A New Year Letter

Well, the year's almost done and looking back it has not been so bad.

I finished a second children's novel. (and we'll have to wait and see how that does)

I completed the Port Brokeferry project at close to 80,000 words.

I wrote thirty short stories and dozens of flash fictions.

I finished a special 'thing'; I wrote 50 flashes on my dad, who passed away some years back, and I did not want that he be forgotten. The whole project has the the title 'Art in Heaven' (as in 'Our Father who art in Heaven...') and was done for my brother who was celebrating a special birthday. This was a big and important project and it meant a lot to get it completed.

I scored 29 hits in competitions including 4 first and 4 seconds.

I got ideas for two novels to add two already simmering in my head, and more Port Brokeferry spin-offs beginning to excite me - lots of those. No signs then of the creative juices drying up.

Yes, so not too bad a year.

And the year ahead? Lots I HAVE to do this year. Lots of projects I need to bring to some kind of fruition. I have goals, as I did last year, and they are a little more ambitious, so I may be a little quieter here than I have been. Maybe - quiet isn't something that sits easy with me... again we'll see.

But for now, a happy new year to all who pop in here. I hope the year behind you has been equally productive and the year ahead already holds some promise.

Best to all.

D

THE END

(And here it is, the final piece for the Port Brokeferry project, and we can discover who this Col is that Mad Martin seeks after and why he is so elusive... and in my head another couple of Port Brokeferry things are percolating so it might be that this is just the beginning! If you have been following this 'story' then you'll remember that each new day in Port Brokeferry has begun with an 'official' document of some description... and so we end on the same, which rounds the whole thing off kind of neatly.)

OLD NEWS

(Below is reproduced a newspaper article pertaining to events that happened in Port Brokeferry’s not too distant past, though there are many in Port Brokeferry who do not now remember all that was said in the article and some who have never known. Those there are who cut out the article and have kept it in the back of a drawer in the kitchen, or tucked away in a box up in the attic space, and they only rarely rediscover the yellowing newsprint and read it now as one who reads fiction, not really believing that the people referred to in the article are real. One there is who keeps it in the glove compartment of his red Ford Fiesta, but he does not live in Port Brokeferry any more.)

A MOMENT OF MADNESS

In a small sleepy fishing village called Port Brokeferry situated on the north-west coast, there was a moment of madness last Sunday, when two teenage boys were involved in a high school caper that turned into catastrophe.

The boys, Colin Galbraith (16), and Martin Stuart (15), had both been drinking. It was late and the boys were still out, even though they were expected at school the next morning. A third boy, Athol Stuart (16), no relation, was with them until shortly before the incident, but he had not been drinking. He said they were ‘quite far gone with the drink’ and were at that ‘silly stage where everything is funny and a good idea’. They had earlier played ‘chap door run’ at some of the houses on the front, and they’d pulled flowers out of one of the gardens, and scattered the contents of a rubbish bin along the main street.

Athol Stuart had then said ‘enough was enough’ and ‘no harm done’ and that they ‘should call it a night’. But they had not yet finished. One of the boys had the idea to turn back time. He proposed that they wind the hands of the village clock back a few hours. They also thought that would justify their lateness the next day at school. There is a clock high on the wall of The Victoria Hotel on Port Brokeferry’s main street. Athol Stuart left at this point, declaring their plan nothing but ‘madness’.

Colin Galbraith and Martin Stuart managed to somehow procure a ladder from the garden of a local handyman and it fell to Martin to climb up to the clock. Athol Stuart afterwards said ‘Martin was always trying to prove himself, being the younger of the three, and Colin was always setting him tasks. Dares, really. And Martin always wanted to be the hero.’

Martin Stuart was successful in altering the time on the Victoria Hotel clock, but then he must have lost his balance and he fell from a height of around twenty feet. He landed awkwardly on the flagstone pavement and took a serious knock to his head that rendered him unconscious. It is thought that Colin Galbraith took fright and fled the scene, though Athol Stuart says that could not be, that something must have happened, for the three boys were the closest of friends.

The body of Martin Stuart was discovered by Athol Stuart when, with an attack of conscience, he thought better of leaving the two inebriated teenagers by themselves and returned to the main street.

