More on the Map of Dartmoor for my novel, 'Dart'

It's looking fab.  Just about done, I reckon, though Dru might have other ideas.  And my lovely publishers, Ronnie and Dawn at Indigo Dreams, are letting me have it in colour.  I am wearing a grin as wide as a very wide banana tonight ... 

Mapping the Black Death on Dartmoor

Look at this - it's a work in progress for my novel, Dart, which will be published by Indigo Dreams in October.  My wondrously talented friend, Dru Marland, is in the process of drawing a map to illustrate the journey of the hero, Tobias, across the hills to seek help when plague strikes their part of the moor.  And I'm so excited!  I've always loved books with maps in, and never dreamt I'd have one of my own.  By which I mean one I'd written.  (Pinching myself hard ... )

My only sadness is that printing restrictions and cost might well mean that it will have to be greyscale rather than the glorious colours Dru's chosen, but I shall be buying at least a dozen prints of it for myself and friends and relatives, so will be able to enjoy them on my wall, at least.

REALLY looking forward to October now!

Barrington Court in October

January's so dark it saps the soul. This winter I've surrounded myself with SAD lamps, which do help but even so it's a slog to get through each day.  I think I must be have been a hedgehog in a past life. To make matters worse, apart from a hobble around New Passage and Clevedon, I haven't been anywhere outside of the city in ages, having sprained my ankle just before Christmas.  I was told to bind it up and walk on it as much as possible and left A&E clutching a catering pack of Ibuprofen.  Then it turned out that I had an ulcer and the rest is agony ...

So, I've decided to brighten things up by posting some photos of my 50th birthday trip to lovely Barrington Court in Somerset, back in October, courtesy of my friends, Julie and Alison.  Quirkiness and colour.  Just the job for the dreary time of year.   

À la recherche des machines Dymo perdues

Dru and I had both been very good and chipped away at our respective Mount Kilimanjaroes of admin, so we decided to have a morning out in Clevedon.  Except it wasn’t a morning out really, it was a business trip to sell our various books and Dru’s cards.  First stop, Seeleys in Hill Road, which we visited together last March also.  Dru was looking forward to taking some photos of the 70s interior of the shop because, as she pointed out, it wouldn’t be there forever.  And I wanted to take in the glories of the Fontana Books bookstand with its bulbous 70s lettering again, and see if I could persuade Mr Seeley to take one of my irresistible little packs containing a copy of ‘Communion’, a copy of the review in the Bristol Review of Books, a copy of the ordering information from Central Books and a nice big Vistaprint postcard of the cover of ‘Communion’ with Dru’s three hares on the back, several of which I had in my most poetical shoulderbag.

Generally I shudder when people use the word ‘tragedy’ to describe a goal conceded in extra time or anything short of untimely death, but when we were confronted with this –

  

–       it actually felt as if an old friend had died. Or innocence, or the past or something. 

So instead of fossicking around inside as we had planned, we took sad photos through the windows, of planks and dust and ancient radiators and pegboards and a two bob bit on a pea green formica counter and a crate with Chutney Indian Mango Empire Produce on it and All Cards 10p and Everything 5p. 

Shouldering our wares, we bade a final farewell to the shop of Dymo machines and a 70s teenager’s writerly dreams and headed off to the Clevedon Community Bookshop in nearby Copse Grove, which rather ironically opened its doors exactly a week after Seeley’s closed.  I had particularly high hopes of getting them to take one of my packs because I am a shareholder(!), having been bought ten quids-worth of shares for Christmas by my friends, Gary and Jill. 

When we got there, I was disappointed to see that the old shop tiles on the frontage that I had glimpsed in a newspaper photo and rather narcissistically assumed read HARVEY actually spell PURVEYOR.  It was not a good omen.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, the shop’s fine if a bit haphazardly organised, but it is very newly opened and the volunteers running it were clearly still finding their feet. Dru and I had a judicious whisper in a back room and decided that we would broach the subject of our own wares, and whether we could have a poetry evening there and so on, once it had all settled down a bit.

We wandered back to the Morris Traveller, my bag decidedly heavier than it had been, being weighed down by three extra books – ‘Coleridge and Wordsworth in Somerset’ (well, how could I not?), ‘Ghost Stories’ by Walter de la Mare and Collected Poems, also by Walter.  Which kind of wasn’t the idea when we’d left Bristol, but sometimes you just have to go with the flow. 

