ashlyme

Labyrinths and leaks

2025-06-03T09:07:42Z

We've had an intermittent drip from the dining room ceiling for ten days now. We were given various explanations: a broken pipe, faulty sealant on the bath, or standing water from a leak last year . Four visits from four different plumbers in just over a week! Bloody tedious, stressful, and expensive.

A couple of nice things from the weekend. I won a Mari Lwyd badge on Ebay and she now adorns my peacoat. The badge is not quite three inches across. The Mari has gold spirals along her jaw; she's framed by a starry disk of sky and a sprig of hawthorn in fruit.

An old friend of B's came up from Reading. We had a picnic in Memorial Park among the copper beeches then a drink in Allesley, where I later walked a turf maze. They've cut it into a patch of wildflower meadow in the churchyard; the paths wind through long grass and speedwell. A sign encourages you to walk slowly and meditate; well, I didn't. The second time through I went a bit fey and sorta danced through it when I thought B and Kirsten weren't looking. I'm a bit disappointed I didn't end up somewhere else. My ears are about as pointy as ever.

Currently reading A. L. Lloyd's FOLK SONG IN ENGLAND.

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You step into darkness, I′m standing with no one again

2025-05-08T14:51:07Z

We took off for the Mayday weekend - away to the hills and ochre towns of the Cotswolds. As the train passed through Oxfordshire, we saw the dishes of some small observatory among the fields - huge daisies turned to the sun. We spent the first day exploring Moreton-in-Marsh until our hotel room was free - it's not a town really designed for the walker: heavy traffic, you can't always tell the pavement from the car park, and as we found out later, a vital bus stop was only marked out in flaking paint on the concrete. Good real ale pubs though. I rescued a battered 1912 book on Cotswold village life from one. One nuclear Thai curry later, we turned in.

The day after Beltane, we set off for the Rollright Stones. B and I have been talking about visiting for a long time. Part of the Tom Baker story THE STONES OF BLOOD was filmed here. A short busride to Little Compton, then uphill walking: hedges creamy with Mayblossom, hills blue with distance, like the Debatable Lands. More skylarks than I've ever heard before. The last leg was hellish - along a main road with no pavement, builders' lorries rattling past, kicking up dust. Then I saw the stones of The King's Men through a hedge. Worth it after all!

Legend has it the ring of stones was once the army of an invading king, tricked and petrified by a local witch. She's supposed to have become an elder tree straight after. It seems a poor reward for her pains. I don't think human hands shaped the King's Men much. They have rough-rippled outlines, much-pitted; speckled with white and gold lichen. They seem to hunker against the ground; the tallest was crowned with white swags of May. It seemed fitting. One or two have holes all the way through, like huge hagstones. I took a photo through one (cursing my knees which are closer to pensionerhood than the rest of me). A slant of hedge, misty-green profile of firs in the distance. It was only later I realised I'd recreated a still from THE OWL SERVICE title sequence. Someone had performed a rite here the day before - in a little scoop of ground they'd written "Beltane" and a heart drawn in rice grains and petals, as well as scattering sprigs of lavender; some of it was also tucked into clefts in the stones. I didn't count the King's Men, though one girl did while we were there. Partly superstition I suppose, also a feeling that it was poor manners to try.

Saturday, we made a pilgrimage out to the Four Shire Stone, a mile or so out of Moreton. It stands ten or twelve foot high, grey-gold limestone soft enough that generations have cut graffiti into it - a palimpsest in rock. Warwickshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Worcestershire met here until the Thirties. The county borders were shuffled like cards. It's tempting to dream that the Stone might call a new shire of debatable hills and into being to make up the balance.

We were waiting for a bus into Chipping Norton, in search of books, ale and lunch. The Stone itself seemed to be the bus stop. At least one driver pointed and laughed. I wondered aloud if even the babies owned cars round here. Anyway, we made it in; after a lengthy browse, Beth had scored a guide to English parish churches and the Observer's Cathedrals. I found pamphlets on sundials, a history of walking in England, a collection of Virginia Woolf's essays and a Forties travelogue along the River Wye. A lunch of soup, a breadboard, and Hook Norton beer. The journey back was soured a bit by a bunch of Australian gap-year students out on the piss. They didn't hassle us, but they were loud and dickish and cajoled one local lad they didn't even know into downing a pint at the stop. Thank god they piled on the bus to Oxford.

