When Anna had enthusiastically approved the house, even going so far as to purr when she saw the huge kitchen with its shiny red Aga, and Bonnie had given her seal of approval to the big rear garden with its tiny orchard, they moved Anna’s things in from the camper.
“You don’t have much stuff.”
“Got a bit more at Ted’s house. But not a lot. I’m not big on stuff.”
“Me neither, but all the women I’ve ever known have always wanted stuff.”
“Yeah. I can’t get my head around that. Plus, I never dared have stuff when mum was at home. She trashed it when she had a drink. By the time we got her into the care home, minimalism had become a habit. Now where can we put my china Bonnie?”
“There’s that cabinet in the hallway. I found it in one of the sheds I knocked down. It’d look well in there.”
“It would. Did you find much else?”
“Yeah. All the wood for the kitchen cabinetry, the big oak chair that’s also in the hallway, three very old Agas, and a lot of rats. The Agas were a lucky find, though, I exchanged them for the new one in the kitchen. Apparently there’s a booming market for reconditioned Agas of venerable years.”
“I love the one you have.”
“We have. The house is ours, nitwit.”
“Idiot. I haven’t been here ten minutes. You can’t go giving me half your house.”
“Can.”
She waved her arms in exasperation.
“Anyway is the Aga oil-fired.”
“Yeah. And fiendishly expensive to run.”
“I expect it is, but I can chip in there.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I do, Sam, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I’m not going to sponge on you.”
“I’m sure of that, but can you afford? I mean will you need to get a job? How long can you…”
He ran down and looked embarrassed. Anna laughed.
“Let’s go sit down. Then we can do the money thing.”
“I think we’d better.”
They got coffee and sat at the kitchen table.
“You first,” Anna said.
“Okay. I earn a thumping big salary. Plus my parents died in a road accident just before my marriage broke up. I was their only chick, so I inherited a lump. Enough to buy this place and do it up. Plus a bit to save for the future. You?”
“More complicated than your situation. I had a good job. There will be a fat pension when I’m fifty-five. Originally, I planned to run away when that happened, but in the end I didn’t have to wait that long. My mum had an aunt who the family didn’t talk about. She ran off to London and went on the stage. But then she found a better way to earn a living: wealthy men. My brother, Danny, and I thought it would be fun to get to know her, and Dad agreed. So we found her and she turned out to be a grand old girl, living in a gloomy great mansion flat in Chelsea with a lady companion. She welcomed us with open arms and we saw as much of her as we could. When Danny got a job in the smoke he wound up living with her and being totally spoilt by the lady companion. Incidentally, it was aunt Ruby who paid for my mother to be cared for in the home. She set up a trust fund that paid for mum’s care until she died, then the money went to the home so they could take on another dementia sufferer whose family was at the end of its tether. But I digress. When aunt Ruby died Danny inherited the flat, and I got a big chunk of money, which bought my house and paid to have an annexe built on for my dad to live in. Danny kept the flat, and did it up with his own hands, making a super-modern living space of it. He settled in happily, and lives with his partner in a state of connubial bliss – when they are in London that is. For some reason best known to themselves, those two bought me a lottery ticket – and the bloody thing only won the jackpot. I tried to share it with them, but they wouldn’t have it. I was firmly told to start enjoying life. The rest, as they say, is history.”
She stopped speaking and Sam pulled her onto his lap. “Does that mean you are a properly rich girl,” he teased.
“Oh yeah. I’m loaded. But you can’t exactly be on the breadline.”
“I ain’t. So aren’t we lucky.”
Then he cuddled her close.
“Is your dad still alive?”
“No. He died five years ago, just after mum. I don’t think he wanted to go on without her. I missed him a lot, but I was lucky enough to let the annexe to a young couple who are related to Mr Patel who runs the mini market around the corner from my house. They are the ones who are renting the whole house now and want to buy it. Maybe I’ll sell it to them.”
“You should. You won’t be needing it any more.”
“I hope I won’t. But you might get tired of me.”
“Not going to happen.”
She sat quietly in his arms for a few minutes then kissed his cheek.
“We need to go food shopping” she announced firmly. “Your store cupboard and your freezer are a disgrace. Frozen pizza. Ready meals. Not on my watch…”
He groaned.
“Do we have to?”
“Yup. And you get to push the trolley.”
“Okay. If you say so. But don’t I need to stay here with Bonnie?”
“No. Good try though. However, she has her bed and she’ll be fine.”
Sam tipped Anna off his lap and got up obligingly.
“Doesn’t that dog have any vices?” he asked plaintively.
“Umm. Only one. She chases cats. Especially cats on her patch.”
“Good. Because there is one bugger that comes in and shits on the flower beds.”
“There won’t be. She’ll see it off. Now. Supermarket.”

