Although it’s always sad to lose local shops and services, there’s something very charming about living in a house that once served a commercial purpose.
Hawkesbury Upton is full of characterful homes wrought from former pubs (so many pubs!), stores, workshops, and even places of worship. As you may know, my cottage is among them, as a former village post office – not to be confused with The Old Post Office just up the road. We never do anything by halves in Hawkesbury Upton. Continue reading “Of House and Home”→
This article originally appeared on Boldwood Books’ blog to mark the publication of my latest novel, Driven to Murder.
In a bizarre incident of life imitating art, as a starting point for the ninth Sophie Sayers Cozy Mystery, I struck upon the idea of the village bus service being cancelled – only to discover shortly afterwards that the bus route passing through my home village of Hawkesbury Upton was also about to be axed.
Although my books are full of comedy, they also subtly gently draw attention to genuine rural issues, such as loneliness and isolation, for added realism.
Public transport is a lifeline to rural communities, especially for the many people who don’t drive or have access to a car. Taxis won’t come out to you as you’re too far from town, and as to take-away services, you might as well be on the Moon!
Only when you lose your public transport do you realise how much you need it.
Children can’t travel to school, teenagers lose their independence, adults can’t get to work, families can’t go shopping or on leisure outings, and no-one can get to medical appointments or banks.
Hawkesbury Upton has very few buses – and now these few are under threat. (Sadly, The Fox Inn, one of two village pubs, has now closed its doors forever.)
Losing the bus shrinks your world to your own back yard and cuts you off from vital services that everybody should be able to access – and for which you still have to pay your taxes! *climbs down from soapbox*
By contrast, in city streets, there are abundant buses at all hours – often many in a single street at the same time. City-centric politicians don’t realise how poorly rural communities are served by public transport.
In Driven to Murder, when Leif Oakham, suave owner of local bus company Highwayman, plans to axe the bus that connects Wendlebury Barrow with the nearest town, the villagers engineer a lively and creative campaign to save the bus. All goes according to plan until one of their number is murdered mid-campaign, in broad daylight, on the number 27!
Ever the amateur sleuth, Sophie pledges to track down the killer before another tragedy can occur – and to save the village bus service along the way.
There’s just one problem: she doesn’t have a driving licence.
A disastrous first lesson with Hector in his precious Land Rover makes her secretly seek an instructor further afield, with hair-raising results.
My husband, who favours action movies, has always told me I ought to add car chases to my books – but I don’t think he meant through single-track country lanes…
Of course, this being Wendlebury Barrow, there’s a happy ending all round, and plenty of surprises along the way.
I just hope we are as successful in winning a reprieve for the Hawkesbury Upton bus.
Back to Reality
In the queue to board the bus from Yate to Hawkesbury Upton last week.
If you’d like to support the campaign to save the Hawkesbury Upton bus, join here’s a link to its Facebook group:
But the simplest and most effective thing to do is to travel by bus!
Although I’m lucky enough to be able to drive and have my own car, there will come a time when I’m too frail or poor to so. I want to make sure the bus is still there for when I need it. Don’t you?
In the meantime, I’ve pledged to make a weekly journey on our village bus service for the duration of the campaign.
If everyone who lived along its route made just one trip a month, our bus service would be saved.
It doesn’t matter how long or short the journey – each trip will boost passenger numbers, the key to the route’s survival.
Of course, these thoughts don’t apply only to my local bus service – wherever you live, whether urban or rural, the message about public transport is the same: USE IT OR LOSE IT!
Now available in ebook, paperback, hardcover and audio – click image to order online or ask for it at your local bookshop
This week I’m in conversation with my author friend Helen Hollick about why rural communities make such great settings for cosy mystery novels
Taken when I first met Helen Hollick at the launch of my first book many years ago! We have since become firm friends.
When my historical novelist friend Helen Hollick took to writing cosy mystery stories during lockdown, I couldn’t wait to read them. I’d enjoyed her Jesemiah Acorne pirate series, and her Arthurian novels were among my mum’s favourite books. What’s more Jan Christopher, the heroine of her new mystery novels was a young librarian in a public library very much like the one I belonged to as a child.
