THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SEVEN -- 15 FEBRUARY 2021

As winter approaches each year we begin stocking up with packet and tinned foodstuffs for those times when the buggy is snowed in. By this we mean it cannot be moved if there is ice or snow between us and the road, even when the road itself has been cleared by a helpful neighbour with an ATV equipped with a small plough. At the time of writing we have not seen the ground for three weeks and more snow is on the way. The longest snowed-in period we've had so far was a hard to believe seventy-seven days, and one year we almost ran out of coffee. Oh, the horror, the horror!

No doubt subscribers have stories of their experiences in adverse or extreme weather but before recalling them, we hope they will take a few moments to read on...

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ERIC'S BIT or TRAVELS ON THE ROADS OF LIFE

The pandemic has forced kids all over the country to learn from home, something technologically impossible when I went to school. The closest we came to distance learning was the occasional episode of Mr Wizard, barely visible on a tiny black and white TV set at the far-off front of the classroom. These days I'm okay with spending hours staring at a computer screen but I don't think I would have enjoyed it growing up. What I would have been happy to escape was the commute to school.

Admittedly, my walk to grade school wasn't bad. All of six tenths of a mile, according to Google Maps. (I'd have guessed it was a lot further.) Down the street past the telephone company where my grandfather worked as a custodian, the dairy, the post office, and the movie theater which charged fourteen cents admission. From there across the highway, past the pharmacy, barbershop, and police station. Yes, it does sound like some sort of small town play set, doesn't it?

The big brick box elementary school sat at the top of a steep hill that could be difficult in the winter when coated with snow and ice. Given that the school year was a mandated 180 days, even accounting for days missed due to chicken pox, measles, flu, colds, and miscellaneous vague discomforts I suffered from time to time when I got fed up with the educational system, I must have been up and down that hill 2,000 times. (I admit my calculations might be off since one of my common ailments was long-division-itis) I can still recall the sidewalks in intimate detail - the bumpy stretch of macadam, the place where a root had buckled and broken a concrete slab. Not long ago I walked up that hill for the first time in ages and those details remained. The sidewalks hadn't been touched in fifty years. The hill seemed steeper though. I wouldn't try running up it these days.

Although the actual journey wasn't onerous I could only run so fast carting my bulging book bag (no backpacks yet) which meant I had to choke down my Cheerios at high speed to arrive before the bell. And naturally the familiar walk soon became boring. I muttered made-up stories to myself to relieve the tedium.

After grade school my commutes got tougher. Sartre had it wrong. Hell isn't other people, hell is a school bus stuffed with adolescents. I can't bring myself to say more.

Driving the roughly twenty miles from home to college was a bit less horrific. Except in winter. The Plymouth wasn't exactly a chariot of the gods to begin with -- the body was mostly patches of unpainted unsanded fiberglass and it left a billowing black trail of smoke in its wake. I had to stop for oil fill-ups more frequently than gasoline. Add to that, during the months of icy weather, the heater didn't work and the tires were bald. One particular intersection required me to start pumping the brakes (such as they were) a half mile in advance when there was snow on the road. Then there was the hill with the sharp curve by the power plant where I twice executed a 180 degree pirouette, luckily not when one of the enormous gravel-laden trucks that frequented the road was coming.

During my last year in law school I worked at a county law library during the day and took night classes in lower Manhattan. This involved bussing from Weehawken NJ (yes, there's really a town with that name) to Jersey City in the morning and taking the subway to Manhattan in the afternoon, then taking another subway at ten PM uptown to the Port Authority in order to catch a bus back to Weehawken. The dark deserted streets I hiked to reach the Canal Street station after classes were exactly as you've seen on film with steaming manholes and the occasional taxi. Since the area was mostly warehouses it wasn't as dangerous as it looked. I felt more uneasy making my way through the maze of corridors, escalators and stairways in the Port Authority.

