Hi Everyone

It’s very strange to be half way through December with no Presteigne Pantomime to get in a panic about. I even miss the Sunday dress rehearsal where no one knows their lines, the songs are all in the wrong key, and the sets are only half finished BUT then it all turns out all right on the night!

I hope my video this month will help lighten the mood. The song is about stealing other people’s music and the high profile court cases that can ensue. There have been quite a few big songwriting disputes in recent years but I find them all utterly ridiculous. The very nature of music, especially in the noisy modern world, means we are bombarded with it from the day we are born and it necessarily follows that any music we create ourselves is in some way or other an amalgam of what we have heard before. When it comes to contemporary pop music with its fairly narrow palette (not to mention Blues, R&R, and Punk) the chances of hitting on a chord sequence that someone has not used before is virtually non-existent.

Imagine being a Landscape Painter and being told you can paint anything you want as long as it doesn’t include any clouds or trees that someone else has painted! Anyway I hope this brief guide, compiled with help of a very clued up Andy Leavis, will allow you to be able to hold your own at the Christmas dinner table if the subject of plagiarism should crop up. Just make sure you are not having sprouts, roast potatoes and turkey because, if you steal my Christmas menu, my lawyers will be round like a flash and will sue you for everything you’ve got.

Thanks to the MBA for letting us use The Assembly Rooms to shoot this daft bit of film.

The first dispute for you to consider was recently settled in Led Zeppelin’s favour after 2 court cases that have been going on since 2014. One expert witness claimed the structure of the song in question ‘Stairway to Heaven’ was actually the same as Chim Chim Cher-ee from Mary Poppins. Led Zeppelin managed to dodge paying out a couple of million to the band Spirit however there is a new claim in town. It comes from Salt (star policeman in the Presteigne Pantomime and 3rd cowboy in the first video). He says that the famous riff from ‘Stairway to Heaven’ was stolen from his mate the folk / blues legend Michael Chapman’s song ‘Kodak Ghosts’. So, have a listen and decide for yourselves.

Next let’s switch to the late Marvin Gaye’s estate – who seem to be particularly litigious. They have one case pending against Ed Sheeran who is been sued for a second time over allegations that his song ‘Thinking Out Loud’ rips off Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On’. They want 100 million off Ed.

In 2015 Pharrell Williams, Robin Thicke and the song ‘Blurred Lines’ publisher were ordered to pay nearly $5 million for infringing the copyright to Marvin Gaye's "Got to Give It Up."

The key to these and many other similar cases is that there needs to be a lot of money and tricky American lawyers involved in the case.

i.e. Don’t bother suing the Rocking Ratmen from Leominster, they have less money than your dog.

I’m always up for any opportunity to take the piss out of Oasis so I was delighted to discover they had been successfully sued by unhip, pop softies The New Seekers for nicking ‘I’d Like to Teach The World To Sing’ (the Coca Cola advert) for their song Shakermaker.

There are lots, lots more but let’s end here with a convoluted little parcel of songs that have the band Radiohead at the centre.

Lana Del Rey revealed in 2018 that Radiohead were suing her over similarities between her song ‘Get Free’ and the bands biggest hit ‘Creep’, and she claimed they wanted 100 percent of her royalties.

Ironically, Radiohead had already been sued for copyright infringement on ‘Creep’ by none other than the Hollies and their 1974 hit ‘The Air That I Breath’. The Songwriters Albert Hammond and Mike Hazelwood settled out of court and are credited as co-writers to this day. They obviously had a keen vested interest in the dispute with Del Rey but lately this spat seems to have just gone away. I wonder who paid who?!

Pete

IAN MARCHANT

In about July, I finally faced up to the fact that there wasn't going to be a Presteigne Panto this year. I had been hoarding gags and ideas for songs since the curtain came down on the 2019 panto, and was reluctant to admit defeat. But the world conspired against writers of feelgood community pantos in 2020, as, I must admit, it seems to have conspired against everyone else. Come to think of it, that's an idea for 2021 - a conspiracy to stop pantos by the Chinese Communist Party, Bill Gates and... actually can't be bothered to finish that sentence.

Anyhoo, in November-ish, I finally got my hands on a DVD of the 2019 panto - and it was good. It was funny. You could hear everyone. This performance is from the Saturday night - the Thursday performance was on 12th December, the night of the General Election, when we all felt a degree of optimism. On the Friday night we were a bit cowed and saddened, but by Saturday, our danders were rising.

One of the beauties of the Presteigne Panto, it seems to me, is that it is incomprehensible much beyond Llandegley International Airport or Mortimer's Cross. In this clip (facilitated by Sally Butler and Tom Carter), why are the characters singing about queuing for bread? Why indeed. It is a local panto for local people, who come in their droves every year to help raise money for local causes.

As the DVD of the performance had proved so watchable, we decided to make proper copies, with proper production details, and to sell them at ten pounds each. A first principle of the Presteigne Panto Players is that 'no-one gets a free seat', so even those who were in it, (or wrote it, like me), have to buy a copy, if they want one, (or two, or three.) All of the money raised is going to the East Radnorshire Foodbank, who can always use a big wodge of cash, most especially at this time of the year.

You can buy copies at Deli Tinto and Lorna's Sandwich Bar on Presteigne High Street, and at the Workhouse on the Trading Estate. You get some hilarious Presteeney fun, and the foodbank get a tenner. What's not to like?

See you all in 2021, when, vaccine allowing, we will be back in action. The jokes I had in mind for 2020 are maturing, like fine wine. Or, let's face it, cheese.

‘THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD’: HOW ONE SCHOOL PLAY CHANGED LIVES

by Sarah Burton

Some years ago I wrote a book about community theatre (‘How To Put On a Community Play’ – it pretty much does what it says on the tin). The book was ready to go to press when the editor asked for a foreword. For reasons which would make a story in itself the book appeared without the foreword, which has never been published. I offer it here – a Christmas story.

Many people’s interest in theatre stems from an outstanding teacher, or a striking production, or other powerful formative influence, and most of us can identify a defining moment which began our dedicated involvement with theatre. Why people become involved with community theatre (as enablers, or convenors, writers, directors or producers) is somewhat harder to pin down. Maybe we just want to share the ‘magic’. Or maybe we think there is another ‘magic’ out there that we can harness and bring in. In my case there is a context which makes sense of everything, but which, despite having written and produced five community plays, I only recognised as I came to the end of writing a book about community theatre. Here is a story I now realise was a background legend I first heard in my childhood, and which suddenly made sense of everything.

