And so to Bristol, for a bakingly hot weekend of crime. Last weekend was the annual Crimefest run by Myles Allfrey and Adrian Muller and I, for one, would like to say a big thank-you to them for making such a brilliant weekend possible. Quite frankly, the thought of organising a convention on this scale makes me want to climb a tree and pull it up after me, but Myles and Adrian sale through and even (gosh!) look as if they’re enjoying it.
Writing, as it’s often said, is a lonely business. That’s perfectly true in my case, mainly, I suspect, because if anyone tries to make it a sociable business by coming in and nattering to me while I’m working, I tend to bite their head off. So it’s really great to get together with a crowd of other partial serial hermits and blow off steam.
How Crimefest works is that every published author gets a panel which they share (thank God) with three other writers and a moderator. My panel was moderated by the incredibly competent Edward Marston, author of tons of books, including the railway series which are fun about Inspector Colbeck, a mid 19th Century policeman with a penchant for railways, Rebecca Jenkins, author of The Duke’s Agent, an 18th Century mystery which I’m halfway through and enjoying very much and Andrew Taylor, who, despite being by any standards a star, is a very modest man and a very good speaker. The discussion was called “Centuries of Murder” and allowed all sorts of musings on why, with modern conveniences to hand, we should bump people off in the past. Dunno really. It’s more fun that way I suppose and you don’t have to bother about DNA and stuff.
Duty done, I was able to sit back, relax and watch everyone else do the work. The amazing thing is how well-informed everyone seems and what active lives folk have had. Take Linda Regan, for instance. As well as being a writer she’s an actress who’s starred in The Bill and Holby City, Pat McIntosh who’s a palaeontologist, Zoe Sharp who’s action woman personified and Michael Stanley, who’s two people really, both retired South African professors, who have tracked lions, fly aircraft and fought bush fires. Sometimes I think I haven’t tried hard enough. Having industrial amounts of children and going to Tesco’s doesn’t seen as exciting somehow.
But, of course, the real pleasure of any weekend like this is meeting old friends and making new ones. J.G. Goodhind (Jeannie to her friends) is always fun to meet up with and like the living embodiment of her character, Honey Driver. Less corpses perhaps – but that’s a social plus, really. Dinner beckoned and a group of us hit Bristol. I was trying to drag my fellow diners into the 21st Century by showing them my ipod. Marvel, I said, at its neatness, its compactness etc, etc. Prithee, look and I will even use it as a video camera. Well, that fell flat. Without a handy teenage I couldn’t get to play the damn thing. Huh. Never mind, I said, brightening, there’s tons of music on it. Play me something you think I’d like, said Rebecca Jenkins. Okey-doke. I selected a classical piece, George Butterworth’s Banks of Green Willow. How about you, Suzette, I said, proffering the instrument to Suzette Hill. Now Suzette’s got an incredibly expressive face. As she listened, that incredibly expressive fisog turned to horror and she ripped the earphones out with a shudder. “Disgusting,” she said with deep feeling. Well, dash it, my music selection’s not as bad as all that. It was the Jazz standard Sway I was playing. “I know,” she said in a sort of heartfelt way. “Bend with me, sway with me? Well, really.” I felt just like Bouncer the dog encountering Maurice the cat and if you’ve read Suzette’s books you’ll know exactly what I mean. Meow!
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Take Your Partners...
My daughter Helen loves the Eighteenth Century. She is virtually word-perfect in Jane Austin, took us all on a (very) guided tour of Bath and, when she had to produce a presentation with pictures for her job application to the Nuclear Industry Graduates Programme, chose to do it on Eighteenth Century fashion. (Yes, yes, I know; nuclear power and fancy frocks don’t seem to have much in common, but the Grad scheme people were looking for depth of knowledge and presentation skills. Anyway, she got the job.) Last Christmas one of her “best” presents was a Georgian silver fruit knife and fork which I bought off ebay. That being the case, she’s been chuffed rotten this week when those old Eighteenth Century names, the Tories (aka Conservatives) and the Whigs (aka Liberal Democrats) have healed the differences of the last few centuries or so and come together in a love-in. David Cameron said it was “Time for change,” and, by jingo, he’s got it, even if it wasn’t quite the change he or anyone else had in mind.
