This book has been sitting in the ‘to-be-done’ tray, so this month it is going to get the second revision and release to beta readers.
…
A little time in Emily’s world
…
After the meeting with Mrs Bakersfield is over, our boy realises that Emily is going to be staying with her grandmother until the end.
Perhaps he will be too, but nothing is really set in concrete.
Time to spend a little time with Emily in her world of luxury and privilege.
It’s not what he wants, but he didn’t say no to the limousine ride to the airport, or no to the ride in the corporate jet, or no to the suite he was put in in the hotel.
I mean, only a fool would, wouldn’t they?
He calls his sister Darcy and lets her know that he is swilling it up, for the moment, it won’t last, and she says she is jealous, maybe.
Then, of course, there are the other members of Emily’s family, especially her stepmother, whom Emily despises, and rather niggardly calls Mrs Winkle, her former married name, and not as Mrs Rothstein, and definitely not Mom.
Our boy is going to take a seat on the sidelines and see just how unhappy families get along.
50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.
They all start with –
A picture paints … well, as many words as you like. For instance:
And, the story:
Have you ever watched your hopes and dreams simply just fly away?
Everything I thought I wanted and needed had just left in an aeroplane, and although I said I was not going to, i came to the airport to see the plane leave. Not the person on it, that would have been far too difficult and emotional, but perhaps it was symbolic, the end of one life and the start of another.
But no matter what I thought or felt, we had both come to the right decision. She needed the opportunity to spread her wings. It was probably not the best idea for her to apply for the job without telling me, but I understood her reasons.
She was in a rut. Though her job was a very good one, it was not as demanding as she had expected, particularly after the last promotion, but with it came resentment from others on her level, that she, the youngest of the group would get the position.
It was something that had been weighing down of her for the last three months, and if noticed it, the late nights, the moodiness, sometimes a flash of temper. I knew she had one, no one could have such red hair and not, but she had always kept it in check.
And, then there was us, together, and after seven years, it felt like we were going nowhere. Perhaps that was down to my lack of ambition, and though she never said it, lack of sophistication. It hadn’t been an issue, well, not until her last promotion, and the fact she had to entertain more, and frankly I felt like an embarrassment to her.
So, there it was, three days ago, the beginning of the weekend, and we had planned to go away for a few days and take stock. We both acknowledged we needed to talk, but it never seemed the right time.
It was then she said she had quit her job and found a new one. Starting the following Monday.
Ok, that took me by surprise, not so much that it something I sort of guessed might happen, but that she would just blurt it out.
I think that right then, at that moment, I could feel her frustration with everything around her.
What surprised her was my reaction. None.
I simply asked where who, and when.
A world-class newspaper, in New York, and she had to be there in a week.
A week.
It was all the time I had left with her.
I remember I just shrugged and asked if the planned weekend away was off.
She stood on the other side of the kitchen counter, hands around a cup of coffee she had just poured, and that one thing I remembered was the lone tear that ran down her cheek.
Is that all you want to know?
I did, yes, but we had lost that intimacy we used to have when she would have told me what was happening, and we would have brainstormed solutions. I might be a cabinet maker but I still had a brain, was what I overheard her tell a friend once.
There’s not much to ask, I said. You’ve been desperately unhappy and haven’t been able to hide it all that well, you have been under a lot of pressure trying to deal with a group of troglodytes, and you’ve been leaning on Bentley’s shoulder instead of mine, and I get it, he’s got more experience in that place, and the politics that go with it, and is still an ally.
Her immediate superior and instrumental in her getting the position, but unlike some men in his position he had not taken advantage of a situation like some men would. And even if she had made a move, which I doubted, that was not the sort of woman she was, he would have politely declined.
One of the very few happily married men in that organisation, so I heard.
So, she said, you’re not just a pretty face.
Par for the course for a cabinet maker whose university degree is in psychology. It doesn’t take rocket science to see what was happening to you. I just didn’t think it was my place to jump in unless you asked me, and when you didn’t, well, that told me everything I needed to know.
Yes, our relationship had a use by date, and it was in the next few days.
I was thinking, she said, that you might come with me, you can make cabinets anywhere.
I could, but I think the real problem wasn’t just the job. It was everything around her and going with her, that would just be a constant reminder of what had been holding her back. I didn’t want that for her and said so.
Then the only question left was, what do we do now?
Go shopping for suitcases. Bags to pack, and places to go.
