Berry Good Eating

by Eric

Even before the spring melt was finished we could see the traditional green spikes of day lilies sticking up through the remains of the snow by our door. We don't try to garden here in the shade, rocks, and tree roots. We only observe. And maybe put names to the vegetation growing naturally in the backyard.

Finding out the name of a hitherto anonymous plant feels akin to putting a stick through the seed packet and placing it at the end of the row in the flower bed, but without the digging, fertilizing, watering, or sowing. For example, I finally identified the Mock (or Indian) Strawberries that will be decorating the grass soon and last right into the fall. At first I mistook the plants for wild strawberries. From a distance they look the same. Closer examination, though, revealed that while the leaves and vines are very similar, the red berries are bristly, seedier, and lacking in the familiar strawberry smell.

Although too dry and tasteless to appeal to humans, they're apparently tasty to animals. I've seen crows and woodchucks harvesting them. I watched a squirrel making a leisurely feast, repeatedly nosing around in the grass to find a berry, then sitting on its haunches to nibble at the treat held in its paws.

For my own part, I was disappointed they weren't wild strawberries. Coming upon anything uncultivated and edible outside is a bit of a thrill. Does it remind us of our foraging past?

When I was a kid I knew where to find the untended berry bushes in nearby fields and patches of woods. I preferred the small blackcaps and raspberries to the larger blackberries with the seeds that stuck between your teeth.

One year, when Mary and I lived in Rochester, the raspberries along the abandoned railroad tracks a couple blocks from our house went wild. We carried away several grocery bags full. We never again saw the berries in such profusion.

Years before that, in a corner of the tiny yard of a house I rented, a gnarled gooseberry bush clung to life. It looked like it had been there since colonial times, or longer, the gooseberry equivalent of the Glastonbury Thorn. Each year the sparsely leafed skeletal branches managed to bring forth a handful of round, translucent berries.

Even more exotic were the berries I discovered while accompanying my dad on trips to haul garbage to the local dump when I was a kid. Beyond the smoking landfill, just inside the woods, in the light shade of saplings and birch trees, wintergreen covered the ground, red berries bright against dark evergreen leaves. I was amazed. To me wintergreen meant chewing gum or Life Savers. It was strange to encounter it in a natural state. There's a berry I've never identified. I only remember seeing it in one place, in the straggling weeds near the edge of a scrubby patch of woods a few yards away

The mysterious berries were the size, shape, and texture of blackcaps but light orange in color and with a mild taste defined mostly by their unfamiliar, perfumy fragrance. I haven't turned up a photo or description on the Internet that quite matches my memory. Perhaps they were golden raspberries and I'm not recalling them exactly. It's been a long time since I've seen them.

The Burying Berry

by Mary

Word on the country street warns us not to eat, pick, or have anything to do with blackberries after Michaelmas, the feast day of St Michael (29th September, 10th October old style). Ignore this advice at your peril, lest misery, disaster, and an IRS audit follow. There are even those who go so far as to predict whoever disregards the warning will be dead by the end of the year, the risk also extending to members of their family.

I first heard we should not eat blackberries after Michaelmas when I lived in Oxfordshire in the long ago, but it was not until we began writing The Guardian Stones that the belief's dark presence showed up in our fiction. When talking about Isobel, who has gone missing from the village of Noddweir, local wise woman Martha Roper declares "She's been carried off by the devil because she ate blackberries last October. The devil, no doubt about it.." To her way of thinking, wilful Isobel did not listen to those who warned her of the danger and thus went over the fatal date, well into the dangerous period to be dining on the berries.

Recently it occurred to me to ponder why the blackberry came to be regarded in this way. A bit of poking about revealed it was considered to have been cursed by Lucifer because he landed on a blackberry bush after his fall from heaven following defeat by the Archangel Michael. The fallen angel vented his fury by lashing out with a fearful malediction that would cause terrible suffering to those who had post-Michaelmas truck with the fruit.

Depending on location, other traditions have it Lucifer was so enraged at the hitherto innocent blackberry he also burnt, trampled, spat, and/or relieved himself on the bush. Margaret Ann Courtney succinctly warned in Cornish Feasts and Folk-lore (1890) "This fruit, by old people, was said not to be good after Michaelmas, kept by them 10th October (old style); after that date they told you the devil spat on them, and birds fouled them."