We came back Sunday. It turned grey and dreich and has pretty much been this way since, but the May is still in flower.

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A ghost that floats over ancient fields I roam

2025-04-22T13:40:49Z

We went out Saturday to try and clear our heads a bit. We plumped for Allesley. It's quite close to the city centre and there's a holloway there; I've just read Macfarlane, Donwood, and Richards' book on the subject. Plus there's a tried-and-tested pub there that does an excellent cheeseboard.

A quick delve in Oxfam yielded an early 70s street-map/guide to Coventry and a copy of A. L. Lloyd's FOLK SONG IN ENGLAND. Then out to Allesley. The church (All Saints) is a mixture of Early English, Norman, and 1860s restoration in dull pink sandstone. The rebuilt spire looks a bit askew crowned with a pennant weathervane. They're leaving part of the churchyard clear to cut a turf maze. I'll go back and wander that when it's done.

Behind All Saints there's a ridge and furrow field, auburn earth ridged by medieval ploughing; the blackthorn there is still creamy with flowers. A rippled red path takes you into the holloway. You walk uphill past domed fields (oaks misty with new leaves; russet molehills; a horse grazing by a distant fence); an annex of the churchyard; a dead and cropped tree like a signpost. The lane itself isn't very deep; we found old bricks in the soil from a previous paving. I stepped in horseshit and didn't mind - it felt like home. There was a floral scent in the lane, sweet like elder or May, but neither of those were in flower yet and it wasn't the blackthorn; I don't know if you can call that a haunting.

We got into The Rainbow ahead of the showers to find a Bank Holiday beer festival on; so worked our way through several different ales as well as various cheddars, walnuts, grapes, and bread. I can't say we came back with clear heads but we didn't regret it.

Currently reading George Ewart Evans' ASK THE FELLOWS WHO CUT THE HAY, a history of Suffolk farming and village life. Good, if a bit of a trudge in places.

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Fuck 'em, and their law

2025-04-17T12:19:35Z

So, we really are TERF Island now. I'm scared, depressed, disgusted. Too distracted now for any of the obvious things that might help my head, so I'm spending as much as I can sitting in the back garden. We have blue tits nesting in the box on the back fence; lots of speckled wood butterflies passing through; various hoverfly species pause over the bench - I'm not sure why it's a favourite spot. There were high winds yesterday. I wanted them to carry me away from all this bullshit.

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My genes have been so many people

2024-11-11T13:52:36Z

This last weekend:

I caught up with an old friend I've not seen since Coventry Pride. Since then he has been on a cruise around Norway and acquired a new boyfriend. Back home we made gratin dauphinoise aux poireaux - a new recipe for us. It worked pretty well, though we agreed next time we'll cook it with Red Leicester instead of Gruyère: not only tastier but easier to find!

Yesterday B was under the weather: we curled up and watched several episodes of Brian Cox's SOLAR SYSTEM. I'd forgotten it was Remembrance Sunday until I went out into the back garden and heard the bagpiper strike up in the cemetery.

Recent books: Malcolm Yorke's MY EYES MINT GOLD might be the best biography of Mervyn Peake that I've read. Now on a slim book of tree and tree-lore called GREEN SHADE by a New Zealand classicist, E. F. Blaiklock. A signed copy of Jeff VanderMeer's new novel has just arrived - courtesy of a friend, so this'll be next. Fingers crossed it lives up to the Southern Reach trilogy.

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ashlyme @ 2024-11-08T08:58:00

2024-11-08T08:59:35Z

I am scared for and of America. I'm scared for the world. Anything I could do to make life a little more bearable - reading, watching a film - seems pointless and self-indulgent. This last year or so, I've felt more and more as I've no place in life; Wednesday's news just made me want to just totally give up. How do I fight all this? How do I carry on? Somehow I must.

