An everyday tale of village life and vampires…

When the bat man finally turned up Em wasn’t impressed. He was skinny, largely bearded and unpleasantly sweaty, he also wore sandals with socks and baggy khaki shorts. He shook hands rather too vigorously and introduced himself in a surprisingly bass voice, although he appeared to communicate with the world via the use of a few words as possible.
He was hung about with boxes and bags, and as Em followed his red gooseberry-like calves through the lich gate she sincerely hoped he was more useful than he looked. The church door stood open and he strode in with his sandals slapping on the ancient stone.
“Where bats?”
“Belfry.”
He turned to smile at her, revealing a set of long, yellow teeth that made Em think of the donkey sanctuary.
“Pipistrelle?”
“Nah. Bigger.”
He spared her a disbelieving sneer before heading towards the vestry door.
Em enjoyed a silent moment of glee and waited for him to admit his error. It took a while but he eventually reemerged.
“Where staircase.”
Em pointed to the door that was almost hidden in the linenfold panelling that covered the white stone walls up to a height of about seven feet. Batman disappeared again and Em composed herself to wait. There came a disturbance in the air and Erasmus appeared on her shoulder. He was giggling. 
“I’m glad I stayed awake to watch the fun,” his voice in her mind was full of unholy glee. “The guy with the beard is getting on Enoch’s nerves.”
“Enoch?”
“Head of the family of small bats. He is so gonna shit on the human’s head. Just waiting for him to take his hat off.”
A faint scream attested to the validity of Erasmus’ instincts before the sound of careful footfalls had him fading abruptly into the background. Arnold came down the aisle walking softly and carrying a large broom. Em grinned and cocked her chin towards the open belfry door. Arnold sat beside her putting something small and black in her hands as he sat. It was a knitted bat, perfect in every detail and Em could feel her face creasing into a doting smile. Erasmus’ voice in her head was awestruck. 
“How’d he make a woolly me?”
“I dunno, boy, it’s beyond my skills.”
Arnold just grinned.
The sound of sandals slapping on the difficult spiral of the old stone stairs alerted them to the arrival of a hyperventilating bat man. He just about fell into the nave, with his beard full of bat shit and his eyes ablaze with missionary zeal.
“Rhinolophus hipposideros. The biggest colony I have ever seen. I will be writing this up immediately.”
He bobbed his head to Em, in a sort of a gesture of respect, before almost running out of the building. 
“Rudolph’s hippopotamus?”
Arnold’s grin grew wider. “Lesser Horseshoe Bat. Rare.
Em nodded and she and Arnold sat in companionable silence for a while, with neither being quite sure what to make of the odd little man’s shenanigans.
Em was thinking about going home when she felt an inimical presence coming close. Being who she was she wasn’t about to run away, but neither was she up for a confrontation with something she had yet to suss out. So she took the third way. She drew in a deep breath and held it, gently willing herself to be unremarkable and at one with the old building. Years of practice ensured that she succeeded to the extent that the light passed through her instead of around her and she became effectively invisible.  Arnold picked up his broom and began methodically sweeping the worn flagstones of the church floor. He had just progressed to the corner by the belfry and quietly closed the door when the vicar swept into the building like an avenging vicar.
“Arnold. Who was that strange little man I just passed?”
“Which strange little man, vicar?” Arnold was the picture of bucolic stupidity as he blinked down at the smaller man.
“The one with the unkempt ginger beard and all the bags.”
“Oh that one. I don’t rightly know. He was messing about in the churchyard. Then he run off. Why?”
The vicar waved a distracted hand. “Never mind. Just so long as he wasn’t… I mean… Well… See there’s a strange car parked outside that nosey bitch Vanderbilt’s house. So I wondered if he was anything to do with her.”
Arnold grunted. “Mrs Vanderbilt don’t usually have no truck with men. Strange or not.”
“Maybe you are right. But doesn’t the old bat seem a bit strange to you.”
“Her’s a woman. They’m all strange.” Arnold shrugged about a yard and a half of shoulder and carried on with his slow methodical sweeping.
The vicar stared at him for quite some time before seeming to come to the conclusion that his employee was just as slow on the uptake as he appeared. He turned on his heel, as if about to leave the building, when he must have caught on to something not quite right. His eyes rounded and his nose became damp and pink and twitchy as he stood very still – scenting the air and finding something not to his taste.
“Arnold,” he said sharply, “can you not smell something?”
“All’s I can smell is bat shit.”
The vicar shook his head and his features rearranged themselves back to handsome human mode. “Oh yes. Maybe it’s the inimical winged rats I can feel. Carry on with your work.”
And he was gone.
Em would normally have dropped the concealment immediately, but some seventh sense had her remain hidden. Which was just as well, as only five or so minutes had passed before the vestry door sprang open to reveal the vicar’s suspicious face.His eyes raked the building before he pulled his head back and closed the door with bang.
Walking home a while later Em was troubled.
“What are you?” she asked herself. “What the heck are you?”

