Lwow Pierogi for Christmas Eve

Every year, at this time, we spend at least half a day making the Lwow pierogi that my father loved. I can't believe that we used to make them on Christmas Eve itself, and then invite friends and neighbours in at 5 o'clock for mulled wine and pierogi. It was a fairly huge undertaking, and I don't know why we weren't more frazzled, especially when we went out to the midnight service in the local kirk afterwards. But perhaps we were just younger and more energetic. 

Now, even in a normal year, we make them in advance and freeze them. In yet another wretched Covid year, we're still making them and freezing them so that we and a few friends can eat them in stages. Not as difficult as last year though, when we sat in the garden in the freezing cold, wrapped up in coats and blankets, to drink wine with our next door neighbours, with whom we were in a 'bubble'. 

My mum and dad used to make these pierogi, and I've eaten them in Poland too. The traditional Polish Christmas Eve meal is meatless but consists of many courses, and generally includes carp. We always had pierogi. There are many variations on this recipe, and pierogi associated with different regions. But this is how to make Lwow Pierogi - with a few additions of our own. 

You begin by preparing the filling. It seems to be obligatory to make twice as much filling as you need, but that's OK, because you can bake or fry any leftovers as an accompaniment to other meals. 

We use any large all purpose potatoes - Maris Piper  - five or six depending on size. Peel and boil till tender. Meanwhile, finely chop 2 medium or 1 large onion and fry gently in a little oil till translucent, not brown. Grate about 200 grams of any good strong cheddar. NB, the genuine Polish cheese to use is Twarog, and Quark is a good substitute, but we like a stronger flavour. It would be worthwhile experimenting with Wensleydale or Lancashire, which have more of a curd texture, but are also quite sharp. Mash the potatoes while they're still hot, with the grated or crumbled cheese and stir in the onion. Set aside to cool while you make your dough. 

Sieve 500 grams of plain flour with a teaspoon of salt. Mix in two beaten eggs and enough cold water to make a soft but not sticky dough. It will be very elastic. Set aside to rest for half an hour or so. 

You'll need a cup of cold water, and a pastry brush. Divide the dough into two halves, and roll out on a very well floured board until thin, but not so thin that it disintegrates! Now for the fiddly bit. Use a fairly large biscuit or scone cutter to cut out your dough into circles. A cup or glass will work just as well. Holding the circle in your left hand, put a good teaspoonful of filling onto it, brush the edges with water, and fold into half circles, like a small pasty. Gently but firmly nip the two edges together all the way along the join. If you don't get this bit right, the filling will all boil out at the next stage. But luckily, the dough is very 'self adhesive' and should form a very good bond. It's a knack and once you've done a few, it becomes easier. Curve them slightly into an ear shape. Lay them out on a floured tray. Do NOT let them overlap, or they will form a horrible mass and you will have to start again. (The voice of experience!) 

You need a large pan of boiling salted water. Using a slotted spoon, carefully put the pierogi into the boiling water, five or six at a time, although a huge pot will take seven. Bring back to the boil, very gently keeping the pierogi moving so that they don't stick to the bottom, and once they are floating in boiling water, simmer each batch for five minutes, or a little longer depending on size. Take them out carefully with your slotted spoon, and lay them (still separately) on lightly greased oven trays. You'll find that you need to top up the water if you're making a large batch, and turn up the heat from time to time to keep it at a rolling boil. 

After that, there are options. These would traditionally be slightly dried out and kept warm in the oven on a very low setting, and then served as one of the courses on Christmas eve, liberally covered with melted butter. 

You can freeze them as soon as they have cooled -  freeze them on a tray before putting them into bags or packets once they are solid, otherwise they will stick together. Thaw them before you intend to use them. We fry lots of chopped smoked streaky bacon in a little oil, and then gently fry the pierogi until they are heated all the way through, the outsides are just becoming golden and the bacon is crisp. This wouldn't be done on a Polish Christmas eve - which must be meatless - but my dad was very fond of them cooked in this way and this is usually the way we make them. 

You can experiment with other fillings. Some regions use a combination of cabbage or meat and mushrooms. Lwow pierogi are made with traditional Polish curd cheeses.My dad used to make them in summer, filled with wild blueberries from the Galloway hills, served with powdered sugar and single cream. 

It is, let's face it, such a faff, that you're better to make a lot at the same time - the above recipe makes about forty. They keep well in the freezer. They are much easier to make if there are two or three cooks - one to do the fiddly bit with the dough and filling, and one to man the pan and kettle, so that you can keep the batches coming. We did it this year while Carousel was on the TV, so I put together forty  pierogi while weeping over poor Billy Bigelow. 

Good luck! And here's hoping for the return of proper Christmas Eve parties, as soon as possible We're heartily sick of restrictions. We're physical, social beings. Isolating is, for most of us, bad for our mental health. 

But Wesołych Świąt anyway!

If you want to read a bit more about a traditional Polish Christmas Eve, you'll find a country Christmas described in my novel The Amber Heart available as an eBook or paperback. And if you can wait until Christmas Eve, the eBook will be on a special deal for Christmas week.

 

New Shoots - The Winter Solstice

In the picture, you can see a couple of hyacinth bulbs in a pair of vintage bulb glasses that were a gift from a friend. I love them and use them every year. They're sitting on my office windowsill, alongside an oak block from some ancient shipwreck. It washed ashore at the south end of the Isle of Gigha, and lay there waiting for us to find it, one long gone summer. 

The other day, after a bitterly cold, misty spell of weather, the sun shone and I walked around the village, dropping off Christmas cards. It was quiet in the village with not so much as a dog barking, although one or two of them popped their heads up as I passed by. As I walked along the winding drive to the old manse of Gemilston, I was suddenly aware that the verges were already starred by bulbs, peeping through, little clumps of pale spikes, tiny teeth. I'm not sure whether they were snowdrops or crocuses - snowdrops possibly, because they come first. Before the end of January and well into February, they will be in bloom here in the west.

I don't much like winter, but if anything, I like autumn even less. I can admire the colours, enjoy the apple harvest, the brambles, the sloes. All that. But nothing lifts my heart like the first signs of spring. I'm a springtime person, and for me, spring comes early. As soon as the Christmas decorations are put away for another year, I like to bring springtime into the house, in the shape of snowdrops, catkins and early indoor hyacinths. 