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strange to behold the stone of this wall, broken by fate

2024-11-04T15:49:47Z

We spent this last weekend in York, staying with old friends of B. I've not been in forty years; the Jorvik museum wasn't open then. Saturday morning we walked through the old grounds of St. Mary's Abbey and St. Olave's Church. We'd just caught the final days of the "Ghosts in the Garden" installation: forty-five wire spectres scattered across the green space of the city; a few shades brighter than the dove-grey sky. I think they're lighted at night. Amongst the ones we found were: a Saxon monk, a beekeeper, an archbishop, a peacock. I would have liked to meet the fiddle player but it wasn't to be. (The website also lists "a stereotypical ghost"!)

A circuit along the city walls towards the Minster - which we properly strolled round on on Sunday morning as the bells pealed. I've recently become interested in sundials (enough to buy a set of 1920s cigarette cards on the subject) and was happy to find one outside the cathedral. Several pictures later, we went on in search of two of my favourite things: second-hand books and ale. Minster Gate Books may be the busiest shop of its kind that I've seen (narrow landings, made narrower by bookcases, narrower still with people like me who crouch down - or even sit cross- to scan the shelves) but in lieu of traffic lights the customers are all very polite. B collects the Edwardian Bell's guides to English cathedrals and found three that day. I would have needed two or three hours longer (and ideally a couple of hundred quid) than I actually had to properly browse; but came out with a recent paperback of Alan Garner's collected folktales; a Mervyn Peake biography; and an edition of The Natural History of Selborne from the 1880s, which I think is the oldest book I own. Lunch, then a pint of vanilla porter with B and our host.

It wasn't til Sunday that we took a stroll round the Minster. We both had pastries: C, a cinnamon bun, a sweet potato and feta roll for me.The bells were in full peal (it seemed apt that I found a pamphlet on bellringing - written by one John Camp - at Oxfam a bit later). The first leg of the journey home was okay, if cramped; then we got to New Street, which is always cursed if you're trying to get to Coventry. One train cancelled due to lack of staff, three minutes before it was due to arrive; the next trying to carry two loads of passengers; people trying to push their way on before the carriage had even emptied - always a dick move. In comparison walking back from Cov station was bliss.

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the chalky children of evermore

2024-10-16T09:52:12Z

We live next to the cemetery on London Road; the back windows look over the graves, and I've wandered round both halves (it's bisected by a railway) many times. A Victorian account describes it as having ‘more the air of a gentlemen’s park than a city of the dead’.

In the older half is an Anglican chapel, built in a Norman style, sporting animal-faced grotesques that look both too old and too Surrealist to have been carved in the 1800s. The chapel was renovated a few years ago and is now in use as a community and arts space. Saturday night we went to a gig by two local musicians there.

It was advertised on the poster as an evening of 'folkish drones'. The first set was pure magic - an hour of medieval instruments (shawms, recorders, and crumhorns) looped with pedals and synth. It didn't take long to feel I was elsewhen; the fact the performer was washed with aquamarine light only helped to reinforce that. (Her name is Jude Rees; unfortunately she doesn't have a Bandcamp or solo releases out.) I went out for a roll-up in the intermission. There was a tang of bonfire smoke between the old graves; a half-moon peeked through the trees. Afterwards we found a pub in a wasteland of industrial estates and student housing (not including the aptly-named Short Street, a stubby survivor I'd guess of an older neighbourhood). The landlady invited us to attend Kazoo Night.

Currently reading Alan Garner's POWSELS AND THRUMS, which is a patchwork of memoir, poems, and essays; often hilarious, sometimes heart-breaking - the chapter on AG's friendship with Alan Turing made me put the book down for a while while I seethed. Get it when you can.

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And kiss the flowers that bend

2024-08-15T11:20:43Z

Saturday we went to visit Nick Drake's grave at Tanworth-in-Arden. I've meant to go for years. His childhood and final years were spent here, not so far from where I grew up. The parish church is St. Mary Magdalene, 1300s: grey stone with a golden weathercock. B (who drove us, and is more of an expert on ecclesiastical buildings than me) pointed out the somewhat wonky chancel. It was a dove-coloured morning, a drift of fine rain coming through the trees - Drake weather.