Like me, as an adult Helen moved from greater London suburbia to the countryside – in her case to Devon, rather than to my neck of the woods in the Cotswolds. Her latest Jan Treasure mystery embraces Devon life at harvest time. I’m pleased to invite Helen on to my blog to day to tell me a bit about why rural Devon – or indeed any rural community – makes such a great setting for cosy mystery stories.
Click the image to view the book on Amazon
Helen: Hello Debbie, thank you for hosting me – and Jan Christopher – today!
Debbie: Jan’s adventures alternate between her native suburban London Borough of Waltham Forest and rural Devon. Why does a rural community make such a great setting for a cosy crime story?
Helen: I moved from London with my husband and daughter, (and the horses and the cats and a dog) to Devon in January 2013 – best thing we ever did!
During Covid lockdown I wanted to write something where I could use my experience of working as a London suburb library assistant during the 1970s. A cozy mystery seemed a good idea, so the Jan Christopher Mysteries came into being. Snag. I also wanted to write about Devon; not exactly autobiographical, but drawing on living in the countryside. Easy solution: alternate the locations.
I think a rural community setting appeals to readers of cozy crime because of the lure of a slower pace of life, and the huge advantage of a village community is that everyone knows each other – ideal for amateur sleuthing via murder mystery writers!
And then there were four…
Village gossip is no mythical exaggeration. Often X who lives at the other end of the village will know what you’re going to do before you do yourself. It’s a sad fact, but I only knew my immediate next-door neighbour when I was back in London, no idea of anyone else in the street. Here, I know almost everyone in the village, even though my nearest neighbour lives almost ¼ of a mile away!
And the biggest appeal of all? Many people long to live in the countryside, away from the hustle and bustle, but have no opportunity to do so. To escape into an outdoor life via the pages of a book is the next best thing to actually doing it – and with the added bonus of working out ‘whodunit’, well, who can resist?
Work in progress
Debbie:What does the rural setting offer that the urban one doesn’t? – and vice versa?
Helen: North Devon couldn’t be more different to Waltham Forest – a sprawling north-east London Borough consisting of the towns of Chingford, Walthamstow, Leyton and Leytonstone. It’s one advantage: Chingford borders the County of Essex and can boast the inclusion of Epping Forest, where I used to ride and keep my horses.
When musing about writing a murder mystery, I knew that I did not want to write it as a police procedure series. I know very little about crime investigation, beyond what I watch on TV, and anyway, my mysteries were to be set in the 1970s when we didn’t even have mobile phones, let alone the internet!
Here in a rural community we rarely see a police car, but they are everywhere in a London town.
In the countryside, strangers are all too happy to chat to other strangers. Alas, it doesn’t happen in London, everyone is far too busy rushing about from A-B with ‘no time to stand and stare’. Country people can often be found leaning on a gate, thoroughly enjoying the view.
Timekeeping rarely seems to exist. There’s a Devon word ‘Dreckly’, it basically means ‘some time soon’. Soon could be this afternoon or next month… or the next.
So in a rural setting you have fewer locals to include as characters but a greater opportunity for the community to gossip.
One huge advantage for a murder mystery, in a small rural village is that it will take a while for a summoned policeman to arrive. In town, you’re probably talking within the hour – add a couple more hours for Devon. Which gives your criminals time to get away, and time for some quality amateur sleuthing.
Nearly done!
A village will probably only have one or two shops and pubs. Town will have several in a small area. Fewer cars in villages, so the ‘grockles’ (strangers/tourists) are more readily noticed.
Good tip for mystery writers: visitors’ cars are usually clean.
The locals get used to the muddy lanes and soon don’t bother cleaning their cars!) A murder committed in town will usually get immediate attention. In a village – well someone in authority will come along ’dreckly…
Debbie: Like Jan – and Sophie Sayers and me! – you’ve moved in real life from an urban to a rural setting. But your move to the countryside, like mine and Sophie’s, was permanent. Jan clearly appreciates the beautiful, peaceful scenery – we know this as the stories are written mostly in her voice. Do you think it might tempt her to move permanently to Devon, if Laurie can get a work transfer?
