone was tidying the text and thought an “up” on the end of “closed” wouldn’t be understood and yet that’s what you do with large houses you don’t want to live in for a while, you close them up.

The other howling mistakes come on pages 25 and 83. I’m really sorry but we’ve always used the word petrol to describe the fuel in our cars. Gasoline is very much an American term not understood over here until the 1960s. Even though the acting Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard is a dour Yorkshire man, I really can’t hear him uttering the words, “gasoline-propelled vehicle” no matter how many qualms he had about them.

On page 83, the “lady of the manor” goes into the local inn for breakfast because she doesn’t want her staff to be inconvenienced by serving her at such a comparatively late hour. We won’t talk about the social niceties of people not eating outside the home until the Second World War, that’s another discussion altogether but I was surprised by her choice of Scotch eggs for breakfast. I was even more surprised she asked Inspector Rutledge to go away “because my breakfast is getting cold”. These are obviously a new kind of Scotch eggs which are served hot, not the cold picnic food kind of Scotch egg I’ve been used to all my life.

Now that I’ve exposed my pedantry, what about the story? This is taken from the blurb on the back page. “An unidentified body appears to have been run down by a motorcar and Ian Rutledge is leading the investigation to uncover what happened. While the signs point to murder, vital questions remain: Who is the victim? And where, exactly, was he killed?

One small clue leads Rutledge to a firm built by two families, famous for producing and selling the world's best Madeira wine. Lewis French, the current head of the English enterprise, is missing. But is he the dead man? And does either his fiancée or his jilted former lover have anything to do with his disappearance—or possible death? What about his sister? Or the London office clerk? Is Matthew Traynor, French's cousin and partner who heads the Madeira office, somehow involved?

The experienced Rutledge knows that suspicion and circumstantial evidence are not proof of guilt, and he's going to keep digging for answers. But that perseverance will pit him against his supervisor, the new acting chief superintendent. When Rutledge discovers a link to an incident in the French family's past, the superintendent dismisses it, claiming the information isn't vital. He's determined to place the blame on one of French's women despite Rutledge's objections. Alone in a no-man's-land rife with mystery and danger, Rutledge must tread very carefully, for someone has decided that he, too, must die so that cruel justice can take its course.”

The first two chapters of the book really don’t add anything to the story and could have been cut in the final edit. Once Inspector Rutledge appears in chapter three the reader can indulge in a fairly pleasant whodunit with good pace, interesting descriptions and enough plot to keep your attention for the couple of hours it takes to read.  I read it last week whilst suffering from a nasty ‘flu like virus and it was a good yarn to while away the hours when I couldn’t do anything else.

I liked Inspector Rutledge and began to care about his character but he was the only person in the book who kept my attention. There were far too many policemen with different names wandering around Scotland Yard and most of the other characters were cardboard cut outs with very little hanging off them to make me believe they might have once lived in their locations.

The plot was fairly predictable. When you have someone your superior officer knows must be the culprit, it is obvious the killer is going to be someone the hero has his money on. I’d even identified the correct flowerbed for the corpse several chapters before the ends were all neatly sewn together.

Inspector Rutledge is a sweetie, but it’s obvious his university degree did not include any UK legal procedures. Having tootled up to Suffolk to collect delicious suspect number two, Miss Whitman, in his own motor vehicle there is no mention of a warrant for her arrest. (Strange he’s allowed to use his own car for police business when Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard always has access to the latest police Rover plus at least one driver no matter how far he is going!)

Inspector Rutledge has a soft spot for Miss Whitman. Having taken her on a sightseeing tour of Willie Lott’s cottage on their way back to London to enable the baddie to decide not to take a pot shot at them, he “stayed with her through Magistrate’s Court where she was remanded to Holloway…” The intimation was that this was all done and dusted in a couple of hours.

Unfortunately, Charles Todd and his mother must have forgotten there is a big difference between the UK and US legal system when it comes to locking up suspects. In the US, every town has a jail and prisoners being held prior to being charged with an offence are kept in that jail. Police stations do not have cells. (After a lifetime of watching TV westerns, I was surprised too but that’s what they told me when I did a study tour of the west coast of the US looking at diversion from custody of mentally ill offenders.)

