Breathing is Free

My blog tells me that quite a large number of you read and liked the Coleridge poem 'To Nature'.  It was plants that opened the door to life on earth for us.  I'm told that they have been around for some 460 million years.  If we are damaging our planet with the use of fossil fuels (and the current winter we are suffering is suggesting that perhaps we are), when did we start?  Relative to the plants, we have been on earth for a very short time.  With the hole in the ozone layer that we have, I felt it would help to know when and why we started to disrespect the life-giving plants of our planet.  The Promise Tree, Books One & Two, attempts, through the course of a fictional story, to pinpoint the 'when' and 'why', and possible 'who'.  But never mind the 'who': let's face it, the deserts of our planet do not make the air that we breathe.

At the moment breathing is free.  But will it stay that way?

See in the Light

On Christmas Eve, in chapter 8, Edwina walks to church to attend the candlelit service.  On her way she sees hosts of tiny white moths drawn to the streetlights.  There are many levels of meaning in Book One of The Promise Tree and it is true that if one wishes to see in the light one must walk in the shadows.  We are now signing off from the blog until after Christmas and will be with you again in the New Year.  We wish you and all our readers a very happy holiday.

Penance

"So why a penance?"
"It was a Christian city.  On the 12th April 1204, the Crusaders, together with a huge army of knights from the Latin countries, attacked Constantinople and defeated it.  The inhabitants were slaughtered and the city was pillaged and the relics of the Eastern Christian Church, worth more than their weight in gold so it is said, were brought back to the West."

So what did this have to do with Friday the 13th?

Christmas Party

A very content and smiling Jennifer was carried back down to the warmth of the party, placed very carefully on the dance floor and even more carefully released, keeping the petals of her skirts in place.  Charles then folded her in his arms and danced with her as he looked for Dani.

Her head on his shoulder, she was dancing with their celebrity guest.  Charles caught her eye and raised his.  Dani smiled in recognition.  She had guessed right and had asked Charles to invite Jennifer.  More gently, had been her instructions to him.

A half hour later, as the couples passed, Dani slid into Charles' arms, slipping Jennifer neatly into her partner's.  Only then, for Charles, did the penny drop.

Christmas Eve

As the first silvery pencils of light had touched the icicles that hung along the Friary wall, he had been walking up Little Street watching the wind blow the rooks about the sky.  Christmas Eve: he loved this day.  Child and man.

Spices of the Orient

By six o'clock the restaurant smelt enticingly of spices of the Orient and Christmas tree.  A log fire crackled in the grand fireplace, hung with holly and ivy.  Roxy, the headwaiter, who had been testing the mulled wine, whisked about the dining-room in an elf's costume, throwing his arms around the temp. girl, Edwina, and shouting 'You shall have a Christmas, Tiny Tim.'

A story for those who care

What is the connection between the arc of the covenant, the beautiful cedars of Lebanon which once grew all around the shores of the Mediterranean, a children's nursery rhyme and the giant figure cut into the chalk hills of the South Downs of England?  If you don't know, find out!  Look for yourself.  Google The Long Man of Wilmington and wonder who created him.

My story takes us through the mind and imaginative wanderings of a young female photojournalist.  In Book One a seemingly disconnected series of events in her life and mind lead her on, drawing her in, as if dangling on the end of a spider's thread.  Inexorably she is pulled toward the centre of the web, to face the ungodly.  By the middle of Book Two she has realised, but can she stop?

Her travels are occasionally bawdy, occasionally funny, well written and romantic.  The majority of the locations in the story are real and the innumerable pieces of history used are, if our history books can be believed, also real.

The Promise Tree Book One is a pleasant read and the electronic book makes an ideal and convenient Christmas present.

The majority of the posts on this blog are short extracts from The Promise Tree Book One.

Enjoy.

Land of Dreams

The door had opened to a land of dreams as easily as if she had just leaned on it by mistake and fallen through.

Hours passed and Christmas day drifted quietly and amiably into evening.

Snowy Christmas

At home the whole house would smell of Christmas cooking.  Freda would be making great yule cakes and leaving them to rise by the fire.  Soon he could be sitting by the fire, a thick slice of freshly baked and buttered cake in his hand, a cup of tea on the corner of the table.

