A Handmade Tale

Tags

genres, Happiness, illustration, publishing, self-publishing, writing

I was talking the other week to my friend Carol. She and I met through our local choir, and have known each other a good many years now. We have written a number of songs together, too, and I wondered if she would be interested in collaborating on writing one to go with my story The Herbarium – something a little more multi-media than I have attempted so far. She said she would! But Carol is not only a musician, she is also a craftsperson, and knows how to make all sorts of intricate and unusual things. One of her many impressive skills is bookbinding, and this gave me an idea. Perhaps with Carol’s help I could create and bind my own books.

I should stop and explain myself at this point. 2018 has been my year of taking myself out of the cut-throat business that is selling (or trying to sell) books. All that scrambling to churn out books as fast as possible, all that battling for a place in a crowded market, and the uncomfortable feeling that I was being used as a catspaw by big business, are a thing of the past now. I’ve written what I wanted, when I wanted, without considerations of timing, genre or anything else. The Herbarium breaks just about every rule a publisher could think of. It’s an odd length – about 12,000 words – not a novel, not a novella, not really a short story either. The construction is a little weird. It doesn’t fit in any obvious genre. It’s quirky. And, dash it all, it’s illustrated. It isn’t tailored to any market whatsoever. Enough to give any publisher an attack of the vapours, I should think.

None of this bothers me, of course. The Herbarium is a one-woman fight-back against the constraints of big business. I wrote it intending to serialise it on this blog so that anyone who wishes to can read it – which I will when the time comes – but might it be something more? Since adding the illustrations I have wondered about publishing it myself, on a small and local scale, perhaps to sell in aid of a charity. Now that is a pleasing thought. But supposing – just supposing – we could bind them individually ourselves. Wouldn’t that make it even more special? It would be more cottage industry than big business, for sure. Handmade, unique books are about as far from big business as you can get, I think. Little works of art – instead of churned-out, machine made stuff. I can’t tell you how much this appeals.

I suppose the real lesson to learn here is that, as a writer, I can take advantage of the modern, large scale opportunities of the internet to make my story freely available to everyone, but at the same time go back to first principles and create some small scale, beautiful artefacts. Modern technology and ancient crafts don’t have to be mutually exclusive. That sounds like a win-win situation to me. So 2019 might be an interesting year. I’m looking forward to it.

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The Tadorna Days – final part

Tags

boats, Grove Ferry, Happiness, Kent, Memoir

Chapter 12 – The Old Station

In which we consider a new enterprise…

The old railway station at Grove Ferry had been empty quite a while, and was starting to show signs of neglect. Birds nested under the eaves and sycamore seedlings sprang up in front of the doors and windows. It was a mess, but it had great potential.

Mum and Dad’s old business at Westgate had not been going well in the year since Tadorna’s refit, and we wondered if we might begin a new life at Grove Ferry. Our idea was to set up a boating business based at the old station. There was a fair packet of land to go with it, and mooring rights along the northern bank for some distance. We could do boat repairs, run the moorings, have a fleet of dinghies for hire, maybe sell bait and tackle for fishing – there were all sorts of possibilities, and we made enquiries to see if the railway authorities would rent the building to us.

It took more than six months to get a reply, but at last we were told that, yes, we could have the house. We were thrilled and began to make definite plans. It was late spring, and we saw ourselves moving in by late summer. Our house in Westgate was put on the market and we submitted plans for the new business – the Old Station Marina, we called it, hopefully.

And so we came out to Grove one day and looked at it anew, as a business proposition. I have to admit it didn’t look much at a glance. We turned in at the station gateway, bumped up the rough roadway past the house, and pulled in proudly on the gravelly patch at the end of the garden. Across the river, Peggy was lying peacefully at her moorings, neat and tidy, while a wren sang from the wall behind her. The idea that such a sight and sound could become an everyday thing, seen each morning, was more delightful than I can express.

We looked at the station moorings, heavily overgrown despite attempts to take them in hand on the part of the boat owners. Dad glared at the nettle clumps. ‘It could,’ he ventured, ‘be just like the Thames!’

