Wednesday, 27 November 2024

Secrets of Avebury's Stone Circles

 

Unlike the far more compact Stonehenge, Avebury is huge. It’s also quite difficult to imagine its structure at ground level -  much easier looking down on it from the air. Then you can see the larger outer circle and twin inner circles, the ditch, bank and avenues running off, in serpentine fashion. 

These avenues were surely followed by countless generations of our prehistoric ancestors as they processed to the centre, but for what purpose we can only speculate. The seasons would have been critical to them, the changing weather patterns, passage of the sun, even the earth’s magnetic forces would surely have resonated more strongly with them than with us. I venture to suggest that we need our sophisticated technology to capture and interpret signals from the world around us that our ancestors would have been capable of receiving naturally. In our incessant progress we have probably lost much of our innate power; the fine-tuned senses that enable animals to correctly predict the advent of severe weather or catastrophe long before we have an inkling.

 Whatever the reason for their creation, stone circles and lone standing stones are a fact. We can see and touch them and, in the U.K. we are fortunate to be blessed with so many, the length and breadth of the land and on the furthest islands off our coasts. In fact, recent archeology up in Orkney (Ness of Brodgar) is throwing up evidence that the culture that built the stone circles originated from far up north, spreading downwards as people travelled and brought their beliefs and practices with them.

 

These beliefs must have been hugely important to them and included a ritual of the dead, judging by the burials that have been discovered. So when Christianity came along, it as inevitable that a clash would occur between the two opposing sets of belief. And that, as the victor, the powerful hierarchy in the established Christian church, where schisms had already occurred, should go all out to destroy anything that didn’t chime with the exact tenets of its belief. Anything that wasn’t deemed Christian was automatically a threat. It was inevitable that it wouldn’t be too long before attention was turned to the stone circles. And soon it was Avebury’s turn.

Legends and myths had grown up around these megaliths. Ghosts. Strange lights. Sounds. The stones were deemed evil. They must be destroyed. And in the 14th century, the villagers set about trying to obliterate them from their landscape. They couldn’t shift them manually. Besides, surely it had taken the devil and his minions to plant them there in the first place so if they couldn’t do that, they could burn them. Or bury them. Or both. And that is what they set out to do, digging pits, toppling the stones into them and covering them over. It was dangerous work. At least one man died – the most famous being a Barber Surgeon, so named because of the tools that were found with him, although he may simply have died and been buried under that stone. He was found during excavations by marmalade heir Alexander Keiller in 1938, still interred under the stone that now bears his name.

For some reason, the villagers stopped felling and burying the stones, leaving the job only partly done. Maybe there were more fatalities. It was just too dangerous. The spirits were angry and likely to bring their wrath down to bear on the entire village. Best leave them well alone.

Or maybe… What if the stones were incorporated into the fabric of the church? Wouldn’t that help to somehow cleanse the evil? Certainly, in the seventeenth century, some of the stones was chipped away for use in the building of the chapel but greater use of the stones came a century later. An infamous builder by the name of Tom Robinson decided he would build some houses, using the sarsen stone from the felled stone circles. He employed a workforce to burn and smash the stones for building material. He complained at the cost of this operation, reckoning it at £4 per stone owing to the manpower needed to lever the stones into the burning pits, the costly equipment which often failed or caught fire and needed to be replaced and all before the cottages were even constructed.

Tom Robinson was not a popular man. He was reported by contemporary historian, William Stukeley who called him the Herostratus of Avebury for his destructive habits and his apparent glorying in the destruction. Apparently the man was not morally sound in his eyes either as he had ‘got his wife (an old woman above 50) with child.’ Robinson’s cottages were built but it appears the spirits of the stones avenged themselves for soon after they were completed, they were mysteriously destroyed n a fire and had to be demolished – at an even greater cost to Robinson. No doubt Mr Stukeley celebrated when he heard the news.