In the UK, it’s different. If someone is arrested they are held in police cells until they are either charged and bailed or charged and remanded in custody after a hearing before the Magistrates Court.  Magistrates only sit between the hours of 10am and 4pm in a normal court, so I doubt anyone brought up to London in the late afternoon would have been put before them until at least the next day.

If Inspector Rutledge were truly a London policeman, he’d have handed his prisoner over to the custody sergeant at Scotland Yard and that would have been the end of his responsibilities that day.

My verdict on Proof of Guilt? If you want to fill a couple of hours with something light and fluffy you don’t have to think about, it’s a reasonable read. The ending is far too abrupt to be satisfying and the hero doesn’t even get a “thank you for saving me from the gallows” kiss from the girl he fancies.

Charles and Caroline Todd are reasonably competent writers if you omit the first two chapters of this book. I would suggest they give their next manuscript to someone from this side of the pond before it’s published if they want to gain the respect of a UK audience.

If anyone in the UK who would like to read a copy of Proof of Guilt, I have one to give away. If you become a blog follower  and leave me a comment to say why you’d like to read it, I’ll draw the names out of a hat next Sunday evening (Feb 24^th) and send it to you.

The Frost Place, New Hampshire USA

We're currently on holiday touring the East coast of the US. I've been posting about our travels on Tales of a Kitchen Herbwife. One of the accidental places we visited was the Robert Frost Museum and Poetry Centre in Franconia. This is my tribute to the poet.

The Frost Place
Your woods I walked today
Red apples shimmering in the sun
Birch and fir tall sentinels
Maple and alder lining the ground with red and gold.

Fat raindrops fell glistening from branches
White stoles wrapped themselves around mountains
As we sat on your porch
Edged with purple aster
Four years of your life laid out within the modest home.

You found it too cold to grow
In dark, New Hampshire winters
Forty four acres not enough
To feed your growing family

You thought to farm
Bur your successful pen brought better fruit
Sat beside the fire
Writing of bending birch
Discarded apples on trees
Your arms and shoulders aching from their picking.

Yet you knew your fields
Sweet whispers of scythes
Penned for your posterity
You left the hay to make itself
Hopeful of summer's heat

As we stood
Grateful for sun,
A welcome respite from torrential rain
Allowing us to walk in your woods
Share in your works
Drinking the colours of fall
Amidst white mountains.

11.15am 3/10/11.

Last cry for summer

I don't know where the summer months have gone. As I sit outside after work preparing home-grown runner beans for dinner, I ponder on time when I should have been writing, but instead I'm weeding or picking or preparing things for winter.

None of my creative work appears to progress and there is little new to offer. There was one poem entered for the annual poetry competition. The ajudicator passed it by saying there was too much detail and I'd left a spelling mistake in the submission. It was enough to make me crawl away and hide except the previous Saturday I read three poems at "Herbfest's got talent".

As I read the distant healing poem, the room was still.

"I don't think they breathed," Chris told me afterwards, "they seemed mesmerised." Maybe they were or maybe the poem has its own power.

Below is the competition poem. I sat under the apple tree and simply wrote what I saw for the hour I had free. I spent the following days honing words and rhythmn until it flowed to my satisfaction. The first verse has been lifted away - another moon contemplation which didn't really sit with the sunny day.

What do you think?

Chosen by rooks
Is your soil strewn with cherries?
Red skins ripped by mawkish marauders
Does your wooden bench hide strawberries?
Wild morsels of crimson sweetness
Garnets and rubies of an alpine range

Do you crunch apples underfoot?
Hard shards pressed into softness
Do you notice morsels lost amidst abundance?
Should you mourn when hundreds swell above you?
Contentedly modulating green within the canopy.

More green from pea pods where pristine petals fall
Their clusters call to bees
Following unseen flight lines to coat their fuzz with pollen
Nectar-driven pilots buzzing from yellow poppy to red woundwort
They drowned in cherries too
Humming their love song to the tree until blossoms fell

Have you noticed redbreast feeding fledgling?
Nurtured still on cherry’s bough
Carefully flitting from branch to chair to roof
Bright watching for strangers
Until he darts deep into darkness
To feed his sitting hen amidst forgotten trimmers
Their former nest forsaken for a safer space

Will you watch the white-tailed bumble rest?
Her bed of bean leaf crowned with scarlet flowers
Perhaps vermillion drops of currant catch your eye
Hanging above swollen gooseberry globes
Or yellow stars of agrimony and St John
Draw your delighted gaze on this bright day.