Quite a few of the gravestones are early Victorian or earlier, their words lost to weather and lichen, or ivy-shawled. Nick's resting place wasn't hard to find: nestled under an oak tree. He has a simple rounded stone, inscribed with his name and those of his parents'; the lyric NOW WE RISE AND WE ARE EVERYWHERE on the back. Fans have left flowers, shells, scraps of tannin-brown paper with lyrics on. A sprig of cuckoo-pint berries; and, rather oddly, a German business card. I wanted to bring something to in tribute - in the end, I laid five leaves on the earth. It seemed right.

A pot of tea at the Bell pub afterwards (it was still raining). It looks across a plectrum-shaped village green to a sweet chestnut tree and an old red phone box. I noticed the latter was in use as a free book exchange, so I left B to pore over a guide to Warwickshire churches. It's been a very long time since I've been inside one of those phone boxes; the door closed behind me and I let out a nostalgic sigh. Not much to be picked up, though: mostly self-help books and romance novels. I hesitated over a rather battered copy of A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW; in the end brought back a book on whisky for B.

Lunch in Hockley Heath, which doesn't have much to recommend it except a canalside pub and a war monument with three sundials (the inscription read THE DAYS SHORT, THEIR WORK GREAT, THEIR DAYS PASS LIKE A SHADOW. I've not encountered many sundials but their mottoes are rarely cheerful. I've got a little book on that subject). The sun came out; we walked along the towpath for a few minutes and came home. Brighter later, indeed.

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Memories are uncertain friends

2024-05-03T09:16:34Z

I aten't dead. I've been gone from here far too long, though. Just a quick entry to restart.

A lot has happened in the last few months. My mother died in this house; I saw it happen - I've not discussed that much on social media, and may/mayn't write about it more here. Better stuff: I found a new partner (let's designate her B from now on) in Coventry, and I spend a lot of time over there now.

Yesterday was grey and hazy: an elongated dusk. I hadn't slept well, and my IBS was playing me up worse than usual; but I walked down to the village hall to vote. It's gratifying to hear Boris was turned away from his local polling booth for forgetting photo ID. Idiot.

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Beware the silent sign

2023-06-13T23:15:26Z

I dreamed last night of making and gifting an hourglass to a friend, filled with the pale red sand you get if you dig a few inches into the soil round here. Tonight is too hot for me to sleep for a while yet, still enough that I could hear a fox moving through the grass under my window; light in the sky at 11 PM - eggshell-green, ash-pink. I rewatched ENYS MEN this evening - bought the DVD - and I'm turning it over in my head like a pebble.

M. John Harrison's "anti-memoir" WISH I WAS HERE is very much worth waiting for, oblique, wry, often laugh-out-loud funny. I almost danced at the very tolerant bookseller as I bought it.

"I could run but I couldn't run away. I still felt as if there was some between me and the world. In some lights it was a window, in others a mirror."

Buy it if you can!

The worst thing about the last couple of days is that I had to cancel my debit card. I thought I'd lost it along the Ash Path; went into the bank to sort it out, then discovered I had left it on the counter in my local shop. Some swearing was involved. At least nobody else got to use it, I suppose.

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Hahahahahaaa

2023-06-09T22:21:32Z

So Boris is gone. I shan't mourn. I wish I had a glass of something to toast his demise, but I'm meeting JH tomorrow for a pub lunch, so just a pleasure deferred. Misquoting Tom Baker's Doctor a little: history won't miss him.

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Nobody knows when I am, I think

2023-06-02T16:05:35Z

Yesterday I found myself in the South with a friend, visiting Waddesdon Manor - the chateau of the Rothschild family, incongruously popped down in a Buckinghamshire village. An opulent sort of place: there are marble wine coolers with the face of Bacchus on them (being an ale-loving pleb, I wanted to drop a couple of bottles of auburn beer into the water). A gilded elephant automaton as you enter - sadly not in operation; I'd like to have seen that. A malachite urn presented by a Russian Tsar. A small Watteau painting of masked comedians. Napoleon's emeralds in the treasury room, along with jade elephants, iridescent glass, mother-of-pearl boxes; security on that room didn't seem as obviously tight as it did in the wine cellars! A fine tall tree-fern caught my eye as we left.

I've waited *years* to see a red kite, and saw seemingly dozens over the roads and fields. They are huge birds, at least as big as buzzards. We passed signs for villages called Oddington, Marsh Gibbon - which really should be someone's pen-name; had a quick pint where the Cotswolds meets Warwickshire: I've missed houses in yellow limestone, never expected to find them so relatively close to me.

