Empires...

Empires come and go. They expand and contract. This is true and it is empirically provable (or disprovable, if you prefer).

Places, on the other hand, are static. They remain in one place. If one ignores the movements of the earth, then they do not move at all. A place remains the unchanged. Things located there may change. If one encountered a building once, and returned to the same place in a thousand years time (if such a thing were possible), then one would find the same building, if it were robust enough. More likely, one would find it's ruins or only traces in the ground.

If a place stands near the boundary of two empires, then over time it is likely to be part of both. Sometimes it will belong to one, and at other times it will belong to another. There will also be times when it sits in a no-man's land between the two.

Like the tide ebbing and flowing, the empires will reach out and engulf a place and then recede and abandon it. History has a rhythm, like that of the tides. Not driven by our sister the moon, but by more distant bodies; the stars themselves, moving in their paths.

Novomosty is a place which has been subject to least two empires. As political allegiances and languages have changed then so has its name. The name may have changed, but the place has remained remarkable constant over the last century. It is, to use the common vernacular "a hole". Some people would call it something worse, by adding an adjective. They would be right. There is little to recommend Novomosty, except perhaps one thing and that only matters to someone like me.

At one time Novomosty (it went by a different name then) was a bustling frontier town, made rich and unsafe by trade and its proximity to the border. But fashions and borders and the goods which people want to buy and sell changed and the merchants and their money went elsewhere. Almost everyone who could leave, left, and what they left behind was a sparsely populated place, inhabited by ghosts, some alive and some dead.

Yes, Novomosty is a hole, and I call it home.
  

RE: The mad old bat, her one eyed son, Mable the pig and Gertie the goat

M, There isn't that much of a tale, but I'll tell you what there is. The cottage was called "Fox Meadow". At least that's what it was called in the brochure. Sometimes they use made up "cute" names in brochures so it might really be called anything. It's somewhere near Torrington, in Devon. It was one of the earlier summer holidays after N and the girls moved over to Ireland. I've just spent a fruitless couple of minutes with Google maps, hoping I would recognise some place names, but no joy.

I remember that we all met up at J's in mid-Wales and then I drove to Devon. Went over the old Severn Bridge, and turned right along the M5 through Avonmouth. Not a route I'd taken before, because it's just not the way I would travel to the west country, especially if I was starting from London. I remember that we paused somewhere for ice-cream. That delayed us.

Finding the cottage was a little bit of a struggle. It wasn't near anywhere much and was tucked about half-a-mile up/down a lane which turned into a bridleway. Effectively it was the end of a very long cul-de-sac. The building was, or had been, a row of cottages, with what might have been a cottage or might have been a barn at one end. We had the "barn" bit and "the bat" and her son had the rest. It looked like two or three cottages, but had actually been converted into one dwelling.

Anyway, "the bat's" name was Mrs Cameron and the son's name was Fergus. Must be some Scottish connection there somewhere. We turned up and they showed us the cottage (more of that later) and invited us to drinks. Drinks were in a sort-of communal garden which stretched along the whole of the front of the building. The whole set-up was very pleasant.

Our cottage was on two floors. Mrs C would have been in her eighties. Fergus wasn't around when we first turned up and I noticed that Mrs C didn't show us upstairs. She just indicated the stairs. I don't blame her at all. The stairs were the kind that only just qualify as stairs, rather than ladder and I had to duck near the top because of the slope of the roof. The cottage was stone and cob with a thatched roof. The first floor was really part in the roof and the windows were all very small. On the ground floor there was a sitting room and a kitchen with a stone-flagged floor. Simple but adequate. I remember that the bathroom was a bit primitive, but then what do you expect in a place like that. Everything worked. Upstairs the floor was uneven and the ceiling was low. There must have been an attic above the ceiling.

The garden was at the front of the building and the back of the building was almost blind. The only window was from the bathroom. Close by on that side there was a large pond which went along the full length of the building. We gave Siobhan and Margaret strict instructions that they were to go nowhere near the pond unless they were with Mummy, Daddy or Fergus. They didn't. They were much more interested in the other side.

So much for the building, now for the inhabitants. I got the idea that Mrs C some money. Probably from a deceased Mr C. She had some idea of being an artist. I saw some of her paintings and also went to an exhibition in Bideford where they were showing one or two that she had produced (among a hundred others!). The paintings were alright but unremarkable. The kind of landscapes that little old ladies paint. She really was daft as a brush. Fergus was, or had been, a professional  photographer and I got the impression that he didn't really want to be there. I think something had gone wrong somewhere else and that he had escaped to live with Mother. He did all the maintenance around the place. Fergus would have been in his late 50's or 60's, and as I said had only one eye.

