…and then the snowman starts singing!
Thank goodness he’s shut up…
Escape to somewhere magical…
Oh you mean it’s not real!
Friday Fun – When you just want to buy plants…
Tuesday Tiny Tale – Hidden
The front door slammed and she sighed with relief, that was everyone gone to work and school and she could have a good tidy up. She switched the radio on, what rubbish had they been listening to? She turned over to Radio 4, bound to be someone talking about something clever. At least they had put the dishwasher on, but what was that letter doing on the counter top? Just rubbish by the look of it, recycling box.
She drifted into the hall where a bright pink glove lay on the floor, Evie’s, her hands would be cold, it was frosty out. Car keys just dropped in that dish, don’t they ever think about security? Mason’s scarf left on the stairs, probably deliberately, he always insists he won’t be cold. She picked the scarf up and carried on up the stairs.
The bedrooms were a complete mess as usual, well making beds was not on her agenda. On the landing she tried to straighten up the ghastly picture, but it fell off the wall, hook fallen out. Dan would have to fix that, it was about time he improved his DIY skills. Someone was going to trip over that toy truck, put it away safely. She could do with a cup of coffee, pity she wasn’t drinking it any more. £20 note just lying on top of the dresser, put that in the money pot, see if anyone missed it.
She looked out of the front bedroom window, new people moving in across the road, how many times had that place changed hands? Library book on the floor, hmm due back tomorrow, better put it by the front door …and reading glasses on the floor, they could go safely in that drawer.
Was that the time already, end of the peace and quiet…
‘Don’t leave your school bags on the floor… no not till you have got changed and done your homework….. I can hear voices in the kitchen! Wait in the hall. It’s okay, the radio was on, but I’m sure I switched if off and I never listen to Radio Four… I’m coming upstairs to make sure you’re getting changed and not playing with… hey who knocked Grandma’s painting down.’
‘Not me it was Evie.’
‘No it wasn’t, it was Mason.’
Hello Darling, hello kids.’
‘Dan, can you fetch my reading glasses down, they’re by the bed. I need to read the instructions on this packet.’
‘Who knocked the picture down, I only put it up last week. Couldn’t see your glasses.’
‘They are with my library book.’
‘Just give me the packet, I’ll read it out to you… See what you mean about the tiny writing, well whatever you are supposed to do you have to do it for five minutes. Now where is that letter I got yesterday, I left it in the kitchen so I would not forget to phone them.’
‘Mummy, where’s my new truck?’
‘I don’t know, where did you leave it, surely it’s too big to lose.’
‘I can’t find my reading glasses anywhere and I can’t find the library book. It’s book club tomorrow and I still have two more chapters to go.’
‘Why do you have to read in bed anyway?’
‘I always read in bed.’
‘Borrow my Kindle, you can just make the writing big, now that’s funny, when did I last have my Kindle?’
‘How am I supposed to know?’
‘Evie, did you find your other glove? Mason will you put your scarf on, there’s a cold wind. What do you mean you can’t find it? Not on the coat hook or in your school bag? Look it’s getting late, I think we’d better go in the car. That’s funny, where are the car keys?’
‘Hello Darling, how was your day?’
‘Don’t ask… Dan, do you think I’m going through the perimenopause?’
‘The peri what?’
‘Brain fog, I keep losing things, or at least forgetting where I’ve put them.’
‘Everyone mislays things. You wanted a nice big house, but it’s easier to lose things than when we were in the flat. Either that or it’s haunted, like on that programme ha ha.’
‘Dan, you don’t really think… the neighbours reckon we got this place cheaper because some old lady died here and her family wanted to sell quickly.’
‘Cos they needed the money probably. Well it was our luck.’
‘Certainly was and all clean and tidy when we viewed it, not like we were expecting, good thing she can’t see it now.’
Thoughtless Thursday
What if you woke up one morning and couldn’t think what to write or blog…
Revolutionary new technique shows what the inside of a writer’s mind actually looks like.
When your home made Christmas cards go wrong.
When you are tasked with finding the venue for your club’s Christmas Do
What a writer’s mind looks like when they are asleep.
When writers are distracted from writing
A day in the life of a writer’s computer
Cartoon courtesy of Big Issue magazine.
Sunday Stroll – Hengistbury Head
Follow the path to the first point of historic interest.
