Queen of Aces.

Below is a sample from a rather silly short story set in the Regency Period, which I've been writing recently.

‘… A man is nothing more than a man.’

Napoleon Bonaparte, 1816.    

The room was dark, dank and dusty, yet the smells of damp and dust were overpowered by the sickly sweet smell of opium fumes. A few rays of the midday sum escaped through the gaps in the faded velvet curtains to cast light over the wooden floor boards, stained rug and patched up sofas. In those beams of light, strands and spirals of smoke danced ever upwards.

            In one corner of the room a well dressed young man huddled on the floor with his eyes closed. A young lady who wore far more make up that she did clothing reclined on one of the sofas and stared into space.

            It had once been a grand room in a fine house, but it had become a home for the lost. It was a meeting place for the hopeless and the invisible and the forgotten… and all of this was agreeable to the young lady who had just walked in.

            She took her place on the empty sofa, put her little lump of opium in her long, curving clay pipe and lit it, adding her own fumes to the dense smoke that drifted across the room. She inhaled deeply and reclined further back into the padded leather of the sofa.

She hoped that she would see flying horses again.

Charles George James Spencer- Harvey Esq. rode away from the Sir Arthur Wellesley’s home with an even greater sense of urgency and self importance than he normally possessed. The Duke- Sir Arthur, Wellington, the greatest living Englishman; and therefore quite possibly the greatest man on earth- had given him - Charles George James Spencer- Harvey Esq. formally Captain Spencer- Harvey of the 14^th Dragoons, formally Knight of The Garter- a job.

And not just a little job. Not at all. Not another silly errand. No. Not in the slightest.

He had been charged to find…

The Greatest Spy To Have Ever Lived.

‘Faster, Harry, faster,’ Charles George James Spencer- Harvey Esq. urged his carriage driver.

Harry obeyed, and flogged the two white stallions which pulled his fine carriage. They sped away from the Dukes office, down several streets, over the Themes and along a few more streets until they reached the majestic mansion where The Greatest Spy To Ever Live was rumoured to live.

            Charles George James Spencer- Harvey Esq. leaped down from the carriage and knocked briskly on the door with the golden head of his cane. A few minutes later, the door was opened by an elderly butler, who gazed down his nose at him.

            After a few minutes of very awkward and confused conversation, Charles George James Spencer- Harvey Esq. learnt that The Greatest Spy To Have Ever Lived had not resided at that address for several months, and had moved several miles further up river, and that the butler had a shockingly low opinion of The Greatest Spy To Have Ever Lived and of himself- Charles George James Spencer- Harvey Esq.           

            There followed a longer and more rapid carriage ride to a modest house on the outskirts of Whitechapel.

            Once there Charles George James Spencer- Harvey Esq. was met by an other elderly butler who told him that The Greatest Spy To Have Ever Lived was not at home and was mostly likely to be found several miles to the west.

            To his astonishment this address turned out to be a large, but ill kept house near the docks. This shabby house had an equally shabby sign above the door which claimed that it was a ‘Parlour of Relaxation and Recreation.’

Charles George James Spencer- Harvey Esq. knocked cautiously on this door. It was opened a fraction and a very large man stared down on him.

‘Yes?’ the large man asked.

‘I am here on very important business, as a representative of The Duke of Wellington and His Majesties Government,’ Charles George James Spencer- Harvey Esq. said.

‘Of course you are, sir,’ the large man said as though addressing a child, ‘do come in sir’.

He entered and directed up a flight of dusty stairs. On the way up he wiped the sweat from his face and readjusted his long, powdered wig. He knocked on the door, waited for a few moments then pushed it open.

He saw three bodies in the smoky room. A young aristocrat who was clearly far from home; a lady who was almost certainly a prostitute; and a lady who may have been a prostitute in mourning.

Looking more closely at the third figure, he saw a petit girl with long dark hair plaited behind her back, who looked to be in her mid twenties. She wore a heavily corseted, ankle length black dress, which left her shoulders, neck, arms and a fashionable amount of cleavage exposed. A certain degree of modesty was preserved by a pair of black lace gloves. Her skin was of a deathly pallor, and yet radiated an inner vitality. A long, black jacket and a clay pipe lay discarded beside her.  

‘Madam?’ he greeted her

She did not stir.

“Madam!’ he ventured more loudly.

He was about to poke her with his cane when she burst into life. One of her delicate hands shot up and grabbed his neck, pulling him down, the other hand produced a cut throat razor from her jacket and held it to his throat.

‘You interrupted my flying ponies!’ she snarled at him.

The Winter Nights.

Brunhild from The Ring, by Arthur Rackham.

The Winter Nights are upon us.

Indeed, they have been upon us more a while now. From the Old Norse calender, The Winter nights begin in early October (are Oktoberfest/ Ale festival time) and last until Samhain (Halloween for you non Pagans). They are a time when the veil between the living and the dead, and the gateways between this and other worlds are at the thinnest. It is a time for magick, and communion with ancestors and spirits (and drinking lots of ale).

Thus far, in the mighty town of Kendal, I have heard of two UFO sightings and one ghost sighting...

"Day and night: one dream interprets another" Austin Osmond Spare

One of those ancient Chinese philosophers once dreamt that he was a butterfly. When he woke, he asked himself if he was a philosopher who had dreamt of being a butterfly or a butterfly that had dreamt that it has a philosopher.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge once wrote something along the lines off; 'what if you dreamt of finding a flower and holding that flower in your hand, and when you woke you still held that flower, and what then...'.

Do not entirely agree with the above three sentiments, but they are certainly worth considerable thought. 

"...to sleep, perchance to dream..." Shakespeare.

The above image was tattooed onto my arm by Emma at Aurora Tattoo a few moths ago, based on a drawing by Holly Payne. Seeing as I can think of nothing better to write about, I shall attempt to explain its significance.

It depicts a girls holding a scythe, and 'tis something of a tribute to Neil Gaimane's Death character. It seems reasonable to me that Death should be beautiful. Old age, and illness and fatal accidents are all terrible things, but Death itself is not. As on the tarot card, Death is a new beginning- a change. We know not what happens after Death; be it reincarnation, asendance to some other world, or the end of our material lives, but we know that it is a change. "The last great adventure", as Mr Pan tells us.

There are two Ancient Greek quotes which are rather good;

"And perhaps we are actually dead, for I once heard the wise men say that we are now dead, and that our body is a tomb." Plato.

"We live the death of the immortals, they live ours." Heraclitus.

The point is that death is not finite, it is not a horror to be feared. That is why Death wears her ankh and her spiral (eternal coil) eye liner.

Death is beautiful, yet it is not to be desired above all other things. Let no one say that this writer encourages suicide- even if his body be marked by death. Quite the opposite. 

When death is not feared, life can be lived more thoroughly. 'Tis a curse of this materialist age that we fear death so. We ought to know what the Vikings and the Samurai knew, that when we loose the fear of death, we gain a great deal from life.