THE FORK OF FOREVER

CAOIMHE THE WHITE - a short story

Photo credit: Wolf on Pexels

I hear the doves calling my name from the cliffs.

“Coo-ee-va! Coo-ee-va!”

Nobody is listening. Down here, at knee height, the clamour of human rage is deafening. Angry ones surround me on all sides. The ones on the right have given all they own to crush those on the left. The ones on the left have spun their half-truths into dragnets to capture the ones to the right. The ones in the middle are shooting in circles hitting everyone who stands in range.

Some signal their entitlement, waving banners printed with ancient riddles. Others sport visors of privilege, rushing against the ranks of the peddlers of falsehood, carrying secret swords weighted with words. Faceless mercenaries are kettling them all, persuading them with pikestaffs and promises, right, left , centre, slantwise towards the sea.

I won’t howl, for that would sound to them like despair. I will not whimper. Yet, how else can I touch them? 

Some from the right dig in their heels, as they are dragged under the feet of those left-lingerers. I can see some on the left trying to climb the walls to escape.  As soon as they get half way up, they turn back to unleash their mockery on the heads of the right-ramblers, faces contorted with scorn below. Nobody cares if they fall in their fury. They get to call it victory. The ones in the middle are no longer safely centred. They are being spun like scythes in a whirlwind, first right, then left, always slicing, always dividing, always falling and failing.

I am running, here, there, anywhere I can still see daylight between them. They are fluttering, battering themselves against one another like moths in a funnel of fire, melting into mayhem. Why don’t they love each other any longer?

I must reach them. I can’t see who is who. Bodies blur. I can’t check their identities, allegiances, alliances. What would it matter to me? Every last one is in my heart. Every last one fills a gulf in my soul.

So I’m pushing forward, the hairs on my body brushing between their kicking legs, narrowly avoiding their stumbling soles. My ears are full of their yelling, their screeching for vengeance, for violence, for retaliation. 

I nudge a hand with my muzzle. It hangs limp. I lick the cheek of a pale one fallen. She doesn’t move. We are almost at the cliffs now. Some are charging along the edge, but the mob of them has grown so wide, others spill into the breakers and fall silent. I cannot catch their eye again.

“Coo-ee-va! Coo-ee-va!”

High and far, in the fragile light bouncing off the salt waves, I hear the doves. This time, the people hear it too. It means nothing to them. Yet the sound makes them all unstiffen their necks and raise their heads to the sky to see what this strange cry might mean. They halt as one, inches from the cliff edge. I sense they are confused. Why are they all standing together? Who has messed with their differences? Who dares play peacemaker? The doves are not giving them entertainment, or predictions, or tokens to spend. What could possibly be their worth? But no matter. They stand still anyway. The thrift flowers blow kisses of pink petals to soothe raw ankles and scarred heels.

A trill, a squeaking as the creak of a door from the sea.

“Coo-ee-va! Coo-ee-va!”

Half of them turn their heads to where the sun is cracking her golden yolk into the salmon-flecked ocean. The other half listens without understanding, to the song of the dolphins offshore.

I nuzzle the palm of a young child as I melt away. Her mother hears her giggling and lifts her up shoulder-high, dropping her weapons to ricochet off the rocks and come to rest in a rockpool.

“Mummy, did you see the white wolf?”

“There are no wolves in this land,” says her mother. “That's just silly talk, little one. Let’s get you home.”

“Her name is Caoimhe. She is for us and for our peace. The doves and dolphins told me.”

SWEETS FOR MY SWEET (Short story/fiction/romance)

 “Max! Where have you got to this time?”

Harry could only just hear himself above the crash and rumble of the waves below and the breeze buffeting and flattening the grass on the cliff top. It was chillier than last time he had been here, but at least the rain the weatherman had forecast had stayed away. Max was nowhere to be seen, as usual.

The trouble was, thought Harry, Max always followed his nose. He seemed to remember every winding path through the thrift and samphire above the little seaside town where he had holidayed every summer of his life with Harry and Maureen. Now he was eager to revisit them all again, haring back every so often to sniff the air and lick Harry’s hand apologetically before lolloping back to pick up all the private messages other doggy friends had left for him over the two years he’d been away.

