Virginia Crow's Blog: Crowvus Book Blog, page 32

Day Twenty-Three: Christmas Eve Eve

Picture One: We made a start on cleaning the windows. One of those jobs which we've been meaning to do all year, but the result was a very clear view of the bird feeding station!
Picture Two: Everyone queueing up for a Click and Collect at Tesco!
Picture Three: Playing Santa and going dropping off presents.
Picture Four: But we only needed a little bag instead of a sack!
Picture Five: A flying sleigh would have been useful to avoid these potholes though! 
Picture Six: Ginny with a very moody sky. 
Picture Seven: An even moodier sky as we headed towards Wick harbour.
Picture Eight: Thurso Christmas lights are beautiful! 
Picture Nine: I know you can't see it (!) but I promise there was a deer in this field just across from our house!
Picture Ten: The hall looks quite different when the door is open, though no less Christmassy!
Picture Eleven: We're no longer looking through a layer of green!
Picture Twelve: A perfect cross on the door. A bit weird as none of us made it!
Picture Thirteen: From this...
Picture Fourteen: ...To this!
(Moving) Picture Fifteen: Off they go to Bethlehem!
Picture Sixteen: It may look like an Ent, but it is in fact a nearly finished Advent Candle.
Picture Seventeen: Only 24 left to go...
Picture Eighteen: ...Until we reach the baby in the manger.
Picture Nineteen: The ham (cured by Clemency) for Christmas Breakfast is now boiled ready.
Picture Twenty: And the biscuits we baked a couple of days ago are already going down!
Picture Twenty-One: The Snowman is ready for its first musical outing in Stempster!
Picture Twenty-Two: We've had almost the entire Christmas story on the Advent Calendar.
Picture Twenty-Three: But this is the one thing which never tires!

#HistFicThursdays - Merry, Fotherby? - Excerpts

Today I just want to take the opportunity to wish you and your family and friends a very merry Christmas!
I love writing Christmas from the past. There is something simultaneously simplistic and exuberant about earlier Christmases, and it is a great opportunity to look into the emotive side of personal history. You can tell a lot about an historical person by looking at how they regarded Christmas.


So here is a couple of snippets from Beneath Black Clouds and White which show two very different Christmases: https://www.stompermcewan.com/beneath-black-clouds-and-white-christmasAnd, if it catches your eye, the eBook is currently free on Smashwords.
Have a Very Merry Christmas, Historical Fiction Fans!

Day Twenty-Two: A Full Day with Many Adventures

Picture One: Orlando was pretending to scuba dive with his stick today! 
Picture Two: Orlando and Ginny on the walk - with our house too!
Picture Three: Ginny paused to sing While Shepherds Watched to the sheep.
Picture Four: They were very interested!
Picture Five: Orlando was very excited to find his toy basket!
Picture Six: Driving through Thurso as it was getting dark was very Christmassy!
Picture Seven: Railway Stations are always very excitig at this time of year - lots of people coming home for Christmas!
Picture Eight: The long road home!
Picture Nine: Heading out in the dark to fetch fish and chips!
Picture Ten: A zoomed in (so fuzzy!) view of a beautiful house!
Picture Eleven: The first Irish Coffee of the year! Mmmm....
Picture Twelve: Puppy cuddles!
Picture Thirteen: The Fimo crib made its way upstairs!
Picture Fourteen: A pile of presents, ready for the big day.
Picture Fifteen: The kitchen fireplace all bedecked.
Picture Sixteen: The greenery is still hanging on, turning the house into a castle!
Picture Seventeen: Still enjoying the reflections in the conservatory...
Picture Eighteen: ...even found some in the ceiling, like a newly discovered constellation...
Picture Nineteen: ...But it doesn't compare to the real thing!
Picture Twenty: The kitchen door looking very exciting and inviting!
Picture Twenty-One: 🎶Just before the dawn, at the paling of the sky 🎶
Picture Twenty-Two: The welcoming decorations in the hall.