A week, as we all know, is a long time in politics, but the speed at which the transition happened was amazing. John Stewart and his team on the Daily Show, the American political satirical show which we get a day late in Britain, had a procession of various news clips where the rapidity of the transfer was marvelled at. I loved John Oliver’s take on the transition. He quite correctly likened President Obama’s accession to power to a coronation which, with the vast crowds and adulation, it was. However, when we have a coronation it’s really a coronation with proper Queens and Kings and Crowns and choirs singing Zadok The Priest and so on, not a mere swapping-over of bureaucrats. So, minutes after Nick Clegg gave the thumbs-up to the alliance with David, it was David in the front door of Number 10, Gordon out the back, and by the way, have you cancelled the milk, turned the gas off and put the cat in its travelling basket?
The first time Britain had a collation government was in 1915. That was also a Liberal and Conservative partnership. The Liberal Asquith (nicknamed “Squiffy” for readily ascertainable reasons and who was afterwards replaced by Lloyd George) came together with the Conservatives.
In an odd echo of today, Britain became a much more international place. The Belgians had a whole colony in Richmond-on-Thames where an arsenal, staffed by Belgians, was built. Australian, Canadian and South African soldiers were a common sight, Brighton Pavilion was turned over to house recuperating Indian troops and Americans played baseball in Arsenal football stadium. Incidentally, Asquith and Lloyd George would have been a gift to a modern tabloid. Lloyd George was notorious for his roving eye and Asquith made a habit of writing all the day’s secrets to his mistress, Venetia Stanley every evening. And he put the letters in the ordinary post. And they were delivered about two hours later. Wow. Just imagine if he’d had email!
Despite everything (such as the biggest war yet staged, air-raids, industrial strife, Ireland on the boil etc., etc.,) the government did okay. With the new collation government only a few days into its term of office, I find that an oddly cheering thought.
A week, as we all know, is a long time in politics, but the speed at which the transition happened was amazing. John Stewart and his team on the Daily Show, the American political satirical show which we get a day late in Britain, had a procession of various news clips where the rapidity of the transfer was marvelled at. I loved John Oliver’s take on the transition. He quite correctly likened President Obama’s accession to power to a coronation which, with the vast crowds and adulation, it was. However, when we have a coronation it’s really a coronation with proper Queens and Kings and Crowns and choirs singing Zadok The Priest and so on, not a mere swapping-over of bureaucrats. So, minutes after Nick Clegg gave the thumbs-up to the alliance with David, it was David in the front door of Number 10, Gordon out the back, and by the way, have you cancelled the milk, turned the gas off and put the cat in its travelling basket?
The first time Britain had a collation government was in 1915. That was also a Liberal and Conservative partnership. The Liberal Asquith (nicknamed “Squiffy” for readily ascertainable reasons and who was afterwards replaced by Lloyd George) came together with the Conservatives.
In an odd echo of today, Britain became a much more international place. The Belgians had a whole colony in Richmond-on-Thames where an arsenal, staffed by Belgians, was built. Australian, Canadian and South African soldiers were a common sight, Brighton Pavilion was turned over to house recuperating Indian troops and Americans played baseball in Arsenal football stadium. Incidentally, Asquith and Lloyd George would have been a gift to a modern tabloid. Lloyd George was notorious for his roving eye and Asquith made a habit of writing all the day’s secrets to his mistress, Venetia Stanley every evening. And he put the letters in the ordinary post. And they were delivered about two hours later. Wow. Just imagine if he’d had email!
Despite everything (such as the biggest war yet staged, air-raids, industrial strife, Ireland on the boil etc., etc.,) the government did okay. With the new collation government only a few days into its term of office, I find that an oddly cheering thought.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Virtually elected
So the election has finally happened. The Nation Decides said the poster advertising the Manchester Evening News last Thursday. As a matter of fact, the Nation sort of went Hmmm. Choice? How about None Of The Above. The weird thing is that Gordo, (whose smile is easily one of the funniest things on TV – it clearly sneaks up on him when he’s not expecting it) is still at Number 10. He moved in without being elected and, now his party has polled fewer votes than Dynamite Dave, he’s still not going anywhere.
