THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # SEVENTY-SIX -- 15 AUGUST 2012

Nightfall has noticeably crept in since the last Orphan Scrivener crept into your in-box and already it's time for the next issue. Subscribers should feel free to imagine a tootle of trombonists blaring a certain song from The Music Man when they notice the number of this issue. However, since Richard Strauss was of the opinion we shouldn't look at people playing trombones because it just encourages them, may we suggest you take his advice, ignore the trombonists, and instead read on?

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ERIC'S BIT or GONE WITH THE WHIP

One of summer's biggest treats was when my parents took me to the amusement park.

I don't know if amusement parks come so small these days, but it was big enough to thrill a nine-year old. No matter where you were, you could hear the clatter, rush and shriek of coaster and riders, the miniature train's jingling bell, the cheerful, maddening tooting and thumping of the merry-go-round's mechanical drum and organ. The air smelled of cotton candy. My sneakers crunched on gravel, sawdust, and discarded peanut shells. By the time I got home my soles were plastered with sun-heated, sticky chewing gum.

Near the park entrance, low cinder block building formed a dim, cool cave full of flashing lights and ringing bells. I never ventured into the pinball lair. The two machines at the entrance of the arcade were what interested me. One stamped the Lord's Prayer or the Gettysburg Address on a flattened penny. Behind the other contraptions' glass face a crane with a mechanical grabber hung above an enticing mountain of trinkets. I managed to snag a treasure trove: a Lilliputian pinhole camera with film, a miniature hectograph, and a trio of ceramic monkeys which puffed smoke rings from their little cigarettes even while they saw, heard, and spoke no evil.

I recall the atmosphere and anticipation more than the rides. I do remember my heart pounding as the roller coaster was ratcheted noisily up the impossibly steep incline until wooden platform and rails vanished and I looked straight up into nothing but blue sky before the bottom dropped out of the world. Then there was centrifugal terror as the whip's long, steel arms threatened to fling my car through the railings. Pressed helplessly back against the cushioned seat, I imagined a bolt coming loose, my car smashing through the flimsy railing and flying out over the passersby, over the popcorn stand to smash into the fun house. The stifling dark of the fun houses comes back to me, the abrupt turns to avoid illuminated skeletons, the far more scary touch of invisible cobwebs in the dark. Also vivid is the feeling of delight when the miniature train train chugged past the boundaries of the park proper and into a wilderness of grass and picnic tables.

Not too many years ago, I passed by the place where the amusement park had been. The wooden mountain at the start of the roller coaster remained, though sagging and probably as rickety and unsafe as I'd feared it was so many years before. Scattered humps of rotting wood were visible between the tall trees that had grown up around the rest of the coaster. One cinder block wall of the arcade still stood, covered with graffiti. There was the platform where the whip had spun, now roofless and empty. At one end of the park small, rusted tracks vanished into an overgrown field.

At the entrance a faded sign remained, promising amusements which were now ghostly memories. I was grateful that as a child I had not known it would come to this.

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NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

The ticker is somewhat shorter than usual this time around, but the big news is that the press is offering a free Kindle download of One For Sorrow at

http://www.amazon.com/One-Sorrow-Chamberlain-Mystery-ebook/dp/B0015ACGQ0

This is the revised version slated to be published in the autumn in the UK by Head of Zeus, who will issue John's first adventure in various formats including hardcover, paperback, and ebook.

We're not sure how long this offer will last, so if you're interested, it would be best to take advantage of it immediately. Just be sure to come back to read the rest of the newsletter!

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MARY'S BIT or AS COOL AS A COLANDER

The current heatwave in many parts of the country has doubtless provided a bonanza in the form of increased sales of ice cream, soft drinks, and sun tan oil. Not to mention calamine lotion, that pink flaky stuff we wore during the hotter stretches of English summers, which despite that lying jade Dame Rumour's contention to the contrary came along now and then.

During those warm spells, since we lived in an industrial area with an abundance of concreted over back yards and no gardens -- the nearest greenery to be found was local cemeteries or parks and living in the city haymaking was not an option when the sun shone -- the heat was magnified something awful. It was excellent for drying the Monday wash strung across the back lane but us thin-blooded locals sometimes found it hard to cope with higher than usual temperatures.

