The Shadow of the Horned One (It's Probably Just a Bloke In A Hat)

OK, everyone, I have a confession. I may come across as a glamorous, urbane sophisticate, but in reality I have a terrible secret. I grew up going to British folk festivals. Worse, now that I am a legal adult in control of my own destiny, I still do. By choice.

Broadly speaking, I have spent my entire life surrounded by the folk traditions of the United Kingdom. The dancing, the songs, the stories, the rituals…. which are fun, and ludicrous, and beautiful, and occasionally a little unhinged.

As you may know by now, I also love horror stories. So it’s rather surprising how long it took me to cotton on to Folk Horror

There is a tweet, from me, at the end of 2020. It had been a difficult year - not as bad for me as it was for many others, but still a difficult year. In the no man’s land between Christmas and New Year (when all of the UK’s festival plans had been abruptly upended and cancelled), I was in the mood to be delighted by something. Anything.

On the 28th of December, I tweeted (approximately):

“Thanks to @Pseudopod_org, and their excellent audio version of The Slow King, I have just discovered that Folk Horror is a thing and I am very much here for it. I'm downloading The Fiends in the Furrows while stirring gravy on the hob...”

I was, too. I remember standing there with a wooden spoon in one hand and my phone in the other. The author of the The Slow King replied to assure me that absolutely, the genre was a thing. And I’m sure the gravy tasted better for having a good dollop of arcane stirred in. I’ve since been to several workshops on Folk Horror by the excellent Alex Davis (he runs courses and everything), and would like to reiterate that I’m still very much here for it.

The landscape of Folk Horror is much broader than I’d imagined it (and as far as I can tell, looms pretty large in film and television, which is an area I rarely stray into). I suspect I like my Folk Horror kind of traditional: rural, pagan, quiet. Woven with folklore and old tales, with the horror waiting for you by a dilapidated stile.

Which obviously explains why I set my first Folk Horror story in various locations, including both KFC and B&Q. The story also contains inflexible opinions about interior decor, some mild church vandalism, and a non-existent Labrador dog.

The lovely people at Frost Zone Stories have included my story - called Bone, Salt, Iron - in their first collection of “dark fiction and quiet horror”. If you’d like to read it, you can snag a copy from Frost Zone’s site.

In the meantime, watch out for those fields. They probably are out to get you.

Liminal Tales

This is a choose-your-own adventure blog post! You have two options!

Option 1: You can watch a mildly disturbing YouTube video, become delighted by it, and then give someone some money in exchange for a product or service. If you are made of stern stuff, I highly recommend this approach.

Option 2: You can read me describing a thing, which I really enjoyed, and then afterwards give someone some money in exchange for a very similar product or service. This may be a better approach for those of a nervous disposition, or who dislike surprises.

I suppose there is also a sort of option 3, whereby you read the text, watch the video, and then don’t give anyone any money at all. But really, I don’t think that is nearly as good a choice.

Are you ready? The video is right here for you to watch… or you can scroll on past it and read the text. Make your choice!

In January, on a Sunday evening, I scurried across London to the Water Rats. Which is a pub, with a tiny venue behind it, somewhere in the vicinity of Kings Cross. Whenever I’ve been there before, it’s been to see a band and the vibe has been packed, boiling hot, and very noisy.

But no! The place was fairly quiet. There were little tables and chairs laid out, and people sitting at them decorously ordering food and drinks. I had a glass of wine. I got chatting to people sitting nearby. It was all quite dreadfully civilised, and then a small parade of people came on stage, one at a time, and read us stories.

Some stories were funny. Some were downright weird. One was pure horror (my favourite, naturally). But six complete and very different stories were read (either by their authors or by an actor), and everyone sat quietly and listened. And clapped. Honestly, it was an absolute delight, and not the sort of entertainment that is commonly available.

Anyway, it turns out that many people enjoyed it, and so another one of it is happening. If you are in or near London, then mark March 23rd in your calendars, and get your ticket before it sells out. (If you are merely near London, then the previous event finished - unless you wanted to hang around and chat - around half past nine, giving you plenty of time to catch your train home. See, I told you it was civilised.)

I’m certainly going again, although this time I will be one of the people standing on the stage.