The election coverage was a happy hunting ground for anyone with a sense of humour. Jeremy Vine moved into a virtual world where he virtually paved the road outside Number 10 and only broke off to wander up and down a virtual staircase hung with virtual portraits of former leaders of hung parliaments. Every time he spoke, red, yellow and blue lines shot out of his fingers like some sort of psychedelic Spiderman and, when it finally began to penetrate that Nick Clegg, far from sweeping to a comfortable second, was being sent back to the basket, a man in the studio worried himself stupid about when was the best time to Activate The Queen.
Now many cutting remarks have been made about the way the Queen waves. True enough, it does have a faint air of the mechanical arm about it, but that’s a long way from suggesting that she’s been Activated. My picture of her at the end of a long day Queening is that she kicks her shoes off and asks Philip to put the kettle on, not, as this startling image suggested, that the Duke of Edinburgh flips open a panel and presses the off switch. Does the Queen have a standby button so she’s ready to be Activated at any time or is the plug removed entirely so she has to warm up?
I think we should be told.
On the domestic front, my old pal, Angela Churm came for the weekend and we celebrated by opening a bottle of champagne. (Yo! Love that noise as the cork comes out.) Dom Pierre Pérignon, (who was my sort of monk) called out, the night he invented champagne, “Come quickly! I am drinking stars!” He wasn’t, obviously a man to undersell his products. Oddly enough, although he was a Benedictine, he didn’t invent Benedictine. And why were we popping corks? Because Angela had a TV show screened Wot She Wrote. It was an episode of the mid-day soap, Doctors that we’d recorded and we watched it together, hence the champers. It was an excellent episode and the good news is that she’s got a commission for another. So that’s another bottle, then. Glug!
The election coverage was a happy hunting ground for anyone with a sense of humour. Jeremy Vine moved into a virtual world where he virtually paved the road outside Number 10 and only broke off to wander up and down a virtual staircase hung with virtual portraits of former leaders of hung parliaments. Every time he spoke, red, yellow and blue lines shot out of his fingers like some sort of psychedelic Spiderman and, when it finally began to penetrate that Nick Clegg, far from sweeping to a comfortable second, was being sent back to the basket, a man in the studio worried himself stupid about when was the best time to Activate The Queen.
Now many cutting remarks have been made about the way the Queen waves. True enough, it does have a faint air of the mechanical arm about it, but that’s a long way from suggesting that she’s been Activated. My picture of her at the end of a long day Queening is that she kicks her shoes off and asks Philip to put the kettle on, not, as this startling image suggested, that the Duke of Edinburgh flips open a panel and presses the off switch. Does the Queen have a standby button so she’s ready to be Activated at any time or is the plug removed entirely so she has to warm up?
I think we should be told.
On the domestic front, my old pal, Angela Churm came for the weekend and we celebrated by opening a bottle of champagne. (Yo! Love that noise as the cork comes out.) Dom Pierre Pérignon, (who was my sort of monk) called out, the night he invented champagne, “Come quickly! I am drinking stars!” He wasn’t, obviously a man to undersell his products. Oddly enough, although he was a Benedictine, he didn’t invent Benedictine. And why were we popping corks? Because Angela had a TV show screened Wot She Wrote. It was an episode of the mid-day soap, Doctors that we’d recorded and we watched it together, hence the champers. It was an excellent episode and the good news is that she’s got a commission for another. So that’s another bottle, then. Glug!
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Jerusalem
Politicians and promises are in the air this week, with the election finally upon us. Come Friday morning we’ll know if it’s Got To Be Gordon’s, as the gin advert used to say or if Clegg-mania prevailed or if a Blue Note has been struck. At church this morning we were enjoined to vote and even, in a not-so-subliminal message, sang Jerusalem as the final hymn.