Day Twenty One: A Day in the Life of Orlando

Picture One: A much less scary version of...
Picture Two: ... The Tinderbox Dog
Picture Three: Orlando letting us know he is ready for his walk
Picture Four: A candle in the hearth rather than a fire, making almost as much light.
Picture Five: Rosy wind turbines at sunrise.
Picture Six: And rosy trees, too!
Picture Seven: Looking in the opposite direction, at the actual sunrise.
Picture Eight: It took the sun the best part of the walk to get over the horizon.
Picture Nine: The Christmas Cake is now almond pasted... just the icing to go!
Picture Ten: Orlando keeping his toes warm under the rug.
Picture Eleven: The view of the Solstice.
Picture Twelve: The Christmas Tree remaining as radiant as when it was put up ten days ago.
Picture Thirteen: The waning moon looking magical from the kitchen door.
Picture Fourteen: There are no words!
Picture Fifteen: Running alongside the train en route to Wick this morning.
Picture Sixteen: Graffiti on the calendar to give it a more festive feel!
Picture Seventeen: One paw emerged, the other is still buried.
Picture Eighteen: Almost all the doors on the Advent Calendar have now been opened.
Picture Nineteen: Orlando now asleep in a more usual Sprocker-Sprawl!
Picture Twenty: The fire's in the grate now, and the pinecones and pomanders are warming themselves.
Picture Twenty-One: The Christmas Radio Times - the only one of the year we ever buy - and today we completed the cryptic crossword. Feeling rather accomplished!

Day Twenty: Biscuits!

Picture One: I hope I never stop feeling lucky when I get this sneaky peek of our home!
Picture Two: Selfie time! And Orlando just flopped into a roll while it was being taken.
Picture Three: Now he's looking a bit sheepish! 
Picture Four: Rusty the Singing Spaniel was very enthusiastic and actually fell off the arm of the chair!
Picture Five: These look insanely Christmassy!
Picture Six: Mum might have a bit of a surprise when she sees this... her masher had to go to Masher Heaven!
Picture Seven: Treacle (and golden syrup!) Biscuits!
Picture Eight: They look slightly more appetising on this photo! 
Picture Nine: And here is the final lot! 
Picture Ten: These beautiful lanterns have made the transition seamlessly from Wick Kitchen to Stempster Kitchen.
Picture Eleven: A little collection of Christmassy things which make us think of our Croy family. Lydia bought us these little dishes, and the tree was bought for Auri's first Christmas. 
Picture Twelve: A gift from a friend, sharing her grandchild's wonder at the Christmas tree.
Picture Thirteen: There are lots of cribs in our house, and this one is on the range.
Picture Fourteen: The arrival of the Christmas kitchen linen is always very exciting, although this cute pan holder is more decorative than practical these days!
Picture Fifteen: The advent candles are looking very promising now!
Picture Sixteen: The photographer snapped on this one! 
Picture Seventeen: Catching up with The Wheel of Time.Dad's not too fussed, but we're enjoying it!
Picture Eighteen: Orlando says his advent calendar treat was very yummy!
Picture Nineteen: But he did have to work for it!
Picture Twenty: Our little castle - the perfect place to head home to!

Day Nineteen: Christmas Cards and an Eventful Walk

Picture One: A rather watery shot of the moon...
Picture Two: ...Getting a little bit clearer(more coming soon!)
Picture Three: Making little notelets. A round robin unlike any other!
Picture Four: A forest of Christmas trees as the cards for music pupils.
Picture Five: And an army of musical snowmen!
Picture Six: This was at the start of card-writing.It quickly stopped being this neat!
Picture Seven: The fire in the Drawing Room, pristine but decked.
Picture Eight: And this is what the moon looked like without the window between!
Picture Nine: A luxurious bath - the deserved weekend treat for all teachers!
Picture Ten: Rolling hills and fields as seen through the bathroom window.
Picture Eleven: Orlando found a box... Orlando sat in the box.

Picture Twelve: No, we hadn't fallen out.I was planning the walk, but Orlando never plans anything!
Picture Thirteen: A very Caithnessian landscape.Moors and turbines!💚
Picture Fourteen: The first time Judith had visited T8.We bag wind turbines like others bag Munros!
Picture Fifteen: And then Orlando flushed a hare and we covered the distance from one turbine to the next in almost record time!
Picture Sixteen: Surveying my  kingdom  neighbourhood.
Picture Seventeen: Orlando loves the Advent Calendar.As soon as you mention it, he emerges from his basket!
Picture Eighteen: And who could deny this little chap anything?! Picture Nineteen: Judith already well on her way with the next colouring project!