Mrs C and Fergus seemed to be running a very small small-holding as well. Or maybe they just liked keeping pet animals. They had Mable the sow, a goat and a whole load of free range chickens. Siobhan and Margaret loved the animals. Mable's name really was Mable. Siobhan and Margaret decided that the goat must be called Gertie, so Gertie it remains. Mable was enormous and black and very friendly. She would snuffle at the fence if you stood there. Gertie as a great favourite. Siobhan and Margaret used to pull leaves (mostly docks) and Gertie was happy to take them, which of course delighted Siobhan an Margaret. Have you ever looked in a goat's (or sheep's) eyes? Most peculiar. They have sort-of dumb-bell shaped pupils! The hens used to just wander around the place and if we left the door open would sometimes come into the kitchen and have to be shooed out again.

It was really a very nice place to holiday with small children. Quite reasonable to let them wander around at the front on their own.

The nearest pub was a fair walk for me. I remember I located it with an Ordinance Survey map and it was a mile-ish footpath all the way, mostly through woods. Safe enough, but a bit of a challenge on the way home.

One little detail that I've just remembered was that Fergus told me that there was an attic that ran the whole length of the building and that he had to go up there on crawling boards for some reason.

Anyway, that's it. Not axe-wielding or screaming madness. Just a couple of eccentric people living in rather a nice place.

I enjoyed writing it anyway.

Cheers,

T     

Alice

Hello Steve, That was nice! Don’t worry about rambling. I like rambling stories. I’m on my lunch-break now, from doing some interminable course about an Oracle database. Useful, but…

I can’t say I was ever a “fan” of Alice Cooper (or should I say “Vincent Furnier” and try and sound like I know him?). I liked the music. When you’re our age, “School’s Out!” still has a particular ring. I really like the idea of “Eating from the bush”. So much so, that I just walked to the bottom of the garden and picked two of my own apples. The crows have pecked away at most of them but I found two decent ones. They’re now sliced up and sitting on a saucer beside me. Oracle will be just a little sweeter this afternoon.

I like the idea of you and Carol watching and listening from a distance. It strikes me as being just a little naughty, in a child-like kind of way. It sort of reminds me of when Noreen and I were on our honeymoon (gosh that’s a long time ago!) We did a cruise around the Baltic. This particular day, we were ashore in Stockholm and the Swedes had some enormous festival on. Even though we had a cordon-bleu dinner waiting for us on the ship in the evening, we played hookey (at least that was what it felt like) and dined out on ice-cream and hot dogs! (In that order too!)

I know what you mean about Alice being accepted by the establishment. It seems strange. I thought it was odd when I found out that he plays golf as well (and he plays it well, too). I don’t know but I have a feeling that Alice himself considers his situation mildly amusing.

One of the things which I think we’ve lost with the wonders of the internet is some of the idea of “foreign-ness”. Would anyone think of buying an imported disc any more? I don’t know. I don’t buy much music these days. Being a citizen of the world is nice, but I don’t want the world to become homogenous. I want it to be difficult to get some things, just so I can have the fun of finding them and the satisfaction of getting hold of them. And I don’t want to go to the far side of the world and drink Guinness. I know it’s good for the Irish economy, but I don’t want to do it.

When I was in Siberia I had a little money trouble. Nothing serious, but for the first few days I couldn’t find a cash machine that would accept any of my cards (that’s a Pre-pay card and credit cards and debit cards from two different banks, in two different currencies). You can’t buy roubles outside the country, and I’d only got about 50 quid’s worth I’d bought in Moscow airport. I was due to be there for 4 weeks and I was worried I was going to be short of cash. There was a Frenchman on the same course in the same predicament as me. With a little help from the Russians we identified several _different_ banks (no point it trying “Barclays” twice) and one afternoon  set out to try them out. We were successful. We had already agreed that if only one of us was lucky we would do some kind of deal, but we both “struck gold”. He spoke a little English and my French is limited to numbers. In any case we were supposed to be speaking Russian. He looked at me and asked “Pivo?” (Russian for beer), to which my response was, of course “Da. Pivo!” The first bar we found was an “English Bar” serving “Fuller’s”! (Not London Pride, but a made-for-the-market version) It tasted good (especially as an hour earlier I had thoughts of going hungry, never mind thirsty), and it was a blistering hot day, but I didn’t really want to be drinking English bitter in the middle of Siberia. Especially not “…made in Siberia by Britons” bitter!

