Despite all human accomplishments Human civilisation owes its existence to a six inch layer of top soil and precipitation.
Plants are actually farming humanity. They feed us with oxygen, so they can get the carbon dioxide they require. Then when we are no longer of use to them we decompose in the ground so they can consume us.
A Hippopotamus runs faster on land the an average human. Hippos also swim faster than the average human. This is why the modern triathlon has a bicycle stage, its the only way we stand a chance.
All the instruments humanity have constructed to search for intelligent life, point away from the earth.
Venus is the only planet named for a goddess, it is also the only one that spins clockwise.
Despite Lions not being native England, the national animal of England is in fact a Lion, the Scots consider this to be a classic example of the arrogance of the English, deciding to make an animal that has never been native to your shores as your national animal…
The national animal of Scotland is a unicorn…
It is illegal in Switzerland to own one guinea pig, because guinea-pigs are social animals and get lonely you are required by law to have at least two.
Sloths can hold their breath longer than dolphins…
The Men in Dark Tweed were created on a whim while I was working on my current WIP novel, a Victorian Urban Fantasy entitled ’Lucifer Mandrake and the Hanoverian Proxy’ The new, somewhat nefarious Home Secretary sets up a plain clothes division of the young Metropolitan Police Force, reporting directly to him. They are a somewhat sinister group, because basically the main antagonist needed a bunch of shadow thugs…
They are however unerringly polite about it all…
The Men in Dark Tweed have made a leap to a short story of their own that will appear in a forth coming anthology. Also now there are badges (because I could) which while available at any event I am working, I will also be selling here if anyone is mad enough to want one because frankly the blog needs to pay for itself somehow and I don’t want more adverts on it… Besides people like badges.
Men In Dark Tweed Pin Badge
Men in dark tweed badges, because this blog has to be paid for in some way or other…
£2 + £1 P&P (uk only)
Will also ship beyond these islands if someone is mad enough to want one
‘No matter how short you may be, you are always tall enough to reach the ground.’
Yesterday i voted, I did this despite the fact I was voting for two things I fundamentally disagree with.
The first of these was for the local Police and Crime commissioner. A bureaucratic position created by the government so they could pass the blame on issues that look bad to them politically, ergo general policing and crime issues, back in 2012. In the 12 years since the various Police and crime commissioners around the UK have successfully achieved their mandate. Which is to say, done nothing, but taken the blame away from central government. What they have not done is in any way lower crime figures or improved the life of UK citizens.
The second post I was asked to vote on was for Tees-valley Mayor. Regional Mayors are a great boon, in that they give the government another layer of bureaucracy to blame. So successful have these regional mayors been that the number of regions with mayors has been expanded this election cycle… My local regional mayor has ‘allegedly’ committed several acts of fraud and ripped off the local tax payers to the tune of half a billion, having sold 500 million’s worth of land for threepence to a couple of his mates (guess which party he stood for).
These two bureaucratic positions, both 100k+ salaried positions at that, which are a layer of local governance we never needed that only costs us money and achieves very little aside fire-walling the UK governments from local issues. They did not exist until very recently and they have not made anyone’s life better, I doubt they ever will because salaried bureaucratic positions become about getting reelected to that same position, rather than achieving anything meaningful very quickly.
Dispute knowing all this, I voted yesterday. More in hope than expectation…
Over the last several years I have been involved in the Harvey Duckman Anthologies project. First as a writer, occasionally a mentor and then latterly as part of the editorial staff . I have spoken of it here more than once. It was a grand enterprise, an outlet for new writers and established ones alike. I say was, because it is no more and for one I morn its passing…
The reasons Harvey Duckman has gone by the wayside are many. The project proved to be flawed when inclusive innocence came up against entitled idiocy, as such things are apt to do. I am not going to go into the whys and wherefores, but a few malcontents ruined what was conceived in, and mostly achieved, wonderfulness. Lessons have been learned and the business model has basically lost money from the word, and was a labour of love for Gillie Hatton has ended. Because its hard to love something that keeps kicking you when you’re down. The thirteen volumes of Harvey Duckman Presents will go out of print for ever at the end of the month.
