SKIING UP THROUGH ROTHERHAM

ST ELLEN'S

DISSOLUTION (Roche Abbey, 1538) - a poem

Disbelieving

On hands and knees,

I crawl, shielding

The hum-bright hive,

Tilted honey spilling unspoiled

Bees trail a curling Kyrie

Up between linden’s fingers

Disbelieving that they would

Until they came

A storm of the king’s sending,

No pilgrimage of grace

Tripping me out of my habit

La belle Roche,

Melts into pewter, stone, timber, lead

What will become of me?

I lick my fingers

As the sword descends,

Taste only honey, blood,

Thyme from the shadows of the kitchen-garden.

Refectorium

Buzz and banter

Swims into silent

No stone unturned

Into rectangles of hollow

Mapped matins and misericord

Long since sung.

WAITING FOR WINGS

Up in the attic with the window ajar in implausibly glacial late April.

A wafer of ice has made sorbet of the bird's water dish and the bee-bath. I shatter it when I'm out scattering mealworms, filling feeders, dispensing lard and suet. Back up in my den I nudge the window wider. The chill's going to be worth it.

This morning I'm listening for something special.

I'm waiting for wings.

The Red Arrows are staging a fly past from RAF Scampton. Scheduled to pass over Robin Hood Airport at Finningley quarter of an hour later, they're flying east as far as Humberside Airport before heading back to Scampton.

Aircraft out of Doncaster regularly cruise low over my roof, at hundreds of feet instead of many thousands. Thrilling yet unnerving. Imagining their wings against this stainless blue sky, anticipating the rumble as they soar over, was what set my fingers notching the window sash onto the latch.

Through the open glass can I hear goldcrests zithering in the conifers over the road at the old farm, rippling further off in the grounds of the Grange. A chaffinch is doing his impersonation of a cricketer running up to the wicket to bowl a spinning googly, the fall of notes at the end of his trilling phrase bouncing down from the Ash tree through the budding leaves. Greenfinch tops the linden, whistling nasally in long coils of whoop. My ear catches the cross tutting of Blackbirds fighting over supplies of sustenance on the patio. Dunnocks are flying off the handle. Robins are in a song contest knockout against their rivals with a medley of their hits where the lyrics always sound like "Do you know who I am?"

There are already babies to feed. I've not seen any in feathery person yet. I only know because their parents' gathering outweighs their grazing. I'm hoping the frosty night hasn't taken them by surprise. You can't throw on an extra heated blanket when your bed's a few twigs in a draughty hedge.

I never do see the Red Arrows, after all. The clock hands sweep past the moment of their homing. The planes must have headed out to the coast and back without darkening these inland skies. The tilted roofs with their aerials sucking signals from the sky, the telegraph wires swinging liquorice skipping ropes in the playground of nippy air are satisfied with the sunshine.

With the window open, I can see sparrows giddying along the eaves, inches from my upturned eyes, skippy shadows fluttering, overwound clockwork automata driven by the ceaseless chivvying of their hungry youngsters from their playpens in the roof.

I think I got the best of it.

I know I did.

It was worth the wait.

I witnessed the wings that make the future brighter.

Young Wood Pigeon - more wings to watch for in Spring

WICKERSLEY'S HISTORIC BUILDINGS: IN REALITY AND IN FICTION

The Round Houses on Wickersley's historic Morthen Road near Rotherham, South Yorkshire, UK

Above are the Round Houses on Wickersley's Morthen Road as they are today.

I used the local geography as one of the backdrops for my novel 'Goatsucker Harvest' set in 1855.

These gorgeous buildings, once used as a place of worship and a shop, now private dwellings, are the ones that catch our heroine Thirza Holberry's eye and fire her imagination as she is waiting for Lucas to collect the new millstone from the quarry to cart back to Thirza's grandparents' windmill on the outskirts of Thorne and Hatfield Moors near Doncaster.

The quarries were one of lovely Wickersley's claims to fame, once renowned for their high quality "Wickersley Rock" sandstone. Their excellent grindstones were in demand for Sheffield's cutlery industry and exported worldwide. You can still see grindstones scattered around Wickersley and in the village there are still many beautiful old houses and walls built of the local stone.