Luckily I've worked from home for the past twenty-five years and haven't had to commute, so that's that. I'll shut up before I start sounding like one of Monty Python's four Yorkshiremen outdoing each other about the hardships of their childhoods, living in shoe boxes or paper bags or an 'ole in the ground.

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NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

Alas, the ticker sits silent once again so there is no news to pass along...maybe it's jammed ...where's the WD-40?...

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MARY'S BIT or THAT TIME WE CONSTRUCTED A WHALE

We are not two to boast, but a few years ago we outdid Herman Melville in that Three For A Letter features not one but two whales, both of which play major roles in the narrative.

The real whale was mentioned by Procopius in passing in his History of the Wars, wherein is recorded it was a terror to shipping for years, whereas our great grey whale was based upon information gathered from that most engaging work, Hero of Alexandria's Pneumatics.

In the opening chapter of Three For A Letter, a banquet held in honour of Empress Theodora features a presentation of the story of Jonah. To the wonderment of all, our mechanical sea beast appears from behind a curtain painted with a seascape, rolls forward without any visible method of propulsion, halts at the edge of the stage, spouts, and then rolls backwards to disappear behind the curtain.

That sounds somewhat unlikely, someone in the back row has doubtless remarked. But while we have not actually built a working model, our fictional whale's remarkable performance was based upon, and extrapolated from, the aforementioned Pneumatics. Details of its construction we borrowed from Hero includes a method of moving a cart back and forth without being pushed (accomplished by ropes around axles hidden under the whale and two bags of sand) and how to produce a jet of water by the use of mechanically compressed air. We also equipped our whale with a skin of painted canvas stretched over wooden ribbing, glass eyes, and, when the leviathan opens its mighty jaws, the action reveals a stuffed red linen tongue and huge metal teeth illuminated by lamps.

We also featured further artifacts whose inner operations are described in Hero's work, including an automatically opening villa door that terrified John's servant Peter (the original instructions applied to a temple door), a mechanical satyr dispensing an unending stream of wine, and an automaton archer who shoots his arrow at a dragon.

While doubts have been expressed concerning whether any such wonders would actually work, either way Hero's instructions are good enough for us. Dammit, Jim, we are authors, not engineers.

In all fairness, we should mention now and then startling events in our fiction are actually based on real life incidents. How else could John have flown in Four For A Boy? Admittedly his flight lasted only a few seconds and ended with a crash landing but it was based on an account of a failed Victorian era suicide. Fortunately John survived -- and a good job he did too, since otherwise the series would also have come to an abrupt end.

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FINALLY

At this point our latest Orphan Scrivener comes to an abrupt end with our usual reminder of the date the next issue will roll into subscribers' in-boxes, which in this case is April 15th.

Until then everyone stay safe and warm.

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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THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SIX -- 15 DECEMBER 2020

Frigid weather or no, in a couple of weeks Eric will again serve as our first foot. Tradition demands the first set of pedal extremities over the threshold in the new year should be that of a dark-haired man, whose entry into a household brings with him good fortune for the coming twelve months. In northeastern England he usually carries a piece of coal and a silver coin to ensure enough of such necessaries during the year he brings in with him. Since he fitted the requirements of this important function, Mary's brother was always sent outside just before midnight on 31st December and only allowed back in after the year turned. This year many will doubtless view their first footers as not only ushering in the new year but also symbolically kicking out the terrible old one.

Meantime, as holiday preparations start cranking up subscribers may care to sit down for a while to give their shanks' ponies a rest and glance over this latest issue of Orphan Scrivener...

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MARY'S BIT or AH, THE DREAMS OF THE YOUNG!

A week or so back I toyed with the idea of dragooning The Silent Partner into co-forming the Maywrite Inkstained Wretches Concert Duo and Jug band, but he pleaded he cannot hit a note even when equipped with a large carpet beater. Though as he mentions below he played triangle along with his similarly equipped elementary classmates' performance of The Anvil Chorus. Where anyone could obtain that many triangles at the same time remains a mystery for the ages.