From The Cracksman Code by Jane Jago

Where the beer flows, there go I
In the pub snug bar I lie
Drinking beer until the cry:
‘Last orders, please’ when I sigh.
Until summer merrily.
Verily, merrily
Shall I go then
Into the beer garden, to drink with friends!

E.M. Swift-Hook

One of the poems in In Verse

In my several decades on this earth I reckon I have necked a fair drop of gin. (According to my unlamented spouse altogether too much, but he caught religious fervour on his fortieth birthday and mostly looked on me as Satan’s daughter from that day forward anyway.)

So.

Gin.

In my youth there was Gordons, Plymouth and bathtub. Which was fine and mostly you knew where you stood – unless some unscrupulous licensee shoved bathtub into a branded bottle. Incidentally, this is not a good idea, as many a misguided landlord has found to his cost – bathtub gin tends to bring out the worst in people and the repairs after a Saturday night brawl will often cost more than the extra profit on the bootleg gin. 

Now. Where was I?

*picks up long G&T made with Bombay Sapphire gin and Fever Tree tonic and stares lovingly into its pale blue depths*

Snap out of it woman…

Ah yes.

Who makes your gin?

Personally, I keep two sorts. One for me and one for the ravening hordes (which I also use for making flavoured gins – of which more later).

But neither is a ‘craft gin’ from a suspiciously small unit on an industrial estate in the arse end of nowhere. I don’t care if your gin blender is called Malachi and has spent two decades perched on a pole contemplating the meaning of flavour and his own rancid toenails. The only respectable flavouring for gin is juniper berries. Anything else is a poncey middle-class irrelevance.

I am not paying forty quid for a bottle because it has a picture of a frigging woodlouse on the label. And even less likely is me parting with great dollops of cash for flavoured gins. They are effing cocktails and I can make them better at home – my sloe gin has been known to reduce grown men to tears of gratitude, and as for my rhubarb and ginger!

Therefore all you craft gin makers are welcome to sell your suspiciously overdescribed wares to the weak, feeble and suggestible. Me? I have no need of your ‘forty aromatics’, I just want a reliable gin to mix with my favourite tonic.

And don’t get me started on the rankness of a lot of tonics…

That’s for another day!

To celebrate our third birthday at the beginning of July, the Working Title Blog held a drabble writing competition.

We are thrilled to announce that this is the winning entry by Tim Walker author of the Arthurian series A Light in the Dark Ages.

“Send in the…” 

He coughed into his palm, shoulders shaking as his body convulsed.

“Send in what, sir?” 

The polished lieutenant leaned towards his commanding officer, concern etched on his brow.

“Send in the…” the older man spluttered, cake crumbs spraying his blotter. “Send in…the…hoops.”

He slumped forward, eyes bulging. The lieutenant leap to his side and slapped his back repeatedly. It was no use. The commander lay dead, saliva dribbling from his lips.

“Send in the hoops?” He eyed his subordinates and sighed. “Stand down the men until I get clarification. And stay away from the cake!”