"To while away the time, Thirza set out to stroll the length of what she imagined was the main street, back towards the parish church of St Alban. She gazed at a pair of unusual bow-fronted cottages and puzzled how the occupants chose furniture that would bend to the shape of the room. Or did they design their own? It must be like living in a windmill, only a windmill cut in half." - Joyce Barrass 'Goatsucker Harvest' ch 25 "Grindstones and Goatsuckers."

Here's St Alban's Parish Church. As Lucas says in the book, the top of the tower is the highest spot between Sheffield and Bawtry and used to have a lantern lit on top to guide travellers by stagecoach in the nights before streetlamps made night like day!

St Alban's Parish Church, Wickersley, from Church Lane

In the story, Thirza is hoping for a quick getaway from the stifling summer heat as she wanders around the village, but Lucas has met his friend from the Old Hall and is getting more than a little merry and incapable of driving their carriage, as he takes more than one drink at the Needles Inn (now Wickersley Social Club, still an excellent venue for a pint or two!)

The former Needles Inn, now Wickersley Social Club

The Inn stands alongside what used to be the main road between Bawtry and Sheffield, before the dual carriageway (Bawtry Road) was built just to the north in more recent memory.

The Gazebo in the grounds of Wickersley Grange beside the Inn, is a listed building reputed to have been where passengers would wait for the stagecoach, dating from the early eighteenth century. More info here on the Historic England website.

The listed Gazebo, just east of Wickersley Grange

Wickersley Old Hall is still standing proud nearby on the opposite side of the road from pub and gazebo, the road across which Lucas staggers dangerously drunk in my novel. Today, it has been converted into flats.

Wickersley Old Hall, south face

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WHERE I GREW UP

Bolton-on-Dearne in the old West Riding of Yorkshire's Dearne Valley, in the railway cottages in the 60s, just in case you were wondering! 😂

Horse Marines and history-based fun and fantasy in my fiction

The last Mexborough Horse Marine, Tom Rawnsley, with his horse on the towpath at Sprotborough, South Yorkshire.
(Picture credits and respect to The Humber Keel & Sloop Preservation Society, taken from Fred Schofield's wonderful book "Humber Keels and Keelmen" published by Terence Dalton Limited, Lavenham, Suffolk, 1988)

The first draft of my new book is going swimmingly, though where Thirza the keelgirl and her wildlife-whisperer Bram, sailing aboard the Humber Keel 'Thistle' are concerned, still waters run deep and it's going to be a very choppy voyage! Though much of the action of my new novel takes place around beautiful Flamborough on the Yorkshire Coast, I am just writing a scene set on the canal bank in Mexborough, in South Yorkshire's Dearne Valley mining district. That's where my heroine Thirza's dad, Jack Holberry, retired from his life as a keelman to become a horse marine, hauling other boats along the canal, as lovely readers of my first novel GOATSUCKER HARVEST will know!

A few of my own waterways ancestors, who give me lots of inspiration for my writing, also worked as boat haulers along this stretch of the South Yorkshire Navigation. I thought readers might enjoy this photo of the last Horse Marine working from Mexborough, Tom Rawnsley, pictured here with his horse on the towpath at Sprotborough to get you in the mood for the drama, intrigue and history-based fun and fantasy in my fiction!

You can  keep up with me on Facebook Joyce Barrass - Author, Twitter or my Goodreads author page. Thanks so much for stopping by!

Set sail down the South Yorkshire canals of yesteryear!

You look like you might need to de-stress and chill out for a while on a calming canal! 

Here you can watch a wonderful historic film clip of a voyage down the Yorkshire canals where my novel "Goatsucker Harvest" is set. You'll see the Stainforth & Keadby Canal, the River Don and the watery world where "Thistle" would have sailed on her regular round trips from Hull to Sheffield. You even get a glimpse of Conisborough Castle from the water in the extended version of the archive film, just as Thirza remembers in the book!