That’s _my_ ramble over. “Back on your heads.” I don’t know if I should base a philosophy of life on a pop song, but I will try and eat a little more from the bush. I still have my saucer of apple slices to help me with Oracle.

Good wishes to Carol and the family,

Regards,

Tom    

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Tom,

When Carol and I were young, before we were married, we were keen fans of Alice Cooper.

You may remember a record collection with all his/their recordings from the first 10 years of the career.

But we have never been ones to attend live performances.

Our favourite song by Alice is ‘Apple bush, apple tree’ from their first record (in 1969?), not released in UK until late 70s but purchased in 73 as an import by a boyfriend of my sisters.

Anyway this song has proven to be a philosophy of life that we have stuck with.

‘There’s people who succeed, they don’t try hard, they’ve found a way to live with ease, by eating from the bush instead of the trees’

We have always been modest in expectation and see pleasure in small things that are already around us. It helps if you live in the finest little village in all England, surrounded by National Trust property to which we have free access, so you don’t have to work yourself to death to earn the money to buy it all and then worry about maintaining it.

We have watched Alice’s career with amusement over the years, culminating with his acceptance into the establishment, presenting his radio show on the BBC.

So you wait 40 years and in the end.....he arrives to play in the next village.

‘No Mother he is not playing a wedding at the village hall’ although stranger things do happen around here.

Fairport Cropredy Festival you know, but what are they doing inviting Alice to play to folk fans?

Just because he’s old doesn’t mean the music is any different. ‘We play all the old hits as close as we can get to the original sound’ says Alice in an interview for the festival.

It was almost 2 weeks ago, he was headline act on Thursday evening. Some years we have heard every song quite clearly, we are 2 miles from Cropredy and can almost see into the site if we go to the far side of the church yard. We decided it might be fitting to listen in from there. What time do you think the last act will be on? 11 or 12pm? No this is Cropredy and they all expect to be in bed for 10.30pm.

But disaster, by 9.30pm the wind was in the wrong direction, all we could hear was the motorway behind us. So we got in the car and drove toward Cropredy, stopping at a favourite spot of our girls, beside the Oxford canal at a tiny hamlet called Apple Tree. It’s 3 farms spread over half a mile and a group of shanty shacks along the canalside, clearly built without regulations or planning permission, housing people more dedicated than we are to ‘eating from the bush’.

And there he is singing away, unmistakably Alice Cooper sounding really good, about half a mile over the hedge and across 2 fields. The light is dazzling and that’s just the floodlights around the site, we can’t see the stage. The sound is clear although the wind is still in the wrong direction. Carol says she wouldn’t want to be any closer, she is uncomfortable with it pounding in her chest. We lean back against the side of the car and watch the stars and bats swooping around us. When another car comes past we see the air is thick with moths and bats diving between them.

We listened to 4 or 5 songs, I recognised only 1 of them and that not a great classic, and that was enough for us oldies. Glad that we hadn’t been deafened and blinded. We drove on some more but not past the site, through Cropredy village which was quite lively with people leaving the concert, more oldies all looking a bit dejected in their brightly coloured home knitted jumpers. The pub was very popular, running a festival fringe concert, more like traditional folk, they are welcome to it.

Sorry this has turned into an epic, I only meant to write a couple of lines.

Steve

The overalls - and a wallet

I bought a set of second hand overalls from a stall at an auto-jumble. The were made of sturdier than usual material, almost the sort that are worn by welders. They are (I still have them) a deep blue. Down the front there were a few stains, so they had been used. They also had signs of wear. They had two breast pockets and below the waist had slits so that the wearer could get access to the pockets in whatever they wore underneath.

When I got home, I examined them more closely. In an inner pocket inside the chest, which I had not noticed I found a wallet. Not only that, but the wallet contained what seemed to be a substantial sum of money in three different currencies. Of course, by then in was far too late and the sale had long closed.

I contacted the organisers of the sale, but with the limited information I was able to give them, they were unable to help me trace the stall-holder.

Second Person, Present tense

(Written Friday 18^th January 2013; 16:45)

This is an exercise. I’m writing to you. You may know who I am. I may know you. If you do, then you know that parts of this are made up. On the other hand, maybe they are real too. Two aspects of writing which I hardly ever use are “second person” – You and “present tense”. I have decided to combine the two into this passage, as an exercise. I expect the result to be mildly uncomfortable both in the writing and the reading. I hope it will have a kind of immediacy. We’ll see!

I’ve planned this passage in my head. Not word for word, but the headings and the flow. I’m going to try and write it in one go, with little or no correction except for obvious mistakes and spelling errors.