As I have written in an earlier newsletter http://home.earthlink.net/~maywrite/tos52.htm#sands we sometimes went to the coast on sunny summer Sundays, but that was not always possible. The swimming baths part of the baths and wash house not far from our street were not free, and the only other body of water near us -- across Scotswood Road at the bottom of our street in fact -- was the River Tyne. Nobody with any sense set foot in it, given at the time if anyone fell in a certain nasty procedure involving the stomach was routine treatment because of the filthy state of the water.

Aside: cleaning-up efforts have progressed very well since then as I hear salmon have returned to spawn upriver. They must have long ancestral memories or perhaps enough of them got through the various connurbations along the river to keep the Tyne tribe alive.

But to get back to what I was saying, discomfort being the mother of invention, one day my younger sister and I devised a cooling method which these days would be called green.

We lived in an upstairs flat in a terraced street, and so steps led down from the back door into our back yard. If any subscribers have seen Get Carter, they've seen this type of housing in the sequence with the hearse in the back lane, except our back steps were open to the sky rather than roofed in.

Our brainwave was to hook up a hosepipe -- it's an enduring mystery why we even had one, since there was nothing to water and no buggy to wash -- to the cold tap in the kitchen. In passing let me mention that this was the only plumbing provided in the flat until we got a water heater. The traditional usual offices were represented by the loo in the back yard although in all fairness to the landlord, the Victorian vintage clothes boiling copper was still in the scullery although in our time it was only used as a meeting place for black beetles.

Well, we tied a broom to the top of the outside staircase and from the broom suspended a colander swinging from three bits of string. Then we tied the hosepipe into the colander, turned on the cold tap, et voila, a shower arrangement was created. We donned our scratchy one-piece black wool bathing suits and took turns standing under the cool water, our feet on sunwarmed concrete.

As the neighbours may well have said, by, but those bairns thought up a canny plan.

Now when Eric says he feels too hot, I'm not being rude when I tell him to stick his head under the cold tap.

A colander is optional.

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AND FINALLY

Speaking of cold taps, while we dislike having to throw cold water on our subscribers' plans for October 15th, we wish to remind them that's when the next issue of Orphan Scrivener will hot-foot into their in-boxes.

See you then!
Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the Web at http://home.earthlink.net/~maywrite/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, the Doom Cat interactive game written by Eric, and our growing libraries of links to free e-texts of classic and Golden Age mysteries, ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural. There's also the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Intrepid subscribers may also wish to pop over to Eric's blog at http://www.journalscape.com/ericmayer/

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THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # SEVENTY-FIVE -- 15 JUNE 2012

Since the Orphan Scrivener's shadow last darkened your inbox, summer has come and the first fireflies have glowed in the shadows on the lawn. Yet already the lengthening days are moving towards the summer solstice and soon the days will begin to grow shorter, if an oxymoron may be permitted grazing room in this latest newsletter.

It was Cardinal Richelieu who reportedly observed that, given six lines written by an honest man, he could find something among them to hang the writer. We leave subscribers to ponder his words while urging them to continue reading beyond this line....

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MARY'S BIT or SEND FOR THE ELECTRIC CORSET!

And now for a peek behind the writing curtain.

We have written a Victorian novel of mystery-suspense with a touch of the occult, for which the plot required inventing a patent cure for evil to serve as a pet theory for a medical man.

What we settled on is fairly tame -- though in its way logical -- compared to some of the patent medicinal panaceas for that era, for hawkers of such didn't hide their bushels under a fancy-labeled box of nostrums. There's no doubt the colourful field of patent medicine produced some exotic crops. You only have to read their beautifully florid advertisements to wonder at mankind's credulity.

Not to mention the number of compounds from which these miraculous cures were, er, compounded, many of which were claimed to be to a doctor's recipe. Well, there's more than one way of doctoring, and here I'm thinking of the ingredients.

For example, take Turlington's Balsam of Life. Please. Patented in the 1700s it boasted over 20 ingredients. Among other ailments, its proprietor claimed it would not only raise the spirits and cure inward weakness but also influence disordered body parts for the better.