We raise a glass and salute its passing…
This is however not the end for Harvey, a new Harvey has being born form the ashes, a new Harvey with a new business model. A new Harvey that has the potential to be greater than ever before. You can find out about it here….
The new Harvey is a community site on Ghost, for writers and readers. It will have short stories , author interviews, writing tips and publishing advice as well as a monthly flash fiction ebook anyone can contribute to as well as read. Please check it out if you are a writer, or a reader, or a want to be writer, of genre fiction.
As part of all this there will also be a New style Harvey paperback coming out quarterly, each focused on its own sub-genre, the first of which will be a Steampunk collection that is being curated in part by me. So I can promise I know the quality of every story that has been accepted, with many new to Harvey authors and its going to be splendid…
This has however put me in a bit of a hole… I have not written a short steampunk story for quite a while and old Hannibal is still on hiatus while I write another novel, so I don’t want to don the old ‘Ins and Outs’ club tie and go back to the smoking room to listen to him tell me stories. I need to write something else suitable for a steampunk collection… If only I had a suitable inkwell from which to draw… Some collection of shadowy individuals that fit into the genre… Oh well, I am sure something will come to me if I stare into the void long enough…
The thing in the Thames with the tentacles was not the problem.
Admittedly, a mass of writhing uncanny, disturbing, pseudopods and slick slimy appendages apt to explode from the waters of the old father was far from ideal. All the less so when having done so it wrapped those tentacles around a Hanson and wrenched the cab, its poor occupants, driver and both horses from the recently completed Tower bridge, down into the waters never to be seen again. That it was fair to say was as near as damn the definition of ‘far from ideal’.
But it was not ‘The Problem’.
“The Problem”, Mr Chapman considered, “is what to do about the witnesses.”
This was the third confirmed attack on Londoners by the enormous night squid which has taken up residence in the Thames. Chapman had noted previously they should ‘thank god every evensong’ that it was a giant Night Squid. The semi-nocturnal creature kept to the dark depths throughout the day and would only break surface under cover of darkness. A more obtrusive cephalopod, one given to making it presence known in daylight, would have proved far more problematic for the ministry to handle, as Chapman had assured his masters in Whitehall. “In the case of monstrous aquatic incursions, darkness is our friend.”
Luckily this was London. City of a hundred thousand chimneys. The furnaces that powered the cities heart with the ever burning coal bless it with the predictable nightly fogs so enamored by drunks, doxies, and the occasional blade wielding maniac that hunted them both. The pea soups of London hid many horrors from the public, which was one of the reasons The Ministry had scuttled clean air bills every time they came before parliament.
The Men in Dark Tweed were created on a whim while I was working on my current WIP novel, a Victorian Urban Fantasy entitled ’Lucifer Mandrake and the Hanoverian Proxy’ The new, somewhat nefarious Home Secretary sets up a plain clothes division of the young Metropolitan Police Force, reporting directly to him. They are a somewhat sinister group, because basically the main antagonist needed a bunch of shadow thugs…
They are however unerringly polite about it all…
That said, there is a line, this may stray across it…
For those who may be interested all the art work I have used for these were drawn by Sidney Paget for long out of print Sherlock Holmes editions and/or the original strand magazine illustrations.
This was a hard lesson, long to be learned, over many years and to an extent still unlearned. Coming to the realisation that what makes you you, and understanding that the sense of identity you’ve been grasping towards, can not be found external to yourself is both a fundamental to the human experience, and an ethereal concept that is counter intuitive to all the imperatives of being a member of humanity.
We are, and ever were, social animals. We can not survive alone. A individual can not hunt a mammoth. No man can stand guard to himself while he sleeps. To be a human alone is to perish. Only through community does mankind survive. A fact as true today as it was at the end of the last great ice age. Even the antisocial butterfly must have those they flutter around. We are not meant to be alone in this. Whatever this is.
