A horror story

The result of a silly Facebook 'would you survive a zombie apocalypse?' quiz (short answer: no) and a challenge from a well-respected local author to take a walk on the dark side.  No spoilers if you aren't familiar with the Solent Welfare Rights Project team, Severe Discomfort or the sequels. 

 

Until they heard the woman's screams from the corridor, Martin Connolly and Toby Novak had been enjoying an unusually quiet afternoon in the Solent Welfare Rights Project's cluttered office, catching up on routine paperwork while listening to Radio 1.  Martin had won the toss and retuned from Radio 4.  Toby had wanted 6 Music, but decided he was still young and cool enough to tolerate his colleague's choice.

Martin was first to his feet and the door.  Immediately outside, one of the housing officers from the office opposite, a middle-aged woman whose name he had never taken the trouble to learn, was sprawled across the floor.

 Toby knelt beside her. 

 'It's okay,' he said, checking her wrist for a pulse.  'She's only fainted.'

 'I can see why...' Martin said slowly.

Standing where the door from the waiting room had been, until something had reduced it to scattered splinters, was a ghastly figure.  Its straggling hair was matted with blood and dirt, there was a rotted look about the greyish flesh of its battered face and one gory socket was missing an eyeball.  It lurched clumsily towards the advisers, dragging its festering feet across the carpet tiles, its left arm swinging limply at its side.  As they looked on, momentarily immobilised in terror, it lurched to a halt and swung its right arm forward. 

Clutched awkwardly in its filthy, gnarled hand was a brown envelope.

'What the...?'  Martin was too stunned even to swear.  He stepped back beyond the prone housing officer.   

Toby rose slowly to his feet and, to Martin's surprise, advanced cautiously until he was almost within reach of the creature's outstretched arm. 

'It looks like a DWP envelope,' he said. 

'Not that!'  Martin exclaimed.  'That!' 

He levelled a shaking arm to point in the creature's direction.

'I reckon he's a zombie,' Toby answered. 

'But zombies aren't real!'

'Of course they are!  Didn't you see the ones abstaining on the second reading of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill?'  Toby warily accepted the envelope from their visitor and stepped back quickly out of reach, drawing the letter out from within surprisingly calmly. 

'We need weapons!' cried Martin.

He glanced back into the office.  He saw only standard office furniture, computers, cardboard folders, notepads and paper.  While it might have counted as such in their usual battles with the dehumanising bureaucracy of the DWP, when it came to zombie-slaying, his trusty CPAG Welfare Rights Handbook didn't really cut it as a weapon.  The only sharp-edged object within easy reach was a staple remover.

'Don't you ever watch horror movies?' Martin demanded, as Toby nonchalantly perused the letter.  'We've got to cut its head off!'

'We can't do that.'

'Why not?'

'He's come here for help.'  Toby offered the letter to Martin.  'He's been found fit for work!'

'What?'

'His Employment and Support Allowance claim has been turned down.  He only got nine points at his medical.  They've allowed him occasionally has uncontrollable episodes of aggressive or disinhibited behaviour that would be unacceptable in any workplace.  No points for anything else.'

'He should be exempt from the Work Capability Assessment, though, shouldn't he?’ Martin argued.  ‘He's terminally ill!'

'Technically he's not, if he's already dead,' Toby suggested.  

'But there must be loads of other descriptors that fit him.'  Martin's keen legal instincts were conquering his fear.  He stepped over the housing officer and got as close as he dared to the creature.  'The way he walked up to us, I don't reckon he'd get more than a hundred metres without stopping or significant discomfort.  That's another nine points straight off.  He only needs six extra to pass.  Hey, zombie!' 

The creature grunted, but had turned away after handing over the envelope and seemed more interested in a fly crawling up his left leg.  Martin noticed that suddenly there were several drowsy flies buzzing about the room.  With a lurch in his stomach, he realised they were hatching out from somewhere near the zombie's left knee.

'He's called Ernest.  Ernest Simpson.'  Toby said evenly.  'It's on the letter.'

'Thanks.  Hey, Ernie!' 

Martin caught the monster's attention this time.  It stood with its head lolling to one side, watching him mutely. 