Strikes me Frankenstein would surely have succeeded in his aim if only he'd laid in a supply of the mixture before he began his shocking experiments.

Opium had a long partnership with this type of preparation. A 1670 work by Christopher Merrett mentions Matthew's Pills, in which the drug was mixed with white hellebore roots and oil of turpentine. He goes to say of this mixture "by giving rest and ease it may easily decoy people into the use of them, though by long taking of them, diseases become far more incurable then they are in their own Nature."

But worse than that was known to happen, for children were not only treated for colic, teething pains, and similar conditions but, alas, were also often kept asleep with the aid of a dose of Godfrey's Cordial, which also contained opium. Sometimes infants thus quietened slept on forever.

One of my favourite nostrums is Dr Salmon's Elixer Universall, the recipe for which he published in 1693, because it mentions filings from a unicorn horn. Other ingredients included "Pouder of a Lyon's heart", chameleon ashes, and a man's dried brain, not to mention the more down to earth earthworms and Egyptian onions. We might ponder whence came some of the more exotic ingredients -- assuming the statements to be true, which is doubtful -- but in any event the exotic mixture was to be taken from what he termed the change of the moon to the full. According to Dr Salmon, his Universall Elixer cured digestive and heart disorders, stopped bleeding, and strengthened the sytem, as well as other good works.

Sounds a bit fishy to me.

Did a person languish under an attack of rheumatism, fever, or ague? Haul out Bateman's Pectoral Drops, a remarkable mixture that could even cure a cold with a single dose, a task beyond medical science today. Another preparation featuring opium, the drops also contained alcohol and oil of anise. Afflicted with diseases of the chest, low spirits, dyspepsia, or trouble with your liver? Try a course of Mountain Herb Pills, which also promised to deal with any female complaints your relatives on the distaff side may have.

Speaking of the ladies, human nature being what it is, preparations such as those I've described were also hawked for beautifying women. Imagine the horror of a titled lady cursed with pimples or other skin eruptions at the start of the London season. Dr Mackenzie's Improved Harmless Arsenic Complexion Wafters -- advertised as producing a lovely complexion -- to the rescue! Once accomplished, it would be wise to keep the skin beautiful with the aid of his Arsenical Toilet Soap, which at shilling a cake or sixpence unscented was pretty expensive, no pun intended.

Should other illnesses strike, still milady need not worry too much. She'd be back in the social whirl quickly after a while spent wearing Dr Scott's Electropathic Corset. Magnetic in nature, its inventor touted it as a remedy for, among various conditions, hysteria, debility, palpitations, and nervousness -- just the sort of ailments to get the servants talking, you notice. Should milady fall victim to rheumatism or even paralysis, Dr Scott's electric hair brush could affect a cure, provided nobody else had used it. Or she might try Dr Fraunce's Female Strengthening Elixir, which promised to restore weak constitutions, for surely a lady could not be possessed of a decayed constitution, correction of which was the hair brush's other claim to fame?

It's a fascinating topic despite causing many peoples' eyes to roll - though if they thus do them a mischief, versions of 19th century eye massagers are on the market today -- but we should not be too hasty to dismiss these old remedies. Why, only the other day I heard leeches have reappeared in the medical world. I refer to health insurance companies.

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NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

The ticker this time round begins with startling news...

A NEW VENTURE or WELDON, WAMBAUGH, AND M. E. MAYER

We're thrilled to announce the refurbished edition of One For Sorrow as by M. E. Mayer will spring forth in November from the new British publisher Head of Zeus. No jokes about the circumstances of Athena's birth if you please. Fellow PPP hist-mystery authors Bruce McBain, Jane Finnis, and Priscilla Royal will also appear from HoZ and in addition to those mentioned above our other distinguished stablemates include Thomas Cook, Dashiell Hammett, and Joyce Carol Oates. Take a glance at HoZ's lavish catalogue at http://headofzeus.com/HoZ_2012.pdf

AND SPEAKING OF PPP or A FEW BLOGS MORE

Continuing her regular turn on the PPP multi-author blog stage, when the curtain went up on Mary's 18th April contribution she revealed fourteen things she learnt by reading Golden Age mysteries. For a start, would you trust a lady who dared to show her ankles? http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/fourteen-things-i-have-learnt-by-reading-golden-age-mysteries/

