Hawkesbury Parish News - Debbie Young's Writing Life

Weathering Storms

Posted on March 25, 2020 by Debbie Young

Every month, I write a column for our local community magazine, the Hawkesbury Parish News. The copy deadline is the middle of the month prior to the cover date. After having spent much of today in my garden enjoying balmy spring sunshine and spring flowers, it seems odd to recall the stormy weather that had come to seem the norm when I was writing my March column, mid-February, which I’m sharing below.

Image by @valentinmuellerandalanmueller via unsplash.com

With Storm Dennis raging outside my study window, I decided to research the naming of storms. The Met Office started this practice just five years ago to make it easier for the media to talk about storms, and so to raise awareness of the dangers they might bring.

A storm is given a human name if it is likely to trigger an amber or red weather warning for wind, rain or snow. A list of 26 named storms is announced at the start of each year, one for each letter of the alphabet. Their names are picked from suggestions submitted by the general public to represent the nation’s cultural mix – hence the likes of Asian Samir and Gaelic Roisin, alongside the solidly English Ellen. The alphabetical list alternates between male and female names. It’s probably only a matter of time before there’s a gender-neutral Robin or Vivan, but Stormy McStormface is a non-starter.

The appearance of Storm Willow in the 2020 list surprised me. I’d always thought of Willow as a good name for a cat, as in Pussy Willow, and it’s currently #23 in the cat name charts. But it’s now also in the top ten for baby girls born in 2020. Who knew? It’s still not a name I’d associate with a scary storm.

But then nor is Dennis, even though psychologists claim that unconscious bias makes us most fear storms with male names. The name Dennis makes me picture a genial old man sitting by the fire with pipe and slippers doing the newspaper crossword. The trees in my garden currently being buffeted about by Storm Dennis beg to differ.

Casting my eye down the list of names for the rest of 2020, there is one that leaps out as easily the most ominous. I can’t help wondering whether the Met Office really thought this particular choice through. In the meantime, look out for Storm Noah, folks – and better start building that ark…

Cover of All Part of the Charm — Available as an ebook and in paperback

If you enjoy reading my entries for the Hawkesbury Parish News, you may like to know I have published a collection of my columns from the 2010-2015 issues as an ebook and paperback.

Click here to buy the ebook on the ereader of your choice.

Click here to order the paperback from Amazon.

Or order from your local bookshop, quoting ISBN 978-1911223023.

photo of snowdrops in the churchyard at Slad

Family, Personal life, Writing

A Trick of the Light

Posted on February 11, 2020February 11, 2020 by Debbie Young

photo of sunset behind leafless trees — Sunset on Starveall Lane, one of the single-track roads that leads into Hawkesbury Upton

Every month, I write a topical column for the Hawkesbury Parish News, the local magazine run by an apparently tireless team of volunteers, for the benefit of everyone within our local community. What could be more topical for an English village in the middle of winter than a heartfelt longing for signs of spring?

Yesterday mid-morning, in a brief interlude between torrential downpours, there was a clear, fresh quality to the daylight in my back garden. If I were an artist, I would have been reaching for my paints, eager to capture the arrival of spring. Yet the calendar told me winter would last two more months.

I welcomed the arrival of this blackbird every morning last week as it worked its way through old apples left over from last autumn

Unlike my husband, I don’t always trust supposedly scientific evidence. Our bathroom scales are another case in point. Bringing them into the bedroom to weigh himself last week, he was startled to find he’d lost ten kilos. “Put them back in their usual place and try again,” I advised.

Sure enough, when returned to the bare boards of the bathroom floor, the scales showed his usual weight. Those ten kilos were never lost – they were just temporarily mislaid. Like his car keys and his phone, which go missing several times a week, I knew they’d turn up eventually.

Weight is in any case relative and not worth getting worked up about. At my health MOT at the GP surgery last week, the nurse congratulated me: “Well done, you’ve lost five pounds since this time last year.”

Taking the compliment with good grace, I chose not to confess that I’d actually lost a stone – and then regained nine pounds.

But I’ll store up my husband’s experience for future reference. Then when I really want to lose weight and keep it off, I’ll just put the scales on the bedroom carpet.

And In Case You’re Impatient for Summer…

A Free Summer Read!

A fun story set in high summer in a classic English village – first in a series of five novels (book six due out at the end of February!)

If these signs of spring aren’t enough to lift your spirits, here’s a chance to download a free ebook of my novel set in high summer, Best Murder in Show. For a limited time only, the ebook edition is available to download free of charge from all good ebook retailers (Kindle, Kobo, Apple, etc).

Just click this link to download your copy in the format of your choice.

Why am I giving it away? I’m hoping readers will get hooked and go on to buy the rest of the series – especially as book six in the series, Murder Your Darlings, is due out at the end of February!

Fortunately, it costs me nothing to give away an ebook as the file is a digital download, with no print or delivery costs. I just wish I could do the same with paperbacks!

More news about Murder Your Darlings soon…

Writing

The Joy of Serendipity

Posted on January 28, 2020January 25, 2020 by Debbie Young

In my column for the January 2020 issue of the Hawkesbury Parish News, which I wrote in the wake of the General Election, I talked about the fun of discovering pleasant surprises as we go about our daily lives.

photo of Alice in Wonderland scarecrown — My Alice in Wonderland scarecrow in our village trail last autumn

There’s a comforting flipside to the old adage that “whoever you vote for, the government always gets in”. That is, whatever government gets in, the nation it represents will still be filled with individual human beings who think for themselves and who are capable of daily acts of kindness.

No politicians can stop us being generous and considerate to those around us.