We agreed, unlikely as it seemed, and imagined elegant lawns running down to the water. There would have to be a slipway, of course, and we paced about deciding the best site for it, tripping up on brambles and getting stung. The Thames-side vision had faded quite a bit by the time we staggered back to the path.

The station garden, which had once been a well-cultivated vegetable patch, was an awful tangle after a couple of years’ neglect. There were tall grasses, hogweeds and brambles artlessly mixed with cabbages and lupins run wild, and a big untidy rosebush rambling along the fence with abandon. The whole lot was rampaging over the garden, stretching out roots and shoots through the containing fence rails so they seemed fit to burst. There was a lot of work to be done.

The station house itself was equally neglected. It was built of red brick and a grey slate roof with little gables. The gutters were full of sparrows’ nests, the straw and hay spilling over here and there and hanging down in streamers. There was live grass growing in the guttering, too. All the paintwork was done over in dismal railway green-and-cream. The downstairs windows were heavily boarded, and had been since the departure of the last station-master, and the main door was firmly locked. But we had the keys.

Inside it was pitch black, gloomy and airless until the double doors onto the platform were open. A dazzling slab of light fell in and all was revealed. This was the old waiting room, and destined to become the centre of operations for our new business. A train came thundering through the station as we stood in the doorway, and the whole house jumped and rattled from floorboards to roof slates. The sudden rush of wind through the open door sent all the dust flying, and we all went spluttering out onto the platform until it settled, leaving its strong, indefinable railway smell on our clothes and hands.

Upstairs, the house was quite something else. There was a separate door to the station-master’s living quarters. It had a huge scrubby elder bush growing over it, but we pushed through and went in. The stair treads creaked as we went up, and we came out on the landing by a little dormer window.

The flat was small, only four rooms and none of them large, but it was full of light. The main living room lay on the east side, and was completely bare, with only a battered fireplace in the middle of the inner wall. But none of us noticed – we could only stand and gape at the vast eastern view from the window. All down the old Wantsum Channel to Ebbsfleet we could see, right across the marshes and almost to the sea. It was breathtaking; in the mornings the sun would flood this room with light.

The kitchen was tiny and hopelessly inadequate, thick with oily grime. The dust motes flew as Janet and I looked into the room that would be our shared bedroom. I just stood in amazement and stared out of the window. The view was incomparable. I saw the gleam of the river, the green turf fields, marshy pastures and reedbeds, all stretching away up the valley. It was an even finer prospect than the eastern view from the living room. I stared and stared, while the sycamores brushed the other window at the side, hiding the bridge. This aspect of the house was a familiar sight above the treetops from upriver. I could hear the sparrows outside, chirping, hopping from the sycamores into the gutters and scuttering under the eaves.

How could such a little house have been so blessed? I knew instinctively that I could be happy there as nowhere else, and that I should never want to leave. We all agreed to go ahead.

There was no question of beginning work on the house until the deal was settled, so we began to clear the garden. Progress was slow, and the vision of Thames-side lawns seemed no closer, but gradually it came to hand, and the house began to show its ground floor, windows and doors appearing magically from behind the sycamore saplings and elder scrub.

It was midsummer before we found a buyer for our house in Westgate, and in the meantime we had found that the sale would not provide enough capital for the new business. Our car was essential, the dinghies would all be needed; there was only one other asset of any value that we possessed – Tadorna. Having been so recently fitted out and in such fine condition, she was snapped up almost as soon as it was known she was for sale. We had our last day out in her, all together, to Fordwich at the end of May; there was a happy regatta day in early June; and she was sold four days before our house, and carried off to Fordwich by her new owner.

Looking back, it is hard to believe I accepted this loss without great grief. But I did – we all did – because the loss of the boat seemed a small price to pay for the pleasure of living at Grove. Once there, we could be with the river all the time, and there would be plenty of opportunities for boating. So we let her go, regretfully, but with high expectations for the future.

But then things began to go wrong. There was a long delay over the vital planning permission. The summer wore on, and ended. Still there was no news. Finally we could wait no longer; our buyer was becoming impatient to move in, and we must make way. It was impossible to move in at the Ferry, so we rented a flat over a ladies-wear shop in Westgate, temporarily. November came, and still there was no news. And then, one dark, early winter day we heard that planning permission had been denied. There was no appeal.

