Fit for Purpose by Vivien Teasdale

I’m nearly there, I’m making it.  I managed to keep it up for 49.5 seconds last week.  I tell you twice a night, three times a week is finally paying off.  My wife says she’s never known anyone like me. 

So I told her, ‘I just need to keep practising’ and suggested making it four nights a week.  She was a bit dubious at first but after a couple of days thinking about it, she agreed.  She even went and bought me a new, soft tape measure so I could really keep tabs on my performance – it does get a bit awkward with that metal thing I used to use. I kept pressing the retract button when I got a bit excited and that’s painful, I can tell you.

I was a bit disappointed with my mate, Jack, though.  He was the one got me started on this regime in the first place. 

‘It’s amazing,’ he used to say, ‘you’ll feel so much better for it’. 

And so I began, just once a week at first, just for something a bit different.  All the measuring and checking was a bit distracting and my performance wasn’t what I expected, but then Millie suggested another night might be helpful and it was. I noticed a big difference and so did she. We really began to see some progress.  So, with her support and encouragement, I added a third night.

Trouble is, I think Jack’s got a bit jealous and he’s even admitted he’s gone off his form lately. I do feel sorry for him but if he wants to succeed, as I’ve done, he needs to commit himself.

So here I am Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and now Thursday too, each week down at the gym, weighing in, measuring my muscle size and recording weights lifted.  My graph is going sky high and I’m even thinking of going on some weekend courses. Might even train as an instructor. Millie thinks it’s great I’ve got such a worthwhile hobby now. 

Pity about Jack though.  Even when he dropped out of the other days, he used to come in on a Thursday, then we’d go down the pub. Now he’s even stopped that.  Prefers walking, he says, but I think he’s just jealous of my progress. No wonder his wife thinks he’s having an affair.

Book Review - Redline by Dave Rigby (Review by Clair Wright)

Redline is the second  "Harry Vos Investigation". Set in Belgium, the novel begins with the discovery of a body - identity unknown - and takes us, and Vos, into the worlds of tattooing, nuclear waste and fracking. I caught up with author Dave Rigby to chat about the book, Belgium and the business of writing. 

What inspired you to write about environmental issues and shady land dealings?

I’ve always had an interest in environmental issues and specific concerns about nuclear power and more recently, fracking.

There’s been an increasing need for storage sites for nuclear waste, particularly with problems around reprocessing of nuclear fuel, the decommissioning of older power stations and recent proposals for building new ones.

Likewise, there’s been a lot of interest from companies wishing to develop sites for fracking, another area of activity which has serious environmental implications.

(Although fracking is not currently permitted in Belgium, there’s an assumption in the book that this position could change and that therefore companies might well be actively looking for potential sites in anticipation of a change in policy.)

It seemed to me that if an organisation like Redline was able to provide land for such sites it would have the potential to make a lot of money. So, I put the company at the centre of the story and portrayed it as a ruthless organisation which protects its commercial interests by using both a high degree of secrecy and a range of underhand and illegal activity.

This provides significant scope in the book for tension, intrigue and ultimately, murder.

There's a strong sense of place in the Voss novels. In this story we learn more about the area, especially its wartime history and the regional dialect. You obviously feel an affinity to the region – do you have family connections there?

Unfortunately, no family connections at all!

But…I have visited Belgium on many occasions, starting in 1966. Over the years I’ve built up a strong feel for the country and in particular for cities such as Brugge, Gent, Antwerp and Mons. Aspects of the country remind me of Northern England, such as the coal mining heritage, the popularity of cycling and the interest in high quality beer!

On one of my trips, a few years ago, I had the idea of writing a book featuring a Belgian private eye. I saw the name Harry Vos in a local newspaper and decided immediately that I’d use this for my central character. When I visited a small town not far from Antwerp called Heist-op-den-Berg, to watch a football match, I was quite taken with the place and decided this would be a good location for Harry to be based. With very little more detail than this, I started writing what became Shoreline, the first of the Harry Vos investigations.

In both Shoreline and Redline I’ve tried to include enough local colour and specific place references to convince the reader that they are in Belgium. I’ve visited the country about a dozen times and I think this gave me sufficient confidence to be able to attempt this. I’ve had lots of positive feedback about the sense of place. It would be interesting to get the views of a Belgian reader and maybe I should try and arrange that!   

There are several storylines running through the novel. How did you handle them? Did you plan them separately or let them develop together?