When Max was a puppy, Maureen used to bring tasty liver treats in the pockets of her mauve fleece jacket to tempt him back from the exciting adventures he was enjoying down in the gulleys and caves along the shoreline. He could always find something more interesting to do than come running back to his master’s voice.

“Harry, you old duffer, Max knows you don’t mean it!” Maureen would say. “I bought you that ultrasonic whistle but you always forget to pack it! Lucky I remembered his favourite snacks. His tummy always wins in the end!”

Maureen was right. Max would always come bounding back up even the steepest path when treats were on offer, panting and smiling to get his reward. For that moment, he forgot about the special smelly seaweed and whatever the gulls had left on the rocks. Sometimes he brought some of that back on his nose or his paws but Maureen always had a packet of those wet wipers to clean him up again.

“We can’t go back to the guest house with all that flotsam and jetsam on us, can we, Max?” she’d say.

Harry chuckled as he remembered how she had used the wipes to tackle a huge blob of rum and raisin ice cream on the back of his own jacket. He’d blamed that on the gulls, too, until Maureen poked him and said:

“Harry! It’s not the gulls. You’ve only gone and sat on your cornet!”

They’d had a fit of the giggles, then, just like they’d always done together since they were teenagers. They shared the same sense of humour. That’s what made Harry notice Maureen at the dance all those years ago; her sparkly eyes and the way she got his jokes and made even funnier ones of her own that made him howl with laughter.

Harry blinked, disappointed with himself.

“Silly soft old sausage,” Maureen would have said. It was no good keep dwelling on those last precious few months over that awful winter and getting upset.

“You need a holiday, dad. It’s no good moping about again in the house all summer. Anyway, you and Max will have lots of lovely walks on the promenade and then there’s the crazy golf and the café that looks out onto the seafront. I’ll phone Mrs Archer for you, if you like.”

Kathy was right, just as grown up daughters seem to have an annoying knack of being. She was a lot like her Mum, too, practical and sensible where Harry often seemed in a muddle and a dream.

“I’ll do it myself, love. Max needs the exercise, the great hairy lump, now he’s an old dog.” But when Harry booked himself into the pet-friendly guest house where he and Maureen had always stayed, he was determined not to avoid their familiar well-loved walks. Where was the fun staying on the flat bits? That was for old codgers! Even when the doctor told him he had diabetes just after he retired, Harry was determined everything would be just the same. His own dad had “had sugar” as they used to say back then, and Dad had carried on regardless till the day he died.

“Mr. Collinson,” his new young consultant had said more recently, “now your pancreas isn’t working quite as it should, it’s important you get some gentle exercise to help the insulin to do its work; just remember always to carry something sugary with you in case your blood glucose drops too low.”

Harry had been hopeless at timing the injections at first, when they told him tablets were no longer enough to control his diabetes. Sometimes he would go a bit wobbly and sweaty and Maureen was always the first to notice.

“Do you need a sugar tablet, Harry? I think you do; you’re getting a bit argumentative and wibbly wobbly, you know.”

Sure enough, Maureen would fish out the packet of special glucose tablets from her pocket or her posh handbag if they were at a dinner dance or a café, and Harry would soon feel better and raring to go again.

“You’d forget your head if it wasn’t nailed on with glue,” she joked. “Lucky I remembered to bring the spare packet with me.”

Harry heard Max’s barking coming up from the path that descended steeply to the shingle strand where the limestone caverns dotted the coast like a doggy paradise. At least he hadn’t fallen in a rock pool, but what if he was stuck on a ledge? Harry imagined the big yellow rescue helicopter whirring overhead and the photos in the local rag showing a soppy old Golden Retriever with a silly smile on its face getting winched to safety with the locals and holidaymakers whooping and applauding.

Harry had always tried to keep himself as fit as he could. A few years ago he could have shimmied down there and been the hero himself.

“You’re always my hero, you old softy,” he could hear Maureen saying.

Harry felt in his pocket. His fingers closed on the neat embossed tin with ‘Best Dad in the World’ on the lid. Kathy had bought it for him as a holiday present to keep three whole packets of glucose in. It felt very light. Then he remembered putting the packets on the bedside table ready to pack into the tin in the morning. They must still be sitting there, along with the wet wipes he was going to put in his pockets for the usual little mishaps Maureen always dealt with so sensibly.

