Blue Eyes

A VIRGIN IN THE PHILIPPINES

2012-03-02T16:04:00.000-08:00

Some evenings you just want to sit down and relax, just put your feet up, read the newspaper, watch TV. Nothing more till bedtime. But then some damn thing gets in the way. You just have to fit in.

Take the night several weeks ago when I was just getting comfortable, the angles of my old body just settling into the contours of my rocking chair (yes, I have one here in the Philippines and I love it.) and reading the first few pages of one of Max Allan Collins' great crime novels. Bliss!

But then comes an interruption. Cousin Perli has texted Fay with big news. Cousin Lilia and her husband have arrived in town from America.

'You would like to meet them?' Fay asks and I tell her it's up to her. She is not keen, she says. She doesn't like sudden invitations (because it doesn’t allow her enough time to put on her face is my conclusion). It seems we are not to go.

Ten minutes later I am surprised to hear Fay asking if I am not ready. Now we seem to be going.

I wash but my face is greasy, Fay says, and she makes me sit on the bed so that she can remedy the defect.

'You have to be presentable,' she says. She looks at me dubiously. 'You cannot go looking like a man from the mountains.' Many years ago she was a visiting nurse in such a region and seems not to have been impressed by the menfolk.

I'm not exactly Britain's best groomed man but to be compared to a man from the mountains is unduly harsh.

Later, when she finally has me looking unmountainmanlike, she says, 'We shall have a grand meal and we shan’t be home till late.'

Then we’re off, picking up cousins Perli and Noring and Perli's eight-year-old granddaughter on the way.

Lilia from America is a sprightly old girl. She is a doctor and confident that what she utters is direct from her Maker. At least that’s how she seems to me. Shortly after our arrival at her home and apropos of nothing, she is announcing to us that children should stand up for themselves and says you cannot go on helping them for ever, for how will they learn? 'I taught my children to fish,' she pronounces. 'I did not give them fish.' I recognise the lines from 'The Book of Worn-Out Aphorisms and Cliches of Our Time' and am tempted to ask how they are getting on in the fishing industry but I look grave and mutter, 'H'm, yes indeed, how true, how true,' as I do when I’m trying to prove to medicals and people of that type that I am just as wise and profound as they think they are.

After this Lilia dispenses packet after packet of medicines which she has brought with her for Perli and Noring. Apparently she does this whenever she comes here. It's so generous and considerate. She visits every year with her husband, Celestino, an immediately likeable man, and they stay for three months, escaping the Michigan winters.

Then there is an interruption and two ladies, local women, are admitted. They have a basket and reveal under a cloth thin strips of dried meat, about twelve inches by six.

There is some chatter and Fay tells me it is wild pig.

'Wild boar,' I tell her, the schoolmaster within me unable to shut his trap.

Fay does not respond. I sidle up to the basket and say approvingly to Lilia, 'Wild boar' as if it’s a dish I’m served regularly at my gentleman's club.

'Venison,' she tells me with an authority I cannot match.

Humbled I go to the back and nod at Celestino.

'Venison,' I tell him, again with the air of a connoisseur.

'Wild pig,' he corrects me.

Anyway, the evening ends abruptly. There is no expected grand meal. Lilia and Celestino arrived from Manila only this afternoon and have not yet unpacked. We feel obliged to make a decent exit. And to think that I had washed and had my post-wash face specially attended to.

Another damp squib of an evening, I think, but I don't say anything to Fay. It's best not to sound off in this world. Let sleeping dogs lie. Keep your trap shut. Do as you're told.

'A VIRGIN IN THE PHILIPPINES' by WH Johnson is to be published as an e-book in the next few days. It will be available on Amazon and from the author in Kindle (MOBI), EPUB and pdf. See www.johnniejohnson.co.uk

A VIRGIN IN THE PHILIPPINES

2012-02-21T16:48:00.002-08:00

I wouldn't have you think I'm an ill-ntempered sort of chap. From time to time, it has been suggested that I am but it's just the fall of my face and what Nature and Time have done to its contours. No, I am normally really tolerant...to a fault I might say.

But I must get my sleep and some nights here it's difficult..

Take last night...an errant mosquito penetrated the defences of the netted doors and windows and bit me on the arm. It’s not the first bite I’ve suffered here and I have to say they are not as bad as some I’ve occasionally had in Europe. Even so, my legs at times have the dramatic effect of a Turner sunset and they itch like hell. I have been regularly using a spray on my legs and arms. It makes great claims, this stuff, to keeping mosquitoes at bay but apparently the mosquitoes cannot read. Certainly last night's couldn't.

But it’s the dogs who are the real menace with their incessant barking all night. They are all yard dogs. I don’t think they ever get into their owners' houses. They’re mostly lean and pale or gingery and they're content to walk along the roadside or along the middle of the road where they stop from time to time to scratch their fleas and lick their behinds in a world-weary sort of way. They manage to avoid cars with the slightest insouciant twitch of the hips and they’re away, escaping wheels and bumpers by a hair’s breadth. But it’s at night when they’re skulking round the home territory that they begin their constant yelps and screeches and barks. Then, just before dawn their shift ends and the cockerels start up.

These blasted birds continue for what seems an eternity. There’s only one which seems to merit an audition to introduce Pathe News (as was, but ask your Granny if you don't get the reference), only one out of what seems like hundreds who sounds at all in his right avian mind. So many of the others sound quite deranged, many as if they are suffering from a form of Tourette’s disease which obliges them to shriek at very short intervals the words 'Dirty bastards.' On and on it goes, the loonies echoing each other way down the road and God knows how far beyond but the sound comes doubling back so that I feel like shouting at them, 'Shut up, you silly buggers.' But I know what they’d say in reply.

I wonder if some of them aren’t punch-drunk veterans of the local cockpit. We saw some the other day being caged, jaunty enough looking chaps with fine handsomely coloured feathers and proud upstanding tails, but each one I suspect with a mad gleam in his eye and looking forward to the next championship bout. It wouldn't be surprising if they were unhinged. Their owners or trainers, for these birds are professional ring-craftsmen, cosset them like babies, stroking them, smoothing their feathers and generally pampering them. But they must - the birds, that is – be quite astonished when clouds of tobacco smoke are blown in their faces. This is said to made them mean-tempered, just what is thought to be necessary in a ring-ready bird. The ones that lose the fights - fought with razor blades tied to the legs - return home oven-ready.

All of this nocturnal hubbub of dogs and cockerels, in this rural hideaway, is played out against a ceaseless background of traffic noise, particularly from motorcycles and tricycles tuned to sound sometimes like farting wasps. At other times huge lorries race down the road, sounding like Jumbo jets preparing to land just outside the front door.

This is in rural Luzon. If it were sprawling MetroManila I'd understand it but here we're in a land of beautiful trees, farms and rice fields of the most delicate shades of green. It would be heaven if it weren't for the night noise. And don't start me on when the women in the family get together talking, you'd think, through loud hailers...

A VIRGIN IN THE PHILIPPINES by WH Johnson will be published as an e-book in the next few weeks.

A VIRGIN IN THE PHILIPPINES

2012-02-16T01:07:00.000-08:00

Well, as I told you, I'm a married man and long past the first, second and third flushes of youth. In fact I'm past the first couple of flushes of old age.

That said, what strikes me in the Philippines is how beautiful so many of the women and young girls are and how they don't seem to age as Western women do.

Now hold on, ladies of the West, I'm not being critical of you. I'm not disparaging you. But I think if you're fair about these matters, if you look at them objectively, you must admit, even if you don't wish to, that Filipinas look good and wear well.

Take the day I was persuaded to go to the dentist in Manila – well, my dentist in Eastbourne had recently quoted me £90 for a filling – and in minutes I was ready to trade my immortal soul for an evening wirh Miss Asia who apparently was doubling up as receptionist. By the time we'd finished the preliminaries she could have had every remaining ivory in my head and then to cap it all in came the nurse to lead me to the surgery and she could have been Miss World. I followed her to the throne of blood with a light step. (And for the record the filling in a beautifully appointed surgery cost me £10.)

But away from shoddy commerce and back to beauty.. In fact back to the supermarket this time where even in their uniforms, with their hair tied back into a tight bun and their faces exquisitely made up, the cash-out girls look like a line-up of glamourous chorus girls in a Hollywood spectacular. I never thought I'd say this but paying at the till in supermarkets in Cabanatuan - and Gapan and Manila for that matter – is an absolute pleasure.

When we went to the rice farm owned by Lito, my 68 year old nephew-by-marriage, I was introduced to his daughter, a healthy looking girl called Michelle. In my interested schoolmasterly voice - and I have a kindly understanding smile to accompany this voice – I asked her how she was getting on at school but was told that had already left. And then, as if she anticipated what I was going to say next, she said 'I am the mother of three.'

Such a child to have such a brood already and I wondered if one or more of the village lads had been taking advantage of her innocence. I then learnt that she was thirty-four! Incredible. These women here, they look so young.

Have I ended up at the fountain of eternal youth and beauty? It certainly seems so.

'A Virgin in the Philippines' is due out as an e-book in the next week or two

A VIRGIN IN THE PHILIPPINES

2012-02-07T19:18:00.000-08:00

Okay, you've got so far but you're not sure. The title...not the sort of reading you'd normally go for. I understand that. Somebody wrote to tell me that it was 'no-no' title, that it was going to encourage pervs, white slavers and all sorts of other undesirables. Only thing I can reply to that is I don't much mind, provided they all buy a copy of the e-book when it comes out.

But to set your mind at rest it's a perfectly respectable book. Suggestions that it is 'not a book you would wish your wife or your servants to read' are far off the mark.

Look, it's about a well-worn old boy, a widower, WH Johnson, whose life takes a sudden change and he's as surprised as anyone. This is what he says right at the beginning of the book:

'Three years ago I'd never given a thought to visiting the Philippines. It wouldn't have appeared in even my top hundred places to visit. Come to that, I'd never thought of remarrying.'

But that's exactly what he did do. He did visit the Philippines and he did remarry though not in that order.

And by the way, he didn't go through a dating agency and he didn't sign up his beautiful bride through ebay.

And in a couple of visits lasting six months the author has put down his thoughts and impressions in an e-book, A VIRGIN IN THE PHILIPPINES which is to be published soon with illustrations by Leonardo Malgapo. He makes no claim to being an expert: this is not a guide book but he does reveal much about his experiences in this beautiful land.

Want to know more intimate details about the author? Want to know about the trauma which led to his shorts anxiety? Or why sometimes he goes into Alec Guinness/River Kwai mode? How he responds to the exotic driving that he encounters? Want to hear about Gina, the woman in the background? About
what he has introduced to the community in which he finds himself? Or which of his physical features is so highly regarded? Why is he so attracted to funerals and the once-despised karaoke? And on what particular occasion did his wife enjoy a Tina Turner moment?

Well that's taster. Do come back for more. There'll be an extract or two next time. Sign up as a follower. It'll be great to have you.

And Senior Citizens, remember I'm a really long-serving member of your group. My only advice: don't just sit in the corner for the rest of your days.

SNIPPETS FROM THE PAST is for the moment suspended and will resume in a few weeks time.

SNIPPETS FROM THE PAST

2012-01-23T17:09:00.000-08:00

THE BRIDES IN THE BATH CASE

In 1915, the nation was temporarily transfixed by the 'Brides in the Bath' murders. At a time of such horror on the Western Front, George Joseph Smith's three murders were a talking point.

A man named as Henry Williams was arrested in London and charged with bigamy. After a whirlwind courtship, he had ‘married’ the genteel, Bessie Mundy, in August 1910, taking off within weeks with her savings. Over the next two years, using a variety of aliases, Williams pursued the same course with several women.

Then, in March 1912, perhaps by chance, he met Bessie again and she forgave him unhesitatingly. Off the couple went to Herne Bay where they set up house at 80 The High Street. This time they made wills in each other’s favour. On 10 July 1912, Williams took his wife to the doctor, concerned that she was having epileptic fits. She had not known that she was suffering fits until her husband told her but her husband explained to her that several nights, in bed, she had had a fit.. Three days later, Bessie was found drowned in a small zinc bath in front of the fire. The doctor had no doubt that she had had a fit. The widower arranged the funeral, asking for it to be ‘moderately carried out’ at the cost of seven guineas. The zinc bath, for which he had paid 37 shillings and 6 pence on approval, he returned later to the hardware store. Now affluent with the money from Bessie’s will, he purchased several houses in Bath and opened accounts in several names in various banks.

Two other women suffered a similar fate. First, Alice Burnham married him on 3 November 1913 and, heavily insured, died in a bath in Blackpool eight days later. She had the cheapest possible funeral. Moving on and calling himself John Lloyd, the constant widower met Margaret Lofty, a clergyman’s daughter with little cash but a good insurance prospect. They married on 17 December 1914 and the following evening, in Holloway, shortly after neighbours heard him singing ‘Nearer my God to Thee’ with harmonium accompaniment, she too was found in the bath. It was a too good a story for newspapermen to ignore. The headline ‘Bride’s Tragic Fate’ in the News of the World led Alice Burnham’s suddenly suspicious father to contact the police.

