The Woman In Black

I celebrated Easter Monday by going to see The Woman In Black. Good grief, that’s as scared as I ever want to be in a cinema!  The interesting thing is that’s there’s no gore, no revolting sights, just good old fashioned creaky chairs and the sense of Something behind every door.

Lucy, Elspeth and myself spent the entire film wrapped round each other trying not to go Eek!  The director says it’s his attempt to revive the old Hammer Horror genre (of which I have very fond memories) but I can’t honestly remember Hammer Horrors ever as being as scary as this.  The great thing is that there’s a lot of hoary old clichés in the film, such as the Old Deserted House in the marshes, a hero who will insist on investigating noises (instead of prudently ducking underneath the bed-covers) an unfinished story that needs completion – all of which could die the death because we’ve seen them so many times before.  Believe you me, all the elements spring into vivid life and it all adds up to a really nerve-wracking film.

I do wonder, though, if it’s a bit too nerve-wracking.  The wonderful old Dracula films with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee touch a very soft spot with a lot of people my age and the conventions they set up (such as no matter how many times Van Helsing sees off Dracula, he’ll find a way of popping back) are oddly endearing.  Terry Pratchett’s vampire, Otto, owes a lot to the daft conventions of the Dracula films.  Otto is a photographer for the Ankh-Morpork Times and every time his flashgun goes off, he disintegrates into a pile of dust, to be revived as the little vial of blood he carries round his neck hits the ground and smashes.

I can’t think of laughing lightly at The Woman In Black. But it’s really good.

Trouble Brewing

Happy Easter everyone!  I hope, despite the pretty dodgy weather we’re having here in glamorous Manchester, that the Easter bunny called.

I had a nice surprise just before Easter, in the form of an email from the publisher, Severn House.  The US Library Journal has picked seven Severn House books (if you see what I mean) out of the nine historical mysteries they’re recommending as hot summer reads.  And (der, der) Trouble Brewing, Jack’s latest, is amongst them.

Wow.

Trouble Brewing is out at the end of this month in the UK and in August in the US, but if any American reader fancies a copy before then, you can order a copy from the “Books” section of the website.

What I really want to tell you is that it’s a brilliant book, dead clever with a knock-out plot and ace characters, one of whom is a real Bentley Boy, all fast cars and life-on-the-edge, madly glamorous and incredibly good looking, but that sounds a bit like blowing my own  trumpet.  Ah well.

Here’s the link to the Library Journal list for the nine books:  Historical Mysteries.

And this is what they said about Trouble Brewing.

Gordon-Smith, Dolores. Trouble Brewing. Severn House. Aug. 2012. 256p. ISBN 9780727881694. $28.95.

Appropriate title: Mark Helston has made a success of himself at Hunt Coffee Limited. Then, in January 1925, he vanishes after leaving his Albemarle Street flat, and, Scotland Yard’s shoulder shrug be damned, his uncle asks series regular Jack Haldean to find him. Instead, Jack finds trouble—and we’re not talking competition from Starbucks.

Fairly Odd Measurements

Lucy has arrived home for the Easter holidays from Leeds Uni, bringing with her, amongst other things, such as a suitcase full of laundry, Rang and Dale’s Pharmacology (Sixth edition) a weighty tome full of must-have information for the earnest enquirer into vancomycin, endocannanonoids, presynaptic modulation and other words I have to have prior warning of before I attempt to pronounce them.  (When I say it’s a weighty tome, I’m not joking; it turns the scales at just shy of five and a half pounds) It’s the last place you’d think of looking for comic relief.

However, the section on General Principles of Bioassay occurs a note on standard measurements.  Quoting J.H. Burn writing in 1950, Rang and Dale say:

Pharmacologists today strain at the king’s arm but swallow the frog, rat and mouse, not to mention the guinea pig and pigeon.  Burn was referring to the fact that the king’s arm had been abandoned as a standard measurement of length, whereas drug activity continues to be defined in the dose needed to cause vomiting in a pigeon or cardiac arrest in a mouse.

Leaving to one side the picture of a laboratory stocked by hurling pigeons and expiring mice, Rang and Dale then weigh in with a footnote worthy of Terry Pratchett.

More picturesque examples of absolute units that Burn would have frowned on are the PHI and the mHelen.  PHI stands for “Purity In Heart” index and measures the ability of a virgin pure-in-heart to transform, under appropriate conditions, a he-goat into a youth of surpassing beauty.   The mHelen is a unit of beauty, one mHelen being sufficient to launch one ship.

However, it was the Elizabethan playwright, Christopher Marlowe, who said Helen had a “face that launched a thousand ships,” whereas, according to Homer, the Trojan fleet consisted of 1,186 ships. That means Helen herself measures 1.186 mHelens of Beauty. Shakespeare had a crack at a beauty index but, in a defeatist sort of way, immediately gave up the task as hopeless. (“Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s Day?  Thou art more lovely…” etc.)  Which means what could be called the S.D. index never took hold.