On 15th May Mary trod the boards again, this time to look backward -- without falling into the orchestra pit -- with a bit of nostalgic musing about the sounds of childhood. Take that, Marcel Proust and your madeleines! http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/sounds-of-childhood/

We've occasionally been asked about co-writing so for her appearance on the 18th of this month Mary will relate how we work as partners in crime. After the style of Gilbert and Sullivan, no less. The PPP blog lives over at http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/category/news-and-blog/ so if subscribers don't fancy that particular topic, they can consult its smorgasboard of links to contributions from other PPP authors and be fairly sure of finding something of interest.

EARLY REVIEWS or WAIT NINE YEARS? NEIN!

Horace was of the opinion literary works should be kept away from the public eye for at least nine years. Rash scribblers that we are, we ignored the famous Roman's advice and thus Nine For The Devil appeared the year following its completion. Since the ticker began with mention of our literary labours we shall close with a couple of reviews of the latest. Robin Burcell, award-winning author of The Bone Chamber, described Ninefer as "More complex and colorful than any Byzantine mosaic", set in "the cruel intrigue-ridden court of the Emperor Justinian, where treachery and murder linger behind every shadowed column of the imperial palace in Constantinople", while Jerrilyn Farmer, bestselling author of the Madeline Bean mysteries, said its "twisty plotting, fabulous dialogue, and aristocratic backstabbing drew me into this clever plot (Who killed an Empress who showed no signs of being murdered?) and I could not stop reading until I watched master problem-solver John dance his way out of the deadly wrath of his grieving emperor". Subscribers wishing to look over other early reviews of Ninefer should point their clickers towards http://home.earthlink.net/~maywrite/ninerev.htm for the collection so far.

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ERIC'S BIT or TYPEWRITER HEROES

Several years ago, Dave Davies of Kinks fame had up for auction on eBay one of his old guitars, a vintage 1977 Les Paul Artisan used on various tours and songs. I imagine that for a connoisseur it would be exciting to get hold of an instrument from which a genuine rock n' roll legend had wrung some notes.

A lot of rock fans can tell you that John Lennon favored a Rickenbacker 325 while Jimi Hendrix preferred a Fender Stratocaster, and even point to what guitars were used on which tracks. I can just about distinguish an acoustic from electric so why, exactly, Dave might have played a Les Paul Artisan three pickup custom walnut on the Kinks' eighties hit Come Dancing instead of, say, a banjo is beyond me.

Since writing, unlike music, is something I know a little about, I was intrigued when I ran across The Classic Typewriter Page on the web, listing typewriters used by famous authors.

http://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/typers.html

I suppose different makes of guitars have characteristic sounds and I can imagine how the guitar used might influence the music produced. At the very least, acoustic guitars sound different than electric ones. Different typewriters -- even electrics and portables -- all produce (or should I say produced?) exactly the same words.

Then again, pounding the typewriter keys and slapping the return lever was a physical process, like working guitar strings. Every typewriter has a different feel. Making the same words on a portable, or a manual, or an electric is a different sensation. The words sound different coming out too. The clatter of the keys, the noise made by the carriage, differ from machine to machine.

Might the make of typewriter used influence the words? Looking down the list I noticed a few authors had the same machines. For example, both Philip K. Dick and Harlan Ellison used an Olympia SG 3. A good machine for sf perhaps? On the other hand, E.B. White and Jack Kerouac wrote on Underwood portables. Now there's a mismatched pair for you!

Check out the machines employed by some mystery virtuosos:

Agatha Christie: Remington Portables No. 2 and No. 5
Raymond Chandler: Underwood Noiseless
Ian Fleming: Royal portables (one gold-plated)
Erle Stanley Gardner: Underwood 5
Dashiell Hammett: Royal De Luxe
Patricia Highsmith: Olympia SM3
Georges Simenon: Royal 10
Mickey Spillane: L.C. Smith Standard Super Speed

Not much in common. Except that all the typewriters represented proved capable of producing publishable work. The Smith-Corona manual portable on which I labored futilely for years was a machine shunned by all the successful authors named on the Classic Typewriter Page. Maybe that was my problem. You need the right tool for the job.

