WORDS IN WATCHET

Posted on February 19, 2026 by fordhollow74

This weekend – 21st and 22nd February – the ‘Words in Watchet’ Literary Festival takes place and in particular the opportunity it represents for a number of Local Writers to display their books to visitors for discussion and hopefully to make sales at bargain prices.

You’ll find the Local Writers at the Phoenix Centre, 5, Harbour Road. close by the wonderful Watchet Harbour, long established in Bristol Channel trading, now providing fishing, tourest and Marina berths.

And years ago did Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner set sale from this port?

I will be bringing my novels and short story collection -PEBBLES – to Watchet;

REQUIEM FOR PRIVATE HUGHES

BIRCHLAND HALL

PUFFBALL PARADOX

and my latest novel, published in December 2025,

THE REGISTER OF JOE’S TREES,

an Anglo-American tale set over the years 1943 to 2003, connecting Bramlesham, Suffolk, UK with Rapid City, South Dakota, USA.

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THE REGISTER OF JOE’S TREES.

Posted on February 9, 2026 by fordhollow74

The last days of 2025 saw the self-publication of my 4th novel with the title in the headline above.

The story of the novel has been with me over many years. The scope of the novel tells of Alice Hallet’s wartime teenage affair with an American Airman, Joseph Cornelius Carew, stationed at a UK airbase far from his South Dakota, USA, home. The airbase is close by Alice’s home village of Bramlesham, Suffolk. Joe serves as aircrew on regular daylight B-17 Flying Fortress missions over nazi Europe. In October 1943, Joe’s bomber, limping home, badly shot up, is lost, with all crew, ditching in the North Sea.

Alice’s harsh father left home years ago; her mother, Helen, who disliked Joe, was glad he was out of the way. Alice runs away from home seeking refuge in Battersea, London, at the home of Gertrude Denley, the sister of Bramlesham’s serving vicar, Reverend Denley. Alice has got to know Miss Denley on her gregular summer visits to stay with her brother, the Vicar.

When Alice at last finds her way to Miss Denley’s Battersea house she is taken in, but told she must return home. Alice refuses, finding a job at a workshop sewing British uniforms. In May 1944, Alice gives birth to Joe’s daughter, Jojo. Later in 1944, a V1 flying bomb, a doodle bug, falls on Battersea close to Jojo’s babyminder’s house. Jojo is amongst the many missing. With no news and little hope, Alice runs away again, this time joining the ATS and becomes an Army driver chauffeuring senior officers all over the country.

After being unfairly dismissed from the ATS, Alice having retaliated against an officer’s unprovoked sexual attack, supported by Miss Denley, Alice finds work in The Civil Service.

As the years pass Alice wild-plants tree saplings in random places, recording the location and tree species of her plantings, creating her Register of Joe’s Trees in memory of her lover Joiseph Carew and his place amongst the lost wartime American servicemen

Over many years Alice and Gertrude Denley become close friends; Alice caring for Gertrude in her old age. As Gertrude’s sole heir, Alice can retire from work and reconciles with her mother, Helen.

As the years pass and Alice settles into her extended childhood home – Farthings Cottage, Bramlesham – things happen that bring order and happiness into Alice’s later life,

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WORDS IN WATCHET LITERARY FESTIVAL

Posted on February 17, 2025 by fordhollow74

21st to 23rd February 2025. That is the time to visit Watchet, the legendary harbour town of Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner.

Tickets available from: http://www.wordsinwatchet.com

A packed programme of West Country talent. Local authors will be there to offer their books for sale and I will be there with my novels and short stories.

PEBBLES, an anthology of 23 short stories, REQUIEM FOR PRIVATE HUGHES, a novel set in West Somerset, BIRCHLAND HALL, a novel set in West Yorkshire and PUFFBALL PARADOX, a novel set on Exmoor.

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PUFFBALL PARADOX

Posted on February 23, 2024 by fordhollow74

This is my third novel, due to be self-published in March 2024.

The last weeks of 2007 are life-changing for Victoria and Franklyn. Victoria is sent on a year-long work assignment in New York. Franklyn is made redundant from his employer of 18 years.