 All aboard for your 1959 trip on the waterways, or travel back to 1855 to experience this beautiful landscape in the pages of "Goatsucker Harvest." Enjoy! 

Yorkshire Film Archive: Is Rotherham a Seaport?

They say the dead tell no tales...

Two of the hundreds of names on gravestones in Wentworth's old churchyard, near Rotherham, South Yorkshire

Visited gorgeous Wentworth village in South Yorkshire to see the Old Church with its medieval tower, 16th century memorial statues, 1684 rebuild by the 2nd Earl of Strafford & its damp & gloomy subterranean burial crypt of the Fitzwilliams built c1824. 

I was amused to see two tombstones nearby, one bearing the name of my heroine in "Goatsucker Harvest", 'Thirza', the other the surname of my villain, (Darnell) 'Salkeld'. Not surprising really, as all my characters bear local Yorkshire names taken directly from my own family tree. What was touching is that the names on these graves were pointed out to me by two people who are enthusiastic readers of my novel! 

Flamborough graveyard also holds links to my next story; and they say the dead tell no tales... 

Goatsucker Harvest: The windmill - titillation, torment and terror?

The old "jog-scry" aka "joggle screen" or "jiggle screen" at Quainton Windmill in Bucks (from the Quainton Mill Website)

How could an innocent old windmill become an instrument of titillation and torment? Even terror?

Above you see a rare example of a "jog scry" or joggling/jiggling screen used in some windmills as a flour grading machine before the invention of wire screens.

The Jog-Scry in Kitson's Windmill in Goatsucker Harvest inspires one character profoundly. Too profoundly, perhaps. It arouses memories and secret, sinister associations in him that have devastating consequences for the people of Turbary Nab.

Disturbing changes are afoot. Humble, run-down Kitson's Windmill is about to become transformed. The unsuspecting townspeople of Victorian Doncaster and beyond are about to encounter something monstrous on their calm horizon. The ancient alchemy of the peat marshes of South Yorkshire is about to be unleashed!

Download "Goatsucker Harvest" now on your Kindle (if you dare!)

[Below are the earthbound remains of some of the local windmills that were in the author's imagination when she was writing about the area with a fictional glow.]

Thorne Windmill by F.W. Jackson

Fishlake Windmill near Doncaster

West Nab Windmill, Fishlake near Doncaster

Lings Windmill at Hatfield Woodhouse, Dunscroft near Doncaster

Thorne Windmill near Doncaster

Goatsucker Harvest: "So, what's a Goatsucker, when it's at home?"

Nightjar, Goatsucker, or Fern-Owl, Caprimulgus europaeus (Lithograph from Painting by J G Keulemans in 'Coloured Figures of the birds of the British  Islands 1885-1897) 

"Why "Goatsucker Harvest"?"

"Such an intriguing title - can't wait to read it!"

"What's a Goatsucker, when it's at home?"

"I've got to ask....'Goatsucker Harvest'... very unusual to say the least, where did it come from!!!!???"

This question's the one I get asked the most when people hear the title of my novel.

So here's the lowdown!

The honest answer is the title itself is straight out of my imagination. I love what it makes me think and feel, about a dusky world out on the peatlands and lowland moors near my ancestral home in South Yorkshire, where the Nightjars fly, chirring their unearthly song and clapping their wings in the twlight, laying their eggs in the summer under the full moon.

I wonder if anyone else recalls a local programme on TV a few years ago in Yorkshire, with Look North weatherman, Paul Hudson, flying in a microlite to discover the The Seven Natural Wonders of Yorkshire & Lincolnshire ? Paul explored local treasures like Malham Cove, Hornsea Mere, Spurn Point and the bird-thronged cliffs at Flamborough (setting for my next novel, "The Clockwork Climmer.").

But what caught my imagination most of all, was his visit to Thorne & Hatfield Moors, part of the Humberhead Levels and the largest area of lowland peat bog in Britain. There Paul was shown how it is possible to stand very still on the Moors in the dusk of evening, clapping your hands above your head, to imitate the sound of the Nightjar's wing-claps. If you are very fortunate, a real life Nightjar will come out of the gloom and fly over your head, emitting its eerie, almost other-worldly cry, so distinctive and unlike any other local bird.