Getting on the roller coaster is easy. On the beginning, it’s a slow easy ride, followed by the slow climb to the top. It’s much like some relationships, they start out easy, they require a little work to get to the next level, follows by the adrenaline rush when it all comes together.
What most people forget is that what comes down must go back up, and life is pretty much a roller coaster with highs and lows.
Our roller coaster had just come or of the final turn and we were braking so that it stops at the station.
There was no question of going with her to New York. Yes, I promised I’d come over and visit her, but that was a promise with crossed fingers behind my back. After a few months in t the new job the last thing shed want was a reminder of what she left behind. New friends new life.
We packed her bags, three out everything she didn’t want, a free trips to the op shop with stiff she knew others would like to have, and basically, by the time she was ready to go, there was nothing left of her in the apartment, or anywhere.
Her friends would be seeing her off at the airport, and that’s when I told her I was not coming, that moment the taxi arrived to take her away forever. I remember standing there, watching the taxi go. It was going to be, and was, as hard as it was to watch the plane leave.
So, there I was, finally staring at the blank sky, around me a dozen other plane spotters, a rather motley crew of plane enthusiasts.
Already that morning there’s been 6 different types of plane depart, and I could hear another winding up its engines for take-off.
People coming, people going.
Maybe I would go to New York in a couple of months, not to see her, but just see what the attraction was. Or maybe I would drop in, just to see how she was.
As one of my friends told me when I gave him the news, the future is never written in stone, and it’s about time you broadened your horizons.
And, yes, the simple description for this word is that area of the earth that isn’t covered by water.
It could also describe that little patch that my house is built on, and is generally covered by the expression, house and land as a package.
After all, a piece of land is not much used to you unless there’s a dwelling on it, or, on rare occasions, under it. Does that mean then that land in this instance only as what you can see?
OK, now it’s getting confusing.
What if I wanted to live off the land. A small patch will not do, in this case, is need a large area, perhaps thousands if hectares.
It is said that the Australian aborigines have lived off the land for thousands of years, with a nomadic lifestyle.
No small patch of land for them.
Now, what if I come down out of the sky. Oddly enough this means I have to land, even if I come back to earth over later. It’s still a landing.
Now it’s getting interesting.
So what if you wanted to refer to where you live? That would be your homeland or motherland, and it describes a country.
So it’s my patch, my country, any area where there isn’t water. What about describing a country, say the land of the long white cloud, or the land of the rising sun?
And just to add to the confusion
I can land a fish
Make land, after being all at sea, and,
Best of all, land that much desired job.
Wow.
I’m beginning to think it’s another one of those ‘four-letter words’
Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.
I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.
But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.
Once again there’s a new installment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.
“So, how do you know your way around this place?”
We walked slowly and carefully because there was a lot of rubbish in the alleyway, mostly from cracks in the walls where the concrete lining had broken away. At times there were mounds of rubble, and we had to carefully walk over these.
The ground was dusty and signs of footprints from past visitors, but it had been a long time, they had almost disappeared. There was also a dank, musty aroma, just short of being nauseating.
“The result of a misspent youth. Not many people know there’s a passageway around the whole perimeter of the mall, with only four entry points from outside, and two inside. This was how we escaped when we came along for some shoplifting.”
“Did you ever think of going straight?”
“Wasn’t much chance of that. There were expectations, and when I did try to give it up, I got ostracised, and ended up having to commit bigger follies to regain acceptance.”
We reached the end of the passage, where it turned right. At a guess, I would say we were in one of the corners of the mall, near the front entrance.
She turned left and then stopped. I could see the bottom of the steps leading up.
A stopped next to her and we shone both torches up the stairs. The light only went as far as a landing.
“What’s up there,” I asked.
“Offices. A holding cell. It’s where the security team used to be. It was separate from everything else. The security guys used to shake down the teenage girls up there, and not in a nice way.”
“You?”
“Once, but I told Vince and he sorted the bastard out. Didn’t happen again.”
A small sidebar to life in a mall.
She started up the steps. “If anything is going to be anywhere, this will be the place. The front of the mall was the safest part, built properly on solid foundations. As work continued, heading sideways and back, corners were cut. It’s not the only shoddy building there is in this area.”
The Benderby’s construction company had built most of the buildings in the county, always coming in at the lowest price. The only place not cracking or falling to pieces was the town hall.
At the top of the stairs, there was another wide passage with rooms branching off it.