Today, at 15.49, the time of the winter solstice, we were waiting with our bottle of fizz (Cava today!) and a couple of Victorian champagne glasses, and we raised a glass to the turning year and the return of the sun. It would not be an exaggeration to say that I find the way the light leaches out of the days in October and November profoundly depressing. (Especially at this miserable Covid time) - but almost as soon as the year turns I feel a small lifting of my spirits, a sensation that only grows as the weeks go by. 

I hope you do too. 

Another Outing for my Radio Dramatisation of Ben Hur

Back in the dear dead days when I was writing lots of radio drama, I dramatised Ben Hur in four episodes, for BBC R4. Now, you can hear it again on R4 Extra, and you can also catch up with it online, here. 

I've been listening to it again myself, because my only copies of it seem to be on cassette (although I still have the scripts filed away somewhere, I think.) To my surprise, it has stood the test of time. Not everything does, but I've occasionally listened again to my dramatisations of Kidnapped, Catriona and Treasure Island, and found that I've enjoyed them. A lot of it is down to the original material, the skills of the producer/director (with Kidnapped and Catriona it was my friend, the late Marilyn Imrie) the music, the editing and perhaps most of all to a brilliant cast. Radio, like all drama, is collaborative.

Ben Hur was directed by the late, much missed and exceptionally fine radio producer Glyn Dearman, with a cast to die for, including Jamie Glover as Ben Hur, Samuel West as a suitably villainous Messala, and Michael Gambon, no less, reading the relevant bible passages. The sound - the amazing sound and music - was by Wilfredo Acosta. 

The original novel, should you want to give it a try, is still available. I found it quite hard going. And when I was dramatising it, I found one or two significant plot holes that I had to fill in,  in the course of the drama. But it is undoubtedly a very good story indeed - as anyone who has watched the film will already know.

The most fun bit to write and record was definitely the chariot race. If you want to hear how it was done, though, you'll have listen yourself! 

End of Shift: Summer - another amazing picture by my artist husband!

 

End of Shift: Summer

I'm not sure what else I can say about this new piece of work, except that I think it's amazing. It's big, as well - 3ft by 3ft in acrylics on a stretched canvas. 

It is a companion picture to Alan's earlier painting: End of Shift,Winter. We sold the original of that one some time ago, but prints are still available. This new work is for sale in our Etsy store: the 200 Year Old House. You'll find more images of it there, as well as a few close-ups. The detail is extraordinary. 

For anyone who doesn't have deep pockets, you can still buy very reasonably priced giclee prints of the first End of Shift on Etsy, and prints of this new image will be coming soon.

Do browse through our shop as well - you'll find all kinds of interesting things! 

Days of Hatred

Yesterday the hideously xenophobic nature of England became all too clear. I don't often make political posts on here, but the deaths of 27 refugees in the English Channel elicited the kind of response on social media that made me, the daughter of a refugee myself, feel a deep despair for the country where I was born.

I can't see any way back for England now. I just can't. Scotland has a slim chance. That's about it. 

These were human beings like us, with hopes and fears. Every single person alive today in this (dis) United Kingdom is descended from an economic migrant. That means you. Even those of you proudly proclaiming your Anglo Saxon and Viking roots. Economic migrants all of you, searching for a better life. Without them, you wouldn't be here. 

These were refugees. They aim for the UK because their second language is English. We take fewer than any other European country. Many of them have relatives here. Many of them are young men, because few want to send elderly women and children across a continent in search of a new life. Some young families risk it. But who wouldn't, if they could, send their sons ahead, hoping for their safety and the possibility of a home and a future? 

What surprised me was that the very worst, the most racist, most disgustingly inhuman comments were on Facebook, rather than on Twitter, which generally tends to have something of the bearpit about it. Mostly they came from older men and women. A few were quite obviously bots. It's a fair bet that if you misspell country, but get all the long words right, you're not posting from the White Cliffs of Dover. But far too many weren't. Far too many were people who would otherwise consider themselves to be fine upstanding human beings. 

Dehumanizing others leads to catastrophe. 

Perhaps if the refugees dressed up as cats they'd meet with a bit more sympathy from the denizens of Facebook..  

My Other Half's Art 4: More Painting

One of the good things about having a husband who is an artist, is that you can sometimes use the images he paints as book covers. Village in Winter made a lovely cover picture for my novel Ice Dancing, which was as much about the joys and peculiarities of village life, as it was about the very grown up love story of the two main characters. 

Village in Winter

Village Gala Day

I think some of Alan's most engaging images are those that involve 'busy' scenes with lots of figures, pictures that tell a story without being just an illustration of something static. They're full of life, colour and movement and I love them. Certainly these are the ones that almost always find a buyer. Lots of people seem to like Outsider Art except the galleries who turn their exclusive noses up at it. 

I think my favourite of all, though, is the one called Ae Spring, in which Tam o' Shanter, is only just managing to escape from the clutches of Cutty Sark, showing her bum in her short shift, with Meg the Mare as well as Tam himself, looking around in horror. And the eyes under the bridge.And the small devil sitting in the tree. It's a wonderful picture and although the original has long been sold, we still have prints. 

Ae Spring

                                 

Bonspiel

 Do have a look at our Etsy Store, the 200 Year Old House, and at Alan's website. 

Meanwhile, remember this post from September?  Artwork Free to a Good Home? Well, time is marching on. It takes up so much space. And he means it. If somebody doesn't come along and take it away very soon, he really will chop it up and put it in the chimenea. But if you do want it, you're going to have to come and pick it up. Preferably for a church or some other religious foundation. 

My Other Half's Art 3: More Woodcarving

 Here's some more of Alan's woodcarving. Including the Gorilla that had to travel to Kelburn Country Park by yacht. 

Some of these pieces, including the chess set, are for sale, and again, you'll find them in our Etsy store. Some of them, like the gorilla, are long gone to very good homes!

Here are a few more images of the spectacular Hapsburg/Ottoman chess set.

The reverse of the board

And some of the work that went into it!

And the Last Supper - a beautiful lockdown project

Finally, a sciapod. This was a commission for a very special anniversary, and it a copy of a Mediaeval 'bench end' from an old church. Who doesn't love a creature whose foot is so big that he can use it as an umbrella or a sunshade? 

If you want to read and see more of Alan's work, go to his website: Alan Lees Artist

My Other Half's Art 2: The Celtic Guitar

Today's artwork is an entirely hand carved celtic design electric guitar. It really is extraordinarily beautiful. You can see more of it here.