Similarly, Charlotte Latham's Some West Sussex Superstitions Lingering in 1868 records the tale of a farmer's wife said to be living near Arundel. Finding herself without the necessary amount of berries needed to make a large batch of blackberry jam, she instructed her charwoman to send a couple of children to pick more for the purpose. The other woman pointed out it was 11th October, adding "I thought every one knew that the devil went round on the 10th October, and spat on all the blackberries, and that if any person were to eat on the 11th, he or some one belonging to him would either die or fall into great trouble before the year was out."

Had Isobel come to grief because she disregarded the awful warning? Well....

Monkey Business at the Flicks

by Mary

Valentine's Day hoves into view as I write and the thought brings back memory of a matter I shall boldly declare we all have in common: our first romantic kiss and/or date.

Let me set the scene in proper fashion. My family lived for several years in Gateshead, the town memorably described by Dr Johnson as a dirty lane leading to Newcastle. Then, as now, a visit to the cinema was a popular outing for a date. There was plenty of choice from numerous cinemas on both sides of the Tyne. Many were second run venues and changed their programmes mid-week.

During our Gateshead residency, we lived equidistant between two picture palaces, the Coatsworth and the Bensham. It was the Coatsworth a boy in my class -- I'll disguise him as Bert -- invited me to a cinematograph entertainment for what would be my first date. He was round-faced and dark haired, and yes, I had a bit of a crush on him.

It was Bert who had given me my first kiss a short while before. He was showing me around the pub his parents ran, including the cellar which featured what I believe is technically termed a beer drop door, i.e. double metal doors set flush in the pavement through which barrels of beer are delivered. In any event, having taken the grand tour we were standing at the door talking when he suddenly leaned forward, planted a kiss on my cheek, shoved me off the step, and slammed the door in my face.

Not exactly romantic, was it?

So here we are, not long afterwards, at the Coatsworth Cinema watching Little Red Monkey, which the Internet informs me is based on a BBC TV series of the same name starring Donald Huston and Honor Blackman. It's a Cold War thriller, wherein someone is assassinating nuclear scientists. Richard Conte arrives and attempts to thwart the villains responsible for these deaths in order to get a Russian defector safely to America.

Back to the Coatsworth Cinema. The only things I remember about Little Red Monkey are, first, its perky organ music and occasional appearances by the titular monkey entering or exiting via a window. Also a comment having nothing to do with the film. It transpired Bert kept his cash in a black purse whose shape was near enough to a heart for me to observe wittily -- or at least I thought so at the time -- if it had been red it should have had an arrow through it.

Since enquiring minds may want to know but are too shy to ask, no, there was no kiss at the end of our date.

Alas, it was not to be. Fortuna intervened in that a few weeks later my family moved back to Newcastle and after that Bert and I never met again.

So there you have it. Meantime, having dragged subscribers this far down Nostalgia Lane, they might care to glance at a couple of sites relevant to my ancient bit of personal history:

Trailer for Little Red Monkey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb9BBVS4hOw&ab_channel=NetworkDistributing

27 screen shots from Reel Streets, long a favourite port o' call of mine
https://www.reelstreets.com/films/little-red-monkey-aka-the-case-of-the-red-monkey/

The Coatsworth Cinema in all its grimy glory
http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/51237/photos/171176

Three Bean or Not Three Bean

by Eric

This time it was the three bean salad.

It's always something.

The awful realization hits me when I'm halfway home, or hauling the bags out of the car, or in the evening, hours after the groceries have been put away.

"Oh no!" I'd forgotten to pick something up.

"Forgetting three bean salad isn't a crime," Mary said.

"Or a snack. Because I didn't bring any home. I could really do with a three bean salad right now."

"Do you think you should be eating three bean salad at ten o'clock at night? You never have it except with meals. Since when do you have three bean salad for a snack?"

"Last winter," I told her. "Or the winter before. I forget. Those were good times. Whenever they were."

"I remember. That was at the end of February. We'd been snowed in for weeks. The shelves were bare. It was either the three bean salad or the tinned okra."