'Can you do this - with either arm?'  Martin raised his hands to the top of his head in turn. 

Ernest Simpson attempted to copy him, but his arms swung down to his sides before his hands were higher than the level of his chest. 

'Nine more points,' Martin said. 'Cannot raise either arm to top of head as if to put on a hat.'

The effort of lifting both arms seemed to have winded the zombie.  He gave a low groan and his left hand dropped off, falling to the floor and landing with a dull squelch.

'Looks like we can count 4c as well.'  Toby said.

'Cannot transfer a light but bulky object, such as an empty cardboard box.'  Martin recited from memory.  'Six points.  But that wouldn't have applied when he had his medical assessment.'

'Fair point.  Still, he's got to be home and dry – we’ve got more than fifteen already and we haven't touched on communication, or his mental health.' 

'Or continence..?'  

Although Martin didn't like to be judgmental, the guy smelt terrible.

Toby checked the letter again,  'He's in time to challenge the decision.  This isn't a month old yet.  I'll get him our usual paperwork to request a mandatory reconsideration.'

Martin didn't fancy being left alone to watch Ernie the zombie.  'Shouldn't we take him into the office?' he asked.

'Better not.  Hilary will give us both hell if he decomposes near her workstation.'

Toby turned to step back over the housing officer, but even as he noticed that the woman was no longer lying behind them, she emerged from her office, angry, wild-eyed and armed with a fearsome sickle-shaped blade.  She rushed straight at the startled zombie, howling as she hacked his head from his shoulders in a single mighty blow.

'It's the blade from the paper guillotine,' she explained, fastidiously wiping the gore off on the dead zombie's ragged clothing.  'I'd better see if there are any more of them about!  There usually are, aren't there?  No point leaving it to you pair of useless do-gooders, obviously!'

The advisers stood speechless as she strode away, looking down solemnly on the body of their decapitated client.

'Poor old Ernie,' said Toby.

    'Yeah,' said Martin.  'I had high hopes of getting him into the Support Group on Regulation 35 too.'

I've started, so I'll finish.

 

With the Tories on the brink of introducing yet more anti-union legislation, threatening the few remaining rights to dissent and protest the conventionally employed still possess, I find myself facing the kind of situation guaranteed to bring organised labour onto the streets with another unilateral change in terms and conditions from Amazon. 

As well as being able to buy ebooks (or download mine free, if you have patience and follow the timetable), it is also possible for 'Kindle Unlimited' subscribers to 'borrow' them.  As a staunchly Kindleless Luddite, I have no idea how this works - does the file disappear from your screen at the end of the 'loan'?  Are there fines for late return? - but what has changed for me is how I earn vanishingly small amounts of money from the process.  Payments used to be per book borrowed; we are now to be paid instead by pages read.

Since I do not have vast numbers of readers borrowing my books at any given time, this has the potential to give me an unexpected insight into where my stories grip their readers, and where they might flag.  This week, via the 'reports' tools Amazon provide, I have been able to follow the progress of one anonymous reader through Grand Union: cover-to-cover in four days with a gentle start, a good binge to the middle of the story, another light day and finally a sprint to the finish.  It will be interesting to see if that is typical.  I hope so; GU has apparently gripped this particular reader all the way to its conclusion, which is good news for the Beverage Fund.  Where I probably stand to lose is with those readers lured into Continual Supervision by the mildly racy second scene, only to be turned off by the politics in the third.  (Daily Mail readers, the lot of them!)
This in turn set me thinking about how we read books, and whether we have a tendency to see them through to the end, even if we aren't enjoying them very much, or give up and move on to something more engaging.  I do tend to stick with a book once I'm a chapter or two into it - probably a habit instilled in my schooldays when 'set books' had to be read and 'appreciated', even if I found them utterly tedious and longed to be brave enough to say so.  No more exams; no more Jane-bloody-Austen!  I know some people will regard that a heresy, but I prefer my classic literature without a soundtrack of tinkling harpsichords.