“Max! Come on up! Time to go for walkies back to the cottage!”

Shouting made Harry realise his voice was going a bit funny as though his cheek muscles and his tongue were made of rubber and when he looked where the gulls were wheeling over the sea, they were mixed up with little swirling spots and squiggles like bits of burning paper blowing up from a bonfire. He was starting to feel quite weak and shaky and although the wind was cool and bracing on the cliff, he was getting so sticky hot he felt he wanted to peel off his jacket and sit down on the ground.

As though he was a million miles away, he could still hear Max barking above the sound of the waves that seemed muffled, somehow, as though his ears were full of singing cotton wool.

The familiar woofing started getting nearer and nearer.

“Good boy, Max. I’ll be up in a minute, I’m just having a little lie down,” Harry heard his own voice saying, as if he was a stranger with detachable lips. He couldn’t remember actually laying down, but his body had taken over somehow, trying to conserve his energy for fight or flight. He had never ever let his blood sugar get so low before, or rather Maureen hadn’t. She always saw the signs long before anybody else even noticed, including Harry himself, and brought out the sugary lifesavers.

Then something warm and wet was tickling his hand where it lay palm down on the prickly grass that felt like little spiky tufts of that artificial stuff greengrocers used on their stalls. His brain was whizzing round trying to make sense but he felt so weak he could only think of giggly silly things as if he was drunk. He hadn’t been drunk more than once in his life when he was just a tiny bit tipsy at a neighbour’s wedding as a very young man. After he met Maureen he never bothered with more than a glass of shandy, so how did he know this felt like being drunk? He remembered then the glossy leaflet the nurse at the Diabetes Centre had shown him describing the symptoms of a ‘hypo’ attack when your blood glucose is too low.

“Be careful as people can sometimes mistake a hypo for being drunk,” the leaflet had spelled out in large underlined capitals.

What if somebody found him like this and called for the police? The tickling got even more slobbery on the back of his hand and he could hear a woman’s voice, now, close by, though his eyes wouldn’t seem to open to let him say hello.

“Are you alright there?” The owner of the voice was kneeling by Harry’s head. “Well, obviously not. Are you diabetic, by any chance?”

Harry managed to nod, but he wasn’t sure which way was up and down, so his head ended up flopping around in a way he hadn’t quite planned, but he did manage to tell the lady his name.

“Alright now, Harry, you’d better have some of these jelly sweets,” the lady attached to the voice was saying, very gently but matter-of-fact. “First we’d better see if you can sit up and swallow properly or I’ll have to call for an ambulance to get you off to A&E. Thank goodness I have this terribly sweet tooth and I carry a big bag of jellies with me whenever I go for a walk. I’ve just been exploring those caves. I felt rather like a smuggler! My grandson calls me Dora the Explorer. Cheeky monkey.”

The voice went on saying soothing, funny things that kept Harry chuckling and concentrating. She helped him sit up and as soon as she was sure he could manage them without choking, she fed Harry some of her jellies. At first his mouth was so numb he couldn’t taste anything but soon the different fruit flavours came through. Gradually, he began to feel much better and they sat at the side of the footpath, with Max trying to sit between them, begging for a sweet of his own by putting his paw on Dora’s wrist.

“Quite an intelligent dog, aren’t you, Mr Max?” said Dora as the three of them made their way back along the cliff top path.

“If he was clever he wouldn’t keep going AWOL and leaving his lord and master stranded miles from nowhere,” joked Harry, “but he’s sharp enough to know which side his bread’s buttered when he wants something.”

They both laughed as Max nuzzled his nose into Dora’s pocket.

“He knows which side pocket the sweets are in, you mean,” she chortled. Harry found himself rather taken by Dora’s laugh.

“How did you know I was a diabetic?” Harry was suddenly curious. Dora smiled.