The Joy of Repetition Really is in.... Me, It Turns Out

I was recently talking to a friend who’d been listening to my Drabbletober podcast (oh, hey, I have a podcast, did I mention? It had daily microfiction episodes every day in October, and will have bonus oddments if you stay subscribed.)

His main complaint was that I made the intro section 26 seconds long. Did I? I hadn’t even realised. Why on earth was he timing how long it takes me to play a few chords, introduce the episode, and tell you who I am?

If you’re a regular podcast listener, the answer may be obvious: your standard podcast player comes equipped with a “skip” button which skips forwards 30 seconds. So, when he skipped the intro, he also missed the very beginning of the actual story and, as a result, had to define a custom skip button - just for my podcast - that skipped forwards 26 seconds.

I am honoured, naturally. But also a bit bewildered. Because I listen to plenty of podcasts that have formulaic or repetitive sections and I never skip them. I find them welcoming, and comforting. Maybe I was led astray at an impressionable age by the “are you sitting comfortably?” and “today we’re going through the round window” of late-70s media, but I bloody love a good bit of repetition.

I’m always pleased to hear that the Elves are sitting round a table with their four favourite facts. I am not ready for an episode of The Modern Mann until Ollie has said “let’s go”. Frankly, Roman Mars moved his offices to “beautiful, uptown, Oakland, CA” - and thus changed his outro - several years ago, and I’m still not over it. Set up a bit of audio-furniture somewhere in your podcast, which you repeat every episode, and I’ll love you for it.

I like repetition in written fiction, too. The rather dated Just So Stories were a favourite with me as a kid. A story can easily get me on-side just by borrowing a device from one of those stories - something which is employed excellently by Seanan McGuire’s How the Maine Coon Cat Learned to Love the Sea. Someone mentioned Kate Atkinson’s brilliant Emotionally Weird the other day, and my first thought was the line that comes up over and over again, the way one character describes the cast of the book: we are as jumbled as a box of biscuits.

Do I love all forms of repetition? Of course not (and those podcasts that play the same custom ad at you three times in one episode drive me up the wall, too). The “repeat until funny” formula of many sitcoms largely leaves me cold. I would say “no one wants to hear the same thing too many times” - but I guess the devil is in the detail of how many times constitutes too many.

But, y’know, that’s why podcast players have skip buttons. I’ll just carry on not using mine.

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(The link to the Seanan McGuire story goes to a free-to-read version in Uncanny magazine, and you really should follow it, especially if you like Just So Stories. Or cats.)

(If the subject line is bugging you… it’s a misquote of Hot Chip.)

Drabbletober 2024

Have you noticed? It’s nearly October. And October, round here, means #drabbletober.

This year - as in 2023 and 2022 - I’ll be sharing a drabble (a story of exactly 100 words) every day. You’ll be able to read the day’s story here, if you want, but you’ll also be able to listen to it in podcast form.

Through October I’ll be releasing a tiny podcast every day, each one containing a new 100-word story. If you’d like me to read you some shiny new microfiction every day, then head on over to the Drabbletober page. You’ll be able to find the text of each story there, and a “play” button if you want to listen to it. Of course, if you’re someone who listens to podcasts already, then you can find it in podcastland in the normal way, by searching for “drabbletober”.

If you’ve got friends who like fiction, or listen to podcasts, please do tell them about it. Each episode should clock in at less than two minutes, so you can pretty much take in a story while you brush your teeth or butter your toast.

The first episode will be available - of course - on October 1st. Drabbletober is coming!

Changing Point of View: The Journey From Third to First

As mentioned recently, I had a lovely time at the UK Ghost Story Festival in Derby in February. I went to quite a few writing workshops, and learned some great new techniques for creating haunting images within my writing.

However, I think the single most useful moment came while listening to one of the authors’ speaker panels. Annoyingly, I can neither remember which panel, nor which author, or I’d credit them. Anyway, someone mentioned in passing that many scary stories are written in the first person, simply because it’s easier to create a feeling of immediacy, to make the fear more tangible, and to bring the reader more intimately into the story.

And I thought: yup. That’s what’s wrong with the story I’m writing at the moment. It’s third person. And it needs to be first.

