The king of Fronark had five brave sons, the most worthy of whom would inherit the kingdom.

The five spent their time seeking to impress, riding out to jousts and tourneys, annexing land into the kingdom, and rescuing princesses. As the king aged they became more competitive travelling far and wide to win renown.

In the hour when the enemy attacked the king was on his deathbed and there were no princes on hand. Only the overlooked princess who ran the country while her brothers were at play. She organised the defence, defeated the invaders – and became Queen of Fronark.

E.M. Swift-Hook

‘Much Dithering in Little Botheringham’ is an everyday tale of village life and vampires, from Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook.

Ginny was getting ready to go to the brutalist designed village hall for the meeting of the Ladies Association. She had decided she should go in disguise – as a normal middle-aged woman. 
This would have two advantages both anonymising her as she walked through the village and maybe allowing her to blend in better with the Ladies Association. Turning up dressed in her usual kind of outfit, looking very much like the slightly out-of-date lifestyle guru she really was, would be bound to cause issues. 
What if someone recognised her?
The horror of that thought sent her back to her wardrobe for her flattest of flat shoes and the once-upon-a-time ‘office smart’ black trousers she had been contemplating donating to charity for the last year but which had still somehow made it into the packing boxes when she moved. A suitable slightly baggy blouse-top with fake buttons and a slate grey thigh-length cardigan completed the ensemble.
Makeup was a minimum. Then she recalled Lucinda’s pithy comment and sighed.
“At a certain age you have to cake it to fake it, darling, or just throw in the towel and give up.”
Should she?
Did she even have time?
As she dithered over that, there was a sharp rap on the front door. Which was odd as she had a very visible doorbell.
The man who stood on her threshold was somewhere in his sixties at a guess, close to six foot tall, his grey hair a bristle on his scalp and his eyes pulled into a slight squint. His posture was severe, as if he had something uncomfortable pushing in the small of his spine and forcing his shoulders back. In one hand he held a large manilla envelope and under the other arm was a short cane with a silver ferrule. Ginny found herself staring at the cane.
“Doorknocker,” he said in a clipped tenor. Then proceeded to demonstrate by fluidly reversing the cane into his hand and rapping on her door with the ferrule. “Major Sidney Harmsley-Gunn at your service. Please don’t ask about my military service, hush-hush and all that.”
“I wasn’t…” She stopped herself, hearing in her head how rude that might sound so she changed it quickly. “I wasn’t expecting anyone.”
“No. I didn’t send ahead. On a sort of recon, you see. Recruiting.”
“Recruiting?” Ginny echoed weakly, desperately thinking what he could mean. “I think I’m a bit old to be eligible for the army – even the reserves.”
That made his squint turn into a frown. It occurred to Ginny that he probably couldn’t see very well. Too proud to wear specs and not suited for contacts. She had met a few of those in London.
“Recruiting for the PC. We have a vacancy and I thought with your metropolitan – er – heritage, you’d bring some much needed common sense about progress in the village.”
“PC?”
“Parish council.” He thrust the manila envelope into her hands. “Just fill these in and bring them along and we’ll co-opt you. Village hall. Second Tuesday.” He stepped back almost clicking his heels then spun on the spot and marched back towards the gate. He paused and lifted the cane as he reached the corner of the cottage. “That’s next week.” 
Then he was gone. Ginny caught a glimpse of the clock and realised there was no time to think about her makeup, she had to go or risk being late and having to sneak in and hope no one noticed. She grabbed her shoulder bag, the one she had chosen as it looked most like a regular kind of handbag, plain faux-suede with tagged zips. All her bags had shoulder straps so that was not something she could choose to do anything about.
There was something happening at the church, but she didn’t have time to find out what, although she was sure there was an outside broadcast van from the local TV in the car park partly concealed from view by the trees. 
The doors of the ugly hall were open as she arrived. Inside the room was cavernous and steel-strutted rafters gave the whole a very grunge feel. There were three doors at one end, the two on either side marked with representations of male and female and the one in the middle labelled ‘Kitchen’. At the other end was a small stage and three rows of chairs were set in a horseshoe facing it. But their focus was not the stage. Someone had set a small table with a laptop in the middle of the horseshoe and a woman sat there who looked to be about the same age as Major Harmsley-Gunn. She was short and comfortably rounded with a neatly cropped head of snowy waves, a pair of hugely trendy horn-rimmed spectacles and a determined chin. She was dressed from head to toe in eye-wateringly bright colours culminating in a ‘pair’ of hand-painted DMs, one of which was orange while the other was violet.