It is not strung and never has been, although stringing - and therefore playing - would be possible. But it is also a collectible, and very unusual, sculpture in wood.

It measures 105cm long by 31 cm at its widest.
It was made in the 1980s when Alan Lees was working as one of Scotland's foremost wood carvers. Examples of his work can be seen throughout Scotland, many in outdoor settings, but he also produced fine indoor pieces such as this one. As he himself says, he cannot now remember what wood this is made from, but it is an exotic hardwood that was recommended for its resonance by musician colleagues. It was also a very beautiful wood for carving.

If you would like to read and see more about Alan's work, you can go to his website 

Alan Lees Artist 

My Other Half's Art: End of Shift

 I'm going to spend a bit of time this week showcasing some of my artist husband's beautiful work. Alan Lees is, if we want to categorise, an 'outsider artist' although sometimes he's labelled a 'folk artist'. He has had more than one snobby comment over the years, but lots of admiration too. Some of his work, including some of his extraordinary woodcarving, is available for sale in our Etsy Store, the 200 Year Old House

I won't waste too much time talking about this, or attempting the usual analysis of his intentions, but will just show you some pictures so that you can make up your own minds. He's currently working on a new, enormous and wonderful canvas, which is pretty much a companion picture to this one, titled End of Shift, one of his most popular images. The original of this sold long ago, but good prints are still available. 

End of Shift

And here's a detail:

I can't show you the new one yet, since he's downstairs working on it, even as I type this!  If you want to see more of his work, go to his website Alan Lees Artist. 

The End. Well, no, not quite.

At Dziedzilow

 Yesterday, after a few months of intensive work, I typed The End. Cause for celebration, but it isn't really the end. Maybe it's the end of the beginning. I'm writing a book called The Last Lancer about my grandfather, his milieu, his family and what became of them. It's a real family saga, a labour of love and it has been extraordinarily difficult and painful to write. 

The research has taken years. I did some of it decades ago, stopped, started again, stopped again. Then, during lockdown I organised my previous research: documents, pictures, photocopies, books, emails, translations, letters. Found out where the gaps in my knowledge were. Did more research. Was helped along the way by a few wonderful Polish people whose generosity with their time and expertise is beyond price. 

Two factors were also important. All of the main protagonists in this story are dead. Some of it is so very personal that I doubt if I could have done full justice to it while, for example, my father was still alive. His voice is in the book because he wrote down so much for me before he died. I have wished time and again that he was still here, so that I could ask him about all kinds of things, but still, it would have been difficult to write about times that must have been painful for him, events he had tried hard to forget. 

About six months ago, I started writing the book in earnest. I've finished the first draft. Now, the long  revision process begins. 

I almost wrote 'real work' instead of 'revision process' there. But I've done the real slog. Revising is hard, intensive work, but I love it. Once I have the first draft on screen, everything becomes a lot less difficult for me. Now, I can 'see' the whole thing, I know where where the problems are and where I'm going. I write to find out and that's why the first draft is so often like pulling teeth, especially in a piece of complicated reflective historical non fiction like this, and perhaps especially so when the historical aspects are very personal. 

I thought writing my previous book of this kind, A Proper Person to be Detained, was difficult, and it was. But The Last Lancer is a whole other order of difficulty. And real, heartrending sadness. 

Spooks Week: Mary King's Close

The Old Tolbooth

Once upon a time, when I was writing a lot of drama for BBC Radio 4, my late and much missed friend and producer Marilyn Imrie and I decided to book a tour of Mary King's Close in Edinburgh, with a view to a possible production. This was long before it became a visitor attraction. To see it, you had to organise personal tours through a volunteer guide who, as far as I remember, had some connection to the Royal Exchange building that sits above this strange and spooky place. 

Our interest was triggered by research that I'd been doing for my novel The Curiosity Cabinet. Although that book is largely set on a fictional Hebridean island, it was originally inspired by the story of Lady Grange, who was kidnapped from her house in Edinburgh's Old Town, at the behest of her husband. He wanted to get rid of her without actually committing murder, so he had her transported to - among other places - St Kilda. I was fascinated by the notion of how a younger woman might cope with a similar challenging situation, and The Curiosity Cabinet was the result, albeit with a happier ending! If you want to read more about the real Lady Grange, I can highly recommend The Prisoner of St Kilda, by the late Margaret Macaulay who was a fine historian. It appears to be available only as a second hand hardback at the moment which is a pity. 

It was in reading accounts of Lady Grange that I became curious about Edinburgh's Old Town. I had lived in Edinburgh for five years, and knew the area well, but what I hadn't known, until I went looking, was that part of Mary King's Close and its warren of linked rooms, had effectively been buried below the newer Royal Exchange building on the Royal Mile. If you walk up Cockburn Street towards the Royal Mile, and look up to your right, you'll spy a door, high up in the building. That door marks the lower end of what survives of the close. 

Edinburgh can probably claim the first skyscrapers in with world, with its impossibly tall 16th and 17th century tenement buildings, with narrow lanes running between them. There are plenty of these 'closes' still in existence. Mary herself, after whom the close was named, was an affluent widow, who lived here c1635. When the tenements were first built, the rich lived high up in the buildings, to avoid the stench of sewage and other refuse clogging up the alleys below. The poor lived down below, and many of the rooms in the labyrinths between closes never saw daylight at all. Contrary to popular belief, plague victims were not 'walled up' here, but this place would certainly have seen its fair share of sickness and horrible death when bubonic plague came to the city in 1645. However, the close survived, with people living there until 1753, when it was adapted to form the foundations of the grand Royal Exchange building on the site. In 1853 the lower end of the close was demolished to make way for Cockburn Street - but a large chunk of the old street and its adjoining warren of rooms survived, buried under the newer building. 

Marilyn and I followed our guide down numerous steps, through rooms that were clearly used as storage for the Royal Exchange above, rooms full of quantities of filing cabinets, old files and documents. At one point, we heard somebody rattling down the stairs, whistling loudly as he came. 

Our guide grinned. 'They don't much like coming down here, even though they have to from time to time!' he told us.

