With the hunt still on for the 'Essex Lion' I though you might enjoy this chapter taken from 'The Ramblings of a Twenty Five Inch Man' about another 'wild cat' on the loose!

Stalked

Surveying was a strange job because apart from anything else you are very affected by the weather and sometimes the surroundings you find yourself in. Rain was a regular nuisance to be put up with. Whether light drizzle or the heavy soaking type of rain you got over in the Welsh borders, it made the job miserable! Not only that, but the surveying jackets that we had in those days, made of a heavy-duty nylon unlike the light breathable fabrics of today made you sweat. They kept  the rain out certainly, but also the moisture and heat in! Lugging a theodolite and its stand for miles sometimes, along with our drawing boards and various other bits of equipment meant that even in cold weather you were guaranteed to work up a good lather inside your coat. With sweat dripping down your back and the wet rain on your hands and face it made doing the actual job quite difficult and certainly unpleasant!
On this particular autumn day however the weather was on my side. It was sunny but not too hot with a slight breeze that made walking even with all my equipment very pleasant. I was about thirty miles from my base in Ludlow and I had been doing some comparative surveying, looking for differences between the old map and the new one. I had been checking water features in some fields, for ponds that had changed shape or appeared to have disappeared altogether. After a quick break for lunch I carried on to where I was surveying for the afternoon. I was to check out some woods on my map.
As I walked through the trees, I could see from looking at the old map, that they had once been deciduous. It had obviously been replanted I decided from looking at the trees which were mostly now coniferous. This meant that from my experience I could pretty much guess the tracks and roadways in the wood would also have changed. I spent most of the afternoon rechecking them and
redrawing the new routes and symbols on my board.
But all afternoon as I went about my work I had the distinct feeling I was being watched. The sun through the trees made various shadows and patterns dance on the ground around me and I hurried on not wanting to linger too long in one place. 
Some places were like that. They made you feel uncomfortable for no apparent reason. Many times in the past I had had this feeling only to be proved right. I would suddenly find a farmer or workman had been watching from afar for some time before finally approaching me and speaking. And then there was always the danger you could be mistaken for a poacher. We had been warned of this in our training, so it was as well to be a little cautious.
On this occasion though, I had looked around many times and could spot no one anywhere behind or near me. Walking on a little way, I came across a hollow at the side of a track with banks covered in moss. I looked down into it and saw the bloodied remains of a sheep’s carcass, various bones and some small bits of rabbit fur. The bank was not steep enough for a sheep to have fallen into it and it seemed a little strange that it had strayed so far from the fields into the wood.  I walked on a little way and stopped in an area that was bathed in sunlight. There was a break in the trees above and the sun had pierced through making the carpet of leaves on the forest floor dance with the shadows and light from the swaying branches above. I took the remains of a sandwich out from my pocket. It was squashed as usual but I took a bite anyway. Behind me I heard a twig snap. I looked round but couldn’t see anything. I felt uneasy again and stuffing the sandwich back in my pocket I hurried on deciding not to hesitate any longer but just to get out of the wood. Half an hour or so’s more walking would take me to the far edge of the wood and the short cut that I hoped would take me back to the van.
As I emerged from the wood into the full sunlight I could see a large group of people standing a little way off. There were also several land rovers and other vehicles and a police car parked in the lane. The group suddenly spotted me and a loud cheer went up.
I had had various welcomes in my times, many of them hostile, some offhand, but this was unusual to say the least! As I approached the group which was made up of twenty or so men, a policeman and a couple of young boys, they started to clap and cheer, the boys jumping up and down in the air shrieking, obviously caught up in the moment.
Then they started to speak all at once.
‘Did you see it?’
‘Have you come all the way through?’
‘Didyou kill it mister?’ one of the young boys shouted.
The group looked me up and down and then behind me. The bombardment of questions continued.
 ‘You’re not on your own are you?’ said one man with a look of surprise on his face.
‘Haven’t you got a gun?’
Right at the back of the group was a young man who was obviously a reporter as he had a camera slung round his neck and was quickly making notes.
‘Are you with the other party then?’ asked the policeman walking forward.
When I could gather my thoughts I spoke.
‘What other party?’ ‘What are you all talking about?’
 ‘The ones,’ he paused ‘with the dart guns,’ he paused again ‘after the panther!’ he said with emphasis.
‘The panther?’ I said, trying not to sound too alarmed. 
‘Yes the black panther!’ they all shouted.
‘Didn’t you go in to find it then?’
‘No, no!’ ‘I don’t know anything about it.’ I said shaking my head.
‘Aaaw.’  ‘And there we were thinking you wus our ‘ero!’ piped up someone at the back and then everyone shrieked with laughter as if they had been waiting for a moment like this to break the tension.
‘Well it’s in there, mark my words.’ an older man said shaking his head.
‘So you didn’t see anything then?’ asked a younger man at the front of the group.
‘No, sorry.’ I said starting to feel a little uneasy, and that perhaps there had been, not someone but something watching me after all. And even more alarmingly perhaps stalking me as I wandered about in there!
The group started to talk amongst themselves again turning away from me.
‘Err, excuse me,’ the reporter had come up to me from his safe place at the back of  the group.  ‘So you saw nothing at all then?’ he asked looking disappointed.
‘Well no, but there’s always talk of the Powys panther and strange animals aren’t there?’
I said trying to calm myself.
The older man swung round and looked at me angrily.
‘Talk?’  ‘Talk?’ he uttered again. ‘This is not just talk! There’s a real live panther escaped from captivity in those woods.’
‘Two days ago, from that lunatic’s house.’ said someone else.
‘Shouldn’t be allowed, keeping things like that.’ he said.
 ‘He’s not a lunatic, ee’s famous!’ someone else spoke up.
‘Whatever he is, he’s mad to keep a panther, that ain’t no kind o’ pet!’
‘Well sir,’spoke the officer ‘you’d better keep out of those woods until the beasts caught!’
‘Lucky you weren’t darted yourself now with that other lot in there.’ 
‘Yes, you could have been shot in the arse!’ someone else shouted out and the whole group burst into whoops of laughter. 
‘Who’s in there then?’ I asked a little shakily.
‘Well that lot of course.’ He said nodding his head to the woods.’ 
‘In there they are looking fer it with those dart guns.’ said the older man as if I should have known.
‘Been in there all day they have, looking like!’
‘I’m s’prised you di’nt see nothing!’
‘Well,’ I paused ‘I did see a sheep’s carcass now I think about it and it did look well err ... mauled!’ I added for effect.
‘Told you! ’said the older man. ‘Told you! That’s my sheep.’  ‘Told you they’d bin goin' missin!’
‘Well then Sir, tell me what exactly were you doing in those woods?’ asked the policeman a little more sternly this time touching his pad and pencil.
 ‘Ordnance Survey!’ I said pushing forward my identity badge that was always clipped to my jacket.
‘Well I suggest you don’t do any more sur-vaaying around here at moment young man.’
‘Right,  right ho’ I answered briskly. ‘I’ll be off then.’
 ‘Good luck’ I shouted back at them, but they were too busy chattering amongst themselves to take any more notice of me. They had lost interest now they knew I wasn’t their ‘ero!
As I made my way down the lane to the farm, I passed by the farmhouse and a dirty green pond. There were an unusually large amount of feathers around the grass and floating on the top of the water too. I nodded a silent hello to the woman who was standing on the doorstep. ‘Had all my ducks it did, that blasted black beast thing!’ she shouted over to me crossly.
‘Oh dear!’ I mumbled to her, walking on a little faster.
I made my way back to the van and got in, grateful now for the safety of it. As I turned the radio on I caught the last of the local news.
“And there’s been no luck in catching the Black Panther that’s on the loose in....”
I turned it off and drove back to the office.
Two days later though, the news was better. A black panther answering to the description of the escapee was captured and
returned to its rightful owner!

