Abigail Thorne

Stealth desk

Where did I go?

Today was a trial run, so I stayed close to home in a small piece of woodland on our property. There is no need to be stealthy here, but folks are so friendly that if the neighbours see me, they will come over for a chat. The whole point is having a tranquil day to is to work, so I will keep my head down.
The woods were quieter than I expected, and at midday, even the birds were asleep. I heard a tractor twice on the lane this morning but nothing else . Bliss!
The thing that I’m enjoying most was the smell, damp, musky and delicious.

It’s late afternoon now but cool because the canopy is thick in the area I’m sitting. My phone says it’s 26 degrees centigrade but I’m beginning to wish I had a jacket.
This morning the hardest thing was starting. I found it so peaceful I felt as though I was on holiday and ended up taking an hour over my breakfast, simply enjoying the place.

What am I working on?

I am working on the first book I wrote and published on amazon. The title was ‘The silver chalice’. But it isn’t available any longer? I took everything off last year, having decided that nothing was good enough.
I need to confess that I have done what you should never do, lost confidence and tossed my toys out of the pram. Since then, I have put books back on Amazon much improved technically. In making technical improvements I lost my voice the thing that made them authentic, so now I find myself at the bottom of a deep dark rabbit hole fiddling with old manuscripts.
Now I have got that off my chest, I will be positive. I have planned a way to get myself out of the dark and into the light again. Only time will tell if I succeed.
The story is about a Church of England Vicar, who has lost her confidence. She moves to a large church as associate minister after a chance encounter with the Rector John Jeffries. He needs help with pastoral work, the one aspect of her job that she loves, and he persuades her she is the right person for the job. She takes a twelve-month contract with the condition that she can assess her calling or vocation at the end of that time.
Two months after she arrives, an intruder breaks in to the church and murders John Jeffries. They steal his personal papers, the church silver, and a historic book kept in a glass case at the back of the sanctuary.
Thrown into turmoil, Alex must find out who broke in and what they wanted. As she solves the mystery, she finds friends and a sense of purpose along the way.
I know so much more about writing than I did when I started. I am creating a stronger, more cohesive story I hope.
Today I worked on the subplot. (It didn’t have one before.) So far, so good. When I have finished, I plan to run it as a serial on here before republishing.

What’s in my lunch box?

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.com

Wow, lunch time!

This morning for breakfast I had egg mayo with bacon on a home-made cob.
I still use the midlands term for bread rolls. When I lived in Yorkshire, I called them teacakes, and I bet you have another name for them. This kind of stuff makes me love the English language, and encourages me to keep writing.
For lunch I have another cob This time brie and gooseberry Jam . An English Kitkat which taste different to the Spanish ones, and a crunchy bar brought over by a friend who pays for her visits in chocolate. She doesn’t have to pay at all, but don’t tell her that!

For my afternoon snack, I had chocolate chip cookies made the day before with smarties and chocolate chips.
Plenty of water and a can of orange fizzy pop completed it.
I missed my fruit and salad so I will add those in next week.

What am I reading?

My computer does not have enough battery life for the whole day, so brought plenty of reading matter with me.
At lunch time I started a book called, Tea and comfort by Andrea Hurst. I will post a full review in my blog. So far, I am unsure about it. It is not a genre I read, and I bought from the cover, without reading the description, so to be fair I will finish it before I write a review. I am convincing myself that reading novels is part of being a writer.
In the afternoon, I read part of a book called Intuitive Editing by Tiffany Yates Martin. It is brilliant and I will put a full review on my blog this week. It cannot say how much it has helped me. And the best thing about it? it is so encouraging, breaking everything into doable stages with headings like how to find it and how to fix it in every chapter.
I am building a collection of craft books because. I aspire to be the best writer possible. Some books are better than others and now this is at the top of my pile. I intend to review those I have found the most helpful in case anyone other writers out there find themselves down the same rabbit hole as me.
Hey ho, and onwards we must go.