At the Old Bailey, George Joseph Smith, the ‘Brides in the Bath’ murderer, was tried for the murder of Bessie Mundy who had always believed herself to be Mrs Williams. It was demonstrated in court how, by pulling Bessie's heels, he had submerged her in the bath. Found guilty, Smith was executed at Maidstone Gaol on 13 August 1915.

But what has always stuck in my mind is the image of Smith going back to the hardware shop with the bath which he had on approval. How on earth can you buy a bath on approval? How on earth could he bring himself to return it One thing is sure, this second-hand salesman, was avaricious beyond measure. For his victim's coffins, nothing but the cheapest would satisfy him..

And then the business of singing 'Nearer my God to Thee.' This was to suggest that at that moment all was well in the house. Shortly after this Smith went out to buy something at the local shops and then, on his return, he went almost immediately to a neighbour to tell her that his wife had drowned in the bath. Actually, she was dead earlier than this, lying there while he sang the hymn. And was there a grim humour behind his choice of hymn? Or was he just so insensitive that he did not connect the words with the deed?

And just a last question? Were there only three women who suffered in ths way? Smith toured the country, buying goods for his second-hand business. But from 1910 till 1915 did he meet only three gullible women? Does it not seem likely that this undoubted charmer - unprepossessing to look at though he was - attracted more such vulnerable ladies?

SNIPPETS OF THE PAST

2012-01-02T19:04:00.000-08:00

ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU WEEP?

At the Sussex Assizes held in Chichester in March 1805, there were 29 prisoners for trial of whom 15 were sentenced to death. Their offences ranged from sheep stealing and the theft of bridles and saddles to the theft of £3 in notes by a 14 year old boy. None involved murder or manslaughter. Fifteen of those charged were sentenced to death but as was common, at the end of the Assizes, before the judges left town, they reprieved seven people.

But one decision on this occasion reveals something of our forefathers' attitudes. Certainly they were not thirsting for revenge. But this example shows that there was a concern that a condemned girl should have time to reflect on her offence and to make her peace with God before her execution. It is her state of mind, the hope that she will accept her punishment and ask for God's mercy, and not the ultimate price she will pay which most concerns the writer of the following passage in the Sussex Advertiser.

'The unhappy young woman, for the murder of her bastard child, was to have suffered on Thursday last, but being represented to the Judge that her mind was in a state of distraction from the effects of her sentence, he humanely granted her a respite...'

Note that. '...he humanely granted her a respite.' Not a reprieve.

The paragraph continues: '… until her mind should become more quiet, and she was better reconciled to her melancholy fate...'

As if the more time she had to ponder over what was going to happen to her so much the better for her!

'...but of this she betrays no symptoms, as her excessive perturbation continues, and shuts out all hope of consolation, and her death is, we hear, in consequence, daily expected.'

This account is not devoid of sympathy for the young woman but it clearly accepts, with some regret, that the law must run its course.

Enough to make you weep? Well, in reaching guilty verdicts and in handing down the ultimate punishment, both jurors and judges were known to weep. Small wonder.

SNIPPETS OF THE PAST

2011-12-24T16:24:00.000-08:00

'TIS THE SEASON TO BE MERRY

24 DECEMBER

1830

The last executions on Penenden Heath attracted a huge crowd. Because of fears of disorder and even of a rescue attempt, there was a very strong military presence which escorted the wagon carrying the prisoners, sitting on their coffins, from Maidstone gaol to the place of execution.

The brothers William and Henry Packman, aged 18 and 19 respectively, had been found guilty firing of a farmer’s barn. In his summing-up the judge had observed that their accomplice, Bishop, who had turned King’s Evidence, was ‘according to the jury, more guilty than you’ but that did not save them. Another man, John Dyke, guilty of setting fire to a barn at Bearsted, suffered a similar fate.

On the scaffold, invited by the chaplain to admit his guilt, Dyke stubbornly refused. Others had perjured themselves, he said. The Packmans were likewise steadfast, shaking hands before, in the last seconds, William, whose wrists seem not to have been bound behind him, tore the hood off his face, declaring that he wished to see the crowd. After the bodies had hung for the usual hour they were cut down. The father of the Packman brothers took his sons to Canterbury for burial.

25 DECEMBER

1819

In the early afternoon of Christmas Day, the house of William Chainey at Benenden was broken into, the robber making off with more than £20 in notes, sovereigns and seven shilling pieces. The thief also took several initialled shirts, a red waistcoat, several silk handkerchiefs and a velveteen jacket. He also stole a two pistols. A young boy saw the man, describing him as youngish and tall, wearing a short round frock and long trousers. He looked to be carrying something in his shirt front. The boy described him as looking rather like a millwright. But the thief seems not to have been caught.

26 DECEMBER TIMES

1839

The Times carries an extensive and detailed report on crime and vagrancy throughout the country. At the time counties and towns were preparing for the first time to establish police forces. Part of the report refers to matters in Northbourne near Deal.

Here the principal felonies were sheepstealing. Such thefts occurred weekly and rarely was anyone caught. The animals were usually slaughtered in the fields at night. There were other minor thefts of poultry and honey from hives. Fruit, when in season, was taken as well as all kinds of garden produce and sacks of corn and barley. Farm tools went missing, even the wheels from barrows, in fact anything ‘not under lock and key.’

SNIPPETS OF THE PAST

2011-12-17T05:48:00.000-08:00

IT PAYS TO ADVERTISE

For many years during the mid- to late-eighteenth century a sovereign cure for the gullible, Beaume de Vie, was advertised in newspapers in almost every county. This ‘most admirable Family Medicine’ was on sale for three shillings a bottle at many pharmacies.

Who could resist such persuasive copy? Look at the high-class language: really way beyond the capacities of an ordinary man. And you could always tell an educated gentleman by his language: an educated man could be trusted. Couldn't he?

BEAUME DE VIE

By the KING’S Patent

The great Number of extraordinary Cures daily performed by this most efficacious Medicine, accounts of which are sent from all Parts of the British Dominions, render it unnecessary to lavish Encomiums on its salutary Effects; suffice it therefore to say, that the Beaume, by its cordial, attenuating, and detergent Powers, fortifies the Stomach and Bowels, and by procuring a good Digestion, purifies the Blood and Juices, and gives Vigour to the whole Constitution. To these Qualities the Faculty attribute its having proved so eminently serviceable in Gouty, Rheumatic, Scorbutic, Languid, Nervous, and Hypochondriac Cases: and hence, also, they account for its being so particularly beneficial in Female Disorders.

CASE – A.C. Esq; of a gross, corpulent Habit, had been several Years so afflicted with ulcerated Legs, that he could not walk: The sedentary life he led had reduced him so low, that he was confined to his Chamber, with both Legs supported on a Stool; and, to add to his Misery, he was constantly tormented with the Gout. A Friend, who was Eye-Witness to the good Effects of the Beaume de Vie, in the Case of Mr S, which he thought similar, strongly recommended it to him: He, for a long time, declined it, from a Dislike to advertised Medicines, but his Case growing daily worse, he at last ventured. The good Effects were almost instantaneous; Sleep, which for a long Time had forsaken him, was restored: His Appetite which had been quite palled, returned; and his Digestion was good. In Six Weeks his Gout left him; and in two more, the Ulcers, which during the Course was dressed with a Dossel [bandage] of Lint dipped in the Beaume were perfectly cicatrised. It is nine Months since the Cure was completed, and he can walk eight or ten Miles at a Time. He has not had the least Return of any Complaint except once that he was threatened with an Attack of the Gout but which yielded to a few Spoonfuls of the Beaume.

SNIPPETS OF THE PAST

2011-12-12T22:59:00.000-08:00

HARD TIMES

In early December 1862, after four months awaiting trial for a serious offence, George Dennis of Cranbrook was acquitted at Maidstone Assizes. It was bad enough being imprisoned for such a time but he also had worries about his wife and children.

Only a day or so before his arrest his wife had borne their third child. What most immediately concerned her was how to provide for the children. She feared she might have to go to the workhouse. ‘I cannot bear to go there,’ she said. ‘They have taken George away and if I go there my poor children will be separated from me too.’ She knew that if the Guardians offered her some financial relief she would be able to keep the family together. But the Guardians were adamant: she must go in to the workhouse. If she refused she would have no help from them. Her father, a farm worker, now offered to take his daughter and her three children into his house and provide for them on condition that the Guardians would allow them two gallons of flour and two shillings a week.

One morning, after having had a small piece of bread and a little weak tea for breakfast, Mrs Dennis, carrying her baby, went to the workhouse to hear the decision on this latest proposal. After waiting for some hours she was told that the Guardians’ decision was unaltered. She must enter the workhouse or do without. By the time she reached home it was 6 o'clock and she had had nothing to eat since breakfast time. No one had thought of giving her or her child anything during the long hours in which she had waited. One of the Guardians said that he was aware that Mrs Dennis would starve but that the remedy was in her own hands.

When George Dennis returned home after his acquittal he found his wife in a state of semi-starvation, and his children in rags. His watch, his furniture, even the bed, had been sold partly to procure bread and partly to provide a counsel to assist him in proving his innocence of the crime of which he was accused.

SNIPPETS OF THE PAST

2011-12-07T18:31:00.000-08:00

THE DEAD MAN'S HAND IS GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH

Public executions, likened by some to theatrical events, attracted enormous crowds, sometimes more than four thousand. No matter how far away, despite the lack of any public transport system, despite the fact that the majority of folk possessed no other means of transport than their hind legs, they would walk miles, from early light, to gain a good vantage point at an execution. For hours, in a noisy fairground atmosphere, an excited mob would jostle for the best possible positions, struggling past pickpockets, sellers of lace and gingerbread, cardsharps and ballad-mongers who related in detail the last minutes of the not yet despatched criminal. And none would jostle to reach a place at the front more energetically than those who had come for a special reason, that only this place and this hanging man could satisfy.

The Maidstone Journal of 1 April 1819 illustrates this.

James Morgan, a 39-year-old, guilty of the theft of 101 sheep from a farm at Bowhill and William Bowra, a highway robber from Tunbridge Wells, were conveyed on a wagon from Maidstone gaol to Penenden Heath. Despite making the usual preparations, the hangman appears to have bungled the affair. While the 19-year-old Bowra’s departure went off without a hitch, the heavily built Morgan fell down so far that his toes were touching the platform and he appeared to be standing up straight with the rope around his neck. The very full report in the newspaper says that ‘the persons surrounding the scaffold with great celerity and presence of mind almost instantaneously got away the platform from under his feet.’ In other words they assisted the inept hangman.

If this episode was not horrifying enough the Journal offered further detail. ‘After the criminals had hung some time, the usual disgusting scene took place of persons afflicted with wens [tumours; goitre] applying to the executioner for the purpose of having the swellings rubbed with a hand of the deceased which the credulity and ignorance of the afflicted or their relatives led them to suppose it would be an effectual cure. On this occasion, many persons of both sexes, and of various ages underwent the operation. One decent, pretty-looking girl about 17 years of age presented herself at the moment when the body of Morgan was about to be cut down and she actually got upon his coffin to stand sufficiently high for the hand of the corpse to be drawn several times over her neck.’

Superstitious? A ghoulish appetite for violence? Cruel and unfeeling? Not at all like us? Is this how our forefathers were? Should we judge them on this? My great grandmother, born in 1850, could have seen a public execution. The last one was in 1868. When I was a child I met her. To me the past and its people doesn't seem so far off when seen in those terms.

SNIPPETS OF THE PAST

2011-12-04T16:32:00.000-08:00

HEALTH TIPS

One ailment particularly rife in many parts of Britain in times past was whooping cough. This wretched illness, with a cough that might last up to three months, was highly infectious and often fatal to babies. There used to be regular epidemics and it is not surprising that in addition to the many herbal remedies available this illness resulted in charmers prescribing a huge variety of cures.

In the late seventeenth century Richard Stapley, who lived at Hickstead Place in Sussex, wrote one of these cures in his diary: ‘Take three field mice, flay them, draw them and roast them and let the party afflicted eat it; dry the others in the oven until they crumble to a powder, and put a little of the powder in what the patient drinks at night and in the morning.’

['flay' means to skin; 'draw' means to remove the innards.]

Others would have the mouse boiled in milk and another recommendation recorded by William Parish, the vicar of Selmeston, was to roast the mouse alive. He was wryly dubious about effect of this particular approach. ‘Whether it is really good for the whooping cough or not I cannot say,’ the vicar comments, ‘but I am sure it must be bad for the mouse.'

As a cure, live spiders wrapped inside cobwebs had its supporters as did a silk bag filled with hair from the cross on a donkey’s neck. In this cure the patient sat on the donkey facing backwards and was sent to a certain spot three times on three successive days. On the other hand there were those who favoured eating bread and butter from a family whose father and mother were named John and Joan.