Thus a dichotomy persists. All our ancestral instincts drive us to form social groupings for our protection and well-being. Yet the nexus of our identities, that which drives us to be individuals and to understand ourselves becomes easily dependent upon others. Many welcome that sense of co-dependence. Welcome being part of the greater whole, But in doing so they risk losing their individual identity.I speak here from bitter experience, I have sought identity from external nexi in the past. I have been a husband, father, lover, rock upon a shatter shore shielding those I love from the breakers driven upon us by the storm. I have been all those things, and often lost myself within those roles. The irony being that in doing so I fail in my own eyes to truly embrace what I sought to be. I say this without regret. Only with the knowledge I have often failed to be that which I wished to be, and in all things this has been when I have let my own identity be taken by the collective. I have become defined by the role I have taken and lost myself in the process.
But through all this. Through all the trails and tribulations of life. I have come to know this. Happiness can not be gained by becoming other than I am to suit the needs of those other than myself and while for a time I can find contentment in setting aside my need for meaning, and find meaning in the role of being part of the collective we. Ultimately this is fleeting, the dark clouds will return, the need to be an identity beyond the nexi of others will return. The need to be my own self and to search within myself for meaning. And thus…
The nexus of my identity is not external to me.
Ghost of the Lost Forrest is a new book by Nimue Brown, it is a book about identity and the search for identity. It holds joy and pain within its grasp. Its protagonist searches for identity in all the places you might expect, and is confused much of the time. He does foolish things, some more foolish than others. He misunderstands much of what is going on around him. Then his search turns inward.
I am normally, as you may be aware if your a regular reader, I am quite good at reviews. Or at least I find things to say that sum up my opinion in a relatable way and why I think others should read that book. I’ve struggled to do so with this one. So much so that I went back and read it again. Not that this was a chore, it is a wonderful book, and enlightening read, and profoundly personal in ways I suspect I would not be alone in discovering.
It is that last bit that has me struggling with this review, the profound personal impact of some of the aspects and segments of this book. I am not saying they would be the same for you. Indeed I highly suspect that the sections that resonated most with me will not resonate in the same way with others. While other sections will find people to resonate with that were of a more passive grace to me, at least in that regard.
Will this book profoundly influence you, and impact upon your thoughts? Perhaps…
Will it echo your own experiences, your own personal journeys, and cause you to perhaps consider things anew? Maybe…
Will you enjoy it? undoubtedly
What I can also say for sure is it will give you a window into a sub-culture, an idea of a conceptualised pagan philosophy, identity and most importantly be an engaging interesting and fun read.
It may also stab you in the guts and turn the blade. It may hurt. It may cause you to stop reading and stare into the void beyond the reading lamp and contemplate the nexus of your identity and how it may not be merely internal to yourself after all. That others have walked the same forests. The long vanished forests that still surround us. The dark pathless woods that lurk beyond our civilised islands of street lights and stone walls.
Or that may just be me…
Should you read it? Yes. because Nimue has a way of telling stories that hold truths, bound and woven within the surreal and the wondrous. truths that will echo your own, and strike cords of meaning. And she does so effortlessly, ( for a given quantity of effortless that takes twenty years to write…)
And finally, because the nexus of your identity may not be purely internal to you but a journey trod by other and there is community and hope within that revelation. We are not alone, we are not isolated islands of self cast in an inky black impassable ocean. There are bridges between us. We are each of us just one part of a great archipelago of share experience.
The nexus of my identity is not external to me, but I am not alone in this…
Ghost of The Lost Forrest by Nimue Brown is available in paperback on Amazon
It is also available in ebook on a ‘pay what you wish’ basis, and you can find details of how to get the book that way on Nimue blog https://druidlife.wordpress.com/ which you should visit anyway because it is wonderful
The lady of the Bog does not give out swords, that her sisters job, the one who hangs about in lakes. The lady of the Bog hands out ancient half rotten tree roots, from the long-vanished forests, with which to cudgel enemies of her soggy land.
The Lady of the Bog is a tad grumpy about this as she believes her sister got the whole ‘sword that gives you the right to rule’ gig because she is the pretty one While she got lumbered with handing out half rotten tree roots that give you the right to rule the bogs.
She is wrong of course, under all the blacken peat, rotten twigs, and crawling insects in her hair, The Lady of the Bog is truly beautiful, rather than merely ‘pretty’ like her sister in the lake.
Sadly, manifest incarnations of earth goddesses are just as prone to self-doubt and body dysmorphia as the rest of us So remember people, tell your local peat goddess she is beautiful every day, and smile when you see her.