Reflections.

Photo by Miguel u00c1. Padriu00f1u00e1n on Pexels.com

Was the day worthwhile?

Absolutely, I not only had a wonderful time, but the following day I was buzzing with enthusiasm for my writing. It pulled me out of the rut I have been in for a while.

What would I do differently?

I need different gear,

In the long term, a battery pack so that my computer lasts all day. I need a new phone so I can use the internet. A camping tarp, so I have protection from the rain. And a camping stove, for days when I want a hot meal.

Oh, and I didn’t use my hammock. I was sure I would.

I use a walking aid because of a back problem, so I am adapting an old rucksack to give me more carrying capacity, meaning I will go further afield. Even though the next two or three weeks I plan to stay close to home.

I have already bought a small flask for my breakfast coffee and individual lunch box so that I don’t have to take the big one we use for picnics

I know people write in cafes, and occasionally I have done that, but this is so much more me. I have a desk in the house and love it. My books, notes etc, are within reach but it was feeling claustrophobic as my mobility issues worsened. I cannot set off for a brisk walk to ‘ blow away the cobwebs’ in the way I once could. This appears to solve that problem. I’ll keep you posted.

Paradela

Photo by Pragyan Bezbaruah on Pexels.com

Another poem today, this time much more lighthearted.

I wrote this when we visited a fiesta in a nearby village. It has a small population of two thousand people. The name Paradela means ‘A stop on the Road.’ It seemed appropriate.

Galicia is sometimes surprising.

Paradela

On Monday Paradela
is a sleepy little town.

On Tuesday Paradela
has nothing going down.

On Wednesday in Paradela
you can buy yourself a cow.

On Thursday Paradela
has a different feeling now

In a square just off the main street,
someone’s setting up a fair.
A sign’s up in the market
warning ‘pedestrians beware’.
Just beyond the town
a closer look reveals.
A farmer on his tractor
doing wheelies in his fields

On Friday Paradela
is getting very weird,
There’s a ramp, a row of buses,
And a lot of men with beards.

On Saturday Paradela
is a very different place.
Bikers clad in leather
are filling every space.
There are Hondas in the marketplace.
Ducati’s in the park.
And as for Kawasaki
they have built themselves an ark.
Yamahas are roaring
and drowning out the sound,
of the leather cladded DJ
on Benelli sponsored ground.
He is playing heavy metal
to the Royal Enfield crowd.
New models from Suzuki
will make their owners proud.
There’s a stylish BMW,
An antique Norton too,
And a row of ancient Triumphs
that served in World War two.
In pride of place on main street
is Harley Davidson
each one so well polished
they outshine the blazing sun.

On Sunday Paradela
is a town gone slightly barmy,
With stuntmen jumping buses
and a display team from the army
The market hall’s a restaurant
behind a giant bar
So the locals are as happy
as the people from afar.

On Monday Paradela
is a sleepy little town.
Just a few exhausted locals
taking all the posters down.

Misty Mornings

Summer days at Casa Batan almost always begin with shrouds of mist. Misty mornings that come before the heat of the day takes hold are one of the privileges of living here.

It covers over mountain tops
and hides the rolling hills.
And winds its way up rivers
dimming swirls and rills

It dances through the forest
with the spirits of the trees.
And hides the fields and hedgerows
then hovers on the breeze,

On the lake it sunbathes,
with feathered falling motion
Yet settles in the valleys
Like a liquid silver ocean

It mingles in the churchyard
with souls of the long gone,
Then frightens playing children
With a half heard mournful song

Inhabits ruined cottages
with smoke from empty grates.
And grasps at passing pilgrims
With icy fingered fate.

It touches all the spiderwebs
makes crystal chandeliers
But in its passing over
leaves a washing line of tears.

Legends ghosts and fairies
all hide within its folds
But so do prayers of pilgrims
And the love of long-lost souls

That is why my homeland
By strangers is dismissed
Because the heart of My Galicia
Is hidden in the mist

By Abigail Thorne

The baker’s shop. A memoir.

