Best in Show again

I've just come back from the village flower show. The storm of wind and rain in the week of the show had played havoc with any flowers growing out of doors so it wasn't just its usual standard but as in the fictional village of Cairndhu, it did its best. When I arrived, my friend explained he had looked round his garden and didn't think there was anything worth exhibiting but he'd look again in the morning before the show. As usual one of his entries got a first prize in its category. There were one or two miscarriages of justice but on the whole the judging was fair, nobody bribing the judges with fillet steaks and legs of lamb like Gillespie in Cairndhu. Over the years the number of cups and trophies has ballooned and it takes a good half hour to hand out all the silver-wear despite it being only a village affair. An innovation since I was a lad is the scarecrows; the favourite last year was Donald Trump but, being SNP country, this year Boris Johnson was the scary man. There were one or two amusing ones and I've added one to the images at the bottom. If the flowers were not quite up to standard, the vegetables were with some enormous leeks and huge cabbages and they are also displayed underneath. I can't shut down without mentioning the lunch which always drives me mad because I have to chose from so many delicious dishes.
In Best in Show, I tried to capture the atmosphere of a village and some of the characters I knew as a boy but a village is a living thing and all I could do was show what it was like in the fifties. I grew up among the mines, so I made Cairdhu a mining village but I'm sure there were and still are non-mining villages with similar characters.
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Jinks brings a letter

I've started to lay out the follow on from Best in Show in Cairndhu. The opening comes with Broon making his way home from work and meeting Jinks, the postman. Jinks gives Broon a letter which he says comes from Dalriada.
'Dalriady?' Broon exclaims, where the Hell's that?'
'No Dalriady, Dalriada, it was spelt oot for me. It seems they don't like their place bein' camed Cluggy.'
'It's been Cluggy since ever I kenned.'
Broon goes on and is met by a bee-keeper who wants to know if he can put his bees on the bramble bushes at Broon's new market garden.
Broon goes home, opend the letter and finds the Dalriada people want a meeting to discuss the next years flower show, which will have two classes, the local Cairndhu, and a special class to include the villages round about. He tells Maisie, his wife, that things are getting out of hand. Maisie naturally suggests a session with Miss Kirkwood to sort things out and Miss K insists Broon write back to Cluggy arranging a meeting.
Broon resists but Miss K was his teacher and he is forced to give in.
I tried several other openings but none of them got into the action like this one.So far, I've introduced five characters, which I feel is enough to be going on with. The next will be Broon's daughter Ger and the rivals for her hand, Calum Gillespie, the butcher's son and young Lindsay, the farmer's son.
I enjoy writing about these people. Their problems are not saving the universe but in the village context they are major.

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Old Meg she was a Gypsy

Miss Mowat, or a name like that, came for a year. Her big thing was poetry, not Admirals All, or Hiawatha, or John Moore being buried, but My love is like a red, red, rose. Slushy things like that. Even worse, she’d tell us we had to read it to a girl, to the giggles of the girls and the dour disapproval of us boys. We tried to think of some way to get revenge. It came from her own choice of big T, who could break wind, from either end, at will. She asked him to read Old Meg.

T started, ‘Old meg,’ poop, ‘she was a gypsy,’ poop poop.

‘And she went from town to town,’ poop, poop, poop!

As I say Miss Mowat left the school at the end of the year.

www.sullatoberdalton.com/books/bees-in-my-bonnet

I wanted to reflect how happy childhood had been for me in a Cairndhu type village but as I mentioned there were low points in the life of those villages and those are better reflected in Miss Kirkwood's story in A Land Fit for Heroes, which was written in memory of all those ladies who lost fiancees in WW1 and took to teaching. They gave us such a warm start to our schooldays that I felt they needed someone to recognise their contribution. Don't think it is doom and gloom, village life is always like tartan or a tweed, a healthy mixture. I had hoped to interest a literary agent and one does one's best but life is full of these little disappointments.

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I shouldn't have described our house. It was small, only two rooms and a kitchen, but I don't want to create the reaction that several people have had to This Boy  and have them feel sorry for us, or feel how courageous we were to overcome our back ground, or think we were deprived. It was home, a place where we had the love of our mothers and the wisdom of our fathers. We were sorry for those who lived in ten room mansions with a governess, who barely saw their mother and whose fathers were remote figures they barely knew, and who had to go to boarding school and fag for bullies. Our common room was the moorland where the larks spiralled up into the sky singing a welcome, or the field above which the lapwing was doing acrobatics in the air, or the wood where the deer and rabbits lived and where you might glimpse a fox sneaking along or hear the rooks argue. It wasn't deprived, it was home!

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

Ice cream in Cairndhu

Ice cream in Cairndhu. When the summer came, I remember standing with Rob staring through the big plate glass window into what we called the milk bar, where they sold Ice Cream. We didn’t have money for ice cream so we were just staring in. Inside, a wee lad called Pat was leaning over the high counter watching the old man who owned the place make ice cream.