He was the first Briton to be killed in an aeronautical accident with a powered aircraft, when the tail of his Wright Flyer broke off during a flying display in Bournemouth. He was aged 32.
Nearby is the popular Hiker Café, popular with the many dog walkers, but as we discovered when we went with my friend’s dog on a very windy rainy day, dogs are not allowed inside the café. Plenty of seating outside and very pleasant inside. Considering how many places let dogs in you might be surprised, but with the strong possibility of dogs getting wet and muddy you can see their point! A short walk takes you to the visitor centre where you can see the history of the headland back to the busy days of the iron age.
‘Long before the arrival of the Romans, Hengistbury Head was a thriving trading port. Some have commented that Hengistbury Head was probably the first urban settlement in England. It was without doubt one of the the most important sea ports in the the whole of England.’
Reassuring to know nature can take back urban areas.
It’s time to make our way up.
Did you guess anything about this monolith in Friday’s blog? It was hard to find anything about it; alas it is neither ancient nor extra terrestrial, but still interesting. Created by sculptor Briony Marshall in 2016.
‘Layers of Bournemouth is a rammed earth sculpture that invites passers-by to slow down and contemplate the beauty and age of our precious natural world.‘
https://briony.com/project/layers-of-bournemouth/
Time to walk up to the top and enjoy the views of Christchurch Harbour..
Then return another way for sea views as the short winter day draws in.
You would have had time to walk further if you hadn’t stopped for coffee and cake at the café! Come back another day to explore more.
PS At one stage Henry George Selfridge bought Hengistbury Head with plans to build a magnificent castle. Fortunately the plans never got off the ground.
Have you been here, or do you have a favourite hill or iron age fort to walk round?
Friday Fun – November Nonsense
Where does this door lead? Find out further on.
What is your latest time waster?
One could say it’s a good warming up exercise for writers. Words with Friends, will they still be your friends after frenzied competition? If you have friends or relatives on other continents there will always be someone who is awake to play, even if you are up very late or early. Unlike Word Blitz and Quiz Planet there are no time constraints, so I do not have the excuse of my hands not working quickly enough for losing all the time.
In the meantime I don’t seem to be getting very far with Duolingo and the owl is always sending me sad or cross email reminders.
Meanwhile back in the real world, did Aliens leave this strange monolith? Find out where it is at the weekend.
Do you like peeping in windows? Who lives here?
Not sure… perhaps you prefer eavesdropping.
Cafes provide ideal opportunities to listen in to other tables, perhaps even snap what they are eating…
‘It was so windy his hearing aids blew off.’
‘She’s a tidy sort of person, so usually when she says the house is a complete mess she means she hasn’t emptied the dishwasher, but when we went to stay, the house was a complete mess.‘
When you hear a whole coffee and cake’s worth ( slowly eaten ) of a holiday from hell you are tempted to join in. ‘Oh that’s just like when we went away with… ‘
But you don’t need to pretend you are looking at your phone or absorbed in your cake. The queue at the shop till is just as fascinating. This is why we must keep human beings at the till. The young chap on the till is busy taping two large rectangular multi photo frames together for a customer. She had explained in great detail what happened last time she bought two such frames and why she needed them taped together to make carrying easier. She then went on to explain why she had bought and was buying again these frames and detailed how many grandchildren she had, referring to how many children she had had and probably about to describe how she had met her husband, but by that time he had finished wrapping. A self service checkout would not have helped her, nor listened with interest to her saga…
How has your week been? Eavesdropped on anyone interesting?
Do you play any addictive games?
Silly Sunday – November Nothings
Random ponderings on First World Problems and out of world experiences.
Miserable November afternoon
Happy November morning, welcomed by a Robin singing his heart out.
It has been a discombobulating month so far. WordPress would not let me download new photographs; how could I go on any walks if I couldn’t use my photos! The naughty elf who runs WordPress seemed to be suggesting my gallery was too full. I deleted lots of pictures to no avail and causing havoc to my posts and pages. To be fair to WordPress this was on my desk top computer which is still on Windows 10, now no longer supported, whatever that means. Cyberson2 had suggested I didn’t need to worry or at least there was no point in doing anything, as my old computer would not cope with Windows 11. He had downloaded extra protection when they were visiting recently… And hey ho, I have heard scary things about Windows 11… So I created a test blog on my iPad and whoopee, pictures were accepted, so now I download pictures to the gallery then do my blog on the computer where my word documents are…
Anyway, back to real life. One of our local towns is in lockdown or gridlock… there are always road works somewhere, but this is work on the bypass that does not bypass the town, but ends at the roundabout. Only one side at a time is being closed over the next three weeks, but apparently locals could not drive or catch a bus with any hope of getting there. No problem for me, I don’t drive, don’t live in the town and I walk there. But it turns out walking across the river to your writers’ group or coffee morning is not much good if nobody else is there. Like any group we arrive from all directions to a central point.
