Died then Dried - can Shermouse Holmes lift his flagging career?

Just when we thought this story all but over, your reporter has received another call from Mr Holmes.  It seems that another victim has been found at Pine Tree Cottage.  One of the big ones was vacuuming behind the woodburner getting the room clean and tidy for visitors (why do big ones do that?  why don't they keep their nests clean and tidy all the time?) when it appeared that there was something stuck on the end of the nozzle of the cleaner. A small fieldmouse, very dead, and very dessicated too was found.  She switched the infernal machine off (although in fact it was not this which caused the death) and collected the mumified body and dropped it into her rubbish disposal box!  Not even a decent burial!  And how do we know this, readers?  because Bob, the postmouse - pictured here returning to the local pub, "The Ear of Corn", for a small barley wine after his ardous task of delivering the post, glanced in through the window and slammed the brakes on at the sight he saw!

He called Shermouse Holmes straight away, as of course only seeing the body, and not  knowing that it was dried out, thought that this was a new murder!  A new case for Holmes then, but not a new murder - rather, an old murder!  So Shermouse Holmes is now investigating whether the mouse in question was murdered or died of natural causes (which is what they call a heart attack - although it would be better if all concerned understood that being frightened to death should be called murder under Mouse Law) and again, he will report to this newspaper with any news.  Will the mayhem never end?  Will Shermouse Holmes every regain his reputation?  Was the postmouse telling the truth?  Only your intrepid reporter will be able to answer these questions........ Tongin Cheeeeeek reporting for the Daily Fieldwhiskers.  Copyright SusanMaclean

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont

Mrs Palfrey, widowed, and with just a little "capital" arrives to live out her days at a third class hotel in the back streets of West London.  The bed is single, the food is passable, and the company of the other permanent residents is not what she hoped for.  She has no friends, as a great chunk of her married life was spent in Burma, and the rest of it on the coast of Sussex.  Her daughter lives in Scotland, and they correspond but never meet up, and she has a grandson who she loved when he was a child, and now never sees. 

When she falls in the street, and Ludo bounds up the basement steps from his bedsitter, it is not long before she finds herself in love with him, not in a sexual way, but in the way that the elderly appreciate great beauty when theirs is gone.  She pursuades him to call at the hotel, and tells him she will introduce him as her grandson.  Ludo, who spends his time in Harrods banking hall sitting in large armchairs, and writing his novel.  His luck in coming across Mrs Palfrey is that his book is about the elderly. 

Set in the 1960's, this is a fine short novel which observes the elderly and leads us gently where we must all go.   Elizabeth Taylor was an English writer who died in 1975.  Her observation of humanity in all its forms is devastatingly accurate,  and whilst only set 50 or so years ago, you will get the feeling that people of Mrs Palfrey's age will have a much better life now than they did then.  An old phrase came to mind: "old before their time".  Gently but beautifully described, Mrs Palfrey's last days are laid before you. 

Big bedroom make-over - at last! From rubbish to loveliness without too much heartache and if I discount the works done on the walls themselves, this was not an expensive makeover.

This is our spare room.  It was a glory hole with a bed in it and way too much furniture before the makeover. Now its so nice I wish it was our room!  But its nice for guests to have a room that they can swing a cat in....

Corner of door and original colour of wall behind bed.

Sun falls on

                                                                                                     bricked up fireplace.

Street window-

                          see original frame for plasterwork?

Garden window

                                                                                           and what a mess!

So.... that's the befores.  Stripped of old lime plaster back to the stonework.  Plaster only held in place by the old wallpaper, painted over many, many times!  This is the last room we tackled, and as we are in this house 9 years, really did think it was about time!  And now you can see what you think of the room after....

The wardrobe is too intensive to have finished it, but it will be painted the same green as the wall behind it, except for the interior, which you can see I have started in dark red.  The open area is a cupboard, but will have doors on it eventually.  Underneath that is a flap which makes that area into a desk, and under that are 4 drawers, with the hanging space on the right..................

At night....

My lovely mirror - £14 and painted to match the walls.  Then,

 propped up on a piece of solid oak sanded to a velvet touch by him indoors, £2 for a bit of skirting board.

Slightly closer view of the stand for the mirror, and this is why he chose it - the lovely knot hole, perfect!

Bookcase from our previous home, repainted to match wall. 

 Also, a little chair £18 from the Barras, Glasgow, probably 30 years ago.  New seat pad.

The bargain bedlinen!  plus luxy cushions!

Kelly Hoppin eat your heart out.  My own bit of interior design... a pair of shoe trees, Bridport market a few years ago  So beautifully made.

Bed and garden window (see before pics above)

Seat pad on little chair - more of this material later

Street window and now my reading corner when

 we don't have visitors!  Had the little cushions made to match the little chair pad.  The fabric makes me laugh!  Had it for years hoping to use it, and I see its still available at John Lewis.  Local upholsterer did them for me for about £17 each, filling, cover, zip and all!

That little bookcase again!  I love it, the dimensions the colour, and the fact that it now holds all our classical CDs, all my "keeper" books, and a few tringum trangums!  Well, that's it.  But of course it isn't - as him indoors recently said that he "didn't like our own bedroom now" - so back to the drawing board!!                                                                                                                  



                              

Just a little makeover for someone who wanted it....

