This book has been written for some time and the manuscript was sitting in a box with half a dozen others gathering dust and not quite as complete, so this month it is going to get the makeover, a first draft for the editor.
And so it begins…
…
Still No Internet
…
More time to stretch out on the newly cleared sofa in my writing room to consider the direction the work in progress is taking.
We’ve reached a point where the guilty now have to make a move. I’m not quite sure how I want to do this, but the questioning of suspects has made it quite clear, the person in charge has covered their tracks carefully.
Will it be the case that like all people who think they have all the bases covered, make one tiny mistake that will lead to their undoing.
Fortunately, I’m not up to that part of the story but it is occupying a large part of my thoughts.
We walked another umpteen miles from the exhibition to a Chinese restaurant that is going to serve us Chinese food again with a beer and a rather potent pomegranate wine that has a real kick. It was definitely value for money at 60 yuan per person.
But perhaps the biggest thrill, if it could be called that, was discovering downstairs, the man who discovered the original pieces of a terracotta soldier when digging a well. He was signing books bought in the souvenir store, but not those that had been bought elsewhere.
Some of is even got photographed with him. Fifteen minutes of fame moment? Maybe.
After lunch, it was off to the station for another high-speed train ride, this time for about two and a half hours, from X’ian to Zhangzhou dong.
It’s the standard high-speed train ride and the usual seat switching because of weird allocation issues, so a little confusion reigns until the train departs at 5:59.
Once we were underway it didn’t take long before we hit the maximum speed
Twenty minutes before arrival, and knowing we only have three minutes to get off everyone is heading for the exit clogging up the passageway. It wasn’t panic but with the three-minute limit, perhaps organized panic would be a better description.
As it turned out, with all the cases near the door, the moment to door opened one of our group got off, and the other just started putting cases on the platform, and in doing so we were all off in 42 seconds with time to spare.
And this was despite the fact there were about twenty passengers just about up against the door trying to get in. I don’t think they expected to have cases flying off the train in their direction.
We find our way to the exit and our tour guide Dannie. It was another long walk to the bus, somewhat shabbier from the previous day, no leg room, no pocket, no USB charging point like the day before. Disappointing.
On the way from the station to the hotel, the tour guide usually gives us a short spiel on the next day’s activities, but instead, I think we got her life history and a song, delivered in high pitched and rapid Chinglish that was hard to understand.
Not at this hour of the night to an almost exhausted busload of people who’d had enough from the train. Oh, did I forgot the singing, no, it was an interesting rendition of ‘you are my sunshine’.
The drive was interesting in that it mostly in the dark. There was no street lighting and in comparison to X’ian which was very bright and cheerful, this was dark and gloomy.
Then close to the hotel our guide said that if we had any problems with the room, she would be in the lobby for half an hour.
That spoke volumes about the hotel they put us in.
This book has been written for some time and the manuscript was sitting in a box with half a dozen others gathering dust and not quite as complete, so this month it is going to get the makeover, a first draft for the editor.
And so it begins…
…
Coping without technology
…
There are no more surprises at least for today.
We have no internet, the power company came along and removed an old pole and that was the end of it.
It’s amazing what you can’t do when there’s no internet and then all the things you said you would do one day if only you had the time.
This morning’s word count accumulates quickly without the distractions so I had the afternoon to finally clean up my workspace.
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.
This book has been written for some time and the manuscript was sitting in a box with half a dozen others gathering dust and not quite as complete, so this month it is going to get the makeover, a first draft for the editor.
And so it begins…
…
Coping without technology
…
There are no more surprises at least for today.
We have no internet, the power company came along and removed an old pole and that was the end of it.
It’s amazing what you can’t do when there’s no internet and then all the things you said you would do one day if only you had the time.
This morning’s word count accumulates quickly without the distractions so I had the afternoon to finally clean up my workspace.
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…
…
When Carlo stopped, I was out of breath and gasping. We all were. The smoke was getting more intense. At times it had made navigation almost impossible.
In front of us were more trees, but these looked different to those we had passed through. I watched Carlo walk back and forth a few yards each way, then disappear into the bushes. A minute later he put his head out and said, “This way.”
We followed him. It was a hidden entrance down to a drain that was quite deep and headed back towards the castle one way and into the forest the other.
If the fire kept up by tomorrow the cover would be gone.
It was still a hard walk through the bushes, but we made it to a wireframeand door with a lock on it. It looked ancient as if it hadn’t been used in decades, even longer.
Carlo produced a rather odd looking key and unlocked it. I would have thought it was rusted shut, but appearances were deceptive. The lock was almost new.