Almost all the happy memories I have of my childhood revolve around food. My mum enjoyed cooking and my dad enjoyed eating. Not only was my mother an excellent cook, but she was an extrovert, sociable hostess and, in the early sixties, these were admirable qualities.
Memory is fickle and changes with family stories and perception, but there’s something life affirming about rooting out the best things and allowing those memories to breathe and grow and give the less happy stuff a bit of balance.
Visits to the bakery are amongst my earliest recollections. Going to the market was a weekly event with a ritual attached. My sister rode in a large pram, and I wore my best coat in anticipation of a visit to a cafe afterwards. The bakery came between the market and the cafe.

We joined the queue, which wound along the street by the marketplace.
“Hold tight to the pram, and I’ll buy you a chocolate milkshake,” whispered Mum.
This was the worst part of the day. The prodding, poking and height measuring of the other women in the line. My long pigtails admired and my pale cheeks pinched.
“You look like your grandmother.” Is a refrain with no response, belonging as it did to the nonsense phrases that my mother’s friends used all the time.

Soon, I tire of that agony, and I dive under the big pram wheel and press my nose against the window of the shop next door. It sells model trains, and the window is full of tiny houses, pieces of track and miniature signal boxes. I long to go inside, but know better than to ask.
We reach the bowed window of the bakers at last, with its shelves of loaves and plates of cake and the unmistakable aroma of baking bread. We park my sister in front with the other prams, our shopping neatly tucked under the pram cover, and the hood up ‘In case of rain’.
Mum then yanks me through the door into the tiny, crowded interior. She is soon chatting, and I begin the job of avoiding shopping bags full of hard vegetables. I wriggle into gaps to find a spot to avoid getting trampled on. The combinations of legs, umbrellas, shopping bags and endless talking terrifies me still.

Sometimes I found the gap beside the glass cases full of fancy cakes, and pressed my face close to see the vanilla slices, meringues, and cream cakes. The swirls of cream and pastel coloured icing fascinated me.

If I close my eyes now, and I can touch the glass and see the cake ensconced inside.

My favourite place was under the big wooden counter where I see into the bakery itself. Men in white trousers putting trays of loaves into a giant oven, with long poles. Or stood at a table shaping pies and pasties, crimping edges at lighting speed. A machine in one corner rattled constantly, and every so often someone lifted mounds of dough onto another table to be shaped and put on racks ready for the oven. Being too young to understand the process never dimmed the fascination. The warm yeasty smell, glimpses of flame at the back of the oven, and constant movement was enough.
Mum always bought a curd tart and an egg custard tart. They came in a brown paper bag warm from the oven with the scent of nutmeg leaking from the opening. They were for my dad, his favourites, and the presentation came after tea, as though he had won an important award. It was all part of the ritual.

Living in Spain as I do, I haven’t seen a Yorkshire curd tart for years. Custard Tarts, I make when the hens are laying, or buy the Portuguese variety from the supermarket.
I made one with homemade farmer’s cheese, knowing at once that the taste would be different. Fresh cheese curds are a byproduct of the cheese-making process and all together richer. Next time I’ll buy fresh cheese from the market and crumble it, rather than turning UHT milk into something it can never be.
Despite the lack of authentic curds, the result was a delight, lighter and less sweet that a modern cheese cake. Plain rather than a fancy desert.
Cakes and tarts like this were part of life then, women cooked and baked as a part of life, not as a hobby. I realised much later when I started going for tea at the houses of friends, how lucky I was that mum was a skilled baker.

Shop bought cakes, rather than homemade, were special and bought from the bakery, but we ate pudding or cake every day as part of a meal. I didn’t taste the mass-produced stuff till I left home years later.

