in liltin' wifey territory

‘Mummy’ began Tilly. 'Yes dear?' I replied, quietly so as not to disturb the couple in the front row of the cinema whose snogging I had been writing down in my notebook of astute observations of everyday life. ‘Is Eva Green from Newcastle?’ ‘Why do you ask that dear?’ I asked. ‘Because it's snowing and she's not wearing a coat', explained Tilly. ‘I thinks she just kept that dress from Casino Royale dear’, I replied, ‘along with her make-up, character and leading man. ‘Mummy?’ continued Tilly. ‘Yes darling?’ I smiled. ‘If everyone’s soul follows them around in animal form what do they do when they want to go somewhere that has a sign saying guide dogs only?’ I was just thinking about that one when I heard ‘and mummy...’ I sighed. ‘You know this film is all about a fierce animal that’s really a king in a mysterious snowy land?’ ‘Yes dear?’ ‘So I take it CS Lewis’s Narnia copyright has expired then?’ she speculated. 'No darling, you don't und...' I began, but suddenly my thoughts were awakened. Perhaps if I went North I could come back with a good story to tell of wild animals, strange locals, and comedy trousers. ‘I’m going to The North children!’ I announced. I would take the train, I thought but remembering the new year engineering works I added ‘I may be gone some time’. ‘Will there be ice bears?’ asked Milly. ‘Don’t be silly Milly’ I smiled. ‘ I think wife in the north shot them all at the weekend’

I arrived at the station just as the train pulled in. It was a sad sight. The GNER colours had been covered over with the horrible new National Express stickers which were also stuck on the roof so they could still be read when the train was lying on it's side like one of their buses and on the side of the locomotive the Highland Chieftain name plate had been replaced with The Alex Salmond Express. I took my seat and as the train rolled away from the platform and into the unknown I began to write. ‘Excuse me’, said another passenger, pointing to a sign on the window, ‘this is the quiet coach, no electronic equipment allowed’. ‘Don’t worry’, I reassured him, gesturing towards my typewriter, ‘even valves weren’t invented when they made this thing!’ and began to tap away as the coach slowly and rather mysteriously grew ever more empty of passengers the further north we travelled.

I knew we had really reached the North when we passed a group of workman erecting the new Welcome to Wife in The North Country sign by the tracks. The train rumbled on and I wondered what other influence my inspiration could have had on Northumberland. Suddenly the intercom burst into life. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’, began the announcement, ‘as the North Sea lies as cold, still , grey and unforgiving as the steel of a reiver’s sword and the river flows muddy brown past the silent stone walls guarding the mysterious secrets of the mist shrouded history of the ancient border we shall shortly be arriving in Berwick on Tweed’. I closed my eyes to steal myself for the arrival and breathed deeply as page after page of lilting possibilities scrolled past my eyes. ‘Please mind the gap’, concluded the announcement. I opened my eyes again and as the train coasted across the Royal Borders Bridge high above the dark Waterstones of the River Tweed I knew what I must do. I alighted from the carriage as soon as the train pulled in and called to the guard. ‘I say, what time is the next train?' I asked. ‘Where are you going to pet?’ he queried. ‘To my destiny', I answered confidently, 'as author of the great northern downshifting novel’. ‘That’ll be the 15.40 from Platform 2 pet’, he said. ‘Don’t be late though’, he added. ‘It’ll be standing room only on that service’.

radio romance

I pulled over by the side of the road and my wife in the north talking book CD faded out from the blaupunkt with a sigh. I looked out of the window and up the hill that rose from the roadside. Could it be true, I asked my self, could that lonely figure atop that distant windswept northern hilltop really be what I thought it was? I had to find out if my eyes were really deceiving me. I began to run up the hill, stumbling over Heather and Dale (It was going to cost those two if they didn’t want to be shamed on my blog, I can tell you, this isn’t a bloody Melvyn Bragg novel you know, sigh). The car began to vanish below me as I climbed and climbed. Suddenly, a sound in the silence, a voice? Yes, a voice in the wilderness! Was it calling out a woman's name? I must be imagining things but no, ‘Cathy!’ called a man’s voice, ‘Cathy!’ I stood silent. ‘Cathy, is it really you?’ I could still not see the source of this most insistent and urgent cry, for a frightening and terrible mist did descend upon the hillside, hushing the very wind and drawing my world closely around me. The voice grew near. It was almost upon me! I shivered and drew my shawl tighter round my shoulders. ‘Cathy, Cathy, I thought I had lost you for ever but you have come back just as you promised you would!’ The man must almost certainly have been but yards away now. I turned and gave a start when a tall and imposing figure strode out of the ghostly swirlling fog . He was wild and tall (hmm, did I mention he was tall already) and handsome. ‘Cathy! He cried, raising his arms as if to embrace me. I was now within reach of his strong masculine grasp. I too opened my arms to receive him ‘Oh’ he said ‘bugger’ I lowered my expectant arms. ‘Most terribly sorry, I thought you were someone else’ He looked nervously from side to side. ‘Oh crikey, I feel like a right tit now’, he said apologetically. ‘I’ll be, errr, getting along then’ he said. ‘pleased to meet you and all that…’ and he vanished into the mist, the tails of his long coat being the last bit of him to disappear into the gloom. I shrugged and carried on towards the top of the hill.

I paused as, at one with the moor, the clouds and the birds, the object of my devotion, the subject of my dreams, the answer to my loneliness, which was abject and to my social status, which was reject, stood tall and unyielding before me at last upon the hill top. I began to fumble with my buttons, my fingers numb with the cold. At last, sign of life, a glimmer of hope a ….'No signal!’ My hopes were dashed as my phone told me this was not a phone mast before me, just a repeater for Radio Two. I should have known such a thing up north was too much to answer for. All the others I had seen had just been mirages. I hoped at least that chap I met earlier found who he was looking for, sigh. All at once, the mist enveloped the fell in a mistlike misty mistiness once more. Was that another voice I could hear? A woman this time? Not so much a voice, more like an eerie ghostly wailing . ‘Heathcliffe!’ cried the plaintive voice ‘Heathcliffe, it’s me, Cathy, come home!’ Where was it coming from? I looked around but saw nothing but the swirling fog. Oh, the lonliness in her voice, oh how I identified with her desperate unhappiness, oh if I could only meet her and tell her of my earlier encounter. The voice faded, to be replaced by 'Hello and top of the mornin' to my listener!' The new disembodied voice contined, 'That was a request from a loverly lady in Northumberland who says she misses her husband, so she does, who's on the other side, so he is, down in London, and if it wasn't for reading Strife in the North she doesn't know how she'd survive, so she doesn't, and now the traffic news...' I sighed. I knew now that my accounts of my grim life, painful as it was for me to relive each grim day at night in front of my computer, had brought solace to another lonely soul out there, although I wondered whether anyone actually spoke like that fellow on the radio in real life. I began to walk back down the hill and, as the sun broke through the clouds, I understood now how to really reach people, I understood how to get FM on my phone, and it was a long weekend coming up and I had managed to get in a romantic depiction of a radio mast before the power to the village went off untill Tuesday, sigh.