Helen: Oh that would be telling wouldn’t it? Although in the postscript of Episode One, A Mirror Murder, (with the p.s set in modern times,) a much older Jan is clearly not in London. Does she move permanently? When? How? And is she still with DS Laurie Walker? Ah…all that will be in another story!
Debbie: How do your real-life neighbours take to having a crime-writer living in the midst of their peaceful community? Have you ever been asked to solve any local crimes or misdemeanours?
Helen: No, to the second part of the question, thank goodness, although I’ve often had to search my fields for a missing horseshoe that one of the horses has lost. Or one of the dog’s toys – or, actually, even a missing pony! We have a couple of Exmoor ponies and they are frequent escape artists. We found them once, over half-a-mile away almost up at the village. I’m sure they were heading for the pub!
My real-life neighbours are wonderful. I must add that my quirky characters are all entirely fictional, apart from three people: Heather is my friend who is often involved with the village community shop. We have tea and cake together usually once a week and often discuss the next mystery. So of course she had to become the Devon shopkeeper in my stories. In A Meadow Murder I have also included pub landlords Hazel and Steve, primarily as a thank you for their wonderful hospitality at the Exeter Inn. Hazel, Steve and Heather gave their full permission to be used as characters, and I have assured them that they would always be ‘goodies’ and not victims!
I have heard that there’s often a fair bit of chatter in the village shop about my books … mostly good, I hope!
Jan takes a ride on top of a loaded tractor in “A Meadow Murder”
Debbie: My fellow bell-ringers at our parish church are always suggesting new murder ideas for me – 101 ways to kill someone with a church bell! Does your adopted home in Devon inspire you with new ideas for crime stories that are specific to rural Devon or to the countryside in general?
Helen:Oh yes! Read A Meadow Murder and find out! I came up with the plot last summer whilst watching our local farmer, Andrew, trundle up and town turning the cut hay in our top field. The field slopes so you can’t see the bottom at all. “What if…” I thought.
The cover image for Meadow Murder is actually my field. The deer and rabbits have been added, but we do see them there.
Debbie: Jan’s stories are set in the 1970s. Her home town in north-east London will have changed a lot – to what extent have things changed since then in rural Devon? How different would the stories be if Jan was a member of Generation Z, ie born between 1990 and the early 2000s?
Helen:A modern Jan would be very different –which is why the stories are set in the 1970s, ‘my’ years as it were. (I was born in 1953.) Technology is a big difference, nearly everyone has cars, phones, laptops today. Though not everyone has a good Internet connection – ours can be very sporadic. We get quite a few power cuts too. I really enjoy your Sophie Sayers mysteries, Debbie, but, well, I just couldn’t do it. Jan and Laurie and their families are from the ’70s and that’s that! The thought of writing modern day just doesn’t appeal to me at all. I guess nostalgia wins out for me – and I hope for my readers, too!
Debbie: Finally, thank you for allowing me to share below an extract from A Meadow Murder to whet my readers’ appetites!
Extract from A MEADOW MURDER
The tractor was trundling off down the row, the baler scooping up the cut hay, packing it into slabs, automatically tying them together with two lengths of baler string and shooting the trussed rectangular bale out behind, before repeating the whole process. Mr Greenslade drove the tractor round the field in ever decreasing circles – or more correctly, odd-shaped squares. Down one row, along the bottom of the meadow, up the furthest row, across the top of the meadow, down the next row, along the bottom… coming at each turn closer to the middle of the field until there were only two rows left.
Our job, I discovered, was to follow the tractor and stack the bound bales in groups of six or eight in order to make the next step of loading them onto the trailer easier.
“Roll them,” Kevin advised when he saw me lifting a bale by the string. “Less likely for the twine t’ break an’ easier on your back. Roll with the lie of the land, downhill.”
