At the beginning of last month I joined a school outing to the National Gallery in London. I’m a school governor at the local primary school that both my sons attended and they often need extra adult help for school trips. You’re normally allocated a group of five or six children to keep an eye…
My Next Big Thing
I’ll start by thanking LIndsay Stanberry-Flynn for tagging me in the Next Big Thing which provides the opportunity for writers to answer questions about their current writing project. Lindsay is a novelist and short story writer. I recommend that you buy and read her prize winning novel, Unravelling and her next novel The Piano Player’s…
Editing
The main task for this week apart from an Award Board at work yesterday is to get back to grips with the manuscript. Ideally I’d take myself off to a quiet corner of Wales to do this free from distractions but instead I’ve taken leave from work. This part of the process is where external…
Who was Percy?
As well as finding out about Percy Honeybill’s war the other thing I wanted to know about was his family. How were we related? A chance on-line conversation with writer Donna Gagnon led to my reading a sea faring entry on her family history blog and discovering I was in the hands of another expert.…
Percy Honeybill’s War
Once I was back home I applied myself to finding out more about Percy Honeybill and what might have happened to him. As always Jeremy Banning was an invaluable source of information. He confirmed that Percy would definitely have been in the first battalion of the Kings Own (Royal Lancaster Regiment) and would have been…
Private Percy Honeybill 1887 – 2nd September 1918
My mother always used to say that if you came across a Honeybill anywhere in the world the chances were that we were related – Honeybill was her maiden name. It turns out she was more correct than she realised as the surname was ‘created’ by a clerk’s error in the mid eighteenth century which…
Somme and Arras – Maps, the Missing and souvenirs
I’ve already mentioned our guide, Jeremy Banning’s expert knowledge – he didn’t simply know where the English, French and German trenches had stood but also produced maps and panoramas to get us to understand. So we’d be standing in the middle of a field and like a magician he’d unfurl a long photographic image showing…
Somme and Arras day 2 – the world turned inside out
I woke early on the second day to the sound of a cockerel crowing somewhere nearby in the village. This was to be a day of the woods – Mametz, Mansel copse, Delville (known as Devil’s wood to the soldiers), and High Wood. I have an affection for woodland which goes back to a childhood…
Somme and Arras – the dead
Sometimes when another writer dangles an opportunity in front of your nose you have to say yes even if it doesn’t necessarily square with your other plans nor with the time you have available. So on the first Friday of October, thanks to Vanessa Gebbie, I found myself on Eurostar early in the morning heading…
Home Straight
I’ve spent the morning pacing around the house, manuscript in hand, growling (I have a sore throat) the poems aloud. I’ve finished the final poem about the Gloucester Sea Gladiators and polished some of the others. Even my hairdresser, Juliet got in on the act earlier. The manuscript went with me to the hairdressers first…