The Supernatural Experience

Everyone it seems has an interest in the supernatural. Some people make a living out of it.
Not everyone who wants to experience it does. Some who don't want ro experience it do. 

I come into the latter. I am not a trained medium, nor am I a schizophrenic. Throughout my life though, the dead have spoken to me.

We had just left Barts hospital, my father was suffering cancer of the throat. He had been lying hooked up to drips and my mother and I had been holding his hands. The day before he had been up and about and even fixed the ward tv as it had been getting on his nerves.
8am the following day at home, the phone rang. I was up making tea mum and little sis were still asleep.
"Tell your mum I'm okay." Dad's voice garbled down the phone.
"Hold on, I'll get her." I said.
"No, no, just tell her I'm okay." He hung up.

I gave mum her tea, told her dad had rang, which wasn't unusual. So we started getting ready to go back to Barts to visit, when the phone rang. 
"Mrs. Cooper?" a young female voice asked.
"Yes." Mum answered quietly.
"I'm the cancer ward sister at Barts Hospital." She went on, "I am sorry to have to tell you that your husband Sidney Cooper died this morning at 2am."
Silence.
"I'm sorry that can't be right." Mum answered eventually. "He phoned here at 8am."
"I think someone is playing a cruel joke on you Mrs Cooper." the nurse sighed. "I was with him all the time holding his hand."

We sat stunned, Mum phoned up one of Dad's friends from work who was a well known practical joker and blasted him over the phone. He denied it, Dad had kept how ill he was from everyone at his work, everyone thought he was having treatment for a stomach ulcer.

"Are you sure it was him?" Mum asked.
"Yes, he just phoned as usual it was him, he sounded a bit foggy, but he was on a lot of drugs yesterday. It was him." Mum knew I wouldn't lie to her. I wasn't lying to her.

The years passed I was walking past Harrods in Knightsbridge, and I heard Spike Milligan's voice loud in my head. "Tell the guys, I'll  meet them for lunch. Don't forget."
Imagination of a writer I told myself, until I heard the news that Spike was dead. The guys he was referring to were Harry Secombe, Michael Bentine and Peter Sellers.

My boyfriend's house was a tip in the process of renovation. An old lady had lived there, she and her daughter had both met him and liked him. He said he wanted to take the house back to a Victorian look. The old lady said "Don't sell it to builders will you?" He said he wouldn't. About a year later, the daughter came round to say her mum had died. She liked what he was doing. Taking out the 60s boarded doors, putting up a wall to make a front room again, sanding the floorboards. "Mum would be proud." she said as she left.

The first time I stayed overnight I was woken up by shouting in my face, an old lady was screaming at me."Get out! Get out!  This is NOT your house it's his! Get out!"
Strangely, I just said sleepily, "it's not your house either so go away!" 

In Cornwall, we had a host of ghosts as did Tim and Sue next door. Hardly surprising as we had mine captain's houses built over the top of the Levant mine shaft. In 1919 men were trapped underground when the lift crashed. Sue & Tim's ghosts were slightly different, still Cornish miners, but they died in the 1960s, and they would go up the stairs that Sue and Tim had removed from their front room. Sometimes just legs in a nice pair of slacks Sue said!   

Then we both had the visitor, a young man in a duffle coat who had got lost in the 1970s and who periodically came back to look for his friends. We had a medium visit one time when he turned up, apparently he sat in an armchair for a rest. He looked arty, beatnik style, long dark hair beard, duffle coat, she told us. She told him his friends had gone home.
"To London?" He asked.
"Yes." She said. He never came back after her visit. 

"There are more things in Heaven and Earth Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy."
W.Shakespeare.

This is CarnYorth, gateway to Hell apparently, on the moor behind our house, it's where the young beatnik guy got lost.

Time travelling

Apparently time is a loop in space that twists and turns and crosses over itself. Sometimes, when it does this a door opens to another time. 

This theory was used in "Quantum Leap", "Goodnight Sweetheart", "The Lake House" and my all time favourite "Somwhere in Time".

The "Time Machine" by H G Wells, accidentally caused a rift in time.

As a re-enactor our time travel is more practical, we try to make a living drawing of the time we re-enact.  

When in my 1940s kit, I am always surprised when people take photos of my husband and myself. To me the clothes are modern enough. However it wasn't fun at Goodwood a couple of years ago when my "roll on" corset decided to "roll off" !  After wrestling in the portaloo with it for about 20 minutes, I gave up and put it in my handbag!

