Friday 30 September 2011


Once again we are driving around the countryside looking for the location for the next book. So far it has been whittled down to either north Cornwall or possibly Dartmoor. Which will depend on where Marcia finds the creative juices are flowing plus, in this case, the furtherance or otherwise of an idea which she has been playing with but is far from settled.

Anyway, we drove over Dartmoor the other day. To be more accurate Marcia drove as I am now waiting for the eyes to settle down after the operation so that I can be have new glasses. The, hopefully, I shall be behind the wheel again.

Our route took us over Holne Moor which is one of my favourite places and then on to Holne itself.

Combestone Tor continues to look down over ‘Foxhole’ - the fictional house in ‘Forgotten Laughter’.

Holne Moor: one of the most evocative open stretches of moor on Dartmoor.

When we arrived we found, to our great delight, that the village shop and tearoom is again open. It closed about a year ago as it was just not making money but the community has organised itself and found enough volunteers to staff it and enough cash to buy the initial stock needed for such a venture. Many congratulations and all the best wishes for the future.

The village of Holne

This took me back to 1984. Then (as now) there was concern about declining rural services. Dorset Rural Community Council had organised a Village Ventures competition to encourage voluntary groups who were finding ways of retaining or gaining services that would otherwise have been lost. In 1980 an organisation called Rural Voice was started to provide a national rural alliance and they took the idea forward to include most of the counties in England. Shell International offered generous financial support and this was matched by various government bodies. It was a great success and Rural Voice wanted a small book written to commemorate this success and, for a reason which now escapes me, I was commissioned to write that book.

Thus it was that in 1984 Marcia and I together with our two dogs set out to visit every county. Being us we did this in an old Bedford camper van and, as you would expect, we had a lot of fun. One memory that was not so amusing was driving through Nottinghamshire. This was at the time of the miners’ strike - a strike that seemed to be a personal battle between Margaret Thatcher and Arthur Scargill. Seeing groups of angry miners and police in riot gear confronting each other made a lasting impression on me and has shaped my political beliefs. On both sides there were perfectly honest and decent people enjoined in a bitter conflict and there are mining communities suffering from the fall out to this day. We were both quite upset and very happy to put that particular scene behind us.

A moment of rest: we sit by the old Bedford camper van. This was a terrible photo (obviously using a timer) but is the only one I can find taken on those trips.

The book cover.

* * * * *

It really is odd – this business of writing. Take Stripey Bunny as an example.

Marcia had just started writing The Christmas Angel having spent a few months brooding and visiting the locations for the book. I suppose this would have been some time in September 2009. The book opens with Jakey, a four year old boy, and his stalwart companion, Stripey Bunny. I’m not entirely sure what image Marcia had of this person at that time but a few weeks later the Christmas catalogues began to arrive.

One was a gift catalogue from a firm neither of us had heard of and there, as Marcia was leafing through it while we enjoyed our morning coffee break, was Stripey Bunny. Within a couple of days he had arrived and was sitting on Marcia’s desk to become the talisman for this book.

Marcia usually has a ‛book CD’: in this case it was Joni Mitchell’s ‛Both Sids Now’. It is to be hoped that Stripey Bunny enjoyed it – he had to listen to it rather a lot. The following photograph shows SB in a dégagé mood. I always felt he was closely related to Dillon in the Magic Roundabout but I expect most of you reading this will be far too young to remember him.

Time for bed, Zebedee.

* * * * *

Marcia was hanging up the washing, glancing to the west from where we had been promised some good weather, when she heard a ‘wooshing’ sound. It was very odd and puzzling until we saw a hot air balloon quite low in the sky and not that far away. We had seen this particular balloon before but even so I decided I wanted to take a couple of photographs. As it happened it was coming in to land three or four fields away – here are the pictures.




Safe landing!

Friday 23 September 2011

It is just over a week now since I had the last eye operation. Things have now settled down and I feel able to start blogging again. This new Blogspot will will take over from the blogs that I used to put up on the DevonWriters web site. It will, however, continue to deal with what Marcia and I are getting up to and to keep you posted as to what is happening on the book front.

There are two reasons for the change. When I started blogging it was a fairly new idea and technology has moved on since then and this is a much more modern way of doing things. Secondly, and I feel this is very important, it is far easier for people - and especially for Marcia's readers - to leave comments and to share their thoughts with us.

So, what has happened since my last blog?

We were delighted when Clare Foss with her husband, Ed, and their two delightful children dropped in to spend an afternoon with us. They had been on holiday down on the Roseland Peninsula in south Cornwall and were on their way home. Clare was Marcia's editor when she was published by Headline and, despite moving to Transworld some ten years ago, they remain very firm friends.

Marcia's birthday is in August and it is very difficult to find something that she would really like as a present. By the time you reach our ages, you have all the 'stuff' that you need and she is totally disinterested in make-up or scent. This year I struck gold. There is an art shop in Tavistock called South West Crafts which is rather hidden away on a footpath that runs past the church.

It is one of my favourite shops and there I found a couple 'jugs' by the potter Janie Ramsey. Our sweet peas were in full flower so I got up early, picked some and put them in the jugs for her to find when she came down for breakfast.
Transworld decided that the right time to publish Marcia's latest book,The Christmas Angel, would be in October - the 27th to be precise - which is hardly surprising in light of the title.
This is Stripey Bunny, one of the less vocal characters in the book and the inseparable companion to young Jakie. He sat on Marcia's desk when she was writing this book but I am not really quite sure what that says.

Two dates for your diary if you are in the south west at the end of October. On Friday 28th Marcia will be signing in Kingsbridge at the Harbour Bookshop from 11.30 am and on the next day in Tavistock at Book Stop from 10.30 am. For those who live overseas, I would remind you that The Book Depository offers free worldwide p & p and the hardback may now be preordered from them.

On the home front, this year we have had more sparrows (both hedge and house) born here than before despite the fact that they are in decline through most of the UK. This is partly due to the fact that we offer a very good environment for them and that we provide them with some food.

The other morning, but with some difficulty as my eyes are still not working very well, I managed to take this picture of a spider's web covered in dew as the early morning sun rose above the hedge.
Hope you like this new format.