The name of Risinghill School, which existed in Islington only between 1960 and 1965, is now largely forgotten, except by those teachers who remember it being mentioned in their training days as a case study: the first comprehensive school, which was prematurely closed, for reasons which have always seemed obscure. However, the school made front page news in its day. Its visionary headmaster, Michael Duane, immediately abolished the cane (then seen as a vital tool of classroom control), listened to the children, and encouraged his staff to resist the siege mentality characteristic of many secondary schools at the time, which they had been used, and often trained, to deploy.

Risinghill was in one of the toughest, most violent, most economically and culturally deprived areas of London. Many of the children came from homes where violence was everyday and expected. ‘School’ often offered relationships with adults and authority figures which were little better. Those children that were not largely disaffected Londoners, were strangers: a quarter of the pupils at Risinghill were first generation immigrants, and many had very little English: a significant proportion had none. As well as tensions between white, Afro-Caribbean and Asian children, relations between Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot families were under pressure: random searches revealed boys of all ethnic backgrounds carrying weapons in school, and there were frequent fights. Progressive education of the kind proposed by Duane had only previously been attempted in middle-class, often private, schools, where parental support was strong. In short, 1960s Islington was probably the last place where Duane’s brand of educational experiment could expect to succeed.

To give a further idea of what the new school was up against: Risinghill had been formed by amalgamating four schools, three of which were single-sex, all of which had been encouraged to see the others as rivals. Two of the former heads, both opposed to Duane’s methods, were on the staff of the new school.  Another factor that made any teaching difficult was that the new school was surrounded by buildings that were being demolished, as one teacher recalls: ‘with those huge metal balls swung on chains from huge cranes: all much more entertaining to most children than anything we had to offer, and large picture windows to watch it all from’.

David Gribble (A Parents’ Guide to Progressive Education, Dorling Kindersly, 1985) wrote twenty years after the events:

These children lived in a world where crime, drunkenness and prostitution were commonplace, yet when they finally realised that they were being treated as reasonable human beings it was as reasonable human beings that they reacted. In such a background Michael Duane’s first objective was to teach these unrespected children a proper self-respect, to help them see that their opinions counted, that they were important as individuals.

In an interview for Punch, Michael Duane described the early period of ‘sheer chaos’ in the school:

The children don’t believe there’s no cane. They have to test your statement. They shout and yell and make life impossible. You have to stand there and let them call you all the four-letter words and every obscenity in the language. You’ve got to go on talking and whatever happens keep your temper. It’s a nightmare for the teachers and some of them can’t take it. I don’t blame them. But it’s the only way. When the children grasp the fact that there really isn’t any cane they calm down. In any case they get tired of chaos eventually and then you can start to talk to them like reasonable human beings. It works in the end.

It did work in the end. By the time the school had been going for eighteen months the children had adjusted to the atmosphere, and calm began to grow out of chaos. However, although the school began to flourish as an orderly, racially harmonious environment, Duane did not have the support of the local education authority, the right-wing press, or the government. Inspectors who visited the school in 1962 wrote – in scornful criticism of Duane - that he ‘esteems cordiality among the major virtues,’ adding, of the informal atmosphere within the school (Duane had aimed ‘to take fear out of school’): ‘Sometimes in avoiding terror the school has abandoned awe.’

The statistics spoke for themselves. At the time, comprehensive schools were supposed to have 20% of pupils in each of five ability ranges. Due to competition from other schools and its early reputation, Risinghill never had more than 1% of children in the top range. The O-Level exam at that time was designed to test only the children in that top range, so fewer than 2 children in any one year-group at Risinghill should, statistically, have passed it. In 1960, 5 pupils passed at least one ‘O’ level; by 1964, the figure was 42; that year the school sent its first two students to university. Perhaps more significantly, in 1960, 98 of the pupils were on probation (ie. had a criminal conviction); by 1964 there were only 9, yet no pupil had been expelled.

However, ‘prejudice triumphed over evidence’, and the school – or the values it represented – had powerful enemies both without and within. In the face of fierce opposition from pupils and parents, Risinghill was closed in 1965. Head-lines which renamed the school ‘Raising Hell’ had done their damage; later ones, such as ‘Wild School Is Tamed By Love’, came too late to save it.

In 1963, Risinghill put on a Nativity Play. All parts of the school got behind the wheel – the art and needlework departments created fabulous costumes and props; to get round the difficulty of corralling the choir at various times for rehearsals, the whole school practised the harmonies for ‘The Hallelujah Chorus’ in morning assembly. It was typical of the ethos of the school that, when the shepherds and Joseph were discovered using the doll that was representing baby Jesus as a football during rehearsal, a young music teacher offered her own eight-week-old baby as a substitute. Her confidence in the children paid off: the children responded to the responsibility with which they had been entrusted beautifully and the atmosphere at rehearsals improved dramatically. Leila Berg, who wrote a book on the subject of the controversial school (Risinghill: Death of a Comprehensive School, Pelican, 1968) said it was one of her greatest regrets was that she never saw that production. She wrote:

In this play every child’s nationality had something to contribute, to delight in. I heard so much about it, questioned so many people, heard about the West Indians children’s calypsos, and the Turkish children’s graceful belly-dancing. I studied the photographs of the children with the jewelled gold of Herod, the embroidered purple of his queen, their tiny Cypriot attendants, bare to the waist, with Turkish trousers, peacock fans, and turbans like silk melons, with their one-string Turkish mandolins; and the Chinese Emperor in pale blue silk, entering to his fascinating music, the African King, dignified and graceful, carrying assegais and furry spears, and the loutish British King, his men stumbling uncouthly in leather and brass tunics, helmets with horns and tartan trousers, with their jester riding his hobby-horse; and the songs, like, ‘Bethlehem on a Saturday Night’, idiomatic, starting from the children’s own lives, but soaring away.

Berg goes on to quote an account of the play from the Islington Gazette, which had sent a journalist to see the production at the notorious school:

Not for Risinghill the worn-out gimmicks – the paper wings for the Angel Gabriel and cute kiddies wrapped in yards of mummy’s discarded curtains and a cardboard star, while parents smile affectionately. For Risinghill – the impact of the luxurious costumes, just like King Herod and the three kings from the east must have worn. For Risinghill – the impact of a thunderingly majestic orchestra which accompanied a grandiose choir. For Risinghill – the impact of a multi-racial cast, adding oriental splendour and striking authenticity to this most exciting of tales.

As I left Risinghill Street and walked in the chilly December night air down Chapel Market, I wept… at the greatest nativity play I have ever had the honour and privilege to see.

Berg adds: ‘For Risinghill, too, of course, a real baby.’