A Doctor Kerr accompanied Martin Stuart to the hospital. It is not yet known what the full extent of the teenager's injuries might be, and Athol Stuart and Colin Galbraith are said to be helping the police with their enquiries.

The Penultimate Port Brokeferry Postcard

(This is the penultimate piece for the Port Brokeferry project and we have heard Mad martin looking for Col all the way through, and here is Col... but the mystery of why he keeps to the shadows will have to wait for the final piece.)

COL

It was not the first time he had been home. And he still thought of it as home. Still, after all this time away. Some years he had missed. Something had interfered with his plans in those years and had kept him in the other place that he did not think of as home. He thought all those missed years a little darker when he looked back on them, like there was nothing worth remembering in them, except what had not been. So he tried to get back more and more. Just once in the year, when Port Brokeferry was busy enough he might not be noticed in all the new people there.

He came by car and he came alone. Just for the day. He arrived in the morning early, wearing dark glasses till the town was about its business and enough people on the street that he was just one more. He came on the weekends mostly. Sometimes a Saturday, sometimes a Sunday. Depended on the weather. Wouldn’t be the thing to be walking the beach in the rain, or the streets of Port Brokeferry. Besides, in the rain the crowds were thinner and he might be known.

He came to see. How things were. How Martin was. And Athol. He came out of a sense of duty, and something else that he could not explain, even to himself. Today had been a good day. As good as these Port Brokeferry days ever get. It was busier than in some years and that had helped. He liked to get there early enough he could watch Martin down on the beach feeding the gulls from his pockets. He knew that was how the days started in Port Brokeferry. And seeing Martin in his kilt, standing just in the sea, it was like going back to a different time, when it wasn’t just Martin, but Athol and Col, too, standing looking out to where the blue-grey smudge of the sky sat on the blue-grey smudge of the water, looking and wondering what it would be like to sail away from Port Brokeferry and into the stories that Finn told when there was a drink in him.

Not much changes. Col knew that. Guthrie had taken over from his dad with ‘The Bobbing Boat’, looked the spit of his dad, too, like it could be that Col was back in that time when they were three and not easily separated, and ‘up to no good’ the policeman said then, and now Athol was the policeman. Funny how things turn out.

And ‘The Ship’ was just ‘The Ship’. And Struan Courtald was still working at The Victoria Hotel, though he’d got a waistcoat now, with shiny buttons, and a fob watch on a chain, and he was a little thicker about the middle, but still tilting his hat at Ina McAllister, used to be Ina Shale. And then there was Berlie’s, always there for the same two weeks, and though it had changed through the years – different music, and louder with more lights – some things were the same.

Mhairi’s Port Brokeferry Giftshop was quite new and he did not know who Mhairi was. But today he’d stopped to look in at the window. There was a picture of Martin on the beach, a painting. And he could not pass it by. He paid for it on credit card and afterwards thought that was a mistake. Then, having stored it under a grey sheet in the back of his car, he was not sure of the sense in having bought it at all.

He came each year to see how Martin was. He knew that Athol looked after him and that was something. He kept a distance though, in case he was seen and recognised for who he was. Just close enough he could see that they were both well, Martin and Athol. Just the two of them, when once there were three.

He stayed till the end of the day, till Athol had seen Martin to his door and seen him safely inside and then closed his own door. Col knew there was nothing more to see after that. He climbed into the car and waited. Like he was catching his breath, like he was preparing himself to dive into the shock of cold water, like leaving was something hard.

He saw the woman from the hairdresser’s, Christine her name was, if the sign above the shop was to be believed. She was a bit unsteady on her feet and a man who was just as drunk was with her and they took the long way from one lamppost to the next, stopping to kiss in the centre of each pool of yellow light. And because they did not know they were seen, the man was touching her under her clothes and the woman made no protest and only laughed.

He waited till they were passed. Then Col reached into the glove compartment of his car. Folded into four was a piece of old newspaper. He carefully unfolded it and read what was printed there, even though it was too dark to really see the words.

I can see the sun going down

(This is the third last piece in this Port Brokeferry project... and a mystery visitor right at the close...)