The use – or abuse – of the stones continued into the nineteenth century but not without incident. One man, a cobbler, who had been working on one of the stones, moved away and almost instantly the stone toppled and would have crushed him to death had he still been sitting there. Another tried to haul away a heavy stone he had earmarked for a millstone only to discover he couldn’t move it, even with his best team of twenty oxen. It ‘broke all his tackle to pieces’. It refused to be shifted by any means and he had to leave it where it lay. Other though were more successful and bits of sarsen can be found incorporated into buildings of the period all over the area

And as for religion. It seems the spirits and forces of nature combine on occasion. A parish clerk sheltered from the worst of a terrific thunderstorm, by standing close up to one of the stones. As he moved away, a bolt of lightning struck that very stone, cleaving it. The parish clerk, much chastened, hurried away convinced he had come within an inch of being killed by forces he could only guess at.

Today, life seems less fraught for the stones. Many have been re-erected, largely thanks to Alexander Keiller’s mammoth efforts back in the 1930s. The ghosts continue to be reported from time to time. Spirit dancers, voices singing when there is no one there. Mysterious lights, anomalous magnetic readings, strange sensations experience by people who touch the surface of the stones and, of course the mists. It is a landscape prone to such mists – especially early morning when the conditions are right. Yet, however explicable those white, swirling fogs are, it takes but a tiny glimmer of imagination to see figures dancing, swaying, undulating to some long forgotten chant.

The stones at Avebury hold many secrets and they don’t intend to give them up any time soon.

My latest novel is inspired by these magical stones:

 ‘Fear her now, fear the queen,

As in her stone she reigns supreme…’

When Jonathan agrees to accompany his girlfriend, Nadia, on a trip to Landane, he imagines a short relaxing break in the countryside.  But he quickly discovers that Nadia isn’t just drawn to the ancient Neolithic stone circle, she is obsessed by the megaliths. One in particular. Within hours, her personality begins to change and it isn’t long before Jonathan starts to fear for her sanity.

Reaching far back into the past and up to the present day, those same stones have demonstrated powers beyond reason and, as Jonathan’s girlfriend becomes increasingly distant from reality, some of the ghosts of the past begin to reappear. Now it isn’t only Nadia who is in danger.

What is the secret of the prehistoric standing stones of Landane? What lies within them? And why does an ancient piece of folklore ring so true?

 

Publishing on January 14th, 2025

 (available for pre-order now (ebook, paperback, hardback)

 Amazon

Flame Tree Press

 Barnes and Noble

 Waterstones

 Bookshop.org

 and/or wherever you shop for books

 Images:

Flame Tree Press

Shutterstock

Abe Books

 

 

Monday, 2 September 2024

The Haunted Pub in Avebury's Stone Circle

It is no secret that my new novel – The Stones of Landane – is inspired by the prehistoric landscape of Avebury in Wiltshire, with its impressive stone circles dating back thousands of years. Legends abound in the small village and the place is so full of ghosts, they almost crowd out the many thousands of tourists who arrive curious and leave shaking their heads in wonder.

 

Avebury has been a place of habitation for millennia so it is no surprise that one of the most haunted locations is the village pub - The Red Lion - which used to be residential but, sadly, is no more. These days it is very much a place to meet, drink and eat in its cosy surroundings and has become much busier than I remember from my first acquaintance some forty or more years ago. There are always gains and losses when a traditional pub undergoes radical renovation in order to accommodate the changing preferences of its target market and I do wonder what its plethora of ghosts make of it all. It would appear that, by and large, they have emerged unscathed and unruffled and continue to go about their daily business.

So who are they, this merry (or not so merry) band of haunters?

First off, there’s a transient visitor that passes near the 17th century building– a ghostly carriage and horses that is the harbinger of bad fortune. Thankfully, its appearances are rare as it signals the death of a close relative.

Then there’s Florrie. Oh, she’s a tragic lady. Back in the days of the English Civil War, her husband returned home unexpectedly from the fighting to discover her in the arms of another man. Angered beyond reason, he killed her lover, slit Florrie’s throat and dragged her body off to the well. This well, by the way is still there, now illuminated, covered by glass and serving as a fascinating drinks table in the restaurant.

Meanwhile, poor Florrie haunts the pub, searching for her lover or her husband (versions differ) but whoever it was had a beard. Men with such facial hair can expect to find themselves targeted. She has been known to make her presence felt by causing a chandelier to twirl…over the head of a bearded customer.

In one of the bedrooms, two ghost children cower in the corner while a woman sits writing at a table busy with her task and appearing unconcerned by their distress. Maybe they are hauntings existing on two distinct plains and are unaware of each other. Certainly their origins are unclear.