Clive James, when considering the work of the futurologist, Herman Khan (ie, Kahn told us what was going to happen in the future) proposed that Herman Khan’s favourite measurement of time, an auto-extruding temporal unit (As in, “This is gonna happen fivetenfifteentweenytwennyfive years from now”) should be called a Hermie, a  measure that ensured by the time it was fivetenfifteentweenytwennyfive years from now we’d have all forgotten what Hermie had said so Hermie could carry on predicting without anyone harshly pointing out that Hermie Got It Wrong.

This is a game anyone can play.  I’ve got two standards of measurements of my own.  One’s the W.I. (not the Women’s Institute) but the Wodehouse Index where, granted that PG Wodehouse’s books are infinitely re-readable, a book can be assessed on the W.I. scale.

Harry Potter is 10 on the W.I., as is Agatha Christie.  I was chuffed to bits when a critic for The Historical Novel Review gave Off The Record 1 on the W.I. by stating, in cold blood in print, that she’d enjoyed the book so much she’d re-read it. The Hunger Games, which I’ve just finished, is a roller-coaster read but scores zero on the W.I.  Now I’ve got to the point where Katniss is living in a sort of peace, I don’t want to do the journey with her again.  Much too exhausting.

The other Standard Measurement I’ve got was evolved with the kids on the school run, as A Diversion, as Legolas memorably says in Lord Of The Rings.  (That’s about 6 W.I.’s, incidentally).   It’s the K.O.C., or Kittens Of Cuteness Index, one kitten = one measure of cuteness.  For instance, a wriggly King Charles’ Spaniel puppy winding its lead round its owner’s leg is 3 K.O.C.’s, whereas a little girl in a sticky-out raincoat, carrying an umbrella   and sloshing through puddles is 10 K.O.C.’s.  Aw.

Where do you get your ideas from?

Where a writer gets their ideas from is the question that’s always asked at literary gatherings.  It’s interesting, isn’t it?  Most people – including me – can, if asked, write a description of a place or person or recount an event but making something up from a standing start – well, that’s a bit more daunting.

The main tool in the creative box is the question, Why? with the sub questions of How? and Who? For instance, my sister, a primary school teacher wanted three short stories (very short – about 500 words) to use in class as examples of creative writing.  She had the first sentence of the story, which stated there was a statue in a park.  And that was it.

Okay…  So Who is the statue of and Why was it there?  As you can see, it gives a lot of scope.  It could be a statue of a famous footballer, a local hero, a knight on horseback, Peter Pan, or even a dog or a cat.  Once you’ve figured out Who the statue’s of, that gives you somewhere to go next.  For instance, if it’s a dog, what did the dog do?  It is a magic dog, that starred in a local folktale or did the dog rescue someone from drowning or give the alarm of fire by barking?  If it’s a footballer, what did he do to merit a statue?  Win the world cup?  Start a football team?  Lead a party of soldiers into the attack by kicking a football in front of him?  (This happened in the First World War, you know!) And what if the statue comes to life…?

I’m thinking along these lines because I’ve been throwing ideas around for a new book this week.  It’s very, very early stages and what always bugs me is how artificial it all seems.  I mean, X bumps off Y and Z notices something and then…  But then a little bit of magic happens.  Get a proper sequence of events and suddenly X, Y, Z and all their alphabetical pals  start to live in an actual place and have actual characters.  Mind you, it’s a fairly energetic process. I’ve cleaned the fish tank, cleaned the windows, strummed for hours on the guitar, mopped the floor etcetera, etcetera.  Agatha Christie used to wash up.  And if it worked for her… You might not get a Miss Marple but at least you’ll have clean plates!

Signed Books For Sale!

One of the nice things about having a book published is having a party to go with it.  Here's a picture of the last party.

....And they were just the people who couldn't get in.

Those who could get in were a little more select:



And, of course, it's nice to be able to sign books for friends



This is me and my sister raring to go.

Now if you'd like a signed book but couldn't get to the party, don't despair!If you tootle over to the Books part of the website and click on the Books tab, this will – no surprises here- bring you too the page which tells you how to buy a book.  What is new is that I’m now selling signed copies.  I’ve set it up so that postage and packing is included (I don't like faffing about, adding up postage when I order something)  both for America and for Britain, and if you’d like a special message written inside – perhaps “Happy Birthday!” or “This is the best book I’ve ever read!” there’s a space for that too.

Souper Saturday or Soup for Fifty-Odd

And yes, the title is a groan-worthy pun.  As the more liturgically inclined may have noticed, it’s Lent.  That’s God’s way of making you give up chocolate so you can really enjoy your Easter eggs come the 8^th of April.  Anyway, in a foolish – not to say feckless way – I ignored the standard advice to Never Volunteer – and rang our local church after an item in the weekly newsletter.

“Have you,” asked the newsletter hopefully, “any idea of how we can celebrate Lent as a parish together?”

“Why don’t we,” I said brightly, “have a shared lunch?  Everyone can bring something and we can all get together in the parish hall.  We can have a presentation about whatever charity it is we’re supporting, take donations and have a raffle.”  (It’s a Catholic do; there’s always a raffle and the prizes, Lent or no Lent, are usually whisky, wine and chocolate. As, indeed, they were.)

