More about canals

Frog, Dog and I took another walk along the Grand Western Canal yesterday. This time we explored the almost derelict northern end which should join up with the River Tone (as in ‘Taunton’)* but doesn’t quite.

All water has a magic to it, but canals particularly so because the water is still. We saw few people yesterday and no boats and there wasn't a sound to be heard. When we got back to the car, I felt as if I'd been in another world.

(Sorry about the quality of the pics - I think the dial on top had jiggled itself round to the wrong place.)

Leaves on the surface of the water,

looking like a Japanese (?) painting:





Disused lime kilns: 







Tunnel entrance:

This is weed growing under the water from the
bed of the canal, but because the water is so clear
it looks as if it's growing above the water:



*I’ve just looked up the derivation of ‘Tone’ and apparently it’s a Celtic word meaning ‘fire’, ie ‘sparkling’, an incentive - if we needed one - to take another walk in the area and follow the dried-up canal-bed as far as the river 

Weretigers and other monsters

According to Asian folklore, man-eating tigers have supernatural origins. Either they are inhabited by gods or demons, or they are human shapeshifters. Patrick Newman, who has lived in Asia and been fascinated by such creatures all his life, has just had a book published on the subject.

    His book, Tracking the Weretiger, draws information from an array of sources and I am aghast at the work that must have gone into it. It is however written in an easy style, with vivid stories and telling details, such as the fact that tigers eat fleshy parts first such as buttocks so that often only the head, hands and feet of victims are found, and one belief that tigers stalking woodcutters synchronised their footsteps with the chops of the axe. Brrr.

    Equally vivid is the picture of colonial times – how the British slaughtered the wild animals, plundered the forests depriving tribespeople of their livelihoods, and drafted in locals as cheap labour.

    He examines some of the reasons why tigers – and other big cats – who usually shun humans should start to eat them. One leopard for instance who terrorised an area 500 miles square for eight years, entering through windows and barred doors to take people from their huts by night, was thought to have acquired the taste for human flesh during a flu epidemic when there was no time to burn the dead.

    This leopard is also the subject of the last chapter. Locals called in famous hunter Jim Corbett who after eight months got the better of the beast. Surveying the dead animal, he wrote, ‘Here was only an old leopard . . . whose only crime – not against the laws of nature, but against the laws of man – was that he had shed human blood, with no object of terrorizing man, but only in order that he might live.’ Corbett later turned conservationist.

With discussion of European werewolf traditions, full references, a glossary and full index, this is a comprehensive and authoritative work. And the fact that Pat is the partner of one of my sisters has not influenced my opinion in the least.

    The book is published in the States, but available through both Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com .

While on the subject of family and talented writers, I must also mention my sister Emma Fischel, who has just had a children’s novel published called The Gorgle. It’s for 8–11s who like a shivery bit of comic horror. (And for 50-somethings. I read it at the weekend and was gripped. It’s very clever.)

    She also writes children’s non-fiction, such as quiz and puzzle books, history made fun and girly books, under the name Lottie Stride. Recent titles include Meerkat Mischief, The Time Traveller's Handbook, Girls Only, Girls' Miscellany. (Frog was gripped at the weekend by the girly books.)

    The Gorgle is the one to buy as Em gets royalties on that. She doesn’t get royalties on the Lottie Stride books, so it’s better to borrow them from the library as then she gets PLR (Public Lending Right – fees for each borrowing).

Thank you!

Walking and writing

Hello again after an absence of four months.

THE WALKING BIT

Here are some pictures from a walk Frog, Dog and I took yesterday along the Grand Western Canal.

This originally ran 24 miles from Tiverton in Devon to Taunton in Somerset but now only runs for 11 miles from Tiverton. Unfortunately this is too short for a boating holiday, but it does mean that the canal’s lovely and quiet.

I call this our ‘OAP walk’ as it’s all on the flat (and that’s hard to find in Devon).



Weedy (green) water because few boats come through, and muddy (brown) water after rain and flood



Swan family (two parents and two cygnets, but one parent thoughtlessly swam out of shot and then it began to pour so I had to put the camera away)



Ayshleigh Chapel

THE WRITING BIT

  

Since July I’ve been madly revising my children’s novel, which I first started about eleven years ago, and finally put down about five years ago. It was great coming back to it after such a long interval as its faults were so much easier to spot and, I hope, to put right. I’ve entered it for a competition run by Mslexia (a magazine ‘for women who write’). It was great too to have a purpose and a deadline, instead of writing in a vacuum.

Sadly, I now have to return to my adult novel which is at a much earlier and therefore (to my mind) more tricky stage. (Hence the blogging!)



Snippets

I’m stuck on The Novel again, so here I am, back after an absence of over a month, for which I feel bad (as if you were hanging on my every word). Thank you for still being there.

The reason I’m stuck on the novel is that, when I wrote the first draft, I plonked chunks of my autobiography in it in what I thought were the appropriate places. Now, when I come to go through the book again, I find that the chunks are completely unusable. Because they’re ‘true’, they don’t expand and blossom like fiction does. They’re fixed and I can’t do anything with them. I’m going to have to completely rewrite them, using my Imagination. I feel daunted.

Reading Nina’s lovely blog (http://www.ninafenner.blogspot.com/) this morning I was honoured to find a mention of one of my posts. It was about sewing, so here is another snippet.

A few weeks ago when we saw the sun, I was inspired to go through my bin bag of summer clothes. As I tried the clothes on, I realised that I am now too old to wear above-the-knee skirts, so I let down the hem of one dress, sewed a matching band on to another (it was a dress I’d made and I had some material left over) and adapted the two items in the picture.

The band round the bottom of the dress comes from a skirt I shortened a few years ago (talk about ‘make do and mend’). The skirt I lengthened by extending the underskirt with a band of similar material – which is fine until the wind blows.

They look all right, don’t you think?

Another preoccupation at the moment is a course I’m thinking of doing. It’s training in something called the Lightning Process, which cured my niece’s ME. I’m wondering if it will help my migraines. Any comments?

Storm damage

Frog tells me this particular form of storm debris is called 'witches' knickers':

Here's our road, washed into the field:

And here's a ladybird which caught my eye this morning from a good ten feet away and which I couldn't resist photographing:

Back to the novel (I hope).