Add to these the many orbs, moving shadows with no known origins, cold spots and host of other phenomena and it is without a doubt that The Red Lion at Avebury can lay claim to be, if not the oldest, then certainly one of the most haunted pubs – and the only one to exist wholly within a circle of prehistoric standing stones.

Want to visit? Here’s the Website

Meanwhile…

‘Fear her now, fear the queen,

As in her stone she reigns supreme…’

When Jonathan agrees to accompany his girlfriend, Nadia, on a trip to Landane, he imagines a short relaxing break in the countryside.  But he quickly discovers that Nadia isn’t just drawn to the ancient Neolithic stone circle, she is obsessed by the megaliths. One in particular. Within hours, her personality begins to change and it isn’t long before Jonathan starts to fear for her sanity.

Reaching far back into the past and up to the present day, those same stones have demonstrated powers beyond reason and, as Jonathan’s girlfriend becomes increasingly distant from reality, some of the ghosts of the past begin to reappear. Now it isn’t only Nadia who is in danger.

What is the secret of the prehistoric standing stones of Landane? What lies within them? And why does an ancient piece of folklore ring so true?


Publishing on January 14th, 2025

(available for pre-order now (ebook, paperback, hardback)






and/or wherever you shop for books

 Images:

Flame Tree Press

Shutterstock

Monday, 5 August 2024

The Stones of Landane -



 ‘Fear her now, fear the queen,


As in her stone she reigns supreme…’

When Jonathan agrees to accompany his girlfriend, Nadia, on a trip to Landane, he imagines a short relaxing break in the countryside. But he quickly discovers that Nadia isn’t just drawn to the ancient Neolithic stone circle, she is obsessed by the megaliths. One in particular holds a fascination for her. Within hours, her personality begins to change, and it isn’t long before Jonathan starts to fear for her sanity.

Reaching far back into the past and up to the present day, those same stones have demonstrated powers beyond reason and, as Jonathan’s girlfriend becomes increasingly distant from reality, some of the ghosts of the past begin to reappear.

Now it isn’t only Nadia who is in danger.


Publishing on January 14th, 2025


available for pre-order now (ebook, paperback, hardback)


Amazon


Flame Tree Press


Barnes and Noble


Waterstones


Bookshop.org


and/or wherever you shop for books




and to get you in the mood...




Monday, 15 July 2024

If You Go Down To The (Screaming) Woods Today...

 


..You had better be prepared to experience more than you bargained for. Especially if the woods in question are in the vicinity of the Kent village of Pluckley. Properly known as Dering Woods, this forest is more commonly known as the Screaming Woods – and for very good reason.

The area itself is situated just south of England’s (arguably) most haunted village – Pluckley – where it seems almost every building and piece of land has its own ghost story to tell. Pinnock Bridge has its Gypsy or Watercress Woman who is supposed to have set herself on fire from a combination of the pipe she was smoking and the gin she was drinking at the same time. She wafts around as a misty figure.

The Elvey Farm has a haunted dairy where an 18th century farmer – Edward Brett – fatally shot himself. He is still heard, muttering ‘I will do it.’


A black silhouette of a miller haunts the site of an old windmill, while a red lady walks her small white dog around the churchyard and a white lady wanders around inside the same church. The locals at the time of her death must have really feared her. She was buried inside not one, but seven coffins AND an oak sarcophagus. She’s still pacing around there though!

An unfortunate love affair led to the suicide (by poisoning) of the Lady of Rose Court, and a poor man who fell into a clay pit still screams in agony. A schoolmaster who hanged himself is still apparently trapped at the site of his demise.

Now, after experiencing all that, you could well be forgiven for deciding to retire to the local hostelry (the Black Horse Inn). Surely here you could kick back and relax over a pint of foaming ale or a glass of comforting wine? Not a bit of it! After the phantom coach and horses have thundered by outside, expect things to start flying around you as the resident poltergeist gets to work.

But I digress. Back to the woods.

In the 18th century, a highwayman called Robert du Bois was tracked down and run through with a sword while he hid in a tree in these very woods. Another version states that he was dragged to the woods before being lynched. Either way, his are the screams which give the woods their name - along with a couple of other unfortunates, such as the army colonel who hanged himself and still can be seen dangling from his tree, and the ghostly soldier who wanders the woodland paths. Others who have simply lost their way - and never found it again - add their desperate voices to the cacophony from beyond the grave.