Part 7 of Much Dithering in Little Botheringham by Jane Jago and Eleanor Swift-Hook, will be here next week.

Because life happens…

Exploring the mysteries of life through the versatile medium of limerick poetry.

Rule of Thumb

The secret of living not glum
Is to live by this one rule of thumb:
If you can’t eat it or fuck it
Then pass by that bucket
And go find a bottle of rum!

Eleanor Swift-Hook

Sometimes you trip over a book by chance and thus it was for me with this one.

Mumsie had been redecorating her retiring room and stacked her broken-spined monstrosities of literature in the hall. Since she was not entirely sober, these leaning towers had shed volumes across the parquet and I missed my footing on one that had fallen open.

Nursing a twisted ankle and a bruised derriere I retrieved the offending tome with every intention of feeding it to the flames in retribution. But the cover caught my eye, and instead, I rescued it from being re-interred within the maternal parent’s bookshelf and started reading.

My review of Dune by Frank Herbert

A family with names that seemed to me highly inappropriate for science fiction (Paul, Jessica, Duncan and Wellington), move to a desert planet which is full of worms. This family seem to be very unpopular and almost all of them get killed off by another family, who have much more genre appropriate names (Glossu, Vladimir and Feyd-Rautha).

Paul survives and goes on to become the hero of the book. He gets to wear a wetsuit which works in reverse, take drugs and ride one of the worms. Oh, there are also some very strange women who go around torturing children and speaking in enigmatic phrases such as ‘fear is the little death’ and other meaningless nonsense.

The best thing about this book is its length. It is fat enough to be perfect for wedging the door of my writing sanctuary closed.

2 stars for such excellent utility!

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound thoughts in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

June comes in beauty, decked out with flowers
Bluebells and harebells, buttercups and celandine
Bringing us days with long daylight hours
And lily-of-the-valley and sweet columbine

Every hedgerow and meadow is blooming
Poppies and daisies, cornflower and chamomile
Gardeners’ know midsummer is looming
Forget-me-nots, campion and hoary cinqfoil

Summer is coming with all nature’s glory
Comfrey and clover, valerian and marigold
Wildflowers blooming tell their own story
Agrimony, saxifrage, and dandelions bold.

So out in the fields and gardens we ramble
Pansy and tansy, willowherb and cow parsley
Braving the sun and the rain and the brambles
For foxgloves and meadowsweet and bird’s foot trefoil.

Eleanor Swift-Hook

Being a true shifter isn’t the blessing it may seem. But through pain and darkness Perdita seeks to find her own life despite the ambition of others…

At fist I didn’t understand why Moth thought it necessary to look, but then I noticed just how many guards there were – seemingly lounging at their ease, but actually in a high state of alertness. They were watching a group of about a dozen young human males who were horsing around, but creeping closer and closer to a family, whose teenage daughter was combing her hair dry while her parents dealt with the business of getting three young boys out of the water. They were weres – wolves would have been my guess – and if the young men got too close to the daughter of the family there was going to be trouble. Even as I thought that it kicked off. Two of the young men moved to flank the young girl. One grabbed his crotch and made what must have been a spectacularly crude suggestion, because the girl immediately started to cry. 

Security grabbed the offenders and the girl’s mother leapt to pet and pacify the frightened teenager. 

“Stupid youngsters.” Mandrake muttered. “But the trolls have them.” He must have had a thought, though, because he spoke to Moth. “Why is it important beloved fae?”

“Moth don’t know, is just feeling.”

They both looked at me. 

“How about this? Those human males obviously thought themselves above common decency and in a position where they wouldn’t be challenged. We might want to put some effort into finding out why.”

“Indeed we might.” Mandrake snarled.

Moth just sighed, but I felt her contacting The Agency. “Is known, and being watched,” she said after a moment or two. Then she shivered.

Mandrake picked her up and shared warmth.

“Time to go home?”

