https://www.ccsidewriter.co.uk/chapter-three-picture-gallery/
If you recall the Sunday School chorus you will know the wise man built his house upon the rock and the foolish man built his house upon the sand. The rain came down and the floods came up. Even if you don’t know the chorus or Christ’s parable, I expect you can guess where this is leading. It is meant to be about building your life on Christ’s teaching, but it is also good engineering advice; advice that builders and councils everywhere, especially in coastal areas, often pay no heed to.
Someone I knew told me her father-in-law once had a chance to buy a cheap piece of land on the narrow strip of sand between Poole Harbour and the sea.
No thanks, it will be washed away in twenty years.
Sandbanks is now claimed to be the world’s most expensive coastal real estate in the world and the man’s descendants could hardly forget what they missed out on. But one day I’m sure the sand will wash away and there will be a different way out of the world’s second largest natural harbour.
Move a little further east and cliffs start to rise towards Bournemouth where houses have slid down the cliff over the years. If left to their own devices cliffs naturally crumble into the sandy beach below. But when man made promenades and buildings are put up, the beach is washed away (coastal drift ) and if resorts wish to keep their beaches they must be replenished with sand dredged up from beneath the sea. Houses on the cliff top move nearer and nearer to the edge and remnants of gardens can be seen flourishing vertically on the cliffside. Chunks of cliff often fall on beach huts and three years ago a landslide wrecked one of Bournemouth’s three cliff lifts.
But the council doesn’t wait for nature to knock buildings down. Last week was the ninetieth anniversary of Bournemouth Pavilion, which has survived both because of and despite councils over the years. It apparently took eighty years of discussion before it became a reality in 1929. In its life time it has seen two winter gardens demolished, but also saw Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra leave and move to Poole’s new arts centre. Looking out to sea from the ballroom the Pavilion was witness to a monstrosity being built at Pier Approach. This was The Waterside, featuring dark glass and a wavy roof designed to represent the sea. It was more commonly known as the Imax building and caused an outcry when it was opened in 1998, owing both to its looks and the fact that it blocked the view across Poole Bay to the Purbeck Hills. The Imax cinema only functioned for a short period and spent most of the years closed. In 2005 the Channel 4 programme Demolition asked people which building they would like knocked down and the Imax was judged first in line in England. The council then had to spend millions buying the building, demolishing it and creating a public ‘space’. Perhaps if they hadn’t demolished the swimming baths that stood there for fifty years…
When we moved into our current house nearly fifteen years ago, the neighbour one side told us that the neighbours the other side were not there; they had to move out because of subsidence! This was a bit worrying and we should have known not to buy a house built on sand. We are not near the cliff edge, because those properties are too expensive, but we are on what was once sandy heathland.
https://www.ccsidewriter.co.uk/chapter-two-coastal-views/
Warning: Do you dare to play the game of life? If you don’t want to read about illness and death or you dislike dark humour please avoid this blog, but I hope you will continue to visit my Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday blogs.
Last week was the appointment to see the oncologist about the scan results. In the main waiting room the television was still on BBC1, ‘Doctors’ on mute with subtitles. The bad news was we got called in quickly and missed the end of Doctors, the good news was everything had stabilised so Cyberspouse could carry on with the current chemotherapy. As he is still feeling fine, life carries on as normal, we can plan a few trips between the three weekly hospital visits. Have another throw of the dice.
Tales of Life and Death
An elderly lady told me a story last week about her last surviving son-in-law. She was awake early expecting a sad phone call, her grandson had flown over from the USA to say goodbye. When he rushed into the hospital he found his father sitting up in bed eating a bacon sandwich.
‘What had been wrong with him?’
Every now and then his lungs collapse and have to be re-inflated. This time they couldn’t blow them up again and there was no hope.
Someone once told me his mother rang up and said Quick, come to the hospital, your gran’s better. After lying in a coma with everyone waiting for her to die, Granny had suddenly sat up in bed, started chatting and had a cup of tea. By the time her grandson arrived she had lapsed back and died soon after. At least she got to enjoy a last cup of tea.