“I’m a retired nurse. Endocrinology was my specialism so I’ve worked in a lot of diabetic clinics in my time. I used to come to the little fishing village in the next cove every year with my husband Stan. When he passed away I decided I just couldn’t face the same old same old. I started coming here when I needed a break. I love walking the cliff and exploring the caves. Usually I have the place to myself but today Max kept running up and barking at me. I realised he must have somebody waiting with a lead somewhere so in the end, when he wouldn’t be shooed away, I thought I’d better climb back up here in case he got lost or stranded when the tide came in. Dog’s know, you know.”

“Max knows when he’s onto a good thing, that’s for certain,” Harry smiled as Max managed to tweak a jelly out of Dora’s pocket when she wasn’t looking.

“I mean some dogs know when their owner’s in trouble; sort of a sixth doggy sense. You can train some dogs to alert people when they start going hypo, or get help if they are prone to seizures.”

Harry grinned and patted Max’s head.

“Can’t teach an old dog new tricks, eh, Maxy?”

But he wasn’t so sure about that any more.

A few summers later, after endless emails and long phone calls and meetings in country pubs with Max in tow, Harry and Dora were walking on the cliffs again. They stood for a moment, close to each other, in the special place where Harry had had his little lie down, as they always called it, just listening to the seabirds squealing and crying as they rode the air currents over the ocean.

A dog was barking somewhere on the beach. They could hear its owner calling it and whistling for all he was worth. Dora squeezed Harry’s hand tenderly the way she did when words weren’t quite enough. They thought of Max, always running on ahead, nose quivering towards hidden horizons, but always coming back when Dora rattled the liver treats that she kept in her pocket next to Harry’s special sweets.

SUPERMARKET SWEEP (Short Story/Humour/Crime)

Chillax, grandma!

Cheeky monkey! Found his comment under my Facebook status this morning. I’ve got this new friend online, you see. Jack Hoodie Honeytrapp. Not his real name. Obviously. He looks in his early twenties from his profile photo. I added him when he requested because I thought he must be Phyllis’s grandson. He has about nine hundred Facebook friends; makes my thirty-five look a bit threadbare, doesn’t it? I’d say “ROTFLMFAO” but apparently that’s a bit saucy for silver surfers like me! A bit like admitting to watching “Shameless” or listening to “Slipknot”! That caused a bit of a ripple. I usually settle for doing a bit of this “LOL-ling” business instead. They can’t touch you for it!

This morning I’m doing one of my “sweeps” down the supermarket. Usual place, different time, because you don’t want to get too predictable for the CCTV. Not that they staff the cameras, really. Just dummies – staff and cameras! Last Tuesday I came away with a whole bag of kumquats in my big plaid shopper. Don’t even know how you’re supposed to use them! They didn’t seem to go with my boil-in-the-bag cod in parsley sauce. I ended up throwing them away.

I always religiously take a snap of the “sweepings”, as I call them, before I get rid, to post on my Facebook. I love how you can set your privacy so only certain friends can see certain photos. I post all my “sweepings” so the other lasses-“Silver Sweepers” we like to tag ourselves- can compare, compete, and pick up tips from each other. Bit like a knitting circle, but with purloined goods instead of purled ones. “Nick one, purloin one,” that’s what I put under one of my photos, and I got loads of thumbs up on Facebook for that one.

“Watch and learn, sisters, watch and learn!” I put on as a little title under the snap of those kumquats. The other Sweepers were green with envy! Phyllis had only managed to post a really blurry photo of the packet of desiccated coconut she’d just pinched. Desiccated coconut? I ask you! That’s not even imaginative! She even nicked a pot of glace cherries last month. Lois texted me this short video of her in the magazine section shoving “Viz” magazine down her skirt (elasticated, naturally, with “inserts”).

“Put it on the website,” I texted back. No good just showing it to me. We all want to see what the others are up to, or where’s the fun? Anyway it was out of focus and you couldn’t see whether the assistant was nearby or not, so where’s the challenge? Lois is a bit of an amateur, to be frank. Fancies herself as a bit of a Quentin Tarantino, I reckon. Style over substance, I say. Just my opinion, of course, but as I started the “Sisterhood of Sweepage”, I think I’ve a right to my two penn’orth.