There were lights but only up to a point. As far as I remember, there was some illumination in the original, steeply cobbled close. The shops were still there. We saw open doors and windows, that would never look out on daylight again. But once we left the close and moved inwards, there was only darkness, our guide and his lantern. It was probably the single most disconcertingly spooky experience I have ever had. Rooms led off rooms. There were passageways, stone stairs and more rooms. His lantern showed us ancient wallpaper peeling off the walls. Fireplaces with the ash still in the grates. A few abandoned pieces of furniture. A cupboard in the wall with the door hanging off. Sad, sad little rooms reflecting the impossibly difficult lives of those who had once lived here.  I chiefly remember the smell of it. It smelled of damp plaster, rot, neglect, a miserable past. We went further down, all sense of direction lost, until at one point it seemed as though we were among the very bones of the city. 

'You know something,' Marilyn whispered in my ear. 'If he were to take his lamp and leave us here, we would never find our way out again!' 

Somewhere online, you will find the PDF of an intriguing book, published in 1800, and titled the History of  Witches, Ghosts and Highland Seers, including, among much else to intrigue and entertain, a chapter about an 'Apparition seen in a dwelling house in Mary King's Close in Edinburgh.' 

The account starts enticingly with somebody meeting a maidservant carrying some light items of furniture into the close in the middle of a 'flitting' or house removal. The friend asks if she intends to stay there, and on being told that she has been 'hired for half a year', tells her that she will 'have more company than yourselves'. As is usual in these cases, maid tells mistress, and mistress tells husband but he, 'with natural courage and fortitude of mind' (i.e. stubborn) decides that they should give it a try. Wisely, the servant heads off to the kirk, but 'came no more to the family.' 

The wife sees the first apparition - the head of an old man, which seems to emerge from a small adjacent room, hovering in the air, gazing at her. Predictably, her husband, who has slept through the whole thing, doesn't believe her. 

They make up a large fire for warmth and comfort, and go back to bed. Whereupon the drowsy husband sees the same old man's head, hovering in the same part of the room. His wife isn't at all happy, but they commend themselves to the Lord, like the good Christian souls they are, and go to bed again. An hour later, they see a vision of a young child 'with a coat upon it' suspended in the air near the old man. 

Tom, the husband, leaps out of bed with his wife not far behind. They are both terrified and try to wake the neighbours, who don't respond. Perhaps they are used to disturbed tenants and prefer to ignore them. The couple light more candles and do a whole lot of praying, but to no avail. 

A naked, disembodied arm appears, flexing as though in salute, and approaches so close to the husband that it seems as though it wishes to shake hands with him. Unsurprisingly, he prefers not to return the gesture. The couple retreat into the bed, whereupon - rather horribly - the hand and arm appear through the opening in the bed-curtains. They try prayers and exhortations, but the persistent arm still approaches them 'in a courteous manner, as though wishing to make their acquaintance.' 

Soon a small dog appears from the same adjacent room, jumps up on a chair and 'composes itself as it were with its nose in its tail to sleep.' They have no dog. Nor do they have a cat, although a cat follows the dog, and begins to 'play some little tricks' as cats do. Soon, the place seems to be full of leaping, dancing creatures. When they are at breaking point, they hear a series of 'deep dreadful groans' whereupon all the apparitions vanish. The narrator reports that they went 'hand in hand to the little room where the drink stood and refreshed themselves.' I'll bet they did. Oddly enough, they then assumed that the worst was over, as in fact it seemed to be, because they remained lodging in Mary King's Close thereafter. Perhaps the welcoming party had tired of the game. 

Fortunately, our 20th century guide didn't abandon us.  Nor did we see any disembodied arms. We staggered into daylight, and went in search of another 'place where the drink stood'. We never did make the programme, and now Mary King's Close is a successful visitor attraction. We went back, my husband and I, many years later. It was very good. We enjoyed it. But it wasn't half as spooky as that original strange voyage into the unknown. 

Spooks Week: Meeting Great Grandad?

 

My paviour great grandfather, wearing a waistcoat & moustache,
next to the bearded man with the tar barrel. 

One of my more recent projects was a book called A Proper Person to be Detained, about the murder of my grandmother's uncle, John Manley, on Christmas Day 1881. It describes the milieu in which these people lived and worked, but it also examines the way in which that single shocking act of violence changed the lives of those who witnessed it and those who came after. 'Like a pebble dropped in a still pool' a friend described it to me afterwards. 

Like my book about Jean Armour, it involved intensive immersion in a time and place and I thought about little else for almost two years. Just as now, when I'm writing about my Polish grandfather and wishing I had known him, I found myself wishing I could have met my Irish great grandfather, but he died before I was born. 

He was born in County Roscommon in Ireland, he had come to England as an adult, to work on the roads, he was a skilled paviour and a kindly man who loved children. He sang, making the traditional 'mouth music' and he had a fund of old songs and stories. 

He was also, in many ways, the saviour of the family. He was my great grandmother's second husband after her first one died tragically young, leaving her and her children in penury. He was a person who managed to haul the family out of the extreme poverty into which they had been born. Yet he was so generous that if he saw a beggar in the street and he was wearing a good coat, he was as likely as not to hand it over to the more needy man. 'He couldn't keep anything,' said my aunt Nora, who remembered him. 'He would give things away when the family could ill afford it.' 

So what's spooky about that, you may ask? 

None of it, except that I think I may have met him in Morrison's car park, one morning when I had just finished writing the book, but was still, somehow, immersed in it. 

It happened like this. I had parked my car, and was heading towards the store. It was a chilly, misty morning, but there was a low winter sun shining in my eyes, dazzling me. I lifted my head and was surprised to see a man standing in front of me. 'Excuse me, madam,' he said. I hadn't seen him coming at all and, surprised, I stopped on the lane between parked cars. 'Oh, be careful, madam!'  He reached out and very gently ushered me onto the pavement. 

He was dressed in working men's clothes, with an old wool coat over them,  and he was covered in mud or dust or some combination of both. 'You see I'm very hungry,' he said. 'But I have no money for breakfast. Do you think you could give me just a little money for my breakfast?' His voice was soft, his accent was unmistakeable. Not Dublin, not Cork, but the soft rural accent of Mayo or Roscommon. I should add that the sudden appearance of Irish labourers isn't particularly common here - or not nowadays anyway. The Belfast ferry is some miles down the coast, and we are more likely to meet summer visitors with Northern Irish accents. 

Even before Covid, I didn't carry much cash, but I took out my purse and gave him a £5 note which was all I had in there. 'Thank-you so much,' he said. 'And God bless you!' 

