#haunted book shop bristol

[ghostcatcherire]

Magic and Mystery at the Grand Opening of Bristol’s Haunted Bookshop

I recenly visited the grand opening of the Haunted Bookshop in Bristol! Spooky vibes, hidden stories, and esoteric books galore. Dive into my full experience on the blog!

(The Haunted Bookshop, Bristol. Image Credit: ©E.Holohan) On a mild autumn afternoon, I found myself standing in front of a brand-new gem in Bristol’s literary scene: the Haunted Bookshop. From the moment I saw its name gleaming on the sign above the shop, I knew I was in for something special. “Step into a world of spine-chilling tales, mystical splendours, and ancient folklore as you explore…

[ariparri]

Christmas Sweater

Here's another story written by cursedautum on Instagram! This was her part of our little story/art trade we've been doing since October. I'll be sharing my part later. She has given me permission again to share the story.

I'm very happy with how it turned out, I just love how cute they are 😭💖 I plan on drawing something for this. But I don't know if I'll have the time due to my busy schedule!!

There are such winter days when you wake up and understand: today you will find something new and very good. It feels like Christmas morning is coming, even if it's just an ordinary winter day outside the apartment door, and nothing special is going to happen. But, as his mother had said to Diego a few years ago, the heart is not ordered, and this applies not only to love. And she was right, as always. 

That morning, Diego and Veruca were walking through the park. It was Saturday, the lazy, restful city was slowly waking up, the pale golden sun streaming down on the ground, drenching the smooth snow with a mother-of-pearl sheen. The sky was so bright and blue, so clear, as if it was a freshly washed window. Icy drops hung from the trees, snow-covered branches intertwined in intricate patterns; somewhere between them, bullfinches hopped about.

Veruca warmed her hands on her cup of hot chocolate and thought about something. Diego looked at her sideways. He rarely understood what she was thinking, but he just liked to look at her. Veruca was beautiful. And not just beautiful, but her own kind of beautiful, different from others. Diego especially liked her eyes — pale green, with thick lashes, serious and a little sly. Only special people have eyes like that.

"What are you thinking?" Diego asked, putting his arm around Veruca. A little girl ran past them, followed by a laughing man and a woman, presumably her parents. Veruca shook her head. "You will be surprised."

"Oh, come on."

"Seriously," Veruca smiled. "I'm not really thinking about anything that special. It's just... you know, I'm thinking about a sweater." and she laughed. Diego's brows went up: "About a sweater? Very thoughtful, Lady McQuaid. What led you to such an unusual thought that not every creature of our mortal world thinks about, may I ask?"

Veruca laughed and poked him in the shoulder, nearly spilling her cocoa. They walked on, hugging each other, and looked at the happy people, well-fed, rested, looking forward to the approaching Christmas, whose spirit crept like an invisible haze through Bristol, hiding behind the twinkling garlands, in the fluffy  tree branches, in the aroma of fresh pastries from the street cafe around the corner. Diego felt happy: he was home, safe, surrounded by friends and the girl he loved. R is no longer there. What else does a peaceful person need for complete happiness? Nothing for him.

Veruca, on the other hand, didn't seem to agree with him.

From that day on, Veruca was not herself. The very next morning, after spending the night with him, she began to search through all the remaining Burberry and I-Wardrobe catalogues in the house with obsessive zeal, looking for something on the glossy pages. These magazines were left in Diego's apartment from the previous owner, and he was not very interested in them, but they added a certain charm to the atmosphere of a creatively bright and cozy apartment.

Veruca had never paid much attention to them before, preferring to chat with him at breakfast or read one of her favorite books, but that morning, after making coffee and cheese toast, Diego noticed that his girlfriend was quickly flipping through the pages of magazines, swallowing their contents along with toasted bread and stringy cheese. It was a surprise to him.

"Hey, Ruca?" Diego laughed nervously. She was so familiar, in his shirt, sitting cross-legged on a chair and chewing on her toast. They liked to eat something unhealthy for breakfast, and for lunch they were content with soup or salad. "Did you want a sweater for Christmas? I was planning on giving you something more interesting."

Veruca looked up at him thoughtfully. "Nah," she smiled a little distantly, as if her thoughts were somewhere out there, far away from the apartment. "It's not for me. It doesn't matter," she put down her magazine and began to talk about how it would be nice to go and visit Coby before Christmas, but the wistful look in her eyes, which still clouded Veruca's gaze, did not disappear.

Sweaters seem to have become Veruca's favorite theme. Now not only Diego, but also Carson, and Tulip, and Penny, and in general absolutely everyone heard some strange questions like: "What style of sweater do you like the most?" or "What color sweater would you wear for the Christmas holiday?"

Penny rightly pointed out that she wouldn't have worn a sweater at all, but would have chosen a dress, and Veruca didn't talk to her for the rest of the day. Once, Talbott glanced sideways at Veruca, who had gotten to Chiara with questions about the warmest sweaters, and pinched his temple in annoyance. On any other day, Diego would have just shut him up — this guy and his girlfriend often annoyed him, but now he just shrugged. Talbott sighed and shook his head in understanding.

Sweaters. Sweaters. Sweaters. Diego didn't understand why Veruca wanted to do this, but in the end he thought that maybe she was looking for a Christmas present for him, her boyfriend. He didn't get a very clear answer from Veruca, but the realization that she was so determined to find him a suitable gift was very flattering to Diego. So maybe he should just wait a little while, and at Christmas Veruca would explain everything to him and give him the best sweater he could get for Christmas.

And he should just wait patiently.

Christmas morning greeted Diego with the smell of pancakes and syrup, the scent of a wreath of mistletoe hanging on the door, and the pale sun flooding the spacious room with a timid light. Diego stretched in bed, remembered it was Christmas, opened his eyes, and heard Veruca singing softly from the kitchen. He almost fell out of bed as he pulled out the box of perfume and the Katrina Richmoney pendant he'd bought just two days ago, knowing that Veruca wanted it so badly, and prepared to give it to her as soon as she came in. But Veruca still didn't come back from the kitchen, and Diego fought down his reluctance to get out of the warm bed, but he got up and went to the kitchen.

Veruca danced by the stove to Dancing Queen, dressed in her favorite niffler pajamas, her hair pulled back in a messy braid, surprisingly deftly turning over thin, crispy, fried pancakes that smelled so good that Diego's stomach rumbled. He came up behind her and purred in a catlike voice, "Good morning, my Christmas fairy."

"Oh!" Veruca jumped, and the pancake fell back into the pan. "Good morning, pretty boy." She quickly turned off the stove, turned to Diego, and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. Diego broke into a satisfied smile. "What are you... oh!"

He pulled from behind his back a cream-colored rectangular box tied with a thin lemon ribbon, with an ornate inscription that read: 'Katrina Richmoney: J&P.' Veruca stared at him blankly for a few seconds, as if seeing him for the first time, and her eyes flashed with an emotional swirl of shock, joy, disbelief and gratitude, she then threw her arms around his neck in joyful delight: "Diego, thank you! Oh thank you, thank you-" she took the box from him, untied the ribbon with a few deft movements, opened the lid, and sighed with delight when she saw a pendant with a shimmering light green stone in the shape of a letter V and a bottle in the shape of a seashell filled with a pleasant-smelling liquid. 

"Oh, that's so sweet!" she smiled slyly. "Will you put it on for me?"

Diego obeyed without question. The pendant fit perfectly around her neck and shaded her eyes beautifully. Veruca immediately tried out the perfume that smelled of cloves, and was completely delighted. 

Diego liked to see her smile. Because of Coby, R, Rakepick, and the Cursed Vaults, she'd forgotten about the emotion of joy for a while, and she didn't smile, so he was acutely aware of her every joy as his own. Diego just wanted Veruca to be happy. Maybe that was why she smiled and laughed and just enjoyed life more because it mattered to him how she felt.

"Where's my present?" Diego moved closer to Veruca and almost pressed her against the countertop. She smelled of syrup and pancake batter. He wanted to surprise her by telling her that he already knew all about the sweater, because even a blind man would have noticed her obsession, but he decided to tell her after she handed him her present. No need to spoil the surprise.

"Do you want it?" Veruca asked playfully.

"Well, can you be my present, hmm? I was just dreaming that I got something sweet for Christmas. I think it's you. Or pancakes."

"Silly cute boy," Veruca laughed softly. Then she twisted around with a grin. "I'll go get your present."

"Of course, my love," Diego gave her his most charming grin, and she went into the other room while he started on the pancakes. Although Veruca had never been much of a cook, today's breakfast was so delicious that when she returned, Diego had eaten almost half of the pancakes and washed them down with a glass of milk.

Veruca returned with a surprisingly small box, and Diego was surprised to see that it was not the sweater she had been raving about for the past two weeks, but a white box with the inscription WizWatch — one of the most popular and expensive brands of wristwatches. The latest model.

Diego had often seen it in shop windows, but he never thought he'd get one from his girlfriend. It was, perhaps, very pleasant, and he could not even find the words to look at the gift that Veruca handed him with an expectant smile, but there was one question that still haunted him, despite the fact that the watch was his long-standing wish.

"Oh, that's just awesome!" he quickly opened the box. The watch glittered like a brand-new galleon with its smooth black dial and almost begged to be worn on his wrist. "Damn, babe, I've been dreaming about this watch since summer!"

"I know," Veruca said, smiling contentedly as they headed back to their room. Diego stared at the clock for a long time, and Veruca kept turning in front of the mirror, watching the pale green pendant shimmer in the timid sunlight. Diego stared at her, homely and comfortable, and finally decided to ask a question that might break their morning idyll, but the answer was too important. He cleared his throat, walked over to Veruca, wrapped his fingers around her shoulders, and murmured, "And that famous sweater you were obsessed with? Was it for me?"

Veruca looked up at him. For a few seconds, she looked as if the mirror reflected not her boyfriend, but some strange person, and an idiot. Then she burst out laughing.

Diego, not understanding, even stepped back. Veruca laughed, she laughed so hard that tears came out of her eyes, and he stood there, not understanding what was happening, and he felt like a complete idiot: why the hell was she laughing? Veruca, on the other hand, could not calm down her burst into such infectious laughter that in the end Diego himself began to laugh nervously, still not fully aware of what he was laughing at. More precisely, without even realizing what he was laughing at. But his girlfriend clearly understood everything and finally just fell on the bed, bending over with laughter. When she stopped, she looked at Diego and groaned: "The sweater... wasn't... for you."

"I've already guessed," he said, still smiling, but now in a jealous tone. Not him. Then who? Coby, one of their mutual friends? "Who then?" Veruca gave another stifled laugh, wiped away a tear, "Gambat."

Diego just stared at her for a few seconds  with the most stony expression on his face. "What?" he asked. Really, what?