We parked up by St Andrew’s Church only to find it was closed, which was a bit disappointing because the last time I was there, I was so distracted by everything else that I forgot to inspect the memorial to Arthur Henry Hallam, after whose untimely and tragic death Tennyson wrote In Memoriam. But it didn’t really matter because there was a magnificent collection of hefty cherubs on the 18^th century gravestones in the churchyard, two of which also bore the adage ‘No one/man is truly happy before death’. Speak for yourself, sez I, because we all know happiness only comes in moments and it was so warm and glorious and almost (whisper it) spring-like that it was hard not to forget troubles and feel a small blaze of joy.       

Then we circled the cliff top back to the car, in the hallowed footsteps of Coleridge and Tennyson.  As business trips go, our visit hadn’t been that successful, but not to worry, taking care of the soul is more important. 

Writing Music the Starling Way

Darkling starlings singing out the Old Year at New Passage on the River Severn ... 

In Moments

Christmas comes in moments.  For me, it's buying red cyclamens to put in my blue Brannam bowls; the ritual changing of the nose stud, from chip of diamond to a rather more festive ruby which my mother mistakes for a scab; gazing at the landslide of cards to write and presents to wrap and realising that Only Whiskey Can Save Me Now.

Then there's my father.  He has his moment too, which he chooses with style.  It's usually about three days before Christmas when my house is upsidedown and it's all coming to a head. 

'Going to town, Deb?  You couldn't get these few bits and pieces for your mother, could you?'  He brandishes a list. 'And pick up some boxes to put them in.  Supermarket ones will do, so long as you cover them with wallpaper and make them look nice.'

I was determined to pre-empt him this year.  Being shopaphobic, I bought as much as much as I could on-line, thus whittling trips in person down to two, one to town, the other out to Cribbs Causeway.  Before each one I asked him what he wanted me to get but he didn't respond.  In the end I did something he's always despaired of me ever learning and Showed Some Initiative, coming back from The Mall clutching fifty pounds' worth of Marks and Spencer vouchers.  Plus, I had a very impressive box in which my leaving present from my old job had been packed and I'd even remembered tissue paper.  Sorted.

'Oh … all right,' he said.  Then, 'I'll need some Nivea Light as well, mind – two tubs.  She doesn't like the ordinary stuff.  And some of that Island Mix from that place in The Galleries – you know, where you got it last time.  And sugared almonds.'  Perhaps sensing my rocketing blood pressure but only making it worse, he added, 'Your mother's out having her hair done so I wrapped up the other things I've got. Thought I'd save you a job.'

'Thanks, Dad,' I heard myself say.

Another ritual: the carol service at St Mary Redcliffe.  This is Chatterton's church and I can never quite believe my luck at getting to sing in such a hallowed place, even if my voice is all wrong for the music and I must pitch it right down in my boots.  Even better is knowing that up in the Muniments Room Thomas is blowing the dust off the parchment that he's found, with all his life before him, while somewhere Wordsworth picks up his quill and Henry Wallis begins a painting that's already famous, of the marvellous boy, that damned shitten arse boy …

Then there's the one-off moments that mug you, send you flying.  A Christmas twenty-four years ago, during the first of many house moves, this one from Taunton to London, so technically homeless.  I'm thirty yards away from where I sit now, in my parents' house, my first-born in my arms.  The baby’s father is going out to wet her head; his friends take a scant glance at the ostensible reason for their revelry and push off down the pub.  Alone and suckling my daughter, I'm holy as Mary …

A candle-lit midnight five Christmas Eves ago, and the minister speaks of T S Eliot, dazzling darkness, Henry Vaughn …

It's Christmas Day 1998, and somehow I'm on my own.  As I collapse onto the settee a programme comes on – an appreciation of Ted Hughes who's just died.  I pour myself a glass of Shiraz.  At the back of the house I can hear voices but no one comes, no one disturbs my miracle.  I plump up the cushions and relax.  Once more the story of 'Birthday Letters', and Heaney reading 'The Day He Died', his voice rusty with grief …     

I hope your Christmas is filled with moments.

Winter Solstice

      


    

  Winter Solstice

      Come all ye candles, ye fairy lights –

      sparkle with all your tremulous might

      against the cajoleries of the dark,
      the cosy winding cloths of night.

             
             Deborah Harvey © 2011