Do let me know if you find these cures helpful!

SNIPPETS OF THE PAST

2011-12-01T18:17:00.000-08:00

OBVIOUSLY GUILTY

I indicated in my last piece – FACT AND FICTION – that the magistrate Mr Prout had no doubt that the man he went to interview in the cell was guilty even before they had spoken. 'Hanging material', Mr Prout had immediately thought, just judging by the man's disreputable appearance. Well, I suppose we all tend to make judgements based on first impressions.

The newspapers of earlier times always gave lengthy and detailed accounts of trials, often describing those charged with offences in the most unflattering terms, even before any verdict was reached. Today, of course, such reporting would result in fines for the newspaper and demands for a retrial.

My fictional character who sits manacled and fettered in prison is based on descriptions of members of the Isaacs gang who robbed and murdered and generally terrorised parts of Sussex, Kent and Surrey in the 1840s. These men led brutal lives, a shiftless crew, a gallery of reckless rogues, each seemed to match his neighbour in viciousness. They had little fear, less shame.

At the appearance of gang members charged with murder in the Guildford magistrates court in October 1850, the press had no hesitation, even before the decision to send them for trial at the Assizes, in describing them in lurid terms.

One member of the gang, 25 year old Richard Trowler, alias Hiram Smith, appearing as a prosecution witness to save his skin, is decribed as having 'the slight, active figure of the accomplished burglar with a cast of countenance at once cunning, cowardly and cruel. His face is extremely forbidding in expression, his features having that sharp prominent character which marks the rogue while the doubtful and hesitating glance of the eye indicates a disposition at once cunning and irresolute.'

Even his mother couldn't have loved him. As for the others, well...

One of the two men charged, twenty-nine year old Levi Harwood appears even less prepossessing. 'He is a ruffianly looking man, square built and evidently possessing considerable physical strength. His features are coarse and rugged and his face betrays the mastery of violent passions. He looks like one of those idle fellows, half-hostlers, half-anything else, who are seen loitering about country inns and waiting for any job that may turn up for him.'

The third man is hardly more appealing. 'James Jones is about middle-size, his features flat and repulsive and his whole physiognomy expressive of a life of depravity and crime. Both he and Levi Harwood look like bold determined fellows, capable of carrying through any deed of violence they may once have undertaken.'

At the Assiszes, Harwood and Jones were sentenced to hang for the murder of the Revd Mr Hollest at Frimley in Surrey. Perhaps in this case these newspaper reports did not affect the verdict but they certainly make for lively reading. Perhaps it's rather better the way we restrain the press today. After all they do like a story, don't they? And sometimes they do overstep the bounds!! Don't they?

SNIPPETS OF THE PAST

2011-11-30T18:45:00.000-08:00

FACT AND FICTION

I've suggested in the course of this series of SNIPPETS OF THE PAST how such material can be used in the creation of scenes and character in historical novels.I'm taking the liberty here of showing how I've tried to build up a scene in my e-novel WINTER HUNT set in the early years of the 19th century and written uder my pen-name Allen Makepeace.

As well as being a banker, Mr Prout is a magistrate, a sometimes irksome responsibilty. Here he is called upon to visit the prison to interview a criminal. I've tried to indicate the role of the magistrate, the dreadful conditions in the prison and what may called a typically unsympathetic prisoner as well as the magistarte's immediate sense that the man is 'hanging material'. Everything in this extract is suggested in a variety of original documents.

Text begins:

And then Mr Barrowby arrives quite unexpectedly with the request that he go at once to the prison.

‘It’s magisterial business, sir,’ Mr Prout is told. ‘Robbery with violence apparently. Somebody was shot as I hear.’

‘Magisterial.’ The word echoes in his head. ‘Magisterial.’ One day, he will give it up, being a magistrate. He has suggested it before. He had been a magistrate for twenty-seven years and it is all so time-consuming. It takes up time from his own bank work. But they insisted that he stay on last time he put it to them, the possibility of his resignation, just as they had done on the two previous occasions.. ‘No, no, Mr Prout,’ they had said to him. ‘Can’t think of it. Too valuable. Your experience.’ And so it will go on in the future. His Lordship will not hear of it; Hartley Wills, the second biggest landowner in this part of the county, will slap him on the back and smile and shake his head when Mr Prout even hints that he wishes to give up; and the three or four substantial farmers and the retired tea-merchant and the fierce Colonel Priddy and the rest of them, who really enjoy a day out at the court, will insist that Mr Prout remain a magistrate.

And so on this miserable morning, at no later than eight-fifteen, Mr Prout finds himself knocking at the huge gate of Mainton prison.

‘Mr Prout, sir,’ says the man who opens the door to him. ‘Good to see you, sir.’

Such a greeting does nothing to assuage the banker’s irritation. Mr Prout has never cared for Turnkey Royle with his leery eye and his unshaven chin.

‘Up here?’ he asks pointing at the stone stairway on the outside of the main building.

‘Up there, sir,’ he is told. ‘In the old pantry. As usual, Mr Prout, eh?’

Oh yes, the old pantry. As usual. Mr Prout knows that room well enough. He has interviewed hundreds of men and women in there in one or other of his capacities, either as magistrate or as banker. It has not been a pantry in all of Mr Prout’s time coming to the prison. It has probably not served that function for the past hundred years but the name has stuck.

Royle leads him up the slope to the main door. As soon as it is opened Mr Prout is assailed by the stench to which after all these years of regular visiting he has never quite become accustomed. A sour, pungent, all-searching stink of people, of drains, of the ‘offices,’ which seem to him to somehow soak into his flesh, his hair, his very bones. And for hours after leaving, the reek of the place will linger on him and his clothes. He will never become used to it.

Nor will he ever accustom himself to the shouts, the curses, the screams in that great echoing place. At whatever time, the earliest hour of the day or the latest of the night, he has been called to the prison he has to steel himself against the unceasing clamour.

‘Here we are then, sir,’ the turnkey says, ushering him into the old pantry with its sweating walls, stained and encrusted with years of grime. And here behind an ancient table sits a man, his wrists manacled, his ankles shackled. His arm has been bandaged. ‘He had a graze last night but the doctor says it’s nothing,’ Royle explains.

‘And he is…?’ Mr Prout asks of another turnkey, Hull, standing in the shadowy corner on the other side of the room.

Hull produces a sheet of paper, stares at it, clears his throat and begins.

‘This is Dennis Aylott, age forty-two, taken in charge earlier this morning with breaking and entering a house in this town while furnished with a pistol.’ He clears his throat again. ‘As Mr Royle says, he was grazed by a shot in the arm last night but it ain’t nothing serious.’

Mr Prout studies Aylott briefly. Long, greasy hair; threadbare, greasy jacket cuffs; fingers dirty, greasy. Hanging material, he tells himself. Guilty as charged. This will not take long, he tells himself.

‘So, Aylott,’ says Mr Prout settling himself on a creaky chair opposite the prisoner. ‘Now, you understand, don’t you, that this is your chance to make a clean breast of things so that the court may consider any mitigating circumstances?’ As if there are likely to be such mitigating circumstances in this case. Some hope. The banker looks sternly over his spectacles. ‘So have you anything to say? Perhaps you can tell me what exactly happened last night?’

SNIPPETS OF THE PAST

2011-11-25T22:03:00.000-08:00

Sorry that this piece is so long but I'm having trouble getting a signal here in the Philippine backwoods. I'm trying to blog twice a week but it's not always easy.

PRISON WORKS

What is the purpose of prison? This question continues to agitate the minds our politicians? Punishment? Retribution? Reformation? Or is it simply to move anti-social characters from our streets either temporarily or permanently for the public benefit? Prison works, some say. But even the harshest regimes have not managed to cut rising crime rates. Look how they've tried.

In 1824 the treadmill at Maidstone prison was completed under the superintendence of William Cubitt, the inventor of this form of prison discipline. Newspaper reports suggest that the machine at Maidstone was ‘the most perfect building of its kind in the country.’ Perhaps similar approval was given to gas chambers.

The machine cost £3,000, equivalent to £200,000 today. There were eight distinct shafts, all connected to the great central wheel. Standing side by side men had 18 inches of elbow room as they ceaselessly climbed, step by step. This mill was capable of holding about 100 persons at the same time. It was built to dress corn and ground 12 bushels an hour.

What a bestial invention. Men fell off the endless ladder or became entangled in the revolving machinery. And there is no evidence that even these nightmare contraptions acted as a deterrent even though those employed, the frail and unfit as well as the robust and sturdy, are estimated to have walked up the equivalent of 12,000 feet each day in winter. In summer, with longer hours for this work, they climbed as much as 18,000 feet. The treadmills were eventually abandoned but whether for humanitarian reasons or for the fact that they produced no positive benefits is uncertain.

In 1867, as part of a national survey, the Court of General Session heard reports from the governors and surgeons of Maidstone and Canterbury gaols on the effects of the Government dietary which had been in force for nine months.

Mr Joy, the Maidstone surgeon, said that the new diet was insufficient to keep prisoners healthy enough to be able to work the scheduled nine hours on the treadmill. There had been, he reported, an unusual amount of sickness and diarrhoea and in consequence he had had to increase the diet of many prisoners. The governor, Major Bannister, claimed that weakness and hunger were visible on the faces of the convicts within a week of their arrival. He had difficulty in preventing them from picking up raw potatoes and potato peelings.

While the Canterbury surgeon, Mr Reed, had observed no serious deterioration in the health of prisoners, he, like Mr Joy, felt that the diet was not compatible with continuous hard labour at the treadmill. He was also of the opinion that released prisoners could not go out into the world and straightaway earn a living after three months on the machine. The treadmill was producing physically broken men.

There were alternative sanctions. In 1867 punishment at Maidstone gaol was inflicted 2,406 times on males and 83 times on females.

Males Females

Whipping 11 -

Irons or handcuffs 1 -

Solitary or dark cells 820 83

Stoppage of diet 1,574 -

In several gaols male prisoners were given shot drill as a punishment. In this form of hard labour, groups of up to 32 men responded to warders’ orders. They had to stoop down and without bending the knees, pick up a cannon ball. The ball was raised up to the chest and when the order was given, the men took three steps sideways and then replaced the ball on the ground. They were then ordered to take three steps backwards and the procedure commenced all over again.

Stone breaking, beating rope, picking oakum and pumping water were other mind-numbing and body-breaking tasks to be performed. Work continued throughout daylight hours in winter and in summer from 6.30am until 6pm.

Oakum picking was carriedout by women as well as men. The purpose of this hateful job was to separate strands of old, tarred rope into thin thread. Constant working at this task, day after day, made the fingers painful, raw and bloody. The reconstituted threads were sold on to make string or mattress stuffing – ‘money for old rope.’

The Report on the Prisons of Great Britain indicates that on the day of the Inspectors’ visit to Canterbury in 1867 the male prisoners were employed as follows:

Treadmill 50

Beating rope and oakum 2

Oakum picking (3lb daily) 17

Shoemaking 1

Cleaning 2

In punishment 1

These days we learn that prisoners can elect not to work during their sentences – a complete turn-about. How do we sort this out? The purpose of prison in a democratic society remains unanswered.

Don't forget these Snippets of the Past are intended not simply for mild historical interest. I do hope that writers of historical fiction may gain some useful background.

SNIPPETS OF THE PAST

2011-11-19T20:11:00.000-08:00

BARBARIC JUSTICE

In the midst of all the high-falutin' language, among all the majesty of wigs and scarlet gowns, and the lawyers' addresses to m'lud and gentlemen of the jury, there are still the ordinary folk in the background on whom the effective carrying out of the sentence depends. Obviously, we need policemen and prison warders but we need others, ordinary tradesmen, to do quite simple tasks as in this case. Bear with the turgid legalese which I confess I rather like and which outlines the indictment in 1776 against Ann Cruttenden. Then you'll see what I mean by the involvement of ordinary tradesmen in the business of carrying out the law's demands.

The indictment at Horsham Assizes stated:

The Jurors for our Lord and King upon their Oath Present That Ann the Wife of Joseph Cruttenden late of the Parish of Brightling in the County of Sussex Butcher not having the fear of God before her Eyes but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the Devil on the fifteenth day of June in the Sixteenth year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord George the third now King of Great Britain & with force and Arms at the Parish aforesaid in the County aforesaid in and upon the said Joseph Cruttenden her Husband in the peace of God and our said Lord the King then and there being feloniously Traitorously Wilfully and of her malice aforethought did make an Assault And that she the said Ann with a certain Knife of the Value of two pence which she the said Ann in her right hand then and there had and held in and upon the right side of the neck of him the said Joseph then and there feloniously Traitorously Wilfully and of her Malice aforethought did strike and thrust giving to him the said Joseph in and upon the right side of the neck of him the said Joseph one Mortal Wound of the breadth of two inches and of Depth of half an inch of which said Mortal Wound he the said Joseph then and there instantly Died.