Easier for men, a nice scarf, either a straw summer fedora or a brown or black one for winter. In the country a flat cap. Short back and sides and clean shaven. Cream slacks or linen for Summer and black, tan or brown trousers for winter. Always black brogues for work in office or brown shoes for blue collar workers.
I remember my father telling me that when he was a child, the only description of a criminal the police had was that he was not wearing a hat, this was in London 1940s and he was caught. Hats for men have made a comeback. So if like Gary Sparrow you find a doorway into the 1940s and you are a man, make sure you are wearing a hat!

This is Edna's sweetshop at Goodwood, she is talking to some children dressed as war evacuees. She's explaining what sort of sweets were allowed on the ration, and how hundreds and thousands became popular as you got more for your money. Chewing gum generally came from friendly GIs stationed in England. Somewhere I have a fascinating little book called, in it advice for dealing with the British!

"The GI Handbook".

The British Are Tough. Don’t be misled by the British tendency to be soft-spoken and polite. If they need to be, they can be plenty tough. The English language didn’t spread across the oceans and over the mountains and jungles and swamps of the world because these people were panty-waists.
Sixty thousand British civilians-men, women, and children-have died under bombs, and yet the morale of the British is unbreakable and high. A nation doesn’t come through that, if it doesn’t have plain, common guts. The British are tough, strong people, and good allies.
You won’t be able to tell the British much about “taking it.” They are not particularly interested in taking it any more. They are far more interested in getting together in solid friendship with us, so that we can all start dishing it out to Hitler.

Bear that in mind at this moment guys!  

WE WILL GET THROUGH THIS WE ARE TOUGH.


  

It's life Jim, but not as we know it.

Working on putting out some Podcasts from my "Farthing for Oxforde" book.

The King, aka Daniel and Mark Turnbull another Civil War faction author will be taking part.

I work from home, typing and researching, going out to find interesting facts to put into my books.  Ironic now I have got my reader Ticket for the Bodliean Library and my list of papers are waiting to be read, I can't go!

In a few short weeks our lives have changed beyond recognition. I found this in with my 1940s stuff - it's strangely relevant.

Here's  a little 1940s World War Two Advice -

 Keep Safe. There's a war on dontcha know.

Ghosts in this post!

There are things people don't like to hear about. Talk about. See.

Ghosts and Clowns are top of the list.  Never understood the thing about Clowns, just weird blokes in heavy make-up. Oh yes, now I get it.

Ghosts are shadows of past lives, some are on a repeat loop. The thing that caused their death so terrible it makes an imprint on the timeline. So they die over and over again.  Anne Boleyn's ghost is very active. Running along the corridors of Hampton Court Palace to beg for her life, appearing on the stairs at the Tower of London going to her execution, walking through the long gallery at Hever Castle, the place where she was born.

On the Battlefield at Edgehill the battle is fought over and over, not by re-enactors as we are not allowed on the site, but by the actual combatants. Every year around the 23rd of October the sounds of a 17thC battle echo from the empty battlefield. Residents of Edgehill are used to it now. Around a thousand men died on that field. 

Gary Stocker, a ghost hunter did some research into this phenomena and found to quote him with grateful thanks:

Two pamphlets published in January 1643, A Great Wonder in Heaven and The New Year’s Wonder recounted how a couple of months afterwards, people in the area saw at night time the battle re-enacted in the sky. This was repeated every few nights and people from the area visited to witness it. A Mr Marshall, the minister in Kineton, went to Oxford where the King was based, and told him. He sent a commission, with six gentlemen, to investigate. Not only did they get first hand accounts, but saw it for themselves.

It was thought that it may have been caused by some of the war dead not being buried, so this was remedied. Since then the full scale battle has not been witnessed although occasional things are said to happen, including Prince Rupert leading his cavalry in a charge.

As a result of this being the subject of a Royal Commission, it is recognised officially in the National Archives, the only ghostly haunting to be recognised in such a way.

Whether you believe or not, there is something in the human psyche that recognises that something exists beyond our knowledge. I'll leave it there for the moment, but if you are on Edgehill and see Sir Ralph Verney's ghost wandering the field looking for his hand with the Verney ring on it, please tell him it's safe at home, and the current Sir Ralph still wears it.