If you enjoyed this tale there are 36 more chapters of even more amazing but true stories in the memoirs of an Ordnance Surveyor to make you laugh and cry at:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ramblings-Twenty-Five-Inch-ebook/dp/B005L1DF3C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346152594&sr=8-1


 

I love Hay on Wye. The Literary Festival is something to be proud  of and has grown into a phenomenal success over the years hosting an  extraordinary diversity of writers and guest speakers. The town itself has an  atmosphere all its own with a castle, its own 'Kingdom' and of course is often  referred to as 'The town of Books' with over thirty book shops. Many of the  book shops are specialist shops selling second hand and collectable books. As a  writer who has published six books, ranging from children's to adults, on Amazon I was more than a little dismayed  at the 'Kindles are banned from the Kingdom of Hay' sign.
My books are of  course read on Kindles and other reading devices and while some people may argue that this modern technology will be the death of traditional books I don't  think so. Hay on Wye and elsewhere will always do a good trade in second hand  and new books. I think people will always love the look and feel of a  traditional book but there is room for new technology - Kindles, Kobos or  whatever form of reading device books can be read in too. I think it is more  than probable that this new technology has actually increased people’s desire  to read in recent years.
North Koreas and other countries limit their citizens use of the  internet but are there I wonder any other places where Kindles and such are  banned?
 As it happened I didn't have my Kindle with me on my visit to Hay but
perhaps in future I will have to hide it under a book. Perhaps there is a
business in Kindle covers that look like traditional dust jackets!
Do you have a view on this? I would love your comments.

