Jubilee

It must be watching the Queen’s Jubilee that brought it on: I’ve been thinking about the war years.
The Anderson air-raid shelters were damp, and sometimes flooded. I remember vaguely that there were a few damp comics on the benches to keep the kids amused. Despite the bombs we gave up the Anderson and used the indoor coal-house that Dad whitewashed for the purpose. Sometimes we would just gather beneath the heavy kitchen table. Through the blackout curtains sometimes we heard screeching phosphorus bombs and could detect the fires from the cornfields after the whistling fire-bombs had been dropped (we urchins would hunt for the whistling devices the next day – they were good fun tied to a rope and spun around the head). I’ve a memory of being grabbed and dragged back under the table after I’d charged the window, wooden spinning top in hand, calling out: ‘Me bomb Hitler back!’

Enchanted Isle

Thinking about St Michael’s Isle and this 12th C chapel. The isle is tiny, and now joined by causeway to the Isle of Mann.

We are just back from holiday on Mann – it was a wrench to leave that enchnated island.

St Michael’s Isle

I’ve been interviewed

At:

http://themyesterioumuslimahshaven.blogspot.ca/2012/05/interview-with-harry.html

Tom Fleck is in his second year. Time to revisit.

Why I needed to tell the story of an unknown man.

Do we ever wonder about our distant forefathers and mothers, those who lived before our great-grandparents, and even before their great-grandparents? What can we know of them? Beyond even our parent’s parents there is sadly just white fog – for most of us.

We can penetrate the fog a little. Family history research has never been more popular. Folk beaver away through the mass of data now on the internet. But what does it yield? Seldom more than the bare bones of names and the dates of baptisms, marriages and burials, and those only if you are lucky and persistent. Personality is not found; we don’t see tears or hear cries of joy, there are no flushed cheeks and beating hearts. No whisperings in the night time.

A few scraps of bone we might find here and there, as we search back through time – but then we reach a solid wall. That barrier is the darkness before the start of parish registers (in England, 1566). This is the end of the search for our ancestors – unless they were aristocrats or notorious rebels.

I’ve trodden this way, back to a mysterious ancestor: Lancelot Horsley (probably a fisherman). In 1573, he buried his first wife and two infants, then remarried and had two healthy sons. That is all I’ll ever know of him; his beginnings are on the far side of that barrier, so there is not a single mark on parchment to show that his parents ever existed.

But what if I write a story? A story about the life and times of people perhaps two generations before Lancelot? I can research how the ordinary folk of his district lived, how they spoke, what they believed to be true, and how events beyond their control swept them along. Why not? So I went for it!

One rare name stepped forward from the Hartlepool records and caught my attention – a little family called Fleck. I imagined their great-grandfather as a Thomas Fleck, a humble farm labourer. He would be a young man in a formative year. 1513 was the year of the Battle of Flodden, a conflict that gave rise to the haunting Scottish lament: “The Flowers of the Forest are a’ wede away”. Fine – so how could I contrive a situation where the humble Tom Fleck would have to leave his kindred and re-discover himself in the midst of international struggles beyond his comprehension?

First, I built his world from scraps of social history and old maps, gave him personality and a family, gave him troubles and yearnings, gave him turning points, cross-roads, helped him deal with enemies and make hard choices. His struggles with love across the boundaries of race and religion took me into fascinating areas of research. All this in order to try to understand how some of our ancestors might have walked the land.

It is done. A whole generation has come alive. They walk and run through the pages and I love them all – even the villains.

They live in ebook, and paper and ink, at:

amazon.co.uk

amazon.com

smashwords

Tees Barrage and Tom Fleck

Yesterday I revisited the Cleveland (North Yorkshire, UK) landscape where my historical novel, ‘Tom Fleck’, opens. Readers will recall that Tom lives in a crumbling cow byre, on the edge of a marsh, close to the southern bank of the tidal river Tees in the year 1513. Those lower reaches of the Tees have changed dramatically since Tom Fleck wades across carrying his wounded dog, Meg.

In Tudor times the region was dominated by a meandering river, swept twice daily by North Sea tides. On either bank broad marshes and alder carrs enclosed the river’s winding course. It was here that Tom collects eggs of wild duck and one day finds a lost gold ring that would transform his life. Three hundred years later, that wild place changed.

Industrialists in the growing town of Stockton-on-Tees needed better access for ships. The river had islands and shifting sandbanks that could could only be navigated during high tide. Ships could take as long to negotiate the few miles between the Stockton and the sea as it took to sail the 280 miles to London.