Back in my hotel room that evening, I scribbled a note to myself (you can see it above!) and immediately switched to writing from my main character’s point of view. Everything went much more smoothly, and I no longer found myself battling so hard to convey what was happening. Around a month later (I have a day job, y’know) I finished the first draft. I began the process of typing it up, thinking I’d just change he to I as I went. After all, it was only the first few pages.

Nope. Firstly, it wasn’t. It was the first four thousand words of a nine-thousand-word first draft.

Secondly, it turns out that switching viewpoint is a lot more complicated than I’d realised. Very early in the story, our hero is in the process of lighting up a cigarette when someone shows him something amazing. He is appropriately amazed, and immediately runs off to do something. The third-person-omniscient viewpoint pulls back to show us his cigarette, dropped and forgotten on the floor.

This scene just does not work when translated to first person. A character can’t show you the thing that is left behind after he has left the room. He also can’t tell you about a thing that he has completely forgotten in his excitement because, by definition, he has forgotten it. He could, at a later stage, mention that he needs a smoke - but we are no longer in the moment.

Descriptions, too, needed to change. No-one, as a rule, describes themselves as looking pale after a shock. They might feel dizzy, or light-headed, or nauseous - but I’m reasonably certain I’ve never, after learning bad news, thought to myself “I look really pale”. An external viewpoint might mention someone speaking in a unpleasantly demanding tone, but I’d think it’s comparatively rare for anyone to describe themselves in that way.

Having populated my story with an inconveniently large number of characters, I found I needed to rewrite quite a lot of the dialogue. Keeping track of five people speaking is painful, but when the I of the story also has to keep track of who’s speaking… well, it’s still painful. It’s just different! Page four of the long-hand draft has a sad little note about how this was going to be quite some rewrite.

And it was! It is, however, much better for it (I think!) The lessons here are to think a little more clearly about the point of view you want before you start - and, if you do get it wrong, don’t mistake it for something you can “just” change as you type up!

Things That Go Bump In The Night

Earlier this month, I headed off to Derby for the UK Ghost Story Festival. It’s a three-day event of talks, panels and workshops held in the Museum of Making. By the standards of conventions, it’s relatively small, extremely friendly, and a great opportunity to spend a weekend thinking about writing, reading and ghosts. The Museum itself is well worth a visit in its own right, and the way in which some of the exhibits are displayed is excellent for provoking ideas about haunted objects.

One of the things I enjoyed most this year was hearing about the huge variety of things “a ghost” in a story can be. Sure, a spectral Victorian gentleman rattling chains is totally an option, but there’s a whole landscape of different approaches. Your story might be haunted by something intangible, or by the ghost of an object, or a place. Your ghost might be a way of describing psychological disturbance, or embodying loneliness, or a metaphor for trauma. It might be something that appears completely mundane and solid, in the moment, or might be simply a lingering ambiguity in the story.

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You might remember that, in October, I spent a month writing and posting a drabble every day. When Drabbletober came to an end, some lovely friends of mine decided to keep it up, and we’ve had a little chat group going through Drabblevember, Drabblecember, and the less lovable-sounding Drabblanuary. At the start of this month, we realised that (a) everyone had taken a turn already, and (b) no one had the least idea how to make the February portmanteau work decently.

However, having a supportive environment to share things in is a very joyful thing, so we have moved to a less-rigid system for sharing small, creative works. In the run up to the Ghost Story Festival, I decided my works would all be ghost-related. I also decided to try and make as few of them as possible be “just” writing - writing is what I do, and the idea was to challenge myself to do something different. Having even the gentle deadline of some people expecting to see something every day pushed me into following through - why is why small groups of supportive friends are such excellent things!

At the start of the week, I had a miserable cold, and was not feeling on any kind of creative form - so I fell back on redaction, and butchered a Wikipedia article.

I’m not sure that it results in the most exciting end-product, but redaction is surprisingly fun to do. I think I first tried it out last year sometime, when I saw a challenge on Twitter to create poetry from rejection letters.

If you’ve never done it, it’s definitely a very entertaining exercise. Pick something, and get crossing out. It’s a great way to work through your feelings about boring administrative post, for example!