Ann Cruttenden was found guilty of 'feloniously Traitorously Wilfully' murdering her husband. Note the word 'Traitorously.' If you commit an act of treachery against the State you commit High Treason. According to Common Law at this time, in killing her husband, Ann Cruttenden committed Petty Treason. As a wife she was considered in the eyes of the law as a subordinate who had therefore committed a vile offence which demanded special punishment. She was sentenced 'to be Drawn on a Hurdle and Burned with fire until she be dead on Thursday next.'

Poor Ann Cruttenden. The couple had been married for eight years. Joseph was 42 when he died. Ann was 80. Maybe there is a story here which has not been told.

But at last to the point I was making about the contribution of ordinary people in these matters. Well, a carpenter, Peter Potter, submitted a bill for 'putting up the post for the woman to be burnt on, making a slip board to stand Doing the slide and putting on hurdell for her to ride on and board and side for ditto: time, nails and board...£1.10 shillings. The gaoler charged fifteen shillings for 'wood and faggots.'

SNIPPETS OF THE PAST

2011-11-16T21:55:00.000-08:00

Just a reminder - the intention of this blog is interest historians and to offer ideas for plots, scenes, characters to writers of fiction.

THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME

DECEMBER 1893

The Medical Officer of Health reported to the Maidstone Town Council on Bonny’s Yard, a group of houses opening out of the south side of King Street and occupying the slope between it and the river.

Bonny's Yard comprised two rows of back to back houses. In one row each house had three floors, with a room on each floor measuring 9 ft 9ins by 8 ft 9ins. The rooms had sash windows, only the lower half of which could be opened for ventilation. Each cottage had its own closet but no water laid on. In the yard there was a communal bin used by all the people. The common water hydrant was also located there.

The eight houses at the bottom of the yard had one room on each of two floors. These ground floor- and first-floor rooms were subdivided into two by partitions. The front partitions measured 10ft by 10ft and the rear 8ft by 8ft. They too had separate closets but no water laid on. They shared the communal dustbin and water hydrant.

‘They are all of a most miserable order of dwellings,’ says the report. In the twenty houses there were 88 people, an average of 4.4 occupants per house although in three dwellings there were eight people and in a fourth there were seven. ‘The occupation of the inhabitants is very various and includes besides general labourers, hawkers, mill hands, gas stokers, sale porters, rag sorters, etc … Viewed as a whole, these dwellings are relics of the past, such as nowadays would not be allowed to be constructed; from a moral and social point of view, without hesitation they must be condemned as not fit for human habitation.’

On the grounds of overcrowding and the effects of ill health from bad ventilation, the author thought they ought to be pulled down.

That reports of appalling housing conditions existed in the Victorian period and beyond ought not to be used a stick with which to be beat politicians and administrators. Put simply, the enormity of the task was quite beyond them. Great efforts were made throughout the period to improve the lot of the poor and though not all such efforts were well devised their intentions in general were sound and sincere.

If a country market town like Maidstone had such sores and blemishes, what could be expected in the great cities and the burgeoning industrial towns?

DECEMBER 1898

Five years later Mr Adams, the MOH, had to return to the same theme.

Grove Court and Bonny's Yard were among the oldest buildings in the town. They were all greatly overcrowded and lacking through ventilation. Mr Adams made the following observations:

In Grove Court, ‘there are nine closets about 12 feet in front of the houses with very foul hopper pans, unprovided with any means for flushing. The service channelling and pavement are defective and water finds its way readily into the basements of the dwellings. The wall and ceiling plaster of the interior is broken away in places and the rooms are damp. In one instance, at No. 3, there are six inhabitants of whom four children aged 13, 11, nine and two years, sleep in an attic affording only 127 cubic feet of air space per head.

‘At Number 10 is a broken chimney that is dangerous, a leaky roof and the tenant complains of a bad smell from a drain which is said to be beneath the floor of his living room.

‘The interiors are in most cases dirty, having damp walls, with, in many places, broken and defective plaster; of the windows only the bottom sashes admit of being opened.’

Mr Adams goes on to describe conditions at No 40 in Ebenezer Place where the roof leaks and continues: ‘the rain water pipe is broken, the wall is green from constant wet; then again, as respect the sanitary accommodation, the closets are wooden structures, very dark, out of repair, ceilings broken, pans very foul and unflushed.

‘Socially,’ he goes on, ‘as one might naturally expect, they are occupied by the lowest class of the people, day labourers and costers for the most part. Sometimes bargemen and waterside loafers: such people as belong to a distinct class and who as a matter of choice gravitate to the most squalid slums they can find, they seldom have any ties of occupation that bind them to a given spot, if turned out from one place as a matter of course they emigrate to the next dirtiest and cheapest they can discover, with little regard to locality.’

Mr Adams then turns to mortality rates.

‘I find that during the 10 years from 1st July, 1888, to the last of June, 1898, there have been 52 deaths upon this area, constituting a death rate 25.2 per 1000 per annum, which is little short of double the rate for the town generally. The mean age at death I find to be 17 years, which is just about half of the average length of life in the town generally.’

39 of the 52 deaths were of people below the age of 20. In other words 75 per cent never reached adult life. ‘Without doubt the damp, dirt and squalor are accountable.’

SNIPPETS OF THE PAST

2011-11-13T04:01:00.000-08:00

THE BODY SHOP

Isn't this graphic? Just shows the films don't always exaggerate.

APRIL 1832

A letter to the Times from F.M. refers to three men - Cornelius Fitzgerald, described as 'an Irishman of respectable appearance'; Robert Self, a one-legged, 35-year-old ex-soldier; and George Betts, a 'shabbily dressed man' – who appeared before the magistrates at Greenwich.

All three men had been arrested early the previous morning. At Deptford, two policemen, James Jefferies and Luke Kenney, had noticed a cart being driven very slowly and two men walking on each side of the horse. The constables recognised the men as notorious resurrectionists (body-snatchers). The policemen sent for help and then took the cart and the men to Greenwich police station.

When the cart was examined it was found to contain the bodies of two old men. Almost at once word was out that the two dead men had been 'burked' (murdered preparatory to sale to a medical school). A crowd of thousands assembled at the police station, demanding that the three 'Burkites' be let out so that they could attend to them. Eventually, late at night - it was still Friday - the three prisoners were escorted by 40 police and taken before the magistrates at Deptford. As they passed, the mob hurled stones and bricks and missiles of every kind at them. It was only with difficulty that the prisoners were brought into the room with the magistrates. The magistrates then remanded the prisoners until the corpses could be identified.

The next day (Saturday, 14 April), the bosun of the Justitia, a convict ship lying off Woolwich, identified both bodies. They were both of convicts, one aged 84, the other 65. They had died on board on the Thursday night. They had, he said, been speedily interred at Plumstead and just as speedily dug up by the three men who, later that morning, had been arrested. Now the magistrates ordered the bodies to be interred once more and the prisoners were again remanded.

On Monday morning (16 April), Jefferies and Kenney were again patrolling the area where they had been on the previous Thursday. Yet again a cart came past and yet again they stopped the driver. Looking inside, the policemen saw the same two corpses which had been disinterred a second time. This time a man named Hollis was charged.

The prisoners were removed to Maidstone gaol and appeared at the next Assizes.

SNIPPETS OF THE PAST

2011-11-08T02:31:00.000-08:00

THE DEVIL AND HIS WORKS

Charlotte Latham’s work was published in the first edition of the Folklore Record as long ago as 1878. A vicar's wife, she had an insatiable desire to learn about the parishioners' lives and to record what she was told.. The Devil and babies figured frequently in local tales.

The baptismal ceremony was not regarded simply as a welcoming into the Christian community but it also contained an element of exorcism, the expulsion of the Devil from the newborn child. The north door of churches – the so-called Devil’s Door - was left open on these occasions for the Devil to make his exit though some churches blocked up the north door to prevent the Devil's entry.

One lady told Mrs Latham the following anecdote:
‘I was lately present at a christening when a lady of the party, who was a godmother of the child, whispered in a voice of anxiety. “The child never cried. Why did not the nurse rouse it up?” After we had left the church, she said to her, “Oh nurse, why did you not pinch baby?” and, when the baby's good behaviour was afterwards commented upon, she observed with a very serious air, “I wish that he had cried.”’

And why? Because with the crying the Devil would have been expelled from the child's body, original sin wiped out with one nip of the child's flesh.

SNIPPETS OF THE PAST

2011-11-05T10:48:00.000-07:00

A CASE OF WITCHCRAFT

In 1842 the wife of a labourer who lived on New Pound Common at Wisborough Green in West Sussex had been ill for a considerable time and could not understand why her illness was so protracted. She had talked matters over with her neighbours and they had concluded that she was bewitched. They suspected that the witch was another local woman, described as 'a very decent, inoffensive creature' but of course, appearances can deceive. The sick woman along with her neighbours tried a number of stratagems to destroy the witch's power but all of these failed. Finally they hit upon a scheme which they hoped might work.

The Sussex Agricultural Express reports: 'They procured pigeons and tied them in pairs back to back by their wings and lighted a large fire, and stopped up [sealed] the room as close as possible; some of the poor pigeons they opened at the breast in order that the fire might burn their hearts while alive. How many were burned, the writer cannot say, but he heard a neighbour state that he himself had burned four, and he thought they should have destroyed the witch if the house had been closer [more tightly sealed]. It is supposed by the neighbours that a dozen to sixteen pigeons were destroyed in this cruel manner.’

During the whole hideous operation, as tradition demanded when counter-spells were employed, not a word was spoken. Sadly, the report contains no mention of the outcome so we do not know if the woman was effectively treated or if the police were called to deal with the matter of the pigeons. And what about the woman who was accused of casting a bad spell? There’s no record of this either.

SNIPPETS OF THE PAST

2011-11-03T12:21:00.000-07:00

LOVE DIVINATION

Time for a new direction now.

I hope that my new series of blogs will be of some interest to writers of historical fiction – or indeed that today’s offering may attract writers of period romance.

In recent years I have become particularly interested in the darker, less publicised aspects of 18^th/19^th/20^th century social history. Sometimes these are no more than footnotes but they are significant in helping us to understand people in the past. I shall therefore be offering glimpses of bygone days, snippets of the past – crime, punishment, social conditions, beliefs – which may offer writers a hint for a plot or a scene.

Though my examples come principally from southern English counties, the stories they tell might well have come from distant parts of the world.

So to work... and here’s something odd. It’s a belief, a superstition, once widely held throughout

Great Britain

and it most probably transferred to other countries. I’d be interested to hear of instances beyond these shores.

It’s called love divination.

Who am I going to marry? What is he going to be like? And when shall I marry? These were – and perhaps they still are - natural speculations for many a young girl. The answers to such questions came from observing specific rituals.

In the 1870s, Charlotte Latham, wife of the vicar of Fittleworth in

Sussex

, questioned many local people about their beliefs and recorded several strange procedures. On the night of the first new moon after New Year's Day, girls would sit alone on a gate or stile and, looking at the moon, recite:

‘All hail to thee, moon! All hail to thee

I pray thee, good moon, reveal to me

This night who my husband must be.’

Now this is an entry into the occult, the words intended to conjure up a living person’s wraith (the ghost of a living person). Little wonder if girls shivered with fear: little wonder if they did not always wait to find out.

And there were other sinister rituals. Two of these involved graveyard visits. Girls took the leaves of a yarrow plant from a young man's grave and then repeated the following wish:

‘Yarrow, sweet Yarrow, the first that I have found,

In the name of Jesus Christ, I plucked it from the ground;

As Joseph loved sweet Mary, and took her for his dear,

So in a dream this night, I hope, my true love will appear.’

Other girls might go to the graveyard with a handful of hemp seed which they would sprinkle on the ground, all the while saying:

‘Hemp seed, I sow thee,

Hempseed, I sow thee;

And he that is my true love

Come after me and mow thee.’

Once the seed was sown, she looked over her left shoulder, expecting to see the wraith of her future husband mowing the already sprouting seed behind her. This spell was said to work only on days appropriate for divining the future – Midsummer’s Eve and St John's Eve, the 23^rd and 24^th June.

Another St John’s Eve strategy: girls would hang their newly washed blouses in front of the kitchen fire. Then leaving the kitchen door open they would sit in silence, waiting for the midnight arrival of the wraith to come in and turn the blouse.

Believe it?

The past is another country: they do things differently there.

ANATOMY OF A NOVEL 10

2011-10-28T07:18:00.000-07:00

AND SUCH GREAT NAMES AS THESE

THE CRUELTY OF EXCLUSION

Just by the bye, the blog had a considerable number of visitors this week. I hope they'll turn up again! Of course, the word ‘vampire’ appeared in the title. Oops…I’ve written it again. But let’s get on…

I suppose that most fiction writers are aware of the themes in their books. I thought that I was aware of the themes in 'And Such Great Names as These' but only this morning - yes, not two hours ago, and remember that this book was first in print four years ago – I realised that there was another theme, not exactly hidden, but it hadn’t previously occurred to me that four major characters in the story suffer serious exclusion, one of the cruellest ways of treating people.