The last few weeks have seen me frantically working on a new story (the first in five years!!!) called IN THE WHITE MAY. It's set mostly in the 90s and revolves fey visitations in the rural Midlands, as well a toy theatre, a playground dancing game, and the folklore of hawthorn trees. Glad to say it was accepted for publication yesterday, for an anthology of tree-related strange fiction, hopefully coming out later this year. A huge thank you to sovay , who read it and made lots of helpful comments. Hopefully it won't be as long a wait for the next story.

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The countries where I cannot read

2023-03-09T00:53:39Z

Snow has fallen all day. It only started settling at tea-time. I took a picture of the field just now (it's after midnight) and it looked like dusk on my mobile screen. Despite this, hawthorn is coming into leaf in the hedges. The young leaves are nice to nibble on (an old country name for them is "bread and cheese") - pleasantly bitter, a bit like rocket, perhaps?

I came back from seeing a friend in town to find a copy of Vernon Watkins' "Ballad of the Mari Lwyd and Other Poems" waiting for me. Some of you will know I'm mildly obsessed with the Grey Mare and I've been after this book for a while now. It rarely turns up for sale online for under fifty quid, so I snapped it up when I got an offer for a quarter of the price. This does feel like Mari-weather.

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Birds, dreams, bells

2023-02-07T23:06:17Z

Because some random things make a post:

Spacedog's Sarah Angliss looks at two centuries of sound effects here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001hxs4

Bookmarking it here as I've not actually listened to it yet!

I spotted a grey wagtail in Kingstanding a couple of days ago. They're gorgeous little birds - slaty- backed with a lemon-yellow breast; tremulous. I note this as I've *never* seen one in a city suburb before; only by running water near my home. Pied wagtails are a fairly common urban sight. I don't know why this bird was pecking about on the concrete by Greggs - there's a canal about a mile away.

A slew of strange vivid dreams the last few days. Lesbian demon mafiosi - fairly benign - at war with a male criminal gang; I was the non-binary gangster's moll in what felt like a very British animé story. Drinking with a real-life friend in a not-real country pub, only for us both to be stalked by the Wild Hunt. The British Army (or maybe UNIT, but Doctorless) hopelessly bombing an alien mildew erasing the land.

I'm on a slow mission to re-read everything by Dorothy L. Sayers. STRONG POISON yesterday, which I loved. Wimsey seems a fairly attractive character to me still; urbane but not condescending, quite willing to look silly. I always did like detectives who underplay themselves. And here the limelight is shared by a few strong women who learn safecracking or the art of a dodgy séance to save someone from the noose. Next book up is probably John Camp's IN PRAISE OF BELLS, a little study of the traditions and folklore of British bells. I'm pretty sure Sayers' THE NINE TAILORS is mentioned a few times!

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Certain there's more than searching

2023-02-01T14:39:36Z

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.

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A body I have seen

2023-01-27T13:01:28Z

Some impressions of Mark Jenkins' ENYS MEN (non-linear thoughts, but then it's a non-linear film). Written for sovay .

It's spring 1973, according to the logbook of the Volunteer (Mary Woodvine): an elfin woman in her fifties, monitoring a rare flower on an island off the Cornish coast. Her days seem much the same. Tea and whatever broadcast the old ivory Dansette in the kitchen can offer. A thermometer reading of the soil near the flowers (the logbook reads "no change" over and over). Dropping a rock into a mineshaft and waiting for it to hit. Reading a paperback of Edward Goldsmith's A Blueprint for Survival by candlelight. Contact with the mainland is usually lost in a drizzle of static; a taciturn boatman drops off supplies. She makes him scones, fucks him against a wall; they have sparse conversations. She tells him "I'm not on my own."