"Gambat," said Veruca. "You know, my bat. Here, take a look." she pointed to the ceiling. Diego looked up and saw Gambat, Veruca's pet. He was hanging from the ceiling in a tiny green sweater with white Christmas trees and a red deer. Suddenly, two emotions seized him by the throat: amusement at his own stupidity and jealousy. Of course, it's strange to be jealous of your girlfriend's pet, but... yes, he was. Veruca must have sensed it, because she held out her hand to him and said: "You're offended."

"Nothing like that," Diego said. Veruca got up, walked over to him, stood on her tiptoes, and wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him. The world swayed and seemed to be rapidly slipping away from under his feet. "I love you," Veruca said, smiling slyly. "You're a jealous fool, Diego Caplan, but I still love you. Merry Christmas."

"And you're crazy and incomprehensible, Veruca McQuaid, but I still love you, too," Diego grinned. "Merry Christmas," he said, and pulled her into a giddy kiss as they both giggled. 

Gambat, who was watching them from the ceiling, gave a barely audible snort and covered himself with his wings for show, but continued to watch the couple from his hiding place and cheerfully glittered with black transparent, cunning, beadlike eyes.

Merry Christmas, sweet couple!

[idiottweets]

Here's the questions and answers from the 3rd Ask the Ghosts Q&A. I'm on mobile so formatting isn't the best, I'm sorry.

0:40 how did you keep yourself occupied during lockdown?

Lolly painted (Ben says they are very good), baking, and eating of the baking. Katy finished writing her book, slept a lot, worried a lot, also a bit of painting, a bit of yoga. Ben says it was terrifying to suddenly teach his two boys. Larry says his son now thinks Larry's the one who stops him from going to see his friends.

3:50 for Lolly - would you be friends with Kitty irl?

She wouldn't mind if Kitty was haunting her, but if Kitty was a real person they probably wouldn't be friends because they don't have similar interests

5:30 since Kitty is always happy, do you get away with laughing when you're filming?

Lolly says she corpses more when she's a plague victim rather than when she's Kitty

6:40 for Katy - do you think Mary ever addresses the trauma of her witch trial?

No because then they wouldn't have the joke, but she opens up a bit more in series 2. Katy likes the mystery of it, and she thinks Mary wouldn't know how to unpack PTSD anyway. Lolly adds that it's nice that the trauma victim doesn't feel the need to unpack for other people. Larry says Mary doesn't feel the need to find out about her trauma, it's the other ghosts who are interested.

9:10 if you became a ghost, what food would you miss most? What would be your food club item?

Lolly replies chocolate, Larry's would be the same, Katy would miss Pasta, Ben says crisps

10:30 if you had to choose a ghost from the show to haunt your own houses, which one would it be?

Lolly: probably Mary

Katy: maybe the plague victims because if she had a cellar she just wouldn't go down there, or Kitty because it would be like having a child

12:50 would Kitty and Mary be friends?

Yes as ghosts, maybe when they're alive, Katy says they have an easy dynamic, Katy and Lolly get on really well

15:00 has Katy ever milked a cow or made a wicker basket?

No, neither, but recently she was on a farm in Yorkshire and she had a go at milking a replica teat out of plastic which felt realistic and had liquid in it that you could pump out and it would go back in through the cow's asshole

16:50 what would your ghosts favourite TV show be?

Lolly: Kitty would like Drag Race (though Lolly hasn't seen it) because she would love the costumes, make-up, and drama

Mary: she'd be open to anything but Katy was thinking the news, and things like Bake Off and anything to do with herbs, Larry would love to see Mary react to adverts

20:20 have either of you seen a ghost and do you believe in them?

Neither have seen one, Lolly sort of believes in them and sort of doesn't, she doesn't trust shows about them but if someone told her they had seen one she'd believe them, Katy says she's similar and she loves hearing about people's experiences especially if it's someone really rational, she really wants to believe in them, Larry replies that he's the same, Katy read a book recently about the subject but she can't remember who wrote it, to her it depends who's telling the story, Larry has a ghost story that he doesn't want to tell it because he's not rational or sane, but he was pulled over in a toilet in a Bristol hotel by an unseen figure, he was washing his hands and it felt like someone grabbed the handle of his rucksack and pulled him off his feet but he was the only person in the room, Katy says that she thinks that when someone dies a lot of people are just so used to seeing them around that they hallucinate them, Larry responds that his grandma used to see his granddad's underpants on the washing line which is silly and really sweet, Lolly says that she thinks it's because when you dream sometimes things that are really important are still there even if they aren't there irl, Larry knew someone who was a twin but the other twin didn't survive childbirth and she used to have dreams where she was a twin even though she didn't know at first, Katy read a novel in which that was a plot

25:50 as there is a large crossover between Ghosts and Stath Lets Flats, which character from Ghosts would be best for Stath and vise versa?

Lolly says Stath's dad would be good in Ghosts, Ben said he auditioned for Stath and it was the first time he met Tom Kingsley

27:50 if you could choose a building to be stuck in as a ghost, what building would it be?

Lolly: a shopping center or a cool music venue like the Royal Albert Hall

Katy: Stonehenge

Ben: a library, specifically the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford

Larry: he likes the energy of sets but everyone thought he said "sex" and started laughing, so he'd be on a set

31:20 if you could take anything from set home, what would it be?

Lolly says there's nice furniture or the dead rat that died in the corridor, Larry says the piano and he could actually have it but he said no, Katy would take the writing desk in the library, Ben would take the caterers home

32:40 if you could have the power of any ghost, which one would you choose?

Lolly says the smell of burning is good, Katy likes the moving objects or being able to speak, Larry would like to be able to be seen but only in a silly way, Ben wants to make places really cold

[lydiabennett]

interaction!!! maize, cinnamon, spice

autumnal asks !! how fucking cute !!

maize – share the weirdest encounter you’ve had with a stranger on the street.

     this was less on the street than just generally “in a public place” but i was in a coffee shop in bath, during the five months when i lived in bristol — it was a ten minute train ride so i’d go whenever i could, usually clutching a journal and a jane austen book to my chest and tearing up. as one does. so i’m sitting in the coffee shop (the outdoor dining, actually), drinking my coffee and reading northanger abbey and tearing up, and i heard a little kid ask “mommy, is she okay” because i was, apparently, just flat out crying, and she sighed like she’d seen it a million times before and said “she’s fine, she’s just american,” and i think about that constantly. the things she must have seen. 

     something similar happened when i visited oxford: i burst into tears, like, real tears, at a church, looking at the space where my favorite tudor queen used to pray, and i got overwhelmed by how grateful i was to live in a world where i could literally step into history and how excited i was to be there, and somebody saw me sniffling and said “you think she’s okay?” to his friend and his friend, clearly a student, said “yeah, she’s just an academic.”

cinnamon –  if you had to live in a time period different than the present, which would you choose and where?

     i would live in the future & in space. i fucking LOVE space. get me a space ship and a space cat. that’s it. that’s all i want. put me in fucking star trek. i’ll grow cucumbers on the ship and i’ll start book clubs with the aliens and my cat can have full run of the bridge. i think about this all the time. just put me on a space ship.

spice –  have you ever encountered a house that you believed to be haunted?

     yes !! it’s called “my house” and it’s where i live. but yeah, there’s definitely stuff in that house. has been for ages, and i’m not the only one who’s experienced it. i recently had to do a lil ‘get out of my face’ spell because a very pain-in-the-ass type ghost kept waking people up and trying to cover their faces with their sheets, and not that long ago my unplugged shredder turned on in the middle of the night and with no warning. i’m also fairly certain that my childhood cat gently haunts the place because whenever i’m sad at night i feel her curling up behind my knees like she would when she was alive. it was her favorite place to sleep when she slept on my bed and i swear i feel her in the exact same shape and size she was. it’s honestly really nice. 

[ofcloudsandstars]

Day 2

I feel like this was the most intense day because it was the day we went to explore the town center and I really cant describe every shop we went into.

The main street is lined with like older stone buildings, some painted vibrant colors and some just old stone. Something about the aesthetic of the town is very fairy-like and full of art everywhere. There were alleyways with murals of forests, the goddess, planets, mandalas, animals, mushrooms etc. Everywhere you looked there was art painted on to something and statues of gnomes, mushrooms, fairies and the goddess. If it wasn't colorful, then it was old stone and medieval-ish. Its a really small town so there was just one street of lots of shops but it was nothing but back to back magical stores some with specialty focus like a magic book store, a magic herb and aromatherapy store, a magic tool emporium store, a magic crystal store, a robe and cloak shop etc.

There was this BEAUTIFUL crystal shop with BIG fairy energy I went into. The shop owner was very fairy-like herself. Actually a lot of people in the town either had strong crone shamanic vibes or fairy vibes. There were so many magical old ladies in shawls, cloaks and sweaters of different vibrant colors with sparkling hair tinsel laced between their silver locks that would be tinted different pastel colors cause they no longer needed to bleach their hair. A lot of people wore hair tinsel actually and had lots of sparkly piercings and crystal jewelry. There were a lot of shoulder-cats, pentagrams, wooden STAFFS some with crystals on the top. It was the first magical town I've been to where people were just unapologetic about being a witch or pagan. I mostly loved all of the older women there who had such intense energy and were just free to be themselves.

Anyway back to the crystal shop (Named Elestial by the way) which I am sure throughout the week I dumped an embarrassing amount of money on, they color coordinated their crystal collection in a beautiful way that my libra self couldn't handle. I got so much stuff and some crystal planchette for my ouija board since my friend that's a medium suggested it could help use it since usual planchettes can be hard for the spirit to move. I got a smokey quartz one since it's protective but further in the week I got a cotton amethyst one that looks beautifully ghostly from another store. There was this gorgeous herb, candle and aromatherapy shop we went to called Starchild. You can smell it down the street and I took pictures I will post cause describing it won't do justice. They played the most FIRE sound tracks you'd imagine hearing if you went to a forest rave. They had oils for every sabbat, zodiac sign, druid tree, plant you could imagine. Their stuff smelled incredible. They had massage oils for every purpose even sexy ones that were like called things like Exctasy (that had st. johns wort in it) or Love Potion No. 9 which had herbs in it that I never heard of, except like Damiana of course lol. They had these INCREDIBLE hand made candles that literally looks like something out of a fanatasy movie. I bought many. They had candles for zodiac signs and planets too. Just imagine candles of many shapes, sizes, textures (I got frothy candles that look like some goblin shit lol) colors. They had a huge library wall of jars filled with herbs you could buy by the ounce. Also a wall of books on herbs and green magic as well. I'd highly recommend that shop!