Nightjars chirring at dusk in this YouTube video

That image stuck with me,  finding its way into the story, mixed with so many other ideas from the years I'd spent walking the land around Thorne, Hatfield Woodhouse, Stainforth, Fishlake, Moorends, Auckley, Blaxton, Finningley and that part of Doncaster that in places, seems to have an alien microclimate and history all of its own. I'd always been fascinated not just by the lives of my own ancestors in these parts, but by the geography, history, flora and fauna of the places they had called home.

So this inspired the setting for "Goatsucker Harvest", with Bram a central figure, unlocking the mysteries of these hidden worlds with his sensitivity and family connections as marshman, decoyman and pinder near Turbary Nab (in the real world, Fishlake Nab was an anchor for the imaginary topography of the landscapes painted in the novel). Bram alone has the local knowledge of the wildfowl, plants and earth secrets with which Thirza becomes involved.

European Nightjar from the Crossley ID Guide Britain & Europe

The Nightjar has many folk names, including Goatsucker, because people used to think its nocturnal habits included sucking the udders of goats dry in the night. The milk connection is also echoed in one of its other nicknames "Churn-Owl", or "Fern Owl" for its chosen habitat among the bracken. The Nightjar features in the book in several forms, both real and mechanical. It becomes significant as the story unfolds. The atmosphere of the book will draw you into this uncanny world as soon as you set foot there.

I also interwove the other understanding of "Goatsucker" into my tale. In folklore originating in the Americas, there is belief in sightings of a strange monstrous creature, the size of a small bear, that is supposed, according to various reports, to have the habit of attacking livestock and sucking their blood. Events in the book raise the hackles of the inhabitants of Turbary Nab, wondering whether such things might be true.

So, that's Goatsucker. But "Harvest"?

I chose "Harvest," as the novel's action leads up to a dramatic climax that happens on the day of the village harvest festival in early October. Harvest also refers to the way in which seeds sown, actions and intentions for good or ill, flower and fruit into a harvest of consequences, cause and effect, a final outcome for the different characters. Often quite a different "harvest" from the one they anticipated or hoped for.

Goatsucker Harvest.

But when the sickle falls, will the reaping be relief or regret?

Corn field near Thorne Moors

Goatsucker Harvest: Picturing your characters - Bram & Piper

Do you picture characters in your head and your heart as you read a book? I confess as I wrote "Goatsucker Harvest" I fell a bit in love with Bram, whose sensitivity to nature, creatures, landscape and intuitive caring is everything I care about. Here's a picture of a real-life decoyman and his dog (like Bram & Piper in my book). Of course, Bram's decoy is quite the opposite of the regular wildfowl-trapping kind! 

I first saw a duck decoy in Doncaster Museum and the spark of an idea for Bram was born. But unlike duck trappers of old, Bram lives by a different principle: the ancient lore of his own people, descendants of the Dutch drainage engineers who came over in the 17th century with Cornelius Vermuyden to drain the peat bogs in Doncaster area and the Fens of East Anglia. His mission is the "Reversal of Ravage", "Omkering van schade" passed down through Bram's ancestral line. But there are those on the horizon who have other ideas. 

Uncover the mysteries of the South Yorkshire peatland moors and meet Bram for yourself in GOATSUCKER HARVEST (Kindle Edition)

Goatsucker Harvest: stunning settings beyond Doncaster the unwary traveller seldom dares to explore!

The Stainforth & Keadby Canal at Thorne

Information Board by English Nature showing the Nightjar (aka "goatsucker") to lure you onto wonderful Thorne Moors

I hope many of you are already enjoying exploring the haunting setting of "Goatsucker Harvest" in your mind's eye. I know some of you are, even though it's not been published for a whole week yet!

I know because I've already been chided for interfering with people's Christmas preparations, for encroaching on people's sleep late into the night with Kindles under the sheets and for lowering people's body temperature with the description of life on a Humber Keel in the middle of an icy February in that first chapter!