Here I am, sitting looking across at you. The room is dark, lit only by the coals glowing in the grate and the hurricane lamp standing on the mantelpiece.  Some while ago you told me that you had taken to wearing a dressing gown. In my mind’s eye I have transformed this into a luxurious robe; the fabric is embroidered with a rich pattern which I can’t make out properly in the darkness. The collar and cuffs are trimmed with ermine. You are sitting in a high wing-backed chair, to the right of the fireplace and you have an embroidered smoking cap on you head. The tassel of the cap is hanging down on the side nearest me. Naturally, you’re smoking. Perhaps you’re surprised to learn that you are smoking a churchwarden pipe, which is long enough to sit comfortably in your right hand which is resting on the arm of the your chair. Each time you inhale I can see the tobacco in the bowl of the pipe glow brightly and then the brightness subsides.

On your feet you are wearing large fluffy “Garfield” slippers. I don’t know why I should think that you are, but it seems appropriate.

Maggie is sitting on your lap. From time to time I can see the firelight reflected in her eyes.  It is a strange mixture of colours; red when it reflects from the surface of the eyes and green when it reflects from the back (the retina). She is smoking a pipe as well. She has her left paw tucked under her and her right paw is in front of the, supporting the pipe. Naturally, her pipe is a little smaller. It has a meerschaum bowl with what I think is a curved amber stem.

I am sitting on the settee in front of the fire. The room seems to be a little larger than I remembered it, but that is a strange effect of the darkness. Outside the area illuminated by the fire it is difficult to see the boundaries of the room. In my imagination it could reach out to infinity. I don’t think it does because it does not feel cold. Maybe it should feel cold, because I get the impression that it is snowing outside.

On the table beside you there is a glass. When you lift it the amber liquid catches the firelight and sparkles.

If it is snowing outside, it must be winter. It is not cold in here. Everything is calm and comfortable.

(Finished 17:10, Pages: 1, Words: 569)

Moonlight

(Written Wednesday 9^th January 2013; 18:55)

The room was bright when he woke. As usual he had gone to bed leaving the bedroom curtains open and the light of the full moon flooded in. Keeping his body under the blankets he shuffled upwards so that he could look out of the window. The grandfather clock in the corner of the room said that it was well past midnight.

Reluctantly he slipped out of bed and knelt on the rug. He pulled the chamber-pot from beneath the bed and pissed in it. He felt relief flooding through him as the stream of urine struck the white enamel.

Curious, he decided to go and look out of the window. The bare floorboards beyond the rug were cold beneath his feet. When he reached the window, he paused and looked towards the horizon. The moon was high in the sky.

On a whim, he opened the French windows and stepped onto the balcony. The stone wall around it was lower than one might expect. It was barely higher than his knee The architect had been more concerned with the appearance from the ground than with safety. Casually he stepped over the wall so that he was sitting astride the parapet. Surprisingly the air felt warm. He brought his other leg over and sat facing outwards with both heels resting on the ledge at the base of the wall. He studied the moon. Slowly he rose and stepped forward. The night air was firm and resilient, like turf or an expensive carpet. After a moment's pause he began striding forwards and started climbing confidently towards the moon. He walked with measured paces. There was no need to hurry. After all, he had the rest of the night.  

 (Finished 19:10, Pages: 1, Words:250)

Let it be. Randomness

I overlooked this

(Written Sunday28^th October 2012; 11:07)

I only have till 11:30. I’m not going to dwell on the problems, I’m just going to write. I’ve going to try and be positive, no ranting or raving, just writing.

I started having more thoughts about “The funeral”, and how it could be built into a story. It seems to me it is a beginning, probably of the book and possibly a prologue before the main plot takes over. It could also have an epilogue as well which would be digging it up again. I think the theme is going to be “manipulation”. Somebody or something is making things happen; not controlling them, that is not what they want to do, but guiding them. Make this an alternative history or fantasy where someone is guiding things in the direction they want. They don’t always succeed, but they have enormous power which, for some unspecified reason, they are reluctant, unwilling or unable to use. The text can be an opportunity to speculate about the nature of gods and free-will.

Some of the chapters could be shaped around ritual. There is no need to make it obvious, I’m not trying to reproduce the ritual, simply use it as a source.  I can note down the bits I can use as an aid-memoire elsewhere.

That’s better. My mind is flowing a little more freely now. I don’t feel as “stuck” as I did earlier this morning. Time to get off to the cooking though. I would like to get that started and then I can come back here.

(Breaking off: 11:20, Resumed:... )