Well, I never mind singing Jerusalem. The words, by William Blake, are definitely odd but fuzzily inspiring and the tune’s great. Not so long ago, in this corner of England’s Mountains Green, we were surrounded with dark, satanic mills and there’s still plenty of factory chimneys left to remind us all of the thick smogs and the gritty taste in the air caused by lots of soot in the atmosphere. (I grew up thinking that all public buildings were made of black stone; it was a real shock when, after the Clean Air Acts, they were sandblasted and turned into honey-coloured sandstone and white Portland Stone.)
But promises… One innovation of recent years is the huge increase of students studying at university and they’re promised an awful lot.
Well, I’m delighted to say that daughter Helen, who graduated last year from Royal Holloway, University of London, finally managed to find a “proper” job. We got the news at the beginning of the week that she’s been successful in getting on a graduate trainee scheme, one of the fortunate final 30 out of 1,500 applicants.
Hallelujah! That meant an outbreak of cards, cake and a bottle or so of champagne, it was such brilliant news.
I can’t think of any recent graduate who hasn’t found it a real slog. It used to be much easier to get a graduate-type job. Naturally, with far fewer graduates chasing them!
At one time, of course, being a graduate was a fairly big deal. So few people went to university, that they really were a privileged group and creamed off the really desirable and sometimes well-paid jobs. Well, the courses haven’t, despite what some grumblers say, got easier, but there are far more students than there used to be. Helen’s been working, of course, but only as an office temp. The government (here come the promises) are very keen to tell us all how much extra graduates earn than non-graduates. Well, I suppose they might, but getting a degree, as so many have found out, is very far from being the fairy dust or magic wand politicians depict it as.
For a start, University is expensive. There are student loans at a good rate of interest, but they do have to be paid back. Then, to make an obvious but sometimes overlooked point, while a student is at university, they’re not earning anything. That’s three or four years with no income while contemporaries are bringing in a salary. These aren’t grumbles, just statements, and it’s a rare student who can complete the course without a big slug of help from home.
It helps, as a student’s parent, to know how a university works. Just because you’ve done a course in – say – Graphic Design or Creative Writing, doesn’t mean you’re going to be a Graphic Designer or any sort of Writer. Or a Forensic Scientist or lawyer or archaeologist. Sometimes politicians talk as if it does, but it’s simply not true. A degree, by itself, is good but most training schemes insist on a 2:1 (which represents a huge amount of work and considerable talent on the student’s part) – and some sort of post-graduate training is almost always necessary.
So where does that leave the politicians’ promises? True? Yes – but, as with most things, you have to read the small print. The devil, as William Blake might very well have thought, is in the detail.
Well, I never mind singing Jerusalem. The words, by William Blake, are definitely odd but fuzzily inspiring and the tune’s great. Not so long ago, in this corner of England’s Mountains Green, we were surrounded with dark, satanic mills and there’s still plenty of factory chimneys left to remind us all of the thick smogs and the gritty taste in the air caused by lots of soot in the atmosphere. (I grew up thinking that all public buildings were made of black stone; it was a real shock when, after the Clean Air Acts, they were sandblasted and turned into honey-coloured sandstone and white Portland Stone.)
But promises… One innovation of recent years is the huge increase of students studying at university and they’re promised an awful lot.
Well, I’m delighted to say that daughter Helen, who graduated last year from Royal Holloway, University of London, finally managed to find a “proper” job. We got the news at the beginning of the week that she’s been successful in getting on a graduate trainee scheme, one of the fortunate final 30 out of 1,500 applicants.
Hallelujah! That meant an outbreak of cards, cake and a bottle or so of champagne, it was such brilliant news.
I can’t think of any recent graduate who hasn’t found it a real slog. It used to be much easier to get a graduate-type job. Naturally, with far fewer graduates chasing them!
At one time, of course, being a graduate was a fairly big deal. So few people went to university, that they really were a privileged group and creamed off the really desirable and sometimes well-paid jobs. Well, the courses haven’t, despite what some grumblers say, got easier, but there are far more students than there used to be. Helen’s been working, of course, but only as an office temp. The government (here come the promises) are very keen to tell us all how much extra graduates earn than non-graduates. Well, I suppose they might, but getting a degree, as so many have found out, is very far from being the fairy dust or magic wand politicians depict it as.