She stood up as Ginny walked in and smiled a welcome.
“Hello there! You must be Virginia Cropper? Em mentioned you might be along. I’m Agnes Millman. Do take a seat. Wherever you like.” She accompanied the final words with a sweeping gesture to the rows of empty chairs. ”Oh and don’t worry, everyone will be here in a few minutes. I asked them to be ten minutes late today so I could brief you first. It’s always a bit daunting walking into a room full of people who all know each other I find.”
Ginny felt a sharp prick behind her eyes and blinked. This was another heritage of the depression. Simple acts of understanding and kindness aimed her way always made her feel teary. But gone was her plan to hide at the back and hope not to be noticed – to observe quietly and see how she might fit in. She took a reluctant seat in the front and to the side mumbling her thanks.
“The Ladies Association is a very venerable institution in the village,” Agnes told her, sitting down again. “We can trace our organisation back to the middle of the Eighteenth Century, but we have always kept up with the times and changed our remit accordingly. In fact, part of our AGM is reviewing the charter so we can discard the outdated and update the dated.”
Ginny nodded and when silence followed she risked a question.
“So what is it the Ladies Association actually does?”
Agnes laughed.
“Oh, everything. We do everything. From organising the annual fete to raising funds for village causes. You’ll soon gather what we’re all about when the meeting starts. Please don’t feel pressured to take anything on first time out. It’s very hard not to, but you’ve barely been here a couple of weeks and I’m sure you’ll still be settling in.” She leaned forward over the table her voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’d just try and learn a couple of names and accept a few invitations for coffee. Everyone is going to want to have you over as you’re new here, so be careful not to overfill your diary.”
Agnes sat back and her voice changed to a cheerful bellow that resembled a roll call.
“Adriana! Stacey! Parminder! Rose! Charlotte! Lilian!” There were a number more and Ginny had turned to see a parade of women most in middle age or older with a scattering of those under forty, before Agnes finished with “Wonderful to see you all. This is Virginia And now let’s get started.” She beamed at one arrival who had a large plastic tub in their hands “Oh Cathy you remembered it was your turn and brought cake. How very kind.”
Ginny found herself shaking hands and trying to put names to faces for a confusing few minutes before Agnes cleared her throat loudly and the room settled down. There were apologies from Emmeline Vanderbilt and the minutes of the last meeting which were approved unread. Everyone seemed to know the agenda and it must have been obvious she was a little a lost as the woman sitting next to her – who had to be around eighty and Ginny recalled was Lilian – whispered “Emailed out – except for Brenda and Clarice as they have no idea about technology, they still think a tablet is what you take for arthritis and a mouse is something you keep cats to prevent.”  
Unfortunately, it was a stage whisper and some sharp looks and the odd giggle came their way.
“Now, let’s get on with the business in hand, ladies.”
For the next half hour they talked fetes and sharing school runs for children and grand-children, charity pushes and knitting bees, bake-ins and who should get the annual award for their garden in bloom. Then the room fell into a kind of expectant hush and Agnes finished making some notes on the laptop. When she looked up and there was something different about the atmosphere in the hall.
“Has anyone got any new problems to report?” Agnes looked around and must have spotted something. “Chloe?”
Chloe turned out to be one of the few younger members.
“Well some of us on the Brownfield Estate is getting eviction notices. The housing association saying we’ve not met some cry-tear-thing what’s on the contract. Me and some of the other single mums has nowhere to go. Kylie’s scared she moves back to her parents and her ex’ll find her again and old Jack Pleasance has been getting sick with his heart after they told him he’d not get his renewed.”
Agnes had become very still and she tapped away on the keyboard of the laptop into a suddenly silent hall. Then she looked up again and smiled warmly at Chloe.
“Thank you for bringing that to our attention. Now, ladies, it’s tea, coffee and some of Cathy’s wonderful cake!”

Part 8 of Much Dithering in Little Botheringham by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook, will be here next week.