And beat her enemies to death with rotten tree stumps, obviously…
The small piece above is based on a Twitter chain I wrote on a whim in reply to a perfectly sensible post by Author Jessica Law about a peat bog which included this picture of her pointing at a peat bog (for reason I will never understand many of my friends seem to enjoy pointing at things).
I mentioned, as authors who research this kind of thing are apt to do, That peat bogs were excellent places to dispose of bodies and asked whom she was point at… Jessica replied that she was not in fact pointing at the body of a former lover she had thrown in the bog, but she had in fact been hoping a lady of the lake type would appear and give her a sword… A sword struck me as not a weapon a lady of the peat bog would hand out… In my defence, I am weird, what do you expect?
In any regard, hence the short piece above, which was written across a series of short tweets.
To Clarify , Jessica is not in fact the manifest incarnation of a theoretical immortal mythological figure of possibly pre-celt origin known to us now as The lady of the Peat Bogs. She just enjoys pointing at peat bogs, which is perfectly normal and not in any way strange…
Probably…
But if anyone was a immortal mythological figure of possibly pre-celt origin I suspect it would be Jessica Law.
As to why she is pointing at a peat bog on this particular occasion it is because she has a new children’s book coming out, published by Barefoot Books called The Rattlin’ Bog
The Rattlin’ Bog: a rhyming picture book for young children which aims to inspire appreciation for these underrated but vital ecosystems. “Rattlin'” is an Irish word for “brilliant”
You can pre-order it from waterstones with the below link , or at most online booksellers in the UK, US and Canada.
The Men in Dark Tweed were created on a whim while I was working on my current WIP novel, a Victorian Urban Fantasy entitled ’Lucifer Mandrake and the Hanoverian Proxy’ The new, somewhat nefarious Home Secretary sets up a plain clothes division of the young Metropolitan Police Force, reporting directly to him. They are a somewhat sinister group, because basically the main antagonist needed a bunch of shadow thugs…
The Men in Dark Tweed were created on a whim while I was working on my current WIP novel, a Victorian Urban Fantasy entitled ’Lucifer Mandrake and the Hanoverian Proxy’ The new, somewhat nefarious Home Secretary sets up a plain clothes division of the young Metropolitan Police Force, reporting directly to him. They are a somewhat sinister group, because basically the main antagonist needed a bunch of shadow thugs…
‘How to Write a Blackwood Article’ and ‘A Predicament’ are two parody’s written by Poe and published in the same edition of the magazine, American Museum. One serves as an introductory piece for the other and in effect they form a single narrative. So in defiance of normality I am going to treat these two tales as one, as without being cast in the light of ‘How to Write a Blackwood Article’ the second ‘A Predicament’ is all but unreadable. But before we get to the tales a little background.
Blackwood’s , or to give its its full title ‘Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine’ was a quarterly magazine that began life in 1817 and by the time Poe wrote these tales in 1838 it had achieved a certain notoriety for the outlandish lurid stories presented as ‘articles’. This was not how the magazine started out, as it was originally conceived as a conservative rival to Whig supporting periodical, ‘The Edinburgh Review’.
For those not conversant with 19th century British political party the Whigs were the progressive left wing of the time, as opposed to the Tory’s who represented much as they do now, the political right. The British Whigs should not be confused with the American Whig party which was one of the proto-republican parties that later merged to formed the GOP. British Whigs and American Whigs were of the opposite political spectrum on almost all counts. Though both were equally pompous as a rule, and tended to spend a lot of time shout the other side down…
So no change there.
In any regard while ‘Blackwood’s’ began as a right wing periodical, before long it moved more towards a populist stance, publishing works of notoriously bohemian poets, Shelly and Coldridge among others. There were even articles by women rights advocates (though this being the early 19th century these were almost all men, because you might publish an article advocating the emancipation of the fairer sex, but not have it taken seriously if you attributed the writing of it to a woman, that would of course be absurd…) In any even while it still pertained to be to the right of politics it became increasing apolitical and sensationalist as the years went by. Which is to say, the publishers sought to make a buck or three and didn’t much care how they did so.