I had an idea for a small cartoon later in the week. I’m not sure I’ve ever tried to draw a cartoon (or, at least, not since I was at junior school) and I ran into a few issues. Some were expected: my drawing isn’t that great, and it took a long while studying line drawings of sheet-ghosts on t’internet before I could produce anything that looked even remotely plausible on the page.

Fitting a story into 6 panels also takes rather more planning than I’d expected. It wasn’t a terribly complex plot, as you can tell, but it still took me several goes to decide exactly what happened in which panel. It is very disappointing to me - as a rather slapdash, hurl-myself-into-it, sort of person - that almost every creative endeavour seems to be improved by more planning upfront.

Finally, having drawn my panel out in a reasonably large sketchbook, the paper was too big to fit in the scanner - so I had to photograph it. It’s always much more difficult to photograph something with straight edges and get it bang on than I expect. (As you can see, I didn’t quite manage it…)

And then I hit my final problem: once the cartoon was scaled down to viewing-on-a-phone size, the lettering was far too small to read. I’d written the “dialogue” in fairly large printing, but each panel was originally 3” square. At the size you’re likely viewing it now, it was extremely unreadable. Cue a lot of rubbing-out, and attempting to fit larger lettering into the space available! I’ve always been a little surprised that lettering is a specific job (distinct from writing, and drawing) in comic-world, but even something this basic was considerably more difficult than expected.

It’s only now that I’m considering that I really ought to have titled this cartoon “Scared, Sheetless”.

A Short Meditation on Domestic Horror

Filed under “daft ideas”, I made a short video just before I hopped on a train up to Derby.

It was hastily edited, on a mobile, on the train. The default video-editor on Android is horrible, and during the whole journey I never seemed to hit enough mobile signal to download a better one. I figured I’d break out my laptop and go full-hog with the video-editing software I’ve got there… but Adobe (in their wisdom) refuse to run the software without being able to check that the licence is valid. Which mine is. But that fact cannot be ascertained without… of course, enough mobile signal to communicate with the mothership.

Still, the video actually came out rather better than I’d hoped.

My final ghost artwork for the week was courtesy of an act of travel-failure which left me sitting at a very minor edge-of-London railway station for fifty minutes. The failure was a combined effort: Transport for London had shut large chunks of useful railway line for maintenance, but I had also failed to read the timetable properly and realise that my options were limited to one-per-hour and I really needed to get a move on and get to the station slightly earlier.

Anyway, since the platform was all-but-abandoned, I thought I’d take the opportunity to do a spot of ghost-hunting. Would you believe, I found one almost straight away…

London is a city with a lot of history, so is pretty thoroughly haunted, but even I didn’t expect to have quite such good luck on my first venture. And in almost-broad-daylight, too!

The Curse of What Happens Next

Many years ago, I shyly sent the URL of one of the first stories I ever had published - Violent Silence* - to a colleague. He was very nice about it, but said something that took me completely by surprise.

"I want to know what happens next."

The story, at least as I'd written it, was complete in itself. I had no plans for what the characters would do next; the entire premise of the story was to reveal something that was now, well, revealed. It hadn't occurred to me that Garth and Latimer had a "next".

My colleague urged me to consider it, and for a while I tried. However, the only logical direction was for a future story to be the sort of military SF that I have absolutely zero interest in writing (or reading). Garth and Latimer go about their further adventures undocumented.

Over Christmas I - unusually for me - watched a whole series on Netflix. It was Bodies, an 8-part adaptation of the Si Spencer comic of the same name.

[Note: I am going to write about the ending of Bodies here, but - I believe - not in a way that constitutes a spoiler.]

Bodies was delightfully comicbook detective mystery, spanning four separate timelines. I loved it (though I also had to listen to a good friend of mine for around thirty minutes explaining all the reasons it was awful, so your mileage may vary). I loved the way all the disparate threads came together and formed a coherent story, with a satisfying conclusion.

And then - and then - right before the closing credits on the final episode, two things happened. Neither of them really made any sense, and both screamed "setting up for a sequel". I haven't read the comic, but I'd taken it as read there was no second volume (there isn't). The mystery was wrapped up neatly, all the things were explained. Sure, one could take some of the characters and send them on more adventures in the same world, but the fundamental engine of the plot had run its course.