We had given up our old business when we moved out, and so were left with no house and no livelihood. All that was left was a mounting pile of legal bills. The world fell down round our ears that early wintertime.

We spent an indescribably miserable afternoon clearing our gardening tools and the dinghies off the station premises, knowing there was no chance now of ever living in that happy house.

The railway authorities, meanwhile, decided there would be no more nonsense with the Grove Ferry station, and promptly had it demolished. There was no appeal against that, either. It was all over.

Epilogue – (written 1989)

 

So whatever became of us all? Well, my parents were resourceful people, and it wasn’t the first time they had been out on their ears. And Fate lent us a hand. The flat we had rented above the ladies-wear shop was the key. The owner had allowed the business to run down as she was about to emigrate to New Zealand. Within three days of the refusal of our planning permission, it was suggested that we take over the shop. Such a business was entirely outside our experience but since nothing better seemed likely to come up, we accepted. The first few months were very shaky indeed, but we kept going, with the help of an understanding bank manager, and slowly the business began to thrive. Indeed, it later became the best business Mum and Dad ever had.

Within a few years it had even paid off well enough for them to buy another cruiser, the Molly, and they resumed their boating days. By this time I had married and moved away, and my visits to Grove Ferry became rare, and consequently very precious. When I did come, I looked again and again for the old station. The empty space where the house used to be seemed a sad magic trick. The red brick that had seemed so solid was only a bright patch of remaining dust now, and the sparrows chirped in the gutters no more. Everything was gone – the platforms, the signal box, everything – all dismantled and taken away. Soon the encroaching plants had covered every trace. Oddly enough, though, our old dream of Thames-like lawns by the river almost came true. The station moorings were rented out and the new owners cleared the jungle of elders and nettles. The trees were clipped, and the sloping bank became lawns and flowerbeds.

One day, years later, we came upriver on board the Molly on a happy expedition to our old haunts, and dallied at the entrance to the tidal lake near the colliery, admiring the water. As we approached the weed-boom, we saw there was something caught behind the barrier, something large – a boat. The engine idled as the Molly edged gingerly through the gap, while we stared at the derelict wreck wedged among the clutter behind the boom.

It was Tadorna. Battered and forlorn, she lay sadly among the flotsam. The patterned curtains we had fitted were still there, ragged and rotten with damp; her hood was gone, with most of her other fittings, and a cruel gash had opened her flank. Her bow was aground or she would have sunk. Her rubbing strakes hung off in shreds among the strips of tattered decking and peeling paint, still recognisably the same as at her fitting-out, years earlier. She was a sorry sight.

After that day I never saw her again. Most likely she met the same fate as most marine-ply boats and ended up as a pile of soggy boards on the bank. But so long as I am not sure, I like to think that somebody took her home and patched her up, and that she sails still on some river. Perhaps she does.

 

When I visit Grove Ferry now, I meet my own ghost at every turn. There is the place by the slipway where I proudly held Tadorna’s line at the launch, twenty years ago, now; and there is the little sycamore where Peggy used to be berthed; and that little clutch of timbers in the water above the bridge is all that remains of our old friend Rose in June. There have been many changes at Grove, many boats have come and gone and many people. Len Miller and Frank and Rene have all been dead some years, and Mum and Dad have retired and given up boating. Janet and I bring our children to visit the place where once we were all so happy.

If I lean on the rail and look upstream, I see the one thing that never really changes, the River Stour, still flowing soupily down to the sea, still open to the spring north-easterlies, still winding across the marshy valley where the lapwings loop-the-loop.

It is as empty, quiet and desolate as ever it was in our Tadorna days. Still our same rough and ready, wild, windy river, where once we leaned on the rail and watched a pretty blue and white cruiser bobbing at her moorings one still July evening.

THE END

The Tadorna Days – Part 11

Tags

boats, Grove Ferry, Kent, Memoir, memories, serial

Chapter 11 – Season’s End

In which we take our final voyage of the year…

It was a grey, chilly morning, but very still. I sat on the bow and leaned on the pulpit rail, relaxing, as we pulled out past our upstream neighbour, Sue II, and fended off casually with my foot as we slid by. This was to be our final trip of the year, we were all agreed. It was late October.