I like the idea of having a number of plots in a novel, some of which link together. One of my starting points was that Harry should have more than one case on the go at any time. The main case involves the Redline company. The Waarschoot case, which is about a husband who has suspicions about his wife, is at a different scale and pace and appears to be totally separate from the main case but in the end the two make a link. The case involving the search for and discovery of Demotte’s wartime journal and gun stands on its own, but provides a different perspective on local life and some historical context. Harry was originally commissioned for this case at the end of Shoreline and this is one of the links between the two books.

Because I don’t do much planning before I start writing, I had to go back through the story, once I’d got a first draft, to make sure that the different plot lines hung together and that there was a logical development of each one. I ended up having to do this several times!

Identity is a big theme in this novel- people are not who they seem, lead double lives, even have more than one name! Did you begin with this theme in mind or did it develop as the plot unfolded?

I didn’t decide from the start to make identity a central theme in the book, but it emerged fairly early on. Charlie’s identity is a key part of the book. I wanted him to be a mysterious character where the reader only finds out a bit at a time what he was like and how he ended on a riverbank near Charleroi. Those involved in the investigation refer to him as Charlie – a name made up for him by a journalist. Those who knew him before his death refer to him by a nickname, Rudy. And there’s a twist later on in the book where it turns out that his actual name really was Charlie.

Webers certainly leads a double life! I wanted the reader to be unclear for as long as possible about who he is and who he works for. Hopefully that maintains a tension in the plot and adds to the intrigue.

I enjoyed writing the character Maes in a series of present tense monologues, gradually revealing more about him and clarifying where he fits into the plot.

Will there be a third Harry Vos novel?

I don’t have an answer to this question right now. However, Harry has been quite persistent in suggesting that there should be. So, who knows!

Redline is available on Amazon , in bookshops and from the publisher,  Troubador. 

Light Birth by Owen Townend

It fell down the Moore West drain cover some time ago. A smooth grey plastic pebble with no features aside from the white speckles forming a ring around its centre.
            It barely made a sound as it landed, a mere splash in muddy water. And yet it wasn't dragged off by the current. Instead it gained a strange heaviness and sank like all pebbles ultimately do.
            And then, at the bottom of the cloudy brown, it malfunctioned back to life. It switched on without prompt and started to emanate bright white lights that cut clean through the water and reached out past the drain cover.
            This light bent and shaped itself into something flat at the bottom but curved at the top: a gentle curve, the curve of a human foot. The light created a twin and these both sprouted up into thin legs that broadened into thighs and hips and levelled out into a waist and chest.
            The light split into a three-pronged fork at the top, the middle prong significantly shorter and rounder than its left and right side. Eventually the arms lowered to the figures' sides. The head lowered too, looking deep down into the drain cover beneath as if to contemplate its own origins.
            As its limbs finished shaping themselves, the light darkened into skin, formed hair from irregular shadows and rough features from precise imperfections.
            The body raised its head again and teased open the slit of its mouth, steadily widening it into an oval from which the light within shone as bright as it originally had.
It didn't breathe. It didn't mutter. It didn't scream. It just mouthed and not even discernible words.
            The figure then blinked its eyes, a frame rate glitch, as it knelt down on the grate. It curled its long limbs inward and wrapped them around the solid trunk of its naked glowing body.
            It lowered itself even further and shifted into the foetal position, mouth still working. The rain fell through this and every other aspect of its body. 
            When it finally shut its eyes for good, the figure started to fall away, sliding back down the holes and cracks and even solid material of the drain cover.
            The figure steadily broke back down into shards of light which retracted directly back to the pebble in the dirty water. The white speckles received every last photon before shutting off completely.
            The pebble did not resurface nor did it move with the sewage flow: it stayed in its exact position and malfunctioned again for three months for precisely half an hour starting at exactly 01:43 in the morning.
            Late passersby learnt to avoid Moore West and the figure who appeared, screamed, collapsed and then disappeared without a single sound. By the time those seeking to divulge truth from folklore came to investigate, the light birth and death had finally completely stopped.
            These investigators shook their heads and moved on to the next tall tale as the strange pebble was swallowed by thick dirt. The speckles clogged and inner machinery dampened, the ghost forever faded away.

My Black Shoes by Virginia Hainsworth

My black shoes.

My shiny, black patent shoes.

My full-back black shoes.

My lean-heeled black shoes.

My higher-than-high black shoes.

They are special, my black shoes.

Look at me, they say.

My glamorous black shoes.

I stand tall in them.

I feel majestic in them.

They hold me at the top of the stairs,

poised to convey me down

and make a graceful entrance.

My inky, ebony black shoes.

One last look at the way they elongate my legs.

One last look at their gleaming, resplendent beauty,

before I remove them

and walk barefoot downstairs.

They will not throw me headlong today.

My killer black shoes.