Risinghill’s Nativity wasn’t technically a community play – although of course, in a way it was. The school used the play as an expression of its community: its hopes, its values, its creativity, its potential. The legend of that production, and the profound effect it had on everyone involved in it, I now realise, has been part of my life, and I believe is part of the story of my own attraction to the idea of the community play. That ‘real baby Jesus’ was me.

GEORGE VASS

This Christmas is going to be very different and probably extremely difficult one for us all, but hopefully, with vaccines already being rolled out, we’ll be back to sort of normal at the tail end of next year.

It’s been a very sad time for the regular supporters of the Presteigne Festival, we’ve seen both our August event and a specially arranged Winter Festival Weekend cancelled due to Covid-19.

However, we did manage to put together our first ever Presteigne Digital Festival, which remains available free-to-view online until 31 December, so if you haven’t yet had a chance to enjoy some of the fantastic performances on offer, please do so by the end of the year – https://presteignefestival.com/2020-presteigne-digital/

Last Friday, BBC Radio 3 broadcast a brilliant live recital from St David’s Hall, Cardiff by pianist Clare Hammond, organised under the aegis of the Presteigne Festival. I listened to it whilst driving across to Presteigne having visited Hereford Cathedral in the morning. With the sun shining and the countryside looking so beautiful, I found it a thoroughly heart-warming experience. The recital is available on BBC Sounds for a month and is definitely worth an hour of your time – https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000q36r

Looking forward to 2021, the Festival dates have been confirmed as 26-31 August; whilst we’ll certainly have the likelihood of social-distancing still in place, plans will be announced very soon. One thing I can confirm is that Cecilia McDowall, a long-time favourite with our audience, will be composer-in-residence next year. Here is a little sample of her music, the carol ‘Now May We Singen’.

I always think that Christmas is a great time for Baroque music, and I chanced upon rather a lovely performance of Handel’s complete Water Music, played by the Akademie für alte Musik, Berlin from The Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.

The great Swedish/American conductor, Herbert Blomstedt, now in his 93rd year, is still working hard – here he is conducting a fabulous performance of Brahms’ First Symphony with the Dresden Staatskapelle, recorded earlier this year.

Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without a performance of Handel’s Messiah, here is a lovely complete performance by the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge and the Brandenburg Consort with four wonderful British soloists conducted by the late Stephen Cleobury (recorded back in 1993).

A very happy Christmas from all of us at the Presteigne Festival – let’s hope 2021 proves to be the fabulous year everyone so desperately deserves and needs.

PRESTEIGNE PANTO - Les Mouserables 2010

With thanks to Alex @Alex Ramsay photography

DAVE LUKE

GARDEN @ No 3 - Sabina Rüber

Every year I promise myself I will finish planting my many, many bulbs by the beginning of December - to have more time to indulge in the pre Christmasy things: festive baking, decorations, a bit of still-life photography for a New Year's card. I love gold, a bit of glitz and kitsch and this is the perfect time to sparkle.

But we are halfway through December and yes, I'm still planting bulbs - filling every pot and container with the promise of Spring. Digging new beds, whilst also planting up in our neighbours' (thank you!) as my excess spills over. And, yes, I ordered yet more, even when I’d told myself not to - but late discoveries, an unusual colour, an exciting new shape … I am my own worst enemy.

However, as someone who is pretty sunk during the gloomy months to come, doubly so with our current difficulties and uncertainties, this is a lifeline. I can imagine the eruption of colour to come and can smile in anticipation. I will avidly watch the slender green leaves emerge in preparation, waiting impatiently for the first pure white of snow drops to signal we are beginning again.

Bulbs, bulbs, glorious bulbs … just everywhere...

‘Quinces’ and Liam’s paper star decorations from last year.

Festive Sparkle with pretty props collected like a magpie (Thank you Presteigne for such beautiful treasures… they all find their way into one of my pictures eventually).

Things to come - hyacinths now and 'Royal Navy’ as it will be in a couple of months time...

BENJI KIRKPATRICK

This is one of the songs I would usually do at the Midwinter Celebration at Discoed church.

PRESTEIGNE PANTO - Presteigne, Rome of the Free 2011

With thanks to Alex @Alex Ramsay photography

MID BORDER ARTS

It was such a shame the Mid Border Arts exhibition in Presteigne was obliged to close at the end of the very day it had planned to open! Fortunately a lot of people who knew Titi’s paintings from long ago, managed to catch it.

This photo gives a flavour of the work, and also shows what a great space The Assembly Rooms is.

Hopefully before long Mid Border Arts will be able to host more events.

Midwinter greetings from MBA

THE BOW STREET RUNNER - Salt

When Ian Marchant bailed me up in Spar last year and told me he had a written me a part as policeman in his new panto, my immediate reaction was “Oh no, not again!”. However when Hilary neatly outflanked me and cut off my escape route (in those heady days before social distancing and one-way systems) I knew I was scuppered…. “But I’m always the Policeman,” I whined. “I know, and that’s the point,” he replied smugly, “and I’ve written you a song to reflect that!”

Now those of you who have caught some of my slick appearances in the past might not realise that the prospect of merely performing on stage actually fills me with terror, but hearing the words “And I’ve written you a song…” is guaranteed to bring on a full-fledged panic attack! However their ambush was so well executed that it was only after they had secured a commitment that I was allowed to proceed with my shopping – I returned my 2 beers to the shelf and scurried home with a bottle of scotch…

When I eventually read the lyrics to the song, I was somewhat baffled and bewildered but then thought “Of course, it’s Presteigne Panto, you’re not supposed to understand what it’s about”, and I was relieved to be able to persuade John Hymas to compromise his wonderful melody into a simpler form I thought I could manage: “What??? – you just want sing it to the tune of ‘My Old Man’s a Dustman’?? he exclaimed… I grovelingly suggested that his superbly written middle section might elevate it to a higher plane, which he grudgingly accepted. (He also confided that he didn’t really understand what is was all about!)

In the event, despite the terror, it seemed to go quite down well on the first night, thanks largely to the clever script and direction, the lovely musicians, and the marvellous imagination of Jules and the costume department. The second night went even better and, riding the crest of that wave, when I went on stage for the last night (when this was filmed by Linzi in the audience), for the first time in my thespian life I was positively relishing the opportunity to ham it up and show off! I hope you enjoy it too.

Thanks to all involved.

