Aipples an’ oranges

The field lay white and untouched. No-one had walked here before them today, perhaps not that week.  The thick covering hid any minor landmarks that Shona might have recognised in summertime and she stared around, dazed both by the sun’s reflected glare and by her own mild confusion.

“Is this the right place?”  Lena asked.

“Aye, there were twa raws o’ hooses either side o’ the road. You can see bits o’ their wa’s, if ye ken whaur tae look. Least, ye can when it’s not a’ hidden unner the snaw.”

The pair scrunched forwards a few paces, peering around for signs of the old village, though in truth Lena didn’t know what she was looking for.  She hadn’t visited the area before and – with the memory of the faded photographs in her mind – half expected a wee row of cottages to appear, smoke billowing welcomingly from stubby chimney stacks.

“Ower here, Lena! Ah’ve fun’ the corner ay auld Armstrong’s cottage!” Shona gestured to a large tree dwarfing the hedgerow beneath it. “This was ahin his hoose…  a wee bitty weeer in they days, mind.”  She scuffed the ground with her boots showing Lena the remains of masonry still half-hidden in the snow and grinned.

Her lips snapped together as she inhaled a mouthful of chilly air, and a childlike expression of fierceness replaced her grin. Lena giggled and hugged her. For a moment they stood and looked around; at the crisp, clean beauty of the colourless landscape and down at the last remnants of Shona’s birthplace and at their own breath resting on the air before fading up into the chilly nothing above.

“It must have been cold, in the cottages.”

“Well, that’s whit they say, aye… Ah don’t remember the cauld. Ma brithers an ma mam never let up aboot how cauld it wis, but they were aulder when we left. Ah mind my mam singin’ the first Christmas in the new hoose. She and my dad were dancin’ in the front room and my mam kept twirling roon in a summer dress. But… Ah don’t hae mind ay the cauld.”

Shona straightened and clapped her hands together, a trait that reminded Lena of her young daughter, the sounded muffled by thick woollen gloves. The older woman appeared to measure out the houses; walls and windows and doors and, focussing on something invisible to Lena, strode over to a spot close to the road. She waved for Lena to join her.

“This is where Ah used tae watch oot for ma brithers. Ah wis only in the schuil the mornin’ an’ when Ah got hame Ah’d wait at the windae for them tae come tearin’ roon the bend in the road. When it had been snawin’ they’d drap their bags and grab haud o’ the sledge and drag it up tae the hill by the big hoose. If they’d let me, and if ma mam didnae think it was too cauld they’d pu’ me there on it tae. I wid juist staun at the bottom o’ the hill playin’ chicken – Ah wis too feart tae go on a sledge when ah wis that wee.”

She smiled at the memory, but pulled her jacket tighter around her shoulders as though the remembered snow from her childhood added to the keen nip in the air.

“Och… ah mean, ah loved the new hoose as much as the ithers did. We had oor first Christmas tree there.  Ah mind pittin’ on paper chains an’ baubles an’ ma mam fussin’ aboot in the backgrun… But Ah loved oor auld hoose in the village mair. We still came here for the sledging for a couple o’ years then… we just stopped comin’.”

A wistful look crossed Shona’s face, already lined with decades of happiness and regret. Lena pictured her keekin’ out the window, a childish brow furrowed in anticipation and excitement and, for a moment, she too regreted the abandoned village, long gone now. It was Christmas tomorrow. Shona would be with her niece in Kilmarnock and Lena would be back with her family in Edinburgh.

Snow started to fall gently as they walked back to the car park at the old kirkyard. By the time they drove off the fall was heavy. By tomorrow there would be no sign left that anyone had ever been there.

About

I wrote quite a bit when I was at school then I just seemed to stop. However I didn’t stop collecting odds and sods of story ideas and, when taking redundancy from BBC Scotland started looking like an attractive proposition last year (2011), writing and editing seemed like a natural niche to try to occupy. So here I am. (I’m also here in my editing and proof-reading capacity.) And here’s some writing. Much of it is early drafts, there are also chunks of a novel I’m very slowly writing (and rewriting). Some of it is *not good* because that is how writing works, at least in my small corner of the world. But there are bits in every piece I like whether it’s the story itself, one line of dialogue or a character’s quirks. So it’s a start.