So no change there either…
After its first few years, and at least one dual being fought over ‘libellous’ content which led to the death of a rival magazines editor. (Once again, publishing in the 1800’s was not for the faint hearted) A new editor John Wilson came to the helm and pitched the magazine to an even broader market, publishing more horror stories and increasingly outlandish articles generally of fiction dressed up as fact. From which it developed a reputation somewhat along the lines of modern magazines like ‘The National Enquirer’. Which is to say it never let truth get in the way of a good story . A reputation that left it wide open to parody, a sitting duck at which our Dear Edgar took somewhat gleeful aim…
*see below
‘How to Write a Blackwood Article’
The delightfully named Signora Psyche Zenobia narrates both tales, in the first one she approach’s the editor of Blackwood’s magazine in order to gain his advice on how bets to write an article for them. Her main motivation for this is it seems to establish her name as a writer, and in doing so rid herself of the nickname Suky Snobbs. A nick name foisted upon her by her bitter rival rival Tabitha Turnip. There is much bemoaning of this, which sets the tone…
The editor advises her on how best to write an article, how any article is improved with a quote or three. Better still if the quote is in German, or one of the dead languages. Greek in the original Greek alphabet for example is much desired. He goes on to advise her to take large quantities of pills then report on the sensations, include at least one animal, and a strange acquaintance that you can describe in freakish detail. Indulge in the hedonistic, report not facts so much as sensations, use evocative words and compounded sentences, and more quotes, and is at all possible get yourself drown or choke upon a chicken bone and report on the near death experience. Indeed if at all possible, actually die and then report on your experience….
Eventually she runs for the hills, fleeing his offices in fear for her life as the editor seems to be more than a little deranged, and looking forward to helping her with her article by means of a sharp knife …
‘A Predicament’
When next we meet Signora Psyche Zenobia, she tells us a new story, a story reported in the exact way she was advised to write by the editor in the first tale… Up to and including the death of the narrator , with quotes in German…. ish
‘Unt stubby dukl, so stubby dun duk she! duk she!’
which she translates for us as
‘and if I died at least i died for thee, for thee’
Except of course that is not actually the German for ‘and if I died at least i died for thee for thee’ that would be ‘ Und wenn ich gestorben bin, bin ich zumindest für dich gestorben’. Nor are the quotes in Greek and Latin, actually Greek or Latin. Because everything in ‘A Predicament’ is Signora Psyche Zenobia attempt at writing an article to present to the editor, following his advice. It is over the top and meant to be just that. She has a pet dog that could fit in her handbag, an unfortunate servant (very unfortunate to modern eyes) and she does indeed die in the end, before reporting on the sensations of her death…
‘A Predicament’ follows all the rules laid out by the editor in ‘How to Write a Blackwood Article’. Together they are clever and witty, but only provided you read the two together. Read apart they hold little interest and are just silly without being particularly funny.
That however is a bit of an issue because even together, while they are a clever and witty combination, they are still not particularly funny unless you are in the right frame of mind for the utter absurdity of it all, which most probably you will not be.
It reads not unlike a bad Monty Python sketch, in two parts with a few animations in between. But it is a Monty Python sketch been reiterated to you in a pub by someone drunker than you. Someone who has never seen John Cleese doing the original version. You know it should be funny, it has all the elements of funny, but it just isn’t…
A TRIO OF VAGUELY AMUSED RAVENS WHO CAN AT LEAST ADMIRE THE SKILL IF NOT THE EXECUTION.
SHOULD YOU READ IT: It well written and smart it just misses the mark for me. There is also an issue with Psyche Zenobia servant in the second story. He is short, black and the portrait is very much of the mid 1800’s. While not in a particularly nasty way, it is to modem sentiments a tad racist. Though it is problematic because it is ‘of it’s time’ rather than in the Lovecraft ‘even for its time’ way. So forgivable in context, to a degree at least.
Bluffers fact: Blackwood’s had a declining readership form the 1840’s onwards yet remained in publication until its final edition in 1980. While it never regained its former popularity it did pull off one notable literary Coo in 1899 when over the course of three editions it published,Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The novel, which while wonderful in its own right, is best known now as forming the basis for Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece, Apocalypse Now.
*still for a delightful little graduation film by Csaba Gellár, well worth an amused watch … see link below
The Passing Place 