These little tables in the supermarket restaurant are very handy. I can park my shopper trolley up against the table just where they have that little tray-rack thing attached and as soon as my cappuccino and my pensioners’ portion of liver and onions with peas and mash gets brought to me by the waitress, it’s in goes the tray, down the side of my plaid swag-bag, no bulge, no stretch, onlookers none the wiser. Today there’s already a tray actually waiting in there, in the rack with its rim stuck out! I had that as well, no messing! It’s a tight fit, but a wiggle and a bit of manoeuvring, and job’s a good ‘un.

I’m sitting here and I’m wondering now if I should maybe have gone for the textured featherlite condoms instead. What if the trays won’t impress the girls when I post the photos after I get home? I do a panning sort of shot on my mobile showing the girl on the till and the waitresses beetling up and down only a few tables away. Pretty daring, but even I feel a bit flat just bagging a couple of melamine trays to show for a day’s sweepage.

When I get up to go, I can tell nobody’s even looking in my direction. I’m in my seventies and I joined Invisibleville, society-wise, quite a few birthdays ago! Every cloud, and all that. Back on the bus, the driver actually shouts back to a young mother with a double pushchair and asks her to budge up for the old lady with the tartan print trolley, and a young man lifts the front over the step for me as the bus isn’t one of those with the let-down hydraulic super-low floors. Young people today! No backbone!

When I get back home I put the trays in a good light on my kitchen worktop, pop my bill for the meal on top as a little in-joke for the girls, (they all love the liver-and-onions), then I take some good full frontal shots of myself sort of hovering in the background, on automatic timer, and then I put them all online with the footage from the restaurant.

More notifications and updates on my homepage: Phyllis’s grandson Jack has just become a friend of half the Sweeper girls on my friends list, including Lois and most of the others. Lois has been busy uploading too, I see. There’s a new photo album on her profile showing her in the store, grinning and pointing at some support stockings still in the packet, poking out of her coat sleeve – not poking out very far, mind, so you can’t really tell one way or the other. Then there’s another couple of photos of her putting on some of that under-eye miracle roll-on stuff. Then some pictures showing how much they’ve ironed out her wrinkles and that “under-eye area” we used to call “bags”! Except they haven’t, of course; her mug looks just as saggy! All that gurning and grimacing for nothing!

Lois usually misses the point, bless her. Maybe the wrinkle stick is a step in the right direction for her. I keep telling her the rule is supposed to be that sweepings have to be things we couldn’t possible have any use for. That way, if anybody starts to suss out what we’re up to (allegedly!), we can put them straight, tell them we couldn’t possibly have taken these items for ourselves. What, me? Your cuddly old gran? Kumquats, condoms, lads’ mags, they fit the bill, but half of what Lois sneaks out is too like the stuff she has on her shopping list anyway! That’s not cricket. That’s common or garden shoplifting!

I decide to do the double today. A morning-and-afternooner, as I call it. I have my cuppa and a digestive around two, then I’m off down the little chemist on the precinct. I can’t get my plaid trolley into the chemist, so I just take my ordinary bag instead. It’s even more challenging, in here, as it’s more hands-on, face-to-face. There’s always an assistant around, doling out advice on which cough medicines you need for tickly, dry or phlegmy, or they’re offering to reach you down the incontinence pads from the top shelf. Why do they put them there, for goodness’ sake? You’re blinking well weeing from having to stretch up there! Too much information, as they say. Still, today, I’m here on a mission, so I’m on the look out for something more unlikely. I go up and down the aisles, very slowly.

“Just browsing, dear,” I mutter, “thank you very nicely, forgotten my list.”

The assistant goes back to shelf stacking and I shuffle round the other side, furthest away from the dispensing counter. That new pharmacist always comes out glaring over her half-rimmed specs, asking people their address as if they couldn’t make that up! Amateurs!

I look on the bottom shelves. Gift items, false eyelashes so you can look like Cheryl Cole, Kylie perfume, hair straighteners. Lots of potential, but they leave me a bit cold, this afternoon. I want a real biggie to impress and inspire the girls. Even Phyllis seems to be lowering her targets lately. Desiccated blooming coconut, indeed! You can’t get slack, or what’s the point?