Would it have helped if I'd used the same writing instrument as a typewriter hero?

Raymond Chandler used an Underwood and I used to bring $4 Underwoods home from the thrift store all the time. Inevitably they proved more suitable for reducing a sheet of paper to shreds than writing, that is when the carriage didn't immediately jam, or fall off. Did any of those Underwoods have The Big Sleep in them, if they had still worked?

The computer keyboards I've been using since around 1990 haven't, but at least I've been able to tap out some publishable material. Although one might ask, is it my keyboard or is it Mary, my co-author?

The typewriter list notes that Bob Dylan used a Royal Safari Deluxe and Roy Orbison an Underwood TM5. Wonder if I'd be able to make music if I found one of those old typewriters? I guess if I wanted to sing I'd stick to the Underwood TM5.

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AND FINALLY

Orphan Scrivener continues its glorious career of skating perilously close to behind hauled up before tbe beak on charges of presenting a probable cause of civil riot, but what is life without a bit of excitement now and then? For, as Dr Johnson observed, when a calamity occurs, the afflicted should always recall how much worse it could have been.

Subscribers may well find out how worse it could be when the next issue causes a commotion in their in-boxes on August 15th.

See you then!
Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the Web at http://home.earthlink.net/~maywrite/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, the Doom Cat interactive game written by Eric, and our growing libraries of links to free e-texts of classic and Golden Age mysteries, ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural. There's also the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Intrepid subscribers may also wish to pop over to Eric's blog at http://www.journalscape.com/ericmayer/

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # SEVENTY-FOUR -- 15 APRIL 2012

Albert Einstein famously remarked that income tax was the hardest thing in the world to understand. This year US residents have an extra two days to get their returns submitted because, for the benefit of overseas subscribers, the 15th April deadline falls on a Sunday and Emancipation Day, observed in DC, is celebrated this year on the 16th.

However, for our subscribers at least 15th April is still notable -- some might say notorious -- in that the February Orphan Scrivener announced this issue was scheduled to show up on that very date.

Well, here it is. It's early, yes, due to suddenly having to deal with time consuming matters that would make it late if left, but after all, what else can you expect with Friday the 13th looming?

Those of iron nerve may wish to read on. Those of a nervous disposition might prefer to return to wrassling their Form 1040s to the mat as a less taxing occupation.

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ERIC'S BIT or THOUGHTS FROM A BROWN STUDY

I've just enjoyed a collection of the kind of stories that aren't written any more. G.K. Chesterton's The Innocence of Father Brown was published back in 1911, and a good thing, because no one seems to write pure classic puzzle mysteries today.

Although Chesterton wrote philosophy, poetry, literary criticism, biography, and Christian apologetics, among other things, he's probably best known for his stories about Father Brown, the dumpy-looking but brilliant little Catholic priest.

According to Chesterton, no one has a nose for evil like a man of the cloth.

The stories in The Innocence of Father Brown are far from realistic. Each simply sets forth a mystifying crime which Father Brown solves mostly by insight and logic. The collection contains one of the most startling mysteries I have ever read -- The Secret Garden -- but a more typical tale is The Sign of the Broken Sword.

As Father Brown, and his associate, former criminal mastermind Flambeau, stroll back to their lodgings from a rural cemetery, they discuss a monument they have visited, and a mystery surrounding a battlefield death many years before. The story consists entirely of a presentation and explication of a puzzle, accompanied by descriptions of the winter landscape.

"...they plunged into the black cloister of the woodland, which ran by them in a dim tapestry of trunks, like one of the dark corridors in a dream."

And so also they plunge into the dark mystery of a man long dead and seek to find the truth buried by history. I found it a wonderful mixture.

There is nothing at stake except the satisfaction of a solution. Those involved in the mystery are long gone. The only challenges faced by the protagonists are intellectual. The two walkers are not attacked or threatened in any way. There is no suspense or fear for their, or anyone else's, safety. The dramatic events took place in the past. The whole tale unfolds at a walking pace, to match the only action.