PRESTEIGNE PANTO - Well Oi'll be Buzzard, 2016

With thanks to Alex @Alex Ramsay photography

THE SHED, GREEN END will be open this Saturday 19th December, 10am - 4pm

Behind Daphne’s and in the yard

Finding us is not so hard

Marvel at our felted creatures

Handmade cards and loads of features

Browse away on Christmas treasures

Little badger, hare and fox

Artists prints & books & leather

Last minute gifts for stocking love

One thing is quite sure its magic

Fairy lights, windows of lead

We wish all a Merry Christmas

And thanks for

Visiting our little Shed

MYSTERY BISCUITS - Sonja Parg

The tradition of making animals out of pastry apparently reaches back more than 2000 years. Our Celtic ancestors believed that at winter solstice, evil spirits would descend on their homes and had to be appeased with sacrificed animals. Later, these were substituted by animal-shaped pastry in order to save and spare their precious flocks, quite a heavy baggage on a continuous train of traditions throughout the centuries to today’s continental pre-Christmas baking.

It is a mystery to me how German-speaking families manage to bake and hide AND keep at least SEVEN different sorts of traditional Advent biscuits going. From the end of November onwards, a Christmas-themed plate is filled for afternoon coffee, evening-family-sofa-time, (welcome) visitors at any time.

However, how can you conceal baking scents – and the evidence of it – and what if there is no pudding on a Sunday as a consequence, which you and everyone else are specifically craving for? Obviously, you have no choice but to sample biscuits, and if you have four children, there won’t be many left for next time, before you even think about baking the second variety, and that’s where the dilemma starts and ends for me.

My mother used to keep a separate tin for each kind with enticing names like: Zimtsterne (cinnamon stars), Kokosmakronen (coconut macaroni), Marillenringe (apricot jam rings), Allgäuer Butter-S (butter S-shaped biscuits, from the foothills of the Alps) isn’t German sometimes efficient ?

My favourite kind, the only one I will/would bake now, must be the “Vanillekipferl” from Vienna, not only as they taste of course of vanilla, wonderfully crumbly without being dry – but also because another ingredient: History.

It seems that its history starts in 1874 with the production of artificial vanillin by the Chemic Wilhelm Haarmann. Being much more affordable than the African Bourbon, it paved the Vanillekipferl’s way to become one of Europe’s most popular biscuits.

But this was not the beginning:

First of all, we can assume that in more civilised countries, bourbon vanilla had been mixed with sugar and flour before.

Secondly, the tradition of baking Kipferl (without vanilla) goes back to 1683 when Viennese bakers are said to have invented the crescent-shaped biscuit to celebrate the end of the (second) Osman occupation. Really, would you use your oppressor’s symbol for cookery/mockery??

Luckily, today my students (German native speakers) and family bake and eat them unaware of any historic traces and definitely don’t harbour any ill feelings. Indeed, I would like to think of them as a bridge between cultures and religions.

I should stop writing, at last bake them and who knows, next year I might have my own photos.

Viennese Vanillkipferl

50 g ground almonds

30 g ground hazelnuts

280 g plain flour

70 g sugar

200 g butter

2 egg yolks

• Knead the dough, refrigerate it, then roll pencil-thick, cut 3 cm rolls and shape crescent-like.

• Bake for about 8 -10 mins at 170 degrees in the oven until golden-brown

• Roll immediately in 5 packets of vanilla sugar and ½ cup of icing sugar at the end

PRESTEIGNE PANTO - Presteigne goes for a Song, 2018

With thanks to Alex @Alex Ramsay photography

THE CHRISTMAS QUIZ!

SAM LLEWELLYN

It is the time of year for ghost stories, and I have written one, suitable for reading aloud by parents to children to the enjoyment of both. It is a retelling of a very local tale….

The Praying Down

of

Vaughan Darkness

Henry Davies - Days in the Life Project

Wednesday 11th April

This is the beginning of our Days in the Life Project. Mrs Preece our History teacher says that we have got to describe our lives for three days. This means we must write down everything about ourselves – where we live, who we meet, what we do, what we eat, the stories we hear, and everything that happens to us. Mrs Preece says that we must hand it in by Friday afternoon, and that the result will be a fascinating historical document and very interesting. Not much interesting really happens, actually. But Mrs Preece says to put down everything, even stuff that everyone knows, and include any documents that come our way. So here goes, and do not blame me if it sends you to sleep.

Mum and Dad and me live in a town called Kington in what is called the Welsh Marches, which is where England and Wales meet. England is green and nearly flat, and Wales is browner and made of little mountains. Our house is quite old, in a street in the town, but with the mountains rising at the end of the back garden.

Sometimes we go into the mountains, which in summer are green and nice-looking and covered in larks twittering and all that. But if you go there in winter you can find yourself in a deep valley where the sun never reaches. In valleys like that the frost lies white and icy for weeks, and sometimes you feel there are other reasons for being cold beside the weather. Today we had porridge for breakfast and I went to school and we had sausages for supper and I can’t remember what we had for lunch and not much happened.

Thursday 12th April

This morning we had porridge for breakfast. Then I went to school on my bike and there was a visiting author. The visiting author was called Montagu Taplin. He had a scrubby white beard and he smelled like a room where nobody has opened the windows for weeks. He writes stuff about local history, which means what happened round Kington hundreds of years ago. This did not sound too interesting at first, because not much happens in Kington now, and it used to be smaller than it is now, so probably even less happened then. But the story got better.

Montagu Taplin sat at a table in the library and read from a pad of mothy old paper. The story was a bit old-fashioned, but I was surprised at how interesting it was. So afterwards I went up to him, holding my breath because of the smell, and got a photocopy. It is called The Praying Down of Vaughan Darkness, and Mrs Preece said to include all documents in our Days in the Life Diaries so here it is.

Narrative of Montagu Taplin

In a valley of the hills west of Kington there stands an ancient house called Hergest Court. It is sited on a low hill frowning over a river, which here broadens into a dark mere. Almost six hundred years ago there lived in this house a certain Thomas Vaughan.

Thomas Vaughan was a great lord and a wicked one. He stole money from farmers’ chests and wives from their husbands’ beds, took children and sold them into slavery, and killed without mercy. In those wild and lawless lands in those wild and lawless times, no-one could prevent this. People came to call him Vaughan Darkness, and chased him from his house, so he took to the crags and caves of Radnor Forest. And in time they set a hunter called Simon ap John after him.

Simon ap John hunted Vaughan Darkness down in a badger sett, bound him and brought him to Kington. Here he was tried by his peers, found guilty of robbery and murder, and (as was the custom of the time) sentenced to hang.

The town of Kington loved a hanging. It was revenge for the wronged. It was entertainment for the curious. And above all it was a lesson for the wicked; or, in the case of Harry Morgan, the said-to-be-wicked.