Well, there is the standing stone that neighbours her cottage, looking like a hunched hooded figure with its back always turned to the camera. And there are the ghosts. The Volunteer has brought one of her own to Enys Men - a dark-haired teenage girl in cardy and flares who likes to stand on the glass roof of the outhouse. The Volunteer warns her against it - too late or too soon? We see the girl tumble through glass, a stomach cut open... and the Volunteer lift her pyjama shirt to reveal a long scar on her belly. Memory, dream, haunting - they all seem one here. The other ghosts are of the island. A door opens into a tunnel filled with silent staring miners; white-clad children hold flowers and sing in Cornish around the ruin of the cottage; a drowned lifeboat crew stand on the cliffs. They seem content to watch the Volunteer as she goes about her days; are they malign? The boatmen grin when she presses her palm to the hob of her cooker. Another time, she's about to drop a rock in the mineshaft when she sees a miner beaming up at her from the depths. The dead aren't giving anything away, but then even in the face of all this, the Volunteer is pretty opaque too. She seems stoical rather than truly frightened.

Time is awry on Enys Men - looping or jumping tracks. She finds debris from a wreck yet to be on the shore. One moment she's entering the cottage, the next glitching back into being at the standing stone. The stone itself vanishes from the landscape. The grey-green lichen that grew on its face spread to the flowers, more real than their white petals - and then they colonise the scar on the Volunteer's stomach: an image right out of Aickman's last story "The Stains". (Maybe it's worth noting that the only other book that appears with a title in ENYS MEN is the Observer's Book of Lichen; I have the same edition, in the same dustjacket.) A shot of the logbook's previous pages implies she has been on the island for a very long time - it's too fast to see the dates. The Volunteer cuts an unblemished flower, returns to an ivy-shawled, glass-less cottage, and it feels to the viewer that this is not the cottage of the past after all... but it might be a home of sorts.

I loved it, of course. Calling ENYS MEN "folk horror" does it a disservice - it feels closer to Rudkin or Garner in spirit than say, MIDSOMMAR. Its ambiguity, cycles, and the closed-off protagonist remind me of POSSUM There is no sacrifice, no evil. Just Time, happening all at once. The rituals we see here are mostly the Volunteer at her work. It's a story of landscape and hauntings, perhaps one of a woman settling into her own ghosthood. I'm not enough of a film geek to talk about Jenkins using 16mm film, but the colour saturation seemed rich, like an old picture postcard. I collect them, so that's not an insult. Apparently all the audio was dubbed post-production, which might explain why I felt there was something strange about the sound; I couldn't quite put my finger on it. There's little dialogue in the film, so nothing is affected. Woodvine is superb. Her acting is naturalistic, minimal; the script doesn't show the Volunteer's inner life - but then perhaps it's happening all around her: island as projection screen. Or she herself is being played; a tape in the stone deck.

I came for the ghosts, stayed for the lichen. A DVD is due in May, so I'll be going back to the island.

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And I know what the darkness knows

2022-10-30T19:58:00Z

I don't know why we turn the clocks back at the end of autumn. Why feed the night another hour when it'll be fat soon enough? When I walked back home I seemed I couldn't really see bright windows or streetlights, just the dark between them. I slept badly and the only good thing to come of it was a dream of travelling in time via mirrors, to a pier ballroom in the mid-eighties. I can't dance in real life - not sure if I was any better in sleep.

I borrowed Sayers' THE NINE TAILORS off a friend yesterday and that will be my book to see October out. I've not read Wimsey in thirty-five years. But the strangeness of this one lingered with me all that time, like the echo of a bell.

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Colour me surprised

2022-10-20T13:36:02Z

...and tara, Liz Truss. I'd send out for popcorn if we weren't due another go on the Shitheel Merry-Go-Round. General Election now please - and an opposition leader who isn't Starmer.

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The still sea is darker than before

2022-06-01T00:47:12Z

Dog roses and honeysuckle are in flower now along the lane. This side of the road, the woodbine is flushed with candy-pink and gold; the other's much paler. I've meant to check the hedges for moths or robin's pincushion, but the last couple of days have been pulse after pulse of rain, which might also explain why I've seen no swifts.