In the following decades, cakes became frowned upon for dietary reasons, but simultaneously became richer and sweeter. Baking has become a hobby and they can therefore be more elaborate.
I make no judgement. Eating habits have changed over the years, along with the number of calories we need to get through the day. I admit I have a nostalgic fondness for old-fashioned teatime time cakes free of cream or mounds of icing, just hints of nutmeg, vanilla, lemon or caraway.

Locks, Dogs and Gypsies.

Scones

I recently watched a TV cooking competition on YouTube. The judges asked the contestants to cook something which was a family tradition and reminded them of home.
One girl made scones. She told the judges that every day after school she went to her gran’s house, and her granny made the best scones. Her face lit up at the memory. Some days there would be a cheese scone with a bowl of homemade soup, sometimes a plain one with butter and a glass of milk, but her favourites were sweet and contained glace cherries. My mind was instantly cast back to my childhood, and memories of watching mum make scones.

My mother’s scones were famous. Sometimes long after I had left home, I would meet a stranger in Bridlington where she lived, who would stop and say “You must be Dorothy’s daughter,” and after a few pleasantries I would be told ‘she makes the most marvellous scones.’ Even now, many years after she died, a conversation about Mum includes the same reference.

I remember sitting at the table watching her hands rise and fall as she rubbed the fat into the flour and just like the contestant; they came both savoury and sweet and were a frequent after-school snack.

People who know the family assume she taught me how to make them, but she never did. In fact, she never taught me how to make anything. Right until she died, she assumed I couldn’t cook. In spite of that, my love of cooking and good food came from watching her.

The rise and fall of her hands in the rhythmic, almost hypnotic, way she rubbed in the fat, allowed the flour to fall back into the bowl in puffs and clouds gathering air as it went. I know now that’s why her scones were so light. She used different fats, butter or margarine, maybe lard or a mixture. Depending on whether they were sweet or savoury or may depending on what was available. The fat and the milk came straight from the fridge. They needed to be cold. There was always salt, and sugar, pinches and spoonfuls no weighing. No eggs, not even for the top. She brushed them with milk.

I believe she had made them so often that instinct played a bigger part than memory. The feel of flour told her if the fat was right. She eyeballed the liquid as she cut it into the dough with a knife, never hesitating or even looking too closely.
Once or twice, friends of hers have asked for her recipe, but even though I have her hand written recipe notebook, there is no mention of scones.

The scones that the cooking show contestant made from her granny’s recipe did not impress the judges. They were not rich enough, more like American biscuits. She served them with butter, not cream. They were too big and not refined, so they wouldn’t look good on a cake stand. They should have raisins, not glace cherries and more sugar.

One judge, finished with the comment, “Of course they taste fantastic but they are not traditional scones, so they don’t fit the brief. What makes a good TikTok story is not good enough here.” He then stuffed the remaining half scone into his mouth.

I watched the confusion on the girl’s face and was angry on her behalf. In the north of England, when me and this girl’s granny grew up, we didn’t have cream teas. TikTok hadn’t been invented and few of us had the money for afternoon tea in a posh hotel. (A tradition that originated in southern aristocratic houses.) Scones were a filling carbohydrate that were quick to make and filled hungry bellies.

Curious, I looked up the history. The modern recipes probably started in Scotland as a filling quick bread, the word scone originating from the word for lump or mass. Variations were made in Ireland and the north of England, all cooked on the fire or a griddle. With the invention of baking powder, quick breads and scones really took off and spread down the country, where no doubt they got fancier. The thing that struck me from this research is that the “traditional scone” doesn’t exist in one form because cooking simple flour doughs has happened since fire and grinding stones existed.

Fer goodness’ sake we can’t even agree on the pronunciation, let alone the recipe.

For reference Pru Leith’s technique bible suggests an egg wash but no egg in the dough and is sparse on the sugar, the Be-Ro recipe book (first published in 1923), from which many modern recipes originate, used an egg in the dough and on top and more sugar.
Mrs Beeton includes recipes for both dropped scones and baked scones, and suggests using sour milk and Modern practical cookery published around 1940, devotes twenty pages to scone recipes which include a variety of add-ins including candied cherries and mixed peel but are even meaner with sugar and fat than I remember and suggest a mix of milk and water to bring the dough together.