ATHOL STUART SEES THAT EVERTHING IS JUST AS IT SHOULD BE

Athol Stuart saw to it that Berlie’s closed on time and that the people cleared from the green without incident. He kept an eye on Martin, too, and the lady he was talking with. Athol thought that maybe he recognised her, though he also knew she was a visitor to Port Brokeferry. Sometimes the young leave and later, when years are passed, they come back again to see if it is still here and still as they remember it. Maybe she was once young in Port Brokeferry, Athol Stuart thought.

The light was on in the police station. He figured that Grace was busy putting in an hour’s cleaning up after him. He never checked. He never needed to check. Some people you could count on and Grace was one of those people.

Athol Stuart walked the length of the street. Not in any hurry. There were people he knew and people he didn’t. More visitors had come in today. No trains on a Sunday, but some had come on the only bus and some had come by car. There were more parked cars on the street than usual. One had edged up onto the pavement, a red Ford Fiesta, and he thought about leaving a note to draw attention to the small infringement of the rules.

He noted the time on the Victoria Hotel clock. It was later than he’d thought. Already the street lights were blinking on, blinking yellow and orange. A man stood back from the lights. He was smoking. Athol did not know who he was or why he was not going somewhere. Athol said good evening to him, not to be welcoming but just to let him know he had been seen.

Athol Stuart saw Guthrie closing up and he asked how business had been. Guthrie said it had been a good day, but from the way that he said it Athol Stuart did not think that he meant what he said.

He stopped outside Mhairi’s Port Brokeferry Giftshop. He stopped to see Martin on the beach again, the picture of him. The window was altered, the things displayed in it different. Three smaller paintings hung where the other had been. ‘Sold already, sold over cheaply,’ Athol Stuart said, and he wondered what Martin would make of the picture being gone so soon.

He popped into ‘The Ship’. He did not intend to stay. He could see that his being there, in uniform, made a difference to some. They sat straighter in their chairs, lowered their voices so as not to draw attention, and looked over their drinks in his direction, to see what he was about, when all he was about was making sure that everything was as it should be.

He noted that Dodie Bredwell was not in his usual place again. Instead, Dodie sitting with Alice in a corner. Magnus was playing chess with Eileen, but they were moving the pieces according to their own rules and laughing and she was calling him cheat. And Lachlan Davie, already drunk, was with Christine again. He had his arm around her, supporting her, and she was nuzzling his neck, and Athol Stuart knew it was Sunday in ‘The Ship’.

Then back on the street again. And in the short time he’d been inside it had become dark outside. He walked back to the green. He tested the door of the police station and it was locked, as it should be. He checked that there were no lights on in old Tom’s and he saw Lillian busy in her kitchen, her curtains open so that she could make sure that Tom was alright – force of habit. Martin was petting the dogs outside the green trailer and making noises like a dove to them. Athol Stuart got him to his feet and they walked together to Martin’s door, and Martin told all about his day.

They were observed and did not know that they were. The same man that Athol had seen smoking earlier. He was more in the darkness than before, not seen this time but seeing. He watched Athol Stuart take Martin home. Watched the policeman wait for the light to go on in Martin’s house and for the door to shut. Then he waited until Athol had gone into his own house before he walked to his car parked on the street, a little up on the kerb.

He sat for a while without putting the key in the ignition. He sat just looking ahead of him. In the back of his car, under a grey cloth, was Mhairi's picture of Martin on the beach.

Shit!

(One of my favourite cartoon strips as a child was Oor Wullie and I can still see him smiling and sitting on an empty bucket, in my head I can... no shit! Ever nearer to the end of Port Brokeferry... and some stories reach some sort of end - as much as stories ever end.)

ST AUGUSTINE AND A BUCKET OF SHIT

Kelso had stepped into the church. It was not that he was thinking to pray. He did not believe in any of that, just as he did not believe in the palm readings that old May gave at the fair. She’d read his palm for free, said things he had heard her tell to others, that there was a girl in his life who was important and that the future was clearer and brighter. And she would be like the sun in his world, this girl who meant so much. Nothing about his being a father and a child between this girl and himself. Nothing about that or his thoughts all muddled. Storm-tossed is what it felt like in his head. All May had was just words for people to cling onto, and if they’d paid money to hear what old May had said, then those words took on a false importance for them.