The ice cream machine was like a deep mixer with a sort of bin that they poured the ice cream mixture into and it went round and round until it was properly chilled. The bin was then taken out and put into the refrigerated hole they served the ice cream from.

In any case, Pat Broon had a school cap on and, as we watched, his cap fell off into the mixer. I’ll never forget the look of absolute disgust and frustration on the old chap's face as looked at Pat, shut down the mixer and delved into it to get the cap out.

He pull out the cap and slapped it, full of ice cream, on to Pat’s head. Pat started to howl and rushed out of the shop and ran away down the street.

We watched him go.

‘I don’t know what he’s bubblin’ about,’ Rob said. ‘He got all that ice cream for nothing. He might have stopped and let us have a lick.’

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

Our house looked out over the end of the tarred road; beyond us there was only a farm road. It looked as if it had been Macadamized with bigger stones below fine grit when the Douglas estates had kept what was known as the Mountain Drive in repair but it had deteriorate over the years. Anyway, beyond the road was a fence, then a burn and then the open field, green when it was used for pasture, dark brown and full of good humus when plowed golden brown and full of the rattle of corn crakes when hay or the corn was waving. Beyond the field was a wood of deciduous trees. Just in front of the wood was the mine dump. It wasn't large nor did it intrude on the view, it was just there. The field sloped to the left at a shallow gradient but on the right, or top side, it increased quite suddenly and that's where the other children were sledging when it snowed and I met Tom Sawyer.

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

Since the market garden was sanctioned and even promoted by Miss Kirkwood, Broon feels he will not be expected to make a major contribution on the Flower Show committee but Miss Kirkwood is determined he will do his duty and continue to be a leading figure in the community. It was he who talked to the other villages about having a premier league competition between the best from each village and they, especially the snobby Cluggie people will not allow him to let things just drift and melt away. Nor is Cluggie, in their opinion an appropriate name. One of the houses is called Dalriada and with several new mansions being built beside it, they feel it reflects the character of the village more appropriately. The locals still remember it being little more than a blacksmith's house and smiddy, or, as the Cluggies refer to it, a smithy.

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November is just to keep Halloween and Christmas/Hogmanay apart in Scotland but Broon has his name down for the dominoes. He gets Galahad as a partner, wins the first round then gets beaten by Moneypenny, the banker, and Gillespie. Not beaten, Galahad has a flu' and Broon tries to get the game postponed but Gillespie insists it has to be played by Saturday or they are disqualified and the barman has to conform to the rules. Jinks has lost already and tries to replace Galahad but Gillespie is having none of it. Galahad wants to struggle on but Miss Kirkwood calls the doctor and puts her foot down. Maybe Galahad has been helping Broon at his ploughed field and gets a bad chill. Can the young ones help in the field? It would bring Gordon Lindsay into the story a bit more and make a triangle with Calum and Ger. The minister is also making noises about early flowers in the greenhouse so things are building nicely.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1535417188

The ploughing match is all very well but, as I mentioned the story needs a lot more incidents to flesh it out. I don't want to go beyond another flower show, so the story needs to cover one year. Ater September the next event would be bramble picking and jam making. That could take Maisie and Broon round the other villages and raise questions about the new form of the show. That would need a committee meeting and bring back some of the old rivalries in new forms with Miss Kirkhope having to calm things down. First the jam and the youngsters upsetting Broon.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1535417188

The ploughing match seems to be a good idea to turn over the ground at Broon's field but when Jinks hears about it, his sporting instincts are aroused and he may find himself in financial difficulties. Broon has hardly had time to digest all this when the Flower Show committee demand his attention and the villages round about demand to know what arrangements will be made for the new competition. Broon will try to delegate but Miss Kirkwood may have other ideas.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1535417188

As I've written out Vernon Brill's tale up to and after Bismark, I've realised - this works for me. I normally write out a general story line, flesh it out, fessh that out several times before doing a detail scene by scene summary and then adding sights, sounds, smells and atmosphere but I enjoyed doing Brilley's experience and I want to try it on the sequel to Best in Show.
Broon, not having won Best in Show had behaved himself and was fairly fresh on Sunday morning. At breakfast, he was thinking about clearing and tidying the garden when Maisie offered him another cup and he could tell by the way she poured that she had something on her mind.
'Maybe we should go and look at that bramble patch, John,' she suggested.
'I was thinking of clearing the garden,' Broon mentioned.
'Let Andrew and Ger do it,' Maisie suggested. 'I'd like to see that site again. Maybe the brambles will be ready and we could make some jam.'
Broon agreed and they went off up the hill.
The brambles weren't ready, almost but not yet juicy and sweet but Maisie turned to look across the Cairndhu valley, then back at the brambles, then back across the valley. 'I think I'd like to see this view, John,' Maisie said.
Dalmighty! She's planning the house and the garden no' even started, Broon thought, looking back to the clumps of grass that covered the field where he had to start making a market garden.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1535417188