Through the skinny end window of my three-metre square office I watched Jackdaw Court grow from a hole in the ground to something one might call an architectural oddity if one was being kind. That having been said, and almost in spite of myself, I got interested and when the ‘for sale’ boards went up I dropped into the estate agent on my way home.
I sat in my tiny ‘apartment’ (ain’t that a joke: read bedsit with pretensions) ate pizza, and studied the blurb with increasing fascination. It was the tower that got me. Ever since I was a little kid I’ve been fascinated by towers, and the idea of living in one really floated my boat.
Not being one to let the grass grow, I was in the estate agent’s prim little office before nine thirty the next morning.
“The tower at Jackdaw Court. When can I see it?”
The over-presented receptionist looked at me as if I was something that had crawled out of the undressed lettuce that undoubtedly formed the mainstay of her meals. I favoured her with my best and most dangerous glare, and she thought better of whatever it was she had intended to say. Instead she made painfully slow progress on her computer. After faffing about for at least ten minutes she made a breakthrough.
“You can see it now” she said brightly. “Mister Brown is free.”
“Well wheel him out then. I don’t have all day.”
She picked up a handset and dialled three digits with a perfectly manicured finger.
“Customer wants to see the tower at Jackdaw Court. Now.” She put the handset down and only just managed not to sneer.
“He will be right with you.”
A middle-aged gent with a bit of a beer belly came out from the back office and smiled at me.
“Paul Brown” he stuck out a hand.
“Alysson Kowalski” I kept my own hands behind my back and his grin actually broadened.
“I’ll just get my car.”
I looked at him sternly. “You could do with the walk.” He winced then grinned.
“As you say.”
It was all of fifteen minutes, even with me needing to slow down for my new friend, but in that time we had sized each other up well enough for no fencing to be necessary.
“I take it” he said genially “that you have all your finances in position and you are in a position to proceed.”
“Yeah. Course I am. But blondie didn’t think so.”
“No. If she had she would have called on one of the thrusting young men who were also sitting in the back office drinking coffee.”
“How’d anything that stupid get a job?”
He grinned and shrugged.
“Yeah. There’s that” I had to admit. “But how does she keep the job?”
“She probably won’t. Especially if I make a sale this morning.”
“Eh? But don’t you make rather a lot of sales? The harmless duffer pose must be worth more than a few bob to the company.”
He grinned toothily. “It is. And I’m probably the most successful salesman in this branch. But you are not my target market. I’m supposed to deal with older people who would be turned off by Ranjit or Ralph – who are both a bit flashy.”
“Well then. I’d probably have wound up breaking someone’s pinky in a handshake. I don’t much care for flashy young men.”
By this time we were rounding the corner to come face to face with Jackdaw Court. Paul Brown visibly recoiled.
“It’s smegging ugly isn’t it” I said conversationally.
“No comment. But if you think that…”
“It’s the tower.”
He must have seen the yearning in my face, as he sprinted to unlock the front door of the tower apartment, which gave access to a flagstoned lobby and a broad stairway that ran up the side of the stone-clad building to the base of the tower proper. We ascended in single file with me in front. When we reached a second locked door Paul passed me a key. I opened up to find myself in a large, light entrance hall.
“Bedroom level. Both are en suite.”
I looked into the first room to find a hardwood floor and white wooden shutters at the window. Nice. The en suite was a wet room with slate walls and floor.
“Master the other side of the hall.” This was bigger and with windows in two walls, but it had the same flooring and shutters. The en suite was a proper bathroom with whirlpool bath, and walk-in shower. Again the floor was slate, but the walls were white composite. I nodded once and preceded Paul up the stairs. This floor was almost entirely taken up with a kitchen cum diner cum family room. The kitchen bit looked fine to me, and the rest was more than fine. Up again we reached the sitting room, which had a big balcony on one side and a tiny roof garden the other. A final bonus was the spiral staircase to a mezzanine level study.
I stood in the middle of the sitting room and considered my options. “Okay” I said. “Take it off the market. I’ll pay the asking price if I can be in inside a month.”

From Jackdaw Court by Jane Jago.

Pearls of wisdom from an octogenarian who’s seen it all…

Socks

Why do I have a drawerful of odd socks? I don’t buy odd socks. I don’t make a habit of taking off one sock and leaving it somewhere random. I don’t make a hole in one sock of every pair.

So where do the single socks come from?

Some of them aren’t even from pairs I have ever owned.

Does the washing machine eat socks?

Is there a sock fairy stealing them?

I have no bloody idea. 

But what I do know is that there’s only one way to deal.