I must go down to the beach again, to the crowded beach and the sun
And all I ask is a wide-brimmed hat and a towel to lie upon
And an ice cream van playing nursery rhymes and sand in the sunshine baking
And a deckchair for Auntie Clair and the sound of the donkeys braying.

I must go down to the beach again for a walk on the promenade
Is a wide prom and a clear prom which is seen in every postcard
And all I ask is a sunny day with no grey clouds a-trying
To spoil the queues of endless folks, cold drinks all a-buying.

I must go down to the beach again to the chippy by the pier
To taste the salt – and the vinegar – just like yesteryear.
And all I ask is a seafront pub called ‘The Wild Rover’
To welcome us in with beer and gin when the sunbathing day is over.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Dai waited until the two women had taken the last seats and Edbert moved to lean against the wall behind Julia. Then he lifted a hand to quiet the low murmurs of conversation and spoke into the ensuing silence.
“My friends, family, fellow Citizens and fellow Britons, we are gathered here today to plot the downfall of Magistratus Sextus Catus Bestia.”
A collective tension seemed to seep through the room. It was as if by naming the evil they had come to fight he had in some way upped the ante. Dai paused, both to allow his words to settle and to allow the chance for anyone to protest or respond. But there was a solid, supportive silence and those faces which had looked relaxed a few moments before seemed to grow more cold and stern. No one here was taking this lightly. They all had too much at stake.
“I thank you all for coming here today and taking time from the celebration to meet. I know I don’t need to do any introductions, there may be a couple of faces unfamiliar to you but we don’t have much time and I doubt we will be able to meet like this again – all in one place. We also can’t use regular channels.” He tapped his new wristphone. “Given the authority he wields, Bestia can have any or all of us monitored. SI Gaius has an idea to set up secure lines of communication and will tell us about those later. For now, it’s enough to know that we will all be able to keep in touch and to be aware that we mustn’t communicate anything outside this room any other way.”
He stopped talking and looked around at the sixteen other people in the room, for a moment, remembering too vividly the place challenging Bestia’s power had left him. An underground prison cell with its bleak despair and hopeless doom. He could not allow anyone else here to wind up in that place.
“But first I need to be sure everyone understands the stakes here. This is not a game where if we lose we get a screen turning black and a ‘play again’ button. If we mess this up it’s game over for good, for all of us, because don’t doubt for a moment we’d be made to betray each other.”
 Enya looked as if she was about to deny that, but Dai could see the moment she noticed even the hard faces of Decimus and Gallus, both veterans of Praetorian battlefields, were not disagreeing with him.
“We know this,” Aoife said, sounding impatient. “So let’s get to what we don’t know.”
Dai nodded to acknowledge both her words and her right to say them.
“I just wanted to give everyone the chance to walk away from this and not get involved any deeper,” he explained, which provoked a throaty laugh from Lavinia
“I don’t think we could really be in any less deep than having agreed to be here in the first place. I can tell you don’t read much crime fiction. Remind me to gift you my back catalogue.”
Dai managed a weak smile.
“Um. Thank you.” He could see the meeting beginning to slip away from him already. “So, if no one wants to leave…?”
No one moved. Dai had not really expected anyone would, but he still experienced a relaxing of muscles he hadn’t realised he’d been holding tense.
“In brief,” he went on, feeling more confident now, “where as we know Bestia is the man who has been behind the headless murders last autumn, the killing of street women this spring and the attempt to have me condemned for treason last month, we have no hard evidence to back up our knowledge. What we now need to do is find solid proof that he did these things. And much as I would like to tie him to all three crimes as all those affected are equally deserving of justice, we have to keep in mind that we only need incontrovertible proof that he was responsible for one in order to have him arrested and condemned and thus stop him doing more and probably worse.”
It was not a thought he liked and he could see a few faces become a shade grimmer as people reflected on how they would feel if their own need for justice wasn’t met. Surprisingly, it was someone he thought would be the most urgent in their need for personal retribution who spoke up.
“What matters most is stopping this man,” Agrippina Julius said, her voice firm. “If that means SI Calvus or others have to take their justice at second hand then so be it.”
There were nods of assent from around the room, even if some such as Brangwen Broanan were more reluctant than others and Dai felt another lurch of relief. This was, as yet, an untried alliance and he knew it was down to him to somehow weave it together into a strong rope with which to hang Bestia.