Day Eighteen: One week to go!

Picture One: We should have been with this little family this weekend, but Covid had other plans!At least we got to Skype with them!
Picture Two: A visit to the Post Office - it's always more exciting at Christmas!
Picture Three: The Music Monster concert has moved online because of Covid, too!Here is Orlando watching said Music Monster uploading all the videos.
Picture Four: And here he is waiting for a piece of chicken.Now, be honest, have you ever seen anything more gorgeous?!
Picture Five: Not waiting so patiently now!
Picture Six: The lights on the landing - yes everywhere is decorated!
Picture Seven: Eeeek! Presents are being wrapped which can only mean it is VERY nearly Christmas!
Picture Eight: Santas in tinsel - more upstairs decorations!
Picture Nine: The view of the hall coming downstairs. The greenery is still stunning!
Picture Ten: Little lambs. Very fitting next to the James Rebanks calendar.
Picture Eleven: These old-fashioned style Christmas decorations are so beautiful and hypnotic to look at.
Picture Twelve: The green against the wood looks very olde worlde!
Picture Thirteen: With the last posting day coming up, it's time to set-to on the Christmas cards!
Picture Fourteen: We never get tired of looking at this tree, so we assume you don't either!Every shot looks a little bit different.
Picture Fifteen: Even the 'cello has decked itself for Christmas.(Okay, we decked it!)
Picture Sixteen: In amongst the ordinary decorations, the pipe-cleaner Santa and the crocheted Christmas tree are bringing Christmas to this corner of the room!
Picture Seventeen: The little handmade nativity set and the bowl of baubles are at the other side of the unit.
Picture Eighteen: Judith's Christmas colouring book comes out each year while Mum reads Children of Green Knowe. This one was started last year, but finished today.

Day Seventeen: The (Table) Football Season Begins

Picture One: A long commute to work is always made better by a stunning sunrise!
Picture Two: We're keeping on with the conservatory! 
Picture Three: Although I'm not sure that Ginny looks very impressed! 
Picture Four: We found a rag rug, which Orlando immediately adopted! 
Picture Five: Today's sunset
Picture Six: Still today's sunset, believe it or not!
Picture Seven: The setting sun illuminating the hare on the Christmas card.
Picture Eight: The moon is really incredible at the moment! 
Picture Nine: The last time there was light in the south-east! (Sunrise)
Picture Ten: The first table football game of the year (Judith won)
Picture Eleven: Smoke being squashed down by the high pressuremade a good impression of clouds this afternoon!
Picture Twelve: All stamps are removed and given to the stamp squirrel who stashes them in a secretive place. Quite a few this year have this extra QR code attached.
Picture Thirteen: Almost all the decorations are now up and in place.
Picture Fourteen: The conservatory is now almost entirely cleared, making the Christmas Tree look even bigger!
Picture Fifteen: and you can see the full length of its reflections...
Picture Sixteen: ...and even see it clearly through the internal window!
Picture Seventeen: Now to be outdone, the other Christmas Tree is simply awesome!

Day Sixteen: Mostly Sunsets - but why not, when they're so beautiful?!

Picture One: Rice Spies! We definitely know how to have fun at breakfast!
Picture Two: This absolute BEAST must have come off a wind turbine. We called the company and they immediately sent people out. 
Picture Three: But Ginny is still looking a little bit scared at the thought of walking underneath it!
Picture Four: A lovely, warming fire. And see if you can spot the pear...!
Picture Five: An impromptu selfie!
Picture Six: I wonder what I would have thought a year ago if you told me I'd be looking through our very own larder...
Picture Seven: This has been missing in action - but now found! Which is good, because it would have been sad if it wasn't a part of our Christmas.
Picture Eight: The start of a beautiful sunset... blue-grey with the light shining underneath,
Picture Nine: Then came the pinks and yellows, with the trees sillhouetted in front of them.
Picture Ten: (I couldn't resit the same time from a different angle!)
Picture Twelve: We noticed this wind turbine seemed to have grown some extra sails!
Picture Thirteen: Finally, Venus came out to play!
Picture Fourteen: One of our new 2021 baubles - and it's a very special one! This beautiful building became our home this summer!
Picture Fifteen: A little white flower we found in the conservatory!
Picture Sixteen: And now, Orlando would like you to know that he has had a very busy day and he is going to go to sleep!

