Janet Gogerty's Blog: Sandscript - Posts Tagged "london"

I just caught the last two parts of 'Book of The Week' on BBC Radio 4; 'An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth'. I heard enough to put it on my goodreads list of books I want to read. A look at the BBC website to see a few of Chris Hadfield's pictures from the space station brought further excitement when I saw a sunny picture of the blue seas of Poole Bay, Dorset, where we live and the lights of London on the Thames.
When I was a child we were expecting to be living on the moon by now, if not Mars, but the Space Shuttle and Concorde have been and gone! However, that does not detract from the achievements of the space station; international co-operation, scientific work and the bravery of the astronauts who can never be sure of getting a safe lift home.
Perhaps most importantly this small band of intelligent adventurers know more about the world than any politician or big business man. From the drying up of the Aral Sea to the growth of Mega Cities, the residents of the space station see it first.
So for Christmas I would much prefer Chris Hadfield's book about real stars than the mountain of celebrity biographies.

What’s in a name? Unless an author writes science fiction set on another planet, or fantasy in a fantasy world, he has to set his story on earth. I once read a novel by a well known writer; unlike his other books it was a tale of wanderings in vaguely European lands, in an unspecified century. I felt no attachment to the characters at all and did not enjoy reading it.
But a crime thriller or romance can be set in a village with an invented name, helpful to avoid a libel case; you only have to look at the map book or drive around Britain to know real villages and towns have names stranger than a writer could create.
I recently read ‘The Cornish Coast Murder’ by John Bude, written in the 1930’s. His pen name is derived from a real Cornish place, the name of the village in the story is invented, but Boscawen sounds genuine. You can read my review of his book here on Goodreads.
Authors are safe in big cities, they are sprawling and anonymous. London has a well know centre surrounded by an endless variety of suburbs. In ‘Brief Encounters of the Third Kind’ the story starts in the back garden of an ordinary house, in the large suburb of Ashley. You won’t find Ashley on the map, but like many other outer London suburbs it has a common popular with walkers, several underground stations, a busy bus service, a hospital, a town centre and local shops. The residents of Ashley think nothing much ever happens there, but they are wrong.
When the characters hop on ‘the tube’ to go into central London well known landmarks feature in the plot. In ‘Three Ages of Man’ the stranger who appears at the beginning of the novel is overwhelmed by sprawling Ashley and the city centre, luckily he has an author to look after him. Waterloo Station is Britain’s busiest station, characters can slip through unnoticed. Here you catch the train to an obscure part of Wiltshire; a good walk from the station, near a little known village, is Holly Tree Farm; an ideal place for people who need to keep a low profile.
Perhaps one day I will set a novel in my current home town. It is big and busy, with students and holiday makers and occasionally, bizarre real life murders; plenty of scope for a novelist. Its real name is Bournemouth, but Thomas Hardy called it Sandbourne in his Wessex novels.
In the meantime it is June at Holly Tree Farm and I am busy writing the third novel in the trilogy.
In my two anthologies ‘Dark and Milk’ and ‘Hallows and Heretics’ you will find stories set in London and the Bournemouth area. In ‘Hallows and Heretics’ you can read the Hambourne Chronicles. Google Hambourne to see if it is a real place.