This is, of course, not a new problem. Humans like things that they like: if we enjoyed a film, we want the sequel. This is why franchises are so popular, and why the Harry Potter novels slowly inflated in spine-width as they took over the world.

My first encounter with the issue was watching Highlander as a teenager. Again, the film tells a complete story whose arc finishes, leaving no room for "what happened next". I was completely baffled to find out that there was a Highlander II - and, to be quite honest, I wasn't any less baffled after having seen it. As a friend of mine was fond of saying: Highlander, there should have been only one.

You will observe from this that, even though I couldn't see how a sequel would work, I still watched it. And yes, the attempt to make a story that kept the vibe of the original, while having none of the actual plot-parts still in working order, was a disaster. This was a valuable lesson: when it seems like a sequel is going to be awful, give it a miss. If it turns out to be brilliant, I'm sure someone will let you know.

Mosca Mye (a character from Fly By Night, by Frances Hardinge), says towards the end of the novel: I don’t want a happy ending, I want more story. Of course she does. We all want more story. But the key is in not wanting the ending. Once you've had the ending, you don't get to have more story.

Highlander, Bodies, my own Violent Silence - they all ended. Although in each case some characters survived, writing "what happened next" would either be quite dull - MacLeod gets married, settles down, and enjoys a nice domestic life - or require something completely new to drive the story forward. And if it's completely new, it may well not contain any of what delighted people in the first instalment.

The Radio Times described it as "disappointing news" when Bodies' director appeared to play down the idea of a second series. I don't. I think I'd find it more disappointing if he were planning one; declining it, letting the original story stand by itself, would be a brave and admirable choice.

Success doesn't have to mean a sequel. We, as consumers, don't have to howl for more, and demand to know what happens next. Some things are complete in and of themselves, and let's let them be that way.

* At the time of posting, the story was free-to-read online. However, since then the magazine has taken the decision to remove all past issues from their website. You can still read Violent Silence by purchasing an e-book or p-book copy of Issue 38 of Luna Station Quarterly (available from Amazon, or from all kinds of other retailers).

The Advent of Advent

Advent has always been one of my favourite seasons of the year. Legally, and liturgically, Advent began this year on Sunday December 3rd. But for most people’s purposes, Advent starts on December 1st when you get to open the first of the little doors.

Growing up, Advent was always counted down in two ways in our house: one, a conventional calendar and two, an Advent candle. The candle stood on the tea table, and each day we burned down another one of the little gold segments. (At least, that was the plan. In reality, we sometimes all had our noses stuck in books and would inadvertently burn through several days at once before someone noticed. Not to mention ending up with candlewax all over the tablecloth.)

Fast-forward a couple of decades, to those dim and distant days of the internet when the phrase “social media” had yet to be invented, and the medium in which most of my friends chose to be social was a blogging platform called LiveJournal. For several years running, I managed to persuade a bunch of LJ’ers to manufacture “some means of counting down the days of Advent”, and post them around the country to each other. I think most people created calendars in the usual format, but there were some wildly creative ideas being sent around - often between people who had never, in the real world, met.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that I have, fundamentally, not grown out of the concept of Advent calendars. I enjoy tracking the steady progress through December to Christmas - which goes at just the same speed as any other month, whatever anyone tells you. This year I have three countdowns on the go: a conventional calendar, an Advent tree, and a role-playing game.

The conventional one features some very hairy cattle, and is actually a combined Christmas card and calendar, sent to me by a friend who lives on a Yorkshire farm (surrounded by not-especially-hairy dairy cattle). Its tiny doors are opening to reveal various woodland creatures - today was a fox and two cubs.

The tree is a tradition which I invented, wholesale, about a decade ago. I usually travel to visit family at Christmas, so don’t have a Christmas tree in my own home. Instead, I have a little wooden tree (which folds flat into a wardrobe the rest of the year), and a box of baubles. Every day, I add a bauble to the tree and - because I haven’t yet accrued 24 of them - every year I acquire a new bauble. I am using the term “bauble” loosely - as you can see from the exceedingly not-spherical felted dinosaur hanging front-and-centre in the picture above. This year’s acquisition was unexpectedly presented to me on Sunday, by a friend who replaced her Christmas cards this year with crocheted festive octopuses. Did you know a festive octopus was a thing? No? Well, neither did I. But now I have one, and it will go on the Advent tree.