Who today would write such a story? Who would publish it? Where could you find anyone advising aspiring authors to write like that?

No, these days, within a paragraph Father Brown would need to whip his .45 caliber Webley-Mars Automatic Pistol from under his robes and some hulking brute would find himself on the bloody end of bullets exiting a flashing muzzle at a velocity of 380 meters per second. The hell with those quaint little homilies Father Brown used to give. Lead is mightier than the Word. And as for Flambeau, far from being reformed, he'd remain a crazed criminal, but given to mayhem, who occasionally takes time out to assist the good father for some tangled psychological reasons.

Yes, yes, I know what you're saying already.

A Catholic priest in the early nineteen hundreds would never have packed a Webley-Mars. He probably would have used an FN Browning M1900 single action, semi-automatic pistol produced in Belgium, the gun Theodore Roosevelt allegedly kept in his desk drawer.

Then again, I suppose we could try for the cozy market and give him a hobby rather than a firearm. Something novel. Like making tin soldiers or Turkish Delight.

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NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

A shortish length of ticker tape today, but hopefully of interest. Read on!

A MOST WELCOME SURPRISE or YET MORE GLORY FOR JOHN

In the last newsletter we mentioned Nine For The Devil was awarded a starred review by Publishers Weekly http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-59058-994-6 This time around we're happy to announce John's latest adventure is travels trailing yet more clouds of glory, being as it was Pierce's Pick in his March 5th blog over at the Rap Sheet. Our thanks to Jeff Kingston Pierce for a most welcome surprise, details of which can be perused at http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2012/03/pierces-picks-nine-for-devil.html

A HOT TOPIC or THE DEVIL'S NINE QUESTIONS

Mary posted some thoughts on March 26th on Maggie Bishop's Dames of Dialogue blog. The topic was The Devil's Nine Questions, concerning riddle songs after the fashion of Scarborough Fair and how the various addressees beat the nasty fellow off with intelligent replies to seemingly impossible questions. http://damesofdialogue.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/the-devils-nine-questions-by-mary-reed/

Visit http://damesofdialogue.wordpress.com for the skinny, and stop by often for other guest posts ranging from what Maggie describes as fun travel and animal articles to food, history, shoes, and author interviews.

A REAL LIFE VILLAIN or THE GHASTLY GOURD

Jenny Milchman is a suspense writer whose debut novel, COVER OF SNOW, was recently sold to Ballantine after eleven years trying to break into print. The book is to be published in February 2013 and her short fiction will soon appear in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Adirondack Mysteries II. Jenny's Suspense Your Disbelief blog welcomes readers, writers, and authors to discuss the ever-present need for story -- and the ever-changing publishing industry. Mary's contribution talks about a vicious historical figure called the Gourd -- though not to his face -- who plays a large part in Four For A Boy, the prequel to John's adventures, and reveals the villain's ultimate fate as recorded by that court gossip Procopius. Point your clickers to http://www.jennymilchman.com/blog/ on April 18th for more!

A SPECIAL OFFER CONTINUES or EBOOKS FOR 99 CENTS!

Poisoned Pen Press has released a new batch of 99 cent ebooks, the majority of them the first in assorted series. Fans of historical mysteries will doubtless be interested -- no, we insist -- to hear titles currently on sale include Aileen Baron's Torch of Tangier, The Trunk Murderess by Jana Bommrsbach, Margit Liesche's Lipstick and Lies, A Spark of Death by Bernadette Pajer, and Charlotte Hinger's Deadly Descent.

If you don't care for historical mysteries there are a number of other PPP authors whose works in various sub-genres may be sampled at this very reasonable price. To see what's available take a look around http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/discover-mystery/

While you're over at Poisoned Pen's website, consider a glance at the blog du jour, You may be unfortunate if you arrive on the 18th as that's Mary's day, but with the blog's rotation of authors and an occasional guest post subscribers are bound to find something of interest sooner or later. Unless of course you'd like to read Mary's revelations entitled Fourteen Things I Have Learnt By Reading Golden Age Mysteries, which goes live on 18th March. It's no mystery where the blog resides. Just pop over to http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/category/blog/ and you're there.