As soon as I first ventured out onto Thorne Moors, on the Humberhead Levels, back in the summer of 2005, my imagination was possessed and senses thrilled by this fragile and extraordinary wilderness wonderland. It crept into my psyche, whispering in the voices of my ancestors who lived and died around these bleak peatlands stretching for miles in every direction around Doncaster, to Thorne, Fishlake, Stainforth, Hatfield, Crowle, Epworth, Belton, Goole and Rawcliffe to the north.

Many of my people, like Thirza Holberry's family in "Goatsucker Harvest", were keelmen and women, mariners and water gypsies, born to live and work on the boats that came inland on the Stainforth and Keadby Canal, the River Don and the South Yorkshire navigation waterways that zigzag across the peaty dykes and warp drains,  joining this weird flat landscape to the restless North Sea.

Beware of adders - a warning Thirza learns to heed from Bram in "Goatsucker Harvest" chapter 9!

Other characters in the book share their names, their sensibilities, their occupations with my own people who scraped a living from this forgotten paradise of Northern England, still the largest area of raised peat bog wilderness in lowland Britain, land partially reclaimed by the Dutch drainage engineers under Sir Cornelius Vermuyden in the 17th century.

This bizarre backdrop is home to as many rare and precious creatures and plants as you will find anywhere in the UK: nightjars (the "goatsuckers" of the title), adders, lizards, dragonflies, cottongrass and sphagnum mosses. Somewhere in the region of 4,000 animal and plant species live here, including 25 of the rarest of all found in Britain, like the giant raft spider and the mire pill beetle.

If you aren't able to come to the moors today, why not explore with me in your wildest imagination? The landscape of "Goatsucker Harvest" is waiting for you, seldom travelled by the faint of heart, full of hidden treasures and unnerving mystery, be it unseen menace or life-enhancing transformation.

Purple Vetch and Bracken on Thorne Moors

Noticeboard showing the Nightjar (aka "goatsucker") on Thorne Moors [English Nature]

Path towards Thorne Moors: the drama of the Levels

Peatland path across Thorne Moors

A wonderfully wet wilderness

'GOATSUCKER HARVEST' by Joyce Barrass is available here on Kindle

Goatsucker Harvest - launched and afloat!

****UPDATE**** Downloadable now at a modest £2.29 or even £0.00 if you're signed up for Kindle Unlimited Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.co.uk


Previously...Here's the reason I've been a bit quiet on the bloggery front these past many months. Thanks for bearing with me, you lovely folks! Having been housebound for the best part of a year, in and out of health relapse since I started writing it in 2010, I've finally got my debut novel ready and published. As I type, my quirky but house-trained "baby" is "live" and downloadable on Amazon. Even managed to upload my photo of a Humber Keel (on which I happened to be sailing at the time) as the cover photo (pictured above).

The only 4 words KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) queried as possible spellchecks when I uploaded were:

"Esq"

"sprattle beam"

"windshaft"

and

"Yackoop!"

None of which were actually wrong. It'll all make perfect sense to you, dear readers, once you're on the voyage!

KDP had said my novel should be available for you to download on Kindle stores worldwide within 12 hours *finally uncrosses all available digits* - they did better than that and it was up and available before I finished typing this blogpost.

So what can you expect?

Well, it's historical fiction with a fantasy twist, set in 1855 on the peat moors and canals of South Yorkshire, stamping ground of many of my ancestors, as many of you will know by now from this blog. Expect exploding windmills, mysterious flying machines,  water gypsies, the Charge of the Light Brigade, the Humberhead Peatlands, Doncaster Railway Plant Works, Wickersley Quarry, Hull Docks,  phlogiston-powered stilts, a duck decoy with a difference, cattle mutilations, tall dark handsome strangers, ball lightning, Humber Keels,  left-handedness, clockwork birds, a traumatised hussar, some very twisted inventions, a social-climbing Mrs Malaprop, a squiffy toff landowner,  a genealogist village wisewoman, an impossibly cute half-human Kooikerhondje dog, an acrophobic miller's wife, a feisty, flawed heroine,  a hero worth holding out for, thrills, spills, chills, drama, comedy, horror, mystery, intrigue, romance, a lick of steampunk, a flying Dutchman and some Yorkshire grit served with a dollop of quirky.

