John Pennington’s life is in the doldrums. Looking for new opportunities, 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 favor 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 ‘favor’ 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’.
As some may be aware, but many not, Chester, my faithful writing assistant, mice catcher, and general pain in the neck, passed away some months ago.
Recently I was running a series based on his adventures, under the title of Past Conversations with my cat.
For those who have not had the chance to read about all of his exploits I will run the series again from Episode 1
These are the memories of our time together…
This is Chester. He’s amused by the new Google Home device we have.
It sits on the table next to the dining table, and only today did he discover we talk to it.
You know, you say “Hey Google” and it listens and fairly accurately types out the voice request you’ve made, such as, “Hey Google, play some Creedence Clearwater Revival”.
Of course, Chester doesn’t like their songs, and all but covers his ears when he hears it. It might be the reason why I request it often, but
Sometimes he’ll sit in front of it, waiting. I suspect he thinks it will work on thought transference, and it will play ‘the meowing of a thousand cats’, to get his revenge.
Sorry, great minds don’t think alike in your case.
Then play something I would like.”
Right.
I ask google to play the Pastoral Symphony. Not exactly Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, but it has it’s moments, like turning up the volume and waiting for the cannon fire.
Scares him every time.
But that was last week. This week he’s requesting Ravel’s Bolero. I think he’s been watching late-night movies again.
I say, “Hey Google, play Ravel’s Bolero.”
Instead of music, I get the instruction to reinstall Spotify. It seems my subscription has run out.
Or in other words, going up the mountain to O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat.
…
The road, from the turn off the Greenlee cottages, Is narrow, winding, and not one you can go faster than 40kph. Buses and trucks are restricted to 20kph, but as you get further into the mountains, it’s difficult to see how they can get along the road at all.
It’s difficult enough in a mid-size SUV.
At times the road is so narrow that you wonder how trucks and buses could get between the trees, because the close you get to the guest house, the narrower the road. And, at times, the car has to scrape by the overhanging branches, especially when having to make way for oncoming traffic.
The road in places is definitely not wide enough for two cars, but there are a lot of points where you can pull off to the side to let them pass.
It is tarred, but being in the middle of a dense tropical forest, it’s pitted and rutted, and very uneven. There is not one moment where can relax, or tale your eyes off the road, as some of us do, to take in the surrounding scenery.
But, whilst most of it looks the same, it’s certainly not boring, and every now and then you break out of the darkness into a clearing. And, sometimes a house.
Yes, people do live on the side of a mountain, and, just to be clear, their view, every morning, from the back verandah must be spectacular
At the end of the three quarters of an hour drive we emerge onto a mountain top, and what is O’Reilly’s guest house, though after a more investigative look around, the guests stay in motel like rooms. Those were the rooms we could see, but apparently there are villas that are part of the rainforest, but we did not get to see them.
That would be where I would stay, if I was going to stay up here.
There is an old wooden structure, but if this is the original guest house, it doesn’t look like people stay there any more.
But, it’s not the accommodation the people come here for, it’s the endless bush walks. Of course, there’s other stuff there, but I suspect for most people, it’s more about communing with nature, discovering the wildlife, and taking in the fresh country air.
Oh, and a plane, like one that had crashed nearby, with an interesting story to go with it.
We went into the souvenir story and whilst the prices are higher than I expected, there’s a wide variety of items that are worthy of being a reminder of the place.
We also went into the cafe, a large cavernous space that was a reminder of the chalet style building in alpine areas, made completely of wood. I was expecting it to be older than it was, but certainly, it was more atmospheric than the modern cafes. The food, though expensive, was good, and the coffee excellent.
It was a pity that we could not do more walking that day, but it was a pleasant interlude, and a place I would go back to.
I have seen this television program once or twice, where a television personality digs into their past and sometimes they discover they had famous, or sometimes infamous, relatives.
I don’t think I would be so lucky, or unlucky as the case may be.
But, to be honest I haven’t really been interested in digging into the past.
On the other hand, my older brother has a keen interest in genealogy in general, borne from a desire to find out more about our family tree.
And he has gone back to the 1600s, for the relatives who came out from England, and no, they have no transported convicts, or at least he’s not saying.
Genealogy is a rather fascinating subject, and, I’ve discovered, is taught in university as a degree. My brother has one now.
What I didn’t realize is that I’ve been playing with it for years because in writing what might be called sagas you need to create your own set of mythical families, and then trace to forebears back in time.
I have one novel I’m writing that has required a family tree, and recently another for a story that required starting with a character who participated in the Eureka Stockade. We had to create parents, a migration from England to Australia, and then construct a family tree through to today so we could write a story from the perspective of a fourth-generation girl at school doing a school project.