Inside the church it was like an escape from everything. The air was cooler and still and there was the sense of being outside when you were in. Outside and alone, shut off from everyone and everything. ‘The peace that passeth human understanding.’ It was something he had heard when he was younger. A minister had come to the school and it was something he had said, standing tall on the stage at the front of the school hall. Kelso hadn’t thought he’d really been listening, but the words came back to him now.

Kelso crept to the far end of the church, feeling like he was trespassing, creeping like a thief. He sat in one of the wooden pews at the front and just sat, looking at the smallest movement of the coloured light across the floor and up the walls, and at the same time not really looking at all.

‘I sometimes just take the time to sit,’ said the minister. ‘It can help to get things straight in my head when I am troubled.’

Kelso had thought he was alone, but the voice of the minister did not startle him. He waited for the minister to speak again, expected that he would, that there’d be something about God and God listening and understanding and a confession of help wanted coaxed from him. They sat in quiet.

Then Kelso spoke. ‘It’s all just shit isn’t it?’ he said.

There was a quiet after his words. Time enough for the minister to consider his response.

‘I think St Augustine put it in just those words, something about life being a bucket of shit that we had to carry around with us always. The same for him as for everyone.’

Kelso was surprised at what the minister said. It wrong-footed him. Then he thought that maybe the minister had intended that it should.

‘What makes a man a saint if his life is a bucket of shit?’

Kelso expected that the minister would talk about God then, and the blessing of God, and what it is to pray, to really pray. Instead the minister just shrugged his shoulders.

‘Is that it? Is that all you’ve got? Nothing!’

‘What is it you are looking for?’ said the minister.

‘A way out. A way to go back to the start of things and not make the same mistakes.’

‘There was a girl I knew once. Before I became a minister. She was everything to me. And I thought it was the same for her. I thought we would last. That we could survive whatever the world threw at us. All Augustine’s shit.’ The minister laughed at that. ‘But clearly we didn’t last, otherwise she’d be here or I’d be there, wherever she is.’

Kelso did not get it. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

‘In here there is an escape of sorts. But it’s only temporary. You don’t want to stay in here. Cut off. Never seeing anyone else. You have to go out again, into the world. And you carry that bucket of shit with you and it never gets any lighter.’

Kelso hadn't come in for answers. He left without any. He did not turn towards Berlie's when he left the church. Instead he headed in the other direction, back along the road that had brought him into Port Brokeferry, and maybe he carried something heavy with him, and maybe it was, as Kelso'd said, and St Augustine had said, and the minister, too: maybe it was all just shit.

BWA

If a writer publishes a book that purports to educate others in the ways of deconstructing argument, you’d expect that writer to be very careful and clever about the arguments they hang up in the public domain. It all goes to credibility, don’t you think?

Yet, in a thinly veiled attack on The British Writers’ Award, one such writer recently made judgements based on comments 'read elsewhere' and jumped to big conclusions from these unverified comments. When some of the comments transpired to have little or no foundation in fact, this writer did not make appropriate apology or address the error. Instead this writer snipped and sniped at other perceived failings in the BWA.

This writer has some experience in the publishing industry, tells you so you know, and then makes bold declarations about what is possible and what impossible in publishing, but no satisfactory argument is given to persuade us of the truth of some of these pronouncements. Apparently a book cannot be edited adequately in the space of a month, it just cannot – I think it would be like a roomful of monkeys typing the complete works of Shakespeare in a morning.

This writer jumps from suspicions held to damning judgements. This writer performs all sorts of statistical manipulations of data that are crazy at best and at worst just fabulously wrong – mostly the manipulated data is wrong! The BWA states that they made little or no profit from last year’s awards competition, that what they did make from the entry fees collected funded the financial prize to the winner. This bold writer has them pocketing nearly a quarter of a million pounds.

I do not doubt this writer’s stated credentials, but I do question the writer’s arguments, we all should, and I do not accept that this writer is the absolute font of all wisdom on the subject of publishing. This writer is someone who has published a book which purports to be a handbook on how to construct intellectual argument, and how to punch holes in the arguments of others; I am a little surprised therefore at the weaknesses in the arguments of this writer.

Are You Looking?

(Here's another piece that brings us closer to the finish line of this Port Brokeferry project.)

EVERYONE’S LOOKING FOR SOMEONE

‘Have you seen Col?’