If I get into a book with a forward-moving plot, I am inclined to speed-read to find out what happens next, only to feel guilty at the end of many a fine novel that I didn't give the writer more respect and take it at a pace to better appreciate their craft.  On the plus side, it does reduce the number of hours of your life you'll never get back from a highly disappointing book.  I'm reluctant to name names, though as an enthusiast for all things medieval and architectural feel a moral obligation to 'dis' Ken Follet's The Pillars of the Earth as a long-winded, pretentious and deeply unpleasant piece of melodrama, which I should never have started, let alone bothered finishing.  I had almost put it out of my mind until it turned up as a recommend on Goodreads.  Seriously, people - no!

However, I digress.  Much as I might question the motives of the Amazon loans policy, it favours writers of long sagas as long as we have engaged our readers with our cast of characters, so even if I could, I don't think I'd be taking industrial action over this!

Encore!

  'What's happened to the pub?'  Wayne Reynolds stared about him, then jumped in shock at the sight of the alien glass in his hand.  'And what the fu...?'
  'It's wine, Wayne,' his wife Marie explained patiently. 'It won't kill you.'
  'What's it doing in my hand, though?'
  'You're drinking it, babe.'
  'But why would I do that?  I'm an Englishman!'
  'Because we're all in a cafe in Paris,' Daphne Randall explained.  'Since we only exist in our author's mind and she's over here in France for a few days.  If you've noticed, man, my beer est disparu as well.'
  'Oh Tom!  How romantic!' sighed Hilary, grasping her husband's hand.  'We do so love Paris, don't we darling?'
  'We do indeed, my love!'  Dr Appleby pressed his lips to her hand.  A smouldering look passed between them.  Tom took Hilary's other hand and kissed that too, never taking his eyes from hers.
  'If I was our author, I'd tell the rest of us to bugger off and stick with writing about those two,' Wayne said to Toby, with a nod towards Hilary and Tom.  'That's the kind of stuff that sells, innit?  She could knock twenty years off 'em and turn your man Tom into a millionaire banker instead of a boffin, and she'd be quids in.'
  'But that's absolutely not what she writes!'  Sally objected.  'We're the opposite to all that, an antidote to that stuff in fact, with heroes who are poor and ordinary, women who are courageous, wise and confident, and rich people who are slimy and dishonest - like they are in real life!' 
  'That's true enough, pet,' Daphne replied.  'But us characters still get to enjoy a bit of a bonk now and again, don't we - yourself and young Danny included!'
  'I know!' Sally laughed.  'But ours is sort of fun bonking, messing about and trying to sort out how to do it properly.  I bet there isn't a market for novels about that!'
  Daniel suddenly seemed even more fascinated by the views of the city from their Montmartre vantage-point, as he turned to face the window, but Sally could tell he was blushing as his ears were pink.
  'He's getting much better,' she added.  'Really.  And I am.'
  Dan's ears darkened.
  'Whatever,' said Wayne.  'You and the nipper might not be that hot, but Hilary and your decorator are a different matter.  She's missing a trick, I tell you.'
  'You've got a point, mate,' Toby agreed.  'It'll be just her luck if someone nicks those two for inspiration and rattles off a fan-fiction best seller - Fifty Shades of DLA, anyone?'
  'No chance!'  Tricia argued.  'Some of her readers already disapprove.  Don't tell H, but one reviewer says their romance is nauseating.'
  'Nauseating!  She would be well pissed off!'  Martin laughed.
  'That is somewhat uncharitable,' said Vaughan James.  'But I suppose if one bought the books for serious political and social comment, one doesn't expect to find two of the principal characters gallivanting around the garden in a state of undress.'
  'Or snogging in public - even in fucking France!' Wayne added.  'Oi!  You two!  If you're going to carry on like that, get a room!'
  The hand kissing had escalated.
  'Don't be so bloody British, man!' Daphne chided.  'Let them kiss and cuddle in peace.  You're in Paris, after all.  I certainly wouldn't say no if our author fancies sending me over here for a racy little adventure, investigating crime on the Canal St Martin with a dishy gendarme or two.  In those circumstances, I could even cope without a decent pint!'
  'You aren't headed anywhere more exotic than Manchester Piccadilly, from what I've heard,' Harry Biddulph grumbled.  'And, before anyone says anything, I aren't stripping off for her readers, neither.  I'll leave that full-frontal malarkey to the Appleby lads!' 
  Daniel was suddenly overcome by the need to photograph the view, rushing outside with his camera, while Tom was evidently oblivious to everything except the sweet lips of his beloved Hilary.
  'I don't mind doing a sex scene, ladies!'
  A stocky man in his fifties, wearing square glasses that really didn't suit him, wandered in to the café.
  'What are you doing here, Fishy?' Sally demanded.  'You're supposed to be in Woking, redeeming yourself by working for me, not making disgusting suggestions!'
  'Yeah, yuk!' Tricia said.  'You've totally put me off my steak tartare, creep!  If I was in publishing, I'd pay our author not to write that scene.'
  'I don't know, Tricia' teased Vaughan.  'Aren't you curious to know exactly how the night ended when Mr Pike and I shared a room, courtesy of the Hampshire constabulary!'
  Gary Pike fled the café, ashen-faced.
  'Actually, he's absolutely not my type...'  Vaughan insisted.  'And if anyone suggests otherwise, I will sue!'
  'I'm glad that horrible man has gone,' said Lyn.  'I quite like it here.  I've never been abroad before, and it is pretty and romantic.  I wouldn't mind spending a few days here.  We could do one of those little riverboat trips, and have a look in some of those nice shops, and stay in one of those elegant buildings George's son was photographing, before Sally went outside and started kissing him.'  She smiled fondly at the young lovers.  'What do you think, Terry?'
  'We've got to go, Lyn love,' he said.
  'Go where, Terry?  Why?'
  'Back to the book - she's writing again, and we're in the first scene.'  He coughed loudly in Hilary's direction.  'You too, darling!'
  Hilary disentangled herself reluctantly from her husband's embrace, smoothed down her hair and straightened her dress.
  Lyn swiftly swilled the last of her wine. 
  'See you all soon!' she said

