Badgers and Swans

This week it’s all about links. To be honest, when I woke up this morning I was in a bit of a panic. What on earth would I write about this week? Mind totally blank. Coffee helped to dispel the sheer blind terror but did little to provide a theme, a subject, anything!

The Marcia said something about a member of the family. Nothing of any real consequence, just the idle comments that most couples throw to and fro - the small change of conversation , the contact calls that hold everything together rather like the delightful chattering you get with a flock of long-tailed tits. Out of that comment, and I now have idea what it was, came that thought. Links - I shall talk about links.

From the writer's point of view, thoughts and ideas: plots and characters if the writer is a novelist, bullet points in other cases - these come somewhat out of the blue, hanging there invitingly, asking to be given due consideration and to be remembered come what may. That last is so important. It may well that this 'thing' will have nothing to do with the book or article or blog on which the writer is working. In such a case it can, usually does, cause distraction and muddle but it is there for a reason. It might not be for the next book/article/blog nor even the one that follows that but these are the nuggets of gold that will become the building bricks from which the final work is built.

It is the links that turn these nuggets into stories - and even the most mundane of non-fiction writing should tell a story and tell it in a way that holds the reader's attention to the bitter end. Suddenly it becomes clear that there is a link: to use Marcia's The Sea Garden to illustrate the point, a link between Kate and Joss. At this stage there will be no idea what that link is: only much later will another piece of information be revealed and we learn that Joss has won an award endowed by Kate's late husband.

Sometimes one of these nuggets is in storage for a number of years. The vision of a journalist living in a converted coastguard cottage waited in the wings for many years before Marcia realised that there was a link here with the Chadwicks and, especially, with Jocelyn. Meanwhile, Cordelia (for it was she in The Prodigal Wife) had to be kept firmly at bay until it was time for her to step forward.

I suspect that some of you are wondering why we have the badgers and the swans. Well, the link is that these photographs were sent to us by readers - the swans by Helen in Portsmouth and the badgers by Susan in Kent. Many thanks to you both for sharing them with us.

Now for a terrible confession: I have lost the notebook in which I have recorded the names of the blog dogs. Marcia and I were having a cup of tea in the community shop-cum-cafe in Holne on Dartmoor when we came across this most delightful person but I cannot give you a name. So, if you know this week's blog dog, please post a comment here to put right this terrible wrong.

I should add that they do serve some really superb home made cake  - so keep well away if you are on a diet.

Lunch amongst the birds

The other day we received a copy of the latest book to be published in Brazil: The Summer House. Its cover has real charm but we are both wondering who the girl is meant to be.

Incidentally, a bit of advance warning for those living not too far away: Marcia will be in The Harbour Bookshop, Kingsbridge from 11 am to 1 pm on Wednesday, 3 July.

By way of celebrating my birthday (which was actually at the beginning of May) a great friend of ours treated Marcia and me to lunch at Turtley Corn Mill. Time for some history.

Turtley was a prehistoric ovoid hilltop enclosure of which there are still a few surviving ramparts. Despite its ancient beginnings it is known locally as ‘the Roman camp’ although there is little evidence that the Romans ever occupied it. The name Turtley or Thurreclyve derive from the Old English for a dry slope: dyrre clif. At some point – probably in the 1300’s but I have been unable to pin down the date – a grist mill was built alongside the Glaze Brook just before it joins the River Avon. It was called Turtley Mill and it continued to grind corn until 1956. After falling into dereliction it was converted into a restaurant which opened in 1978. At that time it was known as The Mill at Avonwick and when we lived in that village it was one of the places where we would go to have a good meal. Since 2005 it has become something even more impressive. Now known as Turtley Corn Mill it is, and rightly so, one of the best places for a good meal in this area. Click here for their web site.