Berlie’s was open for the afternoon. They had to close before six-thirty, but a Sunday afternoon could be good business. Mad Martin had interrupted Wallace, who was himself asking after the whereabouts of someone. Wallace looked Mad Martin up and down before taking the time to answer the question he’d been asked.

‘I have not seen your Col. Or maybe I have, for how should I know? I do not know this Col. What does he look like?’

Mad Martin was confused for a moment. Like a cloud that passes quickly in front of the sun and the shadow changes everything for just the time that it takes to blink, so the confusion moved across Mad Martin’s face. Then:

‘He looks like Col.’

And Wallace laughed, like he’d been beaten in a game by a child. There was only sense in what the kilted man had said. And before Wallace could ask his next question, Mad Martin was onto someone else and asking if they had seen Col.

Evelyn and Morag were there, at Berlie’s. They’d gone for a drink again, as they had after work the day before. Morag was keeping an eye on Evelyn, making sure that she wasn’t about to throw herself at the first available young man. They were on the dodgems, sitting together in the one car and laughing together. Bran from The Silver Herring was there, too, and they were pretending to make space between them for him. Like an invitation it looked.

‘Where have you been all my life?’ Evelyn cried. And all the words seemed joined together she said them so fast.

It was the drink talking, Bran could see that, but he kept looking back over his shoulder, to see if it was something else, too. He saw the man he thought of as Berlie, skip between the cars, and lean in close to the two girls from ‘Christine Cuts Hair’ and take their money for their next shot.

‘I was wondering,’ said Wallace to Evelyn and Morag, ‘if you had maybe seen the boy, Kelso. He works here, and as you can see here he isn’t. Have you seen him at all?’

Evelyn said something about Kelso having crawled back under the rock he’d crawled out of and something about good riddance and how he was a bastard and some other things besides, all of them worse than the last.

Wallace thought he understood and he skipped quickly from their car to the next. Morag took Evelyn’s hand in hers and said something into her ear and their attention was back on Bran and where he had been all Evelyn’s life, and they were soon laughing again.

‘Have you see Col?’ said Mad Martin and this time he was asking a lady from the Victoria Hotel, the one he’d seen sitting in the dark of ‘The Bobbing Boat’ café with Guthrie. ‘Have you see Col?’ he said again.

Moira shook her head. ‘No Martin, I am sorry but I have not seen Col? Is he lost?’

And again the cloud of confusion passed briefly across his face.

‘I know you,’ Mad Martin said. ‘I know you from before.’

Moira smiled at Mad Martin. It was, she thought, good to be in a place where she was known and remembered. That was what home should be, she felt, and Martin was just the someone she'd been looking for this afternoon. 'And I know you, Martin,' she said. And the way that she said it was kind and soft so that Martin did not walk away from her. Not for the rest of the afternoon. And every little while he turned to her and asked again if she had seen Col. And every time Moira smiled and said again that she was sorry but she had not seen Col.

Sinnie and Callum and Doves

(Here's another PB piece, and I am fond of Sinnie as I am of Corinne, and Callum, too, even though some may have thought his looking through windows was a bit sinister at first... turns out he is as 'nice as ninepence'.)

DOVES ARE SO MUCH MORE RESPECTABLE THAN OWLS

‘I never know,’ said Sinnie, ‘about Sunday. I never can tell if it’s the start of the week or the end. On the seventh day He rested, it says, and so I think it should be the end. But from here we look forward so it feels like the start, too. Isn’t it so that the Jews treat Saturday as the day of rest? They call it the Sabbath and they do not do business on that day. And that being the case would make Sunday the first day of the new week. So you see how confusing it is?’

Callum wasn’t sure how they had got onto this subject. He’d dropped in with a granary loaf and had accepted Sinnie’s offer of a cup of tea. ‘The days fold into each other,’ he said. ‘My days do. That’s what I find. Especially at this time of the year, for I am up every morning the same in the summer, and the shop is open Sunday mornings just exactly as every other day. No rest for me. So the days, my days, fold one into another, like dough when it is kneaded, folded into itself.’

‘Precisely. And so it is that Sunday doesn’t feel like the end,’ said Sinnie. ‘Not to me and not to you. For me, today, it feels like a new start. Yes, that’s how it feels to me. And maybe that is all the explanation that is needed.’