With curtains blowing, the back door shut.  His home; his Christmas.  Isolated by the day to come, he settled in front of the fire.
"Might we wake to a snowy Christmas, then?"  Freda peered at him over flour-covered glasses.
Walter shook his head, "Sharp frost and clear."
With his face as red as a smacked bum, she wondered what had been chasing him.  "All finished at the pub then?"
Walter nodded, blew the steam off his tea and added a measure of whisky to it.
"Mrs Lace get off to London then?  To her do?"
"Cuh!  You should've seen her dress.  Bit bloody cold for that sort of thing, I'd say."
Ah.  So that was it.  She'd guessed it would be.  He was jealous and flustered.  She moved the whisky bottle and the mince pies nearer to him on the table.
"I think there'll be a circus on the other channel."

Yo Ho Ho

"Yo Ho Ho

Yum Yum Yum

Stick the Christmas tree up his bum."

A sip of bright Scottish amber and Walter was happy, stapling cupids to Christmas tree fronds above the bar at The Woodpecker.

Santa's Nuts

"Hang Santa up by his nuts."
The pub fell silent.  In that still moment, Mike turned to the Proctor sisters:
"She didn't get what she wanted for Christmas, you know."

Christmas Tree Fairies

"You look like a fairy off the tree in that dress."
"You can turn me upside down to see, if you like."
"What?"
"Everybody looks to see if Christmas tree fairies have knickers on."

Titania

She had tempted Jack in his enchanted wood, made love to Walter the boy openly in the flirting sunlight, moved freely down the hidden pathways of gypsies to the land beyond dreams, where spring and summer rule supreme and fairies ride on unicorns.  The door to their enchanted world had swung easily open.  Half-naked in the wood with Walter she had been shown the Down before the figure.  The wood, or Jack, was playing with her.  So be it.  She would play Spring, Titania, the sensual Queen of the Woodland, for the time being at least.

Perfect Manners

They whispered love's whispers and she answered.
"Love me?"
"You know I do."
"My heart keeps wondering why."
"Shhhh."
"I love you, angel."
"I'll miss you."
"Kiss me."
"Hold me."
"Forever, promise?"

She promised.

As she danced, all of her went with joy to the young men with lost hearts and perfect manners.

Heresy

"Well, the ingredients my dear.  Yours is the nearest English wood, once forest, to France.  Anne was educated at the French court.  France is the land of the great heresy.  Anne's home was Hever Castle, not far from here.  The Friary, there, right next door to your wood, was founded by Simon de Roches, a French Templar knight late back from the Holy Land, from where the great heresy most likely came."

Host of Memories

Turning his face to the descending ice crystals, he shut his eyes: mmmm.  Nice.  Then, putting his plate down on a stall, he cut into the pudding with his fork.  A sprightly dance of Christmas joined a host of memories in his mouth.  That was good.  Very good.  A light pastry case with mincemeat filling, a thick layer of marzipan ice cream and baked meringue to cover.  That was more than good: that made one remember the first ever taste.  As porches of warm houses aand memories of parties burst upon his tongue, a girlfriend's warm hand in his, he walked her home in the snowy moonlight.  Now he was smiling.

Carol Singing

'Of all the trees that are in the wood, the holly bears the crown.'

The voices of the Richards boys came to him clearly on the winter air.  Carol singing somewhere round the village green no doubt.  He felt a light touch in his hand, as if a child had just taken it.  Looking down and all around there was no child to be found.

Star of Evening

Ahead of him to the east the first star of evening began to appear.  Stopping, he watched it twinkling, dancing over the waves on the edge of the world.  'Spend this long night with me.'  Had she whispered it to him, as they kissed and hugged under the mistletoe, in a grove of oaks?  Or had he just imagined she had?

Sandalwood & Oranges

She'd smelt of sandalwood and oranges.....Facing the great tree, her arms reaching round its massive trunk, he'd lifted her up.  Then, their hoard of mistletoe around their feet, in a grove of oaks, she'd kissed him.  It had been a good day.

Glittering Youth

But how on this mossed bank of joy had he cheated the rooster?  Or could this wood of love turn back the crow-blackened edges of mouths to the once rose-pink lips of glittering youth?  An icy hand touched the back of her neck.  Cheating the precipice of ages made her uneasy and she felt the wind blow cold in a far away wood.