Dying to Find Proof by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook is the tenth Dai and Julia Mystery. You can keep reading if you snag a copy of the novella which is FREE until 22 July.

A virgin smiles, her beauty glows
While those who would weigh fortune pose
A question of the stinging smile
As goose-fletched arrows eat the miles
Towards the goat whose hands embrace
A water carrier’s gentle face
And thou and I fry fish for tea
To feed my friend the ram and thee
The bull at bay, his death dirge sings 
Beneath the heavenly duo’s wings
While by the water, pink-shelled ones 
Defy the lion to seek the sun
And all the while the heavens above
Care not if we should hate or love
And, in spite of what we’re taught
The zodiac truly counts for naught

©️jj 2018

Summer is icumen in
Loudly sing cuckoo!

Or some such rubbish…

Since time immemorial (even before I was born), people have been seriously skittish about the summer solstice. 

Building bonfires, prancing around in impractical clothing, singing songs, and celebrating the longest day of the year. All of which was perfectly understandable – back in the mists of time when things like the rotation of the earth and other such wholly fascinating science were undiscovered and people seriously thought that prancing around naked with a wreath of mistletoe on your noggin guaranteed health, wealth and happiness. (Of course it didn’t. You were more likely to catch a heavy cold – if you were lucky. Or an STD – if you weren’t.)

This having been said we are now in the twenty-first century. We know that the days stretch and contract, the moon waxes and wanes, the seasons more or less follow a set pattern, and it’s quite likely that time will continue to flow in a linear pattern.

There Is No Excuse for turning up on Salisbury plain (probably in the pissing rain) to listen to some geezer in a nightie exhorting the sun to carry on rising. It will rise and set as it pleases, and our sad little ball of clay will continue its eccentric orbit without the intervention of a man who gets his hair cut at an MoT station.  It just doesn’t make sense to burn enormous amounts of fossil fuels in order to get to an event that’s supposed to be about being at one with Mother Earth (who would probably clip you around the earhole if she had hands).

Stop it already.

If you want to greet the rising sun do it in your garden. Or in the beer garden of the Dog and Prolapse. Or in your local park. Just don’t drive there. 

Personally, I shall be greeting the sunrise from behind closed eyelids – unless of course Gyp wants out for a piss. In which case I will salute the sun in my own back garden – and I shall be fetchingly attired in a candlewick dressing gown of indeterminate colour and vintage paired with a pair of wellington boots. (The grass in my garden is seriously unkempt because that’s how me and Gyp like it.) Unless of course it’s raining in which case I will remain in the nice dry kitchen giving the sunrise barely a glance as I swear at the fucking dog.

In a nutshell then. There is nothing special about the summer solstice – or the winter one, or the equinoxes. These things just happen. (I blame physics myself, but that’s another whole story.) 

So. Just please grow up. Wear normal clothes, or some clothes anyway. Don’t eat odd mushrooms. And please stay the fuck at home; the A303 was never built to cope with Druidic influxes.

Right that’s bloody midsummer dealt with. Me and Gyp are off down the pub. He fancies a Guinness and I’m gagging for a pint of Crop Circle.

Piss off then. Or are you buying the beer?

Graham was devout as his parents before him, Elsa less so and struggled with the idea of bringing up their daughter to be an unquestioning believer.

Things came to a head when Ruth was doing Noah’s Ark at school. Graham sat with her and read through the entire Bible story.

Afterwards, troubled, Ruth found her mother.

“I asked Daddy why Noah saved all those animals then sacrificed some of them,” she said. “Only two of each were saved so some must’ve gone extinct. God isn’t very nice sometimes.”

Elsa wondered what to say. 

From the mouths of babes, she thought.

E.M. Swift-Hook

This is the opening of Bolded Hearts, a fantasy short by Jane Jago. which is FREE to download until 22 June.