A bit of trivia: Elswick, my home area in Newcastle, forms the setting for our WWII Grace Baxter novel Ruined Stones and the living quarters in our fictional streets are based on the housing in which we lived when young. Indeed, the cramped cold tap scullery with sloping roof featured in Grace's lodgings is a mirror image of my older sister's when she was first married. However, none of those fictional homes were ever visited by the piano fairy, as happened when my younger sister came home from school one day to find said fairy had left her an upright second-hand joanna in our scullery.

For my younger sibling is a talented musician. She can play not only piano but also violin and indeed just about anything with strings, not to mention clarinet and recorder. She reads music, which I cannot. She is also a better singer. I just croak along for the ride. Well, OK, I did sing in the mass choir greeting the Queen Mother when she visited Tyneside, but when among a large group of organised singers or any similar crowd is concerned one voice among many is not usually individually distinguishable. And really mine is not quite as bad as that.

One day just for the heck of it said sister and I had a bash at recreating the Everly Brothers type of harmonies in the The Allisons' ancient hit Are You Sure? We never got past pinning down the first few lines of the chorus and just as well considering we agreed should we have landed a recording contract we were going to be called The Fyddling Four. With a y, yes. Ah, the dreams of the young! Of course there were only the two of us but ya gotta think big in this crazy biz, right?

Such musical skills as I possess extend to playing a mean kazoo. I have only performed on that curious instrument once in public and that was with a group of similarly equipped friends at an sf conference. One (not mine!) was played partly submerged in an almost empty beer mug which, if aural memory does not play me false, produced a strangely strangled buzzing sound that would have surprised the BBC Radiophonics Workshop. If any of us were to be reminded of it now, we would probably plead youthful exuberance as an excuse. Fortunately no recording of our impetuous and improvised concert exists. Another mystery for the ages is who arrived equipped with enough kazoos.

Not long after that I had a bash at learning to play the more complicated harmonica but only succeeded in producing sounds causing the cat to flee the room. However, I have been known to shake a mean (rather than green) tambourine, a skill bound to be useful were I ever to join the Salvation Army. Many subscribers will remember Mr Bean conducting a Salvation Army brass band in a Christmas episode of his titular programme. The organisation is and has been a continuing blessing to many, but my chief memory of them is when they would send one of their bands around Elswick to play on street corners on Sunday mornings at a time probably far too early for those whose last musical performance was harmonising the well-known chorus of Nelly Dean when the pub on the corner of our street emptied after chucking-out time was called the night before.

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NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

...It's been said most domestic repairs can be accomplished by application of either WD40 or duct tape or, in advanced cases, both. Looks like we need to follow the former course as the BSP ticker is so still it's as if it's rusted up. Hopefully it'll be ticking again next time round...

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ERIC'S BIT or A NOTEWORTHY PROBLEM

Elsewhere in this issue Mary impugns my musical abilities. As much as I hate to quarrel in public, I must take issue with this. In point of fact I have absolutely no musical abilities to impugn. If one were to say that I was a bad singer that would be demonstrably false since I cannot sing at all, if singing is defined as emitting a string of notes.

The very concept of a "note" is alien to me. What are notes? Where do they come from? Not out of my mouth, that’s for sure. I’ve got plenty of mumbles in there, and grumbles, rumbles, squawks, and croaks. All sorts of unpleasant noises, but not a single note. No matter where I try to start a song it always ends up going too high or low. I’ve suffered a lifetime of public shame, lip-syncing the National Anthem and Happy Birthday and The Old Wooden Cross while everyone around me warbled and boomed in joyful tunefulness.

It is true, as Mary says, I did bang on a triangle during grade school music class. Did you know it is possible to play a triangle flat? My triangle sounded more like a polygon.

My musical ineptitude was not inherited. My dad was first trumpet in a Seabees band in Hawaii at the end of World War Two. When I was in fourth grade the shiny horn that had wafted Stardust out across the airways to troops in the pineapple fields was removed from its velvet-lined case and pressed into my sweaty little hands.

