Holed up

On the left is a picture from one of my recent shopping trips (Chris took this photo). We're still putting up with the snow, not that we have any choice. From time to time we go crazy and try to do battle with the accumulations (see above), but it's of no use really. We just have to (pretend to) be patient. This time next week we'll be heading across the Atlantic towards a milder climate and in the meantime, thank God for Music, indeed. We've been playing Elizabethan vocal duets transposed for clarinet and violin by Thomas Morley and John Bennet. Chris having written some transposition software, we got the computer to help with this. The other thing I've been busy with, yet again, is touching up my novel. Carol, who has just read it through (as far as it goes at present), sent me an encouraging message to say that she "loved it" and wants more, although if I embark on more, does that mean another ten years' hard work? That's a daunting thought. Anyway I now have a few more (unpublished) printed copies of the first twenty chapters to pass around.

Here's an extract from Chapter 18, copyright Alison Hobbs 2008, which begins where I was imagining some other people holed up, in the 1940s:

On April 20th a Stalag Sports Day took place, with fatigues suspended for the afternoon, orders from the Camp Command.
“What are we celebrating, then? Breaking-up for the school holidays, are we?”
“It is the birthday of the Führer,” snapped a German guard, tugging on the leash of his growling dog. “Heil Hitler!”
“All the flippin' flags out!” muttered the inmates, in tones of heavy sarcasm. “Heil bloody 'itler, 'appy Birthday to you!”
None the less, Tim enjoyed the races round the compound, coming second in one. Small white clouds raced too, across the sky, in a breeze that made the leaves tremble in the surrounding line of trees. It's been a year since Crete, he realised, and I am not dead yet. What's more, I'm fitter again; I can feel it. Box cameras were brought out to snap the wrestling matches and Tim was reminded of the pastimes on his troop ship. What had become of Emrys Williams, old Pughie, and those other Welshmen? Had they survived the battlefields till now? Were they still fighting for dear life or singing their hearts out in their male voice choir? He recalled one fellow, a basso profundo almost, who'd 'upped the tone of the thing,' as Lt-Col Reddaway at the training depot would have put it, by performing Sarastro's aria from The Magic Flute in a ship's concert, with the chorus joining in at the end. Now that was an idea! They could try that one for the summer concert here. If Tim couldn't find a copy of the music he might be able to write out the chord progression from memory; he was fairly sure he could recall the solo part. It had been one of the arias Dr Marshall had made him analyse at Lofty Pines, oh, long ago, and how he had gone over it, over and over on his piano in the living room at home! He slipped into his hut for his manuscript book, the best present his sister had ever given him.

Mavis gave a start and softened towards her fireman, Matthew Judd, as they sat on a bench in the Kenningford municipal gardens during her lunch break. He had interrupted her reverie by murmuring something rather sweet. From behind the high fence they could hear the thwack and bounce of tennis balls from the club courts where Mavis used to play, before the War. She had been thinking of the Ehrmann boys in their white trousers, white shirts, of Rainer's tanned collar bones.
“"Mmm? What was that you said?"”
“"You heard me, vain woman!"” Her absent-minded question, that he must have taken for flirtatiousness, had given him the excuse to bring his face very close to her ear, which he now pecked at with damp lips. "I said you're lovely, you're a lovely girl."”
I love your loveliness: those had been his actual words, but he must feel too embarrassed to repeat them now. “"Oh Matthew!"” She bowed her head, submitting her shoulders to more of his kisses. She liked that. It caused little shivers to run up and down, burying her memory of old sensations under a heap of new ones. This was the only way, Mavis told herself, to cure herself of what she'd lost. And maybe I should let Matthew marry me after all, she thought, he is so persistent these days. Sooner or later I'll give in if I'm not careful.
“"I know you're all wait-and-see with me, Mave,"” he was saying, “"but I think it is about time you were my wife, good and proper. I'm serious now. Every time I go into London to drag those poor devils out of the rubble, I tell you, I think of you and how we shouldn't be wasting our lives waiting and waiting. We might have a lot less time left than you think. I mean to say, look at your brother!"”
“"Don't, Matthew. That's not fair. Tim's doing all right where he is. At least, he sounds cheerful enough when he writes. Ma seems to think he really loves that work he's doing. Anyway, no one's thinking of bombing the Stalags, are they?”"
“"You never know. They might. And what then? Or at the end of the War, eh? How's he going to get out of that place? Anything could happen."

”