Sceptics might say it’s just foxes. Everyone knows foxes can make a terrible racket. As if hell itself had opened and let the screams of the damned escape.

But those of us who know about such things, don’t need any such explanations.

Do we?




Evil runs deep at Mordenhyrst Hall…

When Grace first sets eyes on the imposing Gothic Mordenhyrst Hall, she is struck with an overwhelming sense that something doesn’t want her there. Her fiancé’s sister heads a coterie of Bright Young Things whose frivolous lives hide a sinister intent. Simon, Grace’s fiancé, is not the man she fell in love with, and the local villagers eye her with suspicion that borders on malevolence. 

Her friend, Coralie, possesses the ability to communicate with powerful spirits. She convinces Grace of her own paranormal gifts – gifts Grace will need to draw deeply on as the secrets of Mordenhyrst Hall begin to unravel.

Amazon

 Flame Tree Press

 Barnes and Noble

 Simon and Schuster

 Waterstones

 and all good bookshops - in the high street or online

 

 Images:

Flame Tree Press

Shutterstock




Tuesday, 18 June 2024

Witch Bottles - No Home Should Be Without One


In my collection, The Crow Witch and Other Conjurings, you will meet a selection of sorcerers and wise women and in one story in particular - The Malan Witch - the witches are a powerful, evil force to be reckoned with. If you had been living anywhere near them, you would have been glad you had walled up a dead cat, hidden away a written charm or two, a horse’s skull and some (preferably children’s) shoes. As a cat lover of major proportions, I was relieved to discover that the walled up cats I had read about were, in almost every case, already dead when they were inserted into a cavity in the wall. They were certainly a common enough occurrence. Many medieval houses in need of restoration have revealed a little feline mummified carcass among the wattle and daub.

Even with all this protection, you might not be completely safe If you fell ill inexplicably and suddenly, your crops failed, or your animals got sick and died. You would know that somehow or another you had upset a witch and he – or more likely she – had put a curse on you. Then, most assuredly, you would need your own witch’s bottle.


Witches’ bottles have been found in both the U.K. and the United States, indicating that the practice travelled across the Atlantic with the earliest British settlers.

Although they have most certainly been around since Elizabethan times - if not earlier - one of the first mentions of such a bottle occurs in 1681 in Saducismus Triumphatus, or Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions, written by Joseph Glanvill. The author gives a description of how such a bottle would be created. A man whose wife is sorely afflicted is told to, “Take your Wive’s Urine… and Cork it in a Bottle with Nails, Pins and Needles, and bury it in the Earth; and that will do the feat.” We are told, “The Man did accordingly. And his Wife began to mend sensibly and in a competent time was finely well recovered.”

The ‘cure’ worked well for her – but had another effect, for across town, a wife complained that someone had killed her husband. It transpired that he was a known “Wizard” and must have put a curse on the woman whose husband was wise enough to equip himself with a witch’s bottle. So, these bottles not only had the power to counteract the magic, but were able to turn it back on the perpetrator.

So, what did they look like? Usually they were constructed of brown or grey salt-glazed stoneware. Some – known as Greybeards or Bellarmines – were embossed with a bearded face. Bellarmines also had the dubious distinction of being named after a particularly obsessive Catholic Inquisitor. Some weren’t buried, but deliberately destroyed as part of their function. Some people believed that you should throw the witch’s bottle on the fire and when it exploded, it would break the spell and kill the witch.


By the early 19th century, witch bottles were constructed from glass bottles, vials and other containers. Traditionally – and perhaps ironically – it took a witch to prepare a really effective bottle. As described above, into the bottle went the victim’s urine, hair or nail clippings, and some red thread taken from a ‘sprite trap’ (a device used to trap troublesome spirits). Other ingredients historically included blood, glass, wood and bone. Witch bottles are still with us and more recently, these unsavoury ingredients have largely been replaced by rosemary, needles, pins and red wine.

Once prepared, the bottle is then buried in the house, under the hearth, at the furthest point of the house, or some inconspicuous other place. It is believed that the bottle will capture the evil, and impale it on the pins and needles before drowning it in red wine and sending it on its way, using the rosemary. As long as the bottle remains hidden and unbroken, so its power will endure.

