Our view of life, love, relationships, and marriage come from our own experiences. This is basically the same for all of us for everything that happens to us through life, as young children, at school, at work, at leisure, and, as we grow as a person.
Our ideas about life will come from the experiences of having our children, watching over our children as they grow up, from our relatives, both our own and those acquired by marriage or relationships, and from our friends.
No two life experiences will be exactly the same. There will be similarities but differences which may or may not give us a different perspective, whether that might be for the better or for the worse. Not everything that will happen to us will be good, or bad, but just an experience that we will remember or forget, take notice of or ignore, helps us grow, or cause us pain.
There will be the experiences we have when interaction with others that are outside our family sphere but haling an influence on us directly or indirectly, like politicians, doctors, government officials, and police. There will also be experiences involving those at work that we interact with in a professional manner, and others, who have influence in ways that sometimes can be unimaginable.
These interactions will influence our feelings, thoughts, and how we react and behave, the highs and lows of having children and grandchildren, interactions with aunts, uncles, our parents. Equally there will be moments of despair, of losing a job or missing out on a promotion, of dealing with people in the workplace that make life difficult, dealing with relatives who are not very nice, in short all of those interactions with all these people around you, and more.
Yes, your life is steered by all of these influences, and your views are often coloured by any or all of these people. They make up the sum of who you are, who you will be, and what you want to be. Those dreams will seem, sometimes, within your grasp, but quite often they will seem as far from your grasp as touching the moon.
But all of this, while it makes up who you are, will also make up who your characters are in a story.
They will be people you know, people you’ve met, people you’ve interacted with, people you’ve seen.
Over a series of posts I’ll try to describe some of my influences, and then refine them into the characters and locations of my stories.
A fine day, on this trip a rarity, we decided to take the train to Windsor and see the castle.
This is a real castle, and still in one piece, unlike a lot of castles.
Were we hoping to see the Queen, no, it was highly unlikely.
But there were a lot of planes flying overhead into Heathrow. The wind must have been blowing the wrong day, and I’m sure, with one passing over every few minutes, it must annoy the Queen if she was looking for peace and quiet.
Good thing then, when it was built, it was an ideal spot, and not under the landing path. I guess it was hard to predict what would happen 500 years in the future!
I’m not sure if this was the front gate or back gate, but I was wary of any stray arrows coming out of those slits either side of the entrance.
You just never know!
An excellent lawn for croquet. This, I think, is the doorway, on the left, where dignitaries arrive by car. The private apartments are across the back.
The visitor’s apartments. Not sure who that is on the horse.
St George’s Chapel. It’s a magnificent church for a private castle. It’s been very busy the last few months with Royal weddings.
The Round Tower, or the Keep. It is the castle’s centerpiece. Below it is the gardens.
Those stairs are not for the faint-hearted, nor the Queen I suspect. But I think quite a few royal children and their friends have been up and down them a few times.
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.
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.
Is it possible to mix the two up? I don’t think so.
Great usually means: everything is great, or good, or excellent, whatever degree of goodness you want to put to it.
It could also mean something else, like: Well, you were a great help! when in fact you want to say how useless they were.
Large or little.
Like all creatures great and small, Why not say big or small. Big doesn’t quite have the same effect.
Of course, you could be a great person, well, what I really mean is distinguished. Besides, great could mean way above average, too. Or grand, or impressive, the list goes on.
And haven’t we all, at some time had a great-aunt. No not the good one, the ‘great’ one, denoting her seniority, not necessarily how nice she is.
As for the other grate, we can build a fire in it.
Or add an ‘un’ in front and ‘ful’ at the end, to denote what parents sometimes think of their children
Or get a block of cheese and ‘grate’ it into small shreds.
Or speak in a voice that grates on your nerves, possibly by that great-aunt.
Yet another photograph in what is a series, pushes the story along
It’s a reminder of a past that I have only seen in old movies, which to me, adds a great deal of importance to the preservation of any material that gives us a sense of what it was like many years ago.
It doesn’t mean that what we see happened, because films, like stories, are sometimes based on some fact but the majority of it is fictional padding, adding a picture of how it might have been.
To find out what really happened, it is possible to find archived newspapers and municiple documents going back a long time, quite often the fodder for many history books.
This is how we think the wild west was, at times quite a dangerous place to be. But, in the main, it was probably a lot more mundane, just trying to make a living off the land, the battling kthe vagaries of weather, fighting off all manner of hazards, both predators and human, or trying to eventually eke out a living after a gold strike brought thousands of would be prospectors.
Towns came and went, mines came and went, each leaving the ghosts of their people and buildings behind.
As for my story, it’s probably going to be an amalgum of everything I’ve read or seen, but with my own spin.
So, the story so far – Our hero is away of a driving tour and had come to a covered bridge.
The thought that it might be a portal does cross his mind, but not being a believer, crosses it. Then, after a few miles comes across what seems to be a deserted, or ghost, town. But, it’s not deserted, the car’s gone and in its place, a horse.
…
I woke up in unfamiliar surroundings.
I didn’t remember going to sleep, which, for a moment, was a worry.
It was not a bed I was lying on. It was hard, like a wooden plank, and, looking up, the roofwas very high above. A cathedral ceiling.
A church?
I dragged myself up into a sitting position and looked around. It is a church. A very old church made completely out of timber. The sort of church one might find in an old town.
“Ah, you’re awake?” A voice came from behind me, the sort I instantly reminded of a priest.
I turned. A man that had the requisite collar and shirt, but not your typical priest.
“Where am I?”