There is a scene where Dolly tells Joshua what happened in the chapel years earlier, how the bigoted Mr Samways, the chapel elder, had treated her.

She drew a deep breath. Then she took a kitchen chair and drew it up to the table. She rested her worn hands on the oil cloth and as she spoke she drew little circles with her finger tips.

'Your mam was so kind to me,' she began. 'She was a stranger in this town and I was born here but I had more comfort from her than most.'

'I was havin' a baby, and unmarried, and the father off out of the district,' she said. She looked first at Joshua and then at Rob. Her words did not come out angrily or bitterly, just rather wryly. 'It's a sin, ye know. Havin' a baby and not bein' wed.'

And Joshua knew it was, taking her words at face value. Dolly had been a sinner. He knew about sin. The chapel had told him: his mother had told him.

'He stood up in that chapel on the Sunday morning. That Samways. And my mother was there. And you, Rob, and Henry.' She nodded at Henry's photograph as she mentioned his name. 'And Samways stood at the front there and he looked at me and all of us, all the family. Looked at us and without flinchin' he told them, everybody there. I can remember it as if it had happened this mornin'.'

She glanced down at her hands, stretched out along her thighs. She drew a deep breath as though preparing herself to say something devastating.

'One among us has sinned!'

Dolly boomed the words out, stretching out from the edge of her chair towards Joshua. Rob, sitting now by the table, stared out of the window.

'That's what he said. "One among us has sinned."'

There was none of today’s more enlightened attitudes. Bastardy reflected on the mother and her child. Less was said about fathers.

Earlier in the story Mr Samways, for no sound reason, had barred Joshua’s mother, Alice, from going to the chapel. The sense of being an outcast, the devastation, led this frail-minded, devout woman, to her final breakdown.

And hadn’t Ernie Grayson, the useless soldier, complained of his treatment at the hands of his comrades, people from the same part of

England

, from the same town? He was fighting on the Western Front amid all of the obscenities of that war. What a time, what a place, to feel yourself all alone.

'And the lads. They hate me,' Little Ernie had confided, ignoring Rob's admission. 'Ye know what they do?'

And he had told Rob every instance of minor cruelty to which he had been subjected, to which he was subjected every day. If it wasn't the Germans, it was the Geordies, his own people.

And so he deserted with terrible consequences.

And Joshua himself faced exclusion from his classmates. Events from my own schooldays are still sharply etched in my mind.

And Such Great Names as These by Allen Makepeace

Sample or purchase this e-book on http://smashwords.com/books/view/66884

This book is also available on Amazon Kindle

Website: www.johnniejohnson.co.uk

75% of the book’s profits go to the British Limbless Ex-Servicemen's Association

ANATOMY OF A NOVEL 9

2011-10-22T12:30:00.000-07:00

AND SUCH GREAT NAMES AS THESE – ALLEN MAKEPEACE

A HORROR STORY – AND NOT A VAMPIRE IN SIGHT

I don’t know. There’s such a sudden upsurge. So many books about horror. So many about vampires. I thought Bram Stoker had written the definitive tale about vampires but apparently not. Everywhere I look on book sites there’s a plethora of vampire tales. That or zombies. Written so frequently by women though I add that simply as a matter of information. We cannot now get enough horror, so it seems.

But last night on the television I watched the ultimate horror movie. Men, their faces contorted with a mixture of rage and fear, were clubbing each other to death, raising above their heads whatever came to hand, mallets, hammers, metal stanchions, to crush skulls, using spades to punch out blood and brain. Or they stabbed each other, jabbing not once but twice, thrice, or more times, fierce thrusts into the guts, into the face, into whatever defenceless part of the body presented itself. It was a scene from Hell. Crude. Brutal. Remorseless. Desperate. Cruel. Inhuman.

And other times great waves of men, onward rushing into what they must have known awaited them, were mown down as grass is mown. They were silently dead before they reached to the ground.

Now that was a horror film. That was the kind of film that sears the mind, that scars the imagination. What sorts of beings were represented here? What beasts? What monsters were these that should so mercilessly and recklessly throw themselves on their foes in such a manner, to squander their own and others’ lives? Who had fashioned such horrifying beings?

Who in God’s name were these that the film-maker was representing?

Us. That’s the answer.

It was a film based on fact. It came originally from the pen of Erich Maria Remarque, a veteran of the Western Front, and was translated to film only a dozen years after the end of World War 1 when memories were still fresh. I first saw the film All Quiet on the Western Front in my student days, sixty years ago. I felt its power then and had it revived last night.

And the point is that those engaged in these monstrous daily massacres were not demons or devils. They were not twisted souls seeking revenge on others. These creatures, stinking of fear in the close confines of their embattled trenches, using bayonets, trenching tools, whatever murderous tool was available, had been and perhaps still were, in spite of all, the decent wide-eyed idealists they always had been but who had been transformed in the struggle to survive.

In the novel And Such Great Names as These there are some battle scenes and I have striven to portray desperate soldiers as ordinary, as decent, as helpless. That’s why the representation of battle scenes in the film presents us with a horror film. It’s because they are all helpless victims.

‘Outside, amid the crunch and crump of high explosive and the whizz and whirr of flying metal, farm lads and clerks lay together, silent, awaiting burial; riveters and barmen hung like bird-scarers on the wire; lawyers and lawbreakers were lost forever, buried under fallen trenches, and a prospective Olympic swimmer drowned in a puddle in No Man’s Land.’

And elsewhere in the book:

‘Good old Guthrie. Reliable old Guthrie. Tough as hell old Guthrie though no-one knew that in bed at night he still heard the dry crump and crunch of mortar fire; still felt the earth heave under him; still saw the oak tree, shriven of all its bark, shorn of every leaf, its colour bled away and way up in its highest remaining branches, the two bodies, neither with a shred of clothing so that there was no indication of whose sons might be suspended there, Tommy and Jack or Hans and Fritz.’

Fanciful? Not at all. Years ago, when I was doing some research into the war, the Imperial War Museum sent me a postcard which I never used.

It showed an ‘oak tree, shriven of all its bark, shorn of every leaf, its colour bled away and way up in its highest remaining branches, the two bodies, neither with a shred of clothing…’

Are there really worse horrors than scenes like these?

Vampires are not needed in such places. They are not horrifying enough.

If this and my other blogs have interested you, do please let your friends know.

And Such Great Names as These by Allen Makepeace

Sample or purchase this e-book on http://smashwords.com/books/view/66884

This book is also available on Amazon Kindle

Website: http://www.johnniejohnson.co.uk/

75% of the book’s profits go to the British Limbless Ex-Servicemen's Association

ANATOMY OF A NOVEL 8

2011-10-16T11:22:00.000-07:00

AND SUCH GREAT NAMES AS THESE – ALLEN MAKEPEACE

LEARNING TO BE A PATRIOT

My first public appearance as a musical performer – wait, correction…that ought to read: My only public appearance as a musical performer…

Best to try to be accurate in these matters.

So, my first public appearance as a musical performer must have occurred in either 1933 or 1934. Whenever it was, I cannot ever forget the exhilaration of that day. May 24. Empire Day, the annual, round-the-world celebration of the British Empire, ‘the Empire on which the Sun never Sets’ as they described it at the time.

We must have been primed for days in our classrooms for that great upsurge of patriotic pride. I still have some vague memories of the preparations and though I cannot recall precisely what these were I guess the names of Alfred the Great and Clive of India, Wolfe, Francis Drake and other national heroes rang round every classroom in the land. But none of this side of things made much impact on me. My mother was later to tell me that I came home several days beforehand bursting with excitement. It seems that I thought it had something to do with the Empire Theatre in the town where she and my father had taken me six or so months earlier to see the pantomime, Cinderella. Perhaps I was expecting star-spangled chorus girls and Cinderella and her Wicked Stepmother and Prince Charming and the Ugly Sisters to turn up on the day.

What I really do remember are the flags we made with paper and wax crayons and scissors and glue though if we, as infants, were let near the scissors and glue I am unsure. On the day …and let me alter that to ‘The Day’ for it was of signal importance in all our lives at that time ... we carried our flags outside and our teachers busied themselves getting us into orderly lines, ready for the prayers, and then the march around ‘the yard’ which is what we called our playground. At this point some of us were given our instruments for what parade acknowledging

Britain

’s might could ever proceed without the accompaniment of the stirring music of a brass band?

Not that we had a brass band in our school though one year I am pretty certain that the Boys’ Brigade turned up with their bugles and kettle drums to make things go with a swing. But the year I have in mind I was presented with a triangle. It seemed such a poor little piece of metal compared to the drum that some others were given. Some children were given a kazoo which they blew into and emitted a kind of monotone farting sound. I should have liked that because my triangle – made of the cheapest metal I have no doubt – could not compete with drums and kazoos.

Our teachers then led us off on our march which entailed our following the boys and girls in front and raising our knees as high as possible and then stamping our feet on the ground as hard as we were able . It was so thrilling, so military. I would have said so British but at that time I was unfamiliar with such concepts. All I know is that somehow I was part of something superior and mighty.

In the book, And Such Great names as These, 10 year-old Joshua and his classmates have to prepare for a parade in the town, a parade of soldiers marching off to the Front. The children have to make paper flags and I had my own experience in mind when I wrote that part of the story.

It was to be a grand parade, Mr Pybus had told them. There would be bands and columns of old soldiers from the Boer War; the scouts and guides would be there and the Boys Brigade; there was going to be a large contingent of soldiers from the barracks, but best of all, it was to be 'B' Battalion on their last outing before being shipped off to France.

‘Next month this time, these lads'll be in the thick of the fighting,' Mr Pybus had said. 'For us. For us and our families.'

They had spent the Friday afternoon cutting out squares of paper and colouring them red, white and blue. Once Mr Pybus was satisfied that the lines were straight and the colouring even, he handed them eighteen‑inch sticks. And glue.

'Let them dry nice,' he warned them once the flags were glued. They were placed on the window ledge until the end of the afternoon and then, after the prayer, Mr Pybus allowed them to take them home. 'Give them a good send‑off tomorrow. Wave your flags and give them a cheer. They're fighting for us, for the right. They're brave lads, all of them, so give them some encouragement.'

'It's for tomorrow,' Joshua told Rob when he got home.

He was proud of the flag not just because it was as Mr Pybus had said, a symbol of truth, honour and justice, but because he had made it; the glue was even and had not squeezed out onto the colour as it had with some of the other pupils' efforts. Alfie Mason's flag had come apart as soon as he got into the street outside the school building and others did not look as if they would stand up to any vigorous waving the next day. But Joshua was sure that his would.

It was a time when the people of these islands had no doubt of their sacred mission to bring enlightenment and justice to those benighted areas of the world which had not yet experienced such benefits. What confidence people had in King and Country: what belief in our rightness and superiority. And this at a time when we were in the middle of a most terrible economic depression.

Only a few years later, in 1940, when I was about 12, we British found ourselves alone in the struggle against Nazi Germany. The French had capitulated and Hitler’s soldiers were strutting through Paris and through several other European capitals. The British army had narrowly escaped from the beaches of Dunkirk though at the time the nation was persuaded to believe their overall defeat as a victory. These were dangerous times.

‘D’you think we’ll win?’ I asked my parents.

‘Oh yes,’ my father said. ‘In the end.’

And my mother explained, ‘We always start off badly but we always win eventually.’ As if history had a recognisable pattern, one already decided.

But only the blindest belief in their nation could have made them think such thoughts.

We did win.

In the end.

Eventually.

And Such Great Names as These by Allen Makepeace

Sample or purchase this e-book on http://smashwords.com/books/view/66884

This book is also available on Amazon Kindle

Website: www.johnniejohnson.co.uk

75% of the book’s profits go to the British Limbless Ex-Servicemen's Association

BOOK GIVEAWAY

2011-10-13T06:15:00.000-07:00

From now until 24 October I shall be giving out free copies of both AND SUCH GREAT NAMES AS THESE and WINTER HUNT.

Just apply to me on johnhijo@btinternet.com and I shall let you have a coupon code so that you can download from Smashwords to whatever ereader you have. For those of you who have no ereader, I can send a copy direct to your computer screen.

Have a look at my blogs on this site and also my website (http://www.johnniejohnson.co.uk/ to learn more about these books.
I do hope that you will find the books interesting and that in that circumstance you'll tell your friends. If they do not appeal to you I shall appreciate your dignified silence!

Happy resading!