As we strolled along the Thames one day I wondered where musicians, writers, filmmakers and artists would be without rivers and bridges. We walked from Waterloo Station along the South Bank to Tate Modern, stopping to enjoy the views from Waterloo Bridge. Waterloo Sunset by the Kinks, Waterloo Bridge, a 1930 play that became films in 1931 and 1940 about a couple who meet on the bridge.
‘Our Mutual Friend’ by Charles Dickens is set on The Thames, a lot has changed since then, but at low tide you can walk on the mud, perhaps pick up a fragment of clay pipe and get a feel for Dickensian riverside.
The Millennium Footbridge by Tate Modern has appeared in numerous television thrillers and films during its short life. The bridge is always thronged with people, walking to and from Saint Paul’s Cathedral and the City of London.
Busy places are a gift to authors, our characters can make secret assignations or escape from dangerous individuals into the crowds. Anybody from anywhere could be in these well known places, so the plot is believable. Waterloo Station, the busiest station in England by passenger numbers, features in all my novels. In the Brief Encounters Trilogy the slow train to Salisbury takes characters to an anonymous little station in an unnamed village in Wiltshire. With the vast departures board flickering constantly, what reader can challenge the destinations and train times for a fictional person?
A short walk from Waterloo brings you to the South Bank, all life is here. You can ride on the London Eye giant wheel and gaze down at Westminster, go to a concert at the Royal Festival Hall, walk along the river or walk across the Jubilee Bridges, alongside rattling trains on their way to Charing Cross Station. Plenty of scope for writers and this part of London features in the trilogy and some of my short stories.
Next time you are out and about, strolling across a bridge or rushing to catch your train, remember, the people you brush shoulders with may be fictional.

As I sat reading a book I felt and heard the reassuring rumble of the underground. But I was not on a London tube train, Mum and Dad were in the kitchen next door washing the dishes. We were in our little suburban house in Perth, Western Australia.
It was 10.59a.m., a bank holiday on the 14th October 1968, we had just experienced the Meckering Earthquake, my mother said she had to cling to the kitchen sink. The small town of Meckering was 130 km away in the wheat belt, the 45 second earthquake was magnitude 6.9 on the Richter Scale making it one of the largest recorded in the seismic history of Australia. A few buildings in Perth were damaged. A baby had a miraculous escape in Meckering, their town fell down, but no one was killed. Had the epicentre been in a big city it could have been a major disaster. For us it was exciting, proof that Man cannot control nature.
At school the next day the earthquake was the only topic of conversation. In the classroom we were all startled to feel an aftershock, this time we knew what it was and we were scared. The teacher told us to calm down. There was no evacuation or talk of emergency procedures. It was unlikely the one storey asbestos building would collapse dramatically.

Fast forward to December 1974; I had a Christmas job as a floorwalker in
Harrods toy department. It was the Saturday before Christmas and that afternoon I had the last tea break. The staff restaurant was on the top floor. As I stood in the Ladies combing my hair I heard a muffled thud and assumed it was an IRA bomb going off somewhere else. Of importance later was the fact that I had my handbag with me.
I walked out to see the busy shop deserted, the escalators switched off and a couple of security guards annoyed to see me still in the building, everyone else had been evacuated. Somehow I caught up with colleagues as we poured out of the building; it was only as we looked up and saw thick black smoke pouring from the corner of the iconic department store that the shock hit us. No one was hurt that day, the heroes were the staff who had noticed something suspicious in their department and evacuated customers safely. Heavy fire doors had contained the explosion. Once again I had had a wide escape. We sat in a nearby pub waiting to go back in and fetch our coats, but nobody would return to work that evening. Lucky for me I had my handbag with my season ticket for the train, even if the journey home was a bit chilly without my coat.

We all watch the news and most of us wonder what it would be like to be at the heart of a major disaster. Reporters always ask victims how they feel. Back to Perth, Western Australia, when my fourteen year old self was riding my bike. The suburbs were laid out in a grid design with long straight roads, there was a ‘Give Way To The Right’ rule, logical as long as everybody obeyed; there were always accidents at intersections. I was pedalling towards a corner when suddenly two cars collided in front of me, one of them rolled over. The two young drivers clambered out with some difficulty, but both were laughing, unhurt. When I tried to get back on my bike my legs were shaking so much I couldn’t lift my foot onto the pedal. I have always wondered if everyone benefits from adrenalin when faced with real peril, or if some people turn to jelly.
Writers like to imagine every situation humans face, but can we picture what it’s really like to face the unspeakable terror of the Twin Towers collapsing, or a tsunami if we haven’t been there?
On Saturday 29th August an air show was taking place at Shoreham, Sussex; many people watched in disbelief as a hunter jet did not complete its loop and plunged onto the A27 killing eleven people. One woman apparently carried on driving and emerged safely the other side of the fireball.
How many writers secretly long to be in the midst of a disaster, natural or man made and emerge unscathed, or more dramatically have a story to tell from a comfortable hospital bed?