Harry Morgan was twelve years old, and had been offered by his step-parents to be a monk in Hereford. The reason Harry was said to be wicked was that Harry did not want to be a monk and live with a lot of old men in a draughty abbey. But his parents were dead, and he lived with his uncle Davies and aunt Gwyn, and his uncle Davies and his aunt Gwyn wanted him to be a monk, because they had their eye on the Hope, which was a farm that belonged to the abbey, and if they gave Harry to the abbey, the Bishop (they thought) would give them the farm they wanted.

So uncle Davies dragged Harry by the ear through the crowd on the day of the hanging of Vaughan Darkness, to show him what happened to ungrateful boys who did not do as they were told.

The people of Kington knew about the plan for Harry to become a monk, and thought it was a good idea, and that being ungrateful was a bad idea, and that he could do with a lesson. The crowd parted so Harry could get a front-row view. Inside a fence of oak palings was a clear circle of cobblestones. In the centre of the circle stood a gallows. Standing on a cart under the gallows was a huge man with a dark and bitter face and a rope around his neck. The other end of the rope was tied to the crossbeam of the gallows.

‘There you are, see,’ hissed uncle Davies. ‘Vaughan Darkness on the cart at last. They’ll whip up the horse, and he’ll dangle.’

There was a priest beside the cart, gaunt and blue-nosed in his cassock. ‘Darkness, repent!’ he cried.

Vaughan Darkness grinned, or perhaps it was a snarl, and fixed the priest with his burning black gaze. ‘I’ll see you in hell,’ he said, not as defiance, but as a matter of fact. The crowd groaned, for in those days hell was real, and burning, and lasted for ever. The executioner whacked the horse with his stick. The cart jolted forward. Harry shut his eyes.

He heard a thump, then the creak of a rope with something heavy swinging on the end of it. When he opened his eyes, Vaughan Darkness hung there, dead.

‘Behold the results of wickedness, which begins with disobedience,’ said uncle Davies. ‘We won’t be seeing him again.’

But there, as it turned out, he was wrong.

The brown earth settled over Vaughan’s grave. Winter became spring. And before the grass had its roots well into the mound, strange things began to happen.

Simon ap John the hunter was chasing a stag across the hills when he heard a terrible ripping and snarling from across a ridge. When he went to see the cause, he found all of his hounds with their throats torn out. In the middle of the circle of corpses was a great black dog. When the dog saw Simon it made a horrid bound and sank its fangs into his neck. Simon told this story with his last breath to the shepherd who found him. He added that the dog had had eyes in which red fires burned like the pits of hell. The shepherd passed this on, adding that the dead man’s wound had stunk of brimstone and corruption; brimstone being one of the chief ingredients of hell fire, with a stink somewhere between burning and bad eggs.

Most people thought the shepherd had made this bit up, and that Simon had been unlucky enough to meet a pack of wolves, which at that time still roved the deep hills of Wales. Then something else happened.

A pedlar was lying at his ease in a hedge. He was watching a carter take a load of straw along the road, and pitying him the hard work of carting. It was a still grey evening, soft, with no wind. The pedlar thought he heard a faint roaring in the hills. The roaring came closer. There was a cracking, like branches breaking in a wind. The pedlar felt a breath of breeze on his face and looked up. He saw a black whirlwind howl down the hillside, whisk cart, horse and carter high in the air, and dash them into the ravine by the road. The odd thing about the whirlwind (said the pedlar) was that it seemed to have threads of fire running through it, red as the pits of hell, and it left behind it a stink of brimstone and corruption.

People believed pedlars even less than they believed shepherds, for pedlars were usually trying to sell splinters of wood as bits of the True Cross, or dogs‘ teeth as the molars of saints. They could not check his story with the carter, because the carter was in the ravine, crushed under the wreckage of his cart, and his horse, and the load of straw.

Soon after this, the hangman was out looking after his cattle on Bradnor Hill. A sharp-eyed fowler, out snaring larks, saw what happened. Apparently a huge black bull rose out of the ground and charged at the hangman. The fowler saw the hangman run away, the bull chasing him, head down. The head jerked up. And there was the hangman, spinning on a horn like a Catherine wheel on its pin. The bull tossed the hangman into a gorse bush, lifted its gory muzzle and bellowed. As it bellowed the fowler caught sight of its eyes, which he said were red as the pits of hell. When he ran to help the hangman – who of course was beyond help, being dead - he could hardly breathe for the stink of brimstone and corruption.

But Harry Morgan did not hear about any of this. For Harry was in the abbey at Hereford with the top of his head shaved bald, learning to be a monk.

At this time it was generally believed that the Devil had a house in Radnor Forest. So people were used to events that were hard to explain, and nobody paid much attention to stories of dogs, and whirlwinds, and bulls. But at last people did begin to murmur that the hunter who had been killed was the hunter who had captured Vaughan Darkness, and the carter who had been killed was the carter who had driven the cart on which Vaughan Darkness had stood to be hanged, and the man gored to death by the black bull had been the hangman who had hanged Vaughan Darkness. And they began to wonder.

The man who wondered the most was a judge. He wondered very hard, because he had been the judge who had run the trial of Vaughan Darkness and condemned him to hang. The deaths of the hunter and the carter and the hangman made the judge nervous. He soon grew tired of looking under his four-poster bed for dogs, and whirlwinds, and bulls. So one Thursday he put a holy relic in every pocket, watered his horse at a holy well, and rode to Hereford to see the Bishop.

The Bishop was having breakfast. He looked up from his plate, waving a chicken leg. ‘Judge!’ he cried.

The judge bowed so deeply that his relics clanked. ‘Lord Bishop,’ he said, ‘we must be rid of the wicked sinner Vaughan Darkness.’

‘But he has been hanged, and burns in hell,’ said the Bishop, taking a mouthful.

‘He walks,’ said the judge.

‘Dear me,’ said the Bishop. ‘We’ll have to take care of that. Now, then. Breakfast?’

The judge tucked in to a large and delicious breakfast of mutton chops, sausages and three kinds of pie, and started (somewhat greasy) for home.

The road was a stripe of mud that ran through a forest. It was autumn, and the last flies of the year buzzed in low slants of sun between the oak trunks. In a clearing something had died. A cloud of bluebottles rose from the corpse, along with a stink of brimstone and corruption. One of the flies buzzed into the judge’s face. He swatted at it, expecting it to fly away. But it buzzed back straight and true. He felt a stinging pain in the soft part of his neck beside his windpipe. The pain got worse and worse until there was nothing else. The last thing he saw as his mind faded were the eyes of the rest of the swarm. They were red as the pits of hell.