We hustled a bit and were dry and dressed quite quickly. At the bottom of the stairs, the troll guard handed us our furs.

“If I was you,” he said conversationally, “I’d be cutting straight into the woodland. There might be unfriendly people on the road.”

At least Mandrake waited until we were outside the gate before he asked. “Unfriendly people?”

“Means Agency Deputies.” Moth explained. “Trolls don’t know we are agents.”

“So. Do we avoid them?”

“Fraggit yes. Some deputies are right pain in the arse. And if it’s the sort of ones they are likely to send to chastise badly behaved human adolescents, they’d probably find stopping us on the road highly amusing. Especially as we outrank them and they don’t much care for that.”

“In which case. Take me to the woods.” 

There was an old loggers trail about a quarter of a mile from the hot springs and I put on all the speed I could find to get there. Even then we were only just out of sight when the sound of heavy engines split the air. I drew the quad to a halt and motioned for stillness and silence. The bikes that rolled along the road were as different from my quad as chalk is from cheese. They were big and loud and smelly, and were ridden by a group of big, loud Deputies, who were also probably smelly. This group is dangerous to cross swords with. It takes its culture from the human place although none of the members are actually human – and they don’t make any effort to appear human. They call themselves Hell’s Angels and they are an assortment of orcs, trolls and demons who are mostly the kind of assholes you never want to meet in a fight, or on a pub crawl. But on the other side of the coin they are brave, strong and utterly incorruptible.

When they had passed we went home. Quietly.

Jane Jago

Ponies and Progeny or the graceless art of equine management as envisaged by the pen of Jane Jago and inspired by the genius of Norman Thelwell (1923-2004)

Today we consider the importance of finding the right mount for your pony-mad offspring…

***** ***** *****

Some whimsical words on whimsical themes…

“When shall we eleven meet again?” Even to her own ears that sounded silly so she hunched her scrawny shoulders and tried again. “Next month? Same time? Same place?”

There was a generalised mutter of vague agreement, before the oldest and fattest of their number unearthed a battered Tupperware box from somewhere About her person.

“Fudge anybody?”

It always seemed easier when they got to the eating and drinking, and quite a lively party ensued.

As the last acolyte drifted drunkenly homeward, still singing, there came an aroma of decay. 

Two demons regarded each other in some disgust.

“Witches today…”