In a previous incarnation, in a town far away, my friend was practice manager at our doctor’s surgery, a mutual friend’s husband was a self employed builder with heart trouble. She helped run the playgroup at a chilly scout hut near the doctors. I was also one of the helpers. Her husband was always popping in to help ( annoy ) us.
This particular morning he was doing work at the surgery. Our jolly morning with the children was interrupted by one of the receptionists from the doctors rushing in to say Bob’s having a heart attack.
In the meantime my poor friend the practice manager watched as the paramedics were trying to resuscitate Bob on her office floor. She maintained afterwards he was definitely dead.
The next morning the rest of us arrived at playgroup wondering if the news was the worst, but there was Bob sitting at one of the little tables, he hadn’t even stayed home for a bit of a lie in. Apparently at the hospital the paramedics were astonished to see him walking out of the hospital when they were on the way back to their ambulance…
Never has it been so easy to not be yourself. Everyone can have a platform to project their persona. Whether you blog in detail about your daily life or fill Facebook with photos of your family, half the world can be invited into your life and they have no idea if it is really you.
How do we know what you are telling us is true? It is much more fun to make up a life, a past and present. Of course if friends and family in real life are reading your blog and seeing your posts on Facebook, they will know. If you have no friends in real life, even better, nobody out there will know the real you. Write about your dramatic decade or your perfect present, take twenty years off your age. Post pictures of someone else or recreate yourself in cartoon form. When you are on holiday take photographs of the view from ‘your house’. In the botanical gardens snap ‘your garden’. When you feel like a break from blogging invent a rare illness or a life threatening operation.
But will anybody find out you didn’t really spend ten years in the Amazon ( the real Amazon in South America ) Jungle. No. Even in real life you can recreate yourself every time you move to a new town. How often do you meet new people and believe every word they tell you about their life, which is far more interesting than yours. And your good friends; off they go to visit their highly successful son who owns a tropical island. You have never met the son, because he lives on his tropical island. Unless you actually go with them on holiday how do you know any of it is true?
Among writers Dan Mallory has apparently surpassed us all by being nominated for the British Book Awards, despite or perhaps because he cheated at being British. The best selling author also lied about having cancer and the death of family members. It should come as no surprise to hear that he writes under a pen name A. J. Finn. Perhaps he doesn’t exist at all, which would be an even cleverer cheat.
https://www.vulture.com/2019/03/aj-finn-dan-mallory-british-book-award-nomination.html
But what about the rest of us? Even if you are not outed as a pathological liar by The New Yorker magazine, do WordPress or Facebook know where you really live, can they pinpoint your location, see you sitting in your pyjamas at your computer in a corner of your suburban bedroom, instead of the pine summerhouse looking out over the lower slopes of the Alps. Yes, of course they can, but are they going to tell?
Dave got the idea from the television news. If tents and living pods could be dispatched to disaster areas why couldn’t homeless people in his town be helped. Dave wasn’t actually interested in humanitarian projects abroad or at home until the tent arrived in his shop doorway. Owning a shop was part of his plan to help rejuvenate the high street in Lower Sandbourne. The once thriving parade of shops and smart flats had gone downhill over the years, mainly due to the property activities of Dave and his brother, now he hoped to reinvent himself with ethically sourced gifts and fine food. There was nothing ethical about the origins of most of his goods, but smart labels impressed the chattering classes who could no longer afford to live in Upper Sandbourne. The Sandbourne Traders Association was pleased with the rebirth of a shop that had been an empty bakers and a blot on the high street for several years.
And then the tent had appeared. The doorway that presented excellent window display space was also a perfect size for a one man tent.
Dave had dispatched the first resident and his bedding to another town, but with the new CCTV and his new image this was no longer an option. The bleeding heart owner of the pet shop next door was certainly no help. She gave free dog food for the tented one’s sad eyed mongrel. Dave couldn’t complain as it was the dog that kept customers coming. Instead of being put off by having to step round a tent and over a pair of feet sticking out, the locals eased their conscience at not offering him their spare rooms by lavishing their attention on the dog and buying him unwanted cups of coffee.