Here is a map of the proposals of 1791. I’ve added some notes:

The Tees Cut

The first cut was made in 1810. A 220 yard excavation across the neck of the western meander saved 2.5 miles! In 1831 the eastern meander was cut through and the river became almost straight. To narrow and deepen the river iron works slag was dumped along the river banks. The tide could now sweep in from the sea twice a day and flush the new channel. Stockton thrived for a few more years until the new town Middlesbrough took over dominance at its plcae on the estuary. The wild land Tom Fleck roamed across became covered in industry.

Here is the old river bed photographed from Portrack (the area is now a nature reserve):

Old bed of the Tees

On the far bank, before his fight with Mark Warren, Tom Fleck had quietly watched a seal take a salmon.  Just here, he halted after wading the river and waved farewell to Mary.

The Tees now has a barrage just upstream from the nature reserve:

Tees Barrage

And beyond the barrage we can see the high bridge that carries the A19. The site of Tom’s byre is now buried beneath the right hand approach.

Downriver from Tees Barrage

Tom Fleck would not know the place now.  You can read his story on paper or ebook at Amazon and Smashwords.

From my box of poems.

I wanted to post something today, but my writing arm is idle. So I’ll resort to a rummage among my poems. Here is a storm, still remembered:

Lost Ship

We saw nothing on the wind-glazed surface,
nothing floating in the spume as we steamed
across her last position on the chart;
no scrap of cargo, not a boiler suit,
nor a crumb of last night’s rice.

In the dark we’d talked
in bursts of dots and dashes,
that other man and me.
We’d clung in chairs chained to the deck,
one hand on the tuning knob
chasing each other’s warbling signals
as masts swayed
and phosphor-bronze aerials swung out
wild over the troughs;
the other hand thumping a big brass key -
in the cyclone.

It was sixty years ago – she flew the flag of Pakistan,
a new country. But the ‘Minocher Cowasjee’ was old
I now discover – launched as ‘Parisiana’
by Irvine’s yard in Hartlepool, where my father -
back from his war with Kaiser Bill – might well
have hammered rivets into her, hard against
his own dad’s hammer on the other side of the plate.

Three miles down they’re rusted now, those rivets;
strewn about, forgotten, like Asian mother’s tears.
She’s just another hull – after all,
the ocean floors are flung with ships…

A response to ‘Tom Fleck’

This has just been received from Satyadaka:

‘ I finished reading ‘Tom Fleck’ last night. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I was reminded of the historical novels of Henry Treece which I read as a child. I found it very engaging and was always reluctant to put it down. I entered the world you had created and was sorry to leave it at the end.

On Friday I happened to find myself in Framlingham, in Suffolk. You probably know that Thomas Howard is buried in the church there. I recognised his name from your book. And Henry Howard (who was executed in 1547) is also there. I couldn’t work out if he was Thomas’ son or not…

I also felt plugged into the more mythical Britain from reading your book, Tom and his family being more pagan than Christian.’

…………………….

Note: Henry Howard was son and grandson of the two of the three Howards in command of the English at Flodden. At the end of his life Henry VIII became paranoid about them and ordered the death of Henry and his father, Thomas.
Henry was executed, but his father survived as the king died before the date set for Thomas’ execution.

Free on Smashwords

If you like historical stories free of Kings and Queens, my novel ‘Tom Fleck’, set in Northumberland, Durham and Yorkshire in the year of Flodden (1513) is free as an eBook for five days on Smashwords.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108019

The info is: Promotional price: $0.00
Coupon Code: HR33U
Expires: April 1, 2012

This process is new to me so I hope it works. Feel free to enjoy a good read.

Yellow Dog.

The ice peaks are green,
they stretch all the way to China
in the metallic moonlight.

The scabby yellow dog, with his fleas,
sits alongside on this moraine,
watching. I pull the lost one close
as we gaze to the south.

Gaze at the ridges we crossed,
now in sharp silhouette – teeth
against yellow sheet lightening
on the Indian monsoon plain.

It dawns on me that the man
who entered this high place will not
be the man who leaves.

Poets United – SherryBlue interview

Life of a Poet – Harry Nicholson
Kids, this week we’re nipping Across the Pond to visit a talented writer and artist in England. Today we’re sitting down with Harry Nicholson of 1513Fusion. Having been enthralled at age thirteen by Wuthering Heights, Cathy and Heathcliff wandering, doomed, on the wild moors, (a time when surly heroes still appealed to me), my heart skipped a beat when Harry mentioned he lives near thirty miles of moors. I may have to excuse myself for a few minutes during the interview to run amok among the ruins! AND he has Standing Stones! Be still, my heart! . . .

Full interview with pictures at:

    Poets United