Let me tell you a story. When I was six we were asked to write a story in class at school. I can’t remember my story but I know it involved a bird that was black for I’ve remembered that bird for over fifty years. Now what I didn’t know at the time was if the bird in question was spelt as one word or two. The teacher was far too scary to ask so I got around the problem by writing it like this: Black-bird. I used a hyphen. Pretty clever for a six year old? My teacher didn’t think so. She hauled me up (literally by the shoulders) in front of the class and dangling my writing book up in front of me said ‘This stupid girl has put a full stop in the middle of a sentence. A FULL STOP!’ If she had bothered to look she would have seen it was a dash and not a dot. Perhaps SHE didn’t know what a hyphen was. Who knows! Her name was (and I kid you not) Miss Spells, although with her long wiry hair and grim demeanour ‘Spells’ put me more in mind of witches rather than words. I didn’t speak up of course, I was far too scared, and hurried back to my seat shamefaced and embarrassed. The purpose of this story is that unfair criticism, indeed un-necessary criticism, MAKES MY BLOOD BOIL! Reviews on Amazon have turned into a strange beast. So what makes a good review? Well helpful ones might be: ‘A really great book for a holiday read. An easy read with a few laughs and a great twist at the end. Or: ‘This recipe book was not really suitable for a British audience as the measurements were all in cups and most of the ingredients and packets are not available over here.’ But I have seen thirty reviews for one book all saying the same thing. That there are typos and spelling errors etc etc. They go along the lines of: ‘Algy one Lincs. I found six spelling mistakes, one syntax error and over use of alliteration. I really found these dreadful errors substantially detracted from my reading experience! Blah, blah, blah...’ Well assonance to you then! Who are these people? Are they really so sensitive that their eyes are incapable of skimming over a few mistakes to carry on reading? And why thirty reviews all saying the same thing? Is it a case of kicking a person when they are down? The play ground mentality of a bully perhaps, or were these reviewers the bullied thinking they are at last getting their own back in some way? I’ve also seen over three hundred reviews for the same book. What makes the two hundred and ninety ninth or three hundredth person think their review has anything better, novel, new or interesting to add to the others? Why do it?
I’ve also seen a four page review of a book. I didn’t read it all on principle.
Who has the time to write a four page review? I have read over fifty self
published books over the last six months or so and let me tell you something.
They ALL have mistakes in, my own included. It’s pretty much impossible to
catch all your mistakes without a proof reader, editor etc. Even your own spell
checker can be a hindrance as it can sneakily change words for you so that they are mis spelled or in the wrong context. I have also seen (horror of horrors) books from large publishing houses with errors in too. So there! What do I think of all this? On the whole I don’t give a damn! I think well done to all of us who have self published for all the hard work, effort, time and dedication that has gone into our books. Yes there are a few dreadful books out there, but to all those ‘Algy ones’ do you know what you can do? You can stop reading, delete the book and move on. Shocking I know but true. As for my own reviews I even had a Texan telling me the Shropshire dialect in my book ‘Ramblings’ was inconsistent and incorrect. The story was something that actually happened and the conversation was relayed to me by the actual person who was there, so let me tell you that as someone whose family were born, bred, worked and lived in Shropshire for over one hundred years I think I know who is correct. Why is it these people need to get their two pennies worth in or as in this case two cents worth? If you buy a ‘normal’ printed book the author/publisher/editor has chosen a few well worded quotes and reviews to go in their book. You don’t see readers flocking to the shops with hand written reviews to be pinned to the dust covers. Sometimes you are disappointed with a book, other times delighted and surprised. That’s life. But I feel these sour, knife twisting reviews have got out of hand. Perhaps the star system should stand alone and there shouldn’t be reviews at all or they should expire after a certain time.So what can we do in the meantime? Well there is of course the ‘comment’box where you can comment on a review, and I suggest if you see a really spiteful review you do take the trouble to make a comment or do an opposing review of your own if that’s your view. Then there’s the ‘Was this review helpful?’ button. Tick ‘No!’ if it’s not! If you have had a bad review well don’t worry join the club and I hope this little blog has cheered you up.
And just remember there is of course the view that the ‘Algy ones’ serve a
purpose and it’s this: They put off like minded ‘Algy’s’ reading your book and
that’s a good thing because I certainly don’t want them reading my books. Do you? Have you had a bad review? What do you think of the review system? If you have a comment I’d love to see it on my comment page and if you know someone who would appreciate this blog please pass the link for this page on to them.