(Not much more to read but I’d thought to add a read more out of consideration for people scrolling)

We went through this goddess corridor which has a walk way with crystals embedded into the walls of the corridor. There was a goddess temple which is free to go in and you can ask the priestess to smoke cleanse the hell out of you in her dark chamber. There was a MASSIVE tapestry dedicated to the goddess of Avalon which is the local goddess they honor as she is the personification of the land which Glastonbury resides on. In that courtyard there is a huge statue of a dragon outside of the library of avalon which I wasn't able to visit unfortunately.

We went to the Green Man shop which was owned by a really sweet pagan woman who told me all about her house she lives nearby where she can watch the barn owls swoop over the fields in the summer and family of deers in the winter that come to her window 😭 I got so much stuff in that shop. First of all its so cute inside like everything is green with ivy garland hanging from the ceiling so you feel like you're inside a bigass bush. And its very earth-witchy like I got a pentagram with a stag on it, a black notebook with a silver pentagram on it, tons of cards with beautiful pagan art like one with golden leaf with a crowned owl (probably stolas lol) and a few yule cards. They also sold lots of cauldrons and incense. Everything was SO CHEAP. Also every shop had an insane amount of rainbow-color coordinated walls of incense sticks. I never ran out of insense sticks.

Other shops that were note worthy that I visited throughout the week was this beautiful home store that sold indian furniture that was SO CHEAP and of INCREDIBLE quality. The nature of the community was so supportive of one another and not greedy that they don't see the point of upselling their stuff though they have incredible things to give out. The town and community is so small we kept seeing the same people over and over so I guess its also wise to not fuck people over lol. Anyway this store is beautiful when you pass it at night all the lanterns are lit up and it adds to the beauty of the main street.

There was also this CAMPY fucking witch shop called the wonky broomstick in this old building towards the end of the street that sold like spooky bar soups, had a huge smoke machine cauldron in it and sold silly incense like Pixies Dance (I bought it) Dragons Breath (I also bought it) Mermaid's Blessing (you already know..) and tons of other campy things like colorful grimoire journals and candies inside of cauldron pots. It was perpetual halloween in there and also had some harry potter merchandise. I think the English economy really benefitted from the harry potter years lol but you can tell though some tourist shops were still trying to market with it, its starting to die out. There's also this really great bookstore thats next to the haunted tavern which sold really great books on magic and spirituality for super cheap. I got a book about healing yourself when no one else can lol. 😢

After the shops we walked up to the Tor which was SO BEAUTIFUL like I was ASTOUNDED by the walk itself and how beautiful the countryside is. I felt like I was on some hobbit adventure as we walked through open fields with cows grazing around us or horses nearby (thankfully behind a fence cause they can sometimes have no chill) coming up for a pat, and the hills curved in a way that you can see forests rolling around you and the tor high up in the distance. I felt like I needed a cloak. There was a man nearby hiking with his puppy near us that spooked the cows around us so he had to carry his naughty puppy lol.

While climbing the hill I got this insane realization that I have been dreaming about the Tor and glastonbury for years. Its one of the towns along with London that I've been having dreams about since I was 15. Glastonbury came about later though like I was having dreams about it when I was probably 20?? I remember thinking of it as a sweet and peaceful escape and I remember the town my dream world cooked up being really small and in a way underdeveloped from the cities I was used to. I think if I were to live there I would be happy but be a bit isolated cause that’s what my dreams showed me. I have so many dreams of me climbing up on the steep hill of the tor and looking at the patchwork quilts of towns around me. When I was up there it was like something CLICKED like a place I kept visiting and didn't know what it meant, finally meant something. There's a town nearby in my dreams thats still very spiritual and earthy but a bit more down to earth and Expensive and snooty that I remember I was trying to find a way to move into. It has a lot of big houses and beautiful alleyways and cobbled streets so maybe I need to look at the towns around there and figure it out. I have a feeling its not Bristol though I feel like I need to check that place out too. (Actually it could be Bristol?) I just know now that the dreams I had are about real places I need to see and I thought those dreams were just fantastical since they were beautiful towns with magical people and castles But those beautiful towns with castles and magical people actually exist in real life.

The tor itself was beautiful. We took a lot of pictures and stared at the scenery. I felt like I was in my element cause I love air. There were birds all around us. We watched the sun set burn behind the clouds as we walked down the steeper way.

[7deadlycinderellas]

The Starks at War, ch2

AO3 link

Catelyn had been a girl still, at the outbreak of the Great War. In her youthful naivete, she had believed the propaganda; that the war would be brief and the boys she knew would come home in glory.

Her vision had been shattered.

Her engagement to Brandon Stark had been a terribly childish decision in retrospect, the last act of tradition, the union of two great families before the walls came down.

When he had died, she had felt that her world would end. Ned had held her when he could, and when the war ended they had fallen in love amidst their shared grief. Lyanna’s death had dealt another blow to Ned, unexpectedly. Lyanna had somehow managed to thrive during the war instead of being crushed by it, and in the end, her work managed to crush her anyway.

Yet here Catelyn is, hanging blackout curtains and watching as her children leave Winterfell one by one.

Sansa had been the first, seemingly both terrified and impatient to leave. Ned and Cat had half considered pulling her out of school, but everything was already prepared, her fees paid, and her school was in Kent, far from London.

Robb was eighteen in June. He joins up immediately, taking a spot in the RAF before he could be conscripted.

When Ned raises an eyebrow at his choice of service, Robb grins softly and says,

“I get seasick.”

Jon joins him soon after. Theon has joined the regular British army, haunted by his father’s words about choice of military service.

Catelyn had looked at Ned when all three of them left, with a sinking feeling in her stomach.

“They wouldn’t...not again?”

“No,” Ned insists firmly, “Everyone remembers exactly what happened then”.

When the Great War had started, all the men who could had enlisted. The army had often posted men who were from the same villages and towns together, in hopes that their already created camaraderie would make the transition easier.

It had resulted in some villages losing every single one of their young men. The idea of losing even one of her sons, even Theon, who had already left, even Jon, who she was sometimes embarrassed of, made Cat want to weep. She was so grateful for Bran’s condition, and Rickon’s age, even if thinking so made her feel a traitor.

Ned had left almost immediately afterwards to return to London. He says the government will likely want him to turn production towards the war effort, and he wants to get on top of it, especially once most of his work force disappears. He doesn’t tell anyone that watching Robb and Jon and Theon all walk down the road together broke his heart.

Bran and Arya stare after them with jealousy. They’re both supposed to be doing their schoolwork, but it’s hard to focus on maths and history when history feels like it’s happening around them.

Arya has her own responsibilities though. At the end of the month, petrol is rationed. She rides her bike to the shops every few days, to buy and carry home whatever they need. They have to cook and keep up the house mostly themselves now. The cook and the older maid have both left to return north to their families, and Beth looks like she wants to leave every day. Old Nan moves back in with her sister down the road by the church, though she still comes by to help out with Rickon

At the end of September, Arya gets another unwanted surprise.

“You’re joining up too?” She demands.

“I’m eighteen next month,” Gendry tells her, “And if I don’t join now, I’ll get drafted and might not get a choice where I end up. The Navy says they need mechanics. All the planes and tanks and everything now.”

Arya bites her lip.

“I know, it’s just. It feels like everyone’s leaving. Father’s in London again now, and Robb and Jon and now you too. It feels like everyone’s leaving and I’ll be stuck at home cleaning and knitting socks and listening to the wireless and trying not to pace and panic.”

Gendry sighs a bit.

“You’re fourteen now right?”

Arya nods.

“Keep your eyes open. With all the men enlisting, they’ll need women to do everything we would be, they did during the last war. They’ll be opening up the services to women more soon I’d bet too. But let’s hope it doesn’t go on long enough for you to be able to enlist.”

Suddenly, he starts to look a bit shy.

“Could you…”

Arya furrows her eyebrows. Shy isn’t a look she’s ever seen on Gendry, and she’s fighting the urge to make fun of him.

“Well, soldiers are supposed to have people to write to and write to them.”

That’s what this is all about?

“Soldiers are supposed to have sweethearts write to them.”

“I don’t have one of those,” he takes a long pause, “Or parents or siblings. Or that many friends really. I know you already have your brothers to keep in touch with, but could you write to me?”

Arya feels her face flush. Her stomach is twisting with a feeling she doesn’t understand.

“Sure, sure I will.”

She turns away back home and tries to forget how lonely he looked.

Beth can handle most of the cooking now, as long as it’s nothing fancy. That leads to Arya having to help with most of the cleaning. There’s less of it now, now that there’s two fewer people in the house, but Catelyn insists that they don’t close anything up.

“We may need it soon,” she says cryptically.

Because Catelyn is a lady with a capital L, and if there’s one thing a lady is good at, it’s saving face and keeping together with other ladies.

And the ladies of the country are organizing.

Children flood the countryside, from London mostly but also Cambridge and Bristol and a few even from Leeds and Manchester. Everyone’s terrified of air strikes, but no one seems sure of where will be hit. The children are large and small, dirty and clean. Siblings together grasp hands, and lone ones wrap their overcoats on tightly. They all have cardboard signs hung around their necks.

They stick them wherever they can fit. Nearly everyone in the village takes at least one. The Reeds take in a rather fat young man who had worked in a bakery in London and had screamed when he first saw a frog. Jyana Reed had said that the house was already beginning to feel empty, with her husband having rejoined up with the service, despite his age. Winterfell even hosts three; a small girl not yet speaking much, whom Arya calls Weasel, and a young woman from the East End with a newborn baby.

“I’m calling him little Sam,” the mum says, “After a man I knew.” Her name is Gilly, and she looks to Cat like she’s never had a proper meal before.

The news is almost strangely quiet. Hitler keeps trying to do things, and occasionally a ship sinks, but for a country at war, it feels rather calm.

And every once in a while the air raid sirens blare.

The pamphlets sent out with the black out directions also give safety instructions during an air raid. Everyone keeps their gas masks handy. They’ve all been drills and false alarms so far, but the raids take a special toll on Bran.

“It’s bad enough having to be carried down into the cellar every time, but what if one happens when I’m alone? I can probably drag myself down the steps- slowly- but I’ll be stuck having to hope that someone comes by and finds me. If I get down into the cellar before the bombs hit anyway.”

“At least your cellar has a proper staircase. Ours is just a ladder.” Meera tells him. She’s got a suitcase with her and has come to return something to Arya. She’s just turned eighteen, and is joining the women’s Navy. They’re so close to Portsmouth, but she’s being sent all the way to Liverpool to train.

She’s come by to say goodbye.

“I wanted to dodge Arya. I’ll write to her, but I don’t want to give her another face leaving to stick in her mind.”

“If you’d worn your uniform, you might have scared her off. I’m not sure militarism would suit her. “

“I haven’t been issued my uniform yet. Everything is being requisitioned. All the clothing factories are making service uniforms now.”

“Aren’t you...scared?” Bran had asked her when she had first told them.

“All the posters and things keep saying Wrens are “Never at Sea”, but I’m not sure I buy it. They’re throwing everything at the Germans. I’m not sure how long it will even be.”