But the gate had not been used for a long time and it took Carlo a few minutes to force it to open. It had rusted shut. When it did finally move, it was with a very loud screeching sound.
We filed in and he relocked it. Anyone thinking they heard something and came to investigate; it would end up on the other side of the gate.
So far so good.
For a moment I was back in my element, the archaeologist exploring caves, a wooden fire torch lighting the way, dampness underfoot, and the trickling of water down the walls. All around the dankness from continual dampness.
It was easy the pretend if only for a few minutes I had not been caught up in the war, that I was on a quest for lost treasure, hidden away at the end of a labyrinth.
The reality was we were quite literally in an ancient sewer and the original builders of the castle had used an underground waterway to tap into to remove waste. It was far more effective than modern systems and used the earth’s own ecology.
Inside the castle, the places where the waste used to drop down into the waterway had been covered over by trapdoors that were still there, and that was how we were going to gain access, through rooms that were no longer used.
We were going in via four access points, two men at each door, and mine with one of Blinkys men would be going into the area where the soldiers were camping to mop up whatever the bombs left behind, before closing off an exit.
Carlo had reserved the last one for himself and the boy, where he hoped to find Wallace and the new German commander.
Our cue to move: the bombs going off.
We just had time to get to the point and lower the trapdoors. Then climb up onto the floor and wait by the door. From the other side, Carlo said, anyone in the castle would only see a continuation of the wall panelling.
We made it with seconds to spare.
We were closest to the bombs and the percussive effect was disorientating for a few seconds before we pushed through the door and into the smoke and dust raised by the explosions.
As the dust settled, we could see dead soldiers, and mess everywhere. If a soldier was still alive, we shot them, systematically picking our way through the debris. I counted thirty-one dead by the time we reached the other side, the other exit from the space.
In the distance, we could hear sporadic gunfire coming from other parts of the castle, and then, after taking up our position, near the tank, we waited.
Three soldiers came bursting out of the exit and we shot them too..
Ten minutes later Carlo yelled out, “It’s me, don’t shoot.” Then he stepped out the door. “It is done.”
The castle was ours.
“You wish to speak to your old commander before I execute him?
“Wallace?”
He nodded.
“Sure”
I followed him into the castle and walked through familiar passageways and rooms, much had not changed in a long time.
Wallace and the new commander were tied up in the dining room. The remnants of a meal and several empty bottles of wine were on the table.
Wallace watched me from the doorway until I stood before him.
“I knew it was a mistake letting you go. Jackerby was convinced you were a stupid fool who would unwittingly lead us directly to the resistance. I told him you were cleverer than you looked.”
“And yet…”
“Perhaps I was tired of people like you being killed needlessly. What just happened, that was a waste of human life.”
“I didn’t start the war, and for the record, I didn’t want any part of it. Unfortunately, higher authorities deemed otherwise, and here I am. This is not a victory to savour.”
“A victory nonetheless.”
I shrugged. “It didn’t have to be like this, but at least we’ve weeded out a few more traitors.”
This book has been written for some time and the manuscript was sitting in a box with half a dozen others gathering dust and not quite as complete, so this month it is going to get the makeover, a first draft for the editor.
And so it begins…
…
A twist I didn’t see coming
…
Yes.
I had worked out who the murderer was going to be.
Don’t you just hate it when the story unfolds in a different manner? The current person tapped for the murder is looking very guilty, except for one piece of evidence that was not taken into account.
I can’t say what it is.
And I can’t tell you who the likely suspect is, because now I’m not quite sure myself. I feel this is like a true-life murder crime. plodding through the leads and clues one at a time.
Once again I’m still writing a story even in the first edit that unfolds for me just as it would for the reader.
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…
…
War is hell.
I remembered an old Sargeant Major was telling us that going to war was not fun, that the very real possibility of getting killed should be the only thing on our minds.
Along with keeping your head down and being very aware of your surroundings.
Apparently, he had been at a place called Gallipoli, and from what I had read, that was a special kind of hell.
He had also said fifty per cent of us wouldn’t return. I hoped to be in the fifty per cent that did. Just to spite the old bastard.
I knew it was going to get problematical sooner than we thought, I could smell the aroma of burning bush on the air, and as we got closer to the castle, the smoke got denser.
Wallace had a cunning plan, he’d used flame throwers to set the bush on fire so we couldn’t get to the castle under the cover of the forest. It was a plan he hadn’t me about.
Carlo had stopped, also understanding what Wallace had done. Would this interfere with us getting to the external entrances, or if the other three were unattainable, could we get to the secret entrance?