Meanwhile, no such problem in Southbourne for our monthly book club, only one person absent. The only problem being half of us had not read the book and only one person loved it, nobody else liked it! After the previous month’s enjoyable hardback in good print size, we were faced with a thick paperback in small print. This is a famous novel many people have loved over the years. Find out what it was at the end of this blog. With two lots of visitors staying and blogs to write, I started reading, but decided I must abandon it. I met one of the other members out and about and was relieved to hear she had not read it either.
It is looking like autumn, but too mild. I have just given my so called lawn its third final mow of the year. Talking of global warming, we seem to have heard too little about Prince William’s Earthshot prize and ten year project. While world leaders preside over wars and destruction, clever people are working and innovating to look after the planet.
And talking of the planet…
Years ago my husband came back indoors one night and said he had just watched the space station fly over Ken’s garage. He had asked another neighbour why he was staring above Ken’s garage. We hadn’t known we could go on line and track its many differing orbits. After that we were obsessed for the period it was passing over Southbourne, or Dorset or England…
The International Space Station, that shining beacon of humanity, science and international cooperation is coming up to retirement or abandonment. My scientific knowledge usually comes from tuning in to the middle of intelligent radio programmes, so it may or may not be true that a space station does not stay in orbit of its own accord and is reliant on the occasional blast of propulsion, worked by the Russians. To bring it down safely to some remote Mexican desert is not guaranteed, dependent as it is on international cooperation. Russia’s MIR was successfully brought down in the desert, but Skylab was scattered over Western Australia in 1979. To have a piece of ISS come down in my road would be blogworthy, but possibly more inconvenient than work on the bypass.
Possible scenario of bits of ISS falling on Bournemouth seafront.
The novel was Catch 22 and the person who loved it also loved my novella Pandemonica and gave it a five star review on Goodreads, so she is obviously a good judge of books...
Have you read Catch 22… or Pandemonica?
Have you spotted the space station or perhaps even been to the space station?
Wednesday Wander – Pictures on the Promenade
Where might you see this mural? Answer further along...
Where might this lead?
Is this art?
Is there a painting hiding here?
If you emerge at low tide from the sea, what will you see?
Nearly finished…
Pity the bins are in the way!
https://www.facebook.com/people/Miroslav-Lucan-LucanArt-/100063777633781/
Where is your favourite place to see art?
Saturday Stroll – Serene Souls
Following on from yesterday’s Halloween theme tale, take a stroll through the setting.
You can read yesterday’s tiny tale here.
https://tidalscribe.com/2025/10/31/friday-flash-faction-moving-on/
Do you like wandering around graveyards, do you have a favourite? Are you as fascinated by the lives of writers as much as in what they wrote?
Friday Flash Faction – Moving On
Someone’s on the move, who is it this time?
Tom again, another investigation. If they had just listened to him this could all be avoided.
Yup, he has been trying for years to tell them what really happened.
When Mary sees all this activity we’ll have to hear for the umpteenth time how she was moved from Saint Pancras.
Do you remember last year, the whole evening spoilt when Judith’s family decided it was time she moved closer to them? Wonder how she’s getting on. The last thing she wanted was to be reunited with her husband. She was so glad to come here and have some peace.
So what are we going to do this year then? We never plan early enough then it creeps up on us.
We must do something to cheer Tom up. All this investigating is going to bring back the bad memories.
Hmmm just when he was coming to terms with his situation.
Let’s all go into town, Tom won’t have to leave till the morning hopefully.
Yes a change of scenery is what we all need. Wonder if there will be much going on in town this year?
There will be by the time we’ve stirred things up, giving that Danny Robins more than enough material for his next series.
But we’ll have to start off in Mary Junior’s pub…
…and have to listen to her going on about the year with no summer and how she got the inspiration for her novel?
Yes and then she’ll get all sentimental and beg Percy to recite one of his poems.