She tries to smile, but can’t quite, and tries to lighten the mood.

“Besides, I can swim. Swim and row, so basic training might be easier on me.”

Her face goes serious again. Meera not being able to smile feels like something deeply troubling to Bran.

“Can you take care of Jojen for me? With Dad gone too...Mum will have enough to worry about without having to worry so much about him too. Make sure he takes his medicine. Make sure he remembers what’s going on when it doesn’t work and he seizes anyway. “

“I can try, “ Bran says honestly.

Jojen’s been bringing over his charts and books, and the two of them are trying to teach themselves morse code.

“I wanted to get licensed to do amateur radio broadcasting before this all started,” Jojen admits, “But the government shut down all the bands. It’s too bad, it could be dead useful.”

No one remaining at Winterfell gets much from the outside world, except through letters.

Ned writes that London has transformed. So many businesses have closed up, and houses lie empty, abandoned. He says he will return to Winterfell as soon as he can.

Sansa says that nearly half of her classmates didn’t return to school.

 It means classes are all super small now, which is sort of nice. I finished up senior-level French last year, so I’m doing more in independent study. The teacher says she doesn’t know why, I’m already top of the class. English is much the same as it’s always been. Only one of the history teachers returned, so we’re all stuffed in one class.

    Headmistress says that because of the war, they’re offering several extracurricular courses for girls who wish to support the war. I’m taking typing and first aid. I do miss my dancing lessons- the dancing master has joined up- but some of us girls still practice in the common rooms in the evenings.

Margaery got into some trouble when she decided to start a German club. She’s nearly as fluent in it as she is in French- it sounds so much lovelier coming from her than from me!- and she insists that it could prove useful for all of us if the war continues.

 All the blackout rules are terrifying though. The dormitories are such a big building, and seeing it in total darkness is like a whole different world. And the sirens. I fear I will hear them in my dreams.

She doesn’t tell them about the girl who was outside past curfew when the sirens went off. She’d returned to campus hours after, her head bloodied, having been struck in the dark by a carriage before pulling herself to the side of the road and cowering in a ditch until the all-clear blew. Headmistress had sent her home with nary a word to the others. Sansa still didn’t know how badly she’d been hurt.

Catelyn sighs again at Sansa’s letter. Typing and first aid. Sansa should have been spending her days imagining her debut into society, of meeting someone she could marry, of being a true lady as she was born for. She’d so hoped her starry eyed dreamer of a daughter could be spared the horrors that this conflict was going to bring. She could just see Sansa going into nursing with her huge heart and no idea the sorts of things she would see.

First Aid though. That sparks Catelyn’s mind, for her more wayward daughter. She reaches out to Mya, who was the daughter of a groom who had once worked for the Starks, but knew her daughter in an entire different role.

And a week into November, Arya does something she hasn’t done in over a year. She puts on her Girl Guides uniform, and goes into the village for a meeting. Her former patrol that had dwindled last she had been there, now was swollen to bursting with evacuees from the cities.

 I’m old enough to be a Ranger now she says when she writes to Gendry, Though my uniform isn’t right for it. It’s no matter now, no one’s getting any new ones. I used to go a lot, I loved the camping trips and cook outs. I even learned to use a knife there. But Mother always fretted about me spending all my time around the village girls, told me I was destined for a different life, and when I got older all the girls started wanting to do needlework badges and stuff about babies and so I bailed.

     This week we went around painting the sidewalk curbs white, so people can see them better in the blackouts. Next week we’re helping dig public shelters and starting our first aid training. I still think the songs are stupid though.

Most of Gendry’s letters have been him whingeing about basic training. Arya’s not sure to what end- he’s not going to get much in the way of sympathy from her, and she’s more than capable of whingeing right back. Besides, she thought, he should be used to terrible food and spartan living conditions, having basically had to care for himself since his mother’s passing when he was twelve. Perhaps he shares her opposition to being told what to do, she thinks, and wants someone to agree with him.

Robb and Jon also send letters, more once they both finish basic. They’ve both passed qualifications and are assigned to become fighters. This horrifies Catelyn and excites Arya and Bran.

Robb’s letters are more of what’s expected. Complaints about the food, the lack of privacy. Arya snickers at that, it can’t be as bad as boarding school can it? How much he misses everyone. That hurts.

Jon repeats all of Robb’s sentiments, but also speaks of his pilot’s training.

 Story is they picked Robb and I because we went to a “good school”. Apparently having ridden horses or handled yachts is a good base for learning to fly. I didn’t really do much of any of that, but the instructor’s say I’m a natural. The steering, handling the g-forces, it comes easily to me. I feel like this is what I should be doing.

He doesn’t give too many elaborate loving descriptions of the planes they practice on, for fear of making Bran too jealous. He does send drawings though, as amateurish as they are. Bran tries to improve upon the crude sketches on his own, planning to send them back to Jon as a Christmas gift.

Because 1939 is coming to an end, and Christmas is coming with it, no matter what else is happening.

Ned returns home in December, once the snow is falling heavily and the countryside is as cold as it gets. He brings with him several boxes, that he claims they can’t open until the 25th. He returns to hugs and great cheer, at last, a Stark returning to Winterfell in time for Christmas.

Especially since he’s the only one.

“Last letter,” Arya says, morose when the envelope in Sansa’s pretty script arrived accompanying a large parcel.

It had been awful enough learning that Robb and Jon weren’t going to be coming home. No one was getting leave this year, no matter how little seemed to be going on.

 No one can get train tickets to go home, the government has cracked down on it so much. Some of the other girls come from as far away as Scotland. A few of us as staying with Margaery’s family for Christmas, they have so much room and are just over the hill. I miss everyone, I hope you all like your presents.

She resists the urge to gush about Highgarden, the most grand estate she had ever seen. The Tyrell’s were hosting several girls from the Land Army, and there were so many people and so much cheer that Sansa felt like an ingrate how much fun she was having.

Arya was still a bit sour when Christmas Eve comes. They couldn’t put lights on the Christmas tree even, because of the blackout rules. None of the shops in the village had window displays either. The church still held their Christmas Eve service, but they didn’t ring the bells.

The person who gives Arya back her spirit ends up being of all people, Gilly.

“I’ve never really had a proper Christmas!” She admits when they’re stuffing the Christmas goose to put it in the oven overnight. Jyana has come by for Christmas Eve with Jojen and the boy they've taken in, who it turns out has lots of Opinions about food. They will have a proper feast, if not as grand as in previous years, where they were usually entertaining guests, but there’s a goose and potatoes and lots of baked biscuits, even if they came after very long lines.

“What do you mean by that?” Arya asks her.

“We were terribly poor, never had a tree or nothing. The rain and snow would leak in through the roof bad in winter. And most Christmases Papa would just extra drunk and we girls would hurt for it.”

Catelyn comes over and cuts her off.

“You shouldn’t ask things like that Arya,” she whispers to her, “That girl’s had a hard enough life, without you drudging up memories of it.”

Arya can do that. She’s old enough to realize that she shouldn’t ask where little Sam’s father is.

And when Christmas morning comes Gilly claps her hands at the Christmas tree and the red and gold decorations on the tables and staircases, and even little Sam looks delighted no matter his size. Even Weasel, usually so stoic, looked dazzled.

There are gifts. Sansa knitted and sewed things in class to send to everyone. The pullover she’s made Arya is terribly soft and goes along perfectly with the enormous wooly hat Gilly had made her. Ned and Catelyn give all the younger Stark’s books, even Weasel and Gilly. Bran and Arya had collaborated with the Reed’s boy who had come to be nicknamed “Hot Pie” to make everyone fudge. And the boxes Ned had brought from London turned out to be new clothes, sizes that would fit everyone for some time.

“I remember the last war,” Catelyn comments later in the day when the others are full of Christmas dinner, enjoying their gifts and listening to the BBC’s Christmas programme.

“Buttons, ribbon, wool. Everything was in short supply,” Ned says completing her words. “And if Bran and Arya sprout up like Robb and Sansa did at their age, we would be in trouble.”

Cat stares out the snowy window.

“Tell me this won’t last as long as the last one Ned, “ she begs quietly, “Tell me this might not be our last Christmas together.”

Ned takes her in his arms and stares out the window into the world outside Winterfell and tries not to fear what the next year might bring.

[nancypullen]

Good Grief, Where Do I Start?

The ol’ laptop has been repaired and is in fine working order and we’re back in our routine here at home, which means that vacation already seems long ago.  Don’t you hate that?  It seems like weeks ago instead of days ago that we were winding our way along roads sandwiched between brightly colored trees.

We put over a thousand miles on the rental car.  We flew into Portland, then drove an hour and a half up to Camden to a cottage that served as our base for exploration.  Bangor, Bar Harbor, Bath, Belfast, Blue Hill, Boothbay Harbor, Bristol, Brunswick, Camden, Damariscotta, Ellsworth, Freeport, Kennebunk, Kennebunkport, Lincolnville, Ogunquit, Port Clyde, Portland, Rockland, Rockport, Searsport, St. George, Stockton Springs, Thomaston, Trenton, Wells, Wiscassett, York....and so many more that I’ve failed to list.  We traveled north to Acadia National Park and hiked beautiful trails.  We traveled south and crossed the border into New Hampshire and stayed a couple of days, even scooting into Massachusetts to spend a day in Salem.  There wasn’t a single day that we didn’t enjoy.  Here are some of the highlights of a mighty fine trip.

We made a second swing by Pemaquid Point Lighthouse since the first time was right after a doozie of a storm.  That first visit was all gray skies and angry ocean.  A couple of days later Mickey was able to get this shot.

Love that reflection!  I wandered around and snapped other (safer) perspectives.

 I wouldn’t mind rocking the day away on the front porch.  Not a bad view.

Further north, Bar Harbor was such a charming town.

Acadia was simply beautiful, but I’ve already posted some of those pics.  Mickey went up Cadillac Mountain to get a sunrise shot, so I’ll share that instead. 

We visited York’s Cape Neddick and the Nubble Light.  It’s always a treat.

I walked around snapping photos while the mister sent his drone up for more dramatic footage.

Did I mention he used his drone a lot ?  Here’s a shot of Camden.

 Sorry, I’m all over the map.  

We visited Cape Elizabeth and the Portland Head Light. I walked around taking crooked photos while the mister...you guessed it...flew his drone.

When I was giving this one a pat I looked up and noticed a stray piece of rainbow overhead.  I may have found the pot of gold.

I’m going to fast forward this because I’m probably boring you to tears.  It’s late and I’m apparently fresh out of witty banter.

