On All Saints' Day

Well, the signings are over for another twelve months and so this is the time when Marcia tries to reconnect with the characters in the book she is writing. They disappear when the real world intrudes – which is probably very sensible of them. The poor things have enough problems of their own without adding to them with the dramas we watch unfolding on our television screens or read about in our newspapers.

Marcia at the last signing in Waterstones, Exeter
with one of her loyal readers, Claire Rudkin.

This year, however, it is not quite as simple as that. Next Wednesday evening (at 7.30 if it matters) Marcia will be giving a talk in Brendon Books of Taunton. The bookshop organises The Taunton Literary Festival: click here if you want to learn more. Anyway, that will mean another interruption in this business of connecting with characters but that is all part and parcel of a novelist’s life.

It does mean, of course, that we have done almost nothing since the last signing as Marcia reads herself back into the book. So, this week I will say something about what I have been up to – or more accurately what I have not been up to.

In London there is a news agency that sells video clips to news outlets around the world. These are shot by all sorts of freelance people of which I am one. You may have heard that a very severe storm was to cross the UK last week. These are unusual: most storms start way out in the Atlantic if not close to North America, wind themselves up over the ocean and hit us long after they have begun to calm down. This one, however, was predicted to start quite close to the UK and we were all prepared for winds in excess of 100 miles per hour and lots of rain. Newsflare contacted me and asked me to provide bvideo of this storm.

It may have been calmer than I expected but Dartmouth
looked pretty gloomy when I went down there.

This would not have been a problem but for one small thing: in this area it never really happened. There were two reasons, as far as I can make out. The first was that the storm started even closer to the UK than was forecast and not built up to be much of a problem until it was well to the east of South Devon (actually it was not until it hit Denmark that the wind speeds peaked). The second was that the effect down here seemed to be very local: worse on the north coast than the south. Anyway, the upshot was that there was nothing worth filming so I didn’t.

What was really irritating was that there was a tree down on the railway line a few miles away and well within my patch. This happened in the early hours of the morning and a train (passenger but empty) did run into it but there was no damage and I didn’t hear about this until everything had been cleared up so there was nothing for me to see.

It’s a bit like that when you want pictures of birds and so on. There they are, sitting comfortably, until you have the camera in hand and switched on. Some sixth sense tells them that their privacy is about to be invaded and they are away before you have time to hit the shutter. Plants are so much easier.

Ready to be picked: the crab apples.

Which leads me on to say that the crab apples have been picked by a good friend who will be turning them into crab apple jelly and, I have no doubt, letting us have a couple of jars in due course.

This week we have four Labrador dogs instead of one. Why not?

The top two photographs come from a reader in Canada. Here is the story. 

"The attached of Kyle (l) and Walker (r) is for your Dog(s) of the Week blog dog. 

Sadly, both have gone now and Wylie is now on scene.  Wylie's name comes from a combination of what else.....Kyle and Walker. He is now 9 1/2 months old and is recovering from surgery from elbow dysplasia.  (not sure of the spelling on that).  He is doing well but the prescribed 6 weeks of "bed rest" is nigh impossible.  We (he lives and is officially owned by my daughter and her husband) are trying though.

By the way, Walker was a working guide dog for Canadian Guide Dogs for the Blind.  He guided in BC for almost 10 years.  Since we had puppy walked him he came back to us to enjoy his retirement.  Kyle was also a Canadian Guide Dog and we puppy walked him too.  Alas, he showed signs of knee dysplasia and he too was operated on.  He was a wonderful pet for 10 years but was never accepted into the guide dog programme due to his occasional lameness.

And the 3rd pic (I hope 3 photos is not too many) is of our friend's miniature poodle named Spike."

Where is that picture of Spike? In the folder for next week. Meanwhile, the bottom photograph is of a dog that belongs to an old friend of ours (old as in years of friendship, you understand, not as in age) called Teazel and it is taken in one of the fields near here with Ugborough Beacon on the southern slopes of Dartmoor in the distance.