Brother Anselmus woke in his cell. A cold moon was peering through the slit window. A bell was ringing. A monk’s life was ruled by bells, and by the vow he had taken to bury his old self, the self that had been Harry Morgan. Harry was a dutiful boy, who kept his promises. But he could not get used to being a monk called Anselmus, and he knew that people had noticed this fact, and were not pleased with him.

So he shuddered into the robe of prickly black cloth, and splashed cold water on his face, and tried not to not let himself think about how much he hated getting up in the middle of the winter night to go and mumble prayers in a cold chapel.

Someone rattled at his door. A head appeared round it, pitted with shadow by the lantern its owner was carrying. ‘Anselmus,’ it said. ‘Come. The Lord Bishop will see you now.’

This was the Bishop’s Chaplain, a very important man who normally would not even have noticed Harry. Harry trotted after him, searching his heart for a sin he had committed dreadful enough to get the attention of a real Bishop, and found none except not really wanting to be a monk. Perhaps that was bad enough.

He was still wondering when he arrived in a chamber where the Bishop sat. The room was bright as day, lit with twenty candles. The tubby old Bishop fixed his cunning eyes on Harry. ‘Boy,’ he said. ‘Are you pure in heart?’

‘Yes, my lord,’ said Harry.

‘Then we need you to help us. We are faced with a terrible thing.’

Harry was pleased to be asked to help, but he wondered why the bishop was calling on him. ‘What thing?’

‘A thing of darkness, come from hell,’ said the Bishop in a deep, solemn voice. ‘A thing that must be summoned and prayed down. We have been watching you with interest. We are sure that you are the boy for the job, Andrew.’

‘Anselmus,’ said the Chaplain.

Harry, thought Harry. ‘What job?’ he said.

‘You will be one of those who travel to Cwm to pray the Thing down,’ said the Bishop. ‘If - that is when - you succeed, your name will be great. I know your uncle would like our farm at the Hope. If the ghost is confined,’ he said casually, ‘we will make sure he gets it.’

The Chaplain said, ‘He is young. He does not know praying down.’

‘Then explain it to him.’ The Bishop rose and waddled away to bed.

The Chaplain sat in the Bishop’s chair. He did not offer Harry a seat. He said, in the bored voice of a teacher, ‘Summonings take place at Cwm because it is a lonely place, and if the Devil blasts it, only the Summoners will be hurt. It is done as follows. Twelve candles are lit in the church. Twelve priests, nuns or monks stand near them. The chief Summoner calls the Thing from hell on the stroke of midnight. The Summoners pray the Thing into a bottle and seal it therein with molten lead, and the whole is buried under running water so that the Thing can walk no more. And when the Thing is under the water, the priests and the nuns will be richly rewarded, and your uncle can have that farm he keeps pestering the Bishop about.’ The Chaplain frowned. ‘Though of course many perish during a praying down. And sometimes if the Thing has eaten enough souls, it is content, and goes back to hell, and troubles us no more. Well, that’s all. Away with you.’

Harry stood staring at the Chaplain’s tight-shut face. Summon a ghost and pray it into a bottle? So Uncle Davies could have his farm? There was ice in his heart, and his knees tried to knock together.

‘Go!’ cried the Chaplain.

The Bishop’s people gave Harry bread and a boiled egg and led him outside to where two horses were breathing steam in the half-light. The Bishop’s groom boosted him into the saddle of one of the horses, and mounted the other. They rode through the mucky streets and into the forest.

The sun came up and printed the long shadows of the trees over the ground. Harry thought they looked like fingers out to grab him, and rode round them whenever possible. At noon the Bishop’s groom took out some bread and cheese. He did not offer any to Harry. ‘You must fast,’ he said. ‘Orders from the Chaplain.’ He chewed a bit. ‘Not that it will do you any good. The Bishop’s sending every priest and nun he wants to be rid of to Cwm.’ He laughed, mouth open. ‘He’s promised them money. But we reckon he won’t have to spend it, because at midnight you’ll be a nice snack for Vaughan Darkness, and that’ll be the end of you.’

Sometimes, if the Thing has eaten enough souls, it is content, the Chaplain had said. Perhaps there would be no praying down. Perhaps the Summoners were going to Cwm as ghost-food. He shivered, and thought of kicking his horse into a gallop and fleeing into the wood. But if he did that, everyone would say he had run away from the ghost that was plaguing them, and nobody would help him, and he would starve. He had a choice, it seemed: starve, or be eaten...

No. The only way out was to summon the ghost, and get rid of it, and get Uncle Davies his farm. Then he could run away if he wanted to. Let the ghost appear, he thought, pushing the terror into the shadowy corners of his mind. He would pray it down as best he could with the others. And having kept his side of the bargain, he would do as he liked.

On they rode, on and on. The November night came down. The trees thinned, and the land rose, and the road ran into a deep valley. Rags of cloud chased past a pale sliver of moon. At last the sides of the valley drew away, and it seemed to Harry that they had come into a bowl of ground surrounded by mountains. He had never been so tired and hungry, or so frightened. Soon, he consoled himself, he would meet his fellow Summoners. They would help him. They would all help each other.

The moon was setting behind the mountains. The only light out here was a dim yellow glow, perhaps a candle behind a horn pane, in the bowl’s centre. Twenty minutes later the hooves clattered on cobbles.

‘Off,’ said the groom.

Harry slid down from his horse’s back, found that his legs would not carry him, and collapsed by what he now saw was a church gate. Hands pulled him up by the arm and dragged him through. He saw tombstones, the dark shape of a building. Then sounds began to echo around him, and he knew he was in a church, and the hands dropped him onto something less hard than stone, a mat, perhaps; and he went to sleep.

Someone was shaking him. He woke. There was a little more light, and more voices echoing on stone. He was colder even than before. The shaker’s face was lit by the yellow flame of a rushlight. It had small eyes, and a bulb of a nose, and it gave off a smell that reminded Harry of a wine-cellar. ‘Come, child,’ said a wheezy voice. ‘It is time to do our duty to God and the Bishop.’

Harry scrambled to his feet. The flames cast shadows: twelve shadows in all, nine monks and priests including him, three nuns. Some of them seemed to be eating. What about their fasts? But of course, these were the worst priests and nuns the Bishop could find, sent to have their souls devoured by a Thing from hell. His heart sank. These were not good companions for a life-or-death battle.

From somewhere came a high, lost moaning and a scratching like fingernails on stone. ‘What’s that noise?’ he said. His voice sounded higher than he had meant it to.

