St. Catherine's Chapel

Yesterday was St Catherine’s Day—St Catherine of Alexandria that is—she of the Catherine Wheel and virgins seeking husbands. It seems only fitting to celebrate the fact by sharing our experience of a visit to one of her many chapels scattered across Europe. This one was the closest to hand at Abbotsbury in Dorset. 

St Catherine’s Chapel is one of those magical places that once seen, stays in the mind.  The portraits idealise her though she was quite a lady and a cult figure in Medieval Europe. Protesting against the persecution of Christians, she was tortured and broken on a wheel ringed with swords on the order of the Emperor Maxentius I. Subsequently she was carried to Mount Sinai by angels—and why not? — and became the patron saint of spinsters and virgins—especially those looking for husbands. A common prayer right up to the C19th was:

‘A husband, St Catherine

A handsome one, St Catherine,

A rich one, St Catherine,

And soon, St Catherine.’

In local dialect, the prayer ended ‘Am-a-one’s better than Narn-a-one’.

The Chapel was built in the C14th by Benedictine monks as a place of private prayer and retreat. 

Their monastery can still be seen in the village below albeit in ruins after Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries. The Chapel however was spared, not because the King had a place in his heart for fireworks, virgins and spinsters, but because the chapel served as a ready-made lighthouse. The view is breath taking but our pilgrimage was over. I was thinking of the pint with my name on it down in the village in The Ilchester Arms. 

The story, in pictures is below

 

Chesil Beach with the sea to our right

 And to the left peeping over the hills, St Catherine's Chapel

It's glimpsed again like a pale ghost in Abbotsbury Tropical Gardens,

though it was not a very tropical day

And now we are at its base, our target ahead and dark against the sun.

Behind us at the base of the mount is the village of Abbotsbury

I took several pictures climbing up mainly as an excuse to stop and breathe.

And here it is, more like a war-lord's lair than a place of worship and prayer.

Seen from the side

And now with the sun on it, my  back to the sea.

Inside, 700 years ago, it would have been like standing in a jewel-box. Stained glass windows flooded the small interior in colour.

And 700 years ago young virgins prayed for a husband, like a more stylish Tinder but not Grindr dating site.

Messages are still left for St Catherine though not apparently asking for husbands.

The sea view that illustrates its use as a primitive lighthouse

And some quick views of the surrounding countryside, though by this time I was getting thirsty.

And to end with a song about St Catherine's Chapel

Tushery!

This is so true, though stretching a point, I was twelve when I first read The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson. It totally captured me and decades later, though much of the plot was forgotten, the flavour of the book remained strong, along with certain indelible images. The outlaws' semi-underground den created from the roots of a huge fallen oak was the template for every underground den I made as a boy.

How to describe it? Robert Louis Stevenson referred to it as ‘tushery’ especially in relation to his use of archaic English dialogue, and it puzzles me now how a twelve-year old boy dealt with it. Much the same as a man several decades older, I suppose. The story carries you through, allows you to slip below the surface of the language and enter a deeply coloured world.  

But back to Stevenson and his affectionate self-mockery of the book. ‘Tushery, by the mass! Ay, friend, a whole tale of tushery. And every tusher tushes me so free, that may I be tushed if the whole thing is worth a tush. The Black Arrow: A Tale of Tunstall Forest is his name: Tush! A poor thing.’ Mind you, to put this self-criticism into perspective, Stevenson was equally disparaging about, what some see as his masterpiece, ‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.'

Re-reading a book you loved as a child has its dangers. The disappointment of an adult might not just tarnish a memory but destroy something golden. In this case, mercifully, CS Lewis hit the nail on the head. The twelve-year old Keyton was blown away by a fast moving plot and evocative imagery that stayed in the mind. The much older Keyton saw things he hadn’t before: the subtleties of character. The villainous Sir Daniel Brackley has his merits, charisma and courage, a certain fine recklessness; the future Richard III though not deviating from Shakespeare’s ‘villain’ is also bold and decisive, a natural leader of men. Minor characters like Benett Hatch and his wife Goody Hatch, though working for the villainous Sir Daniel are rounded characters, so that you grieve for their fate. And the young Richard Shelton, the hero of the book is reckless and naïve, only later recognising and accepting the guilt of destroying other people’s lives in derring-do.  

Women may cavil at the heroine Joanne, for she is very much the Victorian stereotype: feisty but push-come-to-shove, dependent on men in a swoony kind of way. 

In short, summing up The Black Arrow, think The Eve of St Agnes, meets The Famous Five with a Pre-Raphaelite gloss. Not something a twelve-year old boy would have thought of but true all the same. 

PS Another book I’d like to re-read is ‘The Dark is Rising’ by Susan Cooper, though that doesn’t quite fall into the CS Lewis category, since I was enjoying that in my twenties. 

Out Now!

Dark Fire was my first publication, and you can imagine my excitement when the contract came through from Red Sage. It did though have an interesting genesis. Dark Fire, a novella at 40k words, began as a piece of speculative fiction centred around past life regression and played with the rich language of the C17th. The problem was, I couldn’t find a publisher. Then a friend suggested it needed sex, her exact words being ‘sex it up a bit’. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound and so I followed her advice, inserting four or five highly erotic sex scenes. And Red Sage, which specialised in erotica for the American market, snapped it up. Success—but with a drawback; being a greenhorn, I signed a contract that gave them full rights in perpetuity. I’d lost ownership of my story. 

But now it's back!

In Tales From the Murenger II

I remember doing a small dance, not a pretty sight, when some six years later Red Sage returned the rights to their various authors, so allowing me to republish Dark Fire. What else can I say about it? The novella begins in C13th France and ends up in Llanthewy Road, Newport. Dark Fire, for a time out of print, and now back in all its glory. ‘A legend in its time’ as us marketing men say. 

The other four stories: Yellow Window, Raw, Your Mother Will Come to You, and Serpent dreaming involve psychopaths, body horror, mad men and serpents. All are based in or around Newport, the latter albeit tenuously.

At £3 for the eBook and £6 for the paper back – one pint or two pints respectively – it’s a bargain I tell you!. 

Tales from the Murenger II

There’s a fair bit that goes into a book cover, but when it’s done, you feel a great sense of relief.  The previous: Tales from the Murenger involved an original photo* of Newport’s iconic Murenger and enough smoke and mist to create a sense of nowhere in particular. The back cover necessitated similar wizardry turning an already mysterious alley into something more sinister. 

But what about this new book:  Tales from the Murenger II ?

I thought it made sense to make it much the same as the first but with a different shade. A series perhaps with the possibility of a future Tales from the Murenger III coloured blue. I'll draw the line at rose-pink.

In this case, however, I wanted a different back-cover and found it in a photograph from Stephen Pocock on the Facebook ‘We Grew Up In Newport’ site. Not only is he a brilliant photographer, he very generously allowed me to use his photo.

Below is the original photo with its sharpness and clarity. The bad news was that however hard I tried to persuade myself otherwise, it jarred with the more mysterious soft focus of the front. The good news is that precisely because of its sharpness, the photo could be softened and dimmed sacrificing clarity for mystery— the essence of Newport. 

So, the cover for your approval or otherwise. (barcode to come.)

The book is already on Amazon, the tales as dark as they get. 

* Front photo Monty Dart

Back photo Stephen Pocock.

Cover design Maria Zannini one of the the best in the business.