There was hardly anyone about as we cleared the bridge, and Tadorna cruised slowly in the shadow of the boatpark wall. Though the little gateway I could see the dull shapes of laid-up boats settled in the grasses. Rose in June bobbed at her moorings on our little wash as we passed. Already there were yellow leaves on the water under the great elm, and more falling all the time. On the high bank the summer was collapsing before our eyes, with just the faded heads of old grasses left. Round the bend at the end of the first reach the reeds were all changing colour, and the draggled stems hung down over the water, ice still.

Tadorna plied steadily on, carrying us between the battered banks, a dirty sycamore leaf plastered to her side. She swung round into the open fields and Dad thumped the throttle open so the boat threw forward her nose, and sat back in the water as she had on her first trip of the year when we came this way. The water slid away beneath the hull, trickling and bubbling, and soon we came to Stodmarsh. The stream outlet by the thicket looked a wreck, choked with debris from the summer – sallow leaves, dead branches, old planks and an oildrum with a moorhen perched on top. The thicket was dark and sinister, wet and silent. From the distance came the dark rumblings of the mine buildings; the rattle of the conveyor chute and deeper sounds of industry. In these grey waters it rang ominously.

There was a place like a little beach just opposite the entrance to the tidal lake, and we pulled Tadorna up on to it, bow first. Just upstream, the weedboom had been hoisted out of the water and was lying askew on the bank with a huge pile of smelly rubbish and flotsam nearby. It looked as forlorn as a wreck dumped up there with the weedmass festering in the still air, ashore at last after months in the water. The empty space in the river where the boom had been seemed desolate, already winter-bound by this annual clear out, and devoid of its former character.

Dad fixed up a rod and began to fish. Across the river on the tidal lake, still as a bell, there were cormorants again on the dead trees, all with their wings spread-eagled. When Janet and I walked over the shale bank to see the other lake, hidden from the river, we found it dead still, with the grebes fishing far out in the middle. You could hear the soft splash as they dived. The woods up on the valley edge had a touch of yellow, and stood in utter quiet except for the prickly sound of the finest drizzle and a robin singing far away.

Later, Dad laid the rod carefully on the cabin roof, with the hook tucked under the reel edge, and we moved upriver, past the bent tree at Puxton Corner, until we came again to the telegraph pole reach and moored under our old willow.

Dad suggested I take charge of the rod for a while, and settled back to roll a cigarette while I baited the hook. Mind the tree, I thought, as I cast. Dad wouldn’t thank me for losing his best float in the willow. The float plopped into the water and the hook sank out of sight. I fixed the reel and settled on the cabin roof to await developments.

Dappled patterns of light fell through the leaves and played on the boat and on the water. The float sat in a dimple of surface tension, a bright marker. Dad watched, advised, and smoked contentedly. I hoisted up the line to look at the bait once or twice, unhooked the golden weed streamers, re-baited and cast back.

Suddenly the float gave a sharp dip, and vanished smartly under the water.

‘A bite!’ said Dad, dropping his cigarette in his lap. There was a panic-stricken pause while he retrieved it, and I was left to my own devices. I had not been concentrating.

I struck, and to the surprise of us both, out flipped a little perch, spines all on end. I reeled in and grasped it, slipping my hand over its head so that the spines folded down. It was a beautiful creature, all silver and green stripes, with red fins and golden brown eyes. It gasped, staring. I slid the hook carefully from its white lip, and climbed down onto the bow. We peered at each other for a moment, the perch and I, then I reached down over the gunwale and let it gently back into the water, where it vanished immediately.

‘You want to watch,’ said Dad, observing this rather guarded performance, ‘that you don’t get a pike next time!’

We left for home early, taking a long look at the placid lakes as we passed, knowing we wouldn’t see them again that year. I took the wheel and we pressed on back to Grove with the throttle wide open to be in time for tea at Len’s tearoom.

Back at the moorings we closed up for the season. Frank came to help us take the outboard off for the winter – a heavy job. Tadorna looked dishevelled and sorry for herself so we wiped her down until she looked respectable, and then tidied up the landing-stage.