It was a little less dusty and musty up here, but the rooms were quite messy, with papers scattered everywhere. It looked like someone had been looking for something. The first room didn’t look like it had been used since everyone left, nor the second.
The third was a different story. It was reasonably clean, a large desk in the middle of the room, and several boxes on the side with rolled-up papers, probably blueprints or plans.
I went in. Nadia kept going up the passage to check the other rooms.
I pulled out one of the rolls and laid it on the table.
It was a map, one that stretched a hundred miles in each direction and giving a very clear view of all the river systems, lakes, mountains, and coastline. Our town was almost in the middle of the chart.
I pulled out another and it was almost the same.
I looked at the writing at the bottom. One was dated 1972, the other dated 1956.
I kept rummaging through the rolls until I found one that was dated 1935. Our town wasn’t a town back then, nor did Patterson’s Reach exist.
And carefully examining the inlets, bays, and coves, given the parameters of what remembered from Boggs’s map, it could be any one of a dozen locations. I didn’t take that much notice when I’d been looking at Boggs’ collection.
“Hey, Smidge,” Nadia yelled out.
I wished she wouldn’t call me that.
I went out of the room and down the passage, past about four other offices, until the second to last. She was standing outside an office with a shut door. I tried it, and it was locked.
“A locked door in an abandoned Mall. What are the odds?”
“That there’s something in there that someone wants to keep secret. This has to be Alex’s lair. What was in that other room?”
“Maps.”
“Any use?”
“Perhaps. Boggs probably had the same, but I never took much notice of his. Trouble is, I was having difficulty believing there is a treasure buried out there somewhere.”
“A lot of people seem to be looking for this non-existent treasure, so there must be something in it.”
“Any of your keys fit?”
She tried the first, no, the second, the same one she had used to get in, and it worked. A skeleton key perhaps, that oped every lock in the place.
The door swung open and we shone the torch lights inside.
For a story that was conceived during those long boring hours flying in a steel cocoon, striving to keep away the thoughts that the plane and everyone in it could just simply disappear as planes have in the past, it has come a long way.
Whilst I have always had a fascination with what happened during the second world war, not the battles or fighting, but in the more obscure events that took place, I decided to pen my own little sidebar to what was a long and bitter war.
And, so, it continues…
…
Rolf Mayer had only ever wanted to design and build rockets for the exploration of space.
Somewhere between the germination of that desire, and where he was right now, in the back of a black Mercedes SS staff car heading south towards Nuremberg something had gone horribly wrong.
Back at Nordhausen, he may have been terrified most of the time from the demands of the Reich, and the horrors of how the Reich was achieving its goals, but he was, at least, safe.
Now he was a traitor, with stolen plans, with two Britisher spies, heading for Italy and from there to, well it hadn’t quite been specified where he might end up, but he assumed it would be England.
As yet they had not asked him whether he had the answer to stop this new weapon, and, if he really thought about it, there wasn’t an answer. Perhaps, with a sense of irony, he could say that in kidnapping him, they might not fix the gyro guidance system which caused a lot of the rockets to go off course and miss their intended targets, but still, a large number would still reach their destination with devasting effect.
As for stopping it, he doubted it could be done. They were fired from mobile positions, and there were no static launching sites so the enemy couldn’t bomb those sites, nor could they stop their production of them because it was underground. A lot of lessons had been learned since Pennemunde.
And that brought another thought to mind. Who was the enemy now, if he was willing to go with these spies? He was German, and he loved his country, but seeing what he had seen, it was hard to balance that patriotism with the means to achieve their goals. Perhaps the blame lay with the Fuhrer, but no one ever spoke of what they really thought, only of their undying allegiance to the mother country and its heroic leader.
No doubt, when he reached his final destination he was going to hear a lot of things that may or may not be true about Reich and its leadership.
Mayer noticed the Standartenfuhrer had a map and at various times they would stop the car and consult the map, an older touring map that predated the war.
Listening to their conversations he had learned that the car had a 50-litre tank that was full at the start of their journey. From Nordhausen to Weimar had been 120 kilometres and had used about 18 litres of petrol. From that, he deduced that the car would go about 300 kilometres per tankful. This means they would need more petrol before they reached Nurnberg.
It was one thing to say they were going to take care of the details but getting one of the most heavily rationed commodities in Germany, or anywhere within the sphere of the Reich was nigh on impossible. He knew this simply because his superiors at the Nordhausen site couldn’t get any petrol for their vehicles.