My recipe for cheesy scones, as shown in the pictures, is:

225 gm self-raising flour (I make my own)

30 gm butter

60gm grated hard cheese. (I like cheddar)

A hand full of snipped chives.

A pinch of salt and a teaspoon of sugar. (You don’t taste the sugar, but it gives a better crust and balances the flavour.)

Heat the oven to 200 C -190 if you have a fan oven

Rub the cheese and fat into the flour until you get a rubble like mixture. The butter disappears, but there will still be flecks of cheese.

Add the salt and sugar and chives.

Add the milk a spoonful at a time, mixing it in with a knife. When you have a clumpy mess, press together with your hands. It should come together in a ragged ball.

Remove from the bowl and shape into a ball on a floured work surface.

Flatten with your fingers until you have a round, flat disc and cut with a biscuit cutter. Re shaping the left over dough each time until you have seven or eight rounds. Put them on a baking tray and brush the tops with milk.

Remove from the oven when they are puffed and golden on top about 10 minutes.

Cool and sprinkle with chilli power.

They are not famous and I doubt people will talk about them after I am gone, but they do remind me of mum and some of the good parts of my childhood and straight from the oven with a bowl of homemade soup. They really can’t be beaten.

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The mystery of the metallic manure.

When we moved to the Galicia fourteen years ago, we had never lived in the countryside before. We couldn’t speak either the local Galician language used by our neighbours or Castilian Spanish. Over the years, there have been many misunderstandings because of both language and lack of rural experience. I can’t hope to explain how different rural Galian life is to life in a busy Midlands city in the UK.
We didn’t expect that fourteen years after we moved here, many unfathomable things would still happen. One such incident occurred a few weeks ago.

Steve takes the dog for a walk long before I am even out of bed. He is one of those cheerful morning people that I have such difficulty coping with. Because of that, he brings me a drink after he has walked the dog and leaves me alone until I wake up properly. On this occasion, he looked worried when he came in with the coffee.

“It’s frosty outside and there are big tire tracks all over our land. You heard nothing last night or this morning, did you?”
I shook my head; He was late, and I was working when he returned home the previous evening. I wasn’t awake when he got up that day.
“It looks like a tractor and smells as though they were muck spreading.” He added helpfully.

“What about the people who cut our hay? Perhaps they hope to get a better crop this year.” I was thinking on my feet, (actually my backside as I was sitting in bed drinking my coffee).
“Seems strange that they didn’t tell us,” he said, but accepted my explanation.

It went out of my mind for a few days.
Later that week on a lovely sunny day and my neighbour knocked on the door and asked if I wanted to walk up the lane with her since in the sunshine. I gladly agreed, closing my computer with a sigh of relief. Writing is much less fun in lovely weather.
We ambled along, stopping to point out the early spring flowers.
“Who has been spraying your field?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. We wondered if it was those people with sheep who cut the hay last year.”
“No, it’s not them. They drive an ancient tractor held together by string and good luck. No, those tracks are from one of those new giant ones. You need to be rich to afford one.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know then, because if it’s a gigantic machine, that also rules out the team who were working for Paca’s family. “There had been a problem the previous summer with the family of a deceased neighbour who go the boundaries mixed up.
By now Chus was marching across the field to examine the clues, or in this case, tire tracks. We both flopped down beside the large ruts, and I was concerned when I saw how deep the ruts were. They had really churned up the ground and would make it harder to cut the grass in the summer.

She handed me a handful of the muck that they had spread. “Smell that!”
“It smells like manure,” I ventured, not really knowing why I was sitting in the middle if a field smelling dirt.
Can’t you smell that metallic odour? It’s not natural.”