There is no "before" picture here... as it was just a little brown three-legged table, and I didn't think it was necessary.  Anyway, picture no. one is the table after being done over.  Pale grey (I know it looks blue) and she asked for shabby chic, so you can see areas where it has been 'worn' by use, and then she asked for a small bit on design somewhere on it and she likes hearts.  So......

 There's the top, complete with hearts.  Its for someone in my LETS (Local Economy Trading Scheme) group - how to make the world go round without money!!  I'll charge her in our local currency, which is NETs - so 15 Nts it is!

Shermouse Holmes back with tail between legs

Despite his announcements that he would find the truth - the once great detective Shermouse Holmes and his travelling caravan have returned home.  He has been searching for a body, and that body is obviously missing for good.  Your reporter recently gave details of an interview with the woodmouse twins, who were witness to the removal of the body but Mr Holmes was not enamoured with small boys, and ignored their tale.  Now he is home with a swift "No comment" in reply to every question and the budget for the local police force (who employed him in the first place) is seriously overspent.  And in a recession, too!

This is the very same police force who now say that they have enough evidence to put Fred Maclean away for a long time.  This announcement followed the discovery of a dried woodmouse body behind the woodburning stove last Friday by one of the "big ones" at Pine Tree Cottage whilst running the dastardly dust-sucker all over the floor and in the secret areas.  The body was sucked into the tube, but was just too big for the implement and was therefore removed by the lady of the house.  Sadly, there was nothing to stop her putting the body in the bin, and so no funeral could be held nor could the body be identified.  There have been a lot of harvest mice visiting this last Summer, so he was probably just a Summer visitor.  All the same, we believe he deserved more. 

We also believe that there is no proof that Fred Maclean killed this little tourist, as there is a Mabel Maclean residing at the same address, and no-one appears to have seen the live mouse, or indeed a dead body being taken into the house by either feline.  So we are at a standstill here.  However, the police are confident that he (Fred Maclean) will eventually be caught in the act (although your reporter has his doubts).  As to Mr Holmes - will his career ever reach its former glorious heights?  When he asked me to go easy on him during this final report, your reporter made his excuses and left.

Tongin Cheeeeeek reporting for the Daily Fieldwhiskers. 

Copyright SusanMaclean



The Small Hand - Susan Hill

Never read any Susan Hill before, and never had the inclination - but have read this and its brilliant!  A wonderfully melancholic feel to every page, and a question in the air all the way through.  I read it in one sitting - and that's probably the best way, and thoroughly enjoyed it.  Adam is a dealer of antiquarian books, and has a small collection of his own, which threaten to take over his living space.  On his way home to London one evening, following a meeting with a client, he loses his way and finds himself on a narrow country road unable to find the fingerpost to tell him how to get back on the main road.  He sees a name sign for a house, and decides that where there is a house, there will be people, and people know the local roads, so they will be able to re-direct him.  But the house is empty and derelict, the garden is badly overgrown, and suddenly, he feels the hand of a child in his.......How he deals with the little ghostly presence, and how his life is turned upside down is told in his own voice.  The small hand is the ghost of ..... ah!   Don't let me tell you, get the book to read and see if you like it too - with its final shocking end.

 



The Lost Daughter of Happiness - Geling Yan

 I find that I enjoy books that mingle a bit of fact with the fiction....and this is one such.  The author, Geling Yan, left her home country of China following the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1985 and settled in California.  The translator, Cathy Silber who translated the book into English, has done an excellent job, for I knew from early on this was a book that was told from another point of view by someone who speaks in another way altogether.  The book itself has no chapters, and this didn't put me off me one bit - though normally it would; although it does have gaps so that you can make a stop here and there!  It is told from two viewpoints - the narrator's voice, a Chinese American voice who is telling the "lost daughter" how she found her 200 years later whilst researching Chinese immigrants into America; and in the third person the story of Fusang, a girl stolen from her home village in China and transported for sale into prostitution.  If you thought that maybe this was an uncommon occurance, you'd be wrong.  Thousand of girls arrived in America this way, they were young and usually dead in their 20s.  Of course, hundreds of thousands of poor chinese men also flocked to America for a better life (it was they who did the donkey work on the great rail system that opened up the States then).  The white men in general hated them with a vengance; they worked for much lower pay, and because they spoke another language they could not be understood.  White men flocked to the dockside brothels on the Pacific coast however, for the novelty of sex with these strange looking prostitutes and their gentle ways (perhaps read inscrutable for gentle here), and the chinese referred to the whites who visited the chinatowns for women, opium, alchohol as "white devils".

Into this life comes Fusang, with a sweet smile, bound feet, and when awakened, a love of sex whoever pays for it.  But she is haunted for many years by a boy.  A white boy, Chris.  She first sees him when he is twelve, looking in through her window whilst she services a customer whilst holding the boy's gaze.  It is his awakening moment, and he is besotted.  What happens to him, and what happens to her - more separately than together, forms the basis of this haunting little novel.  And at the end, you find yourself asking:  Oriental/Caucasian - will we ever truly understand them and they us?