Such starlit gold along with silver moon
Bejewelled planting
Guarded by oak and fir
Serenaded by blackbird, robin, wren
Chosen by rooks
Let rue offer you such grace as can be gained
Within my summer garden.

Novel writing: hints and tips

Like every writer, I have several stories on the go at any one time. Some sit around for years until I feel inspired to take them up again, others live with me either from day to day or week to week.

In my writing group we have a novel sub-group which meets every other week in a local pub where we read out our latest chapter or part-chapter to our peers. One of the group is transferring her novel into a radio play, so we all get a chance to play with the characters and interact with the story. It’s great fun and gets us all laughing.

I’ve been very fortunate in that I’ve already had two of my novels published by Loveyoudivine. You can see all the covers here with accompanying blurbs. I’m now exposing “Gofannon” to the Pub Clubbers and they’ve raised a lot of useful pointers showing how to improve it. My biggest problem is making the time to do the revisions!

This weekend I’ve been putting together my various stories about my shapeshifting cat people just to see how many words I’ve already written and how much more I’d need to write before revising and submitting. I’ve posted a single story on Literotica if you’d like to see what the characters are like. It’s a stand alone story, not central to the plot, but don’t read it if you’re averse to adult content! I’m waiting to see if they upload another story about the cats submitted yesterday which is part of the main book. (You can find it here.)

Trying to shape a novel brought me back to the novel writing workshop Sue Johnson put on for Solihull Writers Workshop at the beginning of May. Sue is a lovely person and a gentle and inspiring speaker. The advice she gave was sensible and sounded achievable, although she had us all gasping when she told us she had forty pieces of work out seeking placement at any one time.

I guess the difference is that she’s a full time writer, with a long track record of successful article writing and poetry publications and has just landed her first romance novel contract called Indigo Dreams with Samhain Publishing. She attributed her success to knowing her characters inside out, so she could describe the leading male as a “Rum truffle” (apparently the publisher use this as a test for all aspiring authors!) and was clear about her marketing potential through Facebook, blogging, twitter and workshops.

Sue said there were five main reasons why novels fail.
1. Insufficient conflict – conflict needs to be in place right at the beginning.
2. The characters are not gripping or convincing e.g. a TSTL heroine (too stupid to live!)
3. Settings are unbelievable – this can be rectified by having pictures or recordings of the place you have in mind and you must engage all the reader’s senses to take them to that setting and keep them there!
4. Unconvincing dialogue – all dialogue must be gripping and must move the action on. Don’t include every word, summarise and remove slower scenes.
5. Insufficient use of senses – must include colours and smells within the action.

A plot emerges from the motivation of the characters but must have enough conflicts within the story. A friend of mine likened a plot to a journey, but there must be threats and points of learning along the way.

My problem has always been that I don’t plot a novel before I start. I usually play with the characters – often with a writing partner online and let the characters decided their own stories by their interactions together. This is really good for understanding your characters, but can make deciding on the beginning, purpose and ending of the story really complex. One of these days I shall be disciplined and plot my story first!

I can understand what Sue means about conflict. I have a very gentle story I’ve played with on my own for a couple of years but apart from the characters heading towards a significant argument, they spend most of their time preparing food and looking after animals which really doesn’t help the story along!

Sue recommended conflicts should be included on three levels. Most stories are actually based on fairy tales and myths. She cited that twelve novels in the top two hundred best sellers are built on the fairy tale structure. James Bond is an example of a mythic plot.

If these structures are followed, you can see that conflicts come in threes.
1. The character’s battle with one aspect of themselves
2. The character’s battle with someone else
3. The character’s battle with some aspect of the environment e.g. weather/disease – something which causes a problem thereby isolating them.

If you are working with things happening in threes, foreshadow, but don’t let things happen immediately. If you have two false alarms, it heightens the tension.

The numbers three and seven are the most popular numbers in all cultures. If you are engaged in persuasive writing, emphasise the point three times.