We shopped in Freeport at the LL Bean flagship store (I think I mentioned that in a previous post) and made our way to Portsmouth.  We’re big fans of New Hampshire, it’s Maine’s tidier cousin.  Our hotel there was the launching pad for a full day in Salem!   Salem,Salem,Salem! In years past I’ve buried you in photos of Salem, describing every magical inch of my favorite city.  I won’t do that today.  Instead I’ll share a few that made me smile.

No big deal, just some crones waiting for a trolley.

And here are a couple of witchy-poos getting some advice at the visitor’s center.

Raising those kids right! Speaking of visitors, Salem, which was originally Shalom, meaning peace - makes sure that everyone feels welcome.

I followed a leaf strewn path all over town, hitting all of my favorite haunts (pun intended).

The mister and I had an agreement - this was my day, I would not be rushed, I would not spend all of my hours waiting for him to snap a photo or fly a drone, and I would probably throw money around all day.  He rented a bike and left me to my own devices. 

We checked in with each other hourly.  I was almost always in a shop or walking to the next shop.  He was...wait for it...taking photos or flying his drone.

 We met for a delicious lunch (OMG, CRAB NACHOS!) and parted ways again.  I’ve yet to find the words to describe the joy I find in Salem.  I’ve always visited in October, maybe I’d feel differently if I dropped by in January or July, but I doubt it.  It’s so much more than their October festivities, although this sure doesn’t hurt.

Every shop window and every door stoop is a nod to the season, and to the magic in the air.  Harry Potter fans will appreciate this one.

I made the most of my day and the mister kept his word, we left when I was good and ready.  Who am I kidding, I’m never ready to leave Salem.  But as the sun was setting we pointed the car north back toward Portsmouth. Our last day was simple - taking in some favorite sights around York and Kennebunkport, and returning to Wells, where we stayed a couple of years ago.  We had one reason for being there - Billy’s Chowder House.  We’d eaten there before, more than once, and the fare is deeeelicious. My last lunch in Maine was perfect.

You guys, that was the lunch special - just $15!  You’d pay that much for a lot less at Panera.  Lobster, fresh green beans, baked potato...I didn’t need another meal for days.  I mean, it didn’t stop me, but I didn’t need one.  That gorgeous lobster seems like a good place to end this rambling blog.  I may share another picture or two as I wade through vacation shots.  I have a whole collection of the back side of Mickey in various places, and plenty of him blocking traffic or risking his life for a photo.

I’ve also got an album of failed selfies, most of them like this - my windblown hair and tired face and the mister in position.  I may make him a calendar.

Seriously though, we had a GRAND time.  We saw so many beautiful sights and laughed ourselves silly most of the time.  We’re fortunate enough to travel well together and allow for each other’s quirks.  We plan an itinerary that will make us both happy and at the end of the day we have a lot to talk about.   Another successful vacation is in the books and this gal is happy to be home and prepping for Halloween.  Time to get my spook on! XOXO

[leospaganpage]

Hi

‘I thought about writing an intro post for a couple of days and not known what to write. I could talk about the last month or so, or I could go back to the beginning. 

So here I am. It’s hot, my laptop is slow. It’s 11pm and I’m half watching ‘America’s Hate Preachers’, drinking wine, surrounded by dragon’s blood incense. I’ll go back to the start:

I was born in Bristol, UK, and baptised Lydia Joy Ginley. You can probably guess from the surname and the baptism that some of my ancestors were Irish Catholics. It was my great granddad. Thankfully, it was very watered down by the time it got to me. I did go to a Catholic primary school but it wasn’t all strict and run by Nuns (though there were a few angry Irish teachers). I’m sure at some point I truly believed in Catholicism, just as children believe in Father Christmas. But I didn’t by the time I was 11, I remember being obsessed with ghosts and the supernatural. 

So one side was catholic but my mother certainly isn’t. One of her friends is a medium. I was brought up with that being normal and there was no doubt in my mind that she wasn’t honest. She moved to South Africa but still keeps in contact, I’ll come back to her later. Mum joined circles, met her friends spirit guide (a native american which is apparently the stereotype). I remember a BBC children’s programme in 1997 called Aquila about two boys that find a roman spaceship. Everyone thought their next door neighbour was mad as she could see and talk to a native american who gave her advice. She was given pills and was convinced she was mad. I think it ended happily with her throwing out the pills and the two boys believing her. But I knew it was her spirit guide, I thought it was obvious.  

My Mum said that once in a meditation was taken to the ‘Hall of Learning’ (spiritualists believe this a place in the spirit world that contains great knowledge of the spirit world). My Mum asked her medium friend that, if that was the hall of learning, why didn’t she learn anything? She told my Mum that she had learned something, she learned that it existed. So that was suddenly a thing in my life. 

My secondary school was not religious at all and always failed the OFSTED thing for RE. I kept my love for the supernatural - everyone remember ‘Most Haunted’? I was obsessed! I didn’t really thing about religion or spirituality much, I was too busy immersing myself in maths, science, art and depression. I had a passion for biology. 

At some point my sister started working at a shop called Crystals. I though crystal healing and stuff was all bollocks. But then many people I did not expect said they didn’t like going in the hop as it made them feel funny, they had weird sensations, etc. Two of these people were devout Catholics and one was a blokey bloke gardener. That was enough to convince me that there is something to it.

At uni, I made friends with many goths.Some of these were pagan (or pretending to be to look cool). I found it really interesting, I read books. But to me, I found it interesting in a history nerd way.  I know what I mean. It was just something from history that we had long since disproved. But I did relate to nature being related to spirituality. Sometime around then, my mother discover a lot of old photos and paperwork. She discovered that her grandfather and his father were Druids. I found this really interesting. I wanted to be inspired by this, I researched. I liked it but just wasn’t grabbed. At uni I developed mental health issues. I tried some of the things I had read out of desperation but didn't really get it.   I met my partner at uni, they were vaguely interested in paganism too but was mostly agnostic/atheist. 

Then that last few years, we’ve not had much time to focus on spiritual things. Life has happened. My partner became disabled and we both came out as transgender. I’ve also still been struggling with my mental health. 

But life has started to go in the right direction. And in the last month or so, I feel like Loki has walked into my life. That’s for my next post. 

[welldresseddadblog]

Mid May it was time to visit the sceptred Isles of Great Britain for another getaway mini-break. Learning from previous experiences regarding the absolute density of experiences in the UK, we planned less travel and more local exploring this time. This also means spending less valuable time moving from overnight accommodation to new overnight accommodation, which again helps to avoid energy loss. This time it was more South Western areas that would be in focus, as in Glastonbury and the surrounding areas. This post will contain marginal coverage of menswear, but may be useful for travel tips! We’ve previously visited Bath and Bristol, which weren’t as great.

A word to start off with though, about getting around in the UK. There really is no substitute for renting a car. I’d love to say “take the train, take buses, they’re great! Cycle! Walk!”, but as far as I can tell it’s a mess of companies, a mess of pricing, and unless you’ve got oceans of time to spend travelling and waiting, it’s going to eat a chunk of your valuable holiday time. So, much as I hate to promote more travel by car, it really does make sense to travel by car. And car rental is surprisingly reasonable these days. I’ll offer up another observation: A lot of the roads in the UK were made a long time ago, before cars, or when cars were much smaller than today. This can be a challenge, in some cases quite terrifying, as you’re heading down a super-narrow road, hedges along the sides and trees growing overhead, and local motorsport heroes barreling towards you in a road space that seems frighteningly narrow. If you know you’re going to be travelling the small roads, get something small. This time there were three of us with luggage, and a lot of modern roads, so we treated ourselves to a larger than usual vehicle, a Vauxhall Grandland. A mini-SUV of sorts, I guess, but practical, comfortable and space for suitcases.

Stock up on water before a long day!

Google Maps is a must for serious driving. A removable holder is a boon.

Posing with an appropriate Stonehenge mug.

Flying into Gatwick late in the evening means less traffic about, which is helpful when readjusting from driving on the right-hand side to the left-hand side, getting the navigation working properly and finding the way to the destination. Rental cars should come with a lit up sign on the rear saying “I’ve just arrived, be gentle”, to warn aggressive locals wanting to get home as fast as possible that the driver ahead is going as fast as feels sane and safe!

At this point I’ll give you another premium travel tip: If you’ve booked an Airbnb, make sure to check that the address is complete and can be found in Google Maps. Not checking this can mean that you arrive in the general area, late at night, with no way of finding out where you’re staying. If you’re in more sparsely populated areas, mobile coverage may also be dodgy. And late at night means people are asleep, it’s very dark, house numbers can be impossible to see and you start wondering if it’s possible to sleep in the car. Yes, this happens. Luckily we found cell coverage, managed to Google up a photo of the frontage online, and found the right place. Oh, and I’d recommend you stick to the AirBnB’s run by “Superhosts” to avoid surprises. Airbnb has made it easy for everyone to allow strangers to stay in their home, which is a fine and dandy idea, but people are different, homes are different, and standards are widely different.

The grounds of Guildford castle.

Remains of Guildford castle.

Guildford was the nearest town and although we’d heard much about it before, we decided to head there. A quick Google showed there was a Park & Ride scheme, so we parked and took a bus to the town centre. A pleasant surprise really, as it proved to be a proper little town, in a sort of old-fashioned way, as there were plenty of shops, no obvious empty spaces, no noticeable vape shops and no huge shopping centre. Plenty of old buildings as well, and even a castle with excellent grounds, and no charge to walk around. I tend to stop by any charity shop that looks promising, as it’s one of the few ways for modern man to legitimately treasure hunt.

A peaceful demonstration for a free Stonehenge.

Obligatory Stonehenge photo.

Can’t fail to see they have a point.

Stonehenge is an odd place. A global icon, a pile of big rocks, a place of alternative worship, and now a genuine five-star tourist trap. We arrived by road alongside it, which means traffic slows to a halt for everyone to get the freebie look from their cars. Once you arrive at the new visitors’ centre though you’ve last all sight of the stones, as the visitors’ centre is a solid mile away. Which a cynical soul might suggest is to make more people pay the entrance fee, which includes a shuttle bus to the site. And therein lies a point, as the Stonehenge site itself is free to visit, but if you want the “official version” it’s very expensive (to the tune of 50 pounds for two adults and a child). To be blunt, to get closer to something you’ve already seen a million times on photos isn’t as big a deal as it’s cracked up to be. It’s kind of, just exactly what you expect. And a fancy visitors centre with a huge well-stocked gift shop doesn’t really make it a bigger deal (that said though, the Stonehenge X Barbour jackets they sold there weren’t bad if a very unlikely collaboration). The toilets are free though, which is handy. Check out here for more info about Free Stonehenge and how to visit Stonehenge for free.

  Kind of meagre selection and even more meagre discount offer, not very impressed, Trickers at Kilver Court!