It took a while to cover the entire field, walking up and down the rows – down was fine, up… the hill seemed to get steeper with each row. Funny how it didn’t look steep from the top, but imitated Mount Everest from the bottom. (Slight exaggeration, but you know what I mean!) At last the tractor came to a stop, with (and we all cheered) no more breakdowns. Scattered across the field as if they were some form of crude artistic sculptures, were stacks of hay, baking in the heat of the haze-shimmering, airless afternoon. We were all somewhat sweaty and grimy, with sore backs and smarting hands, despite wearing gloves. But the work was only half done. Five-hundred bales of hay had to be transferred into the security of the barn before those blackening clouds came any nearer.
If I thought anything we’d done so far was backbreaking, hard work, I soon discovered that I’d been wrong. Stacking the bales on the trailer was much harder, even though I had one of the easier assignments. Aunt Madge and I were on the flat bed of the trailer receiving the bales that the men tossed up. We had to stack them one layer at a time, with each layer criss-crossing, otherwise, if they’d been simply one atop the other the whole lot would fall down. The first three layers were quite simple, but as the stack got higher, the bales had to be tossed higher, and we had to climb higher to keep up with the enthusiastic (and apparently untiring) bale-tossing men. I say it was hard work (it was!) but it was also a laugh. Teasing and banter between us, laughing as the tractor pulling the trailer lurched across the field from each six or eight stacked pile of haybales to the next. I had never felt as stiff and tired before, nor had I ever felt as wonderfully alive and happy.
Aunt Madge jumped down as the fourth layer began to grow, aware that she wasn’t too confident at balancing on a lurching and swaying height, which left me to do the last two layers on my own, but I’d got into the swing of it by then, so didn’t mind.
I suppose the trailer took about seventy bales. (I can’t tell you exactly; I’m guessing as I lost count somewhere along the third layer.) Then the next fun bit… there was no way I could get safely down – balancing atop a trailer stacked high with bales of hay is a challenge, believe me. Outside of learning how to fly, or leaping into Laurie’s outstretched arms in the hope that he’d catch me (both not an option), there was only one thing for it. I made myself a hollow in the centre of the top layer to ride the trailer all the way down the lane.
“Duck your head under the low trees!” Laurie called as Mr Greenslade set off negotiating the gate and the fairly tight turn from the meadow into the lane.
I have to say, it was one of the most thrilling things I’d ever done – and this included those scary, whizzy rides at the fun fair! The trailer was slow, very bumpy and rattly, and I could hear the occasional grinding of complaining brakes holding back the tremendous weight as we went down the steep hill, but the view above the hedges to across the fields was magnificent, and the ride itself was, well I can only describe it as exciting.
About A Meadow Murder
Make hay while the sun shines?
Summer 1972. Young library assistant Jan Christopher and her fiancé, DS Lawrence Walker, are on holiday in North Devon. There are country walks and a day at the races to enjoy, along with Sunday lunch at the village pub, and the hay to help bring in for the neighbouring farmer.
But when a body is found the holiday plans are to change into an investigation of murder, hampered by a resting actor, a woman convinced she’s met a leprechaun and a scarecrow on walkabout…
A Meadow Murder is the fourth tale in the Jan Christopher cosy murder mystery series, the first three being A Mirror Murder, A Mystery of Murder and A Mistake of Murder… see what I’ve done there? Yes, I’ve created a proper puzzle for myself because now every tale in the series will have to follow the same title pattern of ‘A M-something- ofMurder’ (Suggestions welcome!)
Based on working as a library assistant during the 1970s, the mysteries alternate between the location of Chingford, north-east London, where the real library I worked in used to be, (the building is still there, but is, alas, now offices,) and my own North Devon village, but ‘Chappletawton’ is a fictional version, larger than my rural community and has far more quirky characters.
The main characters in the series, however, remain the same: Jan Christopher is the niece, and ward, of Detective Chief Inspector Toby Christopher and his wife, her Aunt Madge. In A Mirror Murder, Jan (short for January, a name she hates) meets her uncle’s new driver, Detective Constable Lawrence Walker. Naturally, it is love at first sight… but will an investigation into a murder affect their budding romance?