Who could ask for anything more? Well, you can. Cos there's another novel in the pipeline.

I love to hear from readers, here, on my FB author page, on Twitter or on Goodreads, so please let me know if you're enjoying the worlds and words I'm spinning and maybe take a mo to leave a rating and short review on Amazon to help let future readers hear about it too.  I really hope you enjoy reading it and getting to know Thirza and Bram and the inhabitants of Turbary Nab as much as I did creating them.

Hope you'll enjoy every second of the voyage! Rise your tack!

My little town's so special in Springtime

JUST SAYING!

Cher-tee Tee-cher

Sun has blown the top off winter

Letting the shock chills through

Among the twigs, Great Tits

Spritzing and spooling

Learning a new generation's brogue

Lisping "Cher-tee" "Cher-tee"

While perched over gravestones

The parent birds tut

"Tee-cher" "Tee-cher"

Best learn this quick

Before hawk and kestrel

Hear callow tweets and tango

Down from the blue all talons

To take your fragile feathers

Fresh from the egg and nest

Experimental

Lilting the timeless song

With sore thumb variations

But the babies flitter up bickering

Through razor edge pearl hard air

Tonguing their mutant rhythm

Play twig-tag, risk and skip

Wondering if the tower is heaven

Or just another tree

Cormorants & Constellations at RSPB Old Moor

Spent a beautiful winter's afternoon and twilight today at RSPB Old Moor in the Dearne Valley.

The "Cormorants & Constellations" Event started with a spot of guided wildfowl watching. Then as the sky darkened, a glimpse through some powerful telescopes provided by the local Mexborough & Swinton Astronomical Society as Venus and Jupiter came out to play between the rolling clouds. This stargazing was timed to coincide with the BBC's Stargazing Live programmes. Some enthusiastic young astronomers in the making were there with their families today, enjoying all that Old Moor and the MSAS have to offer to the Patrick Moores and Professor Brian Coxs of the future!

Thanks to the all wonderful staff at Old Moor, including John and Jeff who took us on guided walk No 2 to the Wader Scrape as the rain swept down and the wind buffeted the water.

Started by seeing Bullfinches and Blue Tits from the visitor centre and then wandered into the play area before the walk, where a cloud of Magpies sat in a treetop before flying rattling exuberantly over our heads.

In Wader Scrape, we looked across towards Darfield church tower, past a stormy scene alive with wildfowl and other birds battling the elements. Flocks of Lapwing, a Great Crested Grebe in its winter plumage, Goosander, Mute Swan, Mallard, Coot, Moorhen, a Great Black-Backed Gull sitting dominating an island, Little Egret, and a male Pheasant scuttling across in front of the hide. Many more, including Carrion Crows, flocks of Starling in the distance over Darfield way, and, of course, a row of Cormorant, proud to know the day named in their honour was going so well!

Jupiter with its moons and Venus shining bright, the evening star in all its splendour, made the stargazing part of the evening a joy in spite of encroaching cloud cover. The Gannets Cafe for a warm cuppa and a bite to eat warmed us up nicely again, with accompanying footage of the earth from the International Space Station. Over in the Classroom, another film was showing, very popular indeed, you had to be quick off the mark to secure a seat! Shows how popular Old Moor is, and with very good reason!

The whole visit was a delight as always. Reminded me how much I love Old Moor, how it's been too long since my last visit, and how good it will be to head back there as soon as health and opportunity permits.

Our friends Sue & Col, and my mum arriving for the fun

This wind turbine sounded ready to take off in the gusty January wind!

Me, three layers of thermals (TMI!), bins, silly woolly hat and walking stick with inbuilt seat affectionately known in my house as the "Ironing Board" for its rather-bulky-but-comfy design. Vanity's not one of my many vices, obviously!

Magpies flocking. They're like Marmite - love 'em or hate 'em. I adore them, the zany clowns of the crow world!

The free giveaway info cards to tie in with BBC's "Stargazing Live"