Finding no employment in London, Franklyn is tasked with being the caretaker of a dilapidated woodland cottage on Exmoor, inherited from a great-aunt by a friend of a friend met in a pub. His sole companion on Exmoor is Angus, the late owner’s dog. Weeks into his task, Franklyn discovers an extraordinary puffball growing fast in the woodland.

Early in 2009, Victoria and Franklyn are reunited. He cannot make himself tell Victoria of the horrific puffball events on Exmoor in 2008. She is promoted to set up and run a London-based Anglo-American company.

The couple’s lives in London and on Exmoor combine over the next few years. Victoria’s company thrives, Franklyn builds a career as a landscape artist, they marry, their son Ivan is born and Angus remains an essential part of their family.

Then the puffballs take their revenge.

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CANNA

Posted on November 2, 2022 by fordhollow74

Last week we said goodbye to our dog and friend of the last few years, CANNA. She was a fortnight short of her fourteenth birthday, the fifth dog we have owned since our first in 1971.

KATIE MALACCA, a Dalmatian, bred in Singapore, came home to the UK aboard one of the company’s ships, Bencruachan. We put her aboard in Singapore at Easter 1973 to travel via Penang and South Africa (the Suez Canal was closed at the time). Bencruachan was hit and badly damaged by a freak wave off Durban where Katie spent a few weeks before being carried on to London and to quarantine kennels in Somerset. She was released in the week before Christmas. In the Spring of 1974, she joined us in Scotland. She never did like water after her adventure.

After Katie we welcomed GUINNESS, the first of our Black Labradors. She came to us with a crumpled ear. She traveled with us on holidays to Jura and Colonsay in the Western Isles and on many long walks in the Trossachs. She looked after us for many years until we moved back to Somerset. She now lies under a full-grown cherry tree, a tree that came with us as a shoot grown in our Scottish Garden.

Only weeks went by before two more black labs, JURA and BARRA, came to live with us. We went to their breeder to buy one puppy. They said they had a canceled order. We came away with the siblings. Together they were adventurous, often going walkabout, fortunately never getting into serious trouble. Barra outlived her sister by a few years.

After a pause, CANNA came to live with us, not a black lab, but a golden lab. She never went far from home, yet we walked many miles round our fields and woodland together. Now the house is very empty without her.

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THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

Posted on March 24, 2022 by fordhollow74

Last night I watched the International Space Station fly over. Its orbit had taken it over South America, crossing the Equator, and the Atlantic to overfly the West of England, seemingly directly over where I stood, watching, the Sun’s bright reflection outshining all the stars visible on so clear a night.

Aboard ISS are both American and Russian space people able to look down as they tracked over Europe until to the West Country eye the reflection of the Sun’s light faded as the ISS overflew Poland. On they passed over the lethal skies of the sovereign state of Ukraine, the land laid waste over the past four weeks by the vile hand of the Russian dictator Putin, outdoing the C20th excesses of Stalin. As they look down from their height above the world’s skies, do the space people debate or only stare and weep?

ISS’s track flew on to cross India where political self-interest has failed to condemn the awful excess of Russian war-mongering. In Ukraine this last week a ninety-five-year-old survivor of the Buchenwald WW2 concentration camp was shot dead. Golda Meir, the fourth Prime Minister of Israel was born in Kyiv, the city that was long established when Moscow was little more than a village.

The year 2022 will forever be in the books of history as a notorious and unforgivable year.

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HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY?

Posted on March 2, 2022 by fordhollow74

Until this year my knowledge of the Republic of Ukraine has been minimal. I knew little of the country’s geography and even less of its history. Over recent years there have been increasing press and broadcast reports and now in 2022 it is the world’s headline, it is awful and evil.

After the Twentieth Century with two World Wars and many subsequent regional conflicts, it is shaming that the all-out Stalinist devastation that the Kremlin is now unleashing on Ukraine can happen with only the bravery of the Ukrainians standing in defence.

Today I have been looking at the history of Ukraine, it is a long and awful tale of repression, serfdom and yet triumphs against the odds. Kyiv was an important town before Moscow was significant, yet Ukrainian history is full of tragedy. The Scythians were in those lands seven centuries before Christ, the Greeks came and the Slavs settled long before the Vikings came, Oleg capturing Kyiv in the Ninth Century A.D. Later the Mongols – Ghengis Khan’s grandson – invaded.