He walked away. The sunlight and mist seemed to swallow him. It was my own response that surprised me. My legs felt suddenly weak. I had to go into the supermarket cafe, sit down and drink coffee till reality resumed. I still remember the feeling - a weird combination of excitement, exultation, disbelief and the inevitable 'don't be daft' rationality that always intrudes sooner or later.

Still, it's one of those things that has stayed with me. I can see him still, emerging from a glorious combination of light and mist, can feel his gentle touch on my arm. 'God bless you!' he said. 

I hope he managed to get some breakfast. 

Spooks Week: The Real Jean Armour

 

19th century ivory miniature of Robert Burns

I've written so much about Robert Burns that you'd think I'd have seen his ghost by now, but I never have. I suspect if I did see him, he would look nothing like the above romanticised image, although as a young man he was described as very dark and 'spare' - slim without being skinny - with fine dark eyes. He liked to dress fashionably when he could, so I reckon he'd have been an attractive young man. His wife Jean Armour certainly thought so.

Even before I knew much about her, I had a soft spot for Jean. I thought she had been hugely neglected over the years by later commentators. Catherine Carswell, in her biographical novel of Burns described her outrageously as a 'young heifer' while even the present day Burns organisations never seem to make much of a connection between the wee song bird on his self designed seal, with the motto 'wood notes wild' - a phrase he always associated with the wife he loved. She had the finest singing voice in the district. 

I've never seen Jean's ghost either, although I would have been very happy to meet her. I think she was a woman of great character, with a wonderful sense of humour. However, something happened when I was researching my novel about her, The Jewel, that certainly gave me pause for thought.

I had been researching Jean, her milieu, her marriage, her life story, for a long time before I ever plunged into writing The Jewel. That's the way it works for me. I try to immerse myself in a time and place for as much as a year beforehand (sometimes more) and then when I get down to telling the story, I'll find out even more things that I didn't know I didn't know, and have to research those too. It's absorbing but exhausting. 

For a time, it seemed as though there was nothing but Jean Armour in this old house which, when you think about it, would have been built while Jean was still alive. She died in 1834.

One night, my husband had got up to go to the loo. It adjoins the room I use as my office, just off our bedroom. I woke up too, as you do, so I saw him come back through the bedroom door, halt for a moment or two, say 'oh!' in a puzzled tone of voice, and then get back into bed. 

'What's the matter?' I asked. 

'I could have sworn I saw a woman standing in the doorway,' he said. 'At first I thought it might be you, but she was wearing strange clothes, a long skirt, a shawl, a cap on her head.' 

'The following morning, I showed him a picture of Jean Armour. 'That's her' he said.

I must admit I was a bit sad that I hadn't seen her myself. But we were immersed in her, so perhaps it's not surprising that my 'thought forms' had suddenly become visible to my poor husband! It's maybe just as well I don't write horror stories ... yet. 

Jean and I

Spooks Week: A Haunted Road

 

Culzean Castle 

This isn't my story, but it was told to us by the friend involved, a man of profound common sense, not to say scepticism, which made it all the more impressive. 

He and a couple of colleagues had taken a party of scouts to camp at Culzean Castle for the weekend. This was a local event and they were pretty close to home, which was just as well, because the wife of one of them was in the advanced stages of pregnancy. They had, however, hiked there, carrying backpacks, and had no other means of transport. 

In the early hours of the morning, a message came through to the Castle that she had gone into the early stages of labour. This was before the days of mobile phones, so it was a landline message. Not wanting to inconvenience anyone further, the husband decided that since it was a fine summer night, he could easily walk the few miles back to the town of Maybole, to pick up his car. Our friend said that since there was still a supervisor left behind for the youngsters he would keep him company along the road and come back to the campsite in the morning. 

If you don't know this part of the world, there is a road running to the west of the A77, closer to the sea.  Head south and it will go to Maidens and will ultimately rejoin the main road south at Turnberry where Mr Trump has his hotel. Northwards, it will take you to Ayr, but a few miles north of Culzean, at a place called Pennyglen, you can branch off towards Maybole. At night, it's a quiet rural road, and certainly the quickest way back to the town. 

Remember, this is an old road, with a violent history. Or at least the surrounding countryside has a violent history. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there were two factions of the Kennedy family, the Earls of Cassilis and the Lairds of Bargany, holding sway north and south of here, and sometimes they came to blows. The feud had been long and bitter. Most notably they came to much more than blows when young Gilbert Kennedy, the Bargany heir, fell victim to an attack by the powerful Earl of Cassilis on 11th December 1601, as he rode from Ayr to Girvan, a journey of some twenty two miles. 

'He was the brawest manne that was to be gotten in ony land,' says a contemporary chronicler, in the old Scots of the time. 'of hich stataur and weel maid, his hair blakk, bott of ane cumlie feace'.  In other words, he was tall, dark and handsome. Even though he was 'feerse and feirry and wander nemble' (fierce and fiery and wondrous nimble) this was a deliberate ambush, the odds were stacked against him and he and his travelling companions were wounded or murdered. Astonishingly, he was carried to Maybole, mortally wounded but still alive, where Cassilis, in his role of 'Judge Ordinar' of the county threatened to kill him if he showed any signs of recovery. He was further transported to Ayr and died there a day later. 

If you're intrigued, you should seek out S R Crockett's The Grey Man, a novel that will tell you a lot more about that time and place. 

But - to resume our spooky tale. 

The two men were young and fit, and they were walking smartly along the road in the direction of Maybole, when they heard, somewhere in the distance, the distinctive clip clop of approaching horse's hooves. Summer nights are short in this part of the world, and the sky was already beginning to grow lighter with that liquid grey light of very early morning. The rider seemed to be coming closer. Now riders are not uncommon on these roads, although as our friend said, not usually at three in the morning. But they weren't unduly worried. They carried on walking. 

The expectant father, anxious to get home, had pulled some yards ahead. Our friend said that around the bend in the road, just ahead of him, came a tall black horse with a tall rider, swathed in what appeared to be a dark cloak. Surprisingly, he seemed to be wearing a 'slouch' hat - 'like the ones you see in the movies', he said. His first thought was to wonder what on earth somebody was doing riding in fancy dress along the back road from Maybole to Maidens. 