#HistFicThursdays - History Close to Home

One of the most incredible things about history is that, the older it gets, the more it resonates. It doesn't shrivel up like an old apple, or drop limbs and branches like an ancient tree, it just gets bigger. With every second which passes and every century which grows, history only piles up. Of course, there are aspects which fade, artefacts which succumb to erosion, but that's the archaeology not the history.

I don't remember exactly what got me into writing historical fiction, but I do know I have always loved that my family are hoarders of antiquities. Ranging from the colossal millennia-old ammonite fossil my dad saved from the children who were chipping it to pieces, to the papers which define my own thirty-six year history, we have kept so much. It has it's downside - moving house this year has been a long, drawn-out process of about five times as many trips as a normal family move - but the richness it affords is second to none.

But you don't have to come from a squirrelling family to find history for inspiration. Within a mile of where you live, something incredible happened. And I can say that with certainty. It's not always discovered yet, like in the recent example from Cambridgeshire when they discovered evidence of crucifixion whilst readying the ground for building houses, and it's not always going to hit the headlines. But it's always there and, what sets historical fiction writers aside from most of the population, is that we feel this history resonating through the ground and the air, even if we don't know why.

Here are three examples of what I mean from our own house here in the middle of nowhere...

Visually obvious, although largely unexplored in the past sixty years, is the broch at the bottom of the garden. Iron Age history is not really my thing - I know this is shocking for someone who lives in Caithness! - but there is something inexplicably exciting about knowing this area has been inhabited for so long. I don't know nearly enough to even begin writing a book on this era, but it did inspire a partially autobiographic little ghost story which I'll share at the bottom of this post. It's taught me that writing about history is almost as enticing as writing set in history... Almost!

When we bought the house, halfway through the legal proceedings, the owner decided to announce that we were buying the house "as is". This has meant several months of sorting through some sentimental and some inane objects which belong entirely to someone else's personal history. Among these were a pair of their daughter's first shoes which we couldn't bear to throw out, and a whole array of school certificates and artwork which have now all gone tip-wards. But, we haven't just inherited the belongings of the previous inhabitants, we've also inherited earlier bits and bobs. There was quite a shock waiting in the garage when my sister came face-to-face with an Edwardian lady, and the mystery of the three photographs began. In Caithness, we're lucky to have the incredible social archive of The Johnston Collection, and we have been trawling through them to try and find a likely match. We're about a third of the way through!
But there is a huge range of time between the Iron Age and the Edwardian period, and this little corner has had houses, crofts or farms on it every step of the way. Whilst digging what is soon to become the shrubbery at the side of the house, my sister (another one!) unearthed a horseshoe. Instantly it put me in mind of a quote from Children of Green Knowe, a much-loved book in this family, about Tolly's hunt for Feste's shoe:"Is there among horse-shoes one that stands out for its delicate curve, suggesting the perfect hoof, the sure and dancing step?"
The presentation of the lawn would suggest the house once had a large circular drive, and this side of the house could easily have been the route to the stables. Or perhaps it was buried there deliberately. Either way, why was it left?

It doesn't matter where you live, history is surrounding you. There are a hundred stories of a thousand lives right there on your doorstep. Within a mile of where you lived, something incredible happened...

Go find it!

The Hunter’s Moon

After more than a decade in town, when the perfect house came up in the country, everything was done to secure a move as quickly as possible. It was an old house and, if it had to weather another winter uninhabited, it would fall into disrepair. It wasn’t only the house which was old. The area had been inhabited for thousands of years, as the broch at the bottom of the garden proved and the cairns on the next hilltop confirmed.

