The House in the Hills

A very happy New Year to everyone.
Let's hope 2022 sees an end to covid and a start to a virus-free year!

Back in June I said I didn't expect to leave the house here that I moved to in 1997. How wrong I was!

Last Friday I moved in with my best friend, who lived four doors away from me. I'm still in the throes of moving what I want to take and dumping a lot of stuff - talk about being ruthless!

Her house mate died in early November. The changes that made to our lives...

We've even got plans made for what happens when one of us dies. This house is too big for one; the one I was in is too small for two unless they're married. No matter how good friends you are with someone, you need some privacy. A married couple gives up on privacy when they marry. Yes, I know, that's cynical!

Did you often read for fun when you were a kid?

All the time.

There were no other kids my age lived anywhere near me - and in any case my mother didn't let me go outside to play - we lived on a street that was very busy. There weren't many cars during the war, but there were four bus routes that passed the tenement where I lived. And anyway, what can you play at in the street, especially a busy one? So reading was my preferred occupation.

I was about ten when I got my first library card. I don't remember just how old I was when I began reading non-fiction as well as fiction, but I couldn't have been more than twelve.

So this is Hallowe'en. A time for ghoulies and ghosties and things that go bump in the night. More or less regarded as a time for kids to have fun.

Looking back... I grew up during the war. And I was the only child in the tenement where we lived - on a street that, because of four bus routes, was pretty busy even with the reduced number of cars running because of petrol rationing. I wasn't allowed to go out - I played by myself in the house or (rarely) on the stairs.

I can remember ducking for apples - and wondering why. There were apples in the fruit dish - why put one in water and make you try to fish it out with your mouth? (I still don't understand the rationale behind it.) But that was about it. After the war, it was much the same. Though pretty well every year a group of kids from somewhere near would come to the door - "Want any guisers?" and my parents always said "No, thank you." After I started teaching, one year one of my pupils told me that he'd been out guising and how much money the group of them had got. By then I knew what he was talking about without understanding why.

When I was thirty, we moved from the town to a village about a mile outside it, where my father had grown up. We still did nothing for Hallowe'en, but my parents did allow the guisers to come in - "In a rural area like this, you do because you know the families," my father said. The routine was, they got a bar of chocolate or something each, and one acted as banker and took money which was then - in our area at least - given to charity.

When I moved here - no children. And while there are some young families now, they don't seem to come guising (and of course this year that's a no-no because of covid).

So basically - I've never understood why anyone would 'celebrate' Hallowe'en.

For the non-Scots - we don't do 'trick or treat'. 'Guising' means going around dressed up, with each child in the group having a party piece - a song a poem, a few jokes - they come in, do their
piece, then get their 'reward'. It's possible that today's Scots kids do do 'trick or treat', but that sounds to me more like a form of blackmail than guising.

Indoors, it's not cold. I'm wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt and not really feeling the need to put on another layer with longer sleeves. But a couple of days ago I needed a fan to keep me from sweating, and I'm certainly not sweating today. Just - basically - comfortably warm.

But outside... quite chilly. First thing this morning the trees were blowing wildly in the wind (the back road was sheltered from the worst of the wind, so I did manage to give Tina a walk, albeit a little shorter than usual). It has now (nearing mid-day) eased off quite a bit, but the rain is making its presence felt. Tina wanted out a few minutes ago - it didn't take her long to come back in! Basically, outside, it's a very cool autumn day. A cool autumn day - and we're only a week into August!

In your own space, set some goals for the coming year.

My one aim for this year isn't a fannish one; it's quite simply to do more housework.

I've never been over-keen on doing housework, and when I had two cataract surgeries last year I was told the usual - no bending (crouch to pick things up) no heavy lifting - and no hoovering. I've taken that last really too seriously, especially since the second surgery, but today I got out the vacuum and gave the house floor a birthday. I plan to do that at least once a week from now on.

Title: Mrs Danbush's Tree
Author: Bluewolf
Category: Gen
Word Count: 906

It was, Blair decided years later, after he had started studying anthropology, a rite of passage. The equivalent of the often painful and usually dangerous 'rite of manhood' boys of hunter-gatherer tribes had to undertake when they hit puberty, if they were to be considered a man of the tribe.

Although there was no 'age of puberty' taken into consideration by the boys of Fort Worth. As soon as the local boys (that was, the ones living in the fairly lengthy cul-de-sac where his uncle lived) were allowed to play outside, go outside their gardens unsupervised, the older ones expected them to submit to 'their' version of being one of them. Some were quite young - at least one was at least three years younger than Blair, sent out in the 'care' of an older brother whose first duty, as far as Blair could see, had been to take the younger boy to the overgrown garden where one big tree grew... and tell him to climb it.