The fog came down suddenly: sleek and white and thick and cold. It felt like being draped in a clammy cobweb, and it became impossible to hear one’s own footsteps on the grassy pathway. If it wasn’t for the feel of the warm fur of the great dog who paced majestically at her side Amal would perhaps have been afraid. But she had walked worse than this with Chin-Cha as companion and protector. She wove her fingers into his great ruff of grey and silver hair, leaning on his strong presence as she had been able to do for so many years. Chin-Cha, she thought, the love of my life and my biggest single regret. She knew that the great dog now pacing at her side was a shape changer trapped in his present form by a powerful bear witch, who had then ensorcelled him to the service of a six-year-old girl. That child had grown up to be Amal the healer and witch-woman. A woman who loved her protector with every fibre of her being but would rather die than burden him with the knowledge of that love.
As the fog grew even denser, a voice spoke in her ear, it was woody and breathy, and sounded like a poorly tuned wind instrument.
“People ahead. Hiding. Ill intentioned. Those who have been hunting you since harvest moon Yuri thinks.”
Yuri was a frost imp and trusted friend. Amal put up a hand as if to touch him, and he blew on her fingers. Surprising warmth.
“How many?”
“I will see” and the sense of his presence was gone.

Chin-Cha pressed himself against her leg, silently urging her off the path. She allowed herself to be guided to the rough trunk of a big tree. He pushed her thigh with his nose, indicating that she should climb. Doing as she was bid Amal soon found herself on a wide branch beside a sheltering hole in the trunk. Wrapping herself in the blanket from her pack she crept into the very heart of the tree. She could no longer see her companion, but had the reassurance of his spirit as he hunkered down in the brownish bracken. Then he was coming towards her. Fast. She felt him bunch his muscles and erupted out onto her branch. He made a prodigious leap and she grasped his harness to steady him. They both crawled into the tree cave and huddled together for warmth and comfort.

It was not long before Amal got the sense of Yuri’s presence. She was about to speak when a small icy hand was placed on her lips.
“They are here” the woody windy little voice whispered, seeming to come from right inside her head. “Be still and silent and listen.”

At first Amal heard nothing, then she made out the sound of laboured breathing. There was a noise as if a heavy boot hit flesh.
“Where is the woman, tracker?” a harsh voice demanded.
“She came this way. She can’t be far. But I can no longer feel her presence. It must be the fog.”
“You had better not be lying to me. Gopal get the hounds. They will track her dog, and the old woman said that once we kill it the witch woman will lose her magic.”

You can keep reading here…

The collected ‘wisdom’ of seven decades on this planet condensed into poetic form. Certainly not philosophy to live your life by…

There was an old woman who lived by the water
Started a club known as Robin Hood’s Daughters
With twenty-five grannies and a male nurse called Dick
Who stole from the rich. And then kept what they’d nicked

©️jj

County Durham, Autumn 1642

“This is witchcraft!”
The man they called ‘Dutch’, which was strange as the furthest east he had ever been was Whitby, picked up the gruesome object and studied it. The dead eyes of a ginger cat stared back at him from its severed head.
“You are certain, Master Fanthorpe? There can be no mistake?”
“No mistake.”
Dutch looked from the cat’s head to his dead sheep and sighed.
“So we have feared, Master Fanthorpe, though we have prayed it was not so – I mean to think that in our community we have such a person… I -”
“You never find a witch alone!” Fanthorpe said sternly, sounding like the Puritan preacher he had been until recently. “There will be a coven here. All the signs are plain.”
Privately, Dutch thought Fanthorpe looked like an overgrown crow. Clad in fine, black wool from head to knee, his sharply angled face, gaunt beneath close-cropped grey hair and a black hat. The only concession to ornament was an oddly shaped buckle on the front of his hatband. Even the linen of his cuffs and collar was plain, unadorned by any lace – strangely at odds with the quality of his dress. He also looked the kind who would enjoy pecking at dead things.
“A coven?” Dutch echoed the words, doubtfully.
“Of course. This is the third case you tell me – so there must be a coven.  But do not fear Master Sawyer, the Lord is watching over us and has us in His keeping. Let us pray for deliverance from this evil”
Dutch bowed his head and let the sonorous drone wash over him, his mind entirely elsewhere. The loss of the sheep was going to be another blow to his struggling small farm, one he could very ill afford. The family had clung to the land against the odds over the last two generations, now it was a struggle to make ends meet enough to keep food on the table. But serious as the loss of livestock was, in that moment another matter clouded close upon his thoughts. He was wondering how he was going to break it to his youngest lass that her favourite ginger tom, the one she had raised from an orphaned kitten, had died.

E.M. Swift-Hook