Apart from being a pub with a restaurant, it includes four rather swish bedrooms should you wish to stay. As a result of all this, it is extremely busy and M and I tend to go there only in the winter when things are rather quieter. Last Sunday, however, the place was heaving, every table inside and every table outside (and there are quite a few) was occupied. Nevertheless we had a great time and the birds were in good form.

Birds? A word of explanation: the mill has its own resident bird life: chickens of various breed, ducks and guinea fowl. These are all free range (although they are not allowed in the pub itself) and the guinea fowl in particular were in a state of high emotion with males chasing females, males chasing males and one female chasing everything in sight – including one really inoffensive chicken who wanted nothing more than to be left alone to check out under the tables for dropped eatables. I hope you enjoy the pictures I took there.

And before we move on from bird pictures, here is one that arrived as an attachment to an email from Jeanne Meyer in Oklahoma showing two of the Canada Geese that spend the winter in her neck of the woods but disappear in the summer to go up north to breed.

Talking of birds, the village has a fairly large resident population of jackdaws. They can be very funny at times but quite a nuisance at others. At this time of the year they have nests in all the chimney pots we can see except those that have been fitted with cowls to keep them out. Click here to see a short video on the subject. Some people here love them, some hate them and yet others hardly seem to notice them.

I was brooding on the relationship between the jackdaws and the villagers when I came across the following which is about a completely different sort of relationship. Anyway, I decided to share it with you.

Now, an hour or so later, I eat my breakfast and brood upon the delicate mechanism that exists in an intimate, on-going relationship between a man and a woman. I see this relationship as a long intricate dance; sometimes the dance becomes almost tribal, aggressive, with stamping feet, waving fists and ugly contorted mouths. At other times each rests peacefully against the other, smiling dreamily, the rhythm slows and our arms go out to encircle the loved one, drawing close, heart against heart, eyes closed. Most of the time, however, the steps are weaving, dexterous, advancing, giving ground, circling, hesitating, marking time. We watch our partner's movements, studying the body language; the energy or lassitude of movement; summing up, giving out, rejecting, in turn.

As I crunch away at my toast, which is loaded with my own home-made marmalade, and pour a second cup of coffee, I try to decide at which point the need for subterfuge, emotional blackmail, the cut and thrust, enters these relationships. Do we even recognise that we are using these stratagems? Surely we do. These little parrying lunges on the matrimonial dance floor are so integral with the daily round.

I am sure you will agree that this is all very true. Any idea who wrote it?

Lucy, above, is often to be seen in The Bedford Hotel in Tavistock keeping Jean in control.

Devon lanes in May

For the last few weeks, Marcia and I have been pottering around as she has been looking for and listening to the people who will, I have no doubt, dominate our household for the next few months during which we shall both get to know them better than our relatives and closest friends. What an odd business this is.

The tall people in the middle are antirrhinum. Around them are the white flowers of Little Mouse Ear and bottom left a few bluebells and there are a lot of other species in there too.

The bluebells are still with us. These are up on the moor beside a lane leading to Leusdon and are still in their prime. When we were down near the coast (a few hundred feet lower in a different world) they were just beginning to go over.

 Anyway, as we have pottered so we have revelled: the Devon lane in May is like nowhere else. For a few glorious weeks nature in all its glory unfolds itself not in some far distant place where you must travel and trek to find it but there, just there, beside the car as you travel about your daily business. Some, sad to say, never notice: their eyes are on what is to come (the shopping – fetching the children from school – the next business appointment – the next repair job – the next delivery). Not all miss out due to the hustle and bustle of life: we see people who stop for a few moments just taking it all in before setting off again. To some of these we speak and they have one thing in common – a thing we share: the need to connect even if only for a moment with that something outside ourselves that we give so many different names.

The yellow flowers belong to the white dead nettle. Bottom right the wild garlic (we call them ransoms). They smell wonderful on a hot day and, yes, you can use them in cooking.

A general view with scores of plants in view. The yellow ones are one of the hawkbits but I don't know which one (they might even be the related smooth hawk's-beard). The tiny blue flowers bottom left are speedwell.