The blue dinghy was coming home with us for a refit, so I went off down the muddy path to fetch it. I grasped the gunwale and turned it over from its resting place against the old wall. With a struggle I slid it over the wet grasses until the stern was almost in the water. I took the rope and gave the dinghy a little push, and it slithered easily into the water with a happy plop and lay there tight under Tadorna’s nose. I stepped aboard and rowed out into the river. The tide was running strongly down, and progress up to the slipway was slow. There was the familiar echo of oar-dips under the concrete arches, and then I turned in at the slip and pulled gently until the bow grated aground.

Dad came down to give me a hand. I jumped out and we carried the little boat up the slip together. Withered leaves from the old willow by the boatpark wall tumbled down into the boat as we strapped her to the trailer. By the time we headed into the tearoom, it was almost dark.

There was a thrush calling somewhere up on the north bank and the nearly-bare branches of the chestnuts in the inn garden clacked together as a breeze got up. Between them a star glittered icily. Very soon, maybe, storms would come and the river would run to flood, churning with grey water, and winter would be upon us. Just then the tearoom door flew open, and out fell the yellow light, the warm, tea-scented air and the babble of chatter. We hurried inside.

 

Look out for the final part of The Tadorna Days, in which we consider a new enterprise…

The Tadorna Days – Part 10

Tags

boats, Grove Ferry, Kent, Memoir, memories, serial

Chapter 10 – The Regatta

In which we meet the sweeps and millers…

I paddled about in midriver, then edged the dinghy back under Blue Dolphin’s nose and hitched up at our stern cleat. Rene was on her second cup of tea, and just saying that Gordon had ordered his megaphone. This was a sure sign that the Grove Ferry boat club’s annual regatta was approaching. Gordon Austin was the club commodore, and lived at Grove on board his boat, Shearwater. Each year the megaphone arrived for regatta day so that he could make himself heard above the racket.

Another annual ritual was the call for a working party to set up the club marquee. It was large and heavy, and the boat club membership tended to be rather geriatric, with so many retired people, so the working party was often a bit sparse.

The regatta itself, though officially a day of fairly thoughtful dinghy racing and manoeuvring, usually amounted to a lot of messing about on and in the water, with various minor fund-raising activities by the boat club, and a great deal of eating and drinking. There was always a funfair atmosphere, and the general public turned up in droves.

Rene was in charge of the tombola and bottle stall again – she seemed to be in charge of pretty well everything, actually, except the megaphone – and was selling raffle tickets by the bundle, though I doubt if she had any idea what the prizes were likely to be. And she was looking for volunteers to take part in a Sweeps and Millers fight. We all knew how cold the river was, even in August, and politely declined.

Rene had a private tragedy which she rarely mentioned; she and Frank had had no children. The gap this left in her life was filled by helping others. Indeed, helping other people to have fun was Rene’s main occupation at Grove, and we were among the first she took under her wing. On the other hand, she had no time at all for snobbery or pompousness, both of which surfaced occasionally in the boat club, especially around regatta time. She made merciless fun of the offenders, to the great delight of everyone else.

When the great day came, it was fine and warm. We came in early to dress Tadorna with bunting for the occasion. The annual uproar had turned everything upside down as usual, with many unfamiliar faces about the place, and calamitous goings-wrong with the plans. Already people were crowding the bridge. The Sandwich boat club had a standing invitation to attend, and many of them would bring their boats upriver for the day.

The marquee was already in place under the horse chestnuts in the inn garden, draped with bunting and ready for business as salad bar and beer tent. Somewhere up on the bridge Gordon was trying out his megaphone. There was plenty of activity on the moorings, too. Peggy, naturally, was dressed over all, and many-coloured strings of bunting were flying, strung from mast to pulpit rail on boat after boat. The Union Jack, a bit battered, was in place on the club flagpole, and a large banner proclaiming ‘GFBC welcomes you’, another piece of Rene’s handiwork, was draped over the bridge rails. Various dinghies and small speedboats were pottering up and down the moorings – only on regatta days did we have that much traffic on the water. Someone was roaring a powerful outboard somewhere upstream, and car after car ran slowly over the bridge, stopping to take in the colourful scene.