Waiting for inspiration...

A group of characters who may be familiar to you wait to be summoned back into action...

   ‘She’s hardly written a word since the election, you know!’  Hilary Carrington took a generous sip of her merlot, reluctantly allowing a frown to furrow her brow.  ‘Naturally, we’re all deeply disappointed with the result, but she can’t leave us in 2013, still full of hope and determination, just because 2015 turns out so badly in reality.’

    ‘At least she’s left us all in a pub while she decides what to do next,’ Terry Walker said to his caseworker.  ‘You can’t say fairer than that.  Cheers darling!’

   Hilary's scowl deepened. 

'Just as long as it's not the pub in Life on Mars and we're only in here because we've already been killed off!'  Toby Novak was generally the joker of the team, but there was a hint of genuine anxiety behind his comment.
   ‘It’s not to be wondered at if she’s lost her way forward for now,’ Daphne Randall said.  'She's got a lot to worry about.'  It was always good to catch up with her friend Hilary, even if she had no idea how she came to be with her, her colleagues and a random selection of southerners just then.  She caught sight of Terry’s glass of Carling, shaking her head in pity and disapproval.  ‘Look on the bright side though, man.  If we’re stranded here for a while, at least I can try to re-educate your taste buds.  How you can drink that pitiful excuse for a pint when they have Titanic on tap, I cannot imagine!’

‘I don’t it’s right calling a beer after that poor ship, luvvie,’ Lyn Walker complained.  ‘One of my great uncles was lost aboard her.  Darren’s Paula found out all about it.  He was only a little nipper, too.  They took him on as a bell boy, the poor little mite…’

‘Another victim of grasping capitalism and the selfishness of the ruling classes,’ Martin Connolly remarked sourly.  ‘That’s what we’re up against – the rich grab the lifeboats, the rest of us get a bit of wreckage to cling to if we’re lucky.’

‘Applying that analogy, we’re more like the crew of the Carpathia,’ Sally Archer suggested cryptically. 

‘What are you on about?’ Martin asked his former colleague.  Much had changed for them both since they had first met as trainees at the Solent Welfare Rights Project, but not her tendency for weirdness.
   ‘The Carpathia was the ship which rescued the survivors from the Titanic,’ explained Terry.  ‘I saw a documentary about it.’