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MARY'S BIT or AN EYEWATERING EPIC

There's a saying in Yorkshire, particularly popular to those in the plumbing profession, that where there's muck there's brass.

Plumbers of course also carry out cleaner work such as, oh, repairs to hydronic heating systems and it is in this connection, no pun intended, that we have contributed a fair amount to our local plumber's IRA yet again. Enough brass, indeed, to provide raw material for at least a trombone for a colliery's brass band.

Truth, they say, lies at the bottom of a well. To be truthful, we prefer not to dwell on the two days last year without water on tap when our well conked out, though certainly it was an impressive reference for the quality of the manufacturer's work to learn via its coded label the dead pump was thirty years old. As those who have been without easy access to potable water will agree, henceforth let us never scorn Adam's ale!

Since then a trickle of other water-related problems have made life at Casa Maywrite interesting in the sense of the proverbial Chinese curse.

To set the scene, readers should picture a boiler that would not have been out of place in the Titanic engine room. Cube shaped with pipes going in and out like the worms in the children's rhyme about worms and pinochle, not to mention various locations on it are ornamented with dials and knobs and levers, all part and parcel of its profound mysteries.

In this particular and literal water go-round we started off with the upstairs heating loop kicking in every time the downstairs loop came on, even though no heat was being called for upstairs. Diagnosis: the upstairs zone valve was jammed open and under the immutable laws of the universe hot water rises.

So the plumber came to call. On his first visit he arrived with the wrong sized parts due to a mix-up at the shop, but the second time all was in order for replacing both valves, a good plan seeing as he was here anyhow and it would save yet another trip should the second valve turn up its toes. The job involved sawing out copper pipe as well as setting valves in. Eric put on his apprentice plumber's hat and held a large coffee tubby to catch occasional solder drips. There was much hammering and colourful language of a comical nature rather than your really ripe, raw stuff, but after a couple of hours the job was done.

About a week later, the loo's feed line suddenly parted company at the joint and water sprayed the bathroom. Talk about pressure! Were it in a hosepipe we could have power-washed siding, quenched a small fire, or dispersed a riot. We turned the line off -- fortunately without breaking the stopcock gizmo -- and until the plumber arrived next day used the fabulously useful for all manner of purposes large coffee tubbie to flush the loo.

All this unwelcome excitement pointed up the prescience of the plumber's observation during the earlier proceedings that at the rate we were going the entire plumbing system will eventually be replaced bit by bit. Malfunctioning plumbing is a trial to be sure but as Flanders & Swann were wont to sing It All Makes Work For The Working Man To Do.

So as we are sure subscribers will understand after the past couple of months don't think us ungrateful but it's just, you know, we'd prefer it if you didn't offer us water biscuits with the cheese board selection.

STOP PRESS

A couple of days after I scribbled the foregoing high winds blew in and blew down a pine tree next door by the garden wall. Most of its trunk is lying in our neighbour's garden with a few branches poking snouts in our direction, but by great good fortune it fell parallel to and between the houses. If it had fallen forward it would have crushed our buggy, if in our direction we'd have little roof remaining if not worse, and if it had tilted the other way the neighbour's cars and/or house would have been damaged. But as a wise man once said to me, all ifs are followed by buts, and in this case it's ... but it didn't.

So in the recent past we've weathered difficulties connected with air and water. Provided we don't have an earthquake or conflagration we shall happily not complete a hand composed of the classical elements. However, as I write the entire state is under a red flag warning, meaning conditions are ripe for fires to start and spread rapidly.

And the ubiquitous they reckon rural life is peaceful!

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AND FINALLY

Philip James Bailey once observed that, like clouds, curses pass away. So indeed does this latest issue of Orphan Scrivener, but bear in mind the next will fly in to cloud subscribers' brows on June 15th.

See you then!
Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the Web at http://home.earthlink.net/~maywrite/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, the Doom Cat interactive game written by Eric, and our growing libraries of links to free e-texts of classic and Golden Age mysteries, ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural. There's also the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Intrepid subscribers may also wish to pop over to Eric's blog at http://www.journalscape.com/ericmayer/ and/or visit the Poisoned Pen Press author blog at http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/category/blog/