I feel a bit creepy, like I’m being watched. There’s a young man who came in after I did and he’s still hanging around. I can’t get into my stride with him malingering there like a bad smell. I think I might go with the eyelashes after all, or maybe now is the hour of the textured featherlite? Suddenly I decide to go for both. The false flutterers slip into my side zip compartment. The security camera’s on the other side of the shop. They have one that looks out into the street, too. I move off in pursuit of the condoms, but they are right opposite the counter. The young man in the hoodie’s still dithering about just behind me. Has he seen me go for the lashes? She who hesitates is lost! I’m just about to reach out for man’s best friend, when he’s leaning over my shoulder. He grabs a packet of some very boring looking Mr Averages, and then he’s at the counter, blushing and coughing as he pays for them. Quit while you’re winning, Rene! Don’t push it. I leave the shop while the assistant’s dealing with reluctant Romeo.

My mobile battery’s running down to the red bit, but I didn’t get chance for any photo evidence on this job, anyway. I could stick on the eyelashes back at home and get some shots that way. I watch the young man come out of the shop. I know what you’ve been up to, but you don’t know what I’ve been up to! He looks vaguely familiar now I come to have a proper look, but I can’t place him. I watch him till he’s back in his car. There’s another bloke in the driving seat with a policeman’s uniform on. Is this why we pay our taxes?

When I get home, there’s a private message on my Facebook from Phyllis. She says no, Jack isn’t her grandson, where did I get that notion? She thought he must be Lois’s grandson. But Lois says not. Lois has been asking Phyllis, “What are privacy settings, anyway?”

“GR8 2 C U 2DAY.L8R G8R,” Jack’s posted on my wall again. Unintelligible but sweet, as ever. More pressing, I’d better check up on Lois and her privacy settings! Apparently, she’s showing her sweeper’s gallery to her whole friends list, or everybody, more likely.

I’ve been in for a while when my flat’s intercom doorbell buzzes. I ignore it for a minute while I glue on my phony eyelashes with the special non-toxic adhesive provided. Still time for an upload or two to get the girls giggling before suppertime. I have my camera at the ready and I’m just thinking up a snappy caption for it, like: “The cashier didn’t bat an eyelash,”or maybe “Granny’s Allowed,” when the doorbell buzzes again, a bit too insistent, for my liking. At this time of day! Don’t they know we’re all pensioners in here?

So I open the door with the eyelashes half on, semi-sighted cos I can’t get my specs back on in the rush. It’s two young men with a warrant to search my flat.

“Mrs Irene Garland?” one says, and I can see he’s the spitting image of young Jack off Facebook, and the other chap’s suspiciously like the policeman in the car this afternoon.

I don’t say much. What’s the point? They show me reams of printed out photos they’ve downloaded from Lois’s sad little collection. They’ve already got Phyllis’s particulars. I haven’t heard that word since I last listened to Gilbert and Sullivan on my iPod!

My case comes up before the magistrates in a couple of weeks. They give me time to unglue my Cheryls before they take me down to the station. They are very decent and a bit apologetic for duping me into a sense of false security. Jack Hoodie Honeytrapp. He didn’t fool a pro like me for a second! Sitting in the back of the unmarked police car, I have a bit of time to do some serious chillaxing.

“Leader of a criminal internet web ring” is a tad erring on the side of overkill, IMHO, but it’ll look good on my CV! The other sweepers will have to settle for supporting roles. The boys in blue don’t seem to notice the lumps in my Damart thermals, even when they go through my handbag for contraband goods. In fact I chillaxed all the way back to my flat with a regulation clipboard, a couple of pencils, a small roll of “Crime Scene-Do Not Enter” fluorescent tape and pair of standard issue handcuffs, no key, but who’s counting?

I think I might give all this social networking a miss tonight and have a night in with the soaps. Or maybe “C.S.I.”

Sand castles and rock pools: first draft, second novel - taking the clifftop path towards "Cloudhover Solstice"

Scouting out "Cloudhover Solstice" locations: Flamborough Head 17th century Old Chalk Beacon Tower 

The first draft of "Cloudhover Solstice" feels to me a bit like a deliciously playful sand castle on the edge of a rockpool of rippling possibilities, hidden depths. The capricious tides of ideas and words are ebbing and flowing, filling things in, knocking bits down, smoothing jutting edges, revealing scary fissures beneath the surface, the story sculpted by sea frets as the wind veers around the compass of plot and pacing.