“As delicious as a Devon Cream Tea!” author Elizabeth St John
“Every sentence pulls you back into the early 1970s… The Darling Buds of May, only not Kent, but Devon. The countryside itself is a character and Hollick imbues it with plenty of emotion”author Alison Morton
About Helen Hollick
Helen Hollick
First accepted for traditional publication in 1993, Helen became a USA Today Bestseller with her historical novel, The Forever Queen (titled A Hollow Crown in the UK) with the sequel, Harold the King (US: I Am The Chosen King) being novels that explore the events that led to the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Her Pendragon’s Banner Trilogy is a fifth-century version of the Arthurian legend.
She writes a nautical adventure/supernatural series, The Sea Witch Voyages. She has also branched out into the quick read novella, ‘Cosy Mystery’ genre with her Jan Christopher Murder Mysteries, set in the 1970s, with the first in the series, A Mirror Murder incorporating her, often hilarious, memories of working as a library assistant.
Her non-fiction books are Pirates: Truth and Tales and Life of A Smuggler.
Helen lives with her husband and daughter in an eighteenth-century farmhouse in North Devon.
Moving to Hawkesbury Upton has given me a much greater awareness of the changing seasons than when I lived and worked in towns and cities. Thirty years on, I’m still not over the novelty of having new-born lambs as near neighbours down my lane in the spring, or to hearing the birds sing with renewed vigour as the days lengthen.
Some of my favourite neighbours
Less predictable was the sudden appearance of a fox the other day in my secluded back garden, enclosed on all sides by the walls and high fences of my neighbours’ properties. I was sitting quietly reading in our back room, when a startling flash of orange out of the corner of my eye alerted me to the biggest and most beautiful fox I’ve ever seen. He was standing majestically on the outhouse roof, channelling his inner Monarch of the Glen, as in Landseer’s famous painting.
Sir Edwin Landseer’s painting The Monarch of the Glen (image in the public domain via Wikimedia Commons)
After a brief staring competition, he performed his own take on the old typing exercise renowned for using all the letters in the alphabet: the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog, substituting for the canine my little tabby and white cat, Bingo, sunning himself at the other end of the roof. Bingo only blinked as the fox darted down the lawn and out of sight.
What I’d really like to see next – though even less likely to be found in my garden – is a March hare.
Well, any old hare, really. I’ve seen lone hares loping across fields around the parish, or sitting up, meerkat-style, to get the lie of the land. But I’ve never seen them engaging in the fabled boxing activity associated with the month of March. I’d always assumed the boxing was between two male hares competing for supremacy. I’ve just discovered that it’s always between a mixed couple, the female fending off the advances of the male early in the mating season.
Albrecht Duerer’s wise and soulful Hare (image in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Not so with so-called boxing kangaroos, where two males fight for dominance, holding each other in place with their short front paws while inflicting serious injuries with their mighty clawed back feet.
Such agitation isn’t really madness in either creature, but the saying “mad as a March hare” dates back to the sixteenth century.
The image was further popularised by Lewis Carroll when he seated his Hare with the Hatter at the tea party in the crazy world of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. They also reappear in the sequel, Through the Looking Glass, as Haigha and Hatta, the King’s messengers.
In John Tenniel’s drawing, the Hare’s ears are strewn with straw, a Victorian symbol of insanity, while the Hatter’s madness is an occupational hazard of his profession. The mercury used by Victorian hatmakers in the felting process caused erethism, a neurological disorder commonly known as Mad Hatter Disease. Symptoms included behavioural changes such as difficulty handling social interactions, as Alice finds to her cost. As indeed does the Dormouse, whom, as Alice leaves the tea party, the Hare and the Hatter are trying to stuff into the teapot.
John Tenniel’s illustration of the Mad Hatter’s tea party in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (image in the public domain via Wikimedia Commons)
But for Hawkesbury hares, there’s good news: the hare’s mating season continues until September, so if they are troubled by March madness, their relationship issues should improve next month. Just so long as their sweethearts are not lured away in April by the arrival of the Easter Bunny bearing gifts…
This post first appeared in the March 2022 edition of the Hawkesbury Parish News
MORE SPRING READING
If you’re already looking forward to Easter, you might like to try my comedy murder mystery novel Springtime for Murder, which kicks off with a report of the Easter Bunny being left for dead in an open grave…
Or ask your local high street bookshop to order it for you, quoting ISBN 978-1911223344
SPECIAL OFFER: Free first in series from 10th-12th March
If you like ebooks and haven’t yet read Best Murder in Show, you might like to take advantage of a three-day special offer: download the ebook completely free from Amazon anywhere in the world from Thursday 10th-Saturday 12th March (US time).
