A letter for Broon

Jinks, the postman, came with a letter from Cluggie, the village next door. They want to have a meeting about the flower show next year. I didn't want to get involved but you ken what Miss Kirkwood is like, as soon as she heard, and I expect Jinks would tell her, she tackled me in the street. 'John,' she told me. 'It's your duty to see that they do not take over our show in Cairndhu. They want to change the name of the village from Cuggie to Dalriada to reflect the quality of the houses there. They didn't have the nerve to say the quality of the people there, but that's what they meant.'
'Miss Kirkwood, I've got this new market garden business to see to and my work at the mine as well as makin' sure Gillespie doesna win the show. I don't have time to go gallavantin' and talkin' to folk like that Cluggie crowd.'
'John Brown, you will not side step your obligations. It was you who first talked to them about this idea of a joint show.'
'There's others better able to talk to them than me, Miss Kirkwood.'
'No there is not, John. You have been hiding from responsibility too long. If you wish I will get Farquhar to accompany you.'
I could see there was no point in arguing so I've written to them at Cluggie, after all, that's the official address and we'll see what happens next.

www.sullatoberdalton.com/pen-sullatober

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.

www.sullatoberdalton.com/pen-sullatober

Saving the Flower Show

Best in Show about a village flower show is now a paperback on Amazon. It is part nostalgia, part light reading and was written because I had so much enjoyment from making advisory visits with my father to flower show competitors as a youngster. My father had grown chrysanthemums for the Christmas market in the thirties, still grew but didn't show and was regarded as an expert. He took me round on his advisory visits when he encouraged competition by complements and fake news of other contestants. The book is set in Miss Kirkwood's village of Cairndhu where an international firm want to take over the show for advertising. Miss Kirkwood is against that and inspires her ex-pupil, John Brown, to resist. John Brown, or Broon as he is known in the village, has other priorities, mainly making sure his chrysanthemums beat George Gillespie's. Gillespie bribes judges with fillet steaks and legs of lamb, of course, so it is not plain sailing, especially when the weather misbehaves.

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

I've been taking my books to a local market and was asked if I'd be prepared to be a committee member. I agreed but it seems there are some reservations. One of the present committee read Best in Show and, while they enjoyed it, after reading the Flower Show Committee scenes, is worried the Market Committee will appear in another volume. Despite a firm resolve to avoid using friends and acquaintances as characters, traits and little idiosyncrasies are what make a character believable and the only knowledge I have of those comes from watching people. Broon, for example, is a conglomeration of many people and his attitudes and reactions come from memories of a mixture of people in the circumstances he finds himself in. I suppose it is the amalgamation of several people's personalities that gives each character complexity and depth. Jinks isn't always a joker, nor is Gillespie without some saving graces, he is married to Betty after all.

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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

At the lunch at Lindsay's farm, the subject of ploughing comes up and Gordon suggests they have have a ploughing match to plough Broon's field. It could even be an annual event and give Broon publicity. Of course, Broon knows nothing about ploughing never mind matches but Maisie thonks it is a grand idea. 'You'll have to have posters and entry forms, John,' Miss Kirkhope says and Broon has the feeling he's in way over his depth again. Dalmighty, it never stops.
The story will need sixteen ideas like that to make 80,000 words. Bernard Cornwell would make it with eight but he's a master and I'm just a country boy.

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There's not only Maisie's reaction to consider, Ger, his daughter will suspect he is trying to match her up with young Gordon Lindsay. Broon is feeling a bit annoyed he ever agreed to go for Sunday lunch at the farm. Then Maisie meets Miss Kirkwood, who will be joining them after church and that puts a different look on the whole thing and Maisie tells Ger to be on her best behavior. This lunch is turning into a major event and JInks will want to make a comment and try to wind Broon up. Since Cedeco are no longer in the picture, someone must arise to become an antagonist. Maybe it will be the other villages, especially the snobbish Cluggie group who want to lay down the law for the flower show.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1535417188