These days, there are a range of alternative ingredients for making up a witch bottle. These include: sea water, earth, sand, stones, salt, knotted threads, vinegar, ashes, coins, oil, feathers, shells, herbs and flowers.

Two witches, burned for their evil centuries earlier, now hell-bent on revenge.

A woman who seems to step out of an old Hollywood movie, and a castle with a murderous past.

A seer whose deadly prediction was hidden away for a future generation.

A mysterious portrait that is far more sinister than mere paint and canvas.

An old woman only the foolish would ridicule, for she knows the secrets of the land and how to harness its power.

All these and more conjurings abound, and you would do well to remember, my dear reader…

When the seeds of revenge are sown, beware the harvest!

Available from:

Weird House Press

Waterstones

and other online and high-street retailers



Images:

Shutterstock

Weird House Press



Thursday, 23 May 2024

Life Before Computers Gave us Anchovy and Claptrap. Part Two


A Play Shakespeare Never Knew He’d Written

 

I went through three generations of manual typewriters before the glorious day when I bought an electronic one that would store a line of type and let me preview it before I let it actually print on the page. Wow! What a breakthrough. However, not long after that I got my first computer. Well, word processor really.

I opened my heart to an Amstrad PCW9512 and my world changed. But, as I’ll explain, some things remained the same for a long, long time and cost a small fortune because, while the age of computers had arrived agents and publishers preferred the old methods…

But for now, here I was with this wonderful bit of kit on my dining room table. It came with a monitor, daisy wheel printer (you’ll still need that older friend/relative you borrowed in order to understand the finer points of part one of this saga) and something called a floppy disk. This was always confusing because it was a square-shaped piece of hard plastic. Not floppy at all. Some years later, I saw that in fact the disk split apart and inside was this floppy disc-shaped thing. The scales fell from my eyes.

Anyway, without too much ado, I inserted the floppy disk into its designated slot on the monitor and, lo and behold, it loaded up the most basic of programs. Of course, being all-new, this seemed wonderfully sophisticated and incredibly technical. Before long I was ready to create my first file in a way not dissimilar to what we do now. Well, up to a point. I couldn’t select whether I wanted 10 point, 12 point or whatever.

That was all down to which daisy wheel I decided to put in my printer. The pack came with one and you could buy others in different styles. Oh. The wonder of it!  I couldn’t choose Garamond, Georgia or anything else for that matter as that too was all dependent on which daisy wheels I had bought – and there wasn’t a lot of choice. I seem to remember Courier was one everyone used - the Times New Roman of its day. But never mind. At least if I made a mistake I could correct it without a load of hassle and wasted paper. Right?

Yes. Right. Absolutely. The Amstrad 9512 did indeed have a dictionary built into its limited brain. Now, I don’t know who had helped write that dictionary but I am betting at least one person with a medical degree was involved as the Amstrad would offer perfect renderings of the most complex medical terminology when asked to check spelling. But I am equally convinced that no one with an English degree had come anywhere near it. And the thing was that once you had accepted its proffered alternative to a spelling it had queried, it would automatically proceed to alter every repeated instance of your apparent mistake. This led to some hilarious (and not so hilarious) bloopers. 


One has always stuck in my mind and, funnily enough, it wasn’t one that happened to me although plenty did. I read an article in what was then Writer’s Monthly magazine. The author had been writing an article relating to that well-known play by William Shakespeare called, Anthony and Cleopatra. The only snag was that every Anthony had been rendered ‘Anchovy’ and every Cleopatra ‘Claptrap’. He had inadvertently accepted the proffered correction. This was all too easy to do as the Amstrad seemed to believe it was infallible and that if it didn’t recognise a word, it couldn’t be correct. Only words in its dictionary were possible, or so it believed. An early instance of the arrogance of artificial intelligence perhaps? Whatever the reason, unless you stopped it from doing so, it would correct every word it didn’t like by inserting one it preferred unless you stopped it from doing so.

This kind of stroppy behaviour led me to abandon the spellchecker for many years, up to and including my early ventures into working with a ‘proper’ computer. I simply didn’t trust it, you see.