“Church. Fergus thought you’d died of fright. Have to say I though that to, but Doc reckons you’re tired from a long ride. Where you from?”
I was going to say from New York, but I wasn’t sure what was going onso I held that thought and just said, “Back east.”
“Running from what?”
Was everyone who landed on their doorstep running from something? At least I wasn’t dressed in a suit, just a flannel shirt and jeans, with sturdy hiking boots. They were the only item of my apparel that could be out of place in this setting.
“A woman. She picked another man, one I thought was a friend.”
It was as close to the truth I’d get. There was a woman, it was just she didn’t like me as much as I did her. The both of us couldn’t stay, so I quit and left.
“Well, it’s too late to go on, the hotel’s out the door and a hundred yards straight ahead. Tommy’s taken your horse to the livery stable.”
My interview was over.
“I’ll see you at the service in the morning.”
Odd, when I walked out the church door, the scene had changed from what I last remembered. On dusk, there were lights, and people. Not many, but just enough to give the town an air of reality.
Until I saw two women walk past, in traditional 1860’s dresses and bonnets.
This had to be an historical town that went that extra mile for reality. It had to be.
Because despite all the self warnings, and trepidation…
…I crossed that bridge and found this:
Yes, we went back in time, and when I pulled over, and got out of the car the first thing that crossed my mind, I was either in an old gold mining town, or it was a mid way settlement to somewhere else.
Of course, it was deserted.
So, next thought was that this was a ghost town. But, the fact it’s late in the afternoon and everything looks as though it’s locked up, this might also quite easily be a tourist attraction, done for the day.
But, it was off the main road, down a track that led to what I thought might have been a settlement.
I go for a walk and look at some of the buildings. They have been kept in good order, but are showing signs of age, and no sign of modernisation.
Does this mean I’ve gone back in time?
“Hey?”
I hear a voice behind me, that of a man, and turn around.
He’s about 80 wearing well worn clothes and a raggedy beard, wrinkled eyes and leathery skin. A miner? A cowboy? Someone who lived here, like perhaps the last remaining resident.
“Who are you?” he askes stopping about 20 feet away. He looks annoyed, or maybe that was his perpetual angry face.
“A visitor?”
“From?”
“Back east.”
A knowing look crosses his face. “City slicker eh?”
Language right out of an old Hollywood western. Any minute now I might see John Wayne or a troop of Union soldiers.
“Perhaps.” I had no idea why I used the expression, back east.
“Then you’d better go back. No place for the likes of people like you. Last fellow that came from the city got run out of town.”
Friendly town then. A sideways glance showed movement, and another man along side one of the buildings, with a rifle, pointed straight at me.
“I guess I’m not welcome. I’m leaving. You might tell that to the man with the gun on me.”
“He knows.”
I turned, and walked slowly and steadily back to where I thought I left the car. Instead there was a saddled horse tied to a fence.
And a thought popped into my head. What if that was a gateway to another dimension, or just a gateway to hell. Or, since my mood wasn’t leaning towards death and mayhem, what if it was the entrance to a new world, one where troubles could be left behind?
All you have to do is cross that bridge.
IT could be like hundreds of others scattered over the United States, simply a bridge crossing a stream. Why did someone build over it? Was there a reason?
Delving into the mysteries of covered bridges there are among no doubt many two that I found. The first, so that the bridge timbers underneath didn’t rot, and the second, since it looked like a barn, animals would not hesitate to walk under and cross the bridge.
So, if it was me, out on a motoring holiday, somewhere in New England where there are a number of these bridges, I’d stop and take a look. First, to see what was on the other side, probably more forest as the road heads into the mountains, then walk through, tasking that first tentative step to see if anything happened.
What would I be expecting? A tingling sensation, a momentary blank, like losing consciousness for a fraction of a second, and coming to without any apparent change of scenery. Perhaps it might be a time warp, and stepping off at the other side sends me back in time, or maybe forward in time.
Or would I get a feeling of elation, that I had made it to the other side, but without being able to define what the other side was.
Or would I be filled with dread, and run back to the car and drive away as fast as I could?
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.
I gave the order to my assistant to order the supplies we needed in order to maintain stock levels.
Oh, yes, the word order is one of my favourites, because it can confuse the hell out of many people in its simplicity and yet complexity.
I gave the order, it’s what happens in the armed forces, and a lot of other places, but mostly we would associate it with organisations that have hierarchical authority.
The military, for one, cut orders, the means of sending one of its minions to another place, or to do a specific job.
Order supplies, well, just about anyone can order something from somewhere, usually on the internet, and sometimes require or are given an order number so it can be tracked.
In order to maintain, in order to get what I want, in order to get elected, this is just another way of using the word, with the aim of achieving something, though I’m sure there’s probably a better way of expressing these sentiments.
Law and order, well, doesn’t everyone want this, and doesn’t it always turn up in an election campaign, and seems to be the first thing sacrificed after the election. The thing is, no one can guarantee law and order.
There is the law and there is administering it. There is no order that comes with it, we just hope that order is maintained, and deplore the situation when it isn’t.
Perhaps in order to maintain law and order, we might need more police.
Then, of course, there is alphabetical order, and numerical order, where things can be designated from A to Z, like this challenge, or from 1 to 10, or more. We can sort words alphabetically, numbers numerically and data items by keys or an index.
This is naturally called a sort order.
Then there is my car, or bike, or washing machine, or mixmaster. They are currently in good working order, though that might not last.
And lastly, in deference to all those out there who are thinking of becoming dictators, it’s always possible, one day, there will be a new world order. They might actually be in their own particular order, whose intellect might be (?) of the highest order.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 