At this stage of the war, a war they were continually told they were winning, there seemed precious little of anything still available or not rationed, especially food. Because they were SS they fared reasonably well, but the others not so much, making him feel guilty that he was not going hungry like everyone else.
In fact, he was feeling hungry now, and he didn’t remember seeing any food in the car.
Some distances from Bayreuth, after passing through another checkpoint, they stopped a further 10 kilometres up the road, in a layby that sheltered them from any other traffic, not that there had been anything other than army convoys. Several times there had been aeroplanes overhead, either coming or going in small groups, perhaps training runs, so perhaps there was a Luftwaffe station nearby
Outside there was another consultation of the map and then the driver headed towards the rear of the car and opened the trunk. The Standartenfuhrer opened the door. “You can get out and stretch your legs.”
Mayer climbed out and found just how stiff and sore he was, and it hadn’t been a very long drive, but the roads were not as good as they once were, before the war.
Then he noticed the driver lugging a large can to the petrol cap, opened it, put a funnel in and with some assistance, started refilling the tank. When he walked towards the rear of the car he saw six such cans in the trunk. They had come prepared, and given the nature of how they had collected him, he realized that he had been targeted, which meant someone inside the Nordhausen complex was an agent working for British Intelligence.
They emptied two of the tanks into the car, and replaced the cans back in the trunk.
The Standartenfuhrer called him over to show him the map.
It had a line roughly drawn from Nordhausen down to Florence, and notes on the side in red, the most pertinent being the distance by road, if they could take the direct route, which now he knew the circumstances, they could not, was about 1,150 kilometres.
Even in the best of circumstances that would take about three days, maybe more. And there was certainly not enough fuel in the rear truck to go the whole distance.
The Standartenfuhrer ran his finger down the line, “This is the intended route we decided on, though not exactly sticking to the main roads. We do not anticipate problems in Germany, but once we cross into Austria and onto Innsbruck there might be a few problems. We’re not quite sure what to expect at the border.”
“There is no border, not as far as the Reich and the Fuehrer is concerned.”
“Let’s hope you’re right. But I think it’s about time we had a talk about what happened if anything happens to the two of us. We’re not planning to get captured, or killed if it’s possible but there’s a lot of risks involved in an operation like this.”
“You expect me to go on alone?”
“Yes. With the plans and drawings. You have to get to a town called Gaiole in Chianti which is about 70 kilometres south of Florence. There you will need to find a man named Luigi Fosini, who will take care of the rest of your journey. There is a code you will need to give him, but we’ll talk about that later. All you need, for now, is the destination.”
Discussion over, they got back in the car and continued on their way.
Then he realized he’d forgotten to ask about food, but judging by the dark expressions they wore, he decided to wait a little longer.
This is what we saw driving along the Coquihalla Highway in Canada, a rather infamous stretch of road featured on the Discovery Channel, and yes, we saw a number of cars and trucks off the side of the road, and not in a good way
The road was iced over in place, and driving was difficult, but on the plus side the scenery was spectacular, and it was hard not to be distracted when driving.
But, inspiration for a story? It might go something like this:
…
Arty was adamant that he knew the best where man in the business.
That might gave been true if he was in the middle of the city where there were endless tests and turns that could be used to lost chasing police vehicles.
But that didn’t apply to the open road, and one that was think with ice and snow, even if it had recently been cleared.
But that wasn’t as bad as the fact that we had got free of the city, lost the pursuing cars, changed vehicles, and got away free.
All he had to fo was follow the road.
Except Arty had a temper, and getting stuck behind an old van going ever so slowly on the road, caused him to first blast them with horn, then start doing dangerous accelations up behind them, and then attempt to overtake on a bend in the road.
That might not have been so bad if there had not been an oncoming car, but there was.
Even that might not have been so bad if the car had not been a police vehicle.
But the real kicker: Arty lost control of the car and we went sailing off the edge of the road into a ravine, landing on soft ice which after a minute started cracking and then gave way.
The last place I wanted to be was to be sinking into a freezing cold river, but there we were, all frantically trying to get out.
Fortunately, I did, but not before I was soaking wet, and almost frozen. The rest didn’t make it.
This book has been sitting in the ‘to-be-done’ tray, so this month it is going to get the second revision and release to beta readers.
…
The inimitable Mrs Bakersfield
…
It’s not every day of the week you get to meet a genuine god-zillionaire. Or so it seems to our boy.