Sue told us that Jane Austen included a plot twist every six or seven pages, which keeps her readers surprised and wanting to know what happens next. She said you need to have background information available about each character to ensure you keep everything consistent.

There is nothing more disconcerting in a story if you have decided to change the name of a character half way through but forget to make sure all the changes have been made in your word processor.

We had this problem in The Strongest Magick. The hero’s name originally was Agravaine, but his nickname used throughout the book just didn’t fit, so my collaborator came up with an older form of the name, Agryffan, so the nickname , Gryff , made more sense. I cannot tell you the hassle it was to go through the entire text and ensure everything had been changed correctly. You cannot trust a word substitution programme!

When you’re plotting a novel, Sue suggested you should decide the opening and the ending and twenty key scenes. These can be developed into chapters on a postcard. Chapter lengths should be varied. Cliff-hangers are good because they keep the pages turning. You need to have enough happening, possibly with events set in threes.

Prologues should be not too long and punchy. Use them to give an overview. The purpose is to give an idea of what has happened before providing any foreshadowing needed.

Similarly, an epilogue should sort everything out, but to achieve all this, the reader must care about the characters.

If you are writing heterosexual stories, Sue said the male and female parts of the novel should be developed equally. The same could be said if you’re writing about same sex couples – i.e. each partner has to be developed to the same extent. You can’t be captivated by Lavonia and have Count Leverhulme remain a cardboard cut-out.

What does he like for breakfast? How did he get the scar on his little finger? Why does he always groan when he hears Beethoven’s 5th Symphony played yet cannot stop drumming the opening sequence on any surface with which he comes into contact?
Sue suggested writers should not plot too tightly. It was more important to get to the end of your novel before tinkering. Don’t worry about perfection; get the bones of ideas down.

An interesting point Sue brought up which publishers are requiring to a much greater extent than before is what is the author prepared to do to promote their book? Sue recommended such things as building websites, offering promotional material, writing competitions, offering workshops, reading in libraries and all the social networking sites. To those can be added giving readings, attending conferences and book fairs.

All these examples are possibly less trouble if you are living and writing in a niche market. It would be much easier for me to write books on herbs or healing because I know where the gaps are and who might be interested and the subject matter is one which can be discussed over the dinner table with friends. It’s more challenging if you write for “adult” markets and can’t publicise your work perhaps as much as you’d like for fear of alienating family, friends or even losing your job!

Sue told us that most publishing contracts for novels often include the need for another novel within twelve months. If you follow her advice to have a minimum of forty pieces of work submitted at any one time, this can be made up of short and long versions of the same short story, articles, poetry, flash fiction, competitions etc. She advised us to have a database tracking system so we knew what was happening to any one piece of work at all times.

When submitting a novel, Sue advised getting the synopsis as good as you can get it, making sure you look at the publisher’s website as well as the Writers and Artist’s Yearbook. It is also advisable to ensure the first two pages have NO mistakes on them. If they do, no-one will read any further.

A one page synopsis can almost be considered as a blurb (the writing on the cover back page). You must make sure the synopsis includes the ending – a publisher does not appreciate surprises!

Publishers will often have blogs giving their pet hates. It is worth reading these so you don’t fall foul of such formatting issues as not having the first paragraph indented but making sure you indent all subsequent paragraphs. Sometimes publishers have enquiry forms and these should be downloaded and completed.

The workshop left me with lots of ideas and hopefully some new skills. Sue told us there is a market for everything. We should go for what inspires us and keep going until we get a result, at the same time looking for every opportunity you can find to promote yourself.

Now I have to follow her advice and push myself into action!

Storm

It can be difficult to come up with an original idea when you're writing to a given theme. The subject of storm seemed to bring out everyone's darkest fears of death and destruction. I count mine as a true story from 1995, when my Oregonian friend and I were playing with the story of a Celtic healer. While Chris held a meeting in our front room, I sat in the lounge and imagined the story's finale as the thunder rolled around the garden in front of me. It was a very surreal experience.


*******************************************************



“Come in, come in. Looks like you made it just in time.” David welcomed his two fellow Beaver leaders into the house and took them through to the front room.