"And the three bean salad was delicious too. Tangy. What else do we have for a snack that's tangy?"

"Never mind," she said. "You can buy two tins of three bean salad next week. Or three tins. This is Liberty Hall."

"There's no point trying to be a Pollyanna about it," I said. "The plain sad fact of the matter is...I forgot."

I might almost have said I was vexed, but I'm not sure if anyone has been truly vexed since the nineteenth century.

"It's easy enough to forget," Mary offered sympathetically.

"Well, yes, there's only one way to remember but endless ways to forget. I mean, I can forget to take the grocery list, or forget to write it in the first place. I might forget to take the list out of my pocket at the store. Or else I put it back in my pocket in order to hold the freezer door open to get at the frozen lasagna, and then forget to take it out again before I get to the tinned vegetable aisle. Oh, I'm a wonder at forgetting!"

"But you did remember the lasagna."

"But I don't want lasagna for a snack. It isn't tangy. I guess I will just have to suffer for my own mistake," I concluded.

"Look on the bright side," Mary told me. "What if you'd forgotten the loo rolls?"

"Oh no!", I said.

Don't Play That Song!

by Eric

According to a recent survey the most annoying Christmas song in America is Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas is You. I'm not sure I've heard the song, but if I did I would probably be annoyed. It's not that I find Christmas music irritating in itself. What annoys me is its ubiquity.

Beginning some time around Thanksgiving, no one can escape being aurally drenched in Christmas spirit no matter where they go or what they do. Television and radio are as full of musical cheer as overstuffed stockings. The radio station I listen to in the car adopts an all Christmas playlist. Last week the supermarket played tunes about Santa and sleigh rides instead of the usual sixties hits. (Man, I never imagined I'd ever be old enough to actually enjoy store muzak. Bummer.)

Mind you, Christmas music is fine in moderation, at the right time, under the right circumstances. When I lived in Brooklyn WPIX Channel 11 broadcast a burning Yule log accompanied by Christmas music for several hours Christmas Eve. You can find that Yule log and imitators all over YouTube. The crackling fire on my computer monitor produces as much warmth as my black and white television set did. Quite pleasant, actually.

My first, and all time favorite, holiday song is, of course, The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late) released in the fall of 1958. Alvin wanted a hula hoop, the big fad at the time. I already had a hula hoop and could use it without risking throwing my back out, which shows how long ago that was.

The second best Christmas song, I am sure you'll agree, is the Three Stooge's version of I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas with its brilliant witty word play. Would you say it is more reminiscent of Oscar Wilde or Noel Coward?

Granted I may be prejudiced by having encountered those songs at a young age. Maybe youthful exposure also explains why I hate, hate, hate Little Drummer Boy. Talk about tedious and repetitive. "Pa rum pum pum pum"? Honestly? And someone says rock 'n' roll lyrics are ridiculous. Anyway -- Pa rum pum pum pum -- Oh no! -- Pa rum pum pum pum -- Now I have it in my head! -- Pa rum pum pum pum -- (Oh, the sacrifices one makes to write newsletter essays....)

Probably for the same reasons I'm not fond of the pop choral versions of carols because my parents owned too many Ray Coniff records. Later I preferred the more modern approach exemplified by Phil Spector's famous Christmas album, although it's hard to listen to it today without thinking about Spector's subsequent history. The same is true of John Lennon's Happy Xmas (War is Over) one of my favorites but with sad associations.

It's become increasingly common for modern artists to supplement the traditional Christmas songs with new compositions. (Also the case with mystery books!) Only a few will enter the canon to be played year after year as Lennon's has, something I wouldn't have imagined when it first came out. At Christmas there's always talk about peace and goodwill but it is all rather abstract, part of the holiday spirit. To actually call for peace, right now, in the world we live in, is seen by too many as some sort of political statement.

My favorite Christmas collection, which has become a tradition for me since it was released in 1979, is Light of the Stable by Emmylou Harris, traditional carols with some modern songs mixed in. Alas, it does include Little Drummer Boy but since it's Emmylou Harris I suppose that will have to be forgiven. Pa rum pum pum pum. Pa rum pum pum pum.

Or maybe not!