I shook my head, pulling a face, still clueless, and I had also seen Manuel, another neighbour, crawling up the lane in his car, gawping at us. Obviously, his neighbours had gone ‘loco’.
Chus was using her ‘I’ll explain slowly because you are English voice’ ” You know what a cow eats from the muck” she explained “When cows eat grass and good hay, it’s sweet, a bit like warm beer. This comes from a cow factory. It is full of chemicals and who knows what else.” I still couldn’t tell the difference, but we had discussed industrial factory farming before, so I guessed where this discussion was heading. She had kept a small herd of grass-fed beef cattle before an eye problem had forced her into early retirement. Her husband is a one of the best butchers in the district. They have ‘views’ on industrial farming and the quality of meat and dairy products that result from it.
Now I had one neighbour thinking I had lost my marbles and another despairing at my lack of crucial countryside knowledge.
“They came in the middle of the night, illegally dumping their muck that’s what has happened, what are you going to do about it?”
I shrugged “I don’t know,” I answered weakly “Maybe it will improve the quality of our grass.” The look she gave me then would have wilted a geranium.
“We’ll just have to keep watch, or make signs to say ‘Private property, no manure in the village’.”
And we that proclamation she got up and marched back down the lane with me trailing in her wake.

I had no intention of making signs or keeping watch. Even if there was a sign, it wouldn’t stop a farmer from coming in the night to dump his slurry. In the daytime, Chus and I are often the only people in the village. She is 5 foot 1 and weighs seven stone and I walk with a stick. Neither of us stand a chance against a large tractor and a man doing something illegal. (Intensive farms are required to have slurry tanks and have the waste disposed of professionally).
I have an overwhelming feeling of failure. It feels like we have made no progress since we got here. I don’t know what really happened or how I can go about fixing it. Unfortunately, I still don’t have the language to deal with an angry dispute in Gallego despite my efforts to learn Spanish and worst of all, I still can’t tell the difference between good and bad manure.

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Publication, Prayer and Pilgrims.

The week after I publish a book is always strange and often, I mooch about the house, not quite knowing what to do with myself. In theory, I start the next book, but the time immediately before the publication date is so intense that I have to shake that off before I can think of anything else.

This time the only difference to that pattern is that I already have the draft of the next book written, so I will edit and revise, instead of starting something fresh. Today, that sounds even less appealing.
Added that, we are in the middle of holy week. Steve has days off and the weather is glorious.

My mind strays toward the summer to come. We are planting spring flowers on the patio and on Sunday we are celebrating Easter day in Santiago with our friend Anna Noon, who is the Anglican/Episcopal Missioner for Pilgrims. I am hoping some of those Pilgrims will join us for the Eucharist in Santa Susanna’s and make the celebration memorable.

To prepare for that, I have been making prayer patches. (Look up Prayer shawl ministry, if you don’t know what they are) for people to carry in their pocket as a symbol that Christ is with them and to assist prayer. Especially useful on a pilgrimage.

As I work, I recall how difficult it has often been to find a time and quiet space to pray. As a child, my family and I often visited the village of Epworth, the birthplace of John and Charles Wesley, the founders of the Methodist church. I learned about Susanna Wesley, their mother. She had nineteen children, and the family was poor, so help with the household and children was beyond her means. One day, in desperation, she put her apron over her head and told the children that when they saw her like that; she was with God and they must not disturb her.

What she actually did in those prayer times I don’t know, but as a young mother, when having a ‘quiet time’ was nigh on impossible, I remembered her example. The apron thing wasn’t very practical, so I looked for a similar solution and for me, it was a small wooden cross which I carried in my hand whenever I pushed the pram. And no, I did not spend every moment when the cross was in my hand in intercession. Sometimes I needed to be quiet. Once or twice I needed a good cry. I’m sure that for Susanna it was the same. I know that because she was human.