Oh, and I am more than happy to get feedback (though no rewriting, please)!

Links to some other non-fiction writing to follow soon.

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The house on the hill

For mum and dad xxx

The house sits a little over a quarter of the way up the hill, on a short plateaux where the gently rising slope of the road catches its breath before rising steeply, invigorated, up and further up. Past The Swan and the post-box burrowed into its mossy stone nook, until it reaches the edge of the village and wanders off across the moor.

It’s witnessed a flurry of activity over the past months; comers and goers, sellers and buyers and deal-doers, sign-fixers, box carriers, auctioneers. And familiar faces amongst the strangers, as family and friends came to say their farewells and offer help and best wishes.

And now it sits alone, waiting, and not waiting, for whatever comes.

It waited before, empty and silent for months the last time, before being filled with noise and bustle once more as experts arrived to poke around – making notes and taking measurements and drawing up plans. New faces appear – a family watching anxiously (and delightedly) as walls are pulled down, stairs ripped out and, slowly, repairs started. Two and then three small children scramble, teetering and over-excited, up makeshift ladder-stairs to run giggling between rooms stripped back to their guts and to peer through each window and door at their new-lives-to-be, all under a wary parental gaze.  The months turn into two years before the experts, hampered by rot – and rotten lawyers – moved on and the family move in, and the house becomes a home again.

To an onlooker, the house might appear proud. Twelve windows, wide and square bar one central ‘porthole’, stare out from its broad walls. Stylish brickwork and a handsome porch underline the house’s formality. Inside, the house becomes a cosy cluttered family home, nestled as if by accident in beautiful architectural details which morph into a house-shaped adventure playground as the children grow larger and bolder. A narrow shelf, held between long oak beams stretching from the ground to the skylight above, becomes a daredevil walkway; legs dangle heart-thrillingly through open treads on the helter-skelter-stairs. Trampoline beds, hopscotch-inspiring carpets and attics (and the tiny dark-dusty corridors between them) are found – and children are lost for whole afternoons.

Week in, week out the house embraces the same rituals; Sunday roasts and pancakes for tea, shaped into the letters of the children’s names, leftovers on Mondays in front of the TV. In the kitchen the walls become covered with childish creations, and chords and discords filter through from music lessons in the dining room. Lazy rainy mornings are spent on the porthole window seat, reading and gazing out. Bath-nights and chasing round the couch to Russian folk music* in the evenings, snuggling with pets and parents, bedtime stories and lullabies.

Visitors come to stay, for a few hours or for weeks at a time. Friends to play and neighbours to chat, family for Christmas and from abroad, and gypsies selling clothes-pegs. A beloved uncle lives as part of the family, on and off for years. Friends fill the house at birthdays and a vixen and her cubs visit the back garden at dawn every morning for a week to tumble and play-fight on the lawn, before disappearing never to be seen again.

In summer the house opens its doors to spill the family out into the garden and for walks in the woods, cycle rides along farm tracks and football on the Orry. The garden is long and even when the sun is low the shadow of the house only reaches the nearest lawn. The garden is a place for hide-and-seek and digging for clay to mould into fat little finger-pots, for swinging and running and climbing trees, for picnics and barbeques and rescuing abandoned birds and bats and builders’ huts. For ‘ordeals by midge’ and occasional camp-outs, listening to blackbirds and thrushes, and stalking Tommy Tortoiseshell as he stalks them. As the summers cool firewood is chopped and coal is stored in an open bunker tucked under the kitchen’s back window. In winter the house flings its doors open too, to welcome pink-faces  back in from sledging and snowball fights and building snowmen, with mugs of warm cocoa and a blazing fire. Frozen-stiff gloves rest on top of radiators and the ice melts into warm drips.