Listen to Light of the Stable

A Manor-House View

by Mary

The coke-bottle windows of Maywrite Towers currently disclose a view of frozen snow and bare branches lying under that unnatural hush a blanket of snow brings, and with overnight temperatures forecast to fall into the teens the buggy will not be off to town for a few days. Another storm arriving in the near future is expected to leave several more inches of snow, but early forecasts have not addressed whether or not a white Christmas may be expected.

When we think of Christmas, apart from snow, what springs to mind? Carols, crackers of the pull-and-bang persuasion, and cards -- and in the British tradition the telling of ghost stories on Christmas night. As I have observed elsewhere, whatever the weather without, by authorial design there is something unsettling about blinding flashes of lightning revealing changes in the positions of the figures in ancestral portraits or the appearance of oddly mottled and claw-like hands scratching at diamond-paned casements in the aptly named dead of night. And while crashing rolls of thunder may drown out the screams of the doomed innocent in the locked attic, it never seems to mask the grim sound of the approaching coach and four driven by the dissolute and long deceased fourth earl, inevitably arriving at the front door on the stroke of midnight though not with the intention of delivering pizza.

As to ghost stories, let me suggest -- no, I insist -- a wonderful yarn just right for keeping up the afore-mentioned tradition: The Mezzotint by M. R. James , long my favourite of this type of fiction. For those who've not read it, it begins, as with a number of his works, in an ordinary not to say routine way. Who could have guessed requesting a catalogue of topographical pictures would launch a mystery, investigation of which ends in such a chilling fashion?

As the story opens Mr Williams, who presides over a university art museum, is considering the purchase of the titular mezzotint, described by the dealer thus: "978.—Unknown. Interesting mezzotint: View of a manor-house, early part of the century. 15 by 10 inches; black frame. £2 2s."

On its arrival at Mr Williams' college rooms for examination, unlike the more traditional and indeed oft times expected setting for this type of fiction, the manor-house concerned is not depicted as an overgrown ruin with ivy shrouding the few remnants of its walls, broken statues reclining in knee-high grass, the family vault within sight of the back door, and a lake half choked with sickly vegetation. Instead the building is almost boring in its details, the mezzotint depicting "a full-face view of a not very large manor-house of the last century, with three rows of plain sashed windows with rusticated masonry about them, a parapet with balls or vases at the angles, and a small portico in the centre. On either side were trees, and in front a considerable expanse of lawn."

Mr Williams doesn't think much of the mezzotint or the price asked for it and intends to send it back to the dealer. However, he first decides to attempt to identify the manor-house. Aided by a couple of words on the remains of a label on the back of the mezzotint, —ngley Hall and —ssex, he and two friends consult gazetteers and guide-books and it is Mr Williams who traces the mysterious house.

Unfortunately, after a series of events involving the mezzotint the solving of the mystery of its location leads to a chilling conclusion, all the more awful because a possible solution to these occurrences suggested in the narration has to be correct.

It is the understated nature of the horror in James' ghost story that I really admire. But occasionally a reader's goosebumps are created for a more personal reason. I shall not name the short story in question but on reading it I was set back more than somewhat when I came across the name of a close friend on a suicide's tombstone, a vital clue to the explanation of the supernatural event involved.

The Mezzotint appears in James' collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary:

Read the Mezzotint

I intend to reread it for the umpteenth time on Christmas night to keep up the fine old tradition.

Ye Tragedie of Ye Clambering Kittie

by Mary

Speaking of Macbeth, on being informed Birnam Wood was on the move he must have been horrified, recalling the prophecy he would not be vanquished until said wood arrived on his doorstep. We have some small idea of how he felt when he looked out on advancing greenery, though in our case as related in the August issue we've been dealing with the fall-out from a single downwardly mobile tree but thankfully without having to worry about a single man-at-arms as well.

So, picking up the saga at the point where we left it, an electrician and his apprentice arrived at the start of this month to attend to the remaining repair, i.e. replacing the electricity line running between the point where it reaches the house to where it enters the meter.

