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You seem to have set a fire with your idea, Raine: even I’m having a go. Yet more apologies: 408 words.
The Last House
There’s freedom and there’s freedom. Sleeping rough and scavenging for food is freedom, but not the sort that appeals to me. And that’s exactly what I’ll be doing tonight if something doesn’t turn up. Another night’s B&B will just about clean me out.
And there’s precious little sign of anything turning up here. Mountains and moorland and big sky might be just what you need if you’re looking for peace and solitude and communion with the beauties of nature. If you’re on the road, homeless and looking for work, they’re no use to you at all.
How much more of this is there? I haven’t had a lift for hours, and I can feel every yard of the miles I’ve walked in my blistered feet, my sore shoulders, my aching back, and most of all in that bloody right leg. It’s hotter than it has any right to be this high up, the bottle of water I bought in Brecon this morning is a distant memory, and my rucksack’s getting heavier by the minute.
SAS men have died in these mountains. And I’ve seen lanes in Surrey that carried more traffic than this supposed main road.
They must have been having a laugh when they sent me along here. Pub along the Swansea road, they said. Desperate they are, they said. You might have a better chance there.
So where is it? There’s not a house in sight, or a barn, or any trace of civilisation at all. Not even a tree. Just rough yellowed grass and shaggy heather. Not a sound, except the wind in the grass and the occasional distant bleating of a sheep. I could be the last man left on Earth.
Or do I hear something coming up behind?
Yes, I do. Better stick out my thumb. Go through the motions.
His brake lights have come on. His hazards are flashing. Glory be, he’s stopping.
It’s a white pick-up, streaked with rust and spattered with mud. Not quite my idea of luxury transport, but I’m hardly about to get picky.
The passenger’s door is already open when I arrive alongside.
‘Thanks, mate,’ I say, dumping my rucksack on the floor and settling myself into the seat.
My saviour has wiry grey hair and a cheerful, weather-beaten face. A sheep farmer? There doesn’t seem to be much else to do around here. ‘I’m only going to Ystrad, mind,’ he says. ‘You okay with that?’
Interesting point there, Raine, about reinforcing society’s assumptions because, obviously, Rubenhold was trying to do exactly the opposite. Bit of a misfire, that.
Agreed, John, that it’s an appalling attitude. The book sets out to do a job that was well worth doing. I just wish she’d done it in a less fanatical and dishonest way.
I did see the programme, Squidge, and yes, it was very interesting. I had heard of this man, Aaron Kosminski, before – he is also the suspect named in the recent DNA testing controversy – and though many people are not convinced, I am at least convinced that the Ripper (whoever he was) was an ordinary, local man, a face in the crowd with intimate local knowledge and a bolt-hole close at hand.
What I found particularly interesting was that up to about fifty years ago it was generally believed that the Ripper had six victims, the extra one being – you guessed it – Martha Tabram, the one reinstated in the programme.
I don’t know if you noticed, but the ex-copper in the programme has the same (very rare) surname as me – with good reason, for he is my second cousin (our grandfathers were brothers). I was rather amused by the spin they put on introducing him. I don’t wish to diss my relative, but if he is an expert on murder cases he’s a self-made one, not a pro. What they somehow failed to mention is that he left the force many years ago with the rank of Detective Constable, or that his career was mainly in undercover infiltration of gangs. That was very dangerous work indeed, and I salute his courage, but it didn’t give him professional experience in murder investigations.
As for ‘The Five,’ it was unfortunate for Hallie Rubenhold that the previous non-fiction book I’d read was Emma Darwin’s recent one. One thing that came over strongly from that was Emma’s scrupulousness about not bending history too much in the writing of historical fiction. The contrast is not flattering to Ms Rubenhold.
Toutes Directions, yes yes, Autres Routes, yes yes yes, but where is the bloody road to [insert town as appropriate]?…
None of the holidays we used to have in France (we haven’t been there since we’ve acquired a sat-nav) used to be quite complete without getting comprehensively lost at least once.
You have my sympathy on two counts, Squidge. Fifteen or so years on, I still shudder at the memory of my only encounter with the Boulevard Périphérique in Paris – which will remain my only encounter if I have anything to do with it. And losing the GPS signal just when you need it: I’ve been there too, more than once. So frustrating.
Glad the day turned out well in the end.
They’re favourites of mine. And they were exceedingly good engines too. A design that stays in front-line express service for forty years is not to be sneezed at.
I own the current iteration of the Hornby Castle. A lovely model to look at, but my example is an erratic runner, so it sits on my desk as an ornament.
I told you I was a nerd…
When they put the Great Western locomotive Caerphilly Castle in the Science Museum my father said, ‘The father of one of classmates at school used to drive that engine.’
In a word, Athers, no. Just a life-long interest in railways, which is a spin-off from a passion for steam engines that started before I can even remember. I’m a nerd, basically. Though not an anorak: I was never a trainspotter, and collecting numbers seems a pointless exercise to me. Though if you were to ask me about the technical workings of a steam locomotive I could bore you for as long as you could stand it.
The nearest thing to a connection is that my father grew up near the main Great Western engine shed (Canton) in Cardiff, and used to watch the trains go by when he was a boy. My autistic son is also very heavily into railways, though not technically like me. I think he may carry a map of the entire British railway network in his head. Maybe it’s in the blood…
No, I hadn’t heard of this one, but with two (as it turns out) of the four fatalities being railwaymen it probably wouldn’t have made a big splash except in the local press. Your father’s reaction, though: kids, eh?
Yes, I’m sure that the signalmen must have thought their systems were foolproof. As for their motivation, it seems to have been professional pride more than anything else. It was a matter of pride not to fall down on the job, to keep the traffic moving if at all possible. And though no one would have blamed them if that arriving train had been held up briefly at a signal while the other train departed, they would have had to record the delay in a book, and they wanted to keep a clean sheet.