As each Christmas approaches the household gravitates to the fire.  Letters to Santa are written (and re-written) and sent – sucked up into the chimney and spat spiralling out with the smoke into a dark sky. The tree is bought and the family gather round to garnish it from boxes and bagsful of favoured baubles which grow in number each year. Every morning presents are counted and examined, recipient’s names read aloud and hopeful guesses guessed. Surfaces are gradually hidden under a tide of cards as they wash daily through the letter box. On Christmas Eve the stockings – scratchy woollen hill-walking socks – are selected thoughtfully from a musty drawer and laid with awe at the feet of the children’s beds. Whispered vows of unfaltering alertness are the last sound heard before the house falls silent – until footsteps creep in to fulfil dreams.

On Christmas morning the stockings are disembowelled. Each new find examined and presented for approval, rag-dolls or cars, origami paper, chocolate coins and clementines, buys a few extra minutes of rest before parents are cajoled from their bed and the family gathers round the tree armed with boxes, lists and excitement. Later, stuffed with turkey and trimmings and cream-smothered-puddings the family settles once more between the hearth and the tree to snore and squabble over board games and watch films on the telly. The uncle tells jokes and dispenses requests for just one wee whisky evenly around the family, who conspire to let him have just enough for a warm happy glow.

And months pass then years, and nothing changes and everything changes, slowly. The ebb and flow of people gradually shifts. The house watches and changes too as the children first grow then leave to live their own lives, to study and work, to travel and to settle. Friends and family gather at the house to celebrate as one daughter returns – only to leave again ceremoniously, stepping from the porch into her wedding car and returning only briefly as a bride before leaving again for a new life hundreds of miles away; the groom suffering slightly, perhaps, from the whisky and craic of the night before. More years pass and the uncle dies and family and friends gather again to mourn and to celebrate his life, and when they leave the house is still and changed again.

The house is quieter now, for spells at least, between bursts of visitors. Grandchildren visit, playing old games and inventing new ones, exploring the garden and thundering out noise from the piano. New pictures adorn the kitchen walls.

It is not perfect, the house on the hill. It’s draughty and creaky and the doors and windows rattle in the wind. But it’s been a home full of warmth, and memories. And now, the last of the family have found a new home and left, taking their memories with them. And while they open their new door to old visitors, unpack boxes and fill windowsills and surfaces with flowers and cards, the house sits a little over a quarter of the way up the hill, as it has done for centuries, waiting for the next family to come and fill it again with new memories.

*Why? I have no idea. It was fun.

A funny thing happened on the way across the Atlantic…

It was the first night back at Ayr Writers’ Club tonight after a summer’s break… and a good time had by all, I think!  A little bit of club housekeeping, some catching up with old buddies and meeting new members, and (of course) a writing exercise to stretch our underused writing muscles.

We were asked to write a short piece about ‘ourselves’ – except it was to be almost entirely a web of lies, with just three truths sneaked in. There were a few gems, especially from a couple of newbies…

Here’s my attempt. (And my three ‘truths’.)

“When I was 12 years old I sailed across the Atlantic singlehandedly, with only my pet koala, Gilbert, for company. By the time we landed at Boston some four years later I had taught myself to speak Latin, French and Sanscrit, my hair had turned completely grey and I had put on eight stone – mainly from eating too many jellyfish which are widely known to be fattening. I had also brought along a small supply of giant salted and roasted Peruvian ants which I ate with great relish and which, along with the seawater, possibly contributed to my going mad. Once back in Scotland I vowed never to return to the sea and set up a small business raising dancing chickens for the cabaret market but, although I made my first million that way I lost it all gambling on the tiddlywinks and got out of the dancing chicken game, though I still keep a few just for eggs. Gilbert, my faithful companion of many years alas passed away some time ago and is buried under a willow in my front garden.”

Nothing like a bit of good old-fashioned ‘spewing’, as this type of exercise is sometimes known.

Next week it’s back to the (probably not too) serious work of a crime writing workshop.

Sigh, I still miss Gilbert.