‘So what’s that got to do with us?’

‘Our author writes because she enjoys telling stories, but she was telling our story to try and stop people voting for parties that supported more benefit cuts,’ Sally explained patiently.  ‘Only it didn’t work and in our future, where she is now, she’s got to put up with another five years of austerity.’

‘But from our author’s point of view, that’s five more years of bloody good story material, isn't it?’   Wayne Reynolds was downing ‘shorts’, as the drinks seemed to be free, even though he wasn't in his wife’s pub.  ‘If I had five years of guaranteed work to look forward to, I’d be laughing!’

   ‘I don't think she wanted to spend five more years writing “welfare rights lit” stories,’ said Hilary.  ‘She was writing our story towards a proper conclusion this time.’

‘Why?’ asked little Amy Walker, on the verge of tears.  'Doesn't she like us any more?'

‘It’s not that, luvvie,’ Lyn said, comforting her granddaughter.  ‘She likes us all very much – so much that she doesn’t really want any more bad or sad things to happen to us.’

‘So we’re supposed to live happily ever after, like Cinderella?’

‘I always hated that fairy story,’ Sally laughed.  ‘Who wants something as dangerous as glass slippers, a coach that turns into a pumpkin and rats at midnight and a stupid prince, when you can have just as much fun dancing in massive safety boots, driving a car that runs on chip fat and loving a poor but brilliant architecture student!'  She smiled at Daniel Appleby.  'But your Nana is right, Amy.  We were supposed to live happily ever after.’

‘So why can’t we?’

‘Because, in the real world, a load of stupid bastards voted for the fucking Tories.’

‘Thank you, Martin; I’m sure Lyn’s granddaughter doesn’t need to hear your bad language.’

‘Sorry H.’

‘But if the author was going to give us a breather, what was she going to write instead?’ asked Toby.  ‘She can’t spend all her spare time gardening.  She lives in the north.  It rains too much up there!’

‘All the better to keep our waterways topped up, pet’ Daphne said.  ‘And I do believe she had some more adventures in mind for me.  After all, that funny little thriller she dashed off last autumn does better bringing in the biscuits than your “welfare rights lit” tales.  It even got her a mention in her local paper.’

‘I aren’t surprised!’ Harry Biddulph laughed, finishing his own pint of White Star.  ‘That’s a bloody clever tactic to get publicity, starting a story with your leading lady seducing a local journalist!  No wonder she got an interview!’

‘There was none of that, man!  She made it quite clear she was happily married and there was no beer or boat trip on offer.  And anyway, who says I seduced you, Harry Biddulph?  As I recall, you were the one who chased me home along the towpath.’

‘But you were the one who dragged me to the pub, woman!  That’s the trouble with the author letting you be narrator – readers only get your side of the story.  If she's stuck for new ideas, I've got one for her -  I reckon she should rewrite Grand Union, from my point of view!’

‘That’s the absolute crappiest idea for a book I ever heard!’ Sally declared.  ‘What’s the point of retelling the same story from someone else's view point, when everyone already knows what happens?  No-one's going to buy the same thing twice!’

‘You'd be surprised, pet.’  Daphne answered.  'After all, people voted the Tories in again and, as our author's remarked before, you'd think they'd be fed up with being screwed by sadistic millionaires by now.'
'Evidently not,' sighed Hilary.

To be continued...

Hot Air and Cold Water

Stoke-on-Trent has just held its second literary festival, and I missed it.  To be fair, there was only one of the invited authors I would have liked to hear speak, and by the time we got home from our narrowboat trip around Birmingham and the Black Country, the tickets for Michael Palin had gone on sale - and promptly sold out. 

The other big names - 'spin doctor' Alistair Campbell and politician Alan Johnson - didn't appeal, and I couldn't really justify buying a ticket just to thank them for their part in persuading me to join the Green Party, though I'm sure my fictional rebel councillor Daphne Randall, lead character of 4mph thriller Grand Union would have elected to do just that!