For a start, University is expensive. There are student loans at a good rate of interest, but they do have to be paid back. Then, to make an obvious but sometimes overlooked point, while a student is at university, they’re not earning anything. That’s three or four years with no income while contemporaries are bringing in a salary. These aren’t grumbles, just statements, and it’s a rare student who can complete the course without a big slug of help from home.
It helps, as a student’s parent, to know how a university works. Just because you’ve done a course in – say – Graphic Design or Creative Writing, doesn’t mean you’re going to be a Graphic Designer or any sort of Writer. Or a Forensic Scientist or lawyer or archaeologist. Sometimes politicians talk as if it does, but it’s simply not true. A degree, by itself, is good but most training schemes insist on a 2:1 (which represents a huge amount of work and considerable talent on the student’s part) – and some sort of post-graduate training is almost always necessary.
So where does that leave the politicians’ promises? True? Yes – but, as with most things, you have to read the small print. The devil, as William Blake might very well have thought, is in the detail.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
A Hundred Thousand Dragons
The big news of my week is that copies of my new book, A Hundred Thousand Dragons turned up. Yo! Much Rejoicings! It’s actually published on the 27th May. I knew that, and didn’t think there was any reason why it shouldn’t be out by then, but it’s terrific to hold the actual book itself. It all seems a lot more real, somehow, when you’ve got the “proper” book in your hand.
Dragons is a little bit different from Jack’s earlier adventures because Jack himself is the focus of the mystery. In one way that seems like a dumb thing to say, because, off the top of your head, you’d think that the detective always has to be the hero, right? A “rule” of literature is – classic literature, that is – that the hero/heroine/main character has to be changed by their experiences by the end of the book. Jane Austen’s Emma, Hamlet, David Copperfield etc. (insert a famous literary character of your choice here) are all changed in some way. Perhaps they’re older, sadder, wiser, married or dead, but they’re certainly changed. It’s all very satisfying for the reader as we accompany Elizabeth Bennet, say, through her various vicissitudes and, as Oscar Wilde would say, in that wonderful two-edged way of his, “The good end happily and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.”
However, when it comes to serial characters, there’s a hitch.
Serial characters, such as Sherlock Holmes (and thanks to Dr Watson for his observations last week) Hercule Poirot, James Bond, Bertie Wooster, Richard Hannay and Fu Manchu have to be more or less whole and entire for their next excursion.
If Elizabeth Bennet decided to ditch Mr Darcy and have another go at the matrimonial stakes we’d think a) she was off her chump (especially if Colin Firth is Mr Darcy) and b) short-changed by Pride and Prejudice. Hercule Poirot dreamed of jacking in detection and growing vegetable marrows; Agatha Christie was far too fly to let him have his own way. When he did escape to the country in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd? she gets him in back in line pretty sharply when the aforesaid Roger turns up wearing a dagger in his neck.
I suppose the ultimate in Comeback Characters is Dracula. He might be a pile of dust, Van Helsing might hang up his stake and relax about drawing the curtains in the evening, but we know that you can’t keep a good vampire down. Somewhere, somehow, violins are shrieking a scary tune as blood drips on the dust… And Van Helsing has all the weary work to do again.
Serial characters can marry but being the spouse of a serial character tends to be a dodgy career move. Bumping off Her Indoors is always an option (James Bond took this route) but spouses can be threatened, kidnapped or tread their own cloth-headed path, such as keeping the date with the one-eyed Mysterious Stranger down the fog-filled docks under the impression that it’s the partner of their joys and sorrows who has summoned them to the meeting. Sherlock Holmes took a sterner view of women. He permitted them to marry Watson but never took the plunge himself.
So how to square the circle? In detective stories, desperately exciting things happen to other people and the detective gets drawn into the action that way. However, every so often, the character and the story come together so the detective is the story. It can’t happen often, as there is a limit to how many life-changing events a protagonist, however willing, can go through without straining a reader’s credulity, but it can happen occasionally. It happens in A Hundred Thousand Dragons – and I do hope you enjoy it!