 

The Biggest Curve Ball of all...

Coronavirus or Corvid 19, whatever you want to call it is a pain in the proverbial.

It really is the biggest curve ball chucked at us for some time. It is affecting ALL of us whether we like it or not. 

I'm really hoping that people start having some sense and know this is not a rehearsal, this is not a disaster movie, this is REAL.

Sorry to keep shouting at you. 

Don't go out, don't meet up with friends, don't wreck ambulances or steal hand santiser.

Do wash your hands. Do use a tissue when you sneeze and bin it. No Tissue? Use your elbow.

Oh and while I'm totally p****d off with people - after all the work I did publicising saving the Rollright Stones and the King Stone, and offering to use my latest book as a way of helping the site. The Rollright Trust didn't even contact me to say it had been saved.

I got their petition over the 30K Mark.  I pestered and pestered people, visitors actually at the Rollrights to sign it.

How did I hear about it being saved? From my friend's daughter.

I don't want a medal, an acknowledgement would have been nice, just a note saying it's been saved would have been good. Thanks for the offer of help.

Nada, nothing, zero.

Ce ma vie.

Bitter? me? Naw, not really. On to something else. I'm glad it's saved. 

Long Compton, sprawling through the Cotswold hills, getting longer by the moment.

A peaceful farming scene, to remind us it really isn't all bad, my ego isn't worth worrying about and when Curve Balls are caught it all comes right in the end.

These photos are from last year BTW!  I am not an idiot!
 
 

Podcast

I am always full of ideas.

Always up and down like a whore's drawers as they used to say in Shoreditch.

One day full of the joys of Spring, the next ready to jump off a cliff.

I try always to be kind and helpful, but God help you if you make me lose my temper!

Must be the red hair.

So anyway, my latest plan is to do a Podcast of my books, reading scraps from them and hopefully triggering interest in The English Civil War(s) yes there was actually more than one. 

I have to be the narrator, the actor, the writer.  Cool eh?

Oh GOD!  who uses Cool these days?

Today I mainly be dressed as the hippy I am. I feel Summer coming on, so I am wearing a floaty skirt, a linen shirt, my Viking jewellry and the leather armband my cat Rosie liked to teethe on. 

My hair is long and flowing after many hours with the straighteners and I'm wearing make up. I had kinda given up for a while, but I have turned over a new leaf.

This is where I need to be. Back in Cornwall my spiritual home. Watching the sea nibble at the edges of the sand. Walking on Sennen beach, working in my office with the view of the Scilly Isles.

Soon, it should have been this year, but the way things are going it isn't going to happen,
but in the meanwhile. I have this Podcast in Mind.

Keep safe.
 
 

On point..

Thing is about writing is that you never  know how other people perceive your work. When I tell friends I have trouble sometimes writing at home as the laundry or cleaning will suddenly seem more appealing, they say things like: Go and write in a Coffee Shop. 

That may have worked for JK Rowling, but she was upstairs in a quiet corner with her baby asleep in her pram. Not a noisy, busy Pret A Mange, or a Starbucks. Yet people being the sheep they are, suddenly think inspiration comes from the hiss of an expresso machine. 

I have seen many young women, hammering away at their laptops in coffee shops, desperately hoping that someone will come over read a scrap of what they're writing and suddenly, blam, fame!

Doesn't work like that.

I have been writing since I was fourteen, I read extensively, set myself the challenge to read all the great classics before I was twenty. I wanted to write for a living, but the only thing I was offered was a junior on The Hackney Gazette. Snooty little bitch that I was, I turned it down, ending up going to Hornsey College of Art, then ITV, then ITN, then the BBC.

Writing, writing, writing, all the time. I had some success, my teenage love stories made it into Jackie, later short stories into Woman and Woman's Own. I took writing courses, in the BBC I took the Script to Screen course and the first script I submitted was based on my own newly married life. Write about what you know, was the mantra. So I did. I was disappointed when it was refused after them keeping it for over 3 weeks. I was told by the  Beeb script editors that they had already got something similar in development.

When it came out in 1978 as "Rings on Their Fingers" starring Martin Jarvis & Diane Keen,
a lot of it was lifted directly from my script.  Even the description of my then husband, tall thin, blond. It was frustrating, but I didn't have the guts or cash to sue my then employers.