  With the rapidly rising popularity of outlet villages, we thought we’d check in on a couple. Kilver Court in Shepton Mallet has a few interesting brands and as it was en-route we went by. Compared to most newer outlet-places it’s on the smaller side, with a limited number of brands, and sadly it proved not very worth the stop. At least for a professional menswearist. The menswear brands all har marginal presences and feeble discounts, not at all in the original and true spirit of outlets, but more in line with newer thinking of “everyone loves an outlet, let’s bung some stuff there and hope people are blinded enough by the discount idea that they’ll grab some of our stuff as well”. The Trickers shoe section was basically a table of shoes, so definitely not worth a visit. A waste of time really, though WDW did enjoy the Toast section (which used to have some good menswear as well, though sadly no longer).

    Glastonbury proved an absolute delight though. I’d heard it was a bit of a freewheeling place, with more Wicca and healing power shops than you can shake a wand at, and this wasn’t far off the mark. There was a relaxed and pleasant feel to the town though, so just going walkabout was nice. Plenty of hippies, street musicians and curiosa. Our Airbnb hos had kindly pointed us towards some recommended hostelries and these proved to be solid tips. If you’re heading that way, we found excellent food and drink at The Who’d A Thought It and Hundred Monkeys. Naturally, being in Somerset, proper cider country, it was great to be able to sample some top ciders straight from the barrel.

I’m not sure where I saw this, but no doubt it was Glastonbury appropriate!

Glastonbury had some nice street-art on offer.

Probably the most refreshing glass of cider I enjoyed all week.

  Thinking back, we did want to see the Glastonbury Abbey. As we often find these days though, there’s an entrance fee. And a cheeky one at that. If you’re travelling around seeing various places, usually several in a day, it’s just not on to request 21 pounds entrance for a family of two adults and a child. We want a quick peek around, not to stay the night. So a  sneaky peek in through the cracks in the gate or over the top of the wall will do. I find it much more palatable when entrance is free and there’s a voluntary donation box.

Panoramic photo of the view from Glastonbury Tor.

We did walk up to Glastonbury Tor though, a nice and not too taxing walk in the sunshine. As legend has it, the Isle of Avalon and the burial site of King Arthur (apparently a legend himself). The view from the top is stunning, you can see for miles and miles in all directions. Remarkably English Heritage has yet to find a way to charge tickets, so the entire experience is free, which only makes it better. On the way down we stopped by the Chalice Well, which proved yet another rip-off venture at 11 pounds for three. It’s not as if there’s anything to see there. Oh, ok, if you do believe that it’s a holy well and that the reddish well water is the blood of Christ after the chalice was cast into it. A simple chemical analysis shows the colour and taste is due to the high iron content though, so you have to be something of a believer to buy into the pitch. Granted, it’s not unpleasant to sit in the gardens and slow down for a moment, but at the end of the day, it’s a small park. We did hear mention of the bathhouse is open during the daytime and a popular haunt for skinny-dipping hippies. For the specially interested, I imagine.

Walking down from Glastonbry Tor.

My travelling companions for the week.

After the touristy trappings of Stonehenge, Avebury was something quite different. Much more like the holidays of my childhood really, with a careless pub lunch, a wonky icecream, lots of people milling around, noisy motorbikes and so forth. Again the parking was totally overpriced, though you could park there all day on the ticket (seriously though, Avebury is not a day’s worth of attraction, though you can pass your ticket on to someone else for a small bump in karma). The famous standing stones were there though, and available to touch, hug or take a selfie against. Not as iconic and well known as the ‘henge, but definitely a friendlier experience all around. And if you like your large, historic, mysterious, probably manmade bumps of ground, there’s also Silbury Hill nearby. It pays to read up a bit though, as the historical importance of the sites isn’t immediately obvious from what you can actually see.

Avebury offers unrestriced access to vertically aligned ancient stones.

The village of Avebury is situated inside the circle of stones.

The day after we noticed that the Clarks Outlet Village was also very close by, so we drove by there to take a look before engaging in more historical pursuits. Again, it’s the typical modern “outlet village”, which while it has a village-layout is really just a shopping mall by any other name. Its main characteristics are a poor selection of goods, goods produced to be “outlet products” and brands that really don’t belong there at all, and the whole bargain aspect of it is mainly in the advertising. The Clarks shop itself was large and well stocked, but the Clarks Originals section was more frustrating than anything unless you happened to have size 13 feet. No need to return here. To be honest, I’m not sure what I’m expecting at an Outlet place, though there used to be a lot of actual bargains on the previous season and odd stuff.

A very large Clarks shoe.

Another very large Clarks shoe.

I realise I’m sounding like an absolute grump. Full on Victor Meldrew. “Can you believe the price of admission?”. It’s so easy to focus on all that is disappointing and terrible, instead of seeing the positive sides of a trip. So to balance things out, I will make a point of mentioning that we had absolutely stunning weather the entire week (cynical voices are no doubt wondering if English Heritage has found a way to charge for this), the places we stayed were better or much better than expected, the rental Vauxhall Grandland was a good choice, comfortable and spacious and traffic was mostly blessedly light. And we had some great food and cider.

To add a little final interest to the garmsman, I can reveal that I mostly wore a pair of blue khaki trousers from Trickett, sneakers from Crown Northampton and a few white t-shirts. Functional and fine, perfect for a short holiday.

In summary, I’d very much recommend visiting Glastonbury and the Somerset area!

Trip report: Glastonbury and the South-West #cider #rant #englishheritage #stonehenge #entryfee #yikes #visitbritain #glastonbury #somerset #pie #avebury #guildford #ancient #historical #standingstones Mid May it was time to visit the sceptred Isles of Great Britain for another getaway mini-break.

[justforbooks]

She Escaped To Become Original.

The relationship between a biographer and his or her subject often takes the form of a one-sided love affair. When the subject is a person of ill repute or a criminal the chances of an attachment are of course less—the most that may usually be managed is a fascinated repulsion. But with a writer, ardent involvement is almost always present, at least at first. After all, the lover and the beloved already share a profession, and the biographer cannot help but feel that he or she understands the subject’s inner life and professional struggles. The fact that this is in effect a love affair is often confessed in public and also in print, at the very end of the acknowledgments in the finished book, when, after thanking interviewees and researchers and editors, the biographer apologizes to his or her spouse or partner for what sounds rather like an adulterous affair, one that diverted time and attention, if not affection and passion, from a real-life partner.

These imaginary adulteries are not one-night stands. The average serious literary biography appears to take about five years of research and writing, and ten years or even more are common when it runs to two or three volumes. Almost always the task involves extensive travel, hours hunched over a computer while your partner or family go on with their lives, and long conversations with strangers in expensive restaurants, bars, and coffee shops. Edmund Gordon is clearly a serious and gifted biographer. He has worked hard, traveling all over the world to speak to people who knew Angela Carter and reading every scrap of her writing he could find. His title, The Invention of Angela Carter, announces both that Carter was a tremendously original writer with a marvelous gift of invention and that, as he puts it, “The story of her life is the story of how she invented herself.”

Gordon discusses Carter’s writing with skill and sense. He also manages to make her self-invention understandable and even sympathetic. He does not leave anything out, but he does sometimes include so much prosaic detail—the names of people she knew, the geography of the places she lived—that astonishing information sometimes flares up like a burst of flame on a damp log. You put the book down, asking yourself: Wait a second. Did he just say that after she slept with the husband of one of her best friends, Jenny, Carter wrote in her journal:

It is good for my ego (happiness is ego-shaped) to see myself as [John] sees me, a sweet, cool, flower in the sun; &, especially as [Jenny] sees me, an exotic, treacherous femme fatale…. I wish Jenny would try to kill herself.

One way to understand this sort of thing is to see it as a statement from someone who is trying to reinvent herself after a truly oppressive childhood. Psychologists have suggested that there are two classic early fears, both deftly portrayed in the folktale “Hansel and Gretel”: the fear of being abandoned and the fear of being consumed. For most of us, one of these anxieties is dominant. Angela Carter grew up with a mother who, like the witch in the fairy tale, overfed and confined her. According to Gordon, “She was an intensely loved and thoroughly spoiled child, heaped with gifts and goodies:…chocolate and ice cream and books…. She was never put to bed until after midnight.” Soon Angela was a very fat little girl who at eight already weighed “six or seven stone” (between eighty-four and ninety-eight pounds), with a bad stammer and no friends.

Her father, who worked as a night editor for the Press Association, was seldom home, and outside of school hours Angela spent most of her time with her mother, Olive, who monitored her every move: “Even when she was ten or eleven, she wasn’t allowed to go to the lavatory on her own. She was made to wash with the bathroom door open well into her teens.” She was also forbidden to go out with boys, and spent most of her free time at home, reading and writing stories. It is not surprising that her early novels and tales often feature lonely girls who are imprisoned in sinister houses or castles.

What is most remarkable is that Carter was able to escape from the gingerbread house. When she was seventeen she suddenly went on a serious diet. Gordon, though he puts this politely, does not quite believe her claim of having become an anorexic and weighing less than eighty pounds, since none of the friends or relatives he interviewed confirmed it. But in any case she eventually stopped dieting and settled into the normal weight range for her height. She also began to defy her parents: “She came to enjoy provoking Olive, and saying whatever she thought would go down worst, usually something iconoclastic, blasphemous or obscene.” It was a game Carter continued to play with anyone who struck her as pretentious or uptight, and one, according to reports, she never ceased to take pleasure in.

Angela Carter was a brilliant student, and her teachers encouraged her to apply to Oxford; but she refused after Olive declared that if she was admitted they would rent a house there to be close to her. When she left school at eighteen, her father found her a job on a local newspaper, the Croydon Advertiser. Angela Carter took the job, she later said, “kicking and screaming,” though soon began to enjoy it. But she was still living at home and quarreling with her parents. She was miserable and full of self-hatred: later she described herself as having been at the time “a great, lumpy, butch cow, physically extremely clumsy, titless and broadbeamed.”

She was also, obviously, a very determined and courageous person. Not only did she transform herself, in a few months, from a fat, frightened, awkward teenager into a skinny Goth beatnik, she managed to escape from Croydon. In 1959, at nineteen, she met her first boyfriend, a twenty-seven-year-old industrial chemist and folk music fan called Paul Carter, and the following year she married him. In 1961 Paul got a job teaching at what would become City of Bristol College, and she moved finally and decisively out of her parents’ claustrophobic world. She began taking courses toward a college degree, and in 1962 published her first short story.

All was not well, however. As Angela Carter later wrote in her journal, “Marriage was one of my typical burn-all-bridges-but-one acts; flight from a closed room into another one.” Though they seem to have been happy at first, she and Paul were not temperamentally suited; Paul was given to “gloomy spells and touchy, drawn-out silences.” He resented her (lifelong) reluctance to do any housework, though she was an enthusiastic and gifted cook.