The pod idea was enthusiastically supported by the locals. Dave’s gang of unqualified builders were used to makeover services to cover up structural defects in Dave’s property empire, so giving shipping containers a makeover was no problem. The council were happy to be seen doing something. By allowing the cabins to be sited on the car park they had just closed down for development, the residents could not complain about the loss of their convenience to such a good cause. The local family run garden centre was persuaded to provide plants and planters and the whole site looked quite pretty as spring blossomed. Sandbourne Hardware donated tins of Hammerite and most of the residents took a pride in painting their cabins to look individual.
Carried away by the great publicity stunt the garden centre built raised beds for the local school to grow vegetables and as the settlement grew, most of the occupiers appeared to be happy, including those who had been made homeless by Dave in the first place. He did wonder how the metal containers would fare in a heatwave, or next winter, but by then the council would have evicted everyone to build the lucrative block of unaffordable apartments; a scheme certain to be tendered out to one of his subsidiary companies. Dave knew he would get the contract, he knew too much about certain councillors for them to turn him down.
In the meantime the shop doorway was tidy and the shop thriving. But trouble was afoot. Dave, the council and the growing jolly band of volunteers had assumed all the homeless would be grateful and no plans had been put in place to address the ‘complex issues’ of some residents.
Jack from the Sandbourne Gazette, who had been watching Dave for years, ever since he re-emerged from his short spell in gaol, had been biding his time. He had even less respect for the council and planned to snare them both. Syringes and other drug paraphernalia were found tossed amongst the round lettuces and spring onions and children started telling their parents about the scary man and the nasty woman at their garden. A row erupted over who was actually overseeing the project. Jack ensured that newcomers to the area would discover Dave’s past and his future plans.
But Jack reckoned without the initiative of the majority of residents who did not want to lose their new homes. They enlisted the help of the national media and Jack’s moment of journalistic fame was lost. The council hastily sent in their new street team, its numbers boosted with a few of Dave’s friends. Under cover of darkness and with a little subtle bribery, they removed the undesirables to a new assisted living project under a council far away. They were replaced by more acceptable homeless. Gardening resumed and volunteers set up ‘everybody together’ coffee mornings and suppers.
The project received national acclaim and most forgot once again about Dave’s past. Though his shop was doing well it hardly afforded the income he was used to, he would have to bide his time before getting another building project underway.
Dark events are inevitably connected to the dark side of the internet, a far cry from what Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, intended.
The worldwide web turned 30 last week. To mark the occasion, its inventor, Sir Tim Berners-Lee — in an event at the Science Museum in London — offered a cri de coeur. With more than half the world now online, Berners-Lee pleaded with every one of us to fight for “the kind of web we want”. It is, he said, “one of the most important causes of our time”.
For those of us enjoying the many benefits of the internet and for authors using it as a ‘platform’ it seems incongruous that fellow bloggers, full of good cheer, have their positive posts deleted from Facebook while terrorists and extremists manage to post hate and the unthinkable.
Ever since I reluctantly joined Facebook nine years ago I have heard talk of it being ‘finished’ and people leaving, but most of us are still there. However, a few writers have now joined ‘MeWe’, planning to use it as their new platform. I had a look at it on Sunday and as it seemed simple to sign up, I did. What next I’m not sure, especially with my dodgy technical skills and the fact I keep forgetting what it’s called – WeMe, WeWe?
Eons ago I tried joining Twitter, accidentally joined twice then lost both accounts. I have since recovered one, but I have not yet got a grip on it. It seems to be a lot of retweeting of greetings. My WordPress blogs are linked to Twitter, apologies to any fellow Tweeters I have ignored or not thanked for retweeting… I find WordPress easier to negotiate and blogs more satisfying to read.