On getting the house, the first thing we spent money on were three trailcams and, after snapping countless deer, felines, and rodents, we managed to catch a pine marten prowling. It was my self-appointed job to check the videos and I got exceptionally good at watching the tall grasses being blown in our Caithnessian gales. If I began to go mad as I fast-forwarded through the three-hundred files, scanning them for life, I reminded myself of discovering the marten and how worthwhile each video might turn out to be. We had caught the shadowy creature in the area we called “The Wild Wood”, and I now paid particular attention to this camera.

Last month, on a windy October Sunday, I made another discovery.

As the trees began shedding their leafy raiment, the sun’s light became dappled and created halos of iridescent light on the camera lens. The branches which were still clad caused these circlets to strobe in and out of existence, while the wind continued to tear their clothing free, causing a hundred leaves to create a hundred videos. I flicked through these, skimming the surface of the woodland world as it passed before me at twenty times its usual speed.

I checked the time stamp: 13:35:24. I’d almost reached the time I changed the camera card, and we rarely caught things during the day. Still, being stubborn and meticulous, I couldn’t make myself delete these files without scanning them. I whizzed through the videos, half-blinding myself with their strobing.

And there I was.

I sighed despondently. Another card with nothing but waving grass and an over-inquisitive farm cat.

Something at the back of my mind was toying with me, like a unique memory to which only I was party. My finger hovered over the “confirm” button to delete all the files. I drew it back. Something was not right. Not wrong, either, just missed. I opened the final file on the card and realised this wasn’t the video I just watched. That was what had been peculiar about the earlier one. The person had walked up from the dense part of the wood, from the direction of the broch, the opposite direction from where I’d arrive.

I scrolled through the videos and found the one with this intruder. Sure enough, the time stamp was too early for me, but only by about three minutes. It’s not difficult to get into our wood, the boundary is precarious flagstones topped with a couple of strands of barbed wire. If anyone wanted to climb over, they easily could. I watched as this figure, wearing the dappled light of the sparse trees, walked onward until, as the wind caught the trees, another rainbow of light shot out from the sun. By the time the camera had refocused, they were gone.

Dragging the slider back, I watched as the person reappeared, wondering at a new concern I felt but didn’t recognise. They were short and stocky and, by virtue of the lumbering gait, I decided it was a man. Beyond that, it was almost impossible to describe him. He clearly thought better of his act and had turned around while the sun blinded the camera. There was no way he could have run past without casting a shadow.

I kept this to myself. There was no point in alarming the others when it might be nothing. But, over the next couple of weeks, he kept reappearing. It was always at the same time of day and the sun continued to swallow him. On dull days, which were growing more frequent, he was vague and little more than a silhouette against the increasingly bare trees. This made it easier to discern his shape, though not his features, and I noticed with interest that he seemed to be carrying various poles strapped at his waist or back. He also leaned on a walking stick with a peculiarly shaped top like an arrow. But the camera never picked him up any closer than the tangled trees.

Two weeks ago, curiosity got the better of me. Someone had been letting themselves into our garden for no apparent reason and, not being a frightened person, I was more affronted than scared.

It was another sunny October day and I stood beside the camera. From here, I knew exactly where to look. I continued to glance down at my watch, waiting for that moment when, regular as clockwork, he would enter our garden.

Having said I wasn’t frightened, I should qualify that I wasn’t frightened of people. So, when I saw something from the corner of my eyes, like a shift in the landscape which never took shape, I began to feel unsettled. But terror didn’t strike me until this vague blur solidified and lunged itself towards me. I couldn’t tell what it was, except that it was full of fur and teeth. It morphed seamlessly through the balustrade of the summer house where I was standing before something struck it and it fell, disappearing entirely.

I jumped as the alarm I’d set myself began beeping at my wrist. Turning towards where the man would appear, I heard cheering. The intruder was there for only a moment, accepting the audible but invisible homage, before the sun broke the trees. I sheltered my eyes and, when I lowered my hand, he was gone.

Shaken, I returned to the house, pausing to admire the full moon which was barely visible as it competed against the sun’s radiance. The Hunter’s Moon.