Aside from that minor inconvenience, my little Amstrad was a godsend. I could now copy my precious story onto floppy disks (you needed something like half a dozen for a novel) and I could keep these in various locations as I was always wary of the house burning down and taking with it the only copy of my novel. 

A tip from author Judith Krantz had led me to wrapping my top copy of any manuscript and putting it in the freezer on the basis that it was usually the last bit of equipment to succumb to the flames. Now I could carry it round me with me if I wished to. And I did until I realised this was a silly idea. What if I was mugged? The robber would have my manuscript and could sell it as his/hers. You can see a state of paranoia underlining this, can’t you?

Anyway, onto the printing itself. The daisy wheel printer was a noisy thing that vibrated a lot and was programmed to print off a line when it detected it was coming to the end of a sheet of paper. (Don't ask me why it did that, but it did. I think it was purely for aesthetic reasons, although as this practice inevitably devoured a fair amount of printer ribbon, there may have been other, ulterior, motives. Who knows?) It would then repeat this exercise at the top of the new page. The noise of the same key repeatedly hitting the ribbon resembled rapid machine gun fire (imagine spending a night in an active war zone) but at least I could set it printing and only have to return when, either it had finished that chapter, run out of paper or run out of ribbon. Printing a 400-page novel was, as a result, noisy and expensive (those ribbon cartridges weren’t cheap) but so much less hassle than my now-abandoned typewriter.

Then it was time to try and get someone interested. In my case, at that time, I concentrated heavily on finding a suitable agent. The targeting process wasn’t unlike today’s except that there was no internet so you referred to a physical copy of The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook.

I would send out half a dozen query letters at a time. Each carefully targetted and personalised (some things don't change) and all utilising what we now call 'snail mail' – we then called it ‘the mail’ because there was no other. You had to include a stamped, self-addressed envelope and obey the individual agent's instructions which might mean you also sent out a sample chapter or two. Postage had to cover the return of whatever you had sent. This could prove expensive but at least you could fit everything into an envelope – usually an A4-sized one. 

The process meant a trip down to the Post Office, armed with your letters, sample chapters and envelopes. The assistant would weigh each one and hand it back to you, along with stamps. You moved away from the counter, stuck them on appropriately, sealed your envelopes, with the return, stamped, addressed envelope safely inside each one, prayed to your deity of choice, and mailed them.

Then you waited. 

If you were really lucky, one agent out of four or five might request chapters or the entire manuscript. In the latter case, you cheered and groaned in equal proportion, printed out a new copy of the manuscript or looked for the least creased one, and then marched down to the Post Office once again. This time, you were equipped with brown wrapping paper, paperclips to attach the required postage to the letter, adhesive tape, scissors… 

You waited in line. The assistant weighed everything, multiplied it by two for the return postage, added on the required extra for Recorded Delivery in case the parcel got lost, handed everything back to you, and off you went to find some quiet corner to assemble your precious package.

Once safely sealed, you once again joined the back of the line because, of course the package was too large to go through the mailbox. I have spent many Saturday mornings thus engaged.

Then it was back home to wait.

And wait…

And wait…

Then one day, weeks later you returned home from work to find the mailman had attempted to deliver a parcel. Your heart sank and you asked yourself if it was worth all the effort and considerable expense.

You wept bitter tears. 

On Saturday you went and collected the slightly battered parcel containing the dog-eared, expensively produced manuscript that would never be able to be sent anywhere else (who wants to receive a manuscript that looks like a golden retriever tussled for it with a somewhat over-excited poodle?) You found the agent's letter or, worse, the scribbled note on the front page of the submission.


“Sorry, not for us.”

You sighed, poured yourself a drink, picked up the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, and started your search for an agent all over again.

Because that’s what we did, back in the days before the internet made it all so easy…


 (In case you missed it, you can find Part One of this article here)

 Images

Shutterstock

public domain

 

 

Tuesday, 21 May 2024

Life Before Computers Gave us Anchovy and Claptrap. Part One

 Remember Carbon Paper?