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Sullatober Dalton

Broon was standing looking at the field when Lindsay drove up in his tractor.
'How much do ye want ploughed this year, Broon? One acre or two?'
'As far as I can mind, an acre is the size of a football pitch and that will be more than we can cope with for a start. We can put tatties in all right but I'd like a wee space for some other things. If the acre was ploughed , Andrew and I could maybe clear a bit for ...'
'A flower or two that the missus might get for the house, maybe. She's already askin' if there was any chance.'
'Dalmighty! I'm just trying to see where would be the best place to start, no searchin' catalogues for flowers.'
'Keep yer hair on Broon. Ye'll do what ye can, I understand that, I only mentioned it to make conversation. What I really wanted to ask was if ye and the family would like to come for a bite o' lunch at the farm after you've heard the meenister on Sunday?'
Broon was startled and several things sped through his mind. He could bring Ger and Lindsay's son would be there. What would Maisie think of it? She didn't ken Lindsay's wife. What shift was he on?
'If ye don't want to come, just say that, Broon.'
'No, no, I was just thinkin' what shift I was on but the worst would be night-shift. What time would we come?'
'After the meenister's reminded ye ye're goin' to Hell. The wife goes for a reminder on a Sunday but comes straight back.'
'Is this your idea, or does your missus ken?' Broon asked.
'Would you invite me and the missus without Maisie's sayin' you could?'

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This is fine but I need to get some feeling for later.

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.

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The village flower show was always held in the school and going back, it seems incredible that there were eight classrooms in that little building. Even elderly people find it hard to believe that in the first class we had slates to write on. The slates had a wooden rim and some were adorned with the initials out parents had carved into them. We wrote with a slate pencil, a thin round piece of slate which made pale grey marks on the slate. If you made a mistake, all you had to do was wet your finger and rub.
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Flower shows seem a long way off at this time of year but thankfully I have photographs and images to remind me of brighter times . The picture below is a King Protea from the garden in front of the church in Pniel near Cape Town, the village where those magnificent pumpkins were grown.http://www.amazon.com/dp/1535417188

Memories of the village flower show have an extra dimension for me. When I was about fourteen, the committee laid on n afternoon dance for the teens. I was a member of the Scout Highland Dance Display team and danced the Eightsome Reel, Dashing White Sergeant and the Strathspeys, but was taken by surprise when a girl I had admired for some time came to ask me to dance a quickstep or something. When I told her I couldn't do 'modern dance', she told me I could try but I was quite adamant I wasn't going to make a fool of myself. Eventually, she glared at me and walked off. As I watched her go, I thought, this will NEVER happen to me again. It was the first,but far from the last time that lassie inspired me to get on with things. The picture was taken years after we were married http://www.amazon.com/dp/1535417188

I set Best in Show in a mining village in Southern Scotland because most of the miners were proud of their garden. One chap I worked with had a garden of the standard one sees in the magazines. When he was moving from one council house to another he asked the incoming tenant if he would be prepared to pay something for the shrubs and plants that he had planted and arranged. The new chap refused and my friend transplanted everything, including rows and rows of potatoes. He told me the potatoes survived and cropped. I wouldn't want you to get the impression that I knew people who were mean but... http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1535417188

In South Africa, this is mid-summer and people are getting ready for flower show.The nearest I came to Cairndhu was in a village called Pniel in the Swart River Valley that the slaves - people of mixed race- had built when they were freed in 1834.From the picture, you can see how successful they are at growing. They were lovely people, self sufficient in many ways and in no way inferior, despite apartheid. http://www.amazon.com/dp/1535417188

In one office I worked in, one of the women had a pot plant, which she talked to. Being an engineer and sceptical, for a kind of joke, every time I walked past the plant I muttered to it - Drop dead. To my amazement, the damn thing was dead inside a month. The blame didn't go to the woman who forgot to water it, of course, so, now, I even chat to vegetables when I visit them and naturally the Cairndhu gardeners encourage their Flower Show exhibits.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1535417188

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I was worrying about how I could follow up Best in Show but I took some copies to a country market on Friday and readers were telling me about flower shows they remembered from the fifties. If this carries on then we will be back in Cairndhu with John Brown, Miss Kirkwood

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1535417188, and of course, Jinks

People ask where Cairndhu is. Well, I thought it was in my imagination but it turns out there are places called Cairndhu. The one in the book is a thing of the past, a mining village where people were a community, worked together, played together, prayed together. I was lucky to be brought up in that atmosphere. I suppose it was being in the dark for the working shift that made us all appreciate the colours and scents of the flowers.
Sullatober Dalton

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I want to share a few of my flower show pictures, as much to look at them again as to try to brighten this gloomy weather.

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I love going to local flower shows, not the Chelsea, where I'm supposed to 'get a message' from the various garden designs but the ones where I can just enjoy the flowers. Unfortunately, I don't know all the names but I do enjoy the beauty. This is an example

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