Herb Robert (the same one as grows in North America where it is called  Robert Geranium) was used as a cure for toothache and nose bleeds. It has other names, too, such as "death come quickly" but why I have no idea. It is, of course, related to all the other geraniums.

There is a universal need to connect to nature which is why natural history programmes are so popular. I watch some of these too (usually in the depths of winter) but given the option of sitting in front of a television and watching some exotic beast from some foreign country or just pottering down one of our lanes I would always choose the latter. Indeed, I imagine myself in old age in a powered wheelchair doing so to the bitter end.

Ramsons again.

Stonecrop, a sedum that (as the name suggests) loves to live in stony places but there, just alongside, is a group of bluebells which don't. Both seem to be doing quite well.

I have chosen these two to demonstrate how short spring can be. Both are taken within a hundred yards of each other and show a hedge which has a good deal of sycamore in it (despite the fact that this is a pretty rotten plant for hedging). One section gets a lot more sun than the other which explains the difference. Anyway, top - new and very beautiful sycamore leaves still that luscious yellowy-pinky-red whilst the others are already quite grown up and a rather boringly just green.

 So yesterday I set off with my simplest camera – a delightful Panasonic Lumix – and I took a series of photographs from the car just to prove the point and to share some of the delights with you. Some of the plants shown here are already passing over – now the verges and hedges will start to take on their summer coats – the snowdrops have gone but we still have some winter aconite, primroses and celendines (but I have already shared them with you in earlier blogs). Yes, there will be much to see and much to enjoy but it will be autumn before the lanes are once again quite simply magical.

Almost certainly cow parsley or a close relative. This family (after which the umbrella gets its name) will dominate the verges for the rest of the summer.

I don't know. Simple as that. No idea. The leaves in early spring look just like bluebell leaves but they are rather harsher to the feel and less fleshy. The flowers, as you can see, are uninspiring. I have pored through books and asked friends for help with identifying them but nobody seems to know. So, over to you - come on, one of you must be able to help.

I should add that one of the constraints of sticking to taking photographs from the car is that you only have those images available when it comes to identification. I have done the best I can but some may well be wrongly named. The other problem is that you tend to hold up the traffic: sorry to all those who sat behind me, patiently waiting until (with a jolt) I realised they were there.

Of course he's called Churchill. Well, he had to be didn't it? (For those who do not live in the UK, this is the spit image of a dog who is used to advertise an insurance company which trades under the name of Churchill).

Swanning About

The simplest way to describe life this last week is to say we have been swanning around. This is all part of Marcia’s search for these rather ephemeral (as yet, anyway) characters she has in the back of her mind. Still shadowy, they have been dominating what we do and where we go. It seems a crazy way to write a novel but, as I am sure you would all agree, it works.

The source of the Dart is a bit tricky. Up on the moor it divides into the East Dart and the West Dart and then there are all the streams that feed into it. Most start as an "issue" where water literally oozes out of the ground. Above is the issue that becomes the Walla Brook that becomes the West Dart that . . . well, you get the idea.

Anyway, we have been all over the place, following the River Dart from it’s source on Dartmoor to the sea at Dartmouth and along the coast from there westwards to Bigbury and Burgh Island.

No confusing the mouth of the River Dart with its castle.

As usual, as we go I have been taking photographs and the odd scrap of video. As far as the latter is concerned you will find a video called (well, it had to be) “Swanning About” on YouTube. Click here to see that. Stick with it – it gets more interesting towards the end.

This photograph was actually taken on 23 May - 2009.
A sea of bluebells on the open moor.

Meanwhile, Marcia has learned that her editor is over the moon with the last book so there will be a new one out in the autumn of 2014. I never doubted this for one moment but Marcia is always cautious. She is right to be, there is more to getting a book published these days than simply writing a good one. Behind the editor is the marketing department, sales and the accounts department. All have their say for there is no value in writing a novel that cannot be marketed well, sold well and – vitally important for all involved – make a profit.