Writers are ‘somewhere else’ in their heads all the time, but most of us have the occasional chance to be ‘somewhere else’ in real life.
One of my earliest memories as a water lover is a sunny day wading near a sandy bank (it would be years before I learnt to swim). I spotted a shiny jewel, a curious object with tiny feathers. I plucked it from the water. Above me I heard an angry man’s voice and looked up at the bank. I made no connection between the curious object I was still holding and the angry man, I was more intent on taking the treasure to show my parents.
Did they see the ‘incident’, were they watching over me lest I was swept away by strong river currents? I was in little danger, I was paddling in Pen Ponds, Richmond Park, London’s greatest royal park, extending over 2,500 acres. Charles I created this park in 1637, ordering its brick-walled enclosure so that he might hunt deer. At the centre of the park are Pen Ponds, where coarse fishing is still allowed by permit.
Nobody in my family fished, it wasn’t till I was an adult and recalled the event I realised I had picked up a fishing fly and no doubt disturbed any possible catches. On that picnic day and others like it we were ‘Somewhere Else’, somewhere so different from the rented top half of a house on a main road in Isleworth. The smell of bracken warmed by the sun, deer with branches on their heads; one time I patted the nose of a stag, gazing up at his antlers, my parents didn’t believe me when I ran to tell them. Did that really happen, or did I imagine it? Once within the royal walls anything could happen, the outside world was forgotten.
Another playground for the gardenless child was Kew Gardens, with magical structures such as the iconic ten-storey red Pagoda dating back to 1762 and the gleaming Victorian glass houses. Any place where you must go through a gate, which is walled off from the outside world, is magic for adults and children alike, no traffic, no shops, nothing to remind you of everyday life.
National Trust estates are popular for the same reason. Once through the pay kiosk, past the gift shop, you will find a house to explore, lawns for children to roll down, secret gardens.
From one of my earliest outings to our most recent; ‘Stourhead’ in Wiltshire is photographers’ heaven, autumnal scenes by the lake are instantly recognised. We took a chance and went on a day when most of the country was covered in fog. But the sun came out and my first view of the famous lake was breathtaking, even with photographers dotted everywhere. This is man made scenery designed to be natural. A walk round the lakes is essential to appreciate reflections of burning autumn colours and Greek temples. In the woods, golden leaves floated gently down from beech trees like pennies from Heaven. Strangers smiled, it was such a perfect day it was the closest to Paradise or the Garden of Eden that one could imagine. The troubles of The World could not intrude.

p.s. if you like a u-tube laugh 'Fenton the Labrador' achieved fame in Richmond Park. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk9iJ...

Just as divisive as the Presidential Campaign or the referendum on the European Union is a BBC television series that has just finished, ‘Dickensian’, a delightful confection of twenty soap style half hour episodes that started at Christmas. This drama entwined many Dickens characters together in the same pocket of London Streets, filling in back stories. It started with the murder of Jacob Marley, we followed the domestic life of the Cratchet family and events in the life of young Miss Haversham leading to her tragic jilting; equally tragic, her friend who will become the widow Lady Dedlock with a secret. In the last episode The Artful Dodger takes Oliver to meet Fagin.
In the unlikely event you have never heard of any Dickens characters you would have enjoyed a rattling good tale. Keen readers and watchers of BBC dramatisations could enjoy picking out the characters and novels. Opinions were divided, some thought Dickens should not be tampered with, or didn’t like the attempts to give his simpering female characters some zest. I don’t usually like the idea of prequels and sequels written on behalf of dead authors, when they have no say in the matter, but this series was fun and delightfully dark for pre watershed viewing.
Dickens wrote short stories, plays and of course his novels, which started as weekly installments and ended as public readings on both sides of the Atlantic in the last years of his life. He was a great publicist, so no doubt he would have been delighted to see so many film and television portrayals of his tales. As for ‘Dickensian’; famously he changed the ending of Great Expectations, would he mind others constructing the beginnings of his stories?
Whether you like it or not Dickens is surely part of many people’s lives. One of my earliest memories is having nightmares after watching black and white Miss Haversham on television. The first Dickens books I actually read were my mother’s library books ‘One Pair of Hands’ by his great granddaughter Monica; disillusioned with her upper class origins she went ‘into service’ and then into nursing –‘One Pair of Feet’. I recall them being hilarious, I don’t know if they have stood the test of time like her ancestor. In high school in Australia we had to ‘do’ Great Expectations. Picture a gnarled old bloke with nicotine stained hands and a hacking cough. This was our literature teacher. ‘Personally I can’t stand Dickens’ were his first words to us. Most lessons we were left to do ‘free reading’. I was determined on principal to read and enjoy the work of a fellow Englishman.
Since then I have read some, but not all of his novels, usually prompted by enjoying a BBC television series. We have a house full of Dickens paperbacks as a teenage member of the family discovered one could buy paperback classics for a pound and hit upon these as cheap birthday presents. The novels of Charles Dickens are bound to feel heavy and the print small in paperbacks, not to be read on the bus or tube, but savoured at a leisurely pace. Every sentence is packed full of description of people and places, but if you lose your way and don’t finish you can always catch up on DVD.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06vbmfq