SBT Treasure’s writing workshop

A group of us from my local writers’ club recently attended a very interesting writing workshop led by writer-author Ewan Morrison… I was asked to write up the event for the groups blog. Here’s the start…

 

We arrived one-by-one at the designated time, huddling together for warmth while we waited for the last stragglers to arrive* and listening to the rain as it pelted hard on the wide stone shoulders of the bard, who stood guard outside. When it was time, we began.

…It was quite a good laugh, actually.

Ayr Writer’s Club was well represented at writer-director Ewan Morrison’s Treasures writing workshop on Saturday, numbering five of the eight in attendance, including Ewan and the facilitator, writer Ross McGregor. Also in attendance were Teddy and Fluff Monkey – venerable old friends of Linda and Babs’ respectively, a representative from the Mesozoic Era (who sat in stony silence throughout) and various other much-treasured objects.

Read the rest of the post here.

A Handful of Cowries

As a wee girl in the 70s I spent most of my summer holidays in Dornoch, where my grandparents lived. My siblings and I loved the town (actually a cathedral city), with its wide high street, home to the weekly pipe band practise on a Saturday night and lined with touristy shops; the fields surrounding my grandfather’s house, where we took a neighbours’ dog for walks and watched it hopelessly chase rabbits; and the sunny walled garden and orchard where my grandfather patiently grafted fruit trees, a hobby he had picked up living and working as a doctor in Peru. More than anything we loved the endless white sandy beaches that stretched up and down the coast for miles in either direction.

Every year we would race to the beach at the earliest opportunity, stopping only to select an array of brashly coloured buckets and spades from the local shops (transformed into Aladdin’s caves of tourist tat over the summer months). Once we had arrived, passing the golf course clubhouse and the caravan site on the right and miles of scratchy machair-covered dunes to the left, we would inspect the panorama; comparing what lay before us with memories from previous visits. Here was the best place to pitch camp for the day, with the obligatory stripy wind-breaker, rugs and picnic bag; there was the huge rock from which you could dive into the sea when the tide was fully in (or lose a shoe to an unexpectedly big wave, the other shoe later being donated to the neighbours grateful dog); and there, further on, the best rock-pooling spot.

After an hour or so of splashing and exploring, one of us three would plonk down on the sand and begin the annual serious business of cowrie hunting.

‘Cowrie’ is the name given to a particular type of seashell found washed up on beaches. Tiny, pinky-white and delicate-looking (but actually rock hard), the shells are a softened oval, ribbed with curved lines. They look almost like a child’s pinkie fingertip. Around the Dornoch area cowries are – or certainly were in the 70s – relatively rare. Over the course of three weeks’ worth of studious beach-combing we might only find two or three between us.

We would each select a patch of sand and inch our way forward on hands and knees, eyes darting around to pick out the tell-tale perfectly formed little shells, perhaps moving a stone to inspect what lay underneath or brushing a few grains of multi-coloured sand from a tiny mound, only to be disappointed to find a still pretty, but less coveted, smooth and milky-pale pebble, or a little fragment of mother-of-pearl, and always careful to avoid kneeling on any spikey sundried seaweed.  Our eyes would only leave the miniature sandy landscape, inches away from out faces, to sneak a look at each other’s progress. If one of us was successful we would whoop triumphantly and wave our minute trophy in the air while the other two would have to decide whether to abandon current searches and move to seemingly more fruitful pastures, or keep going doggedly on.

The end of the school holiday would arrive too soon, we would say goodbye to my grandparents, their cats and their house and leave Dornoch and its ‘Carlsberg don’t do beaches but if they did…’ behind for another year.

For any of us children with a new cowrie in our pocket, the sadness of leaving would be tempered with the knowledge of what was to come. Once we’d settled back home, at some point one of us would suggest a game of ‘shop’. Due to their rarity, cowries were much prized, and for the price of a cowrie I could buy a week’s loan of my sister’s favourite ragdoll, several copies of my brother’s Beano… or pretty much whatever my heart desired.

