Marking Time

The days between Boxing Day and the New Year have a curious feel to them- compounded of anti-climax and anticipation. It's an illusion of course, but it feels as though life is on hold- and there's no way you could possibly start anything new. They're the year's appendix.

The remains of the turkey go out onto the compost heap where I hope predators and carrion eaters will find them, the accumulated waste paper and cardboard go to start a bonfire...

A Leicestershire Ghost Story

Over Christmas I've been reading Leicestershire Ghosts by David Bell and taking it in little sips to make it last. My daughter gave it me. "I hope you don't already know all the stories" she said- and I didn't.

Here's one of the oddest:

In the village of Bilston, near Twycross, stands what's left of a gibbet erected in the 1790s to display the executed remains of a ruffian who'd murdered his wife by throwing her in the mill race and tried- but failed- to kill his step-daughter the same way.  A modern visitor to the gibbet arrived to find a woman standing there admiring it and a little girl running round. She nodded to the woman- who ignored her- and then did what she'd come to do and took some photographs. Later when she came to review the results she was surprised to find that neither the woman nor the child appeared in any of the pictures. And then she remembered a detail that her memory had suppressed- that both of them had been soaking wet.