The role-playing game is from the lovely people at Black Armada. Advent of Abomination is their December Patreon gift, although you can also buy a copy. When this month’s email rolled in, with the news that they were producing “an advent calendar that’s also a solo folk horror TTRPG”, I felt that it couldn’t really have been aimed more specifically at me if it had tried. I immediately printed it out, scored its windows, and glued it up. Six days in, and I’m having a thoroughly lovely time working my way through the story prompts. Plus, of course, it has the added benefit of making sure I do at least some writing every day. (I’ve always had very strong feelings that Advent calendars should have 24 doors, not 25 - since this one actually has 31, I’m not entirely sure where I stand!)

A couple of years ago I bought The Ticking World’s Adventure Calendar, which combined Advent with a choose-your-own-adventure game. Sadly they’ve sold out this year, although it looks from some of their retweets as if someone is streaming their own experiences of the Adventure on Twitch. They’ve also mentioned that there will be an all-new Adventure Calendar next year, so I’ll be keeping my eye on that.

Many moons ago, a good friend gave me a copy of The Christmas Mystery, by Jostein Gaarder. It’s a short novel, following a boy with an Advent calendar, and is told one-chapter-per-day - making it excellent as a calendar in itself, because you can read it in “real time”.

Although I am still firmly in favour of opening a little cardboard door to reveal a picture each day, there’s a whole world of alternate possibilities. Are you tracking Advent? If so, how?

October 31st: Hallowe’en with the Zaa’

Day 31 - the final day - of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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Hallowe’en with the Zaa’

Bruce squared his shoulders.

It was lovely, the way the Zaa' tried to make Earth ambassadors feel at home, but their interpretations of human culture could be surprising. The Christmas banquet which served tiny presents with sprouts and gravy had been odd. The Easter party decorations had been nightmarish.

It was mutual, of course. Parisian diplomats had faithfully recreated a historic "Zaa' Hoo" celebration, once, not realising that anything less than wild innovation was the greatest insult.

Bruce walked in. He could handle apple-witches, and mutant tarantulas, but he really wished they hadn't made all the jack-o-lanterns out of kittens.

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Whew! It’s the final day of October, so this is the last of my drabbles (for the time being).

Thank you very much to everyone who’s read along with me. Some days it has definitely been a struggle to get a story out, and knowing you were out there is what’s kept me at it.

October 30th: A Desert End

Day 30 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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A Desert End

To remain with the desert, a feast in the hot dunes. That's what Athan always wanted. Yet his wife would hear none of it: a box, she said. A box of polished wood and velvet, to shut Athan up for eternity.

"Ma'am, Athan would have..."

"I'm not having him torn apart by those vile things."

On the outskirts of camp, smelling death, the expectant ghouls shuffled their feet in the sand.

He made sure the box was weighted correctly. He attended the funeral she held.

Then, under the new moon, he allowed the ghouls to bear his best friend away.

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It’s definitely spooky season, so I thought it was time to visit ghouls. From everyone’s favourite website, I have learned that ghouls sometimes have origins in the desert. There’s a particularly lovely bit of Islamic lore which says ghouls are devils who tried to fly to the heavens but were burned by comets.

Anyway, today’s drabble is not based on “real” tradition in any sense. I just liked the idea of ghouls being viewed in a slightly more positive light (at least by some).

October 29th: Cabbages

Day 29 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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Cabbages

"I need you there, with the cabbages. Promise?"

"I will. Trust me."

It's not that difficult. It's not far across town. Cabbages are everywhere, you can buy them in Tesco for 80p.

So, getting them over to her...

Wait. What? Why am I buying cabbages?

I look around. Dark, with the occasional red LED. Typical budget hotel room.

Thank goodness. Just a dream. What on earth was that about?

It's only later in the day that - in broad daylight, sitting in Costa - I remember about the cabbages.