Once she had finished her degree, most of Angela Carter’s time was devoted to writing. “My first husband wouldn’t let me get a job after I graduated from university,” she said in 1980. “So I stayed at home and wrote books instead, which served the bugger right.” Gordon tactfully calls this an “exaggeration,” and reports that in fact Paul, who “was never very supportive of her writing,” seems to have put pressure on Angela to find a job. Luckily for her readers, he did not succeed, and over the next decade she published three novels and dozens of articles and stories.

Edmund Gordon has admirably avoided what is known as the biographical fallacy: the attempt to explain a writer’s work by the facts of his or her life. But a reviewer, whose observations will soon dissolve into wastepaper and weak electronic pulses, can be more casual and speculative. It seems quite likely to me that a fat, clever girl with no friends who spends the first seventeen years of her life in a gingerbread house in suburban middle-class South London, reading avidly and incessantly, will have limited experience of life. Her conceptual world, on the other hand, may be rich and full and colorful, populated by the dramatic characters and events—both historical and fictional—that have excited her imagination.

Most writers take off from the worlds they have known. Angela Carter’s stories and novels, on the other hand, can be seen as inspired principally by dramatic historical figures like Baudelaire and Edgar Allan Poe and Lizzie Borden, plus a rich imaginative universe of witches and ghosts and princes and princesses, magicians and clowns, werewolves and vampires, mad scientists and evil aristocrats, incestuous siblings, and murderous seducers. It is a world that would make her simultaneously one of the most derivative and the most original of writers.

Angela Carter’s first published story, “The Man Who Loved a Double Bass,” was a remarkable achievement for a twenty-two-year-old. Its hero hangs himself when his beloved instrument is destroyed. Already, the prose is strikingly good: “Darkness came with the afternoon, dragging mist with it…. [It] fell around their shoulders like a rain-soaked blanket.”

Her first three novels, Shadow Dance (1966), The Magic Toyshop (1967), and Several Perceptions (1968), are set in contemporary Bristol and London, in an intensely emotional counterculture landscape of disguise and artifice, sex, and violence, and they were well reviewed. Later she ranged further in space and time, often setting her stories in a world of fantastic characters and melodramatic events, vast wealth, and violent passions; a world as far as possible from the one she had grown up in. As she put it in her appendix to the story collection Fireworks (1974):

I’d always been fond of…Gothic tales, cruel tales, tales of wonder, tales of terror, fabulous narratives that deal directly with the imagery of the unconscious—mirrors; the externalized self; forsaken castles; haunted castles; forbidden sexual objects.

Carter’s new persona was equally vivid. She started dyeing her drab brown hair with henna, and for the next twenty years was a striking five-foot-nine redhead. She dressed dramatically, often in black, chain-smoked, and liked to say shocking things and use coarse words. She claimed to despise classic authors like Henry James and W.B. Yeats, and “formed an intense dislike for Jane Austen.” Her attitude toward contemporary British writers, especially women, was unfriendly: at a public reading she went up to the realistic novelist A.S. Byatt, whom she had never met, and said: “My name’s Angela Carter. I recognized you and I wanted to stop and tell you that the sort of thing you’re doing is no good at all. There’s nothing in it—that’s not where literature is going.” But she was not always comfortable with the impression she was making, and wrote in her journal:

I talk about myself too much instead of watching other people, I try & exhibit my own original and exciting personality—whereas I am, in fact, merely a stupid young bitch…

Soon Angela Carter had a reputation as someone who would say anything and take any risk. It was not all talk: when Several Perceptions won a prize of £500 in 1969, she used the money to go to Japan for a month, although she knew no one there and could speak no Japanese. Halfway through her stay she met a twenty-four-year-old college dropout called Sozo in a coffee-house, and went with him to a Tokyo “love hotel.” Almost at once, she was in love. When she returned to England two weeks later she did not return to her husband Paul. She also did not see her parents until that December, when she heard that her mother was in the hospital with a heart attack. According to Gordon, Olive “took one look at her and turned her face to the wall.” She died soon after, having cut her daughter out of her will.

In April 1971 Carter moved to Japan to live with Sozo, first in Tokyo and then in a nearly deserted winter beach resort where she began to write her controversial magic-realist fantasy, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972), which a few readers, including Salman Rushdie, consider her best work. Others have found it both lurid and baffling. As Gordon says, it is set in “a dream-version of Tokyo” in which the narrator-hero, Desiderio, who is based on Sozo, pursues the evil Dr. Hoffman through a series of fantastic supernatural worlds full of exotic and in some cases violent and cruel sexual customs, all graphically described.

Passionate as it was, Carter’s relationship with Sozo had problems. Sozo was younger than she, and not really ready to settle down. As a Japanese man, he expected a woman to stay home at night and mind the house while he went out drinking with friends, often not returning until the following morning.

In April 1972, Carter went back to England to do publicity for her newest novel, Love. When she returned to Tokyo a little over two months later, Sozo was not there to meet her as he’d promised. When she finally tracked him down, he told her that he had slept with three women while she’d been away. A week afterward the affair was over. Carter always maintained that the break was her idea, but Gordon does not believe this. For the first time in her life she was the rejected one, and it hit her hard:

She returned to worrying that she was unattractive and unlovable, and that her work wasn’t any good. All the same, she had enough self-awareness to realise that she hadn’t objectively changed when Sozo left her.

She stayed on in Japan, writing and seeing expatriate friends; for a week she worked as a bar hostess, but quit when she found she was expected to go home with at least some of the patrons. In November 1972 she took up with a nineteen-year-old Korean called Kō who spoke very little English. The relationship made her happy, but she didn’t take it very seriously, though she did spend the New Year holidays with him and his parents in Osaka. In the spring she returned to England; Kō desperately wanted to go with her but she discouraged him. Back home she wrote in her journal, almost as Lieutenant Pinkerton might have written of Madame Butterfly:

I can’t think what will come next or who will come next; Kō is in my heart, for ever, and maybe I do not want time to blur his perfection at nineteen, his warm, clean, golden flesh, his eyes like the hearts of anemones…. You can’t possess people; you only borrow them for a time.

Carter’s stay in East Asia was the source not only of The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman but of two of her most brilliant early stories, “A Souvenir of Japan” and “The Smile of Winter.” They are clearly autobiographical: the narrator sees her lover in great detail, but as an object. “I should have liked to have had him embalmed and been able to keep him beside me in a glass coffin, so that I could watch him all the time….” She realizes that both of them are engaged in a kind of intense sex tourism. “He found me, I think, inexpressibly exotic.” She is also enthralled by the mannerist style and elegant formality of Japan, and eager to take part in the performance: “Here we all strike picturesque attitudes and that is why we are so beautiful.” The darker side of the culture especially fascinates her: “This country has elevated hypocrisy to the level of the highest style. To look at a samurai, you would not know him for a murderer, or a geisha for a whore.”

After Angela Carter returned to live in London in 1972, her reputation and confidence increased. She published more novels and many stories, essays, and reviews, and bought a house in South London. The Company of Wolves (1984) and The Magic Toyshop (1987), two films based on her work, appeared; she joined the board of Virago Books and was recognized as one of Britain’s leading feminist writers. In the fall of 1974 she met a young carpenter from Bristol called Mark Pearce who was working on the house across from hers. Angela described him as looking “like a werewolf,” but in fact he was essentially stable and kind. They soon became lovers, and Mark moved in with her. They would be together for the rest of her life, and he was the father of her son Alex, born in 1983.

The most difficult task for a biographer, in the long run, is not how to write both sympathetically and honestly about a subject’s bad times and bad behavior, but how to keep the reader’s attention when all the news is good. As Penelope Fitzgerald put it, “The years of success are a biographer’s nightmare.” Gordon’s book inevitably loses some of its dramatic interest as he reaches the years when Angela Carter was living happily with Mark and Alex. Now we hear a steady rising melody of achievement and recognition: respectful interviews, favorable reviews, escalating advances and sales, meetings with other famous people, trips to writers’ conferences, literary and film and theater projects, and well-paid gigs as a visiting writer at top universities all over the world.

At the same time, a new Angela Carter gradually emerged. She stopped dyeing her hair and wearing all black. I remember her during this period at a literary festival in the garden at Charleston, the former home of Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell: a tall, slightly smiling woman with long white hair in a long pale blue sweater and a flowered Liberty print skirt, like a benevolent ghost from the Bloomsbury years.

But it was not just Carter’s outward appearance that had changed: now she was often described by journalists as a warm, affectionate wife and mother, and/or a wise, generous, and benevolent white witch or fairy godmother, with magical narrative and imaginative powers. According to people who knew her well, and to her biographer, this wasn’t a pose. It seems very likely: after all, happiness is usually good for the character. “I haven’t always been nice,” she used to say to interviewers, but nobody believed her. Though she never became close to any contemporary woman writer, she was loved and admired by her agent, her editor, and many friends.

Meanwhile her reputation kept on growing. In 1979 she published two of her best and most famous works: The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography and The Bloody Chamber. The first is a remarkably erudite and ardent examination of the way that men have limited women to the roles of victim and victimizer, or virgin and whore, with a proposal for an alternative myth in which a good woman can be both strong and passionate; it is still widely read and a set text in college courses.

The second, The Bloody Chamber, dramatically illustrated these ideas. It is a brilliant revision of some of Grimm’s best-known stories, and presents striking alternatives to the characters and plots of the old tales. In the title story, the bride of the wicked marquis, a Bluebeard figure, is rescued not by her brothers, as in the original, but by her mother, who rides into the castle on a rearing horse and shoots the murderous husband with a revolver as he is about to cut off her daughter’s head. In “The Tiger’s Bride,” a revised version of “Beauty and the Beast,” the Beast does not become human; instead Beauty joyfully, and perhaps metaphorically, turns into a tiger herself.

In Angela Carter’s next two novels, Nights at the Circus (1984) and Wise Children (1991), she continued to take off from the historical and literary persons and scenes that had always inspired her. But now she moved from the exotic and fantastic worlds of her earlier work into a more familiar and local territory. Instead of Surrealism and fairy tales, she drew on Shakespeare and music-hall comedy. In Nights at the Circus there are still both historic and fantastic elements: its narrator is a journalist based on the young Jack London; and its heroine, Fevvers, is a trapeze artist who can really fly. But in both books the setting is essentially the real world—a world of theatrical boardinghouses, provincial road companies, backstage romance, Christmas pantomime, Cockney hoofers and comics, stage magicians, singers, charwomen, and taxi drivers. Angela Carter celebrates not exotic, erotic violence, but working-class humor and vulgarity, loyalty and courage and comradeship.