From now on I’m only ever gonna wear odd socks…

“I’m sure you weren’t expecting me.”
The stranger stood in the shadows just outside my door, his face partly hid by the hood of his cloak. His hand gripped around a traveller’s staff, the sort that could be used both for walking and a sturdy defence. I’d have taken him for some vagrant were it not for the large ruby ring that I could see on that hand.
“I can’t say as how I was expecting anyone,” I told him, wondering if I’d be wiser just to shut the door in his face. When you live alone and your nearest neighbour is the other side of the fell, welcoming a stranger into your home after dark is not so wise.
“Can I come in? I just need shelter for the night.”
Now, you can call me a superstitious old woman but I know as well as the next that most all the magical beings you can name from brownies to vampires need to be invited into your home before they can touch you.
“If you need a place to sleep there is the barn.” I nodded to that old ramshackle building my grandfather raised. It’s outlived its name and its purpose long since, but the roof keeps the wind and rain out – mostly.
“Thank you,” he said and dipped his head in a sort of bow, like I was a noble lady or something.
I still don’t know why I did it, but later that evening I took a bowl of my stew and a lump of seed bread out to the barn. I saw a sort of red glow coming through the cracks in the walls and very nearly dropped the tray in fright. Instead, I crept close and peeked through one of them cracks and as I’m standing here today, I swear I saw a red dragon three times the size of any man curled with its nose on its tail and staring right back at me with ruby eyes.
I don’t mind admitting I ran back to the house and bolted the door. Not that would have kept out a dragon, but what else was I to do?
I went back in the morning at first light. The barn was empty. First I thought I’d imagined it all, but where that dragon had been curled I found this very gold piece…

E.M. Swift-Hook

Benita loved naming things.

When she was a child every toy had a name and if the people next door might have neglected to call their chickens anything, Benita had a name for each.

She would name people she saw in the street and when she finally found a boyfriend she delighted in bestowing a different name upon him each day of the week.

The day before their wedding he found a list of twelve names – six male, six female – on her notepad.

“What are these for?”

She smiled at him radiantly.

“Our children, of course.”

He cancelled the wedding.