She needed them. It was important. And I promised.

Where is she now?

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I am someone who wakes up quite slowly. My dreams often give way only reluctantly to “rational” “daylight” thinking.

It does worry me that, sometimes, I have stood up people in the Dreamworld.

October 28th: Crying

Day 28 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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Crying

After months we were ready. Complete refurbishment; updated displays; rooms furnished and dressed for the 1940s. One of the original evacuees came along to the opening event and spoke, quavering, into the mic. The people here had been kind, she said, but the kids hated it and cried for their families.

Afterwards, guests drifted away and we began to tidy up. The boss told me to check all the lights were out upstairs.

I scurried to the till.

"Russ can check, I'll cash up."

The evacuee's eyes snapped open. As I passed, she whispered.

"You still hear them, don't you?"

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Today, among other things, I went on a tour of Ramsgate Tunnels. Which I highly recommend, should you be in the area. The Tunnels were planned and built, well in advance of the Blitz, for use as air raid shelters.

Given that they’re full of abandoned, WW2-era objects, the Tunnels seemed surprisingly un-haunted.

In the daytime, anyway.

October 27th: Reformation

Day 27 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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Reformation

We worked so hard. Late nights, long trips away. We loved it, but we weren't making any money. Nicky missed his boyfriend, and H wondered about heading home to Australia.

So we called it a day. One last show. Done.

And we began our new lives. I had kids. So did Nicky. H started another band.

It was the sensible choice, we said. Look how happy we are.

Then that venue, the one we loved, mailed about their special event. Would we?

Yes. Fuck, yes.

And we're onstage, guitars in hands. The crowd roars and we remember how it felt.

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I'm in a Travelodge, in an obscure town on the very edge of England. Tonight, in a tiny venue, I watched one of my favourite bands. They split up in 2016.

Was it like this? I don't know.

October 26th: Hibernacle

Day 26 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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Hibernacle

The light spilled golden over the windowsill and into the wet street. Every day, he walked a little slower as he passed the corner house. It looked warm, cosy, friendly; everything his own flat was not.

In late December, they put candles in the windows. And a glossy wreath on the red front door. The sleet caught in his eyelashes as he stood outside, wondering if the hallway really did smell of coffee and home-made cake.

On Christmas Eve, after midnight, he slipped down the side-road, settled against the wall, and waited for the joy to soak into his bones.

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Today, courtesy of an episode of The Allusionist (featuring Susie Dent, no less), I learned the word hibernacle. It is a word for winter quarters, or a place where an animal hibernates.

Have I mentioned how fond I am of the Allusionist?

October 25th: Even When Asleep

Day 25 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Content note for murder and abuse.

Here is today’s drabble…

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Even When Asleep

She stubbed her toe and winced, first in pain, and then at the noise she'd made.

She froze, shaking.

He didn't wake. He lay, head thrown back. Confident.

A vein pulsed in his neck. There were knives, in the kitchen.

A quick slice. Blood everywhere, a body to hide.

A little cut. Him, awake, in a rage, with a knife close by.

A jagged gash. A tale of an intruder no-one would believe.

A single stab. Prison for the rest of her life.

She slumped. He was right, of course he was. Perfectly safe; perfectly in control. Even when asleep.

---

I suspect that, if something is pulsing in someone’s neck, it’s an artery. Let’s leave aside for the moment the idea that it is an alien, or an inner self struggling to get out. Scientifically speaking, I think it’s an artery, not a vein.

But somehow, if you refer to an artery in ordinary prose, it just sounds weird.

October 24th: No, We Do Not Have An Electronic Library Catalogue

Day 24 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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No, We Do Not Have An Electronic Library Catalogue

Bethany braced herself. It was, after all, the finest legal library in the country.

"Mr Silcrow?"

He inclined his head, on his thin neck. "Pilcrow."

"I'm sorry..."

"What do you need?"

Bethany reeled off the case number.

Pilcrow closed his eyes. Silcrow shuffled over, and in slow, whispery sentences they recalled the relevant volume was in Rack 37.

Silcrow (or was it Pilcrow?) offered to escort her.

"No, no. Thank you. I'm fine."

