THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-THREE -- 15 JUNE 2020

Society has undergone quite an upheaval since we last showed up in subscribers' in-boxes, but through the remote magick of the Internet, subscribers won't need to grasp this issue with tongs in order to read it. And we do hope you will...

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MARY'S BIT or ADDRESSING HISTORY

Oscar Wilde was of the opinion memory is the diary we carry with us and the same can be said for address books, for in the old days I carted my little black book around in my handbag, a habit I confess I find strange in retrospect. It would have been far better to leave that indispensable record at home, but youthful notions are oft times inexplicable.

The multi-amended addresses mean every entry represents a history of lives of which I am a part. Were a subscriber to look over my virtual shoulder they'd see, for example, the names of two of my oldest friends. I met the first when we were both in the first form of grammar school and though I have lived in a number of places both here and in England, she never left Tyneside. The second once resided in an ancient Oxfordshire village pub which formed the model for Noddweir's pub in The Guardian Stones. Our paths converged because she worked in an office connected to my third job. Alas, there will never be address changes for either of them as they both died far too young.

I like to hear how people first met, so I'll mention a couple of examples of my own. Some friendships have roots in my liking for science fiction and fantasy. Readers of these genres have a tendency to be keen letter-writers and in fact that very trait was how Mr Maywrite and I came to meet. I finally met another correspondent, a resident in a Yorkshire village, in person for the first time at a London convention for fans of the two categories of fiction. Another friendship originating in similar circumstances involves a chap who when we originally met in London had a slightly menacing air, since at the time he went in for the full Goth look years before it came into vogue. Needless to say he still gets his leg pulled by those who remember those days because he eventually went in for a career as an accountant.

A glance at one or two other pages demonstrate not only how mobile we have become but also how small the world is by contrast to years ago, when the notion we would live halfway across the world from each other would have been laughable. But now one chap who originally lived in Cornwall resides in Sweden. There's a Londoner whose acquaintance I initially made at The Globe pub in London's Hatton Gardens -- I assure subscribers it's not as lurid a story as it may seem at first sight -- and he moved to Hawaii just a couple of months ago. It was my now oldest friend (our paths originally crossed when we both attended the same pre-secretarial course as teens) who introduced me to a friend who lived down her street, who subsequently lived in Germany, the UAE, and Spain before recently returning to the old country.

All in all, Bob Dylan's Dream is a particularly poignant recording for me, especially his line recalling "our choices they was few so the thought never hit / That the one road we traveled would ever shatter and split."

It's a strange thought too that address books give us a ghostly second life because as long as we have an entry in those belonging to family and friends we can be said to still exist, even when we are no longer physically here.

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

Hurrah! The ticker has coughed into life again!

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES or AN OLD ADVENTURE BECOMES ALL TOO TIMELY

Lois Winston, author of the Anastasia Crafting Mystery series, kindly hosted an essay from Maywrite Towers on her blog a few days back. The topic was Five For Silver, the setting during the Justinianic pandemic, and thus timely in a most uncomfortable way. The plague's symptoms and its effects form an important part of the structure of the plot, and A Circumstance Such As Has Never Before Been Recorded describes the historical sources we consulted for needed info.

https://anastasiapollack.blogspot.com/2020/06/historical-mystery-authors-mary-reed.html

RETURN OF THE REAPER or YOU REAP WHAT YOU MOW

We're happy to report The Grim Reaper's Lawnmower was accepted by editor Michael Bracken for reprinting in the November 2019 issue of Seeds, a free weekly electronic newsletter for Texas gardeners. Due to an email problem we didn't hear about it until just after the last Orphan Scrivener was sent out, but here's where to point your clicker if you'd like to read it.

https://texasgardener.com/texas-gardeners-seeds-november-27-2019/

Should any subscribers interested in gardening happen to live in Texas, information about Seeds may be accessed at

https://texasgardener.com/newsletter/

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DIGITAL FOSSILS or AN INTRUDER IN A FAMILIAR PLACE

Mary and I have been cranking this newsletter out for more than twenty years now, emailing it, then archiving it on our website. Sometimes I browse through my past essays to see if the brilliant subject I've decided to write about is one I covered already ten or fifteen years ago. It often is.

Those visits to ancient Internet files remind me of when I broke into the house I had rented for eight years and recently vacated. It wasn't as bad as it sounds. I'd turned the keys over to the landlord but the place was unoccupied and due to be demolished. I thought I'd forgotten to pack something during the confusion of moving day. (A ceremonial sword, actually, but that's another story...) I knew that the door to the sun porch didn't close properly. The landlord had never fixed it, nor had he replaced the broken latch on the basement window inside the porch. So rather than bothering him about the key I got into the cellar as easily as a burglar might have done.

It was strange coming up the cellar stairs to find empty rooms. The late afternoon sun coming in through partly closed Venetian blinds laid patterns of light and shadow across floors and walls where carpets and paintings had been. Vague patterns in the dust were all that remained of familiar furniture. Upstairs the loose floorboard in the hallway outside the kids' bedrooms creaked more loudly than I remembered. I felt like a trespasser in my own memories.

I always have a similar feeling stepping back into my Internet past, a sense of being an intruder in a familiar place grown strange.

One way or another we will all, eventually, abandon our writings on the web. I suppose they will remain as long as their hosts are functioning, perhaps for longer in the Google cache or via sites like The Wayback Machine. A day will come when everyone who used the Internet in its first decades is gone but their blogs and websites and interactions with one other will linger. More and more of the worldwide web will become a phantom web. Ghosts and the living will mingle, indistinguishably.

I suppose there are technical reasons why phantoms will never overrun the Internet but it seems likely to me that if humanity and the web survive long enough an electronic past will accumulate which is far more alive, immense, and accessible than the physical past, the ruins and scraps of writing to which we have been limited up until now. And as the future continues to pile up, all of us are going to be in the layer at the very bottom.

I wonder what sort of digital fossil I will make?

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AND FINALLY

It was Victor Hugo who observed that caution is wisdom's eldest child, and in the current pandemic it is sound advice. Stay safe, subscribers, as we close with a reminder the next Orphan Scrivener will appear in your in-boxes on August 15th.

See you then!
Mary R & Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, to be found hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the Web at http://reedmayermysteries.000webhostapp.com/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, a bibliography, and our growing libraries of links to free e-texts of classic and Golden Age mysteries, ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural. It also hosts the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Our joint blog, largely devoted to reviews of Golden Age of Mystery fiction, lurks about at http://ericreedmysteries.blogspot.com/ Intrepid subscribers may also wish to know our noms des Twitter are @marymaywrite and @groggytales. Drop in some time!

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