I tried to read P. J. Harvey's verse-novel ORLAM at the weekend, but couldn't finish it - there's an act of sexual violence in it that set off a panic attack so bad I was still shaking an hour or so after I put the book down. (This last week in general hasn't been very kind to my mental health, which has been taking a slo-mo landslide ever since my dad died in January.) So I've carried on puttering through a re-read of various things by Ramsey Campbell. Another book I came across recently was THE BLACK HORSEMEN by S. G Wildman. The glorious subtitle is ENGLISH INNS AND KING ARTHUR; Wildman's theory is that certain pub names record the passing of Arthur's cavalry as they fought off Saxon incomers around AD 500. It's pleasantly bonkers but not as out there as many other earth mysteries/antiquarian books that came out in the Seventies. He breaks off hs quest to investigate the Red Horse of Tysoe ((a hillside figure in Warwickshire that appears to've gone through several versions before it was erased for good in the early 1900s) and then claims to find traces of other figures in the turf he associates with the god Tiw. Hmm. It's a diverting little read, mind.

Vaguely pecking away at what *might* be a new story called THE GEOGRAPHY, which I'd like to be a sort of Blackwoodian or Machenesque slant of my little corner of the world (and perhaps another one just beyond it, seen through the prism of a certain field). So far So far, it's like doing a jigsaw puzzle without having the picture on the box to refer to. But the pieces look pretty!

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Two wanders

2021-06-02T22:47:21Z

Tuesday I went walking barefoot in a field I don't often explore. I'd just meant to take off my trainers and bury my feet in cool deep grass while reading under a tree, but the decision felt right. I've written about someone else doing this recently, so I wanted to follow that person. let the breeze blow the cobwebs out of my head. It's been a very webby mind of late. There was a buzzard wheeling overhead - I heard its peeiouing few times. Then a pair of crows (presumably new parents) came up from the birches to drive it off. The field was newly cut, speedwell and vetch brightening the margins and under the oaks: you could hear them creakspeaking when the breeze got up. Another field beyond which would have taken me quite close to the airport but by then my feet were itching like hell. There's a corridor of woodland - mostly silver birch - that I can get into at one place where the fence is down. That's an adventure for another day, and probably with a friend. I've been in a little way before but wouldn't trust my own sense of direction much further than that.

Saturday I walked around the Jewellery Quarter with JH (in trainers). We hadn't been there since winter. I've found it hard to navigate, and at least here there's a good reason - a lot of the old factories and workshops are either being converted or demolished, baring doorways or the silhouettes of banisters to the air. We found a building that looked like a nineteenth century townhouse; the plastic sheeting blowing from the glassless windows looked like curtains, an exposed wall a Harlequin in shades of brick. I was looking for (and didn't find any) ghost signs, but there were plenty of little architectural details: a verdrigris'd nightsafe, a stained-glass roundel with a compass and cameo head high above the street, claret-and-sky Victorian tiling. I'd brought J some 1920s German hyperinflationary stamps to complete his collection and a copy of Simon Dewes' Soho I'd found that morning. We had lunch (cheese-and-potato pie and a couple of pints of Salopian's Golden Thread) at the Jeweller's Arms and talked about urban ghosts, postcards, pipes, pince-nez and other ephemera. I've missed the city, the stories it tells me.

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Coax ancient voices from the landscape

2021-05-25T13:22:32Z

My first sight of swallows (or swifts) today. I wish I could give them a bluer sky to fly in - these concrete-coloured days aren't a good welcome to bird or human. It's not all rain - but the odd glint of sun seems like so much fools' gold. Then again some afternoons the rain comes scented with the blossom of the may, so

An hour ago, a fallow (I think) deer grazing where the Halls had their allotment: coffee-grey, little budding antlers. He seemed peaceful.

Yesterday I chatted with a woman who keeps three horses in a little paddock up the lane. We often wish each other a good morning but I thought it past time I talked a bit more. Two of the horses are getting on a bit and have asthma and other conditions; the latest arrival is called Nero, a chocolate-dark little feller who's still playful but settling down after a frisly start. None of the three have done much more when I've said hello than nibble my hand then let it go when they realise I'm not edible. In the evening I walked down into Catney to meet a friend at the (massively) revamped Boat. It was good to see him but it's not a place I feel I'm at home in anymore; it's about twice the size now, and the prices have shot up: you're talking five quid for a pint, and as for the menu.... well, the cheeseboard has improved - you can now slather your Cheddar with quince jelly! But I'm too skint for the place. I'll miss the nights where I could read and talk to someone by a little woodfire. Ho hum. If only there was a socialist equivalent of Wetherspoons...