It wasn’t quite what Callum had meant, but he said that he was glad that she felt that way and that he’d been worried, not seeing her in the shop.

Sinnie leaned forward in her chair, and she touched Callum’s arm. ‘You do a good job watching over us all, Callum. Yes, you do. None of us getting any younger and there’s the comfort of you watching over all of us in the street. That’s being a good neighbour.’

Callum drained his cup and set it back in its saucer on the table. Sinnie fetched her purse and offered to pay for the bread that he’d brought. He waved away the offer and said she could maybe treat herself to extra scones next time she was in the shop and that would be money in his till.

‘That’s funny,’ Sinnie said. ‘You saying that. For there has been an end to the dreams of owls and a new dream this morning. It is something of a relief, I can tell you. Do you see what I mean? How it feels like the start and not the end. And today I dreamed of doves, not flying like the owls, but strutting like old men in frock coats, only their coats were white, and they wore shoes with spats, and they were dipping their heads, like bowing, and pecking at breadcrumbs on the ground. And there was one flew to my gloved hand and I broke a scone into pieces for it to feed on. Do you see? So maybe I will treat myself, and the birds in my garden, too, and some extra scones added to my order, if you please. Callum, I can tell you this in confidence, but I am a lot happier with this new dream. Doves are so much more respectable than owls, don’t you think?’

Callum had not ever considered the ranking of birds according to respectability. But it was easier to agree, and so he nodded and said, 'Exactly so.' Then he got up to go. He thanked Sinnie for the tea and moved towards the door. He stopped, as if he was considering something. He wanted to say how he missed old Tom and how the old man's passing was like an end of sorts, and that being the case meant today felt like the start of something different. But in the end he said nothing, not wanting to dampen Sinnie's mood, said nothing except that he wished Sinnie a good afternoon, and left.

The last we'll hear of Corinne in PB

(As a child when walking to the shops I made up games to pass the time and the walking. I raced oncomers to landmarks between us, but I couldn't run, could only walk, and walking fast so my legs were wobbly. Of course, they didn't ever know my small victories, or my failures. I play those silly games still. Not walking now, but writing. I set myself a target this year: 30 competition hits. We are in December and I heard this week of my 29th: onto another waiting shortlist. Only one more result to come in for me in December, so we'll see. Here's more from the ending of PB - and I do like Corinne.)

THE SCHOOLGIRL CORINNE LOOKS FOR MONDAY-MONDAY

The day drags its feet. That’s how it seems, this long slow Sunday. No different from any other Sunday, except what she wrote in her book. About a boy called Munro and he took her hand in hers. And now it is an age till Monday comes, and she will see him again. And she wonders till then, all the long slow day, wonders if he will take her hand again.

She keeps the door to her bedroom closed. There is music playing in the room and she is reading from the book she took from the library. And she turns to a poem called ‘To A Child Dancing in the Wind’. She holds the book in her hand, her two arms raised, and she dances, there in the small space of her room, for it says ‘Dance there upon the shore’, the first thing that it says, and it’s like he is telling her to do what she does, this poet called William. And with the window wide and the air moving in her room and the sound of the sea, faintly, and the gulls crying somewhere, it is like she could be the child. ‘What need have you to care’ says the poet, ‘For wind or water’s roar’. And Corinne, her yellow hair flying behind her as she dances, knows that he does not mean wind and he does not mean water. It is something about the buffeting of life and the poet is old and has suffered rejection from a Maudlin woman. ‘And tumble out your hair,’ she reads, and she shakes her head and her hair. ‘That the salt drops have wet’ – and she thinks of tears then, in those ‘salt drops’, and she does not make sense of what she has read, not with those tears, but it matters not to her, for she knows poetry can be like that: one moment knowing and understanding and the next lost in the words on the page.

‘Being young you have not known

The fool’s triumph, nor yet

Love lost as soon as won.’

And she stops then, her dancing, and she is suddenly afraid, and it is something about what he has said, this sad man whose poetry book she stole from the library. And Corinne wonders if Munro will take her hand on Monday, if he ever will again. And she recalls that Mr Bredwell’s name for the boy is Monday-Monday, and Munro does not know why, no one knows, and maybe there is no reason. Except there is a song that she has heard. Not a new song. And the first line is ‘Monday Monday, so good to me’ and that lifts her for a moment, and then she thinks that there’s another line in it, the old song, something about not knowing if he ‘would still be here with me’.