In 1979 my grandfather died, my grandmother moved to Inverness to be closer to her sisters and holidays in Dornoch stopped. I wouldn’t visit again for over 20 years, and when I did many of my childhood haunts were gone, or so changed as to be unrecognisable. The fields beside my grandfather’s house had been torn up and built on, the towering rocks we used to leap into the sea from were a shadow of their former monolithic selves, half-buried in the ever-changing sandscape.

The first summer after my grandfather died we spent our holidays on Iona. One morning we decided to walk to the nearby beach. I have a clear recollection of a long straight walk along a road with large flat fields on either side and the constant sound of crickets chirruping. We got to the beach and found a likely looking spot. One of us must have sat on the sand, picked up a handful of sand to sieve through inquisitive fingers … and found a cowrie. A miracle! Soon we had two excitedly clutched handfuls of cowries each. That beach was forever more in my mind called ‘Cowrie Beach’.

Our holiday came to an end and we went home. Each of us was desperate to play shop, to spend the vast riches of cowries that we had accumulated. Perhaps my older sister had a glimmering of understanding but my wee brother and I were at a loss to understand why our cowries, once considered so ‘valuable’, were now practically worthless.

I sat with a cowrie cupped in my hand, dwarfed even in my small palm, my gaze drawn along each line and back and tried to understand what had happened. I still loved my cowries, I could still see that each one was a perfectly beautiful miniature object, but somehow, something had changed.

*

Last year, on a beach in Cornwall, I found a cowrie completely by chance (on Orkney and Shetland they are called ‘groatie buckies’, I don’t know what they are called in Cornwall). I looked around for more, enlisting the help of my three children, but there was none to be found.

 

 

Faerie

 The willow, to many folk, appears to be full of sorrow as her heavy branches reach down to take comfort from the solid earth. But willows are strong. Willow stands for survival and rebirth; for second chances.  In the field next to the old school, someone has built a little living willow hut. The children sit in it to hide from the sun and the rain and each other, and as a place to think and imagine.

Ghoulish shapes and grinning faces flicker in the half-light, looking down at the gleeful youngsters leaping and birling around. Isobel would like to join in, but remains in the shadows watching. Light glints rhythmically from above the unlikely gathering, casting strange and hypnotic shapes on the wooden floor.

A green shape weaves through the mass of bodies towards Isobel and small hands try to pull her in to the throng.

They had chosen the fabrics together, sitting side-by-side on the floor by the rag basket. Faded deep green cotton for oak, soft yellow silk for autumn beech, silver velvet for poplar. They had rubbed the scraps against their cheeks, giggling as the sweet textures tickled.

In an instant the magic flees the scene. Plunged into a harsh light the assembled crowd, young and old, squint and shade their eyes. A figure strides to the centre of the room and demands silence in a voice used to being obeyed.

Giggles escape into the hushed space, quickly smothered as Mrs MacKendrick raises her eyebrows in the general direction of the P2s.

“Right, you little monsters… and rabbits… and robots – the judges have made their decision, so it’s time to announce the winners. Before I do, I’d like to thank all the parents and teachers and classes 2a and 3b for their fantastic efforts towards making the Halloween disco such a success.

“So, without further ado, and in reverse order third prize goes to… “

“Stewart Hamilton, for his Fantastic Mr Fox!”

The crowd clap and cheer as Stewart stands stock still, wide-eyed and grinning madly. His mates barge into him playfully and he snaps out of the spell and punches his arms into the air victoriously.

Isobel glances at May, Stewarts’ mum. She looks as bashful as her son, carefully avoiding the other mums’ eyes but with a hint of a laugh on her lips.

They gazed around as they meandered along the wide avenue of sky-scraping trees, down at the patchwork quilt of fallen leaves then up into the tallest tree tops. Sunlight squeezed through the thinning leaves above. Holly and Ivy stood stark and bright against the softer yellows and browns. Holly, they decided, for protection, (the prickly leaves were true against lightning and witches alike). Dancing ivy, October’s tree, for celebration and perseverance. Besides, they both had such pretty leaves.