In my Young By Name column for this month’s Tetbury Advertiser, I wrote about a sight I’d like to spot more often in the Cotswolds – although they are beautiful enough as they are!
Driving along a lane in the high fields near Newark Park, I spot a mirage-like splash of blue big enough to fill a field. Or is it mauve? Rippling in the late afternoon breeze, the flowering crop is changing colour as readily as the two-tone tonic suits favoured by Mods in the 1960s. Oil poured on water morphs from black to rainbow hues because the floating film is just a molecule thick, but when I park alongside the field, these plants are chest high.
I’m used to seeing cars stopping on the roadside in early summer to photograph swathes of pillar-box red poppies among the crops. A few years ago, a field just off the A46 was as densely carpeted with poppies as the famous scene in The Wizard of Oz. An instant tourist attraction, it triggered a proliferation of social media selfies.
The arresting view of Hawkesbury’s poppy field caused may motorists to divert from the A46 for a closer look
The mauve flowers – or are they blue? – in this field by Newark Park have a far subtler beauty. It is of course a field of flax, the first I’ve seen for a long time, and an increasingly rare sight in the Cotswolds. How I wish I could substitute flax for the ubiquitous rapeseed, whose vivid flowers look all wrong in our gentle landscape. They also make me sneeze like one possessed, a yellow morning mist floating above their fields like mustard gas. While I don’t expect farmers to choose crops for their good looks, I do wish flax could be more profitable.
Flax, aka linseed, is certainly a useful and versatile crop. Chez Young, we add linseeds to our breakfast cereal and salads for their health benefits. Linseeds are rich in fibre, protein, Vitamin B, minerals and Omega 3 fatty acids.
I wish the latter didn’t sound so unappetising: “Mmm, fatty acids,” said Homer Simpson, never.
Research indicates that linseeds improve digestive health and lower blood pressure, bad cholesterol and cancer risk. If that’s not enough to win your heart, linseed oil goes into paints, varnishes, animal feeds and cricket bats.
The stalk, with fibres three times stronger than cotton, is the source of linen. The Ancient Egyptians considered linen a symbol of purity and allowed only priests and mummies to wear it. Much as I love linen clothes, that’s not a sacrifice I’d be prepared to make. Flax fibres are also used in the manufacture of cigarette papers (boo!) and teabags (hurrah!)
So why don’t we grow more flax on the rolling hills of the Cotswolds? When I google its preferred growing conditions, I discover it’s not just a matter of money. Flax thrives on alluvial soil, ie rich in sediment deposited by running water on a floodplain. With an average elevation of over 100m in the Cotswolds, I’m guessing alluvial soil is not our long suit.
As the sky begins to darken ahead of a thunderstorm, I realise I must make the most of this rare scene, so I capture it on my smartphone before returning to my car – and, like a tourist on my home turf, to social media.
More poppies, spotted on my way home from Newark ParkFollow the changing seasons of the Cotswolds year from one summer to the next in this seven-book series
SERIES OF GENTLE MYSTERY NOVELS INSPIRED BY THE SEASONS IN THE COTSWOLDS
Watching the changing seasons in the Cotswolds is one of the inspirations for my Sophie Sayers Village Mysteries series, which follows the course of village life from one summer to the next through the eyes of newcomer Sophie Sayers.
Or ask your favourite local bookshop to order from their usual stockist, quoting ISBN 978-1911223139.
All the books in the series are available in both paperback and ebook, and Best Murder in Showis also available as an audiobook (order direct from me via this link for a very special price), and production is about to start on the audiobook of Trick or Murder?
Helen: Hello Debbie, thank you for hosting me – and Jan Christopher – today!
Extract from A MEADOW MURDER
About A Meadow Murder 