“Leave it with me,” said the prelate.  “I’ll get back to you.”

Now quite how a bring-your-own lunch metamorphosed into me making soup for fifty-odd people occurred, I’m not sure, but it did.

The actual soup I made the day before, but come Saturday, there were, thank the powers that be, a highly competent group of willing helpers to dish it out and clear away. We raised a healthy sum for charity and everyone enjoyed themselves.

Anyway, if you do fancy making soup in these industrial quantities (and you never know when the mood will strike you) here’s the recipe for (der, der!)

Lentil and vegetable soup.



This makes six pints or fourteen portions.  Therefore 12 pints equals twenty eight portions and so on and so forth, but six pints is a reasonable amount to make in one go.



Ten ounces of lentils.

Six carrots

Two parsnips

Some swede or turnip

Two onions

Four small potatoes

Two cans of tomatoes

Two stock cubes

A clove of garlic or a dollop of minced garlic

Three pints of boiling water.

Soak the lentils for twenty minutes or longer.

While they’re soaking, peel and chop the veg.

Fry up the onions (I used a wok for this part) then add the rest of the veg.

Then put the veg into a large saucepan together with the tomatoes, the garlic, the stock cubes and the boiling water.

Cook for twenty minutes.

If you put a lid on the pan, it will cook away happily on a low heat.

Add the soaked lentils and cook for another twenty minutes.

Test for seasoning and add salt and pepper to taste.

Then whiz it up with a hand-held blender.

To serve it up, you can add a drizzle of cream.

Incidentally, the pan and the soup will be slightly hotter than the surface of Mercury by the time you’ve finished, so it’s worth while transferring the soup to another pan before you whiz it with the blender.  Otherwise, your blender will probably become warped by contact with the very hot bottom of the pan.  I know; I’ve now got an excellent but very oddly shaped blender!

Finding Your Inner Welshman

The lst of March: Spring is (fingers crossed) just around the corner, I no longer wake up in the pitch dark and, as the day progresses, peer into the gloomy murk which is the North of England in Winter.

It’s amazing what a bit more daylight can do. If I was an ancient Druid or something, I think I’d be moved to nip down to Stonehenge and start chanting at the sun or sacrifice something. It probably wouldn’t cause too much comment in Wiltshire but I’d be looked on as distinctly odd if I started erecting stone tables, wearing long white robes and greeting the dawn with public prayer in Greater Manchester. (I mean, people would look; and comment.)

What I don’t do in the garden: not recently, anyway.

But, in this censorious age, I have to fall back on the more industrial and domestic Signs of Spring.

I’ve been told at least three times by people who come under the category of I-know-them-to speak-to-but-I-don’t-know-their-name-if-you-know-what-I-mean (in the bank, by the bloke behind the ticket desk in the railway station and the pet-shop owner) that it’s getting lighter in the evenings.  It is, we tell each other in awe-struck tones, still daylight at five o’clock. I’m thinking about painting the fence. I’m told to Chill and Stop Stressing when I adjure the offspring in a voice of motherly concern to Wrap Up, It’s Bit Parky Outside. (Mind you, I did think it was a bit early for shorts, even when teamed with the tights and the Ugg boots thought suitable for college wear)  and, in the more traditional signs of Spring, the birds in the garden are kicking up a dickens of a fuss about random bits of twigs and the snowdrops are venturing forth.

Do you know that terrific medieval song, Summer is y-comen in? Although it says Summer, the songster is obviously talking about Spring.  It obviously is a song and not a poem and I can imagine it being bellowed out cheerfully by peasants and Aged Crones in Ye Saracen’s Eyeball, or DunCrusadin, quaffing ale or mead or whatever the equivalent was of half of Carlsberg or a gin and tonic with ice and lemon and a little umbrella.  (Quaffing, as I’ve heard it said, is like drinking, only you spill more.) There aren’t many songs about flatulence, not that are printed in anthologies of poetry, anyway, so it’s worth noting for that alone.

Excuse the medieval accent:  Summer is y-comen in, Loude sing, cuckoo! Bullock starteth, bucke fartheth, Merry sing, cuckoo!

Anyway, the 1^st of March.  I hope everyone dined exclusively on leeks to celebrate St David, the patron saint of Wales, and his Day. Despite beating us at Rugby (which caused some major distress and heart-searchings in the Gordon-Smith household) the Welsh are OK.

An Irish friend of mine refers to the Welsh as The Irish Who Can’t Swim but there are some pretty good reasons for staying in Wales, such as mouth-watering scenery and some of the daftest road-signs in Britain, which adds humour to your journey.  St Davids itself, the smallest city in the UK (a city needn’t be glittering sky-scrapers or urban deprivation but merely a town with a cathedral) is a lovely place.  So, altogether now; plunge deep within to find your Inner Welshman and let’s let rip with a rousing chorus of Cwm Rhondda.