“In second place we have… “

“Lindsey Hamilton. Well done Lindsey, I do not think I’ve ever seen such a convincing ‘Time Warp’, or indeed any time warps at all before tonight!”

Lindsey bops about happily, grinning at the other girls in her class and preening. The girl does look the part, Isobel thinks, and she should know, she’d put long hours of work into the child’s costume. A swirling hooped skirt of shimmering satin, tilted to just the right jaunty angle. Armlets fashioned in exaggerated whirls of silver and blue ribbon. With her pale face and hair braided tightly to her skull Lindsey looks not-of-this-world, like a child model from the future.

Isobel resists looking at Helen. Her face would be predictably schooled into a picture of modest delight. The invoice for the costume will be settled, naturally, but Isobel will not get a repeat order. To Helen, second prize was akin to failure.

“Do you know where tree faeries live?”

Isobel tried to remember, but before she could speak…

“I know the answer! In Hawthorn bushes. At least, that’s where everyone used to think they lived in olden times. I looked it up on Google, mum, at school!”

Isobel laughed and rewarded the answer with kisses. But her daughter’s smile slipped away as she remembered another lesson learned that day.

“I don’t even think they still exist, mum.”

 “And the winner of the fancy dress costume is… Gillian Scott!”

Isobel watches as her daughter laughs and claps her hands with pleasure, hugging her friend before skipping over to her mother.

They found a faded emerald t-shirt dress that would be too small to wear the following summer and too worn to pass down or sell. They worked together, mother and daughter, carefully cutting and sewing, each admiring the other’s work. Delicately they fashioned leaves to encircle the dress’ neckline, colours shifting through the autumn rainbow before the shapes fluttered down to the hem – strips of crushed organza – willow, blowing in the breeze.

“Mum! Gillian won – I knew she would!” Debs declares, before skipping back to grab her friend’s hands and twirl her round and round.

Light glints off the tiny beads sewn into the fabric leaves on Debs’ dress as she and her friend spin around, laughing and sharing innocent whispered secrets, and Isobel is grateful for every stitch – of love, of wonder, of gently spent time – that has woven their lives together.

Book Review – ‘The Incomers’ by Moira McPartlin

Moria McPartlin’s debut novel The Incomers is a thought-provoking tale which follows the book’s protagonist, Ellie, as she adjusts to her new life in 1960s Scotland.

The book describes the events which take place in a small Fife mining village over a few months in 1966. The author moved to a similar village as a child and her own experience as ‘an incomer’ was partly behind her choice of this theme for her first full-length work.

In the story, Ellie has travelled from West Africa to join her white husband, James, the local estate factor. Ellie is not the only incomer in the community. Through her tale we also meet the Winskis, a Polish couple, and Mary, a young girl who has moved from England with her family. Each of these outsiders deals with the trials of integrating into a strange community in their own way. The Winskis’ struggles with isolation and separation from home and family leads to tragedy, while watchful Mary makes her own childish decisions and sacrifices in her efforts to fit in.

Beauty

The room was cool and dimly lit. The contrast between the sumptuous leather sofas and the stark equipment, lined up meticulously along the shelves, was somehow unsettling.

Scott stood a little way back, almost in the shadows, his arms at his sides. Steel glinted in his hand.

Rachael met his gaze reflected in the mirror, sparking a memory of the first time she had met him. She had been so young, they both had. Rachael had been nervous but Scott’s aura of confidence had helped to calm her. She remembered chattering excitedly about the evening ahead, conscious of fluttering her hands about like a school girl. But Scott had made her feel beautiful.  He always made her feel beautiful.

Ghost writing

“You’ve killed me! You absolutely vile, treacherous, ungrateful bitch. I actually can’t believe you’ve killed me off.”

Sara stared at the apparition with dumbstruck horror. She’d just finished the eighteenth chapter of her latest Hell’s Angel novel and had decided to treat herself to a celebratory treat. When she’d walked back into her study, mouth still full of creamy Swiss chocolate, this… thing standing beside her writing desk had started ranting at her. She (it was clearly a ‘she’) seemed to be furious with Sara for some reason.