Certain there's more than searching

[ashlyme]

 

I read Ramsey Campbell's Fellstones a couple of nights ago. It's a fine blend of folk and cosmic horror - think Children of the Stones more than Lovecraft - with the usual Campbellian protagonist increasingly mazed in their own paranoia. There's a lot of references to classical music thrown into the mix; I probably missed a few nuances by not knowing more about that subject. I had the chance to meet Ramsey for a curry many years ago, and always regretted not going; too scared of being tongue-tied, or worse still, burbling the poor man to death.

 

A week back I walked round the old  walled gardens at Elmdon Manor, and in particular the little apple orchard. It was a greyish day; the trees bore a good crop of vivid moss, antlered lichen. I was in search of a story I thought might happen here; the phrase or title "The pewter apples of dusk" has been itching in my head for a week or two now. I could imagine an orchard-wassailing happening here, but not a modern one; a one-off ceremony in the years before the Great War, captured in the bronzy-grey tints of a postcard, a few scraps of lore floating about on local history websites. And some narrator meeting whatever force that lingers on in the garden. (This was never a cider county; local wassails are only a very recent thing. Perhaps the landowner tried to graft his own rites onto this country - but I don't want to bog this thing down with too exposition.) I could imagine the trees were dancing, too fast or slow for me to see, or that someone might slip between the trunks when I turned away - not a threatening feeling to me. Not sure how my character might feel. There was a litter of windfill, rotting-gold in the mud; but I did pick one apple off the branch - ochre, no bigger than a cherry, quite firm when I squeezed it. I thanked the trees - it couldn't hurt, and places like that call to my heathen streak, anyway - and brought the apple home. Still not sure how to write the story. I've been out of the game for five years - it's a little scary going back.

 

Bought a nice coat off Vinted and am waiting for warmer weather so I can actually wear it! Military style, knee-length, black wool with stripes of grey velvet and black frogging near the cuffs. An early birthday present to myself. I turn fifty in ten days' time and still don't know how that happened. I suppose a lot of us think that way. 

 

 

Comments

[sovay]

The irony is, a couple of friends might be off to a Warwickshire wassail tonight, which I can't make. I've asked for pictures.

Make them take recordings!