Dragons is a little bit different from Jack’s earlier adventures because Jack himself is the focus of the mystery. In one way that seems like a dumb thing to say, because, off the top of your head, you’d think that the detective always has to be the hero, right? A “rule” of literature is – classic literature, that is – that the hero/heroine/main character has to be changed by their experiences by the end of the book. Jane Austen’s Emma, Hamlet, David Copperfield etc. (insert a famous literary character of your choice here) are all changed in some way. Perhaps they’re older, sadder, wiser, married or dead, but they’re certainly changed. It’s all very satisfying for the reader as we accompany Elizabeth Bennet, say, through her various vicissitudes and, as Oscar Wilde would say, in that wonderful two-edged way of his, “The good end happily and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.”
However, when it comes to serial characters, there’s a hitch.
Serial characters, such as Sherlock Holmes (and thanks to Dr Watson for his observations last week) Hercule Poirot, James Bond, Bertie Wooster, Richard Hannay and Fu Manchu have to be more or less whole and entire for their next excursion.
If Elizabeth Bennet decided to ditch Mr Darcy and have another go at the matrimonial stakes we’d think a) she was off her chump (especially if Colin Firth is Mr Darcy) and b) short-changed by Pride and Prejudice. Hercule Poirot dreamed of jacking in detection and growing vegetable marrows; Agatha Christie was far too fly to let him have his own way. When he did escape to the country in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd? she gets him in back in line pretty sharply when the aforesaid Roger turns up wearing a dagger in his neck.
I suppose the ultimate in Comeback Characters is Dracula. He might be a pile of dust, Van Helsing might hang up his stake and relax about drawing the curtains in the evening, but we know that you can’t keep a good vampire down. Somewhere, somehow, violins are shrieking a scary tune as blood drips on the dust… And Van Helsing has all the weary work to do again.
Serial characters can marry but being the spouse of a serial character tends to be a dodgy career move. Bumping off Her Indoors is always an option (James Bond took this route) but spouses can be threatened, kidnapped or tread their own cloth-headed path, such as keeping the date with the one-eyed Mysterious Stranger down the fog-filled docks under the impression that it’s the partner of their joys and sorrows who has summoned them to the meeting. Sherlock Holmes took a sterner view of women. He permitted them to marry Watson but never took the plunge himself.
So how to square the circle? In detective stories, desperately exciting things happen to other people and the detective gets drawn into the action that way. However, every so often, the character and the story come together so the detective is the story. It can’t happen often, as there is a limit to how many life-changing events a protagonist, however willing, can go through without straining a reader’s credulity, but it can happen occasionally. It happens in A Hundred Thousand Dragons – and I do hope you enjoy it!
Sunday, April 18, 2010
The case of Bo-Peep and the missing sheep
This week, I’m glad to say, I’ve secured the services of a distinguished guest blogger, Dr J.H. Watston, M.D.
From the diary of Dr Watson
It is with a heavy heart I take up my pen – no, hang on, I think I’ll keep that line to use another time. Here’s another opening line; I have never known my friend, Mr Sherlock Holmes, to be in better form than in the spring of 1894.
Yes, that’ll do. It isn’t 1894, of course. I only put that in to confuse the punters. I had returned to Baker Street after my fourteenth marriage in a state of some ire (one of these days I’ll find a wife who can remember my first name) to update my website (www.mymatesbrighterthanme.com) a name that Holmes himself had suggested.
Holmes was in a good mood that day. I knew he was feeling light-hearted when he suggested one of his jolliest games, the one where I stand against the wall and he picks out my outline in revolver bullets. He has achieved several good likenesses of me in that way and the wounds take no time at all to heal. He was just filling in the shading round my moustache when Mrs Hudson, our redoubtable landlady, burst into the room in a state of some agitation.
“Mr Holmes!” she cried, ushering in to the room a huge shepherdess. “This is a friend of mine, Miss Little Bo-Peep.”