She is Mrs Bakersfield, CEO of a conglomerate, rivalling the once fortunes of the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and others. To her granddaughter, Emily, she is simply Grandma.
It doesn’t take long to see that her grandmother and Emile have a special bond, one that might have included Emily’s mother, Grandma’s daughter.
And for the record, Emily and Tim are her last two direct descendants.
Of course, Grandma has noticed the change in her granddaughter because of our boy and she has a private talk.
It is an interesting conversation. She can see that he has the same affection for Emily as Emily does for him, enough to believe that something might come of the relationship.
She is no doubt aware of the differences in background, but sometimes those are just details.
She offers him a job, well, not so much a job, but an introduction to the HR manager, the equivalent one might say to an interview.
Oh, and one final detail, the grandmother has stage four cancer and has only a matter of weeks to live.
The architecture along the Bund or Waitan is a living museum of the colonial history of the 1800s. The area centers on a section of Zhongshan Road within the former Shanghai International Settlement.
The word bund means an embankment or an embanked quay. It was initially a British settlement; later the British and American settlements were combined in the International Settlement.
The Bund is a mile-long stretch of waterfront promenade along the Huangpu River. There are 52 buildings of various architectural styles, including Gothic, baroque, and neoclassical styles. The area is often referred to as “the museum of buildings”.
Building styles include Romanesque Revival, Gothic Revival, Renaissance Revival, Baroque Revival, Neo-Classical or Beaux-Arts, as well as a number in Art Deco style.
Having seen these buildings initially the night before, mostly lit up, our viewing this morning was from the land side, and particularly interesting in that the colonial architecture was really fascinating considering their location, but not surprising given Shanghai’s history. A lot of these buildings would be more at home in London, that out in the far east.
The Bund waterfront is about two kilometers long and impossible to cover in the time allowed for this part of the tour.
There was just enough time to get photos of the waterfront and the old buildings.
Some of these buildings had odd shapes, like one on the far right that looks like a bottle opener.
And, for some odd reason, a bull.
On the other side of the water, the sights that had been quite colorful the night before, were equally impressive though somewhat diminished by the haze.
You would think that going away for a few days, you would be able to drag yourself away from writing.
You would think, after doing it every day for the last six months, it would be time to take a break. But, the trouble with good intentions and being in a different place, there’s a ton of new and different places and things to write about.
We are away primarily for a wedding, with part of it being a Chinese Tea Ceremony, and at course I’ve been reading up on it, and there is any number of descriptions, making it difficult to get a clear idea of what happens.
I guess I’m going to have to wait until the day, next Friday.
In between, there will be a dinner that will have as the centrepiece, Peking duck, my absolute favourite duck dish.
I had it last in Hong Kong two years back before the riots at the restaurant in the Peninsular hotel, and it was exquisite.
Then it’s my brother’s 70th birthday. As he is working feverishly on the family history, and having jetted off many times overseas tracking down the long lost relatives we knew nothing about, it’ll be time for a progress report.
I must admit that some of those relatives have roused my writer’s curiosity. When I helped clear out my parent’s house after they moved into a retirement home, we found a great deal of ancestral material, the most interesting of which is, would you believe, was about my mother.
We have found a whole lot of letters she received from her first boyfriend and then from my father. It shows a side to her I never knew about, and a side to my father that given what I know of him, is totally out of character.
There will no doubt be more on this subject later.
And finally but not least there was a baby announcement, always a subject of much joy and happiness.
This is only day two. There is definitely more to come.
John Pennington’s life is in the doldrums. Looking for new opportunities, and prevaricating about getting married, the only joy on the horizon was an upcoming visit to his grandmother in Sorrento, Italy.
Suddenly he is left at the check-in counter with a message on his phone telling him the marriage is off, and the relationship is over.
If only he hadn’t promised a friend he would do a favour for him in Rome.
At the first stop, Geneva, he has a chance encounter with Zoe, an intriguing woman who captures his imagination from the moment she boards the Savoire, and his life ventures into uncharted territory in more ways than one.
That ‘favour’ for his friend suddenly becomes a life-changing event, and when Zoe, the woman who he knows is too good to be true, reappears, danger and death follow.
Shot at, lied to, seduced, and drawn into a world where nothing is what it seems, John is dragged into an adrenaline-charged undertaking, where he may have been wiser to stay with the ‘devil you know’ rather than opt for the ‘devil you don’t’.
