Softly Shouting

    You have to be early enough to be one of the respectable ones, I say, but late enough for them to start tidying up.  Saturdays are best.  You should look respectable; otherwise you’ll be chased away.   They’ll give freely to the respectable ones, I say.  The ones after us, the junkies and the alkies will have to sift through the rubbish bins for the really manky leftovers.  You have to look confident, I say.  You have to look as if you are doing your weekend shopping but left it just a little bit late. If we are really lucky, the cheese monger may give us a few bits and pieces.  He is one of the good ones.  He isn’t one who cuts two ounces over and then asks: do you mind a little more?  No- he is an honest man and a kind man, and he’ll give us the left-over, awkward pieces, more crust than cheese.  We’ll get some fruit and veg, I say.  Fruit is plentiful on the Saturday evening....

  I had the privilige to be present at a talk by Bernard MacLaverty last week. He read one of the stories from his new collection of short stories: Blank Pages and other stories. It was lovely to hear him read and listen to him talling about the genesis of some of his books. I was bowled away by Midwinter Break - set in Amsterdam. His language is deceptively simple; his choice of topics too. He is truly a master of the sort form, though his novels are extremely well written too. Feast of recognition: in a story about the Spanish Flue in 1918, he describes how the protagonist always feels a compulsion to work. I have been known to clean kitchen cupboards standing on a ladder when having flu!

In preparation for my attempt to write something using the story of the unfortunate women in my village, who got convicted and executed for witchcraft in my village, I am reading books, novels as well as non-fiction, to find a voice and a framing device. One of the books I recently finished is Ashes and Stones, written by Allyson Shaw. Allyson is an American woman living in North East Scotland. In this book, she journeys throughout Scotland to the various monuments to 'witches' and women who were accused and convicted of witchcraft. The idea is brilliant. She travels from Orkney to the Borders and visits the monuments, which are not always easy to find. Though many of the memorials are dedicated to more than one woman, she concentrates on one of the alleged witches and writes a little about the history of that woman. That is quite nice, but she mixes it with writing about her own problems and there is where I part company. The descriptions are at time quite nice and poetic but,...