"Just remember," said my father by way of last minute instruction, "keep a stiff upper lip."

Apparently I would’ve been one step ahead of the game if I’d been born British. Sucking cherry cokes through straws at the corner drug store does not give you the musculature you need to tighten your lip into the brass equivalent of a vibrating reed. Maybe Mary, being from the UK, should take up trumpet.

The trumpet was not my instrument (any more than the triangle had been....) I managed to finger the valves. I could even operate the gadget that let the spit out of the tubes. Trouble was, I couldn’t get any into the tubes -- or air for that matter -- let alone force it clear out the other end.

I huffed and puffed to no avail. I might just as well have tried to blow the Eiffel Tower over from my back porch. There must have been ten miles of tubing between the mouthpiece and the bell -- stuffed full of concrete. My face turned blue, my cheeks puffed up until I was afraid they were going to split like overinflated footballs. The only sound I heard was bells as the room started to whirl around me and go dark due to my lack of oxygen. Once I did get some air through or maybe I only displaced a few of dad's breaths left over from 1944. It sounded like asthmatic geese coughing.

Eventually my parents let me quit. They were probably afraid I’d do myself a mischief.

That was my last crack at music, so there will be no Maywrite Inkstained Wretches Concert Duo and Jug band. Unless we perform 4'33" by John Cage, which consists of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence.

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AND FINALLY

Speaking of chucking-out time as we were, that for 2020 will be here in a couple of weeks so we'll close by reminding subscribers the next issue of Orphan Scrivener will be found lurking on their virtual doorsteps on 15th January.

Meantime everyone stay safe, and see you next year.
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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THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE -- 15 OCTOBER 2020

It's dead calm as this newsletter is written and a fine crop of orange to yellow leaves is still on display, almost glowing against a sullen sky. Inevitably the winds that howl around Casa Maywrite will decimate them but when tempests visit, Wordsworth's describing autumnal winds in faded woods as wild music comes into its own, despite stray cold gusts of air chilling the ankles. And speaking of chilling, here's the latest issue of our newsletter. Read on...

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MARY'S BIT or A TALE OF TWO LADDERS AND SOME WHITE PAINT

Matisse opined those who devoted themselves to painting should begin by cutting out their tongues. He was of course talking about a different type of painting than that involved in the tale I am about to relate, but being as this is Liberty Hall we shall talk of our recent job: painting the inside of the sun porch.

But first the background . It is some time since the flat roof of the sun porch was repaired, a task that grew into a major operation since at the time we were arranging it we didn't know it was not just the northern corner of the roof that had rotted but also half the front wall. It seemed solid enough until a crew member tripped, banged his head on the wall, and half of it collapsed.

The construction work was accomplished mumblety-mumple months ago and a fine job it was too. We kept saying we really should paint the inside...and finally, a couple of weeks back, we went so far as to purchase paint, brushes and tray, drop cloths, masking tape, and one of those handy stirring sticks. We already had latex gloves and two ladders, as well as a screwdriver and hammer for prising open and tightly sealing the paint tins' lids. Not to mention a utility knife the better to scrape splashes off windows, which did not get much use since most of the dropped paint landed on the appropriately named drop cloth. Well, except when they landed on our clothing and shoes and occasionally our heads. The paint itself was wondrous to behold: it served as both undercoat and final coat all in one go. Talk about efficiency! And so we began the task.

It turned out the twirly stirrer was supposed to be attached to a drill, which we do not possess. So we just vigorously stirred the paint by hand as if it was Yorkshire pudding batter. On reflection perhaps we were too enthusiastic, since the operation caused the first minor splashes of white to spatter the drop cloth. Never mind, we said, on with the job in hand.

What we forgot was standing on even a small amount of wet paint leaves tracks.

