Never too late

It’s never too late to be what you might have been
The heading above is attributed to that pioneering and most humane of writers, George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans by birth) who wrote the marvellous Middlemarch (mentioned in Small Acts of Kindness.) I identify with the quotation in my retirement since my life as a teacher seems to be decades ago, now that I spend a good deal of my time writing about another planet in a fictional future. Even if I’m never published, the craft of writing is an energising activity and fills my imagination with adventures and wonder. In July it was Emily’s birthday. My eldest daughter has recently taken a bold step to change her life and retrain to work as a nurse in the NHS. The year has been filled with surprises. Politically, public discourse may feel toxic, but personally life is sweet. Long may sweet continue. Never too late.

A surprise or two in 2019....

Rhubarb and Robins

Bettys Cookery School, welcome tables at daughter's houses, and who doesn't love rhubarb?

True friendship
Back in April 2019, Sally and Maggie, braved the rigours (and joys) of Bettys famous Cookery School (yes, there is no apostrophe) to produce a meal for members of their combined families (including lucky old me). On that balmy Spring evening I sat down to locally sourced ingredients:

• Spiced mackerel
• Beef in red wine sauce and carrot purée with Yorkshire mash
• Ginger panna cotta with stewed rhubarb

Sitting down to a meal (or sharing a drink) with loved ones is a global human impulse: all ages, types, nations, ethnicities and religions share company, count blessings, celebrate occasions, forge relationships, court lovers, toast memories, provoke laughter, make peace and bury hurts with food and/or drink.

The Strid at Bolton Abbey, local walks, ponds and washing at daughters' houses

Tear and Share
Children across the world revel in party sweets, jelly and ice cream. Everyone has beloved food from formative years (for me, I’ll always feel nostalgic about corned beef hash, scuffles, ginger beer, parkin, sponge pudding and custard and pie&peas on Bonfire Night.) Shakespeare gives us hundreds of references to food, drink and feasting; some plays contain extraordinary dinner table dramas (Timon of Athens and Titus Andronicus immediately come to mind.) Scripture gives us “breaking bread together” and in the charred remains following the cataclysmic eruptions of Vesuvius what is more moving than the charred remains of a loaf of bread, scored for tearing and sharing?

Northcliffe meadow, Dove Cottage in Shibden near Halifax, and who doesn't love a robin?

Sprouts and Trust
I made a friend at university who is a lifetime touchstone for one of my core philosophies: sprouts and trust….! One evening we sobered up enough to realise we had been chatting shit for a couple of hours about castles, the countryside, sprouts, our families, time travel, music, and back again to sprouts…. And my diary entry of that day is titled “Sprouts and Trust,” an oddbeat combination that summed up my friend and appealed to me. Alongside food, drink and good companionship, I believe Nature is The Great Binder, the powerful force to which you can submit for healing and calm: the sea, the meadows, the forests, the fields, the dry stone walls of Yorkshire. Who needs pomp and ceremony? True friendship needs no ceremony. Talk sprouts, feel trust. Strange and diverse combinations are the stuff of life. Once again, who needs pomp and ceremony? Rhubarb and Robins will suffice. Simple fruit, steadfast creature.
Ceremony was but devised at first
To set a gloss on faint deeds, hollow welcomes….
Where there is true friendship, there needs none

True friendship, Bolton Abbey, Dove Cottage, welcome table, sprouts and trust, rhubarb and robins....

The Brie, The Bullet and The Black Cat

As Time Goes By
The year is 1942, the town is Casablanca. The final few days of Vichy France. Of all the joints in all the world, Monsieur Huges Le Grandbutte, the Deputy Mayor of Casablanca invites his guests to the Official Residence to meet France’s greatest living mime artist.

Fundamental Things Apply
Mon Dieu! Bonne Douleur! France’s greatest living mime artist, The Black Cat, cannot attend. He is dead, he is no more, he is deceased. Il est mort. Qui a tué Le Chat Noir? (Who killed The Black Cat?)

Bienvenue aux femmes

• EDITH LE GRANDBUTTE - the mayor's wife, a former dancer
• NICOLE LE GRANDBUTTE - Edith and Hughes' daughter, an idealist
• COUNTESS BOGOV - an exiled, glamorous Russian aristocrat
• CHERIE BOOT - a husky-voiced French cabaret singer
• INGRID PITH - a flirtatious Danish art dealer

Bienvenue aux hommes

• HUGHES LE GRANDBUTTE - Deputy Mayor of Casablanca, a bureaucrat
• KIRK RANSOM III - an American who runs Kirk's Cafe in downtown Casablanca, a doomed romantic
• MONSIEUR OU MADAME OILY-CARTE – an ambiguous booking agent for the Moulin Bleu in Paris
• PIERRE PAYANSKI - a 24 year old half-Russian rather-leftish poet, Nicole’s lover

Suspect suspicious suspects
Is Huges as respectable as he seems? Does Edith yearn for her earlier days as a dancer? Will Nicole finally lose patience with her German-appeasing father? Why is Kirk nursing a broken heart? What happened in Countess Bogov’s past? What plans did Monsieur (ou Madame) Oily-Cart have for The (late) Black Cat. How did Pierre get his wooden leg? Does Cherie always sing for her supper or does she have another source of income? What priceless paintings are being pursued by Ingrid across wartorn Europe and Northern Africa. Which of them knew The Black Cat personally? Who has the strongest motive for wanting him dead?

Previous Murder Mystery Game Nights:
Murder on a Train
The Champagne Murders
Monte Carlo Murders
Death by Chocolate
Stiffed at the Speakeasy
The Red Rose Murders

Undercliffe Cemetery

Magnificent Memorial
As part of this year’s Bradford Literature Festival, we booked onto a twilight tour of the famous Undercliffe Cemetery. The haunting site overlooks the city and contains impressive Victorian funerary edifices and tombs, as well as areas of neglected dilapidation. There are also over 200 military graves from different conflicts in history. The site features memorably in the 1963 film of Billy Liar.

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
It’s hard not to reflect on humanity’s ambitions and the fleeting span of lifetimes as you contemplate the inscriptions and imagine the forgotten stories of the great and the good, the greedy and the vain, the humble and the tragic. In Victorian times Bradford was one of the richest cities in Europe because of the thriving textile industries; civic pride is evident as you wander across the enormous site. Six of the memorials have listed building status and the place is now run by the Undercliffe Cemetery Charity.