No? Prepare to be shocked

Yes? Welcome back to the Pre-Millennium Carbon Age

Part One

So you’ve got a story idea…

 
Back in those heady days of yore when you had an idea for a story, you didn’t fire up your laptop (‘What’s that?’ you would have cried and no one would have answered.) Instead, you grabbed your Silvine Exercise Book. There was something so wonderfully tactile about the glossy textured surface and, on the back cover, you could learn ‘avoirdupois weights’, ‘hay and straw weights’, ‘long and lineal measures’ including how many poles were in a furlong (40), the number of yards in a fathom (2). We all knew how many noggins made up a pint (4) because our exercise books told us, and as for rods, poles and perches...

With pencils sharpened, you stared at the first pristine page. If you were already inspired enough, you might actually write something - maybe the working title, or possibly a first sentence. Braver souls headed straight for the ballpoint pen; the rest of us lined up our erasers.

Meanwhile, the machine that would eventually be harnessed into service to produce a printed version sat idly in the corner of the kitchen/living room/bedroom. Most likely it was a portable, neatly zipped into its leatherette carrying case. You wouldn’t dream of typing your first draft or even your second. No, that was for later, when you had finished all the crossings out and amendments and after you had deciphered that note you made on page 32 relating to something on page 94 that was now completely obliterated or amended so many times as to be completely illegible.

But eventually the day would come when you would unzip that carrying case and take out your beloved, much cherished Empire Smith Corona, Olivetti, Imperial or whatever make of typewriter you had chosen. The smell was unmistakeable, a mix of the ink on the ribbon (more of that later) and the grease on the simple cogs and keys that kept the machine working. Next to you, was your collection of scribbled-on Silvine exercise books numbered from 1 to whatever, open at volume 1, page 1. All you had to do now was type it up. Simple? Well, yes, and then again…no.

You see your friendly typewriter couldn’t correct any mistakes you might make, or any decisions to alter a word or phrase once you had typed it. If you wanted to make a correction, you had to do it yourself. To effect such a change, you needed to call on the services of a hard typewriter rubber (that usually rubbed a hole in the paper while removing the offending error) or, if you were a little more sophisticated, you might use a white liquid resembling a cross between a bottle of nail varnish and Dulux Brilliant White Gloss Paint – called variously ‘Liquid Paper’ or ‘Tipp-Ex’ depending on your manufacturer of choice. 

This had been invented by the mother of a musician and sometime member of The Monkees (anyone under the age of 40 is advised to consult an older relative or friend). His name was Michael (Mike) Nesmith. I forget hers but I believe she was a Mrs. Nesmith, at least once upon a time. Tipp-Ex also made a paper-correction slip thingy but it’s far too complicated to explain here (that older friend/relative is going to become increasingly handy from now on).

(Mike Nesmith is on the left)
The subject of errors and revisions leads me to the next hurdle we writers from the carbon (paper) age had to overcome. Copies. Nowadays, along with everything else a typewriter couldn’t do, your computer, in cahoots with a printer, will happily print off as many copies as you want – all identical and of the same quality. Not back then they didn’t.

And this is where carbon paper came in.

It was sold in boxes, in various sorts, textures and colours. Usually you had a choice of black or, a sort of, royal blue. If you wanted more colour definition you needed to use different colours of paper rather than print. Even the most amateur writer knew that to type only one copy of the precious manuscript was to court danger of the most precipitous kind. What if you lost it? What if you sent it to a publisher and THEY lost it? Or the postal service lost it (I’m coming to them later, in part two). What if your house burned down? What if…what if… The prospect was too horrendous to contemplate so, the investment in carbon paper was well worth it, plus publishers were usually satisfied with receiving a first or second-generation copy, as long as it was neat, error-free, pristine, and…legible. As well as double-spaced, with correct margins and numbered pages (you had to type those on as you went along).

In order to create your usual mix of one top copy plus up to five carbon copies, you carefully layered your sheets of typing paper with a layer of carbon paper between each one – taking great care to load the carbon paper the right way up or else the damn thing would print on the reverse of the previous sheet and you would have to (sound ominous music here) START ALL OVER AGAIN.

A word of caution here. Imagine you are bashing away at your typewriter - not the gentle tip tap most of you do right now. Typewriters were robust and required robust operation – some more than others; the keys needed to be moved. They had to be hit with meaning and a certain sense of real purpose or they had a tendency to sit tight and refuse to budge or else all gang up on you, move together and end in a tangle which – you guessed it – you would have to sort out. Manually manipulating the little buggers back where they belonged. This usually resulted in scraped fingers (yours) and bad language (yours again).