The really sad thing (this is a personal statement) is to watch people who for other reasons are in the public eye writing poor quality novels which, nevertheless, are listed in the top ten simply because the author is a “celeb” (or, of course, a ghost writer who has done all the work and will get none of the glory even if the return in financial terms is good).

End of rant.

The problem with modern life is, as we all know, that the speed of communication makes us immediately (and, often, dramatically) aware of the bad things that happen throughout the world. We were shocked by the impact of the typhoon on Oklahoma and so glad that, as far as we know, none of Marcia’s readers suffered loss or damage as a result. That gladness is, of course, tinged with sadness when we think of those who were less fortunate. Many thanks to Jeanne for keeping us informed.

This week our blog-dog is called Scarlett.

Oklahoma typhoon

Marcia and I were horrified to read about the typhoon and the devastation it has caused. Our thoughts are with all those whose relatives or friends have been killed or wounded and with those who have seen their property destroyed.

If you live in OK, please get is touch to let us know whether or not you are all right.

Location, location and characters

You may remember me telling you how we came to find the location for The Sea Garden. If you want to refresh your memory, click here. All the photographs below (apart from the blog dog) were taken while Marcia was researching in the area and I was just sitting there enjoying this extraordinarily atmospheric place where the light conditions change minute by minute, the tide surges in and out and, of course, weather and time of day all combine to ensure that it is never the same twice. Most do not have a caption as I think these speak for themselves. I suspect I have allowed myself to get carried away. You could just look the other way.

So we had a location but no characters other than the fact that Marcia was sure this would be a book in which Cass and Kate would find their lifelong relationship at risk when it looked as though the marriage between Cass’s daughter, Gemma, and Kate’s son, Guy, was on the rocks. That, however was not the main thrust of this book although at that stage Marcia had no idea what was.

Then one character stepped out of the shadows. A girl, really a young woman, on a train from Bristol to London and almost beside herself with joy. Who? Why Bristol to London? Why joyful? What has this to do with a book that is to be set on the banks of the River Tamar? Well, we lived with those questions for a week or so as we talked through all the options. As always, this became easier (or at least clearer) when the girl had a name: Joss. Marcia feels that names are so important: how can you give a baby a name before it is born, before you know what he or she is like? Perhaps this is why so many children end up with nicknames – their given names are all wrong. It’s the same with dogs – Kit was always the member of the Chadwick family to name the dogs at the Keep and this aspect of her character she shares with Marcia (or should that be the other way around?).

We are now back in that sort of situation as Marcia begins to fumble towards the next novel whilst trying to keep the characters of the last one in her head in case her editor wants some changes made. Today, however, it is not a location but no characters nor all the main characters and no location (and that has happened quite often) but an odd combination of the two: fleeting glimpses of shadowing people standing in the wings, odd senses of resonance when in certain places but nothing definite at all. We shall have to wait and see and, for now, spend time pottering around a wide area of moorland and coastal Devon hoping that as we do so everything will fall into place. They always have in the past so no reason why they shouldn’t again.

This is one of the racing gigs famous in the west country.

Marcia showing berries from the spindle tree

"Time for bed," said Zebedee and it was.

Meanwhile I am driving myself mad trying to sort out some of the thousands of photographs that I have on my computer or waiting to be scanned in and making some sense of them on my own web site. At the moment I am trying to add at least six different species of bird each week. At the same time, I am working on a few video projects. (Yes, quite right: those whom the gods wish to destroy they first send mad) Putting video on this blog makes it rather clunky and some people I know can’t actually see them because not all devices support that format. So, I have put a couple of snippets up on YouTube which you can look at or not as the mood takes you. Here are the links.

Jackdaws gathering material for theirnests and  a coot on Slapton Ley on the South DevonCoast.

Then, of course, there is the blog dog of the week: Bosca by name.