Years passed, many books refused, many short stories printed, articles on the BBC Sense of Place website, The Guardian, Sunday lifestyle pages. More writing courses, Creative Writing, Writing for Pleasure and Profit.  Articles in History Magazines, History websites.

I started writing my Hilary Long Mysteries about ten years ago, while I was working in Waddesdon Manor. They are based on characters I knew. It was suggested to me by one of the other Guides saying Murder Mysteries were money spinners.  They were, bringing in about £100 a month.

I have always had to have a full time job, both my parents had died by the time I was 23, and I had to adopt my own teenage sister to stop her going into a home. They left only enough money to bury them, lived in a rented flat and had nothing of real worth. So my life as a writer had to take a back stage.

So here I am ancient and afraid for the future as we wait the wrath of Gaia as she takes her planet Earth back.

This is one mystery that I really don't know how it will end.  Keep safe.

Keep it light

Trying hard to think of good things to get through this time.

Home made Bath Buns?

Ted warming himself on a stove (electric!)

 

Porthcurno on a beautiful day

New kitten Molly rolling in the dust!

Irish soda bread for St Patricks Day

Sealed Knot encampment food at Bristol

 

 My book launch at Nantwich 

Our new Kitten.

I suppose I'm quite parochial in what I like. Our new kitten is to fill the huge gap Ted left. I cook because I enjoy it and like to try new things. I'm always amazed  when it comes out 

right! For every up there is a down, and life has a way of throwing a curve ball at us like the one Giaia the earth has thrown at us now. I like so many different things, writing, the Sealed Knot, my friends and family, drawing, sewing, helping people along my way.

The Plague

 Time for the Plague

 

 It seems that every century has it's own particular plagues. At the moment we are going through Coronavirus or Corvid 19. We have good methods of communication, good advice given to us by the people who know what we're dealing with. 

Not the Government particularly, but that's my personal opinion.

We are lucky. No-one who caught The Black Death in the 15th/16th centuries survived.  But those who didn't catch it, lived longer in the following years.

Everything was tried, eating onions, arsenic, mercury, (usually used for STDS) bursting the buboes. Blood letting.

When all they needed to do was to be clean. Get rid of the rats and their fleas.

Bit like today. Wash your hands, sneeze into a hankie, don't wipe your face with dirty hands.

The famous nursery rhyme, "Ring a ring o' Rosies, a pocket full of posies, Atishoo, Atishoo we all fall down!" came from this time.

Lavender and roses prevented bad smells and pockets full of herbs were meant to protect the wearer, sneezing was one of the first signs, then of course you would fall down. Dead.

Today, some people will die if the catch it, the already sick, the aged, the infirm, but if we are careful we should be ok. Those of us alive today are already survivors of the people who did not die of the plague.

More mysterious is The Sweating Sickness, today we still don't know what caused it, or why it worked so quickly and was so fatal. within hours of the first symptoms the victims felt unable to keep awake and if they did sleep, they died. Some recovered but there was no immunity and some people suffered this illness three or four times before they died.

It disappeared from History in 1551. It just stopped. No-one knows why. That was the Tudor Plague.

So far we have had bird flu, swine flu, norvovirus, Asian flu, Spanish Flu, HIV, Cholera, Polio, TB in our history. 

Does make you wonder why people keep fighting wars.

 

I lived near a plague pit. It was called Pitfield Street in Shoreditch. There are many more throughout London. The 1665 plague was only ended by The Great Fire of London, so one disaster finished another.

I'll end it there, sweet dreams, don't have nightmares, just wash your hands and sneeze into a tissue.

Today I am mainly in 1945

Mending a 1940s airman's jacket where the zip has gone. Not easy.

Baking shortbread biscuits and about to attempt a 1945 recipe for carrot cake - no eggs no sugar. Should be interesting.

Later I'll be making Homity Pie, a Land Girl's recipe from WW2. 

My mum wanted to be a Land Girl, but she was too young. She went into the shirt factory making Tootal shirts in Derry, like all the other women in her family. Unknown to her at the time, this was the beginning of her career in fashion.

But I digress. 

This year marks the 75th Anniversay of VE Day on the 8th of May. 
To commemorate the last of those who remember the war on the homefront, in the air, on the battlefield and on the seas, the Royal Navy and The Wavy Navy as it was called, the Merchant shipping on which Britain relied, and which was pounded into the ocean by German shipping.