If that sounds complicated, believe me, it is. But from my granddaughter who came up with the idea, she is very excited about it.
Much better than sitting in front of a computer playing games or a tv watching cartoons.
But once again I digress…
I have found a lot of genealogy stuff that my mother had been working on, and I’m taking it to my brother, and at the same time, l will get the latest installment on our family.
So far I’ve learned that I come from a combination of British relatives on both my mother and father’s side, the most recent my father’s mother who was born in England, and German from my mother’s side, her surname being Auhl.
No doubt, and with a great deal of irony, my relatives probably fought against each other in two world wars.
I’m sure more will be revealed on Wednesday.
But, the more I learn the more I feel inclined to create a fictionalized history with my family members as characters in the story. At the moment a biographical account of the family would be reasonably boring since as yet no one notorious had been discovered.
Is love the metaphorical equivalent to ‘walking the plank’; a dive into uncharted waters?
For Henry the only romance he was interested in was a life at sea, and when away from it, he strived to find sanctuary from his family and perhaps life itself. It takes him to a small village by the sea, s place he never expected to find another just like him, Michelle, whom he soon discovers is as mysterious as she is beautiful.
Henry had long since given up the notion of finding romance, and Michelle couldn’t get involved for reasons she could never explain, but in the end both acknowledge that something happened the moment they first met.
Plans were made, plans were revised, and hopes were shattered.
A chance encounter causes Michelle’s past to catch up with her, and whatever hope she had of having a normal life with Henry, or anyone else, is gone. To keep him alive she has to destroy her blossoming relationship, an act that breaks her heart and shatters his.
But can love conquer all?
It takes a few words of encouragement from an unlikely source to send Henry and his friend Radly on an odyssey into the darkest corners of the red light district in a race against time to find and rescue the woman he finally realizes is the love of his life.
To write a private detective serial has always been one of the items at the top of my to-do list, though trying to write novels and a serial, as well as a blog, and maintain a social media presence, well, you get the idea.
But I made it happen, from a bunch of episodes I wrote a long, long time ago, used these to start it, and then continue on, then as now, never having much of an idea where it was going to end up, or how long it would take to tell the story.
That, I think is the joy of ad hoc writing, even you, as the author, have as much idea of where it’s going as the reader does.
It’s basically been in the mill since 1990, and although I finished it last year, it looks like the beginning to end will have taken exactly 30 years. Had you asked me 30 years ago if I’d ever get it finished, the answer would be maybe?
My private detective, Harry Walthenson
I’d like to say he’s from that great literary mold of Sam Spade, or Mickey Spillane, or Phillip Marlow, but he’s not.
But, I’ve watched Humphrey Bogart play Sam Spade with much interest, and modeled Harry and his office on it. Similarly, I’ve watched Robert Micham play Phillip Marlow with great panache, if not detachment, and added a bit of him to the mix.
Other characters come into play, and all of them, no matter what period they’re from, always seem larger than life. I’m not above stealing a little of Mary Astor, Peter Lorre or Sidney Greenstreet, to breathe life into beguiling women and dangerous men alike.
Then there’s the title, like
The Case of the Unintentional Mummy – this has so many meanings in so many contexts, though I image back in Hollywood in the ’30s and ’40s, this would be excellent fodder for Abbott and Costello
The Case of the Three-Legged Dog – Yes, I suspect there may be a few real-life dogs with three legs, but this plot would involve something more sinister. And if made out of plaster, yes, they’re always something else inside.
But for mine, to begin with, it was “The Case of the …”, because I had no idea what the case was going to be about, well, I did, but not specifically.
Then I liked the idea of calling it “The Case of the Brother’s Revenge” because I began to have a notion there was a brother no one knew about, but that’s stuff for other stories, not mine, so then went the way of the others.
Now it’s called ‘A Case of Working With the Jones Brothers’, finished the first three drafts, and at the editor for the last.
I have high hopes of publishing it in early 2021. It even has a cover.
Or to be more precise, the homestead at what is now O’Reilly’s vineyard, where there is a pleasant lawn out back running down to the river for picnics, an alpaca farm next door, and the homestead plays host to functions, and wine tastings.
My interest was that we had assumed there was a restaraunt, and we were going to have lunch. There might be one, but not the day we visited, it was just cafe food or a picnic available.
I was more interested in the old homestead, because it was a fine example of the homesteads built in the ‘outback’.
…
Today we are having lunch in the Platypus room, in the O’Reilly’s vineyard farmhouse, which, if you close your eyes and let your imagination run free, could see it as the master bedroom of a homestead.