“Would you like some tea?” Janet hovered in the doorway, trying to be hospitable, but wanting to keep her distance from this planning meeting for the next term. Her suggestions for ten weeks of tree projects had not gone down well. Five year old boys were not interested in trees, she was told. They needed more interesting topics to hold their attention.

David took the drinks through into the front room from the kitchen leaving Janet to occupy herself in the lounge. The children were upstairs asleep. Normally she would sit and watch television but the large screen was blank and she felt no desire to pick up her knitting needles and concentrate on yet another Thomas pattern.

Janet stared out into the darkening garden. Even with the French window wide open, there seemed to be no air. Black clouds hung low, hugging the top of the apple tree while thunder rolled in the distance. A single blackbird called an alarm from the top of the neighbour’s fir tree, but there was no sight of the other garden dwellers.

“They must all be hiding in the hedges,” Janet thought, as she caught sight of a slender forsythia branch swaying in the stillness. A robin or bluetit must have landed on it briefly before seeking shelter amongst the green hawthorn.

Sheet lightning danced across the clouds, the flashes mesmerising her. She waited, counting silently for the thunder to crash overhead. Nine seconds before the sky cracked. It was almost overhead. Sudden sounds on the concrete slabs heralded raindrops as the storm arrived, bringing with it swirling air currents which ruffled the curtains.

“Should I shut the French window?” Janet wondered, but she was tied to her chair by her terror of the storm. Her fingers gripped the armrests as her mind took her back to another time, another storm where summer rain lashed the bracken around a large stone dwelling.


It had been a disastrous year. Savage frosts burned the fruit blossom. Spring planting was difficult with many fields of seeds rotting where they were sown because of incessant rain.

“The God is angry with us,” people muttered. “No sun will shine until the land is nourished with blood. No crops and we’ll all die this winter.”

“Have you seen the Laird?” Ygraine asked, passing through the kitchen in search of her aged husband. Many decades had passed since they accepted the clan leader’s torcs. Ygraine’s once raven tresses were streaked with grey and Angus’ gleaming golden mane was now as white as snow on winter hillsides.

“I saw him walking down towards the stones before the storm broke. He took the knife with him.”

Ygraine whirled towards the speaker, a dour man with grizzled hair who was hanging pots and pans on their hooks in the wide oak beams. “What do you mean he took the knife?”

“He said it was time and you were not to worry.”

An anguished scream tore from her throat as she flung open the thick wooden door and ran out into windswept moorland.

“Angus, Angus, where are you?” but her words were lost to the thunder as she ran along the narrow track leading to the ancient stone circle. She stumbled many times in the darkness, but as she reached the brow of the hill a sudden flash of lightning lit up the fateful scene below her.

Angus was kneeling behind the altar stone, the sacrificial knife held high in front of him. His long white hair stuck to his clothes, drenched by pouring rain.

“No!” screamed Ygraine, but even as her cry echoed around the glen, she saw Angus plunge the knife into his chest and a tell-tale stain began to seep across his white shirt as he slumped forward onto the ground.

She flew down the track, throwing herself to her knees and cradling his body in her arms.

“Why you?” she sobbed, wiping the rain from his face.

“The king must give himself for the land,” he whispered. “I’m old and tired, Grainne. I want to go home. Better now, herein this sacred space, than a living death inside stone walls.”

Her sobs gave way to heart-wrenching cries as his body went limp and the spark died within his eyes. It was there they found her, their children and the rest of the clan. Tenderly they took him from her, laying his body on a horse drawn bier, their sons supporting her, their daughters arms wrapped around each other as they slowly followed along the track.

As the Laird’s blood seeped into the soil, the wind dropped. Against a departing wall of clouds the emerging sun threw a double arc of rainbows across the sky. The man leading the horse stopped at the top of the hill, the bier suddenly alive with colours.

“You’ve done enough,” he spoke to the corpse. “We’ve hope again.”


The front door slammed, dragging Janet back from her reverie.

“Storm’s gone now,” David said, closing the French window and drawing the curtains. “We managed to get everything sorted. Do you want some tea?”

Janet looked at him, wondering if the tears she felt running down her face were really there or just stray raindrops blown in through the open window. How could she tell him what she’d witnessed?

“I’ll make it,” she said getting up from her chair just as he put the light on. “It was an amazing storm.”