ANATOMY OF A NOVEL

2011-10-11T03:33:00.000-07:00

I'm hoping to enlist some more followers to my blog - and here is the missing link.

http:// .blogspot.com

When I complete this particular series from next month I may write about my sortie to the Philippines where I shall be spending the winter with my Filipino friends and relatives. It's a fascinating country and I'd like to share my experiences with you.

ANATOMY OF A NOVEL 7

2011-10-10T03:45:00.000-07:00

AND SUCH GREAT NAMES AS THESE – ALLEN MAKEPEACE

SAVELOYS, POLONEY AND PEASE PUDDING – FOOD FOR THOUGHT

My Auntie Elsie Fisher was never really my auntie. She’d been invested with the honour of aunt-dom because she was my mother’s oldest friend. She wasn’t even called Fisher when I came into the world because she’d married by then. Even so, my mother continued to refer to her as ‘your Auntie Elsie Fisher’ throughout both of their long lives, which had begun way back even before their infant school days.

Auntie Elsie’s parents had come from

Germany

sometime in the late nineteenth century and had settled in South Shields on the north-east coast of

England

. They opened up in business as pork butchers. They weren’t alone in that trade: there were many German pork butchers in

England

at that time. It was as though they had a special capacity for that arm of butchery.

I can remember going into the shop quite often with my mother in the 1930s. What a wonderful place it was, the rich cooking smell of it enfolding you, a place where they sold red-skinned saveloys and poloneys and pies and sausages and cold cuts and ham and pease pudding and black puddings. All marvellous. But we went in there principally for pork sandwiches. You could get a penny dip – a bun dipped in the hot fat of a roast pork joint – but best of all there were pork sandwiches. Pork sandwiches, the very thought makes me drool. The bun was dipped in fat and then there’d be a fine slice of pork topped with sage and onion stuffing. And I still clearly remember the lady behind the counter always used to ask me: ‘D’you want some scranchum, pet?’ (Everybody’s ‘pet’ up there in the north-east and ‘scranchum’ was what we called pork skin, so crunchy and juicy and tasty.) Ah, Fisher’s Pork Butcher’s Shop. It was so popular and so were the Fishers because they were a genuinely decent family.

But one day, in 1914, when they were about eleven years old, Auntie Elsie came to my mother in tears.

‘They smashed the shop windows last night,’ she sobbed.

My mother tried to console her. It was a lively town, a tough town, at times a rough town, but people didn’t go round doing that sort of thing. Not normally.

‘They were shouting,’ Auntie Elsie said, ‘a great crowd of them. Calling us all sorts of names. Saying we were Germans, that we were the enemy, saying we’d better look out.’

My mother told me about this many years ago and it stuck in my mind and I used it – or a related version - in ‘And Such Great Names as These.’ Briefly, Rob has taken two young boys, Joshua and Billy, into the Augusta Tea Rooms which is run by an old German couple. He is a decorated soldier wearing civilian clothes and his aim is to show the boys that though we are at war with

Germany

we have to be tolerant about individual Germans, especially those living in this country. And the boys do learn the lesson in an unexpected manner.

The door to the street opened.

The bell rang shrilly.

They all looked up.

Three soldiers. Not drunk. But not sober. They seemed to fill the remaining space, to darken it with their presence.

'Out. You.'

The tallest of them scowled at Rob.

'Out. You.' he repeated more loudly, emphasising each word, jerking his thumb in the direction of the street behind him.

His two companions stood behind him, perhaps a little less sure of themselves.

'What's this?' Rob asked, not moving.

'This,' the tall soldier, now bunching his fist and waving it in front of Rob's face, 'this is goin' to bloody knock you off that chair if ye don't get out of here. That's what this is.'

Rob put up a hand, placatory.

'All right,' he said. 'No need to get rough. Let's take it quietly.'

As he spoke, one of the other soldiers, short, bow‑legged, sporting the beginnings of a moustache, threw down a cup from one of the other tables. The third soldier, an older man, maybe thirty years of age, giggled and copied his mate and another cup was shattered.

'Out!Out!' the tall soldier shouted, pushing his coarse young face closer to Rob's. 'D'ye not understand?' he asked, his voice now taking on a plaintive tone. 'These is bloody Jerries in here. Fuckin’ Boches.' He gestured over to where old Mr Forster stood silent.

Behind him, Hannah, his wife, short and stout, came through the curtains. She stopped, her mouth opening and shutting with no sound issuing forth.

'These is Jerries,' the tall soldier repeated slowly as if for the benefit of the two boys. 'They're our enemies.' He turned his head to stare angrily at the old man and then shifted his gaze to his wife.

Another cup and saucer were smashed. The old man still said nothing, simply stood unmoving. From Hannah, there came a whimper as she put her hand to her anguished mouth. Then, as though making an enormous effort to speak, she whispered, 'Not again. Please not again.'

'Have ye been here before?' Rob asked, standing up slowly from the table. Joshua thought how tall and strong he looked.

'No, we haven't,' the bow‑legged soldier told him. 'But ye'd better scram out of here and fast.'

'Other people. Three times now.' The old woman was barely audible. 'We've been smashed up three times. But other people.'

Her accent was still strong whereas that of her husband had taken on the local tinge. He could scarcely be recognised as foreign born.

'Please go,' Mr Forster said, finding his voice at last. 'We don't deserve this. We have a son in the army.'

The oldest of the intruders moved across to the old man, grabbing him by the jacket.

'You bloody shut up, Jerry.'

The soldier's face was twisted with hatred.

But we always think that we are on the side of liberty and justice. Not in those words perhaps, but we believe that we have a general sense of the fairness and kindness which underlie those two great aims. We would say that fairness and kindness are in our make-up, that we hold such sentiments in abundance. They are natural to us. That’s what we think about ourselves.

But our noble aspirations are sometimes betrayed. In World War One it was the Germans who were said to ravage nuns and slaughter babies. Not us. We didn’t treat people in such an abominable manner. So we told ourselves.

The scene above is not the same as what happened in Fisher’s pork butcher’s shop. But the germ was there for this episode in the book. That’s where many stories so often come from, from the real past.

Hope you found this interesting. Back next week.

And Such Great Names as These by Allen Makepeace

Sample or purchase this e-book on http://smashwords.com/books/view/66884

This book is also available on Amazon Kindle

Website: www.johnniejohnson.co.uk

75% of the book’s profits go to the British Limbless Ex-Servicemen's Association

ANATOMY OF A NOVEL 6

2011-10-03T06:59:00.000-07:00

AND SUCH GREAT NAMES AS THESE – ALLEN MAKEPEACE

SACRIFICIAL LAMBS

So how was it that I came to write a war story? Well, the First World War, the Great War as we called it, made an impact on my boyhood. It had been over for ten years before I arrived on the scene but men who had fought were often only thirty years older than me. Later I worked with some of them. I was friendly with their sons and daughters. They lived in our street, these men. And I heard occasional things. Not much. It wasn’t a generation to talk about such matters. My father and three of his brothers went to that war and all came home unscathed and never said much about it.

But we know more of it now. It’s recorded on grainy film. You see the soldiers in the trenches or crossing No-man’s Land. Sometimes they fall and lie for ever on the celluloid battlefield. And sometimes during a lull or a period behind the front line you see them sitting around chatting and smoking, laughing and playing football, engaging in horse-play and practical jokes. How could they be so calm? Were they all heroes?

In the book, Dexter is a hero. He has been decorated for bravery. But he deserts. Is he now a coward? Is he brave some days and not others? I wonder often about the nature of courage. Wonder how I might have fared in the Western Front slaughterhouse. Or in the brown dust of

Afghanistan

I’ve been lucky in my time. I’ve never faced danger. I’ve never had anyone firing a gun at me. I experienced a few air raids during the war but even they seem to have been ‘off-nights’ for enemy pilots. I only recall one significant raid and going the next morning to see the damage done to my school. But when I went into the services in 1946 the war had been over for a year. Some men of my age found themselves in Malaya fighting guerrillas and perhaps had I been a year or two younger I might have been in

Korea

. Lucky me.

But what about Little Ernie, a victim in my story, a timid, frightened little lad? Had we any right to expect more of him, given his nature? His character is based on people I later met during my days in the services. There were two in particular, both born to be victims, one a young man about my age, the other a regular serviceman in his forties, but a victim nevertheless, another outsider.

I remember this older man – Rankin was his name - who was either ignored or who was the victim of our sly jokes. Here was I, just out of school, drinking my first beers, and leaning back and sneering at him, a man old enough to be my father. When we could distract him on the occasions he joined us in the bar – never by invitation, by the way - we used to flick our cigarette ash in his glass. He never seemed to notice. We waited for him to pass out because we had heard that that was the effect of ash in beer. Well, he never did pass out. But even so we laughed about our small cruelties.

The other one was a boy my age. He was in the same intake as me when we joined up. Steven Hope, as I call him here, was a slow, shuffling, little chap, not very bright, not over clean, nobody’s friend. Everybody laughed at him when they deigned to notice him. Nobody ever laughed with him. Couldn’t be bothered with him. But when one of the boys in my hut lost his gas cape – a punishable offence – without hesitation, he went to the neighbouring hut and took Steven Hope’s. Yet no-one ever thought of that as a cruel act or a theft. Nobody ever doubted that we were all bound by some indissoluble noble, comradely code.

I remember the day when, for reasons best known to the military mind, we were ordered to assemble in alphabetical order. A hundred of us, we had to sort ourselves out fairly briskly.

We organised ourselves in double-quick time and then the sergeant looked us over and his eye lit on Steven Hope.

‘You, lad, you in the right group?’

Steven looked bewildered and I don’t believe he made any answer.

The sergeant twitched his nostrils and flexed his shoulders..

‘What group is this?’ the sergeant asked another of us.

‘S, sergeant,’ was the reply.

‘S,’ the sergeant let the sound of that single letter sizzle like a boiling kettle. And he repeated the sound, now investing it with an interrogative element. ‘S.s.s.s.s?’

We all waited.

‘And you, lad,’ the sergeant turned his attention fully on Steven. ‘Still sure you’re in the right group, eh?’

Again Steven gave some kind of answer but what it was could not be heard..

The sergeant stretched himself up to his full height.

‘This group is the S group,’ he barked at Steven. ‘And your name, lad…your name is…?’

Some of us started to snigger but the sergeant silenced us with a look. But Steven suddenly looked more confident, taller, straighter. It was as though some magical transformation had overcome him. And many of us, as we later agreed, saw a daft boy grow into a man. He was sure of himself.

For the first time we heard him speak with any confidence.

‘Steven, sergeant,’ he answered.

At for that brief moment I felt sorry for him.

‘F…..g Steven,’ the sergeant bawled. ‘F….g Steven?’ He stopped as if unsure what to say next. ‘Then f…. off,’ he resumed, ‘and join the f….g H group.’

And now realising his error and even before joining the H group, Steven had returned to his normal unloved self and ever after he was the unit joke, the unit victim, the sacrificial lamb that all groups seem to need.

Unlike Ernie Grayson, Steven Hope was not shot for desertion. But all these years later, part of him and the older Rankin are to be found in the pages of a book.

And Such Great Names as These by Allen Makepeace

Sample or purchase this e-book on http://smashwords.com/books/view/66884

This book is also available on Amazon Kindle

Website: www.johnniejohnson.co.uk

75% of the book’s profits go to the British Limbless Ex-Servicemen's Association

ANATOMY OF A NOVEL 5

2011-09-15T04:43:00.000-07:00

AND SUCH GREAT NAMES AS THESE

ALLEN MAKEPEACE

TRUTH, RUMOUR, FICTION

That’s the trouble with the study of history. It’s too rigid. You cannot play around - at least you oughtn’t to play around - with the evidence. Interpret the events as you will but you mustn’t invent or distort. Be true to the facts.

But fiction, that’s different. Create. Be imaginative. As the journalists say, don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.

So having had a lifetime’s interest in history and literature – or should I say Fact and Fiction? – I was faced with this difficulty when I came to write And Such Great Names as These.

Over the years I’d heard the odd tale from the Great War. One of these tales was that there were some unofficial and unrecorded military executions of deserters. I have no evidence for this assertion and so in the interests of historical truth such suggestions ought to be ignored. On the other hand, as the journalists say…

So an unofficial military execution is related in the book and the truth hidden so that even the parents never know what has happened to their son. They have simply been told of his death in action.

But just imagine, the parents who have lost their son in this way, come to see one of his former comrades. Dolly’s brother Rob knows how Ernie Grayson died and his mother and father arrive unexpectedly at her house to find out more.

The Graysons, intent on every word made no movement, no sound.

'I met him one afternoon. We were out of the line. And he saw me. We were in a village about twenty miles back.'

They were respectable, timid, narrow. And they would never forget their son. They loved him. Always would.

'We had a drink, I remember.'

Mrs Grayson's mouth was pursed.

'Not too much, I hope.'

Even in death, Ernest was not to be allowed to have forgotten that he was from a respectable home.

'No,' Rob told them. 'Just a couple. Special circumstances,' he added. 'We were under a bit of strain. Ye know, fightin'.'