I also failed to get an invitation via my short story entry - again!  I haven't seen the shortlisted entries, so don't know whether sulking is in order or whether I should graciously concede defeat to a better wordsmith, but either way I can't complain because despite my previous grumbles and despite 'Daphne's' merciless critique of the Six Towns Gazette a few pages into Grand Union, I was lucky enough to get a photo and article in The Sentinel, its non-fictional counterpart and festival sponsor, a couple of weeks ago.  If you've read Grand Union, you'll appreciate that Richard the journalist might have wondered what he was letting himself in for when he made contact, and probably considered himself fortunate to have escaped without being invited for a beer or boat trip!

Still, here's the 'also ran' short story.  Expect to see it recycled as the foreword to another Daphne Randall story one day - but probably not the next one!

Lock 37

The Trent and Mersey Canal takes a varied course south from its shadowy summit in the ferrous depths of the Harecastle Tunnel, past Westport Lake with its vociferous wildfowl, modern and Victorian potteries at Steelite and Middleport, the wasteland that was Shelton Bar and the soulless regeneration of Festival Park, before dropping through five locks that nestle in the heart of the Six Towns.

Etruria deep lock and its shallower companion are numbered 40 and 39.  They form part of the picturesque industrial scene beside a boatyard and a bone mill, still supervised by master engineer James Brindley, his statue retired to a sheltered housing scheme and his wig powdered white by disrespectful pigeons.  Twyford Lock - number 38 - is unremarkable, though below it the waterway passes ominously between the living and the dead.  Modern housing faces a graveyard; long-dead generations sleeping beneath their marble covers a sombre reminder of mortality as the flat-dwellers rise and draw their blinds to each new dawn.

At the neglected southern boundary of the cemetery you reach the unlovely and unloved lock 37 where, crushed beneath iron girders straining under the main line to Manchester, the canal descends from a landscape of dereliction into darkness.  Corroded railway bridges bleed rust through faded, blistered paint, tattooed with mindless daubs of vandalism unworthy of the name ‘graffiti’.  Livid green algae cloaks the walls of the lock chamber, flaying away in sheets of slime as the water level falls and the tattered wooden gates open to the unquiet waters ahead.  A seething by-wash boils and hisses in the gloom and thin, bony stalactites reach down from the blood red girders of the bridge while, too close above your head, trains howl and screech like angry demons.   It is always a relief to be through this dismal lock; to duck carefully under the skull-splittingly low railway bridge while peering through the dank gloom beneath, before motoring briskly away into even the dullest wet day’s light. 

Mr and Mrs Entwhistle’s first attempt on lock 37 unexpectedly ran into trouble.  A shuddering and clanking from their narrowboat’s propeller and the realisation that though the water level was falling steadily and levelly, their vessel was not, caused a moment of panic before Mrs Entwhistle loyally followed her husband’s instructions to close all the paddles and then carefully refill the lock.  With the prop still sluggish, they towed the boat backwards through the grey morning’s light spring rain and moored in the pound above.  The skipper delved about in the weed hatch, removing a quantity of fabric and fluff that might once have been part of padded jacket, but a second attempt took them no closer to the bottom of the lock, before the propeller snagged and the boat began to tilt again. 

Surmising that there must be an obstruction beneath the surface hindering the boat’s descent, they refilled the lock, reversed again and called out the Canal and River Trust, whose lads made the gruesome discovery that lock 37 had been the portal to Purgatory, if indeed there is such a place, for one Mickey Mulligan.    

In death, as in much of his forty-seven years of life, the fates had conspired against Mickey Mulligan.  Lock 37 usually leaks to empty through its moth-eaten mitred bottom gates, but the crew of the last boat ascending on the final evening of his life must have left one of the top paddles raised in their haste away from this God-forsaken spot, allowing the lock to stay full.  Mickey might yet have found a full lock less deadly than a drained one, had his tattered rucksack and the pockets of his ragged anorak not been stuffed with stolen goods, but these had dragged him to the bottom without even a brief scrabble for freedom; the post mortem revealed none of that lurid slime from the lock’s cold walls under his nicotine-stained nails. 