The title characters in Wise Children, the identical twins Dora and Nora Chance, are based on two real-life music hall performers, the Dolly Sisters. Now they are tough, wise old Cockneys who still sometimes, in their local pub, burst into song and dance from their old routines. They are the illegitimate twin daughters of a family of Shakespearean actors, the Hazards, whose last name is an upmarket synonym of theirs. In some ways the book is like a night at a Victorian music hall or early cinema. Melodramatic events are thick underfoot: murder, suicide, extravagant parties, intense sexual encounters, burning mansions, and the return of characters presumed dead, but everything turns out all right in the end. Gordon manages his subject’s years of success as well as anyone could, leavening the list of achievements with quotes and anecdotes, but he doesn’t really escape the problem. It is in a way his good fortune as a biographer, and our great misfortune as readers, that this period of Angela Carter’s life was short. In March 1991 she was diagnosed with lung cancer. “Things happened very quickly after that,” she wrote to a friend. In order to make sure that Mark would have custody of their son Alex, they married in May 1991. She worked whenever she could, planning a new novel and collecting the best of her articles for the book that appeared in 1992 as Expletives Deleted. But in less than a year she was dead.

As soon as Angela Carter was gone a flock of fans and critics of all kinds descended upon the body of her work. It was naturally attractive to them: not only was it highly original and imaginative, it drew both from folklore and from history. It was full of dramatic stock characters and events, both real and traditional, and therefore encouraged comparison and interpretation. Feminists, postfeminists, structuralists, poststructuralists, anthropologists, Freudians, and Jungians came to feast and praise, to interpret and overinterpret. As more schools of criticism appear, no doubt they too will be drawn to this tasty and inexhaustible meal. And why shouldn’t they be? At the very least, they will encourage the reading and rereading of one of the twentieth century’s most gifted and original writers.

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Top 10 UK guided walks and tours for families

If you’re searching out “gently spooky” families as opposed to “deliver the youngster’s nightmares tours for weeks”, then that is the UK   ghost tour for you. Comply with “Victorian undertaker” Invoice Spectre as he leads you thru the returned

streets and courtyards of Oxford. This twilight excursion is peppered with ghost memories, that are illustrated with props, pyrotechnics, and illusions. Lots of jokes and audience participation ensure it by no means goes to the dark face and is suitable for children of every age. • Friday and Saturday night at 6.30pm from the gift shop of Oxford Fortress Unlocked, 1¾ hours, no need to an e-book. Adults £9, youngsters £5-£7. Ghosttrail.Org

Robin Hood, Nottingham Ezekial Bone’s Robin Hood tour. Fb Twitter Pinterest The legend of Nottinghamshire’s well-known outlaw is delivered to live on this entertaining tour. In feathered cap and leather jerkin, Ezekial Bone (aka Ade Andrews) appears the element, leading traffic across the key sights in Nottingham, along with the Castle, Lace Market, and Vintage County Gaol. A foray into underground caves and St Mary’s churchyard add a fun frisson for youngsters. Bone additionally runs tours of Sherwood Wooded area with an emphasis on the natural environment. • tours run most Saturdays from March-October and on different dates at some stage in the yr. Endorsed for kids over 10, 2½ hours. Adults £12, underneath-14s, £7. Ezekialbone.Com

Blackbeard to Banksy, Bristol Workplace block wall in Bristol providing a Banksy mural of a caricature canine. Fb Twitter Pinterest Banksy mural on a Workplace wall Discover Old pirate haunts and current avenue artwork on Duncan McKellar’s taking walks excursion. An artist and historian, McKellar humorously weave the specific strands of Bristol’s records on a two-hour walk, taking in Lengthy John Silver’s model, Robinson Crusoe’s first port of name, Bristol Fort and some of the metropolis’s avenue art, such as pieces by using Banksy and JPS. • tours run on Thurs-Solar, departing from the cathedral at eleven.30am. Adults £7, children £3, a circle of relatives £18. Blackbeard2banksy.Blogspot.Co.uk

Supercalifragilistic, London Amber Raney-Kincade’s Mary Poppins excursion. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Photograph: Niki Gorick Dressed as Mary Poppins, Amber Raney-Kincade takes households on walking excursions of the city of London, inspired by means of the lifestyles and works of Poppins novelist PL Travers. Amber prefers to maintain the precise details of the itinerary a wonder, but count on a jaunt to a London park, feeding the pigeons on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral, a view over the London rooftops or even the occasional burst of the track. Film fans can find out about the making of Mary Poppins (which wasn’t truly shot in London) and there are masses of thrilling records sprinkled in approximate suffragettes, chimney sweeps, and the city. The total distance walked is much less than a mile, so it’s best for little legs and on hand for prams and wheelchairs. • Runs maximum Saturdays, 2 hours. Adults £15, under-12s £10. Americantourguideinlondon.Com

Fossil looking, Isle of Wight Compton bay, Isle of Wight. Caption Fossil looking, on the dinosaur island “ isle of wight” Fb Twitter Pinterest Photo: Samuel J Ford/Picfair Martin Simpson recognized locally as “the Fossil Man”, runs the fossil and gem save at Godshill on the Isle of Wight. He’s written several kids’ books on fossils and Stocks his understanding on fossil-looking journeys on beaches in the southwest of the island. They normally include the chance to spot dinosaur foot casts and, if the tide is ways out sufficient, the remnants of a fossilized Wooded area. families are shown wherein to look for fossils and might preserve any they locate. The 2-hour journeys are appropriate for every age and no equipment are required. • Some journeys are led by Martin and A few through head guide Felicity, 2 hours. Adults £4, children £3, circle of relatives £12/£14, personal journeys from £40, island-gems.Co.uk

Seaside safaris, Gower peninsula Organization of traffic to a Seaside safari, Gower peninsula, Wales. Fb Twitter Pinterest Picture: Judith Oakley Marine biologist Judith Oakley is in no way happier than while poking around rock pools in south Wales. On summer weekends, households can join her on one among her free Beach safaris to learn about the area’s hidden storefront and marine wildlife, and how to help appearance after it. kids discover ways to discover exceptional forms of seaweed and anemones and are shown the high-quality locations to look for sea urchins, starfish, and crabs. Places for the safaris vary but consist of Mumbles, Rhossili Bay, Bracelet Bay and Port Eynon. • Safaris open to all ages from 3 upwards and are loose. Reserving essential – dates and details could be available on the Oakley Intertidal Facebook web page

Roam with Romans, Northumberland A tour guide and a colleague, wearing Roman soldier gown, stand on Hadrian’s Wall. UK Fb Twitter Pinterest Not anything pops up a history lesson pretty like an area experience – particularly if it’s guided via your very own Roman auxiliary. Kev Robson started out Wild canine Outside 4 years in the past and his two-hour Roam with the Romans taking walks excursion of Hadrian’s Wall offers families an insight into existence in Celtic/Roman Britain, the cultural beliefs of the time, battle procedures and the constructing of the wall itself. The tours start at Cawfields, near Haltwhistle, wherein there is a properly-preserved stretch of wall, the remains of a Milecastle and stunning views throughout the moors. The interactive tours are led by way of a costumed guide – regularly Kevin, however occasionally every other member of the team – and children can attempt on a Roman helmet and Observe a self-guided story map. Kevin also can organise family bushcraft workshops and c498ca6ac814ba2a0e6fddbf2ba4d831 excursions of the area. • Adults £20, 5- to fifteen-12 months-olds £three, under-5s loose. Wilddogoutdoors.Co.uk

wildlife safaris, Scottish Highlands natural world Safaris, Scottish Highlands with wild west.Scot Facebook Twitter Pinterest Spot pink deer, Highland cattle, seals, otters, osprey and eagles on a flora and fauna safari with the guide and photographer Ian MacLeod. Ranging from four hours to a full day, the Wild West minibus excursions out of Fortress William discover the wildlife of Lochaber and the Ardnamurchan peninsula. Ian’s Huge 5 safari consists of a ship trip on Loch Shiel to search for otters and harbor seals, followed by using a street excursion in search of purple deer, purple squirrels, and golden eagles. In October, Ian runs safaris to look pink deer rutting, and he additionally gives searchlight trips to identify nocturnal animals which include bats, badgers and pine marten. • 1/2-day safaris: adults £35, underneath-16s £21. full day Big 5 safari with boat ride: adults £eighty, beneath-16s £48. Wildwest.Scot

Viking walk, York visitors, and publications on the Unique Viking stroll, York Facebook Twitter Pinterest learn about the deeds of Ivar the Boneless, Eirik Bloodaxe and Harald Hardrada on a walk via York with Sigwulf (real call, Neil Tattersall). With flowing locks and dressed in complete Viking apparel, Neil immerses himself in the component and – with a background in overall performance, martial arts and level combat – is aware of a thing or two approximately how to weave a story and wield an axe, which should hold maximum kids enthralled in this 75-minute tour around the historical capital of the north. • excursions run every Saturday and on demand; most are led through Neil but by way of different guides once in a while. Adults £6, below-16s £three. Northernforge.Co.uk

Thames archaeology, London Thames Direction, London Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Tames Path in critical London. Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Mum or dad Dr. Fiona Haughey is one of the international’s leading experts at the records of the river Thames. Her “Secret Thames – the Archaeology” tour is a taking walks records lesson, covering the entirety from the Roman career to London’s Secret rivers. “Beachcombing” tours are no longer approved on the foreshore without a license, so most of the tour now takes place on the Thames Course. But, Fiona brings alongside Masses of her very own captivating unearths for human beings to deal with – everything from a flint all to a medieval clay pipe – and on the end of the tour, individuals are free to go down onto the foreshore to look what they can locate. • Scheduled dates from April-October from Mansion Residence tube station, 2 hours.

Family Life in the 18th Century

Marriage, children, economic circumstances and social status were closely linked during the 1700s. The majority of families were what the famed English author Daniel Defoe termed “the middling class” or the middle class, a status of the family that was non-existent before the 18th century. During the 1600s people were either wealthy and privileged or utterly poor and there was no in-between whatsoever. The rise of the middle class began during the 18th century and its impact upon family was enormous.

Women and men of the upper classes did not marry for love. Instead, they married strictly for financial and social reasons. Women who wished to continue living in a wealthy household simply did not marry a man of the middle or lower class. A self-respecting gentleman didn’t even consider marrying a woman from a poor family. It was unlikely she would possess the social graces and dowry required to marry into such a society. Moreover, rumors would abound as to why a wealthy young man would wed a girl of such poor means. Perhaps he had gotten her “in the family way” and was inclined to do right by her? Such humiliation could never be visited upon his family.

The middle class, on the other hand, could marry whomever they liked. It wasn’t sensible for middle-class

women to marry a poor man since her children would be raised in poverty, yet if her happiness depended upon it, her family was unlikely to intervene. There was no need to marry for social status or wealth since the middle class did not possess either.

Yet the concept of the middle class was still one of privilege. Up until the 18th-century childhood, like the middle class did not exist. The lower class worked hard to eke out a living and their children were expected to work alongside them. The school was a privilege that only the upper class could afford. And well into the 18th-century childhood still did not exist for the lower class.