E.M. Swift-Hook

This was one of the two major auction houses in Viriconium that specialised in antiques. It was also the place that, according to his own records, Vibius did the most trade. They had swooped on the owner just as an afternoon auction had finished.
Justina Cynddylan was a harassed-looking woman in her fifties, wearing a fine quality stola and a silver ring of Citizenship. She didn’t seem even slightly intimidated by an unannounced visit from the Vigiles when Bryn produced his ID, and flapped a hand to the stairs at the rear of the auction room when asked if they could go somewhere a bit quieter to talk.
“I don’t have much space, we can use the small store upstairs if you like. But I have nothing to hide, so why not just ask me here?” Her gaze moved past the two for a moment and she raised her voice. “Not that one, Carwyn. The dominus said he was sending someone to collect it.” Then she looked back at Dai. “I am sorry, but I do have a business to run here, so can we make this – whatever it is – as quick as possible please?”
Dai tried his best boyish smile. “Of course, I quite understand. And that is why I suggest we go somewhere quieter so we don’t keep getting interruptions that will delay us all.”
She didn’t quite melt, but the look of tense disapproval softened very slightly.
“Very well.” She led them to the rear staircase and then turned to call across the room “Gawain? Three teas and a plate of those vanilla fingers we had earlier.” A young man, presumably Gawain, put down the box he was carrying and scuttled off through a side door.
The ‘small store’ was well named in Dai’s opinion. It was a room with a tiny window, half full of boxes of bric-a-brac. The other half was occupied by an elderly leather settee and a couple of hard backed, un-matching, very British dining chairs set either side of a small pedestal-leg table. Justina perched on one of the chairs and gestured imperiously that Dai and Bryn should appropriate the settee between them. Dai did so and regretted it in the same moment as the seat sagged away deeply beneath him. He just knew that if he tried to rise he would struggle to free himself. Bryn was clearly a wiser man as he declined the settee and instead used it to display the pictures of artefacts they had taken at random from the internet.
“Do you recognise any of these, domina?” he asked before sitting on the other hard chair.
The auction room owner peered a little myopically at the images, then picked one or two up to look closely at them.
“This is in the collection of Minoan artefacts presently on display in Londinium and this,” she waved another picture, “went missing from an exhibition in Latium four years ago. The rest I could have a stab at their provenance, but I have no idea where they are now.” She dropped the pictures back on the couch and looked at Bryn accusingly. “Why are you showing me these?”
Before he could answer there was a tap on the door and the youngster Dai had seen downstairs brought in a tray of spiced fruit teas and cakes and placed it on the table, then retreated quickly from the room.
“Help yourselves if you want.” Justina waved towards the tray then looked back at the images. “I don’t see what any of these have to do with me.”
“They are not really, domina. Just some items that have been stolen over the last few years.” As Bryn spoke he offered a tea to Dai, who shook his head having decided that trying to drink whilst being swallowed into the depths of the settee would be a recipe for disaster. “We just wondered if you might recognise any of them.”
Justina glared at Bryn as if he had just propositioned her for a night of wild orgies.
“I don’t allow any stolen goods in my auction room,” she said, icily. “Everything that passes through here is checked as having the correct licences.”
“Anyone can make a mistake,” Dai suggested and the woman snorted in disgust.
“Perhaps you Vigiles can make mistakes and think no more about it – those in positions of power often seem to feel that way about life. You just shovel your mistakes under the nearest carpet and carry on regardless, with no one daring to say otherwise. But I can’t afford to make that kind of mistake. This is my livelihood. Even if I avoided criminal charges for doing so, it would ruin my reputation as a dealer with integrity and that would destroy my business.”
Dai nodded sympathetically. “Yes. I can see that. So it must have been a bit difficult for you to find out that Josephus Vibius Anser, one of your best customers, was in fact up to his neck in the illicit art and antiquities trade?”
Her face darkened.
“You are not going to try and tie me in to that. Anything and everything that man bought from me had a full and legitimate licence attached. I can give you the entire list, with origins, previous owners, prices made at each sale, everything – solid as a blockchain.”
“Thank you,” Dai said, “that would be very useful so we can eliminate you from our enquiries completely. Perhaps you could email those to us before you go home today.”
He tried to get to his feet then but having his buttocks lower than his knees and the sagging cushion enveloping him it was a little undignified. In the end, he grabbed the edge of the settee with his hands and pulled himself up. Bryn was making little attempt to hide his grin behind a teacup, which he drained quickly when Dai caught his eye. Justina Cynddylan didn’t seem to notice. She was still frowning at them her thoughts apparently elsewhere.
“If you want my opinion,” she said as Dai finally gained his feet, “you would do better asking everybody’s friend, Tony Talog. If anyone is doing things the wrong way it’s him.”
Dai searched his memory and failed.
“Tony Talog?”
Bryn cleared his throat and picked up one of the cakes. “That’d be the man who runs ‘Rara et Vetera’ isn’t it? Your local competition, domina.”
“That – that creature is not any kind of competition for me,” she said firmly. “Half what he sells as pristine originals is heavy restoration. Some so heavy they are really reproductions. I have people attend some of his auctions and they tell me some horrific tales. But it is more than just that he sells bad antiques. One of his employees was close to quitting his place and joining me. The day she put in her notice someone kidnapped her dog and two days later the poor creature appeared on her doorstep stuffed by a taxidermist. She left Viriconium the next day, I believe, at least I have heard nothing more about her since.” She glared accusingly at Dai. “And your lot didn’t lift a finger, of course. I expect the Submagistratus is getting backhanders from Talog to turn a blind eye.”
“Not at all,” Dai assured her. “I am not in the corruption business, although I can’t speak for my predecessor.”
They left her with her mouth agape looking like a stunned sheep and walked quickly from the room, down the stairs and out onto the street.

An extract from Dying for a Vacation by JJane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook one of the Dai and Julia Mysteries set in an alternative modern-day world, where the Roman Empire still rules.

Pearls of wisdom from an octogenarian who’s seen it all…

Read the F***ing Notice!

Queueing in the sunshine for an ice cream. The place has about forty flavours and a strict queuing system. Today’s flavours are displayed on a blackboard. Beside this there is a notice saying.

‘Please choose your flavour before entering so that other people aren’t kept waiting any longer than necessary.’

There’s also a little girl popping up and down the queue asking people to please choose their flavour from the blackboard.

I know the two women in front of me are too busy blethering.

In they go.

“What flavours have you got?”, one says brightly.

Read the fucking notice, assholes.