I expect most of you who think of Ordnance Survey maps think they are useful, interesting perhaps, good historical documents or colourful enough to stick on a wall! Others of you who are about to read this blog may even think they are boring!
But have you ever thought about the people who made them, the map makers who went out and about risking life and limb in the process? No? Well read on.
I ghost wrote the memoirs of an Ordnance Surveyor (The Ramblings of a Twenty Five Inch Man) over the last couple of years, and in it I describe the amazing encounters, mishaps and adventures the young surveyor had back in the 70's and 80's in Southampton, Wales and Shropshire.. These were the days before the digitisation and technology that nowadays goes into map making. Back then every surveyor had to walk every inch of their map checking, amending and re-drawing features. This was where the danger and the near tragic consequences came in - certainly for this hapless hero! Surveyors always worked on their own. It was not OS policy to send two men out on a job, it was too costly! Health and safety regulations hardly existed and mobiles hadn't been invented. These three things together coupled with the terrain the map makers had to cover were then the perfect conditions for accidents or near accidents to happen.
Even so there are many hilarious tales our surveyor tells - unwittingly being stalked by a panther in a wood on the welsh borders, trailed and 'mugged' by the SAS and encounters with Russian spies. This was just for starters! Then come the tales of being shot at, shelled on an artillery ground, held prisoner by a madman with a machete and nearly dying of hypothermia on the Brecon Beacons. Then there are the tales of the characters and animals that are encountered along the way. Dinner of stew cooked in a cauldron in the welsh hills with the old shepherds and their dogs, milking a goat for a cup of tea in a remote farmhouse and being attacked by hundreds of geese in a farmyard! There was the giant of a man with an axe swirling around his head, many, many shotgun stories and the sixty foot well that beckoned a watery grave.
 
No, life for an Ordnance Surveyor back in those days was never easy and that was before the strict deadlines that had to be adhered to and the vast areas to be covered regardless of the weather or terrain. An array of old cars that always had some problem or other didn't help matters as did working away from home all week on 'detached duty' as it was called. The Ordnance Survey had a long affiliation to the Royal Engineers and the long haired hapless hero of these surveying tales was somewhat of a fish out of water but none-the-less always took a pride in his job.  

Set against a background of 'The Good Life' in a country cottage with his wife these stories just begged to be told.
And what happened to The Twenty Five Inch Man?  -  I married him!

Country and Border Life has done a wonderful illustrated article this month (May 2012) on The Ramblings of a Twenty Five Inch Man and if you would like to read the stories for yourself you can find them at:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ramblings-Twenty-Five-Inch-ebook/dp/B005L1DF3C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336040235&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Ramblings-Twenty-Five-Inch-ebook/dp/B005L1DF3C/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336043534&sr=8-1-fkmr1

    What does publishing a book on Kindle entail? Those of you who have already published an ebook will know - a considerable amount of work! And that is after you have you have written it! That alone is an almighty task as anyone familiar with the Ernest Hemingway quote: ‘All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed!’ will know. The idea, the plot, research, character
drawing, editing, re-writing, editing, proof reading etc is enough to make
anyone tear their hair out and why we writers should do it in the first place
is a mystery to me, except write I must!  I think it’s in the genes! My father
Edward Benbow was a writer too writing scripts and plays for the BBC before the war and a great deal of other material, stories, novels and poems afterwards. In his last years he tormented his brain with words by writing the longest palindromic composition in the world (in fact long enough to be a book although not a very entertaining one!) at well over 150,000 words. So, writing and words chase and taunt me too - but back to Kindle!

I have published four children’s books on Amazon so far (many more to come)- the latest ‘The Kettle that Lost its Whistle’ this week. They are illustrated books so double the work! The sketching and watercolours are just the first part of the process. Once happy with the pictures (and being very self critical that is rarely!) I scan the images onto my computer. There, the colours and tones can be adjusted, the image enlarged and any small errors taken out. Modern technology is wonderful for this. Text is added under the pictures and then by a variety of means the images are converted to the right file types. I rely on my wonderful publisher son for this wizardry and just sit by nodding my head in the appropriate places! For the cover, the title header, borders etc are added and it is adjusted to the correct proportions for the Kindle format.