The older boys weren't totally unreasonable about it. They did understand that for some of the younger, aka smaller, boys the tree would be quite difficult to climb, and if someone failed on his first attempt - or even his tenth - it didn't mean he was automatically barred from ever being accepted. He just wasn't allowed to join in the games the older boys played in the sparsely-vehicled street until he had climbed the tree.

Even at seven Blair realized that the girls probably had their own ritual, based on something in the part of the street where they played, but boys and girls never mixed. Not until they were old enough to stop spending their time playing with their friends. The boys played nearer the main street; the girls played close to the upper end of the cul-de-sac.

Uncle David had sent Blair out with his cousin Robert; and Robert had taken him to the tree, quietly explaining that until he could climb it he would just have to sit and watch the other boys playing.

Blair looked at the tree. The bottom six or seven feet had no branches - not even the mini stubs where branches had been removed. After that, however, the branches were plentiful, although some looked too thin to bear anyone's weight.

Yes, it was that bottom bit that provided most difficulty...

Blair grinned mentally. His time spent on one of the Pacific islands would be of considerable benefit to him; he knew how the natives of that island climbed the long branchless trunks of the coconut palms; he had even been taught how it was done. He reached forward and began to climb, half aware that he was being watched, open-mouthed, by the other boys. He reached the lowest branches and transferred his weight to one, then climbed on.

The one thing he hadn't been told was how high he should go, but finally he decided that the branches were getting just too thin to hold his weight. He started to climb down... and a branch broke under one foot. He struggled to remain in the tree, but he was unable to get a firm grasp on another branch, and he fell. The branches broke his fall a little as he dropped through them, but there was nothing to support him for the final six feet and he hit the ground with a thump that left him breathless.

Robert reached him first. "Blair! Are you all right?"

Blair tried to push himself into a sitting position, and gasped at the pain that stabbed his arm. "My arm... " he gasped.

The two oldest boys glanced at each other. "We'll help you take him home," one of them told Robert. It was clear that both were somewhat shaken and Blair had the feeling that he was the first boy to have been hurt.

"Story is... I was running, tripped and fell," he said. "No need to tell Uncle David I fell out of a tree."

"You went higher than anyone else ever has," Roy Brookes said quietly. "You proved yourself... and if you're willing to keep quiet about the tree... "

"The grown-ups don't need to know the truth," Blair said as they carefully helped him up. "Just warn anyone else who climbs it not to go too high."

Uncle David took Blair to the hospital, where they confirmed what he already suspected; Blair had broken his arm.

He went out and watched the other boys playing until the cast was removed, and then found himself welcomed into the group. Even though he'd fallen, he had successfully climbed Mrs Danbush's tree.

Blair stayed in Fort Worth for another year, before his mother collected him and took him off on another trip around some of the more exotic parts of the world.

He would, he knew, miss the acceptance he had been given by the other boys - he had no idea if Naomi would ask Uncle David to give him a temporary home again. The one thing he did know was that he would soon have to spend some serious time in school to gain the qualifications he would need to go to university.

But that, for the moment, didn't concern him. He was traveling again with his foot-loose mother, and although he missed his uncle, aunt and cousins, and the local boys who had become his friends, he was looking forward to seeing some more of the world.

In your own space, talk about your Happy Place—the things that give you joy, calms you or keeps you sane.


I'm a little late coming to this - it's actually the 2nd now, my time - but... Almost anywhere in the Scottish hills, but in particular the hill called Schiehallion - the Faery Hill. I fell in love with it when I was about 8, when I saw it (fully fifty miles away) from the Law, the hill in the centre of Dundee where I lived at the time... I've climbed it three times, saw my first Brocken Spectre there one of those times... and (slightly morbid) I've left instructions that when I die my ashes are to be scattered there. So I'll be there for ever.

In your own space, write about a moment in fandom that meant a lot to you.

Basically - the first convention I ever attended. I was totally new into fandom - I'd always thought 'fandom' meant teenage crushes on pop stars, something that had totally passed me by; I only really found out about it by sheer chance; a three line paragraph in our Sunday paper saying that this woman in Leicester was running a Star Trek convention. I wrote her, fregistered for the con and volunteered to steward because I was going knowing nobody and reckoned it would be a quick way to get to know a few people.

Little did I realise that I'd meet the woman who became one of my two best friends there, and that it would plunge me into a life of active fandom that has lasted ever since. I've only been involved in three fandoms over the years - Trek, The Sentinel, and marginally The Professionals, but I have a lot of online friends courtesy of those fandoms.

Without fandom, I'm not sure what course my life would have taken. I wouldn't be living where I am. I certainly wouldn't be sitting here typing this. I wouldn't even have a computer so I wouldn't have 370+ stories posted to AO3. I might have a lot of stories written, but nobody else would ever have seen them.

So Jenny - thank you for running that long-ago con that changed my life so much for the better.

Not the sort of thing I usually think of doing, but... I've put the first three days together; not trying day 4.( Read more... )