“Little?” asked Holmes, in his penetrating way.
“Get over it,” said the shepherdess, flexing her crook warningly. “Anyone who’s called Sherlock shouldn’t make remarks about other people’s names.”
“I was entertaining Miss Bo-Peep in the kitchen,” explained Mrs Hudson. “You know the sort of thing, sir. I was balancing a cheese-grater on my nose and juggling pans as usual, but despite my best efforts, Miss Bo-Peep remained morose and distrait.”
At this point Miss Bo-Peep burst into tears. “It’s my sheep,” she explained.
“You’ve lost them?” asked Holmes.
Miss Bo-Peep nodded sadly.
“Good heavens!” I broke in, unable to restrain my admiration. “You astound me, Holmes!”
“Why not try leaving the sheep alone, Miss Bo-Peep?” he asked, reaching for his violin. Then, as the sound of a saxophone came from the street below, an expression of disgust marked his finely-chiselled features. “Excuse me,” he said briefly. “It’s that chap Gerry Rafferty again.” And, walking to the window, he let off a fusillade of shots. There was a yelp from below. “It’s one of the problems of living on Baker Street,” he explained, shutting the window. “If you leave your sheep alone, they will come home, and, unless I am much mistaken, they will be wagging their tails behind them.”
“But they haven’t come home!” wailed Bo-Peep. She reached into her reticule (which looked painful).“This is my only clue.” She drew out a knitted jersey. “It was left in the field.”
Holmes looked at it keenly. “Ah-ah! This explains everything, does it not, Watson?”
I shook my head, unable to follow the train of thought which was so evident to his keen mind.
“Have you, Miss Bo-Peep, seen a trampoline salesman in the neighbourhood?”
“Why, yes, Mr Holmes.”
“Find that trampoline salesman, Miss Bo-Peep, and you have solved your mystery. Your sheep will be bouncing up and down on the trampoline.”
“Good heavens!” I broke in, unable to restrain my admiration. “You astound me, Holmes! But what is this villain’s fell purpose?”
“Elementary, my dear Watson,” said Holmes with a smile. “The trampoline salesman is turning them all into woolly jumpers.”
From the diary of Dr Watson
It is with a heavy heart I take up my pen – no, hang on, I think I’ll keep that line to use another time. Here’s another opening line; I have never known my friend, Mr Sherlock Holmes, to be in better form than in the spring of 1894.
Yes, that’ll do. It isn’t 1894, of course. I only put that in to confuse the punters. I had returned to Baker Street after my fourteenth marriage in a state of some ire (one of these days I’ll find a wife who can remember my first name) to update my website (www.mymatesbrighterthanme.com) a name that Holmes himself had suggested.
Holmes was in a good mood that day. I knew he was feeling light-hearted when he suggested one of his jolliest games, the one where I stand against the wall and he picks out my outline in revolver bullets. He has achieved several good likenesses of me in that way and the wounds take no time at all to heal. He was just filling in the shading round my moustache when Mrs Hudson, our redoubtable landlady, burst into the room in a state of some agitation.
“Mr Holmes!” she cried, ushering in to the room a huge shepherdess. “This is a friend of mine, Miss Little Bo-Peep.”
“Little?” asked Holmes, in his penetrating way.
“Get over it,” said the shepherdess, flexing her crook warningly. “Anyone who’s called Sherlock shouldn’t make remarks about other people’s names.”
“I was entertaining Miss Bo-Peep in the kitchen,” explained Mrs Hudson. “You know the sort of thing, sir. I was balancing a cheese-grater on my nose and juggling pans as usual, but despite my best efforts, Miss Bo-Peep remained morose and distrait.”
At this point Miss Bo-Peep burst into tears. “It’s my sheep,” she explained.
“You’ve lost them?” asked Holmes.
Miss Bo-Peep nodded sadly.
“Good heavens!” I broke in, unable to restrain my admiration. “You astound me, Holmes!”