Remainer or Leaver, In or Out? Facebook was awash with opinions in the lead up to June 23rd 2016; better informed opinions than our politicians were giving us.
We were in Scotland during the 2014 Referendum and there was a real buzz in Dundee and Glasgow. Banners on buildings, posters in fields – their choice was Yes or No – and all the signs were Yes to leave.
https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
But No won by a narrow margin and I thought the same would happen in the European Union Referendum; Leave seemed to be winning, but surely not?
I’m not a farmer or a fisherman, I have never been in business or industry, so perhaps I was not as qualified as some to make a decision, but from the start my gut instinct was to stay in the European Union; peace, unity, the environment, there are bigger issues at stake than the tangle of bureaucracy we all dislike. It also seemed right that people should support the decision of the younger members of their family and fortunately our immediate family was of one accord.
We will never know how some individuals voted, it was a secret ballot, but there was a buzz in the whole country. People had a chance for their say which had nothing to do with political parties; the main parties were in disarray and disagreement, destroying what little confidence we had left in our leaders. Many Leavers were choosing Sovereignty, but others were taking the chance to vote against politicians and the establishment in general, while at the bottom of the pile were the racist bigots who just wanted to get out and keep everybody out. The intelligent Leavers have been furious to be portrayed as racists, while older Remainers do not wish to be lumped together with the senior generation accused of ‘stealing the future’ from the younger ones.
For writers, whether commentators or fiction authors, there will be great interest in how these new rifts will affect communities and individuals. The kingdom of Scotland voted to remain; one of the reasons they voted No to leaving the United Kingdom was so they could stay in the European Union; now there is talk of a second Scottish Referendum. Northern Island voted to remain, they don’t want to see the border that has gradually melted away, with the province and Eire both being in the EU, become a border again. But the principality of Wales voted to leave, though they have benefited more than many from money pouring in from the EU. Not surprisingly London, surely one of the most international and tolerant cities in the World, wanted to remain; how long before a novel is written about London becoming a city state?
Back down on the ground what were my observations? Nothing was simple, nothing could be assumed. The oldest chap in the office wanted to Remain while the young people all wanted to leave, a happily married couple, one on each side. The father who decided to consult his sons before a final decision; one was strongly for leaving, the other as fervent for remaining. Brothers and sisters divided.
Amongst friends whose opinions we are privy to there are more Remainers, but we have good friends who voted to Leave.
Meanwhile for writers the backstabbing amongst politicians is more dramatic than a Greek tragedy or Shakespeare; how delightful for the cynical to observe the wheeling and dealing ending in resignations and imploding of careers. Few authors would want to be in politics themselves, but I’m sure they will enjoy creating characters better able to run the country, or perhaps leaders even worse than we already have? Look out for some post European dystopian novels set in the 2020’s or 2030’s.