Kindness costs nothing and cannot be taxed. Small gestures such as a smile and a cheery ‘hello’ in passing (we’re very good at that in this parish), or holding a door open for the person behind you, or helping a stranger carry their shopping to the car, can make a real difference to someone who is sad, lonely, or having a bad day. Such things also lift the spirits of the giver.

Towards the end of 2019, I was impressed by a few imaginative schemes for spreading smiles to passers-by:

A young woman who crocheted dozens of flowers and leaves them in public places with a note inviting finders to be keepers (see full news story here)
A knitting group in Caerleon which created “hats” for local pillar boxes, each decorated with a fun scene such as a skiing penguins and a full Christmas dinner (full news story here)
Members of an Essex Baptist church who hid around their local community a thousand pebbles painted to resemble a swaddled baby Jesus (full news story here)

Who could fail to be cheered by encountering any of these?

Of course, such schemes are not new. In our parish, the Hawkesbury Rocks initiative has been encouraging us to hide painted pebbles for a while, and the annual Scarecrow Trail is a delight. But in the uncertain early days of a new government, these examples of the generosity and wit of the general British public provide a heartening start to the new year.

In 2020, I wish you happiest of years, full of kindness, smiles and pleasant surprises.

cover of first book in Cambridge Latin series showing Amazon bestseller orange flag

Personal life, Reading, Writing

Latin is a Language (Not Quite as Dead as Can Be)

Posted on December 3, 2019December 11, 2019 by Debbie Young

In my column for the December issue of the Hawkesbury Parish News, I shared the new discovery that’s helping me to learn Latin: Duolingo

For a couple of years at secondary school, I studied Latin using what was then considered a revolutionary new system.

The Cambridge Latin Course tried hard to make learning fun and Latin funky. The first year’s course book had a bright orange cover – very right-on in the 1970s, when I chose to paint my bedroom walls bright orange too.

The course revolved around the story of a real-life family, headed by Lucus Caecilius Iucundus, a rich banker, living in Pompeii just before the devastating eruption of Vesuvius.

Call me suggestible, but Lucus Caecilius Iucundus and his family came to seem very real to me, and I cared about them.

When I changed schools at the age of 14, to my regret Latin was no longer an option.

Now, decades later, I’m making up for lost time with a very 21^st century route to fluency: a free app called Duolingo. With an estimated three million users globally, Duolingo aims to please its students wherever they are in the world. Thus I find myself translating surreal conversations featuring New York, Philadelphia, Boston and California, none of which existed when Latin was a living language.

screenshot of Duolingo's Twitter home page — Duoloingo’s Twitter home page indicates its popularity

Having always wondered what happened to Caecilius and family, I decided to investigate. To my surprise, our experimental texts have since become a classic teaching method, celebrating 50 years in print. The particular book I used, albeit now published with a less startling coloured cover, is currently Amazon’s #1 bestseller in Latin.

Even more surprising is that Caecilius and family have since featured in an episode of Dr Who, which my daughter kindly found me on Netflix. Their adventure opens just as Vesuvius is making ominous noises, portentous of imminent eruption and mass destruction. What becomes of my chum Caecilius? You’ll have to watch it to find out. (Here’s the link to its IMDB page: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1173173/)

But I have one remaining question: had I had been able to persevere with my Latin studies, would Dr Who have popped up in the A Level textbook? Now that would have made Latin cool.

PS Added Duolingo fun can be found on this alternative Twitter account: @shitsduosays, which highlights the more bizarre and surreal phrases it teaches you. Here are a few screenshots to whet your appetite:

The side of the £20 note showing Turner and his painting of The Fighting Temeraire

Events, Personal life

Coining It – Some Thoughts about Commemorative British Coins and Pound Notes

Posted on November 20, 2019 by Debbie Young

Sherlock Holmes 50p coin — My latest collectible 50p coin features Sherlock Holmes

My column for the November 2019 issue of Hawkesbury Parish News was sparked by reading an article in the paper about the new design for the British sterling £20 note, which will be launched into circulation on the pleasingly appropriate date of 20/2/2020.

I bet I’m not the only one in the parish stealthily collecting commemorative British coins.

Every time I pay by cash, I check my change for these tiny works of art in which I take a childlike pleasure. My latest acquisition is a Sherlock Holmes 50p, an odd bedfellow for Paddington Bear, Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny in my collection, but a very welcome one.

array of Beatrix Potter, Paddington Bear and Sherlock Holmes 50p coins — Spot the odd one out…

If you’re looking for something to collect, these special coins are a good choice:

They’re affordable
They retain their face value
You might even profit from selling rarer ones on eBay

If you hit hard times, simply return them to circulation (ie spend them!) and put a smile on the face of another enthusiast.

Not that I plan to do that with mine. I’ve always regretted as a child spending my collection of old pennies, after acquiring one for nearly every year that they’d been minted.

Good on Paper

Paper money, with its larger canvas, attracts public debate with every new design. The latest note to get a new look is the £20, with a portrait of Turner and his most famous painting, The Fighting Temeraire.

Although celebrating a ship that played a significant role in the Battle of Trafalgar, the picture is tinged with sadness, as it shows the ship being towed away for scrap by newfangled steam tugs. The golden age of sail is over, and the nation is entering a period of radical change. As I write, we’re poised on the brink of Brexit: the end of another era. I wonder whether that’s the real reason the Bank of England’s chose this design?

Like to know more about the new £20 note?
Click here for an interesting article on the Bank of England‘s website.

Like to read more of my columns from the Hawkesbury Parish News?
Click here to find out about All Part of the Charm, my published collection of these columns.