The book - in Rack 37, of course - had a rude comment about Pilcrow scrawled in the margin. At least this one wasn't in long-faded, watery copperplate handwriting.

---

Yesterday, someone asked me what the name of the punctuation mark § was. And I thought ooh, ooh, I know that one, it’s a section mark. What I did not know is that it is also called a silcrow, and that its friend ¶, the paragraph mark, is called a pilcrow.

At which point my librarians, Pilcrow and Silcrow, quietly ushered themselves in. Unfortunately, I had rather more to say about them that would actually fit in a drabble (you can probably tell!)

October 23rd: The Fortune Teller

Day 23 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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The Fortune Teller

"Will I meet him?"

I half-closed my eyes. "Not today. Not tomorrow. But in the next couple of weeks. An older man, someone with a taste for travel."

"At last." She flushed, delight crinkling her eyes as she stared into her tea-cup.

I smiled enigmatically, and she paid, and went dancing down the hallway.

She checked the boxes, the ones that left her personal data open to everyone. All those habits, and secret desires, and searches, all streaming off her phone and into our data models.

It's all in the small print. But somehow everyone prefers to blame the tea-leaves.

---

Despite my best efforts, the verb that has stuck for the act of creating a drabble is “to dribble”. As in: oh dear, it’s eleven o’clock already, I really must go and dribble a drabble.

Unfortunately, I also sing this to the tune of Snuzzle a Wuzzle, which was a jingle from a 1980s advert for a brand of weird hybrid cuddly animals (like “Eleroo” - part elephant, part kangaroo). 80s kids stuff was quite strange.

Even worse, I can’t even find the Snuzzle a Wuzzle jingle I remember. I can find other jingles for Wuzzles… but not that one.

Go on, admit it. You’re curious now. Here you go…

October 22nd: Ptolemy's Data Analysis

Day 22 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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Ptolemy's Data Analysis

"Do we have the projections for the coming year?"

The meeting looked expectant. Shaun sighed, and put up his presentation.

He talked through his assumptions and methodology, explained the variance and the error bars, showed the raw data. He was aware that no-one was listening. They wanted a slide with a single, easy-to-understand curve and he was sick of explaining that the world just wasn't like that.

Ah, well. They wanted simple. He hit the button to run the animation.

Outliers faded away, key points glowed gold, and a beautiful outline flowed around them.

"I call this one Galloping Reindeer."

---

As someone who sometimes has to present data at work, I feel for Shaun. I really do.

October 21st: Culverted

Day 21 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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Culverted

The rain sluices down, sheeting off awnings and barreling through gutters. Drains, overfull, spill over roads and something wakes up. It swirls, and eddies, and begins to rise, slick and cold.

It is weary. Weary and sick of pipes, and sewers, and narrow, restricted ways that keep it secret.

PC Bradley stares ahead, rain hammerimg relentlessly on his regulation hood. When the figure looms out of the darkness, he calls to it.

"Sorry, mate, road's closed. Flooding."

When the figure doesn't slow, he shouts again. It surges.

Mark Bradley opens his mouth, and the dark tide washes straight over him.

---

I've been out in that London today for an event which was… wet. Very wet. Although given the havoc wind and rain is wreaking across Britain, “wet” feels like a very minor problem.

On days like today, I remember the number of “forgotten”, “subterranean” rivers that used to wind their own merry way across London.

October 20th: No Deal

Day 20 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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No Deal

"So did you go through with it?"

"Yeah."

"Really? Crossroads at midnight, the whole thing?"

"Yeah."

"And? What happened? Did he show up?"

"Yeah."

"No way! Did you try to make him the offer, like you said?"

"Yeah."

"Come on, Billy! Tell me the story! Are you the greatest guitarist in the world now?"

"He turned me down."

"He what?"

"He wouldn't take the deal. Said I was too late."

"What?"

"My family always said that my dad sold my soul for a crate of whisky when I was three years old. I thought it was a metaphor. It wasn't."

---

Today I learned about the 21 grams experiment, in which a doctor set out to weigh people at the point of death and determine the weight of the soul. (Spoilers: modern-day scientists don’t have much truck with his methodology, or his results.)

But it made me wonder: how would you know whether you had a soul or not?