‘Wind in the trees,’ said the priest with the bulb nose.

‘But the scratching.’ ‘Twigs on the roof,’ said another voice, sarcastic. ‘Can it be that he believes in ghosts?’

Laughter from the priests and nuns. Some of it real, thought Harry. Some of it not; the kind of forced laugh you might give if you were trying to persuade yourself not to be frightened of something. He wanted to shout that they should have kept to the rules. But that sarcastic voice would only sneer, and the others would laugh nervously, but they would not argue. Their souls would be eaten, and his with them. He squeezed his eyes shut so he would not cry.

‘Let us begin,’ said Bulb Nose.

‘Very well, Marcus, your holiness,’ said the sarcastic voice, and the others laughed again, and Harry’s heart sank still lower.

‘Candles, then,’ said Marcus. ‘Books. What else?’

Another voice said, ‘Never mind the mumbo jumbo. Let’s get it over with and take our money and go home.’

No, no, thought Harry. They must do things the right way, or they would be in terrible danger. He said, ‘What about the lead?’

‘Lead?’

‘For melting. And the bottle to put the ghost in.’

There was a silence. Then the sarcastic voice said, ‘Well, well, he really does believe. Now listen to me, child. We are here because the Bishop wants to be rid of us.’ That was what the groom had said. ‘But the Bishop is a superstitious old fool. We do not believe in being eaten by ghosts. So at the praying down, Marcus will recite the summons, and of course the ghost will not come, and we will tell the Bishop that the ghost said sorry and went away, and we will get our pay. I believe in money, not ghosts,’ he said.

There was laughter, but the silence in the church seemed to suck it up. In the quiet, Harry was almost sure he heard a voice far, far away, a harsh voice with a long echo. It was laughing too.

Harry told himself it was probably an owl. Ghost or no ghost, getting ready would take his mind off the waiting. ‘I’m going to melt some lead,’ he said.

‘If you must,’ said Marcus.

In an alcove in the church wall Harry found a bottle, a little brazier, some charcoal, a saucepan and some odds and ends of lead. He put the brazier on the stone bench that ran down the church wall, lit the charcoal, blew it into red embers, put the lead in the saucepan and balanced the saucepan on the brazier.

‘It is time to light the candles,’ said Father Marcus, sounding bored. ‘Have you quite finished, Anselmus?’

‘Coming,’ said Harry, hot-faced, blowing the brazier.

The candles stood on the altar, pale as bones. The Summoners walked up one by one, lit a single candle each, and went to stand on alternate sides of the altar steps. Harry went last because he was the youngest. The warmth of the brazier had left him, and he was cold with terror. His hands were shaking so much that he could not bring the taper to the candle. The nuns sniggered. He managed on his third try, using both hands. Twelve flames made a cheerful golden glow; but Harry could not help thinking that up in the vaulting of the roof the shadows wriggled in a way that was not quite right.

Silence fell, broken only by the moan of the wind and the heavy tick of the clock. There was a clunk and a whirring, and the first stroke of midnight boomed in the freezing air. Father Marcus held his book to the light of the candles and began to read.

The words were in Latin. Like everyone else in those days, Harry had been taught Latin at school. ‘Come up, come up, foul spirit.’ Father Marcus paused to blow his nose. ‘Visit us, we command thee, that we may strive with thee and compass thee about, and put thy being in this world into a bottle, and thy being in the other world into the Pit. Vaughan Darkness, we command thee to attend us in St Michael’s holy church of Cwm.’

Amen, said the priests and nuns.

The last stroke of midnight died away. The candle flames stood still as golden spearheads and the clock ticked on. A nun said something to another nun. Nothing is going to happen, Harry told himself, warm with relief. Nothing at all —

The church doors burst open with a crash. Wind shrieked in the gargoyles and icy air flooded up the aisle, bowing the candle-flames into flat red lines of fire. The gust died. The doors slammed shut. The candle flames stood straight again, and the silence returned.

Harry’s skin crawled.

The clock had stopped ticking.

Someone – some thing – had come into the church.

Harry held his hands in front of his face as if he was praying, and peeped between his fingers. A patch of shadow by the door seemed thicker than it should have been. Terror crawled over him like spiders. The shadows drew together. They took on a shape. It was the shape of a man: an enormous man, with huge shoulders and a great black cloak that merged with the darkness behind him. The figure flowed up the aisle, and hung over the double line of Summoners like a thundercloud. A voice spoke, so deep that it seemed to come from the vaults under the paving. ‘Who summons me?’ it said.

Now there was real silence, unbroken even by breathing. Harry saw Father Marcus suddenly start forward, as if one of the nuns had pinched his bottom.

‘You?’ said the phantom, in a voice full of scorn.

Father Marcus’s face was greenish in the candlelight. He lifted the book in his hand and began reading in Latin. ‘Avaunt, foul fiend, let thy many sins pursue thee like the hounds of hell into yonder bottle —‘

A laugh like vault doors slamming. ‘And who are you to tell me where I must go?’ said Vaughan Darkness. ‘You do not even believe in ghosts, you say. Why should something that does not exist do as you tell it? But perhaps we can make you believe.’ The shadowy hand made a small gesture, like one flicking a fly away. Marcus the priest jolted backwards, tumbled up and over the altar and smashed through the east window, his scream fading into the far distance.

One of the candles on the altar flicked out.

‘Next?’ said Vaughan Darkness.

Through his fingers, Harry saw two of the nuns sidle away into the shadows. Himself, he was too scared to move.

The nuns began laughing, high and mad. Two more candles flicked out.

Another priest stepped forward, mumbling Latin words. The ghost loomed over him, dark and terrible. ‘Hmm,’ it said. ‘Can that be bread and cheese I smell on your breath? Can it be that you have broken your fast? Aye. Farewell.’ A hand of shadow came out, rested on the bald patch on the priest’s head, and pressed downwards. The paving slabs under the priest’s feet seemed to soften. He sank into the floor, screaming until the screams were muffled by the stones closing over his mouth.

A fourth candle died.

‘Some years in the vault will teach him the meaning of fasting,’ said the ghost. ‘Oh. Are you leaving us?’

For six priests and the remaining nun were creeping down the aisle. Now they broke into a run, heading for the doors. The ghost waved a corner of his cloak at them. They fell flat on the paving, like puppets with their strings cut.

It seemed to be getting darker in the church. Harry turned to the altar. Between the fingers of his praying hands he saw the flames of seven more candles die to tiny red coals and vanish.