Mrs Grayson's severe look relaxed slightly as she acknowledged that perhaps in those special circumstances, Ernest might be allowed one drink. But no more than that. The restriction was etched in her face.

'He'd had a hard time, Mrs Grayson.'

It was true. He had. Every day since he had joined the army had been tough. It was difficult to know who his worst enemies were. Those in his own company or the Germans. As they had sat in the bar ‑ and as Ernie had couple after couple after couple though there was no need for the Graysons to know that ‑ Ernie had told Rob what it was like for him.

'I'm frightened,' he had admitted without shame. 'I'm frightened I'm goin' to get killed or maimed. Lose a limb. Me face. Me balls.'

And Rob had told him that was what they were all afraid of.

'You're not,' Little Ernie had told Rob. 'You've been decorated. You proved you're not frightened.'

And Rob had told him how frightened he was every day on whatever side of the wire he found himself.

'And the lads. They hate me,' Little Ernie had confided, ignoring Rob's admission. 'Ye know what they do?' And he had told Rob every instance of minor cruelty to which he had been subjected, to which he was subjected every day. If it wasn't the Germans, it was the Geordies, his own people.

'We'll get out of it eventually,' Rob had reassured him. He had wondered about Ernie. He was harmless. He was everybody's victim. Both sides of the wire.

'I never will,' Little Ernie had wept into his wine. 'I'll never get away from here.'

They were almost the last words Rob heard for Little Ernie had sobbed himself to sleep at the table.

But where did the character of Ernie come from? Well, really, much of Ernie came from two people I knew. Tell you about them next time though it won’t be for a couple of weeks.

And Such Great Names as These by Allen Makepeace

Sample or purchase this e-book on http://smashwords.com/books/view/66884

This book is also available on Amazon Kindle

Website: www.johnniejohnson.co.uk

75% of the book’s profits go to the British Limbless Ex-Servicemen's Association

ANATOMY OF A NOVEL 4

2011-09-11T15:00:00.000-07:00

AND SUCH GREAT NAMES AS THESE – ALLEN MAKEPEACE

NOW WHAT WAS I SAYING?

Funny what you can remember and what you can’t.

Last week I walked back from town with a heavy bag of shopping. Once in the house I remembered that I’d left the car in the town-centre car park. And I could tell you countless other little occasions like this. Provided of course that I could remember them

So how is it that I can still recall my first day at infant school? And the smell of the leather in my dad’s first car, a little Morris 8? And the day in the back lane when Henry Coxon, after filling my mother’s milk jug with his ladle, let me ride in his cart and call out instructions to the horse; and another day when uncle Will went down his backyard to kill a chicken for us? These are such sharply etched images, smells and sounds and at times – after intervals of months or years even – they pop up unbidden.

And here’s an odd memory. I can remember the day I first heard the word ‘affable.’

‘Affable?’ I asked my mother. ‘What’s that?’

We’d just been to see my headmaster – it must have been during the Easter holiday of 1940 and I have no idea of why we had gone to see him – and on the way back home my mother had come out with the word.

‘Mr Lucas was very affable today,’ she said. I’d never heard the word before.

She explained.

I’d never thought of the distant figure of Mr Lucas in that light. To me, seeing him ghost along corridors, passing him when he seemed to be whispering State secrets to other teachers, he was a mysterious, all-powerful figure. I’d never been in his presence before that morning. At least, never close up to him. The only times I really heard his voice was in assembly when, on a direct line to God, like some Old Testament preacher he sermonised, warned of the most awful outcomes for disobedience and generally scared the living daylights out of us before telling us, in the same terrifying way, of the first eleven cricket results, the splendid success of some senior boy and the forthcoming gas-mask inspection.

Affable? I’d not seen that characteristic. That vulpine smile he’d given us as we left his study hadn’t reassured me. I’d heard stories about his caning boys.

Such memories are precious now as a source of amusement, pleasure, wonderment even, and they’re particularly useful for writers. Schooldays are a goldmine and I’ve no doubt that the following scene from And Such Great Names as These owes something to my time in school. And, by the way, as I later learnt, Mr Lucas was a decent, straightforward, kindly man, highly effective in his profession.

So here is ten-year old Joshua in his junior school listening to Mr Pybus’ history lesson when into the room comes Mr McKie.

A kind of involuntary spasmodic shudder went round the room. It was Mr McKie. He rarely came unless somebody was in trouble. Then it was six of the best. Or at least that is what all of the children seemed to believe. They used to say that if you put a horse hair across your hand, it would split the cane. They had often talked about that but who ever had a horse hair on him at the right time? And anyway, Joshua had often told himself, if the cane split, it might nip your hand as well as all the other damage it did. These thoughts ‑ about canes and horse hairs ‑ always passed through Joshua's mind when Mr McKie came in.

And his worst fears, almost the stuff of nightmares, were realised because today Mr McKie had come for him.

As Mr McKie bent confidentially towards Mr Pybus, Joshua heard his name mentioned, saw Mr McKie turn away briefly from Mr Pybus and look for him down the rows of desks. After more whispering between the two men, Mr Pybus stood up straight.

'Joshua Slater. Go along with Mr McKie.'

'In my office,' Mr McKie added.

Joshua's knee jumped involuntarily, his legs felt limp and rubbery as he made his way past Michael and Jackie who stood in the narrow gangway between the rows of desks. Sixty pairs of eyes on him. Why him? Why me?

Mr Pybus said nothing until Joshua was near the door, on the point of opening it.

'Right now ... The White Man's Burden ... everybody ... now, pay attention ... don't take any notice of him ... right, now ... The White Man's Burden ...'

And Joshua closed the door on Mr Pybus, his Empire and his Burden.

The walk to Mr McKie's office was no more than thirty yards. It seemed to take a lifetime. Why was he being called? He'd done nothing wrong; he was convinced of that. Was there anything in the last two or three days? Not that he could think of.

Mr McKie had reached his office before Joshua had closed the door of the classroom. Reaching the green door, the boy was unsure whether he should knock. After all, Mr McKie must know he was there. So had he shut the door because he was not ready for him? Was he getting out the cane? Did he have to move furniture before caning? Or was he busy with other important things? Should he knock? He had never been in there before. He scarcely knew Mr McKie. He didn't usually speak to any of the children until they were in the top class. Next year, of course, Mr McKie would teach him. He was not looking forward to that. He knocked at the door.

'Come in.'

Joshua opened the door and Mr McKie was sitting behind his desk. Strange how, anxious as he was, Joshua had time to take in the brown painted walls, the two or three pictures, a book case full of books, a pile of copy books on the desk, a brass ashtray containing Mr McKie's pipe. He looked around for the crook-handled cane. He had heard so much about Mr McKie's cane. Horse hair, he thought.

'Sit down, Joshua.'

I imagine that you’ve had similar experiences and I’ve no doubt from time to time they’ve figured in your writing..

Hope you found this interesting. If you did, please pass it on.

Back next week.

And Such Great Names as These by Allen Makepeace

Sample or purchase this e-book on http://smashwords.com/books/view/66884

This book is also available on Amazon Kindle

Website: www.johnniejohnson.co.uk

75% of the book’s profits go to the British Limbless Ex-Servicemen's Association

ANATOMY OF A NOVEL 3

2011-09-05T08:45:00.000-07:00

AND SUCH GREAT NAMES AS THESE – ALLEN MAKEPEACE

IF YOU WANT TO GET AHEAD – GET A HAT!

I admit it. I have from time to time laid my head in ladies’ laps, run my hand through their hair, gurgled incomprehensible love tones in their ears, kissed them sloppily on the cheek. I’m talking of course of my infant years. Though come to think of it…

I still vaguely remember those days, my speech still barely formed, and the feel of their hats as I ran my hand across spiky straw or softest velour, as I played with the wobbling clusters of wax fruit or miniature bluebirds or caressed the smooth length of pheasant feathers. Such tulle-laden adornments women then carried on their heads. Nor did they ever seem to remove these vast uncomfortable objects, leaving them there to be admired throughout the afternoon-tea visit or the occasional brief call to exchange some idle gossip that today would be exchanged in seconds on Twitter or Facebook. But these two arrivistes do not require one to dress up, to put on an appropriate dress and coat; they don’t demand a special brooch or necklace; nor do they provide an opportunity for an outing for the latest hat. All gone now, such opportunities.

Dressing-down is today’s obligation just as dressing-up was in earlier times. I recall the poorest women in our town with their shawls over their heads, women in the drabbest clothes, with workmen’s worn-out boots on their feet. But, for very many other women, it was important to dress as well as they could. Dolly Weston, the heroine in the book, is aware of that. When she first meets young Joshua she explains to him how important it is to dress as well as possible.

'Just because we come from round here doesn't mean we can't do our best for ourselves. And I'll tell ye

this,' she said, peering closely into Joshua's face as if to emphasise what she was saying, 'they

wouldn't've been quite so helpful today, that old devil Forsyth and the folks in the hospital, if I'd gone in

wearin' a shawl round me shoulders and me old work skirt. They'd've been difficult, I'll tell ye. They

couldn't have stopped ye comin' out but they'd've been awkward. And there'd've been more fuss gettin' in

to see your mam.'

Mrs Weston folded her arms across her chest and nodded her head as if she was confirming the truth of

what she had said.

'I keep me eyes open, ye know. If somebody I'm workin' for is throwin' clothes out, things they don't want

any more, I offer to buy them, if I think I can do them up nice. I mean that. I do pay. Not much, mind,

and I do get some bargains.' Mrs Weston looked triumphant, happy. 'It doesn't take all that much to

make things nice. I've got this coat and a jacket and some skirts and a couple of blouses that way.' She

nudged him. 'As I say, it's no good bein' poor and lookin' poor.'

At that time – I’m talking about eighty or ninety years ago - most of the menfolk, high and low, wore three-piece suits – jacket, trousers, waistcoat. You see them on the earliest news films. As for the hats, you would imagine that they had been designed as a daily reminder of the class system and the higher up the ladder a man might be so the height of his headwear proclaimed his place in society.

For instance, you’d find the financiers, the captains of industry, the politicians, all of them in top hats except when they were on the grouse moors. The only one in our family to wear a top hat was my uncle Bob who wore his when, as an undertaker, he led a procession of mourners to the cemetery.

Then there were the clerks and shopkeepers out and about, but on their heads a bowler hat. Aspiring men, indicating that they were a little rung or two up the social ladder. Just that little bit …is the word ‘classier’?

And then there were the football crowds, mostly working class men, pretty well every one of them in suits and most of them wearing flat caps.

In the book there is a reminder of the social significance of men’s hats, and the bowler and the cap in particular, when Dolly’s brother puts on a suit belonging to her husband..

'This is nicer,' she had said, offering him a shirt with a blue stripe, 'with that suit.' Then he had to

struggle a second time with the celluloid collar.

Now Rob would try the bowler. 'Might as well look a toff,' he said. He looked at himself in the mirror,

testing it at various angles.

'No,' he said at last. 'A dutt's not right on me. I don't look right in a gaffer's hat.'

He placed the bowler on the chair beside the table.

'That's better,' he said when Dolly offered him the cloth cap.

But today, it matters less. The man in t-shirt and jeans: is he a boilermaker or a banker? The girl in the frilly top and black tights: what is she, where does she stand in terms of social status? You just can’t tell.

Times have changed.

Hope you found this interesting. If you did, please pass it on.

Back next week.

And Such Great Names as These by Allen Makepeace

Sample or purchase this e-book on http://smashwords.com/books/view/66884

This book is also available on Amazon Kindle

Website: www.johnniejohnson.co.uk

75% of the book’s profits go to the British Limbless Ex-Servicemen's Association

ANATOMY OF A NOVEL 2

2011-09-01T04:35:00.001-07:00

AND SUCH GREAT NAMES AS THESE – ALLEN MAKEPEACE

HANDS, GLOVES AND CLASS

Gloves? Don’t talk to me about gloves.

When I was in my teens, my mother, hoping to advance me up the social ladder, always used to insist that I carry gloves to church on a Sunday evening. Not that she or my father ever went to church but she knew what was socially demanded of me as their earthly representative. And your mam’s your mam and there’s no refusing her. She didn’t know that I used to put the dratted things in my jacket pocket as soon as I was out of sight. Well, what boy would have done anything different? Especially in north-east

England

Ladies, of course – real ladies, I mean, and that included most women - always wore gloves in those days. And they never went out without a hat. (Note to self: must fit in something about hats sometime).

In my novel, And Such Great Names as These, a very smartly dressed lady learns that young Joshua’s mother has been taken to hospital and that he has been sent to the workhouse. She brings him out with a real show of authority after only one night. Dolly is a total stranger to the boy and he is rather overwhelmed by her.

