Introduction by Mark :

Elizabeth Tuckwell is a fellow Harvey Duckman writer and the aunt of an old friend of mine. These two things are not connected and we were unaware of the second connection till the old friend read a Harvey that contained stories by both of us and pointed this out. the world is small and full of coincidences…

Elizabeth is also in all likelihood not a distant decedent of Frier Tuckwell of Kirklees Priory cira 1107. Neither was he that Frier Tuckwell, who is entirely fictional, but was played brilliantly by Phil Rose in Robin and Sherwood between 1984 and 1986. Frier tuck was also played with some gusto by Mike McShane in 1991 Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, a movie that featured a great scene in which from a tree in Northumberland you can see Nottinghamshire. Some one recently cut down that tree in an act of vandalism which quite rightly made everyone angry.

However, I would posit that the fate of a single ‘famous’ tree that was once in a movie with Kevin Costner, pales in comparison to the felling of the rain forests of Brazil for palm oil plantations, and perhaps, just perhaps, having the same amount of rage about Palm oil as we do about the felling of a sycamore tree beside a wall some roman order built 1800 years ago would be more likely to help avert the common end of civilisation… Which brings me to the question Liz asked herself when writing the guest blog below… *

*wow that was convoluted even for me wasn’t it…

Are you ready for the apocalypse? I’m not.

I recently watched an episode of the TV series of The Day of the Triffids with my niece. She loves the book and told me she’s read it at least eleven time after I gave her a copy of the original Penguin Paperback with the cute line drawing of a triffid. The Day of the Triffids is a cosy catastrophe. It’s also relevant today as one of the two main causes of the the catastrophe is Man’s greed.

It has one of the best openings of any novel ever.

“When a day that happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday there is something seriously wrong somewhere.”

Anyway, it struck me while watching it, that electric cars would be pretty useless after an apocalypse. Where are you going to be able to charge up your car? I have an electric car.

It then got me thinking about apocalypses generally and I realised how useless I would be. I don’t have food or even more importantly, water, hoarded. I’m not an expert in any martial art. I can’t shoot and don’t have any stockpile of weapons, which I usually think is a Good Thing. I’ve never read a book or watched any YouTube videos about survivalist tactics.

And even worse, I live in London and even I know that when the apocalypse comes, you really don’t want to be in a large urban area.

And then there’s the Zombie Apocalypse. I really would be even more useless because I don’t like looking at zombies. They turn my stomach. I’m assuming this wouldn’t help while you’re trying to bash their brains out. The only three Zombie films I’ve watched to the end are Shaun of the Dead, World War Z and 28 Days Later. I started watching the sequel to 28 Days, 28 Weeks Later. I’ve never watched The Walking Dead or Fear The Walking Dead or any of the classic zombie films such as Night of the Living Dead. I have therefore gleaned no useful tips.

So, I’ve come to the conclusion that come the apocalypse, zombie or otherwise, I’m doomed. Are you?

Liz Tuckwell is a regular contributor to the Harvey Duckman Presents anthologies and the author of Moonsleep and Other Stories, a collection of darkish fantasy and horror short stories.