… and one will lead to a dozen.
…and he will drift into melancholy and declare his heart always belonged to Mary and England.
At which point we will move on and see what’s happening elsewhere in town.
‘I don’t think October 31st is a very good night for doing this Boss.’
‘It’s a perfect night for exhuming a body, the locals will be keeping away from the graveyard, even if they claim not to believe in all that stuff.’
‘Why are we digging him up?’
‘His family still want answers so he can rest in peace, though he’s not getting much peace if we keep digging him up. Poor chap, last time there was no DNA, not sure what they hope to find in his bones, but that’s not our job. Ah here comes the vicar, no cracking jokes, this is hallowed ground.
‘I’m not laughing I’m feeling sick.’
‘You will have to toughen up if you want to be a grave digger.’
‘I did not want to be a gravedigger, couldn’t find another job. And I thought I would be burying people, not unburying them.’
‘Half the people in this churchyard have been moved from elsewhere, someone has to do it. Evening Vicar.’
‘Boss, did you hear voices?’
‘Nah just get on with digging.’
‘Vicar, did you hear that voice?’
‘Well um, that’s why I am here, to pray for any unquiet spirits.’
‘Such as poor Tom who was viciously murdered?’
‘But at peace now…’
Footnotes
‘Mary Wollstonecraft was buried at St Pancras old churchyard with an epitaph reading ‘Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: Born 27 April 1759: Died 10 September 1797.’
‘Famously, Mary Shelley spent many hours in the graveyard that held her mother’s remains and was said to have professed her love for Percy Shelley, her future husband, there.’
‘Wollstonecraft and her husband William Godwin’s remains were moved in 1851 upon the request of their grandson Percy Florence Shelley, thanks to the imminent railway works across St Pancras.’
‘Today, their remains can be visited at St Peter’s churchyard in Bournemouth, where the family tomb holds the remains of William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, grandson Percy Florence Shelley and his wife Jane Shelley (1820 -1899).’
Is this tale true?
‘Percy drowned while sailing his boat, the Don Juan, through a summer storm across the Gulf of Spezia in Italy. When his remains were found a few days later by friend and novelist Edward John Trelawny, a fire was built on the beach and he was cremated. To Trelawney’s surprise, however, Percy’s heart would not succumb to the flames. The hardened remains of Percy’s heart were plucked from the ashes and, after an argument over who would keep the remains, were eventually given over to Percy’s wife, Mary Shelley.’
Is his heart in the family tomb?
Back to the 21st century Danny Robbins presents ‘Uncanny’ BBC radio series, TV series and podcasts investigating many strange occurrences…
Back in Time
With real humans visiting I have not spent much time in the blogosphere, but luckily I have an extra hour this weekend… and time for a tiny tale…
Back in Time
It was Edward’s second favourite night of the year, staying up till 2am to watch the changes and do the alterations. An ancient ceremony to be revered, conducted for over one hundred years.
Edward’s home was analogue and digital, flashing on the cooker, ticking on the wall; a grandfather clock and his grandfather’s pocket watch he used to joke and promised he would leave his grandson the first digital watch he saved up £50 to buy…
Watching the time on his iPhone change, alert to see if this time it would change at 01.59 or 02.01 but it never let him down. Clambering up the folding steps in several rooms… adieu BST welcome back GMT. His son said he did not need a clock at all, let alone his horology collection. After all, he had the time on his smart phone and Fitbit, so he did not need to risk life and limb, especially to reach the grandmother clock high up in the stair well.
The night the clocks went back, changing from British Summer Time to Greenwich Mean Time, would be no fun without his beloved clocks. He was never ready for sleep after all the excitement and anyway, everyone was getting an extra hour in bed. He would go on the computer and check the time in other European countries changing their clocks.
He could not lie in for long in the morning as he always went round to his sister’s house for breakfast; more clambering on wobbly steps to change her clocks and the all important reconfiguring in her bedroom. He had bought her one of the first digital radio alarm clocks and after all these years she still had not figured out how to change the time.
Of course Edward’s favourite night of the year was when the clocks went forward in spring.
Facetiming is tricky at this time of year when you are talking to other countries, even other states, let alone other hemispheres. Some change, some don’t, not all choose the same weekend. If and when are you changing your clocks? More importantly, are you gruntled or disgruntled with the whole procedure?
Times and Tides of a Beachwriter 