Then, as now, editors didn’t like to receive work that showed a lack of care – spelling and grammatical errors and typos for example. Back then, you would need to add corrections to the list of their pet hates They would – if you were lucky – allow you probably one or maybe two very minor corrections now and again on a full novel-length manuscript but some were far stricter than that and would reject anything that, at least on the first ten pages, contained more than one obvious error. Don’t forget that any mistake you made was echoed through every carbon copy and was far harder to disguise on your copies. And also, Liquid Paper needed time to dry. A frequent complaint from agents and publishers concerned the difficulty of trying to prise apart sheets of type fused together with an over-exuberant application of correction fluid.

How many times have I reached almost to the end of the page only to make a stupid error and have to retype the entire sheet? More than I care to recall and, of course, when retyping the page it never seemed to quite line up with the previous or proceeding one so an entire chapter might have to be retyped. Another factor to bear in mind is that the more carbons you made, the fainter the type would appear on, say the, fourth or fifth copy, to the extent that whole letters might appear to have been missed because you hadn’t bashed that key quite hard enough. Also, the weight of the paper made a huge difference, which is why most carbon copies were produced on what we called ‘flimsy’. This was a much lighter weight – resembling tissue paper.

Like everything else, carbon paper had a limited life span although you could reuse it a number of times, only discarding it when the copies started growing fainter.

The same applied to the ribbon.

On my first typewriter, I had an all-black ribbon. You unwrapped it, sat it down on its spindle, threaded it through and attached it to an empty reel and spindle on the other side of your machine. Hitting a typewriter key would cause the selected hammer to strike the ribbon and its attendant letter to appear on the printed page. When your ribbon was nice and new, the type would be a bold, assertive black. Once the ribbon had run its course to the end, it would automatically reverse itself and you could merrily carry on typing until you saw the type beginning to move from black through dark charcoal to grey. Time to replace the ribbon. Some fancier typewriters used black and red ribbons enabling you to select which colour you wanted to type in. That always seemed a bit of a waste to me as it meant half the ribbon was barely used.

As you can imagine, changing a ribbon was messy, time consuming and inclined to result in sore, inky fingers and bad language(that would be yours again). As with all inanimate objects, a typewriter experiencing a ribbon change seemed to want to provide you with as much grief as it was capable of. And, take it from me, typewriters were born sadists.

Later models dispensed with all that nonsense and delivered you a cassette which you inserted. Slam, dunk, done. It didn’t reverse itself and stopped when it was empty. That was fine as long as you had a replacement all ready and waiting. Infuriating if you didn’t and it was Sunday afternoon.

Of course, I have been talking here about manual typewriters. There were expensive electric ones. The only real difference for many years was that they were usually a little quieter and required less heavy bashing of the keys, and they automatically performed something known as ‘automatic carriage return’ (you haven’t sent that older relative/friend home yet, have you?). In other words, once you had set your margins, the typewriter would ring a little bell when it knew you were coming to the end of a sentence and, at one finger touch from you., would send the carriage flying back to the beginning of the next line. On manual typewriters you could also set your margins and a bell would ping but then you had to return the carriage yourself (your friend/relative will explain).

Your typewriter wouldn’t ping when it came to the bottom of the page though. Oh no, you would have to take precautions against running out of paper (in my case, I would draw the faintest pencil line a couple of inches up from the bottom) or run the risk of all your efforts being in vain as you watched your paper slip to one side, along with your line of print. And guess what that meant? You’ve got it. START ALL OVER AGAIN.

Oh – and another point. If you were lost for just the right word to use, there was no point in asking your typewriter, you had to reach up to your bookshelf, heave down your copy of Roget’s Thesaurus and look it up. Yes, really. Ask…well, you know who by now don’t you?

So, are you still mad at your laptop? Do you still think producing your manuscript is tough? Wait till you learn what happened when you wanted to send it off.

Still to come, in Part Two:

I get my first Word Processor

The first spellcheckers – introducing the wonderful world of Anchovy and Claptrap

The perils, pitfalls, and expense of querying agents and publishers before emails made it all so easy (or not)

Don’t miss Part Two

It will leave you aghast and wondering why anyone even tried to get published.

Images:

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