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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Prize winning Short story -

I've added O'Reilly's Daughter to the short stories. It won a prize in Writers Journal and I am rather pleased with it. I love characters who don't conform and Elizabeth is one of those. In a way I find strong female characters have more depth than male ones. The male ones seem to come out hard men or bullies and single minded. It probably has something to do with heroes from boyhood, they never had any doubts and we knew they would win. John Wayne at Iwo Jima, Zorro and Buffalo Bill. The funny men were just funny, Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, or the Three Stogies. We never had a funny hero, or a tough funny man. But the ladies could do stupid things and remain ladies, fall in love and realise their mistake.

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Cairndhu revisited

Broon's problems with Jinks in Cairndhu and Cluggie village, wishing to have it's name changed to Dalriada to give a proper impression of its community, are about to be reintroduced with the Spring weather. Miss Kirkwood is still there to help him with both. Maisie will keep him right as he tries to get his market garden venture off the ground but he is not entirely reconciled to his daughter's liaison
with Gillespie's son.

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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.

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I like dogs

I'm always amazed at how life turns up incidents that might find their way into a book about Cairndhu. I met someone who had been on holiday in Cornwall somewhere and the family were terrorised by a cockerel from the cottage next door. It reminded me of the occasion when a dog took a dislike to my bicycle. I tried all kinds of things from going down the other side of the road, to walking the bike  but that dog heard me no matter what. It even jumped over the fence when I tried full speed ahead. The same thing happened in Zambia when I had a motorbike, only that time it was a three legged dog and it jumped an eight foot high hedge and chased me down the street. I've searched for the pic I have of our last spaniel but he seems to have wandered off and I found this of my wife when we were at the launch of the South African Americas Cup yacht that I had forgotten about

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Horses

When I was growing up, the farmer had a pair of horses for ploughing, harrowing, harvesting and pulling the cart. The milk was delivered by a kind of gig with big milk cans with taps on them to fill the jugs and bottles people left out. Nowadays they use machines that are three stories high to plough, machines that get stuck on narrow bridges and cause traffic jams. There are to be no diesel or petrol cars by some date I might not see but what of these monsters? They will need to trail a power station behind them and everything the cut will have to be used to generate the power. We face STARVATION unless we go back to a good pair of Clydesdales whose breath steams as they pull the plough on frosty mornings - I'm not going to spoil the picture by going into what noxious gasses they produce or what particulates they leave behind.

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Postman's Knock

 In Cairndhu, at Christmas, each Sunday School class had a party, where there were games like Postman's Knock and a thing called Be Baw Babity and The Farmer Wants a Wife, all of which needed a ring with someone inside. For the Farmer the person inside chose a wife then the wife chose someone to be the child and so on, until someone had to choose a dog. Choosing the first wife, if Tiptoes was there, was fixed - you got scalded with her look if you made a mistake and chose Jeany with the light brown hair. Several people were expected to contribute a party piece and Tiptoes recited Christopher Robin is saying his prayers in a VERY SWEET voice while we boys squirmed at a boy being portrayed in such a pansy fashion. There was also a girl who was taking elocution lessons and recited 'The bairnies cuddle doon at nicht wi' muckle fecht and din'. Why one needed to attend elocution classes to learn that, I never knew. I just hope the present day disco parties are as memorable as ours were.

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