But gold is a remarkably heavy element and Mickey Mulligan was drowned in possession of a substantial quantity of it.  In fact, once the items retrieved from a pains-taking fingertip search of the reeking mud at the base of the lock were reconciled with those still in the dead man’s pack and pockets, the police could account for all but one item stolen in the armed robbery on Mohammed Zia’s jewellery shop, eight days before Mickey was dredged out of the lock.  What they couldn’t account for was how the proceeds of that crime came to be in Mulligan’s possession, when both the witness statements and CCTV suggested the suspects were two young men of Asian origin, a description which in no way matched the corpse in the canal. 

Most likely Mulligan, a persistent but incompetent thief with addictions to fund and debts to pay, had stumbled across the haul when scouting his neighbourhood for unlocked doors or ill-fitting sash windows, and had stumbled again as he tried to short-cut across the lock on his get-away.  Apart from where the boat had struck his already lifeless body, there were no wounds to suggest foul play, and his fall had surely been an accident; had anyone helped him into the water, they would certainly have searched and emptied his bag and clothes of the loot first.  So the police publicly ascribed Mulligan’s death to ‘misadventure’ and privately attributed the shortfall between what was found and what was reported missing to an over-zealous insurance claim by Mr Zia, despite his most earnest protestations that the missing necklace was a precious heirloom, purchased as a wedding gift by an important customer.

Delayed in the Potteries for a couple of days, Dennis and Marjorie Entwhistle completed their third and final descent of lock 37 on a bright spring evening, chugging on in their trusty Maisie Joan to the grim concrete of lock 36, where an angry dog barked them down onto the drain-like channel to the Trent aqueduct, and so on to Trentham and the sixth lock out of the city.  Whichever route Dennis plotted to get them from there to Birmingham, the long-suffering Marjorie knew she would have to wind the paddles up and down on at least thirty more locks, and then the same again from there to Stratford, before she had to wrestle with those massive river locks on the Avon all the way to Tewkesbury and back up the Severn.  It would perhaps have eased her labours if occasionally he showed that he appreciated her hard work; their ruby wedding anniversary had passed without card or present a week before as she had slogged up the Marple flight in biting sleet, windlass in hand, for no more reward than the offer of a nice cup of tea.

Dennis had in fact belatedly remembered the occasion, a little while after they first reversed out of lock 37.  While groping about in the weed hatch, removing the remnants of poor Mickey Mulligan’s anorak, a glint that was not the brass of the propeller had caught his eye through the murky waters.  The clanking noise he had heard in the lock was explained as he carefully and nervously disentangled an intricately formed necklace of thick golden chain that had wrapped itself around the prop-shaft.   On a whim, and quite out of character, he slipped it into his pocket.  It was hardly Marjorie’s usual style, being rather ethnic looking, but when he had the chance to examine it more closely, while his wife was getting the groceries, he decided it could be worth a stroll into the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter to get the dents and scratches repaired. 

It would make a perfect if belated anniversary present for ‘the Missus’, and she need never know it had cost him next to nothing and was only second-hand.  

Polls Apart

Stoke-on-Trent North

I didn't specifically request a postal vote for next month's General Election or the local election, but we must still be on the list from last time as two envelopes each, each containing two envelopes and a ballot paper, turned up last week and this morning, in a moment of resolution, I completed and posted mine.

In one respect, I can still claim to be a 'life-long Labour voter' as the only local election candidates came from the 'Big Three'.  Nationally, I've voted for the party whose policies most closely reflect my principles and concerns - and that isn't one who think chunky red mugs with slogans on them about controlling immigration are a good idea.

And I've lived up here long enough to wonder where they made those mugs too!

The irony is that as I was typing out the first draft of Severe Discomfort in the grey, wet summer of 2012, I had fond hopes of it helping Labour back into power in 2015 - but I hoped it wouldn't be the same Labour Party that gave us ESA and Local Housing Allowance.  Sadly, it's no better, promising to repeal the Bedroom Tax (because it's unpopular) but not the Benefit Cap (because it's popular), continuing the freeze on Child Benefit, treating 18 to 21 year-olds like children and indulging in an ugly bidding war with the Tories over which party is prepared to let EEA migrant workers starve for longest between jobs.