It was turning out very hot, and quite a crowd was gathering, waiting for the inn to open. Swarms of people were on the bridge, too; the rails would be crowded with leaning elbows from mid-morning to late afternoon. Gordon was up there in his yachting cap trying to restore order with the megaphone, and having very limited success, as was Len Miller, now trying to prevent cars lingering on the bridge as they passed. He was red in the face and indignant at the public’s lack of proper respect for a water bailiff, and the regulars kept well out of his way. Suddenly the cry went up, ‘They’re here!’

Everyone dashed onto the bridge to welcome the Sandwich contingent, and poor Len was almost bowled over by the onrush. The scene downstream was spectacular, with the Grove boats brightly decorated, ensigns flying, the moorings crowded with people in the cockpits and on the landing-stages. The Sandwich boats were just making their entrance, led by their commodore, Harry Moyes, whose boat Seabird, was, naturally, the nicest of the lot. Everyone waved and called out as Harry came up to moor near the bridge, where he received a regal welcome from Gordon, his opposite number. The other boats tied up double and triple banked with their friends from Grove, so the river was narrowed to a trickle here and there, and the bridge rails were crowded to capacity with jostling elbows.

The dreariness of those boats that were unattended was emphasised by all this; those, that is, that were always unattended, packed up for winter all the year round. Their desertion showed up all the more for the special clean-up the others had had. Poor Whitewings remained untouched and unopened all day.

When the Sandwich boats had all come in, the crowds on the bridge began to disperse for lunch, and we strolled back down the moorings to the peace and comfort of Tadorna’s cockpit until it was time for the Sweeps and Millers.

Up on the bridge, Harry Moyes smoothed his handlebar moustaches and stood by graciously as Gordon and the megaphone announced the teams, who had occupied a couple of sturdy dinghies and armed themselves with bags of soot and flour. Gordon had hardly finished his introduction before they began to pelt each other. The frail bags flew through the air, bursting open with a splut as they hit the dinghy gunwales, the water, or somebody’s ear. Very soon both teams were unrecognisable, and, as ammunition ran low, they began to rock the boats precariously.

All this delighted the crowds on the bridge, who yelled encouragement as they began to anticipate a ducking for some or all of the participants. The end was inevitable; the sweeps pulled and rocked their opponents’ boat until the gunwale dipped below the surface and it slid gracefully down, while the millers, covered in soot, sloshed about in useless attempts to bail, and then fell in. The dinghy bow alone remained above the water, as it began to float slowly off with a flotilla of empty soot bags in attendance. Meanwhile, not to be outdone, the millers swam to the sweeps’ boat and hauled determinedly on it until it capsized, and they all fell in. Everyone shouted and laughed and stamped their feet up and down the moorings, while children on the bridge had to be restrained from jumping in to join them.

When the dinghies had been recovered, pulled up on the slip, emptied out and left to dry, the word went round that someone was going to try water-skiing along the first reach. Impossible, we said.

Nonetheless, just above the bridge there was a tiny speedboat with a huge black outboard motor. And there was a fellow in a wetsuit, apparently about to waterski. We leaned on the rail and watched as the boat took off at high speed, with the skier whipped out of the water in pursuit, while an elephantine backwash sent the end boats thumping against the bank, and Len Miller’s blood pressure soaring. The ensemble disappeared round the corner. After a while there was still no sign of them – they fell foul of the shallows, perhaps, or worse, a low branch. Anyway, there was no more water-skiing after that, so we all went back to Tadorna for tea. The sweeps and millers, Rene told us, were none the worse for wear and all drying off nicely. The river was reported to be very cold indeed.

In the late afternoon the crowds began to disperse, and we began to clear up. Poor old Grove looked a bit battered, knee-deep in ice-cream wrappers, lolly sticks and cigarette ends. Draggled bunting was being taken down, and the boats tidied, wearily. Some of them had splashes of soot or flour about them. It was washing-up time.

There was a certain pleasure in showing off Grove Ferry to so many people, but it left us all with a feeling of having been invaded. The image the public saw was noisy and overblown, not a bit like the place we knew and loved and pottered about in on Sunday mornings. Thank heavens, we said, that it only happens once a year, and went off to help gather up the litter.

 

Look out for the next chapter of The Tadorna Days, in which we take our final voyage of the year…