I am sad to say that her life’s circumstances didn’t change a great deal. Nine of her children died in infancy, and her marriage was difficult. Simple things, like finding the next meal, continued to occupy her time. I like to think that her prayers brought her peace. We might never know that, but what I do know is that her prayers changed the lives of generations to come.
Two women called Janet Severi Bristow and Victoria Galo started the prayer shawl movement in 1998, intending to help women needing a moment of quiet and comfort in difficult times. I do not know if the story of Susanna Wesley influenced them, or even if they had heard of her, but the sentiment and the inspiration are the same.

The pocket prayer shawls I am making are for those men and women who need to carry their quiet place with them.

I crocheted mine and I love the way the repetitive rhythm means I can say a prayer for each stitch I make. I use the same principle if I intend to walk prayerfully, and so I can ask God to bless the pilgrim who might use it. Walking is a way to lose the things of this world for a while and allow God’s rhythm to take over.

I still have a butterfly mind that flits from one thing to the next with the least provocation, despite all my lofty principles, and I am forced to trust that God honours my intention as much as my actions. Sadly, I am as human now as I was all those years ago, although I have learned to accept my limitations more readily.

Either way, I have plenty of squares prepared to take along with me on Sunday.

We are expecting a record number of Pilgrims to pass through Sarria this year, and we hope to meet as many as we can and share stories with them.

I have written a plan for next week’s work, so that’s something at least I am working on the next book in my Camino de Santiago Murders. This one is called Sea Dead and centred on Finisterre, where Richard Harris has to discover the identity of a body washed ashore while he is on holiday. He is told that the body belongs to a careless pilgrim washed off the jetty wall in a storm, but he knows that the local police have lied to him and want to find out why.

So I’ve firmly fixed my mind upon this year’s Pilgrim season, in my mind and in my heart.
My god bless you this Easter weekend.

A Womble in Winter

It is normal for me to supplement our diet with wild greens, even though we have a vegetable garden. Miners’ lettuce (Winter Purslane), Pennywort and chickweed all find their way into winter salads. This year, though, I stumbled on a real find by the lane which leads into the village. Turnips. We’ve been eating them for three months and the last few days of warm weather has finished them for good. I discussed their appearance with my neighbour, who concluded that they had seeded themselves from a neglected crop planted years ago in a nearby field.
“But why have they spread now I asked, who haven’t really seen them here before?”
“That’s easy,” she told me. “It’s climate change, devastating that is, because they’ve changed look at the size of the turnip,” and she pulled one up to show me a huge white winter turnip.

“These are way better than the ones on my allotment. Let’s pick a bag from the top of the lane,” she said “If we leave the ones nearer the village to go to seed, we might get a field of giant turnips next year.” I suppose she’s right, but do should we encourage an invasion of giant turnips, but then that’s no reason not to eat them. Watch this space to see if they get their revenge next winter. (Think, ‘Day of the Triffids,’ but substitute turnips.)

My scavenging activities are not always welcome and I know that it’s not entirely normal. I remember once when my son and his wife came for a visit; they laid bets on how much junk (not how I described it) I would bring home from the beach. My husband’s still trying to get rid of the two faux leather armchairs I got, with a friend’s help, from the side of the road. I thought they were amazing, him not so much. I need to admit that the seat cushions were missing, making made them difficult to use. I resigned myself to putting them in the barn for a while until I found a solution. I do sometimes get funny looks when I bring home wild greens, I get it – it’s tricky to pick and make ’em edible (pig nuts, anyone?), and some of ’em can be too bitter to eat raw (sow thistle, dandelion, clover – all tasty, but you need some dressing and milder leaves to balance it out). I don’t like to give up though, and the autumn after finding the chairs I was hunting for mushroom and found two seat cushions recently dumped, which would fit the chairs with a bit of judicious knife work. I abandoned the mushrooms and took the cushions because I couldn’t carry both Steve would have preferred the mushrooms.

I have one chair next to my sewing table, but I see Steve eyeing it up every time he goes in there, and I’m sure it won’t survive the next renovation.