Southampton Itchen

But I'm not sure I would have been quite as idealistic about my (Green - you guessed?) General Election vote if I still lived in precariously marginal Southampton Itchen. Several of my books' characters would face just that dilemma.  Radical Martin would be torn between following his heart and canvassing for his TUSC candidate, and doing the pragmatic thing to keep the Tory out.  Green Sally Archer might lean towards a LibDem vote to be sure of keeping her Eastleigh constituency out of UKIP hands, and Hilary's hand might hover over her ballot paper again in similar fashion.  Down in Portsmouth North, Tricia can safely follow her conscience - red, redder or green - and will still get blue, one of millions who must feel their vote has no true value.  Still, pity the left-leaning voter pondering their ballot paper where the best way to stop a 'Kipper is to vote Tory - or is voting UKIP the best way to stop a Tory?  Lucky for my crew that they aren't staffing the Medway Welfare Rights Project!

As for Daphne, if she hasn't registered in Stoke Central she'll be moored in a marginal seat where her cross can make the greatest impact.  Sadly, the South Yorkshire Navigation doesn't reach as far as Sheffield Hallam and to get to Wirral West would take Lady Eowyn into risky tidal waters, but Daphne knows the way to Nuneaton or Milton Keynes, Crewe and Nantwich is close to home and Weaver Vale might be very much to her taste, so watch out for a floating voter!

Now wash your hands!

While the next episode of 'Claimant Commitment' (part 4) slowly takes shape, I've been continuing with marketing plans for 'Grand Union', the unlikely waterways-based thriller with Geordie lass Daphne Randall at the tiller in the company of Potteries hack Harry Biddulph.

Hopefully, I can come up with a plan for a boat-based book launch, as there is now a paperback in addition to the Kindle version - currently only available via CompletelyNovel,  but hopefully soon to be on general release.  In anticipation of this, I ordered a small batch of books last month, only to realise when they arrived that, while I had amended the manuscript for the printers to correct the last few typos (hopefully...) and iron out some page-numbering glitches, I had failed to upload these changes to CompletelyNovel's system, so the books came out with the errors still in.

Not wishing to hand out 'seconds' to people I hope to impress, and wary of inflicting yet more of my dodgy books on my long-suffering friends, I am disposing of a handful of these in a manner even their harshest critics might feel is a little too cruel: they are being abandoned in lavatories!

Actually, it's not quite as grim as it sounds, since the loos in question are actually the Canal and River Trust sanitary stations to be found alongside the canal network, many of which have an additional function as boaters' libraries.  Boaters drop off books they have finished reading, sometimes exchanging them for another that catches their eye. This isn't a book-borrowing arrangement likely to appeal to anyone who is a bit 'OCD' about hand-washing and hygiene, but appears to work well nonetheless and there is usually an interesting variety to chose from.  One copy of 'Grand Union' was exchanged for Jennifer Worth's fascinating Call the Midwife (on which the Sunday evening TV show was based), an extraordinary piece of compassionate but unsentimental social history that Mr H read from cover to cover in a couple of days and I have now prized away from him to read myself, so thanks to whoever left that at Gailey Wharf. 

I would be curious to know where the books end up and how they migrate about the system - I'm making a note in the front cover of where they are first left, and though it is possible that one or two might become permanent fixtures of a boater's bookshelf, I rather hope they'll roam about.  I've had a cheery message on Facebook from the finder of one volume, which was very thoughtful; I hope Daphne has made a new friend, but whether she has or not, there may be a copy for collection somewhere along the Shroppie in due course.  All being well, none of the books will actually end up being used in lieu of loo paper!

I've still got a couple to release - one at least should find a home somewhere on the BCN, and perhaps Fradley Junction for the last, as it lies along the route of Daphne's first adventure.  I've been doodling notes for more stories, so Daph will definitely be back one day - battling up the Wolverhampton 21 in a raging gale, perhaps, though with whom and to investigate what remains to be seen.


Kindle users can find the story here: www.amazon.co.uk/Grand-Union-Sarah-Honeysett-ebook/dp/B00T3CG5KU/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8