I'm back from my eagerly-anticipated research reconnaissance trip to fairest Flamborough, the setting for the novel, from the chalk cliffs and caves to the haunting hidden hollows of ancient Danes Dyke, cutting off the headland from the rest of these islands, leaving it pointing mysteriously out towards vanished Doggerland off the coast of Holderness.

Selwick Stack, Selwick's Bay, Flamborough Head

I took the opportunity of drinking in every detail, smelling the scents of the sea, tasting the bite of the onshore breezes, listening to the rhythms and colours of the seabirds' crying, so integral to my tale. I stood in Bram's shoes as he hears the unsettling call of the Kittiwakes over the water, stood with Thirza as she teeters, conflicted and determined on the edge of the crumbling cliff. I wandered along the beaches of North and South Landing, watching through the filter of imagination all the local sights and sounds that are the background to my evolving narrative.

Kittiwakes, High Stacks, Flamborough

Cave arch, North Landing, Flamborough

I took photographs and emotional mental snapshots, too, of those dominant sentinels of the headland, the 1806 Lighthouse and the Old Beacon Tower, built in chalk in the seventeen century. They must play their part, with their own tales interweaving into the lives of my characters and impacting on their fictional journey.

I took panorama sweeps to judge distances between landmarks, from Filey Brigg in the north, to Bridlington to the south. I explored Chatterthrow, formerly "Chattertrove" beyond Little Thornwick Bay, named for the racket made by the seabirds that thronged the cliffs as they nested, before humankind impacted their paradise, a central theme in my book.

Flamborough panorama from Chatterthrow back towards the Lighthouse

Flamborough did me good, as it always does, not only as a writer, but as a human being. Chronic illness has meant four years of not being able to manage a holiday, and Flamborough has haunted my dreams with glimpses of joy throughout those life-limiting days. Flamborough more than made up for it. Flamborough wouldn't know how to disappoint me if it tried!

Flamborough Head Lighthouse

So the chipping and carving at the sand castle goes on, as "Cloudhover Solstice" takes its own unique shape under my scribbling fingers, recreating and restoring me along the way. I hope when it's ready to reveal itself to the world, you will enjoy reading it and that you'll be enchanted too by this magical place!

Danes Dyke Beach, Flamborough

Dribbles and Dabbles with Drabbles

Dribbles? Drabbles?

Not altogether gobbledygook if you bear with me!

When you're writing, "dribbles" often describes the fragmented way the storytelling progresses: a dribble of inspiration here, a dribble of frantic scribbling there, seasoned with a dribble of banging your head on the keyboard!

"Drabbles" on the other hand, are a method I find useful to help pull my "dribbles" of creativity together along the writing journey. I hope this idea may help you, too. Sometimes when those "dribbles" seem to be drying up, a "drabble" or two can prime the pump and get your story-brain refreshed, released and ready to weave those words into gold.

I'm reaching the tipping point of my new novel. The research is done. The plot is arced. The procrastinating side-projects are frustratingly complete. The blind alleys of my storyland are cordoned off with Hi-Vis "Do Not Enter" tape. The characters are alive in my head. I can hear what they'd say and picture the situations they're about to get themselves into. The sense of place just off the Yorkshire Coast is so real to me I can smell the seaweed and feel the spray stinging my characters' skin and the change of light before dusk. I've chalk under my nails from clinging onto the sheer cliffs in my imagination. I'm raring to go! My first draft is beckoning me to plunge over the edge of those risky still-blank pages and swim for dear life to the shore at the end of the tale.

So, when your dribbles run dry, maybe it's time for a dabble with a drabble!

The wiki says: Drabble: A drabble is a short work of fiction of around one hundred words in length, not necessarily including the title. The purpose of the drabble is brevity, testing the author's ability to express interesting and meaningful ideas in a confined space.

In other words, flash fiction. For me, it's just a great way of getting my writing flowing whenever it stalls. If I have a scene from the novel that's in my mind for later, getting in the way of the current plotline, a "drabble" dealing with that character, that plot twist, that conflict, that setting, is a way of getting creative instead of blocked. Maybe the seeds from the drabble will be grist to the mill of a new story, an unexpected turn, a deepening of some exchange within the book. It doesn't even have to be connected. A drabble can get you writing again when you're overwhelmed. It's non-threatening, expendable, achievable almost anywhere, anytime. It's that blank page clothed in purpose, colour, forward motion.