However, that thought quickly gave way to surprise when he saw his friend pause for a few seconds, and then quite suddenly take to his heels, run past the rider at a rate of knots and head off into the distance. He was standing stock still in astonishment as the rider calmly trotted past him. Who could it possibly be, to give his friend such a fright? 

He raised his eyes to the figure.

'As true as I'm sitting here,' he said, 'there was no face at all, no head even, between the hat and the cloak. Just a gap where it should be.'

'What did you do?' we asked.

'What do you think I did?' he said. 'I ran too. I don't think either of us stopped until we were back home in Maybole!' 

Spooks Week: Stone Tape Experiences.

 

I've titled today's blog 'Stone Tape Experiences'. A long time ago there was a scary and highly original  television drama called The Stone Tape. You can read all about it here, and I think you can even find a copy of the drama online. When I first watched it, it terrified me. I went back to it more recently, and found it very much of its time, and less riveting than it had once been. The original thesis of the programme is still a fascinating one: that the stones of which a building is constructed can somehow retain images, scents, sounds of events that have taken place there - and that certain people can, in the right circumstances, 'play them back'. The twist at the end of the play is a very good one that still gives me a little frisson of horror - so I won't spoil it here. But I've had a few experiences myself that have made me wonder about so called 'residual haunting.' 

When I was a very little girl, we lived in a tiny flat above my grandparents' two small shops in Leeds. You can see the shops in the picture above. That's me with my dad. One was a sweet and tobacconist shop that sold chocolate and cigarettes to nearby factory workers, and in the other my grandfather dealt in fishing tackle. My grandparents lived next door, just out of shot of that photograph, in a tall thin house with a back yard. You can find out a lot more about that time and place in my book A Proper Person to be Detained, about a murder in my family in 1881, and its aftermath. The story of the murder recently featured in A House Through Time. 

I was often ill with asthma as a young child because there was massive industrial pollution from the printing company next door. I spent a lot of time at home, in bed, wheezing. Treatments weren't nearly as effective as they are today. But I used to have vivid dreams, and one of my dreams was both recurring and oddly comforting. I used to dream about three people, sitting around a table in the window of what was effectively our living room and kitchen combined, playing cards. The flat was cramped and we seldom had visitors. Any family get-togethers were held in my grandparents' house next door. 

As far as I remember, there were two women and a man. I was vaguely aware that they were dressed in dark, very plain clothes. But they were my talisman. I often had bizarre and disturbing fever-induced dreams, but even in my dreams, I knew that if I could see the 'people at the table', the nightmares would fade and normality would resume. I could and did deliberately invoke them. They were never aware of my presence. They were just there, enjoying a quiet time together. And whenever I saw them, any nightmare simply faded away. 

I thought nothing of this, assuming that it was part of my very active imagination, until many years later, when I told my mum about it. She looked taken aback. 'But they were real,' she said. She went on to explain that when she was a child, back in the 1920s, and even earlier than that, the small flat had been rented to a family of two sisters and a brother, who had habitually sat at the table in the window and played cards. She barely remembered them herself, working people of my grandmother's generation, and she had certainly never mentioned them to me - but I still think about them affectionately, even now.  

Two more stone tape experiences occur to me. One was during a holiday with friends in an old castle in beautiful West Cork, where we had an apartment divided from the rest of the castle by a solid partition, with no door through.  One of our party - quite young at the time - came down for breakfast in the morning and wondered 'who was the man standing in the corridor in the night?' We were in an adjoining bedroom, and had seen her get up to cross to the bathroom, pause, and gaze along the corridor. There was nobody there. Or nobody that we could see, anyway...

Finally, another friend went back to her childhood home in a small Scottish town, and, invited in by the current owners, was delighted to be able to have a look around. 'We love the house' they said. 'But tell me, when you lived here, did you ever hear the sound of a musical box playing and a dog howling? Because we sometimes hear it at the bend in the stairs.'

She had to confess, somewhat shamefacedly, that during her childhood, there had been an old musical box just at the bend in the stairs. It made the dog howl. So, kids being what they are, they had occasionally played it, just to upset the poor dog. No ghosts were involved, unless you count the dog - but it did seem very much as though the old stones of the house had somehow absorbed the sounds and in certain atmospheric conditions, played them back for the current residents. 

Spooks Week: The Creature in the Field

 

My dad, as a little boy, in Poland.

This story really belongs to my lovely late dad. With a different setting and date I've used it in a novel called The Amber Heart, which is available in eBook form, and is about to be published as a paperback. It formed a very useful background to a major turning point in the book. 

But it happened to my father and my grandfather, Wladyslaw, when dad was just about the age in the picture above, so here it is. 

Dad came from what was then Eastern Poland and is now Ukraine. He was born and spent his childhood on the family estate in a place called Dziedzilow, now Didyliv. You can look at the village on Google's street view and find that it isn't much changed. It's rural, rolling agricultural countryside. Winters were hard with plenty of snow, and the family used sleighs to get about. But this story happened in late autumn, when the hard frosts had started, but the snow hadn't yet fallen in any quantity.

The two of them were coming back from a visit to a neighbouring house, in a pony trap, a 'droshky' to use the English spelling of a Polish word.  It was a very cold night, darkness had fallen, but there was a full moon. It must have been about 1933 or 34. Dad would have been seven or eight, and my grandfather, twenty nine or thirty. I never knew him, but I know that he was funny, warm, slightly autocratic, and definitely had a wild streak. I'm currently writing a new book about him called The Last Lancer.

They were passing a lonely field in which there were big heaps of manure, left there for the frosts of winter to break them up, when in the moonlight, they spotted what can only be described as a creature, on the other side of the field. It was child sized, dad said, but somehow it didn't have the look of a child. 

Not at all. 

Wladyslaw drew the trap to a halt and they watched, fascinated. The creature was leaping up onto each heap of manure and - as my dad described it - bending backwards and forwards like a coiled spring. He said it looked like an impossible contortion. Worse, as it bent backwards, it cried out 'hehee!' and as it bent forwards, it called 'hahaa!'. The sound, comical and sinister at the same time, echoed through the night. 

Wladyslaw - and this seems like exactly the kind of thing the man I have come to know and love would have done - stood up in his seat, cupped his hands, and shouted 'hehee, hahaa' in the general direction of the creature. 

It heard. It paused and turned its head in their direction. It looked, said my dad later, horribly grotesque and uncanny. Especially when it began to head rapidly towards them, leaping on manure heaps, coiling and uncoiling itself as it came.