Here we go again!

“She has this small girl with her but it’s not her daughter. The mother is visiting someone in Australia – or New Zealand – or somewhere. Now all we have to find out is who this is, who is the daughter, where are they and what do they have to do with the story.” That isn't a quote but boils down what Marcia has been saying for the last few days into one simple sentence.

Simple? Well, not really. Still, that should be pretty easy – given the odd miracle or two – so why are we waiting? Well, we aren't  We are getting on with it. Between us we have driven about three hundred miles this week in trying to find the answer. Not that we've found it. All we know now is that there are a few places where they aren't and a few where the definitely are not. There is a subtle difference: in the first case it means that there is no sign that they are there whilst the latter means that this is so wrong that there would be no point in even thinking about it.

It is rather like when we were looking for a river. Not any old river but one particular river. If you remember we started looking in Cornwall and some weeks and many miles later found it by accident when we were up on Exmoor. Hey ho.

To be fair, searching around looking for Marcia’s people has taken me to places that I would otherwise not know exist. It has made me realise just what a wonderfully rich part of the world the south west of England is. Having spent a part of my life as a travelling trouble-shooter I have made brief trips to may countries and they all have some spectacular scenery and fascinating wild life. Mind you, I seemed to spend more time in their industrial estates than I did in their countryside but even so I took whatever opportunities I could to have a good look around. 

There are many I would have loved to explore more fully but it seems to me that there are two sorts of explorers in this world (and most people are neither). There are the ones that want to visit as many places as they can and then there are the ones that want to know one area as intimately as they can. I belong to the second group and every time we go off I will see something new, something I have never noticed before. Also, as the seasons revolve I shall know where to look for old friends – early snowdrops, shy violets, the first bluebells and so on right through the year – and in some ways this is just as important as finding the new.

Gorse, bell heather and ling (the paler of the heaths).

There is the whiff of autumn in the air. The wonderful lanes of spring have long since gone although there are a few places where there are good shows of wild flowers. Not entirely sure that I fully know why. On the open moors, the bell heather (Erica cinerea) is nearly over – what there is tends to be in the low clumps of gorse which is in flower at the same time – but the ling (Calluna vulgaris) lingers (and, before you ask, that is not why it has that name). It is also known as Common Heather or just Heather and is far paler than the bell heather but keeps going longer into the autumn.

' ...wild flowers behaving badly ...'

That’s about it for colour at the moment: the odd patch of wild flowers behaving badly and the gorse with the attendant heathers. Oh, and the rowan or mountain ash, which Marcia loves, is now covered in berries. 

Beech trees in the Exe valley in autumn

Meanwhile we have the proper autumn colours to look forward to. Nothing as spectacular as they see in Canada, of course, but there is nothing lovelier than the Exe valley when the beech trees prepare for winter.

Thanks to my brother-in-law, the puzzle of the moth has been solved. The problem was, of course, that we were looking at the underside so that the wonderful orange and red colours that adorn this animal were hidden. Anyway, all is revealed and what we were looking at was a Jersey Tiger Moth (Euplagia quadripunctaria). My thanks to the Natural History Museum for the following image.

Beau - well it had to be, didn't it?

Signings as of today (all signings last 1 hour):

Friday, October 11: Totnes Bookshop 2 pm

Saturday, October 12: The Harbour Bookshop, Kingsbridge 11 am

Friday, October 18: Bookstop, Tavistock 10.30 am

Saturday, October 19: The Torbay Bookshop, Paignton 10.30 am

Tuesday, October 22: Bookshelf, Saltash

Saturday, October 26: Waterstone’s, Plymouth 11 am

Saturday, October 26: Waterstone’s,, Roman Gate, Exeter 2 pm

To be scheduled: Waterstone’s. Truro and The Bookshop, Liskeard.

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I rarely suggest that Marcia's readers would be at all interested in my other blogs but the one I posted today - Friday 13th - may be an exception. If you want to see what I am talking about, please CLICK HERE. This post is called 'Three Crows'.