It can even become a part of your work in progress. It can ignite a dormant creative spark. It can be your own private pool of light-bulb moments. It can be a short holiday break for your imagination to go exploring again before coming home rejuvenated to the work in hand. It can be just what you need it to be!

Wishing you joy and word-woven blessings, whether you're a fellow writer, reader, a fan of GOATSUCKER HARVEST or you've just wandered in to do a bit of procrastination from your own personal challenges today! Welcome!

"Tropical Storm Zeta 2005" by NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center 

Here's a quick 102-word drabble I've written which may or may not get its seat at the banquet in my WIP:



Waves roll upside down, sucking the sky beneath through lips like a dolphin's. Head spinning now.
A guillemot skittles out of a cliff-face inverted inches from her nose. A vortex of fish oil tang closes her throat. 
"Did you see it? Careful! Sit down, you'll have us overboard!"
Disembodied voices far above.
"Below, I mean..." Trying to correct herself, steady herself. The strap creaks. Too much give in it.
Blood-singing, suffocating closeness all around, yet the salt spray's icy, flinging itself down in an arc and falling back upwards into stormclouds.
The scream seems to be her own as the sea explodes.

Like Joyce Barrass - author on Facebook
Follow me on Goodreads
Find out more on Joyce Barrass's Amazon author page
Follow me on Joyce's Twitter
Joyce on Google +

What I don't know about wet collodion and Victorian post-mortem photography

I'm just working on a short story about an itinerant photographer who travels with his tripod and cumbersome portable dark room from village to village producing snapshots of the locals. I won't spoil the plot in case it is published one day, but basically, the sittings in one village lead to a crime, after which the young ambrotypist is called on to take an early post mortem photograph for the local constabulary.

I feel most alive when I am writing and never cease to marvel how much we can learn from researching our stories. In the course of researching this story, for instance, I've been discovering the developments that took place in the 1850s, when the early Daguerrotype process was improved on by the wet collodion process, particularly popular for its quick, cheap "instant" results. This meant that the image could more easily be replicated from a single negative. The glass plates for wet (and later, dry) collodion photos were also more readily available than the older silver-plated copper.

But its usually true of the research we accumulate for storywriting that it's better left in the background, to inform rather than hijack the tale. You DON'T want to know all about coating glass plates with silver nitrate and the dangers of working in a confined space with acid, bromide, iodide salts, alcohol, ether and goodness knows what else! Still less will the reader want to know about the gruesome fashion for "post mortem" photographs I've just discovered while striving for background knowledge. I now know that Victorian mourners often had their lately deceased loved ones photographed for posterity, even having "eyes" painted on the closed lids for a more "lifelike" effect! Some of the many existing examples of these memento mori are the stuff of nightmare and have no place in my own tale. Facts are facts, and anyone can pursue them. What the readers long for is a tale to inspire them, transport them. They want to know "Who did it?", or "Do they get together in the end?" or to encounter a host of other life-enhancing, challenging moments that only fiction can nudge their way.

What a joy and a journey! The challenge I've set myself in this story is to try to let the reader see through the eyes of the camera what is really going on under the surface. Of course, being me, on the way I inevitably become voracious gobbler of weird and wonderful facts that get stored away in my brain and imagination. Sometimes these things lead to other stories I never would have planned, often more intriguing than the original idea! Stories, like ourselves as writers and readers, are always open to evolve and change as we interact with God's glorious, endlessly gracious creative power. Stories give us space too to fix a snapshot of some truth within the rainbow of possibilities, developed like the photographer's negatives exposed to the sunlight of the human heart.

From the Open University's Learning Space "Arts and History" Unit on "The rise of the itinerant photographer": Image 78: Photographer/Painter: John Thomson. Subject: The Itinerant Photographer on Clapham Common’, from John Thomson & Adolphe Smith, Street Life in London, 1877/78.

(One of many excellent sites used during my research for the story mentioned in this post)