Later it was the Polish/Lithuanian empire that wielded power over the ever-changing boundaries of Ukrainian lands. The Turks came until the Cossacks – (Freemen) – rebelled before Tzarist Russia and Austria claimed their lands.

In 1917 there was all too brief independence before it was subsumed into the USSR. Stalin collectivized peasant agriculture, in 1932/33 there was famine when millions, mostly in Ukraine, died. Stalin’s purges then predated the Nazi onslaught with millions, mostly Jewish, murdered. Stalin,’s return led to reprisals assuming the people were disloyal.

In more recent history with the ending of the USSR, Ukraine moved closer to Europe as have other states, but there was hesitation and the opportunity was not taken. How wrong that looks today with the Stalinist Kremlin dictatorship. The utter cruelty of current events is the measure of man’s cruelty to man. It exceeds the worst of the animal kingdom.

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DUDLEY AND EUNICE, SUCH A SWEET COUPLE.

Posted on February 24, 2022 by fordhollow74

They arrived on the charabanc for their seaside break at the Great Grand Hotel in Weston-super-Mare, down from the Midlands. Two nights bed and breakfast, take the sea air, have a good break then home again.

But something must have upset them. Was it their son turning up, Franklin? He’s a disruptive sort. Whatever it was they were in a right state when it came to be time to leave and go back home.

My, you would have thought witchcraft was at work, why the seas rose up, the winds howled, there were few trees left standing. Dudley was at it first and he was furious, but when it came to be Eunice’s turn never have I seen such fury, buildings trembled, rivers broke their banks and the sea roared.

Let’s hope Dudley and Eunice stay away and as for Franklin, we don’t want to see him again.

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IS THERE AN END IN SIGHT?

Posted on January 31, 2022 by fordhollow74

Rather shocked to see it is again ten months since I wrote in Chip’s Chatter. I must return to my original intention of monthly pieces now, surely, that the pandemic is waning.

Progress with my work in progress has also slipped but has picked up speed again for 2022. First, I am adapting my short story – PUFFBALL published in 2019 in the Exeter Authors Association anthology ‘Tales of Deepest Darkest Devon’ – into a novel. At first blink, this might be a straightforward task, but the skills of short stories and novels are very different. It is coming together, but the novel will not be ready until the year-end. The working title is EXMOOR PUFFBALL, but the mystery evolves around similar giant puffballs growing on Exmoor and in the mountains close by Kyoto in Japan.

Second, my other novel now in working draft is THE REGISTER OF JOE’S TREES. This spans the decades from wartime 1940s into the 2000s. It tells the story of Alice Hallet’s teenage affair with a US airman, Joe, whose B17 is lost on a 1943 bombing raid to her linking with his US family in her old age. Joe’s grandson comes looking for the Suffolk airbase where his grandfather was stationed.

The first signs of spring are here. The days are getting longer and the snowdrops are blooming.

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CATCHING UP

Posted on April 14, 2021 by fordhollow74

You would have thought that the last few lockdown months would have been ideal for posting on the website and making progress on my several writing projects. Not a bit of it. I see it is ten months since I last posted on Chip’s Chatter and I have to admit progress on my work-in-progress novel writing has been slow.

What I have been doing is working on short stories and submitting to competitions and magazines. As ever there will be a wait of weeks or months before there is any development on that front. Now to progress my main novel in progress – The Register of Joe’s tTrees.

I have been reading short stories on Facebook, the Exeter Authors Association Coffee Time Short Stories on many Thursday mornings through the winter. My current reading is from my Fable – THE BATTLE OF SLOTTERHAM HALL, AD 1929 – when the Birds confront the Guns.

Good news today here – at one thousand feet above sea level in the Exmoor National Park – the first Swallow has returned from its Africa and back migration. The first Chiff Chaff was here three weeks ago, but has moved on. Now waiting for our House Martins who should be here by the end of the month, only hope the freezing nights will be over by then. They have work to do. The nests they built last summer have not survived the winter, smashing to the ground when winter birds try to press into them for nighttime roosting places. Wrens in particular creep in, but when too many try to get in the nest is soon broken. The artificial nests are waiting the Martins’ return.

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