They are travelling to her house on the tram. And then, in the course of the journey, the conductor comes to collect the fares…

She took off her gloves to rummage in her purse and for the first time Joshua noticed her hands. It was because she looked so grand, so well dressed, that he had not been prepared to see such workworn hands, the nails torn, the flesh almost raw and ingrained with the grime of hard work. His mother's hands were like that; he was used to seeing them like that. But this woman, with her very good clothes, and her very confident manner, like a real lady, ought not to have hands like that. Mrs Weston saw him staring at them as she pulled her gloves on again.

'Oh, Joshua,' she said, shaking her head and smiling. 'I'm not a toff if that's what ye think. I work hard for me livin'. Cleanin'. Cleanin' folk's houses. Like your mam. And it's dirty work. Doesn't do your hands any good.'

But if Dolly Weston is quite unmoved when Joshua sees her hands she is less confident when it comes to dealing with the army officer with whom she has fallen in love. Here he comes, the love of her life…

Hector waved, came walking towards her. You'd have taken him for a soldier just by the way he carried himself; the straight back; the crisp sure‑footedness; the eyes steadfastly ahead as though he were led by distant trumpets. His light overcoat, his homburg, could not hide what he was, a real soldier. As he came closer he waved again and Dolly could tell even at that distance how he looked, the cheerful boyish expression, the kindliness of his eyes.

The first time, she thought, as he walked towards her ... the first time ... the day he'd come to Mrs Waterstone's ... she had answered the door and let him in.

And what a mess she'd been, her hands covered in black lead. She'd never expected a caller and there she was on her knees rubbing away at the oven door, when the bell rang.

'I've come to see my sister,' he had said. 'I'm Mrs Waterstone's brother,' he had added unnecessarily.

And Dolly had been conscious of her dirty hands and her bare arms. I'm a skivvy, she thought, but I wish I didn't look like one.

'Oh, right, sir,' she'd said, standing aside, feeling she wanted to wipe her hands on her apron and knowing that would make things worse. She stood aside at the open door, her hands flapping uselessly at her side and wondering if her face was smudged. She had stammered out how Mrs Allen, the full‑time daily, had been called away on family business and that she, Dolly, had been asked in just for the day.

I was looking for a heroine who would not be beaten down by circumstances and this is how I hope Dolly appears most of the time. In another scene she is quite clearly ashamed of her work, of her hands and of herself and I think that Hector, middle-class through and through, is very understanding.

'I'm sorry,' he said gently. 'You should be proud of those hands. They're like your campaign medals…people have all got their value. You mustn't think signs of work are anything to be ashamed of.’

Good old Hector. So many people thought differently in those days. They even celebrated the notion in their hymns. Remember the lines?

The rich man in his castle

The poor man at his gate

He made them, high and lowly,

And ordered their estate.

It was an idea that suffused the period and that made love affairs of the kind I have described very problematical.

Hope you found this interesting. If you did, please pass it on.

Back next week.

And Such Great Names as These by Allen Makepeace

Sample or purchase this e-book on http://smashwords.com/books/view/66884

This book is also available on Amazon Kindle

Website: www.johnniejohnson.co.uk

75% of the book’s profits go to the British Limbless Ex-Servicemen's Association

ANATOMY OF A NOVEL

2011-08-27T01:36:00.000-07:00

AND SUCH GREAT NAMES AS THESE – ALLEN MAKEPEACE

My Liberal Education

Miss Madden who taught me in junior school was - at least I think she was – a fairly cultivated sort of person. She loved poetry and stories and we loved listening to her reading to us. She wasn’t a beautiful woman. I could see that, even at the age of eight or nine, but she wore nice clothes with bright dangling beads and her straight black hair worn in a fringe was tight to her head as if she wore a helmet. I liked Miss Madden who must have been in her forties when I knew her.

And she taught magical history lessons. How we beat Napoleon and won the battle of Trafalgar; described the treachery of an Indian prince and the Black Hole of Calcutta; and about when we whipped the Spanish Armada and how our soldiers beat off the savages at Rorke’s Drift in South Africa; and about Wolfe’s troops in Canada, scaling the Heights of Abraham, to defeat the French. What examples to all of us. Never any doubts about us and our courage, because we were a strong, adventurous, noble race. How could we not win?

Usually the teachers you like will occasionally tell jokes but I remember only one joke from Miss Madden. In the days before photo-copiers you had to put a ‘skin’ on the tumbler and then turn it by hand and the copies would slowly chug out. But before operating the machine it was smeared with a thick, black, gooey ink which came out of what looked like an oversized tooth-paste tube. That was when Miss Madden used to crack her only joke which, though expected, always seemed so fresh and newly minted.

She would hold up the tube of black ink and say: ‘Darkies toothpaste.’ And how we laughed and smacked each other on the shoulder and repeated the words to each other. Darkies toothpaste. Ridiculous. We all knew that they had white teeth.

Maybe after that we’d have singing and many’s the time we sang ‘Swanee River’ about the ‘darkies’ on ‘the old plantation’. Why children in north-east England in the 1930s were singing about such an alien world mystifies me now but the adults of that time did not question such usage.

Even my grandfather, a jokeless man if ever there was one, used to refer – in what context I cannot recall – to ‘a ginger-headed darkie’ and we used to laugh at the absurdity of the image.

In the book, Mr Pybus the schoolmaster speaks to his class of the glories of the British Empire with the same casual abandon and the same unquestioned assumptions of English superiority. Note the emphasis on ‘English’.

'We've got a new world map.'

Mr Pybus was unrolling it, holding it by one hand under his chin until, opened out, it covered his knees.

'And look here,' he said, waving his free hand airily across the surface in front of him, 'this in red. See it?'

He paused like the proprietor of a well‑stocked emporium, smiling at the class as though he was about to reveal a personal triumph to them.

'This in red? Eh? Well, it's all ours. Belongs to us. The British Empire.'

Any other day Joshua would have been enthralled. To learn that he was heir to all that, that others owed so much to him and his fellow Englishmen, would have entranced him. Even today, his neighbour, Michael Lawrence, with no elbows to his jacket sleeves, swelled with the pride of ownership. The four other occupants of the Windsor desk were equally impressed. All these darkies they had beaten.

India

. Africa. Jackie Udall eased his feet in his brother's cast‑off boots. Betty Wright stopped picking at the purple‑daubed spot on her face; Ernie Pattison's open mouth betrayed his black and broken teeth; and Alan Hogg ran his hand through the fringe in front of his close‑shaven scalp. The whole class, every one of the sixty boys and girls, treated the information with proper respect and wonder.

'Think of these people before we went,' Mr Pybus told them. 'Poor, benighted savages.'

***

'Not all darkies either,' Mr Pybus was saying. 'Up there,' ‑ he pointed at

Canada

‑ 'they were Frenchmen.'

Now he moved to

Australia

and

New Zealand

. 'They're ours too. And they're white.'

Mr Pybus paused to take a deep breath, heightening the drama of his tale. It was important to him, to these bairns, to know what Englishmen were doing for people in other places, people without advantages. He tugged at the ends of his generous moustache, preparing to launch into the next stage. He would just be brief today, give a broad picture, let them know of Wolfe's victory, the gallantry at Rorke's Drift, the treachery of the Indian prince at the Black Hole of Calcutta, the lack of civilisation before the English reached Australia and New Zealand. He would give more detailed accounts of each event later in the year.

'The White Man's Burden,' he was saying when there came a knock on the glass pane of the classroom door.

Enlightenment, Mr Pybus is telling them. It’s our gift to the world.

And it’s what Miss Madden in her history lessons implied and her comment about the ‘darkies toothpaste’ never struck us or our parents or grandparents as other than a really good joke.

And it’s from these kinds of long-fermenting memories that stories come

Hope you found this interesting. Do respond! And if you did, do forward it to others!

I’ll be back next week!!!

And Such Great Names as These by Allen Makepeace

Sample or purchase this e-book on http://smashwords.com/books/view/66884

This book is also available on Amazon Kindle

Website: www.johnniejohnson.co.uk

75% of the book’s profits go to the British Limbless Ex-Servicemen's Association

Got it just about right now

2011-08-26T05:53:00.000-07:00

Some of my followers (at the present count there are two of you: there were three until I managed to remove my presence earlier today for I’m the last person who would wish to follow me) are likely to be mystified by the sequencing of the three previous blogs. Simple – ‘Bewildered’ comes first, then ‘Settling in’ and then, the most recent, ‘Blooging Vampires.’ I've had problems! But I've got it about right now!

Tomorrow I shall post the first of several blogs related to my novel, And Such Great Names as These. I shall endeavour to post the blogs at least once a week. The title is ANATOMYOF A NOVEL. It’s not litcrit, not heavy stuff, but it is an attempt to look at the genesis of the story and how my own background in some ways influences the telling of the tale.

In brief the story is set in 1916, during World War One, and the action is located briefly in the battlefields of France. Most of the tale, however, takes place in north-east England.

There are four major characters; a working-class woman who is having a love affair with an officer recuperating from war wounds; a deserter from the carnage of the Western Front; and a ten-year-old boy who becomes closely attached to the three adults.

So this is a war story, a love story and an account of a boy growing-up in very difficult circumstances.

The book was highly praised when it was first released. See the reviews on Amazon.

And perhaps I may need to tell you that that Allen Makepeace is credited as the author of this book. But I’m Johnnie Johnson and I created him!!

Bewildered

2011-08-26T01:49:00.001-07:00

I don't quite know how I have arrived here. Up till ten minutes ago I was bewildered, uncertain which button to press but in blind optimism I went ahead and here I am. Fact is that I arrived at some point last night and sent off a blog but I didn't address it to anyone so it probably way out there. What I think I'm letting you know is that I'm not at ease with modern technology nor indeed with the vocabulary. I just do not understand so amny of the words of instruction: why do they allow computer people to write the instructions?
Anyway, just to let you know that I'm here though I do not know who will receive this or whether it's just graffiti on the cell door. Perhaps if there is anybody on the outside you'll let me know. Just to say, hello and tell me that I'm not just talking to myself.

Settling in...just

2011-08-26T01:47:00.000-07:00

Goodness, I’ve just been away for a couple of days in Holland and I have come back to an avalanche (that ought to read ‘fifteen’) of responses to a blog I sent out sometime last week. I had no addressees and didn’t know quite where it would end up – if anywhere - so I’m astonished that so many of you have found it. Thank you for your welcome.

I must say that I’m quite overwhelmed and not a little abashed because the sites are so beautiful, so skilled and professional. I have to tell you that I’m not into providing anything so elegant. Of course I’ve looked at the suggestions but they are going to take some time to work out. Truth is I am not comfortable with the computer. Never have been. In the last year or two of my working days I was offered a machine but declined. I didn’t think that a chap as naturally inept as I would gain much benefit and nor would those who employed me.. So it wasn’t until my retirement in 1988 that I began my uncertain relationship with the computer.

In addition to your kind offers of friendship, the lady who looks after my computer needs has emailed to tell me that I have opened two blogs, both named Blue Eyes, and recommends that I get rid of one of them. She makes no comment about the fact that I have managed to follow myself, which I imagine to be quite rare, but I fancy that I might have cleared up that matter now.

I am aware that this is a catch-all blog but I’m unsure of the courtesies. Ought I to write to each of you personally or should it go out as a general blog? Think I’ll try it as a general blog but only after I’ve worked out what to do with these URL things.

Just a last word – the above is serious. It’s the real me. I’m not playing for laughs.

Blooging vampires and others of that ilk

2011-08-26T01:44:00.000-07:00

I never really thought that this blogging business would keep intruding so much. As I told you, last week we were in Holland - well, that's a perfectly acceptable reason for not appearing here - and then no sooner were we back than relatives from US were staying with us. They went earlier today and so I can again get down to continuing my career as a blogger. (In a recent post to another recipient I inadvertently referred to 'blooging' - my fingers are all over the place on this machine - but I fancy it's a very useful alternative, a Freudian portmanteau word - 'bloody' and 'blogging'.)

But really what I intended to say was that I have been looking in some depth at book publications and reviews and have been surprised, though I ought not to have been, by the number of books about vampires, horror figures and werewolves which are now being published. I mean we had Mary Shelley and Poe and Bram Stoker who kept us more or less satisfied with this sort of thing for years and years and now there's this sudden onrush. How has it come about? Maybe the sainted JK Rowling has unintentionally nudged readers in this direction. Anyway, should we be pleased at this development?

2011-08-05T12:53:00.000-07:00

I feel as though I've been invited to a party and I'm the only here so far. I've been looking around the place and getting a mite confused. Nobody here but I'm receiving all sorts of instructions and suggestions and I've tried to accept them - it's rude not to accept offers when you're in a new place. And I've done something crass beyond measure: I've got a follower and it's me. I'm following myself. There's a story I read somewhere - maybe Poe (and I'm not throwing the name around to impress you because I'm lost here) - about a man following himself.
Anyway, I'm going to send this off into the ether though there's no addressee so it may be hanging round up there for God knows how long.
So, here goes...help!