The only recommendation the enquiry made was to install a track circuit between Signal 171 and Number 95 Points to electronically detect the presence of a train. Interlocked with the points and signals, it would prevent those points being moved when a train was anywhere on that stretch of track. I haven’t been able to find out if that was ever done.
Fascinating but daunting. So glad for you that it turned out so well, but anyone reading this who believes they’ll have it made once they’ve got an agent is really going to have their eyes opened. But we need to know what we’re up against, so thanks for posting this. And, again, congratulations.
Well, to be honest I was already pretty leery of small indies after various horror stories I’ve heard. Also the amount of work involved puts me off. If I’m going to try at all it’ll be by the agent route.
Nonfic could work for me, as I am coming to the sad conclusion that I am better at telling an existing story than at making one up. As for your specific suggestion, although I flatter myself I know my subject and would love to do it, that’s been done before, more than once. I’d say the market is saturated, so if I’m going to write about railway accidents at all I’d have to think up another approach.
The usual reason given is for ease of maintenance in WWII. The streamlined casings were a diktat from the LMS publicity department (the LNER’s got them so we must have them too), and the Chief Mechanical Engineer referred to the batch of five un-streamlined ones he insisted on building ‘for comparison’ as ‘proper’ones.
Well, to be fair, accidents through excessive speed aren’t all caused by the heat of competition. One curve at Morpeth was the scene of three (count them) derailments within thirty years, all in the BR period: 1969, 1884 and 1994. Fortunately only the first caused any fatalities, six of them. And at Eltham Well Hall in 1972 the driver was drunk.
On the other hand, on one occasion in 1937 the London Midland and Scottish Railway, inheritors of the West Coast main line, gave official sanction to an episode of (as the railway writer W A Tuplin put it) ‘barely credible recklessness.’ And the motive was, yes, prestige and publicity.
On the other side of the country the London and North Eastern Railway had introduced streamlined expresses and there had been several record-breaking runs, which its publicity department had not been slow to exploit. So when the LMS introduced its own streamliner it used the pre-service press demonstration run as an excuse for an attempt to beat the LNER’s maximum speed record. The attempt was made on a downhill stretch just south of Crewe, where the train was, incredibly, scheduled to enter the station via a series of points and crossovers limited to 20mph.
What were they thinking? They were thinking about getting one-up on the LNER. They were not thinking about how long it might take to slow down from a speed never reached in normal service.
114mph had been reached when, less than two miles from Crewe, the brakes were slammed hard on, and the train hurtled down the bank towards the station with flames and smoke coming off the brake blocks. It was still doing over 50mph when it hit the first crossover. Passengers were thrown about and there was a fusillade of breaking crockery from the dining car, but the train stayed on the rails and drew to a halt, more or less safely, in the station. No one was seriously hurt, but it was close, much too close, to being another Salisbury.
I think it’s just human nature. Before we moved MrsB was a Beaver Scout Leader for twenty years, and over that time I lost count of the number of Beaver/ Cub/ Scout leaders I heard carrying on about what horrors their charges were, what a hard time it all was, and generally giving the impression that they were being put upon and they would rather be doing almost anything else. There was usually an element of humour in it, but all the same Scouting is a voluntary activity…
Yes, if you tell someone that you play, say, the guitar, they don’t normally up and ask you if you’ve got a recording contract, do they? Though I don’t think I’ve told anybody outside my immediate circle of close friends and family that I write.
Apart from you lot, obviously.
Or to put it another, slightly less discouraging way, if you’re writing fiction that’s coming from inside your head, right? So anything outside that is Real Life.
Well done indeed, Daeds. Authoritative, erudite and lucid. Once again you display that knack you have of making technical things clear to the layman.
Before I start writing (these days, anyway) I need to know the beginning (obviously) and some idea of the ending, but not necessarily everything that happens in between. Nothing is set in stone, though, and either may change before I’ve finished, depending on what happens along the way.
The two novels I’m prepared to own up to came about in quite different ways. The first (the one you’ve just read, Jane) started with the setting, inspired by a farmhouse I’d seen not far from where I live. It wasn’t derelict, but it was very isolated, and it started me wondering what it would be like to live in such a place, far from help, if things turned toxic. Then I thought of making it a ghost story.
The other came about in a much murkier and more indirect way. Short of inspiration for a follow-up, I dusted off an idea that had been knocking around for many many years. By the time I’d ‘finished’ it just about everything except the basic premise of the MC’s initial situation and a couple of characters’ names had changed. Including the genre.
I feel much the same way, Squidge. I never have been able to get on with charts, graphs, grids or any other kind of science-ish analysis. I’m not knocking it for those who find it useful, but my eyes start to glaze over when faced with such stuff, and it seems to place a barrier between me and my creativity (if any). I suppose I might conceivably be able to apply such analysis after drafting and see if what I’ve written measures up.
Maybe that’s why none of my submissions have got anywhere.
On the other hand (coughs modestly), I’ve been told by a professional editor that I have ‘an innate sense of structure and continuity.’
SloMo – definitely sounds like my kind of thing. I’d be up for it. Might encourage me to get a bit more editing done on the notorious ghost story.
Yes, there’s something to be said for leaving all the polishing until the editing, and I’m sure it works for some, but not for me. If something I’ve written doesn’t satisfy me, it niggles at me until I’ve put it right.
Can’t say I’ve ever felt tempted. I find rigid targets counter-productive, and I fear that if I were concerning myself with the number of my words rather than the quality I’d churn out crap. And I can’t bear to write crap, even temporarily. Quality over quantity for me, any day. Yes, I’m slow, but I usually get there in the end.