Certainly the building is old, made completely of timber, inside and out, with the traditional high ceilings to keep the heat at bay.
At one end, a large bay window, which would be ideal to sir and view the outside, past the sweeping verandah. There is a small lawn and a rotunda, but beyond that what might have been extended gardens, is the vineyard.
The homestead is in an ideal position midway between the main road and the river, has the traditional surrounding verandah, and shows signs of being extended on almost all sides.
On the other side of the wide corridor that leads you to the bar, and, coincidentally, down the centre of the house, is a smaller bedroom, also used as a dining room, and ubiquitously named the library.
It may be small but it does have a fireplace. Which the assumed master bedroom does not, but now I’m thinking that room might have been the morning room.
Behind the room we’re in is another bedroom, or perhaps this might be the master, because it does have a fireplace and is quite large. And a name, the Ambassador room. Now it serves as the pick up place for picnic baskets.
There is another room on the opposite side of the corridor called the Drawing Room, but is not open to the public. But, going into the room with the fireplace adjacent to it, you can sell the aroma of pizzas, so it’s probably an extension of the kitchen, and, walking around the outside that side of the house proves it to be case.
After all, they do catering for weddings and need a very large food preparation area which I discovered runs down the whole of that side of the house.
At the end of the corridor I’d the bar and spare space, and running off that and behind that is where there is a large dining area, perhaps prior to COVID, the restaurant.
It’s not hard to imagine that area as a very large entertaining area, either for very large dinner parties, or dancing.
As for the food, it’s either a picnic basket, or pizzas. We chose the latter, not realising the bases were not home made, but bought in.
The toppings however were both plentiful and tasty. It could have been hotter, because it was a cold day, and it was cold in the room.
As for something to do other than taste the wine, and buy a few bottles, you can get up close to the vines, which, at this time of the year gave been pruned back and look quite dead, look at or walk an alpaca, even feed it, or all of them, or go down to the river and see if you can spot a Platypus.
Perhaps next time we’ll have a picnic down by the river.
It was one of those beautiful Autumn mornings, blue sky with a smattering of clouds but a sunny day all the same. It’s Sunday so there is not as much traffic on the road.
Anyone with any sense would be going to eat their favorite coffee place and settling down to your choice of coffee and perhaps a toaster or muffin to accompany the conversation.
This is what’s happening at the cafe we go for coffee. 9:00 in the morning it is packed. But great coffee is hard to find, and this is great coffee.
It’s that in-between time before it gets windy, cold and wet, with the sort of chill you can feel in your bones, rather it’s the time when you have a barbeque in the mid-afternoon and get home before the cold sets in, or take the kids to the park for some healthy exercise.
Today I have to take a drive from one side of suburbia to the other, taking as a network of main roads with rather anonymous names such as North and South
We travel through the older suburbs, those with a collection of red or white bricks and timber dating back to the fifties and sixties. They are not, for the most part, in a good state of repair, and rather than looking ramshackle, it’s more like they are slowly decaying.
Fences are rotting or falling over, extensions like they have been glued on rather than added by an architect, and paint either fading or missing.
Some have been bulldozed and replaced, blocks are cleared awaiting new development, others are being renovated. Any way you look at them they are still worth a great deal of money being in the close to the city part of suburbia.
It’s a location we could never afford. Because we were not affluent we were pushed out to the less expensive outer suburbs. This was of course 50 years ago, and now those outer suburbs are now the new medium suburbs and people are buying 20 km further out in the new estates. When I was young these suburbs were farms and open land.
It also surprises me that people would want to live on the main road because with traffic as it is heading into the city, it would be difficult to leave or return by car. At least for these people, public transport is better than it is in the outer suburbs.
Because it’s Sunday my trip takes a lot less time, except for those unpredictable traffic lights, some of which I missed and took a while to cycle through the other traffic before it was our time to move.
Time enough for reflection, and realize that nothing stands still and that everything was always in a constant state of change.
Next time I come this way, I doubt anything will be the same, except perhaps, the traffic lights
A single event driven by fate, after Ben told his wife Charlotte he would be late home one night, he left early, and by chance discovers his wife having dinner in their favourite restaurant with another man.
A single event where it could be said Ben was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Who was this man? Why was she having dinner with him?
A simple truth to explain the single event was all Ben required. Instead, Charlotte told him a lie.
A single event that forces Ben to question everything he thought he knew about his wife, and the people who are around her.
After a near-death experience and forced retirement into a world he is unfamiliar with, Ben finds himself once again drawn back into that life of lies, violence, and intrigue.
From London to a small village in Tuscany, little by little Ben discovers who the woman he married is, and the real reason why fate had brought them together.