My second jab is Thursday morning. It won't resolve all the anxieties that hit me in a handy consolidated lump sum last week, but it'll help. Trying to live more kindly with myself today: a DVD or two later, almost certainly the James Mason-fronted documentary The London Nobody Knows. The original book by Geoffrey Fletcher charmed me

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Where are you? How many times must I turn?

2021-04-20T15:28:03Z

My nightmares this morning at least had the decency to frame themselves as horror stories. But it's disconcerting to be both the reader who knows what's coming and the character who doesn't. I don't know if they escaped their doom; I woke up briefly then went back into what felt like the second chapter and that was... horrible. No idea where they came from - the weather's been bright and warm and that's done wonders for my mood. My dad's been ill, my nerves have been a bit ragged and haven't wanted to talk about it on the net, just post frivolous stuff until things blew over.

I managed to read and review an anthology on the Cambridge Chit-Chat Club for the M. R. James zine Ghosts and Scholars at least. With things unlocking a little I've predictably been going a bit wild in charity shops.(Rock n roll, eh?) Recent hauls have included a handbook to a collection of Edwardian taxidermied birds, which should be subtitled Things I Have Shot (I've got a theory it was written by one Colonel Sebastian Moran, late of Moriarty's gang); a coffee-table book on Bakelite radios; a 1950s pocket mapbook of Brum and a biography of Francis Dashwood (both presents for a friend).

I must have at least two or three friends who are DWJ fans - do any of you think highly of the Dalemark Quartet? I got it as a late birthday present. I don't mind a few spoilers!

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Rotating, waiting - forever

2021-04-02T12:01:29Z

I got my first vaccination (Astra-Zeneca) Wednesday morning. The jab was done almost without me noticing; I've had worse off bramble or dog-rose thorns. Coming back in the taxi I saw my first muntjac of the year, on the Parkway verge: the tiniest antlers, anxious-looking (you would be, next to that traffic). Hopefully I'll see him grazing from my window before too long. Later in the day I found half a robin's egg and brought back home. I just found out its colour is sometimes called lost egg blue. Forty-eight hours on I've had no side-effects. Touch wood there'll be none coming. I pulled something in my back the other day and that's made for a couple of long tedious nights. It's migrating towards my waist.

Currently reading Nancy Arrowsmith's A Field Guide to the Little People which thankfully isn't twee as the title suggests. Its wights and goblins aren't averse to dropping the odd four-letter word. Some of Arrowsmith's choices don't quite fit. my idea of "fey": - basilisks, satyrs and selkies? Hmm. There seem to be an unusual amount of fey women whose breasts are long enough to throw over their shoulders. I guess that's warm in winter? Assuming it wasn't women who came up with those tales. It's illustrated by Hans Edelmann who did the art direction for Yellow Submarine. I wish Mervyn Peake had been alive and working in the seventies; just imagine what he would have created for this! This passage on English fairies made me shout But what about Arden?*

They are known throughout England, although they are less numerous in the Midlands.

Pfft. Anyway, it's a good book. A paperback of Peake's Shapes and Sounds came through the letterbox yesterday and that's next. The cover illustration's extraordinary, drawn in the Blitz - a mother made of rubble holding a baby to her: "half-masonry, half-pain."

*Yes, I know Midsummer Night's Dream is set in an Athenian wood. But I'm with Angela Carter that it's just a stand-in for Arden.

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Can you hear me, Penny?

2021-03-23T14:38:41Z

I fell down the Wikipedia rabbit hole in the small hours and now I find I could have lived in a timeline where Benjamin Britten made an opera of Gormenghast. I feel a bit cheated. When I did sleep I dreamed of being a "newborn" ghost learning the physical rules of slipping in and out of pictures. I treated book covers like surfing a wave. Photographs were harder; it was like being locked in a diorama. My mentor was on her way, using bus stop ads as doors, but I woke up before she got to me. That one must've been written by P. J. Hammond on one of his better days.

(sovay - I owe you some words on Schalcken the Painter, but I'll save it for a day when my head is less frayed.)

Have a couple of links:

I've been revisiting Bagpuss recently for some much-needed whimsy. Here's an article on the series and its folk music soundtrack.

Step back in time two thousand years with this soundscape of the ancient Somerset Levels.

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