“Why not try leaving the sheep alone, Miss Bo-Peep?” he asked, reaching for his violin. Then, as the sound of a saxophone came from the street below, an expression of disgust marked his finely-chiselled features. “Excuse me,” he said briefly. “It’s that chap Gerry Rafferty again.” And, walking to the window, he let off a fusillade of shots. There was a yelp from below. “It’s one of the problems of living on Baker Street,” he explained, shutting the window. “If you leave your sheep alone, they will come home, and, unless I am much mistaken, they will be wagging their tails behind them.”
“But they haven’t come home!” wailed Bo-Peep. She reached into her reticule (which looked painful).“This is my only clue.” She drew out a knitted jersey. “It was left in the field.”
Holmes looked at it keenly. “Ah-ah! This explains everything, does it not, Watson?”
I shook my head, unable to follow the train of thought which was so evident to his keen mind.
“Have you, Miss Bo-Peep, seen a trampoline salesman in the neighbourhood?”
“Why, yes, Mr Holmes.”
“Find that trampoline salesman, Miss Bo-Peep, and you have solved your mystery. Your sheep will be bouncing up and down on the trampoline.”
“Good heavens!” I broke in, unable to restrain my admiration. “You astound me, Holmes! But what is this villain’s fell purpose?”
“Elementary, my dear Watson,” said Holmes with a smile. “The trampoline salesman is turning them all into woolly jumpers.”
Monday, April 12, 2010
Raise A Glass
I’m sorry to have been away for a while. My computer’s been playing up and, because it’s Easter, Justin, the local computer guru, has been strangely unobtainable. However, I love Easter. The weather’s improved out of all recognition so – and this is probably bad for my figure – we can have the back door open and Barney and Lucky (canines) and Snooker, Minou and Arthur (felines) can come and go without all the carry-on of barking, scratching and meowing to get out followed by barking, scratching and meowing to get in. Yours Truly seems to act as an animals’ janitor from October onwards to April or thereabouts. Not that means the animals in question are particularly pleased with life; when they’re in they want to be out and when they’re out they want to be in and when the door’s left open they fuss about the draught.
The other thing is that, now Lent’s over, I can drink red wine with a clear conscience once more. I usually try and give it up for Lent, spurred on by the incredulity of my family that I can do any such thing (not that I’ve got a problem or anything, it’s just that I love the stuff). This year my Lenten abstinence was pretty spotty, even by my elastic standards. It wasn’t I gave it up particularly, but I did whinge about it.
However, what with books to write and decorating to do, to say nothing of the Other Half being away for large lumps of March, I thought I had enough to be going on with without giving the elbow to the true, the blushful hippocrene, with beaded bubbles winking at the rim, as Keats, who obviously liked a couple as well, called it. Keats was spotted as toper, I recall, by the Monty Python bunch in their immortal words: Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle and Keats was fond of a dram…
And then there’s eggs; lots and lots of choccy eggs. I’m not that bothered about chocolate but I’d feel aggrieved if the celebration wasn’t marked with a certain amount of solidified cocoa-butter and the junior members of the family would feel as if the sky had fallen in.
Our Easter-egg giving had to be postponed – it’s usually first thing in the morning – as the Children’s Group at church was doing the Easter Garden and I was a prime mover.
A couple of years ago, moved by some obscure impulse or other, I decided that an Easter Garden would be nice. Like any average guardian of the young, I spent years being covered in a mixture of PVA glue and water and clouds of flour as I made play-dough. Once the taste for PVA glue gets into your system, it never really leaves. I like making things and painting, and it’s always nice to have an excuse to do a bit. Anyway, a six-foot junk model of a more or less desert landscape backed up with a six-foot painting of a Jerusalem-ish place was the result, complete with miniature things, such as a spear (clay modelled on a skewer) and a Holy Grail (that’s a chalice, not Mary Magdalene!) and a little donkey nicked from the crib set. The kids from the Children’s Group take it in turn to put the objects into the garden whilst other kids describe what’s going on to the congregation. It always seems to work well, but it’s actually fairly loosely organized chaos. Just like life, really.
Here’s what the completed garden looked like. There’s another picture at the top of the blog. It should be down here, but I got it in the wrong place – ah well! Now where’s my chocolate….
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