They soon discovered what we long since realised: when repairs are needed, there is almost certain to be difficulties carrying them out given how often in the course of the work bits and bobs will be encountered whose threads, size, location, or shape means getting them removed is not going to be easy. It's not surprising considering the age of the house but while new parts will fit, getting the old ones off takes more time than expected, involving a process resembling hand to hand combat. Further, on occasion it's been necessary for more than one craftsperson to take a trip back to base to check the company's collection of less modern tools or older parts in stock in order to complete the job. One example from a couple of months ago: an appropriate length of L-shaped siding needed to embrace a corner was located at the company after the newer piece brought to the job was too wide to fit the angle where the two walls met, underlining that useful advice to keep any usable or surplus nails, screws, fiddly widgets, etc, just in case. Most people have a collection of such kickshaws. Our accumulation includes the external encrustations from the recently-replaced pressure tank for our well and an ancient pair of coke-bottle spectacles. Laugh about those gig-lamps ye may, but what if one rainy Sunday afternoon we are suddenly seized with the idea of attempting to build a microscope or telescope? Well, then.

To make matters worse, in the course of their two-hour visit the gaffer described some of the original work here as having been done "old style" -- for example a plank the tree ripped off the house was held in place by headless nails. Thus, for one task he needed an old style tool. As it happened. they carry just such a gizmo around in their van so this cannot be the first house presenting such problems. The implement, which we think was a crimper and if so was used to connect the two lines at the point they meet by mangling them together. Though there've been two electricians in the immediate family I have not the technical knowledge to describe how that would work without destroying them. alas. But the tool was extremely heavy, ran on batteries, and due to the amount of work done with it had to be recharged twice.

The electrician had been wielding it while perched on a ten foot ladder, but as the job progressed he had to go higher so switched to a twelve footer. While he seemed unconcerned about the nose-bleeding height, he experienced some difficulty inasmuch as being right-handed he could not deal with the left hand part of the fitting on which he was working. Moving the ladder left -- there was just enough space to anchor it safely -- he was able to continue working right-handedly on the left side of the job. And just as well as if not it would have meant summoning a basket truck to assist. How he could even hold such a heavy tool (it looked as if it was made of iron) in one hand remains a matter of mystery and admiration.

Then a wee bit of drama unfolded.

A movement flickered in the corner of the eye. A glance over to the right and there it was! An enormous black spider had suddenly appeared on the siding next to the electrician. He immediately observed to his audience he does *not* like spiders. Without exaggeration, if you include the span of legs, these nasty arachnids are as wide as the palm of an adult's hand. A couple have been encountered inside the house, most recently a few weeks ago. Like previous intruders it met with a speedy end. Dealing with them at ground-level is awful enough but for the fellow perched twelve feet up it was much worse, since any movement to dislodge it would be dangerous for him. It appears something frightened the ghastly thing because to everyone's relief it paused its peregrinations for a few seconds and then scuttled off to skulk behind the weatherboard.

A few days later the work passed inspection, so all is well at Maywrite Towers once again and what turned into a three month saga is over. But at times glancing out and observing the ten foot or so high broken trunk still standing, glaring at us across next door's lawn, just for a few seconds it's, well, somewhat unnerving.

There is, however, a footnote to this story. We had replaced the line in question on the advice of the crew who came out to effect a temporary hookup the day after the storm. They told us that the insulation on the line to the meter showed some weathering.

Not long after this was accomplished we watched the 1946 noir classic The Postman Always Rings Twice. Lana Turner and John Garfield had almost been caught in an attempt to murder Lana's husband Nick, to be staged as a fatal accident in a locked bathroom. The plan was to leave the scene of the crime via its window, drop to the flat roof below, and then from there to the ground by means of a ladder already in place. The attempt was thwarted when a cat clambered up the ladder and, in the manner of its kind, became curious, its resulting electrocution causing a power outage and resulting loss of nerve so Nick was safe for a bit longer. A motorcycle policeman who arrived after the incident noticed poor kitty's corpse and asked what had happened. Garfield replied he'd noticed some insulation had worn off what he called the feed wire but he hadn't got around to fixing it.

At this point we turned to each other, exclaiming whoah! in unison because that was exactly the problem we had just dealt with. Yes, our lives are just like a noir mystery albeit without unfortunate felines.*

* See https://cinemacats.com/the-postman-always-rings-twice-1946/