My father was a Chief Petty Officer on the Ark Royal, he was a teenager during the war, so after the war the national service he chose was the Navy. He wanted to travel, unaware that he did and always would, suffer from debilitating seasickness. Didn't stop him though, once he was punished for this by having to scrub a deck with a toothbrush. I imagine, (though he never said,) he made more mess than he cleared up.

My husband's father was traumatised by the war. He was a POW, his regiment was the Black Watch, he worked in salt mines and was starved. He was on the Long Walk. He like many others who survived would not talk about his experiences.

My ex-husband's father was out in the Middle East with Monty and Rommel. His job there was to clear up air crashes in the desert. He met Lawrence (of Arabia) and Monty while he was there, having a job with purpose gave him a different experience. He actually enjoyed the adventure.

My uncle Ted was rescued from Dunkirk.

A handshake away from history. 

So re-enacting the Home Front, the Battle of Britain display team, being the Army or the Navy or a Spiv. Without the danger. Without the constant threat. Is fun, but all of us who do it remember that our parents, grandparents,lived through it. That's why we are here, that's why we do it, as a tribute to them we can make it fun, for them.

My husband sporting a proper short back and sides haircut for a 1940s do!

 At the nightclub with the Spivs and their ladies, authentic hairstyles by DoWop Dos!


 

 

Cooking again!

I cook a lot, from scratch, sometimes with not many ingredients.

 Sometimes it can turn out funny - I think this loaf I made is having a laugh!

Sometimes it's biscuits made from a recipe found on Bosworth Field 

and passed down the ages.

Having friends round for Christmas tea with home made sausage rolls biscuits and cake.

 Sometimes it's a commemorative cake for Richard III

Or a 17th C summer picnic on a Sealed Knot camp 

with sweets of the period called "orange drops"

 

Finally banquet fayre, Lob Lolly castle, liquorice sticks to chew, Brie and puddings.

 

I grow herbs, fruit and veg, this year a little slim because of the rain, but rhubarb is already bright red and jolly, I have jammed last years blueberries, strawberries and plums.

Lavender, sage, chives, bay I hope will survive, looking for a house with a bigger garden.

 

I must do a recipe book, been meaning to do one for years,  perhaps now is the time.

 

Moving Fast!

Possibly three more book signings coming up. Damn your eyes Coronovirus!  Might have to wait and see.

New cover design finished for the Legend of the Rollrights.

The Sealed Knot season may be under threat as well. 

Article in The Orders of the Daye hopefully published in next magazine.

Now all my books are on Goodreads.

Still selling well on Amazon.

All copies are in the British Library. I think that's the thing I'm most proud of.

So in the meantime...The angry sea off Godrevey beach. 


"I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.” The Admiral's wife states in Jane Austen's "Persuasion"

Calm waters could be good sometimes, we all need a break from the hurly burly (that's from the 16th Century), we can get fed up with all the bumpf we have to deal with, (another one!).

After writing 16th/17th/18th century histories its very very hard to come back and live in 2020 again

 A Jane Austen me, when times were more elegant, but probably no less frustrating.

 A 17th Century me in the early days of the Sealed Knot. Playing the part of a farmers wife.

Shortly after this picture was taken at Edgehill I suffered a stroke. Luckily it was dealt with quickly by Sealed Knot medics and Warwick hospital. I made a full recovery, all I got left from it was OCD and migraines. So you see a bit of calm waters now and then is necessary.

Hopefully this modern plague will leave us alone, so I can be all the different women I want to be.  Keep safe keep Happy, keep Well.


 

Photos

 Dryden's house

 Sealed Knot Living History Camp Claydon House

 Compton Verney House and Art Gallery, bust of Charles 1

 

Oliver Cromwell, Compton Verney Art Gallery

 

 Me disguised as a tourist outside Compton Verney

 Me as my Steampunk Victorian Vampire look

 Me as Goodwyfe at Trinity College Oxford in commemoration of Brigadier Peter Young

Claydon House and church

The memorial to the Verney family of Claydon House, truly by the Sword Divided

 

On the Cob at Lyme Regis Dorset.

I go everywhere I get an opportunity to, Sealed Knotting, researching, dressing up, 

dressing down, being many different people in one life. Victoria Wood said her only big regret was that you were only allowed to be one person in your life, that's why she made up so many interesting characters to portray in her sketches.

So much to do and so little time.