My website I also started long ago, another ‘must have’ for new authors; it is a paid for template, a photo album with pages to fill in! If I had known about WordPress back then perhaps I would have done things differently, but when the most unexpected people mention that they have been looking at my website, I think it has a place in the ether.
https://www.ccsidewriter.co.uk/
Instagram is a more recent venture; as I love photography I enjoy the challenge of seeking new views to snap most days, but I am not sure how one is supposed to use it to promote books or any other business.
Meanwhile back at Facebook I have an author page where I post links to my blogs and website; posts there are all mine, though how many people find their way there is another matter! On general Facebook pages there is no logic as to what will pop up on your page and which of your own posts will be seen by friends and family. Facebook Messenger is a boon, so easy to send messages and photos instantly to groups of friends or family. Facebook groups are as good as the members in them. It was Author Chat Forum that started me linking in with other writers on line. Local groups can be handy, but sometimes lead to ‘discussions’ about dogs, cats or coffee shops and hundreds of comments that go on for days. I think I’ll be sticking with Facebook for a good while yet; after all, I would miss the hilarious cartoons and genuine fake news that get shared around.
Choose social media you enjoy for its own sake; otherwise you could be spending a lot of time for little in the way of book sales if that is your only aim.
What social media do you like to use?
If there is anything better than writing a best seller, it is writing a best selling series and a best selling series in a popular genre is sure to be a winner. The way to fame is for your series to be adapted for television, so that everyone knows you have written lots of best selling books, even if they haven’t read them.
Fame may come at a price, murder. Crime thrillers are always popular with the public and that’s not hard to understand; we all like to participate in the thrills without actually being killed ourselves. We all like to guess who did it from the comfort of the sofa without having to pound dark alleyways or lonely moors.
You only need three things for your fabulous fiction.
One or more dead bodies.
One or more detectives.
An interesting setting.
Optional extras are a few interesting characters who insist on getting involved in the investigation.
I love a good crime thriller and some knitting after dinner, we all need a break from writing and computers. At Cheztidalscribe sub titles are our favourites; everything from gritty Paris to dark brooding Wales, from sunny Sicily to bracing Iceland. At present we are watching Trapped, set in a small town in Iceland; the fact that this fascinating country only has three hundred thousand people does not hold them back from having plenty of murders.
Much as I love hearing different languages and seeing a change of scenery, not speaking the language and never having visited are good reasons not to try and write novels set in another country. But there is still plenty of scope for new crime thrillers set in the British Isles. Popular novels can be set in ancient university towns; Morse in Oxford, Granchester in Cambridge. Then there are gritty cities such as Rebus in Edinburgh. Equally popular are quiet villages with an unbelievably high rate of crime, Midsomer Murders or islands such as Shetland where bodies appear at an alarming rate for Jimmy Perez to deal with.
So let’s choose a place with beautiful scenery and scattered remote houses which the police can never get to in time. A detective who must be divorced or widowed and a local population who don’t trust him, because he is an outsider. His only friends are a simmering love interest with a fisherman’s wife and the local vet, doctor or vicar who helps solve every case. The detective inspector can be of either sex, but their constable or sergeant will always be of the opposite sex.
I am going to set my series on the beautiful Scottish Inner Hebrides island of Iona, I have only been there once, for a few hours, but that won’t deter me. There are only about 120 permanent residents and it is only three miles long, but that needn’t prevent them having a serial killer; with lots of tourists coming over on the little Caledonian MacBrain ferry who knows what could happen and as visitors’ vehicles are banned this gives the police a head start on chasing them.
When television producers adapt your thrilling best seller there may be some compromise. Your stocky dark brooding hero is replaced by a well known tall blond actor and they film most of it on the mainland because it’s cheaper. The programmes are so popular you have to write more novels at a frantic pace, if not you will find your intelligent stories replaced by increasingly ridiculous plots and your name will appear only at the end of the credits – based on the characters created by…
But the good news is your book will now appear at the front of the book store with the covers your friend designed with his holiday photos replaced by dramatic pictures of the television star on location.
Good luck.