We have eaten turnips with everything for the last three months and we now have a bag of greens in the freezer and a jar of dried turnip cubes to add to stews in the pantry I don’t remember what mashed potatoes taste like without turnips added.

But they are flowering now, so that is the end of that. Still the nettles and coming along well, so this weekend I think it will be time to get my gloves out.

Bookshops

I suppose that there are people in the world who don’t like bookshops, in the same way as there are people who forget to eat lunch. I don’t recall having many conversations with such people, but that’s probably because the conversation was too short for recollection. Bookshops, which also serve lunch, or at the very least coffee and cake, are pretty high on my fantasy destination list.
I guess that’s why I chose a second-hand bookshop with a cafe as the setting for my latest cosy mystery. Attack In the Attic

The inspiration is an actual shop called Scarthin Books in Cromford, Derbyshire.

I don’t remember who told me about Scarthins or when my first visit was, or even why I was in Cromford, but I remember stepping over the threshold that first time.
Books have their own aroma, inky paper with a hint of dust and damp, which combines to form a heady scent full of unbelievable promise. Then there are the colours, the gaudiness of the new with brash jackets, contrast with the muted wisdom, and faded grandeur of the older used volumes.
I hesitate, overwhelmed, and a grey-haired lady behind the counter suggests I start at the top and work my way down, so I follow her instructions and find the stairs. Even finding my way to the top is overwhelming there is so much to look at, so many delights to wrench my attention away from finding the beginning. A book on bottling fruit, another fine volume on herbal poultices, an entire section devoted to Winston Churchill. I squeeze past someone settled in a worn armchair engrossed in a history of the civil war, following an ever-narrowing path to the top of the building. I’ve already ignored intriguing signs pointing me to children’s books and Victorian romance and so much more when there is a tap on my shoulder.

” Will you be much longer? Dad says we’ll wait in the car.”

And with that, I realise my hopes of seeing everything this wonderland offers are futile.

I head back to the cookery section and find a secondhand copy of Jane Grigson’s ‘English Food’ at a good price and continue down to the ground floor intending to pay only for that, but get distracted by a table display and add ‘Like water for Chocolate’ by Laura Esquivel. The table is old and one leg is too short. A wad of paper keeps it steady, and it’s definitely more magical than the modern chains that dominate the city high street, which I also love. I realise that the smart, carefully thought-out new design takes away some of the wonder and mystery that exists in spades here.
The lady at the counter clasps her hands together and tells me how enchanting the Laura Esquivel book is and how much I will love it and we chat for a while about food and books and special places. I leave clutching my purchases, but have to stop for a moment as I step out of the door and blink a few times to adjust to the real world. I wonder if the Pevensie children felt the same way when they left Narnia and clambered out of the wardrobe.

The photos of Scarthin’s are recent ones taken by my son a couple of weeks ago. My anecdote dates back maybe thirty years, and the shop now is perhaps even more magical than it was then. The woman who served me was right about ‘Like water for Chocolate’, by the way. It is magical.
The wonderful thing about reading fiction is that you get to choose your adventure and escape from whatever is wrong with your world. Even if the only thing wrong is the normality of day-to-day life. The wonderful thing about bookshops is that they offer you a gateway to that adventure. In those days, I had no hopes of becoming a writer, but it’s wonderful when your daydreaming becomes a legitimate way to pass the time.

You can locate the website for Scarthin Books here.

My new book is called Attack in the Attic by Abigail Thorne and you can find it here

When Esther and Sue discover a mysterious corpse in the attic of their quaint Derbyshire Bookshop, Esther, an ex-librarian, and the owner must take it upon herself to uncover the truth.
Join her as she navigates the puzzling clues left behind. Unearthing secrets that hid in the shadows of the dusty shelves. With the help of her curious staff, can this amateur sleuth discover the identity of the victim and the culprit before the police arrest the wrong person?
Get ready to curl up with this cosy mystery and unravel a thrilling tale of intrigue and suspense.