On wet days we played inside. Bob’s parents had a chaise-long in the back room, one of those couches with an arm at only one end that you see Cleopatra lounging on to eat grapes. We tried sliding down the big arm but it was covered in a kind of velvet material and didn’t slip so we looked about for other things of interest.

In a drawer or cupboard, Rob found an officer’s revolver from the Great War but, fortunately, there was no ammunition – sooner or later, we’d have tried a shot, maybe at the farmer’s bull in the empty field behind the houses. How Rob’s dad had acquired it we never found out but his dad had been wounded at the Somme and there was a copy of a newspaper picture of him being guided to the ambulance that I’ve seen in books and on TV now and then.

www.sullatoberdalton.com/books/best-in-show

I thought it was time to make a start, so the first 500 words of the sequel are written and, of course, Broon is being rushed into something with his usual, Dalmighty, what does she want now? They've gone to look at the bramble patch and found the brambles are ripe and the young ones will be organised to pick them.

www.sullatoberdalton.com/books/best-in-show

Best in Show started out as a short story which found Miss Kirkwood retired and struggling to make sure Cairndhu Flower Show's Best in Show award would not be won by someone who treated his wife rather like a slave. Not something uncommon in the fifties but by no means the norm. In most instances the wife ran the home and her rules were not only observed by her husband but reinforced if the bairns broke any of them. By the fifties, the old 'miner's rows' were jhad been mostly replaced with decent housing but some still remained. In one village the houses had been undermined and the walls had cracks you could put your hand through. The sense of community in those old rows was strong and few who needed help didn't get it.

www.sullatoberdalton.com/books/land-fit-heroes