Amelia DeVere was dreading her birthday; Brian and the girls were coming round with her present, a lap top. They had given her several other choices; a clever phone, an eye mask, a lozenge or was it a capsule? She had plumped for the lap top, at least she wouldn’t be expected to put it in her handbag and use it. She was quite happy with her mobile phone that didn’t take pictures, buttons 1, 2 and 3 were programmed for the local mini cab firm, Jenny next door and Brian.
But Amelia had not realised the full implications of her choice until it was too late.
You’ll be able to Facetime Aunty Phoebe in Canada and see pictures of the new baby on Facebook.
‘I just want to do e-mails’ said Amelia, on the offensive as she answered the door on her birthday morning.
‘Of course, we need to do that first. But just think Gran, you would have been the first to know Constanza was expecting, instead of the last.’
Just as Brian’s marriage was breaking up, her younger son Roger had got his act together and met someone. It didn’t appear they were going to get married, but now she was pregnant they had reluctantly left the Orangutan sanctuary and returned to Constanza’s hometown, Melbourne.
She was soon sending Roger an e-mail, AmDev@gmail.com
‘Can we have lunch now?’ she pleaded.
‘In a mo Gran, let’s just look at Facebook and make sure there are no other Amelia DeVeres… oh look, there are…
Are you this Amelia DeVere?
They all laughed at the young woman with spiky rose pink and sky blue hair, but then Amelia felt rather miffed at seeing a member of the family she didn’t know.
‘That’s probably not her real name Mum,’ said Brian ‘look, she’s an author, got her own author page.’
‘Can we look at it?’
‘No, you have to be her friend.’
‘I don’t need to be her friend if I’m a relative.’
The screen was flashing, artificial fingernails were skimming across the keyboard.
‘Here’s her Amazon page,’ said her granddaughter ‘…author of fruity romances Strawberries in Surmmer, Peaches for Pandora, hundreds of reviews… The book every twentysomething must take on holiday, published in paperback and on Amazon Kindle.’
‘Let’s read a preview’ urged her sister.
Amelia had to admit she was quite impressed that they could turn the pages of a pretend book. ‘Let me read, I’m getting used to this lap top… Pandora ran her slender manicured fingers through the dark hairs on Mickael’s chest, then across his firm tanned stomach, bringing to life his…’ she peered closer with her bi-focals at the small print ‘bringing to life his what?’
‘I don’t think that’s your sort of book Mother’ said Brian, hastily moving his large hands across the keyboard.
Images flashed across the screen, more frantic tapping by the girls.
‘Look Gran, Uncle Roger’s accepted you as a friend, they must still be up, probably midnight there.’
Suddenly the bemused grandmother was confronted with a black and white picture of an alien, but her granddaughters screamed with delight.
‘It’s a boy, you’re going to have your first grandson.’
‘They can’t have had the baby already.’
‘No, they’ve just had the scan to tell the sex; four hours ago 23 comments and 40 likes already, you can make a comment.’
‘That’s revolting, looks like one of their Orangutans.’
‘We all looked like that once, in the womb, I can’t believe how ultrasound has improved since we had the girls,’ said her son ‘but I don’t think I would put it on Facebook.’
The girls giggled ‘We can’t put what Gran said, how about Wonderful news, do u want to Facetime tomorrow?’
Over lunch the girls discussed Constanza and why there were no pictures of her on Facebook and would Dad pay for them to visit their new cousin, but Amelia returned to the subject of the other Amelia.
‘Of course I would know if she was a real DeVere, can I complain if she’s an impostor?’
‘Let’s Google and see what else we can find out.’
‘Yes, never mind the dishes, let’s get back on the lap top’ she said.
She was surprised to see her own DeVeres mentioned, but it was Amelia the novelist who had page after page of blue writing devoted to her, image after image came up as they visited websites. The young woman was everywhere, The Word Hut, Writers’ Room, Romantic Novelists Association, Twitter, she even had her own Blog.
‘Why does she think we want to know how the romantic holiday with her gorgeous man went?’ puzzled Amelia.