We soon realised that although the paint was of the one-coat persuasion, what we had not reckoned with was the roof itself correctly had the rougher side of its boards facing inwards, while the stretch of new wall had its smoother side towards us and thus was easy to paint. But when we began to paint the roof this rough side drank up paint something shocking.

It was at that point we discovered one ladder was too short to comfortably reach the roof area and the other too long to be fully erected in one corner where the floor is slightly uneven. A burst of creative thinking produced the solution: duct-taping a brush to a broom and the roller to the handle of a plunger-less plumber's friend kept in case it would be useful for something some day. As indeed it was. Those parts of the roof and beams not reachable by ladder were dealt with by standing on the increasingly paint-spattered drop cloth with our heads at awkward angles, extending stick and broom with aching arms.

And so the job was done, although taking two days rather than just one as anticipated. It really doesn't look too bad so despite a few rough patches where less paint remains on the surface of the wood than elsewhere we may not need to give it another coat after all. But just in case we've stored the remaining tin of paint, the speckled duds we wore, and the plumbers' friend's handle.

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NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

The ticker is showing some signs of life this time around!

SHORT MYSTERY STORIES or THOUGHTS ON THEIR POPULARITY

Of late short mystery stories have become an attractive choice for readers because, as so many are finding in the current difficult situation, our concentration has not been of the best. Many readers are fans of this type of fiction even in better times. Among them is Jane Finnis, author of the Aurelia Marcella series, who contributed her thoughts on the topic to our blog last week. Point your clicker to

https://ericreedmysteries.blogspot.com/2020/10/jane-finnis-on-why-she-loves-short.html

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ERIC'S BIT or A PROCLIVITY FOR PURPLE

Purple is my favorite color.

It's probably the only thing I have in common with Roman emperors like Justinian. Tyrian purple came to represent the emperor, who maintained a monopoly on the production of purple silks. In 532 when Justinian prepared to flee rioting mobs in Constantinople Empress Theodora convinced him to remain steadfast and face death because "the royal purple is the noblest shroud."

But my proclivity for purple predated any knowledge of, or writing about, Roman emperors. The color caught my fancy thanks to the Purple People Eater.

That Sheb Wooley number was my first Favorite Song. A lively beat, funny lyrics, a science fiction theme, and the silly voice of the alien himself. What more could a kid want?

In the summers, until I was in fourth grade my parents ran a lakeside picnic spot. It was summer when the Purple People Eater landed. My parents had their orders. I wasn't to miss a single radio play. If the tune came over the car radio while my dad drove around the park doing his morning clean up, or on the radio in the cottage as my mom cooked breakfast, or crackled out of a transistor radio while my parents were taking a break down on the beach, I had to be called so I could frantically race the opening notes in time to hear the first chorus. The alien invasion cost me more than a little skin off my knees.

Eventually I owned a plastic Purple People Eater, which, like most of the artist's conceptions that appeared in Look Magazine (if I recall) was colored purple, even though the lyrics make it clear that the people he ate were purple.

I suppose he might've been purple, too, due to his diet.

I have to admit I have always been a bit circumspect about my love for purple. I once used a purple theme for a blog but I never wore purple clothing. Mary is fond of the Jenny Joseph poem that begins "When I am an old woman I shall wear purple." Well, maybe someday, I'll be an old enough man to wear purple. But I doubt it.

The one time I dared to emulate the emperors and don the imperial purple was a debacle. My dad made me a Purple People Eater costume for the annual Halloween parade. To me it was the coolest costume ever. Unfortunately, I didn't win any prize at all. Not even an honorable mention. A big pair of dice won. Can you believe it?

Don't tell me a giant purple papier-mache head is the noblest shroud.

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AND FINALLY

It was, relates Poe, in a bleak December when a dark-hued avian visitor came a'tapping on the latticed window, reminding us we should mention the next issue of Orphan Scrivener will flap into subscribers' in-boxes on 15th December.

Meantime, stay safe, everyone, and 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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