'What happened?' I asked.

'My father sat down, whipped up the horse and we never stopped or looked back till we were safe and sound at home,' he said, with a grin. 

Nothing followed them. My dad was a scientist who didn't really believe in the supernatural. But he remembered exactly what they had seen, and could never find a wholly satisfactory explanation. Can you? 

Spooks Week: A Village Ghost

 

The Glebe in spring

This is the first of a few spooky - and mostly TRUE - stories, for the week before Hallowe'en. Feel free to add your own true ghost stories in the comments. 

Many years ago - although it seems like yesterday - we looked after my parents' dog while they were away in Vienna. Dad spent a couple of years working at the International Atomic Energy Commission there, before his retirement. I would walk the dog in the morning and afternoon, usually taking her up one of the roads out of the village. She had a particular tree that she liked to get to before turning for home again. 

It was autumn, just about this time of year, and not-quite-twilight when we were heading for home together, passing the field that you can just see in the photograph above, the Glebe, that used to belong to the old manse. It's very much a part of the village, with a low wall, and a driveway leading into old and new manses. The dog was a rescue dog with a very sweet nature. 

We were walking along the pavement and a fine drizzle had started, when I saw an elderly gentleman on the other side of the road, standing up against the wall in the picture. He wasn't unwell or anything. Just standing looking over the wall. 

Because this is a village where people are friendly and the road was empty and quiet,  I began to cross over, to speak to him. The odd thing was that the dog crossed over before I did. She tugged me across in his direction, pulling on her lead, so she clearly saw him too. 

When I got there - seconds later - he disappeared. 

He disappeared as swiftly and suddenly as a picture disappears when you switch off the television. It was so odd and so unexpected that I found myself looking over the wall, which was ridiculous, because it's not a high wall, and even walking the few yards back to the manse entrance, peering around the length of the wall, just to make sure nobody had bobbed down on the other side. The dog looked confused as well. She wagged her tail and looked up at me. 

There was nobody there at all. 

When I got home, slightly bemused, I told my husband, describing what I'd seen. 

'I think you've seen Jock,' he said.

Jock McBlane was the village chimney-sweep, general handyman and elder of the kirk. My husband remembered him well although I had never known him. But he knew all there was to know about all the houses in the village, where the drains ran, how the old houses were constructed. A useful person. He always wore white gloves in the kirk. And he liked to walk about the village in the evening, checking that all was well. He once told my husband that ours was one of the most soundly constructed houses in the village. It was built back in 1808, but Jock had definitely done some work here in the intervening period. 

The cafe in our village shop is called Jock's Cafe in his memory. It's situated in the village hall now, but it used to be in the old building that had once been Jock's workshop, over the road. Back when it was a restaurant, one of the previous owners told me that she would often come in in the morning to set up for the day and turn on the radio so that she could hear it in the kitchen, only to have somebody turn it down again. She assumed Jock didn't approve of loud music!

Why I love reading fiction on my Kindle ...

 

Since I publish most of my fiction on paper, as well as in eBook form, it feels a bit heretical to write this, but I read pretty much all of the fiction I read purely for pleasure on my Kindle these days. It's an old, bog standard Paperwhite and it has been going for years now. It is a bit slower than it once was, although switching it on and off again tends to remedy that, but I'm considering asking for a new one for Christmas. 

I don't want anything too complicated though. An upgrade of this one will be fine. I don't really want to browse the internet or get onto social media while I'm reading. In fact it's one of the big attractions of my old Kindle that I can't do that. I can, of course, download a new book as soon as I've finished the most recent one, which is very handy when it comes to those series you gallop through voraciously, desperate to start the next one. Fred Vargas and her brilliant Commissaire Adamsberg novels, for example. I can look up words and even place names, which comes in handy. And I can take and save notes and juggle with the settings to suit myself. But that's really all I need.

I do a lot of my fiction reading late at night. I'm something of an insomniac. I can wake up at 4am, so wide awake that I know it will be impossible to go back to sleep. That's when I pick up my Kindle, set its light very low, and read for an hour or two before eventually falling asleep, and all this without waking my slumbering husband. Not only that but the Kindle will quietly switch itself off when I fall asleep, and it will keep my place for me. Although it does sometimes slide off the bed and wake me up again when it lands with a thud on the carpet. 

But all this involves practical details, and my love for my Kindle involves far more than that. Years ago, when radio drama was in its heyday, somebody pointed out that they loved listening to plays on radio because the pictures were better. And I love reading on my Kindle, especially in the dark, in the middle of the night, because the pictures are definitely better. 

One of the complaints made about eBooks (especially from people with a vested interest in selling paper books, oddly enough) is that people don't remember what they read on an e-reader. I find that the opposite is true. Although I'd admit that it depends on the quality of the book. NVG fiction will just slide away from you, but NVG fiction on paper will do the same thing. 

There is something magical about entering the world of a good book in the middle of the night, in the dark, just you and the words and the world that the writer has created. The pictures are so much better. Sometimes, a book can be so entrancing that I find myself falling asleep and continuing the story in my dreams. You should try it. It's magic. 

Apples - and a Recipe.

 

These are Golden Noble apples from the very old tree at the bottom of our garden. They're cooking apples, but much sweeter than Bramleys, so you don't need to add much sugar. The tree is so old that it's now on a two year cycle. It has a massive crop one year, and then rests up and has only a few the following year. The variety is old as well. As they ripen and mature, they turn a lovely golden colour. 

This year was an apple year. We have made apple pies, apple crumbles and apple scones. We've frozen some for winter. We've given a lot of them away to friends. You're not allowed to leave the house without taking some apples. We've given the small windfalls to a friend with horses - they love them, seemingly. We don't spray the tree, so there are no chemicals on them. The wasps have had a good go at the remaining windfalls, and the birds are doing the same thing. 

Now, most of them are gone, winter's on its way and I'm going to cook the last few. This isn't my favourite time of year. I love the colours that I can see from the window of the room where I work, but I hate the fading light, the way the nights draw in. The only positive thing is that it's easier to batten down the hatches and write. This year, in the sad old UK, with our energy prices rising to crazy levels, I'll be writing all wrapped up in woollies and socks and blankets, and hoping for a less chilly winter. I've got my fiction to keep me warm.