But after the family had left she felt compelled to switch the lap top on and practice her new skills. She couldn’t resist Googling Amelia. The writer was planning to attend literary festivals and book signings, perhaps it would be possible to see her in the flesh…
A few days later the grandmother’s notebook was full, she was pretty certain she had looked up every internet mention of Amelia and written it down, she had also read the openings of all her books. She wasn’t even very good at writing, the older woman wondered how she had become so famous.
A week later the door bell rang; Amelia DeVere was very surprised when a plain clothes policeman introduced himself. He was equally surprised to find she lived alone.
‘D.I. Benson, C.C.U. Cyber Crime Unit. We’re investigating the stalking of a young woman, she has been trolled on Twitter, someone’s hacked into her e-mails, various other online abuses… I can’t go into details. We noticed that the most on line activity connected to her internet presence was coming from this locality, we may need to take your computer away to be examined.’
Are you sure you know where you are? I could say I live in Wessex, but Wessex has not existed for a thousand years. It was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom in the south of Great Britain, from 519 until England was unified by Æthelstan in the early 10th century. But Wessex must exist because Thomas Hardy set his novels there… No, he used it as the name of the county in which his stories are set; corresponding approximately to Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire and Wiltshire.
But Wessex must exist because there is an Earl of Wessex. Don’t worry if you get confused with all the titles the Queen has bestowed on her children and grandchildren, most of us do. In 1999, Queen Elizabeth II’s youngest son, Prince Edward, married Sophie Rhys-Jones. By tradition the monarch’s son receives a title upon marriage. Prince Edward became the first British prince in centuries to be created an earl, rather than a duke. His wife Sophie became The Countess of Wessex.
Many organisations, including the army, that cover the area of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire and Wiltshire use the name Wessex .
The ITV television series Broadchurch takes place in the Wessex area, primarily the county of Dorset. It features government agencies such as Wessex Police and Wessex Crown Court, and several characters are seen attending South Wessex Secondary School.
I live in Bournemouth which is in Dorset… or is it? Before it was founded in 1810 by Lewis Tregonwell, the area was a deserted heathland occasionally visited by fishermen and smugglers. Historically part of Hampshire, it joined Dorset with the reorganisation of local government in 1974, but it has always seemed to me to have little in common with real rural Dorset. Since 1997 the town has been administered by Bournemouth Borough Council. But wait, more changes are afoot Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council will be the unitary local authority for the district of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole that is to come into being on 1 April 2019. The three towns already form the South East Dorset urban connurbation. What will it mean for the locals? Most of us are expecting to pay more in rates and have more services cut. Bournemouth is a new town set between two historic towns with plenty of pirates. Poole has the second largest natural harbour in the world, Sydney, Australia has the largest. Our sea is Pool Bay. Christchurch lies round the corner separated by Hengistbury Head; in Bronze Age Britain this was an important seaport, there was a settlement here in the Iron Age. I wonder how they viewed their identity?
But let’s zoom in. I live in Southbourne, the creation of Doctor Thomas Armetriding Compton, who set up general practice in Bournemouth in 1866 and could see the area’s potential as a health resort. The clifftop land here had been part of Tuckton Farm, purchased by Compton in 1871 and later developed by the Southbourne-on-Sea Freehold Land Company.
Local businesses consider they are in Southbourne-on-Sea, Southbourne Grove, thriving with interesting shops and eateries, has been nicknamed the Sobo Mile.
You can see plenty of my local area at my website.
https://www.ccsidewriter.co.uk/chapter-two-coastal-views/
Now let us zoom out. I have never considered I come from anywhere in particular, having lived in lots of places. I was born in Middlesex, but it ceased to exist as a county in 1965. It stretched to Westminster many centuries ago, but London had finally swallowed it.
Our local borough may be getting bigger, but our horizons will narrow as Britain leaves the European Union, dark days for those of us who are Remainers. We shall all still be members of The Commonwealth and the English speaking world and The World, The Solar System and the Universe… as we used to write in our exercise books at school…
Do you know where you are, do you care where you are?
Times and Tides of a Beachwriter 