![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
It is not he, and the night's coming on
Oct. 1st, 2020 03:42 pmA few days ago, I walked around Bournville with JH. Someone was playing a carillon in the Village School as we passed by; I'd never heard one before. It's a very quiet suburb of the city; not many other walkers around. J showed me the Serbian Orthodox Church, which with its greened copper domes could belong in Portmeirion. Lots of gorgeous architectural details across the village: eyebrow gables, deep porches, Arts and Crafts houses with little buttresses. One front garden was filled with the stone heads of classical gods, and though we saw no Pan, we hoped the owner was a Machen reader. A fat paperback lay broken-spined on a wall. It looked like a trap. We walked into town along the canal; where it parallels the railway from Stirchley the twopath is hedged with yew and old man's beard just coming into whisker.
A less epic walk today, just down the cut to Copt Heath Wharf. There's a weird rusted-orange vessel moored out there, submersible-looking, with a huge spiderweb-paned porthole window, KITTIWAKE stencilled along the top. No idea if it's a container or lived in. Some balsams still in bllom in the damp places, Queen Anne's Lace too: the leaves are usually dusted with mildew, so they're only few shades darker than the flowers. Rosehips everywhere, fat rubies; a few nightshade berries, bright on dead vines.
A Facebook friend found his copy of Edward Gorey's Dracula toy theatre last night, and ever since then I've mulled over writing something about them. Can you think of any weird fiction that revolves around toy theatres? I think they feature in a late Russell Hoban novel, and (perhaps) in Aickman's novella The Model, but there must be others. The thoughts (such as they are) are trying to connect with a scenario I have in my head, featuring characters I can only see as being played by Murray Melvin and Toby Jones. I don't know yet if the theatre is an intrument of haunting or a layer of ghosts. The word bramblejack jostled in today but I think that's a whole different story.
A less epic walk today, just down the cut to Copt Heath Wharf. There's a weird rusted-orange vessel moored out there, submersible-looking, with a huge spiderweb-paned porthole window, KITTIWAKE stencilled along the top. No idea if it's a container or lived in. Some balsams still in bllom in the damp places, Queen Anne's Lace too: the leaves are usually dusted with mildew, so they're only few shades darker than the flowers. Rosehips everywhere, fat rubies; a few nightshade berries, bright on dead vines.
A Facebook friend found his copy of Edward Gorey's Dracula toy theatre last night, and ever since then I've mulled over writing something about them. Can you think of any weird fiction that revolves around toy theatres? I think they feature in a late Russell Hoban novel, and (perhaps) in Aickman's novella The Model, but there must be others. The thoughts (such as they are) are trying to connect with a scenario I have in my head, featuring characters I can only see as being played by Murray Melvin and Toby Jones. I don't know yet if the theatre is an intrument of haunting or a layer of ghosts. The word bramblejack jostled in today but I think that's a whole different story.