Now back to the text. Unfortunately when I originally started writing and formatting books for Kindle I still used double line spacing of text which used to be the standard and how I was used to presenting it. Digital methods have to be much tighter. Text has to run on neatly, no additional spaces are needed which can play havoc with uploading your book. Making your text look ‘nice’ on the page as you type it is not just un-necessary but unhelpful to your publisher and detrimental to the process. The use of pilcrows is essential for text and shows quite clearly any extra spacing’s etc.  For a full length novel, such as the memoir I published last year, the word file is converted to a compatible one for Kindle and importantly I think the chapters are formatted in a table of contents. I read an awful lot of Kindle books and there is nothing more annoying, even in a short book, than not being able to click on the chapter heading and so skip in and out of chapters and backwards and forwards in a book! Having to scroll through page after page to find what you are looking for is annoying to say the least and a little effort in getting this right is much appreciated! 

For my illustrated children’s books the images once digitally finished are placed within the text ensuring there are no additional page breaks which again can cause problems. All this then, along with the cover, can be uploaded to Kindle. Then there are all the other bits and pieces to fill in along with pricing (a blog in itself) but finally you can press ‘Publish!’ The book then goes off to 'Kindle land' where it is hopefully approved in a day or so.

So there we have it! I have added a few pictures through their various stages which you may be interested in.
They are from ‘Roly Moley Goes in Search of the Moon.’

Here is a pencil and ink drawing. I will have already done a rough sketch beforehand but at this stage it is hopefully the one that will be used in the book. Sometimes things go wrong though and I have to start all over again!

Starting to fill in with watercolour here

Owl nearly finished and the start of the tree trunk emerges. These are just photographs so the colours look wrong - sorry.

This is pretty much the final version as it appears in the book although there will be a few minor alters and the text caption underneath.



Roley Moley Goes in Search of the Moon

    I have been thinking lately about whether an author can shock themselves with their own words and works. I have been writing all my life but only published The Ramblings of a Twenty Five Inch Man which is the memoir of an Ordnance Surveyor last year. The stories are extraordinary considering our hapless hero was simply trying to make maps, but they are not shocking in the sense I mean here. I am talking about the strange journey a writer takes putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. In my own case I always start off thinking I have a pretty good idea of what the storyline is.
I published Seymour Stephens Glasses and Other Stories a couple of weeks ago. The stories are in the Ghost/Horror genre and had been in my head for many years in some cases, just waiting for the right moment to unleash themselves on paper. Talking for myself, when I write, it sometimes seems that the words take on a life of their own Even though I think I know where the storyline and characters are leading me I quite often end up on a journey that is quite unexpected. It seems sometimes as my fingers fly across the keys (well almost!) that the words are being transcribed to me and not my imaginings at all. But of course they are and that is where the 'shock' comes. I surprise myself constantly at the thoughts that end up on the ends of my fingertips. It is almost 'Ah so that's how it ends!' when I come to finish a story. And of course some of the ends (and middles) of the stories DID shock me even though I wrote them! I even had to face up to a personal fear writing one of the stories in the collection.
I think if you have a good imagination (and most writers do) you are so wrapped up in getting the story down, being 'in there' with your characters and plot that it is only later that a sense of surprise can creep in at what you have actually created.
The story of Seymour Stephens Glasses came from a very old pair of glasses I inherited (they are the ones on the front of the book actually). I started to wonder what my ancestor had seen through them maybe a hundred years ago and as my imagination proceeded to carry on a route of its own the story of Seymour just came to me! Well part of it that is, because that is where the surprise comes in writing. It seemed I had only part of the story in my head - the rest appeared as I wrote it, the ideas coming quite easily as if they were just there - waiting in the wings! And these bits as it happened were the most shocking!

But talking of glasses it was just two days ago that I held Mahatma Gandhis glasses in my hands! Yes really! They were at an auction in Ludlow, so very close to my home, and I went along out of curiosity. They went for £34,000 of course but I did get the opportunity of holding them. They were the round metal framed glasses that he was so often seen wearing and placed in a rather rusty metal case. The merest of connections to me is that my grandfather was a stretcher bearer in the Boer war - as was Ghandi and that made the whole experience just that bit more interesting. It was amazing to think of the history connected to them as I held the tiny gold frames in my hands. I hope they have gone to a good home! 
 
If you are a writer does your own writing surprise or shock you?
Don't forget to leave your comments on our contact page.
And if you are brave enough to read Seymour Stephens Glasses and Other Stories I hope you are not too shocked!
My next blog will be on illustrating childrens books. I hope you'll be back!