Eleven candles gone. Only one still burned on the altar. He fixed his eyes on it. It shone pure and clear. He felt its warmth and light flow into him.

The wind moaned in the vaults. The shadow of Vaughan Darkness loomed over him, glaring down with eyes red as the pits of hell.

But in his mind Harry saw the sun bright as the candle, shining from a clear sky onto the green hills of Wales. He heard larks singing, and smelled the grass growing. He saw that this Vaughan was mere death, a nothing, emptiness. So he looked into the terrible red eyes and said, ‘Vaughan Darkness, into the bottle with you.’ The eyes flared, but gave out no light. ‘The others I destroyed,’ said Vaughan Darkness. ‘You I will eat.’ A red mouth opened in the shadowy head.

But all Harry saw was a filthy rat cornered in a patch of shadow by a haycart. ‘I have fasted,’ he said. ‘I believe in you, but not in your power, for you are nothing, and cannot live in my world. So you have no command over me.’

In his bright hay-meadow he bent and picked up the squirming, snapping, red-eyed rat by its scaly tail, and carried it squealing across to the bottle, and crammed it in, and took the pan of molten lead from the coals, and poured the lead in on top of it. There was a roar and a hiss and a dreadful scream. The great shadow writhed in the light of the last candle. It was a bull, then a dog, then a whirlwind. The whirlwind shrank to become a fly, slow and sleepy in the winter chill. Harry stepped on it. There was a slight crunch, and a wisp of vapour that stank of brimstone and corruption.

He lay down in front of the altar and went to sleep.

They found him there the next morning. The eleven priests and nuns were dead or raving mad. Harry was mad too, they decided. For he declared that he would no longer be a monk. When they asked him why, he showed them a bunch of fresh flowers, the kind you would pick in a hayfield in June; though it was November, and a cold one at that. And nobody could make him tell where he had got them.

They took the bottle with Vaughan Darkness stoppered up in it to Hergest. They dug a hole in the bed of the mere and buried the bottle in it. Then they covered the place with a great stone bearing the sign of the Cross and a Latin inscription forbidding anyone to move it, ever, and let the water back in to cover it.

As for Harry, he collected his wits and the Bishop’s reward. His uncle and aunt died of the plague soon afterwards, and he took on the farm at the Hope, and in time became the father of a large family, and lived to a great age loved by all.

Hello, hello, Henry Davies here, I’m back. That is the end of Montagu Taplin’s story. I thought it was quite good, but it took me a long time to read. It is supper now. We are having stew, and after that I am going to bed. With the light on.

Friday 13th April

Not much happened today. We had porridge for breakfast and school this morning, and nothing after lunch which was disgusting pasta salad because Mrs Preece said she wanted the Days in the Life Diaries by six o’clock so she could read them before Monday. I was biking home when I heard a roar and a clatter and it was Dave. Dave drives a JCB 4CX digger and he says that next year when I am twelve he will let me have a go. Everyone rings Dave when there is digging to be done. They even get him to dig the graves in the churchyard. People say, doesn’t it spook you? But Dave says a hole is a hole, and what people put in it is up to them.

Anyway he slowed down and said, coming for a ride? and I said where, thinking not really, because I have got the Days in the Life Diary to finish, but then he said Hergest Court and I thought perhaps this is an interesting coincidence. So I put my bike in the bucket and Dave rang Mum on his mobile to say I would be back for tea, and off we went, me sitting in the spare seat of the cab.

As we drove along I said, ‘What’s the job?’

Dave said, ‘They’ve drained the mere at the Court, and there’s a lot of silty old muck in there that needs shifting and there will be probably be eels.’ Dave knows I like catching eels. So we went down Hergest drive and he put the digger alongside the mere, which is only a pond really, and he started digging out all this black mud, and there were eels in it, which was excellent. I was chasing this big eel through the grass when I heard the digger bucket bang against something hard. So I ran back to have a look. The bucket was deep in wet mud, jerking away at something. ‘Stone,’ Dave shouted, frowning through the open window of his cab.

It was then that I remembered the stone in the story. So I started to yell, ‘Stop, Dave,’ but Dave could not hear over the noise of the digger, and anyway Dave thinks a grave is just a hole in the ground, and a story is only a story, so it would have been a waste of breath. He got the bucket under whatever it was and lifted. Up it came, a great big lump of black mud with a stone in the middle of it. The stone looked a bit square, as if someone had shaped it. I really hoped it would not have writing on it. I decided not to go and look, just in case it did.

As Dave swung the bucket to put the load in the dumper truck, something fell out of the lump. Whatever it was winked in the sun like glass. Like part of a bottle, really. And when I went to look at it I saw it was an old, old bottle, broken now. The mud smelled horrible, like a mixture of corruption and brimstone, whatever that is. But I picked up the bits because I will find out where Montagu Taplin lives and show them to him.

I took my bike out of the bucket and waved to Dave and pedalled off home as fast as I could.

All the way home I have been telling myself that Montagu Taplin’s story is only a story. It made me nervous, though, and the only way I could stop myself feeling nervous was to tell myself that it was all a load of rubbish. So I put the bottle bits in the recycling bin and came inside to finish writing my Days in the Life Diary. Craig next door is in my class and he is going to hand in his Days in the Life Diary to Miss Preece at her house and he says he will take mine along too.

It is nearly tea time, and Craig will be here any minute, so I must stop now. Dad has just shouted up the stairs to say there is some sort of dog out by the back fence and it will be into the bins soon and the bins are my job and he is busy, and the wind is getting up so it will probably rain, so I should go and chase it away now, before I get wet and it rips the bags. I have opened my bedroom window to shout at it, but it hasn’t done any good. I can hear it panting, and there is some sort of cow bellowing, so maybe it has been chasing the dog out of the mountains or something. The dog sounds big. It must have got into one of the bins already, because even from up here at the window I can see that there are flies everywhere, and a terrible stink of brimstone and corruption.

There goes the doorbell. That will be Craig. I’ll give him this and then I’ll do the bins. It’s been quite interesting to write after all. That dog is really, really barking. I wonder what it wants? Soon find out.

This is the Days in the Life Diary handed in by Craig Evans to Miss Preece, with his own effort, at five o’clock on April 13th. At five past five on the same evening, the Davies house was destroyed by a freak whirlwind. The entire Davies family vanished, and no trace of them has been seen since.

SEASONS GREETINGS

Thank you to the writers, artists, musicians and people of Presteigne who inspired and entertained us with your contributions to the Lugg Blogg just when we needed it most.

Wishing everyone a very Happy Christmas and a more hopeful New Year,

The Lugg Blogg

See you in 2021...