I caught up to him. “Not exactly what we envisaged. I had no idea Wallace was planning this?”
“It is a logical move. He can’t leave the castle, and as it was, he knew the forest would give us cover until the very last moment.”
“And now?”
“Now we use another entrance. Take longer, but we’ll get there. Only problem, they will be expecting us, and waiting.”
The others joined me, just as Carlo did an about-face and started going back the way we came.
“Where is he going?” Blinky asked.
“Another way. Wallace is burning our cover.”
He shrugged. “I suppose it would be too much to ask for some rain?”
“Sadly no. Fine and clear with a touch of fog, well, smoke maybe.”
He didn’t think it was funny. War I guess could do that to you.
When Thompson and company were planning the operation that was set up primarily to get defecting Germans out of the country, there was only so much research that could be done.
It was one of the reasons I got a seat at the table, my exploits in Italy looking at ancient buildings suddenly became a red-hot reason to be included. The war had all but petered out in that part of the country, the Germans were shoring up the Italians, and the Allies had bigger plans to invade via Sicily, or one of those islands.
Someone mentioned something hush-hush about Italy and the road back to peace, but at that point in time, the end of the war was not in sight.
The point was, the castle was in a strategic location, it was only being held by a small garrison, according to the resistance, ideal for what Thompson wanted. Approvals gained, he sent in a team of German-speaking soldiers to replace those there, as if nothing had happened and then set up the pipeline.
It worked.
For a while anyway. Several months after the new team had set themselves up and the personnel was moving through, it all stopped.
First thought was the Germans had discovered what was going on and switched the team again. Until Thompson noted we were still getting reports from Wallace, one of his men on the ground.
That’s when Thompson decided to send me.
And. No, it was not just a matter of saying, great, I always wanted to holiday in Italy, and particularly Tuscany. My excuse, I was not trained to be a commando or a secret agent.
Of course, I made that one fatal mistake, I had enlisted to fight in the war, and it was not my decision where they sent me.
So, I was on the next plane to Tuscany.
The trouble was, Thompson and I both agreed that it was more likely the men we selected had not changed their allegiances, they just went back to what they were before. Wallace, Johannesen and Jackerby had all been extricated from blown missions, and Thompson had been left scratching his head as to who the mole was in his office.
Too many coincidences proved it wasn’t.
Except coincidentally, Thompson had teamed up all the traitors in one place.
So, my mission was twofold, first to ascertain if they were traitors, and, if they were, to execute them.
The next problem, the mission was almost over before it started, because even though Thompson had told Wallace the wrong pick-up point where my plane would be landing, cloud cover made it impossible to guarantee I’d be jumping at the correct spot.
As it turned out, the resistance had planned a huge ambush in exactly the same place my plane landed, and I was in the middle of it. The rest as they say is history.
The thing is, ever since I landed, I had the benefit of a huge amount of good luck.
That couldn’t last.
Carlo seemed unfazed about the fire, perhaps he had expected it, but his only concern was time. We had to be in the castle just as the explosions started.
With 23 minutes to go, Carlo stepped up the pace. For a big man, he didn’t make much noise. I wished I could say the same for myself.
This book has been written for some time and the manuscript was sitting in a box with half a dozen others gathering dust and not quite as complete, so this month it is going to get the makeover, a first draft for the editor.
And so it begins…
…
A twist I didn’t see coming
…
Yes.
I had worked out who the murderer was going to be.
Don’t you just hate it when the story unfolds in a different manner? The current person tapped for the murder is looking very guilty, except for one piece of evidence that was not taken into account.
I can’t say what it is.
And I can’t tell you who the likely suspect is, because now I’m not quite sure myself. I feel this is like a true-life murder crime. plodding through the leads and clues one at a time.
Once again I’m still writing a story even in the first edit that unfolds for me just as it would for the reader.
This book has been written for some time and the manuscript was sitting in a box with half a dozen others gathering dust and not quite as complete, so this month it is going to get the makeover, a first draft for the editor.
And so it begins…
…
Half way there
…
Yes, 15 days down and 15 days to go.
At this point my hand is starting to cramp from the toils of writing, yes, I’m one of those writers who often puts words to paper longhand.
Two weeks is a long time, but I think this sort of exercise is what’s needed if you want to write a novel every year, though this one is going to come out with more than 50,000 words.
I think there are about three more chapters to go to end part two, then I can get onto the big finale in part three.
It has turned out to be a bigger project than I originally thought, and I didn’t think I could stretch it to 50,000 words. Now, I’m hoping to keep it to about 60,000.
Still, no need to get ahead of myself. Murphy’s law may yet rear its ugly head.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 