But Corinne is being silly with such thoughts, and she knows that she is. The last two lines of the poem on the page in front of her say as much:

‘What need have you to dread

The monstrous crying of wind?’

And there is no reason, for Munro took her hand in his, and it was enough. That's what she wrote in her book. And the day is long, this slow dragging Sunday, and Corinne looks for Monday-Monday and knows it will be good to her when it come. And then she is dancing again and her hair tossing and she has dropped the book of poems on the floor of her room.

Another visit to PB - not many left!

(Been busy clearing my head of stories this week, getting them down on paper. Been tied up with so many projects this past six months that it is good to be exploring other stories that just stand by themselves and are not part of anything bigger. That feels good. Here's another Port Brokeferry piece.)

BLAIR DOESN’T DO DREAMS

Everyone in Port Brokeferry gets something through the mail. And Blair delivers them all. Postcards, letters, birthday cards and parcels, bills and circulars. Not on Sundays, of course, or on post office holidays. But everyone at sometime has something delivered. From one end of the village to the other; from the green at the last reach one way to as far out the other as Jess’s Ship and Pamela with her small gifts for him when she has been gone. There’s even mail for Berlie’s when it’s here, two weeks each year, and he hands those letters and small packets and filled orders for parts and bulbs, to the man called Wallace who is in charge. Blair even delivers to himself. Not posting them through his own door, that would be odd. But laying the new mail on the edge of his kitchen table until he has made himself tea and can sit with time to read what has been delivered.

Everyone in Port Brokeferry, except one. And Blair does not deliver anything to her, never has, for it is her job to sort through the mail and so anything that is for her she sets aside and does not slip into his postbag.

Blair does not always remember his dreams. Is usually in too much of a rush to get into the day and to collect the new mail that is to be delivered, door to every door. He thinks he maybe doesn’t do dreams. Would say as much if you asked him. ‘Not like Sinnie,’ he’d say. ‘Sinnie and her dreams all clear pictures and she recalls every word spoken and the colours and the smells.’ No, Blair would tell you, he does not dream.

Except he does. He wakes on Sundays and holidays and he has slept later than usual. And he lies half in sleep and half awake, and he thinks about the day ahead and the different it will be from all his other days. And he remembers his dreams then, bits of them. Only he does not believe they are dreams. Thoughts are what they are, he thinks. Fanciful thoughts on what could be and what isn’t.

But in truth they are snatches of things Blair has dreamed. And in one of his dreams he is knocking on Izzy’s door and handing her a letter. He pictures her standing with one hand outstretched, waiting for the letter he has taken from out of his postbag. And she says she has a secret and she asks him if he wants to know.

Blair holds out the letter for her to take. He shakes his head. He knows secrets about all the people in Port Brokeferry. He knows things he wishes he didn’t. He knows the minister loved a girl with blond hair before he came to the church and the minister sees that girl in Corinne Downs and he fights against what he sees. He knows that Callum looks in through windows when people are sleeping, and that he spends the longest time looking in on Margaret, his wife, turning and turning in her dreams. And he knows that Grace has waited for the boy called Kelso, a whole year she has waited, and he knows why that is.

‘It is a secret about me,’ says Izzy. In the dream, that’s what she says. ‘It is a good secret.’

And Blair knows about the order Izzy made, for a bottle of German cologne, and he knows about Johannes and Izzy’s mother and the years of postcards from a place called Koln and small parcels that stopped coming.

And Blair says he does not want to know the secret that Izzy wants to tell him. Instead he hands her the letter and something else.

And beside his bed, in the waking real world, is a small bottle of perfume that Pamela gave him, one of her small gifts to him, a bottle shaped like a cresting wave in frosted glass. She gets lots of free samples and she thought maybe Blair could gift this bottle to a girl he likes. And in the dream he hands it to Izzy, wrapped up like the small parcels that used to come for Izzy's mother. But only in the dream and in the part of the dream that the waking Blair does not remember. So the bottle sits by his bed, undelivered.