Jane Jago

An everyday tale of village life and vampires…

It wanted five days to the start of the new month and Ginny spent most of them trying to find all the things Stan and his pals had laboriously hidden in the wrong places.
She had got back from the shop to find them already in their van and about to go.
“Don’t worry about that cuppa,” Dan/Ian/Stan told her, as though he was doing her a big favour by letting her off making it. “Me and the lads’ll get going right away.” 
So she had tipped them and they were gone before she’d walked back into the house.
She had been careful to mark each box with its destination room, but they still seemed to have decided for themselves where each should go.
The room she planned to make into her study-office-come-reading nook, which had a wonderful view over the back garden, was so full of boxes she couldn’t even get through the door, whilst her bedroom had nothing in it except her bed – not even the bedding, which was presumably somewhere in the study under the boxes of her books. Fortunately, she had a sleeping bag in the boot of her car which meant she didn’t need to excavate frantically that evening, but she did ponder whether she might have been deliberately misled by Stan the removal man when he suggested she went to the shop.
The next day she was sorting the kitchen, unpacking things into drawers and cupboards whilst singing to the radio about how the sun always shone on television, when a shadow fell across the threshold of the kitchen door, left open to let in the fresh air.
Like most dwellings, the cottage had a front door which opened – via a short path and a fringe of grass – onto the road and was where visitors were expected to present themselves. The kitchen door was in the side of the house, accessed by a path with a high hedge that led to the back garden and was blocked by a gate at the front. So the sudden appearance of the shadow was startling and unexpected.
She spun around heart pounding and found herself looking into the eyes of the man she had bumped into on the way to the shop. Only now he was fully clothed. Jeans and a short-sleeved black Armani shirt, with a white dog-collar.
“Hello there,” he shouted. “I’m your vicar, Doug Turner. I did knock but the music… ”
Blushing furiously, Ginny grabbed at the DAB and turned it off.
“Sorry,” she mumbled and then managed to get out something about making tea and would he like one.
He accepted with a dazzling smile and for a few moments she was able to consume herself in finding and rinsing two mugs and dropping a regular tea bag in each.
Could you even give a mug of tea to a vicar? Didn’t it need to be bone-china cups and saucers and a teapot of Darjeeling not a ‘Happy Price’ teabag from the local shop?
By the time she was done he had leaned his muscular frame against the wall and he graciously accepted the proffered mug.
“What, no cucumber sandwiches?”
Ginny gaped at him blankly.
“I-I’m sorry?”
He shook his head and grinned at her and she noticed his teeth seemed a little large at the front.
“An old joke. One we vicars often get.”
“Oh. Right. I’ve not met many. In fact, I can’t think of any. I don’t think I’ve lived somewhere that had a vicar before.”
For some reason he found that hilarious and Ginny watched the tea in his mug slop dangerously close to the rim as he laughed.
“Everywhere in the country has a vicar,” he said when the laughter subsided and as if that explained why he had been so amused. “You’ll’ve had a vicar before but never knew it.”
Ginny tried to take control of the conversation again.
“Do you call on all your…” She fell at the first hurdle. What did vicars call their community? Flock? That sounded archaic. “…on all new people?”
Vicar Doug took a slup of tea and pulled a face. Ginny wasn’t sure whether that was a response to her tea making or her question.
“I try to get to meet new parishioners when I can, but I did want to apologise for running into you the other day. I thought you were a tourist.”
He made it sound as if running into tourists was perfectly acceptable behaviour. And perhaps it was in a place like this where tourists were no doubt seen as an annoying fact of life.
“Oh. I see. Well, I’m not.” She realised belatedly she hadn’t introduced herself and stuck out the hand not clutching her mug. “Ginny Cropper. Pleased to meet you.”
His hand stopped half-way as if he was having second thoughts about the shake.
“Not the Ginny Cropper?”
Her heart sank. She found herself resorting to an old line.
“Depends what you mean by that. I’m certainly a Ginny Cropper.”
“I meant, are you the woman behind the Virginia Creeper lifestyle brand?”
His hand completed the journey to hers but barely touched her fingers before withdrawing, the intensity of his gaze upon her.
You couldn’t lie to a vicar, could you?
Could you?
Ginny dropped his gaze and turned to look out of the small kitchen window, through it she could see the wheelie bin and a cat sitting on the recycling box. There was nothing to offer her an escape or inspiration.
“I was,” she admitted. “But I’ve retired – sort of.” 
There was a long silence behind her and in the end she had to turn around.
Vicar Doug was gone.
His unfinished mug of tea sat on the floor where he had been. 
As startled by his departure as his arrival, Ginny picked up the mug and emptied it into the sink, washing it out without really thinking. It was, she realised, her British Wildlife Society mug, which had a picture of an endangered species of native bats on the side.
Sighing, she decided she was going to find it more trying than she had realised to get used to life in Little Botheringham.

Part 6 of Much Dithering in Little Botheringham by Jane Jago and Eleanor Swift-Hook, will be here next week.

Because life happens…

Exploring the mysteries of life through the versatile medium of limerick poetry.

Glorious Dance

Life is a glorious dance
Where your partner is much down to chance.
You might find your true mate
On a casual date
Or from friendship develop romance.

Eleanor Swift-Hook

One might never have read this book had it not been that Mumsie decreed it a winter project last year. One resisted as best one might, but in the end it is never wise to argue with one’s mater as a clout around one’s ear with whatever the woman has in her hand at the time can be injurious to both health and beauty.

One attempted to ask what particular merit the uninspiring looking volume was hiding under its brown paper dustcover. But Mumsie merely looked up from her copy of some other boring old book and slapped one large, square hand hard on the boards of the dining table.
“You,” she intoned in a doom-laden voice, “call yourself a writer. So you better effing well learn to write, and you just might do that by reading some people who actually can. Bloody read it. And don’t skip. There will be questions.”

Knowing when discretion is the better part of valour is just one of the things a public school education teaches. So I read it. And here is my review.

My review of The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

This is absolutely black, plain and black. There is no artistry in the choice of words. No beauty in the language. No heroism. The story is told as colloquially as if the ‘hero’ (if one could call him such) was talking to his rough chums in some public house. There is no attempt to elevate the story of his struggle beyond the mundane and everyday.

Something happens and lots of people go blind. Then some plants start walking about killing people. And there is a girl.

There is not even a decent happy ever after. Does humanity triumph? Or do the plants win?  I couldn’t tell. I was left dissatisfied and unsettled. This is not a nice book.

Two stars. Awarded for proper spelling and punctuation.

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound thoughts in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.