Meanwhile, I make my scones with about 500 grams of self raising flour, a couple of teaspoons of baking powder, a walnut sized lump of butter rubbed in, as many peeled apples as you like chopped into the mixture (lots) and a tablespoonful of sugar. I mix them with home made kefir, but if you haven't got that, buttermilk, or a big dollop of Greek yoghurt mixed with milk, or sour milk - all these will do. I like to add some vanilla essence, but you might prefer cinnamon. Your scone dough should be very soft - just not quite sticky. Better sticky than too dry though. Form into two rounds on a well greased baking tray, make a cross in the middle so that you can pull them apart later, and bake in a medium to hot oven, (about 200C) until well risen, and cooked all through. If you're baking them in big rounds like this, it's about half an hour. If you're making nice little scones, it'll be more like 15 minutes. Cool on a baking tray and eat while they're still warm with lots of butter. They freeze well too. 

Telling Tales

All my writing life, people have been giving me advice. Some of it was solicited, and some of it wasn't. Some was useful and some wasn't.  I once asked an established artist friend if people routinely told her that she ought to make drastic changes to her work, and she looked at me as though I had gone mad. 'No' she said. 'No, they don't!' 

I don't mean skilled editing. A good editor can help you to see the whole wood when you're obsessing about individual trees. I mean the person who tells you to turn your book into the kind of book they would have written themselves, if only they could write. Two different people once told me to cut a third of a novel. The trouble was that one wanted me to cut the first third and one wanted me to cut the last third. 

Neither of them was right, although the book in question certainly needed a lot of pruning. In fact when I did prune it, here there and everywhere, I probably deleted just as much as they had been recommending. But they had gone for the easy option which said more about them than it did about the book. 

Beta Readers worry me. I don't have them, but I worry about other people's reliance on them. Most (although not all) writers want to be read. We're in the business of communicating. And we often have some hypothetical reader in mind. But most of the time, we're writing the kind of book we want to read ourselves, telling the stories that gnaw at us till we put them into words, the ideas we feel passionate about. 

Which is why when somebody says 'I've got this great idea for a book!' our hearts sink. We may smile politely, but what we're really thinking is, 'well go and write it then.' Other people's ideas for books are just like other people's dreams. Only our own are interesting to us. We may like to chat to our readers once the book is published. I know I do. We may like to hear from them, and answer questions and even debate with them. But I don't want any random reader critiquing my work before the event. 

Which leads me, in this rambling post, to note that I've just finished reading Kingfishers Catch Fire and I'm wondering as I do with all her novels, why it has taken me so long to discover Rumer Godden's work. Why didn't it feature as part of my course work all those years ago when I did a degree in English Language and Literature and when the first two years consisted of a quick gallop through 'the canon'. Mind you, the canon was mostly male, dead and English (even in Edinburgh) so it isn't too surprising. 

If you haven't read it, do. Immediately. It's magical. And very relevant indeed at a time when, as the Covid threat begins to recede a bit, so many people seem to be deciding to move to rural communities in order to 'find themselves' and finding mostly that they don't know how to live in rural communities. Or they make television programmes about 'finding themselves' in rural communities where people have already found themselves, thank-you very much.

Godden tells wonderful tales. And that brings me back to the thorny problem of advice. I'd lay bets that if a beta reader had got their hands on Godden's extraordinary work they would have told her everything that was wrong with it, just because it is so strange and so different from anything they might have read before. 

Then it struck me that the one piece of advice I wish somebody, anybody, had given me when I was just starting out, was this: Tell your story and tell it well. But first and foremost tell it for yourself. If you're bored with it, everyone else will be. If you're engrossed in it, passionate about it, and if you truly know what you're writing about, there will certainly be somebody out there who loves it too. 

Men Writing Women

My novel with a male narrator

I was doomscrolling through Twitter, first thing this morning, as you do, even though you know it's bad for you, when I came across a thread by a writer who had started a novel by a gender neutral sounding author, only to realise on the second page that it was written by a man. How did she know, she asked. The answers, mostly from women, were many and varied, although all of them were accurate. 

There were a few dead giveaways.

Someone neatly summarised them as (1) female protagonist young enough to be ugly male protagonist's daughter or grand-daughter, but still fancies him. Instantly. Hops into bed with him at the first opportunity.  (2) Female protagonist has no idea how beautiful she is. (3) Answers her door wearing next to nothing.(4) Gazes at herself in the mirror and (5) Always, always fondles her boobs. 

Even more accurately summed up as 'she breasted boobily down the stairs'. Young women, as written by men seem curiously aware of, not to say obsessed with, their own chests. Also, they absentmindedly caress them with the back of their hands. Not easy. Try it. There are many examples, and male critics never notice.

Mind you, the other dead giveaway is when the female protagonist casually puts her hands in her pockets. I put a perfectly good pair of trousers in the charity shop bag only the other day, because it had the abomination that is MOCK POCKETS. Sometimes the pockets are only stitched up. I had a jacket like this for about a year before I realised that it really did have beautiful, useful deep pockets - once I had unpicked the stitches! 

A few things occurred to me about all this though.

It works the other way. When I read a book by Fred Vargas, my best discovery of lockdown, thanks to a recommendation from a friend, my first thought was - wow, what an interesting and perceptive writer this is. What believable characters. Then, I realised that Fred is female. I began in the middle of the series with The Ghost Riders of Ordebec. There is one particularly wonderful passage in one of the later novels where a big, brilliant female character hides the hero in a very unusual way. You'll know it when you read it. 

Do men feel the same about these novels? Do they read them without a second thought assuming that Fred is male? Does that predispose them to enjoy them? I have no answers to these questions. 

All I know is, I read more fiction by women than by men these days. There are plenty of exceptions. I think Winston Graham writes absolutely believable female characters for instance.  But my tendency is always to enjoy female fiction more. I can't help it. Recently, seeking to escape from the doomscrolling and the gratuitous violence, I went back to Mary Stewart and Rumer Godden for the sheer pleasure, the recognition, the comfort of the female perspective. It's why I love Barbara Pym too. And Jane Austen. And the Brontes. 

You do, though, as a writer, start to wonder if you're writing believable men yourself. I wrote a whole novel in the voice of an elderly Scottish narrator remembering his youth in late 1700s Glasgow. (The Physic Garden) I think he was credible. But how would I know? He was a grumpy old bugger, and I liked him a lot. 

If men won't read books by women, and women don't much like books by men, where does that leave any of us?