#FridayFlash - The Wilson Street Mission

Tweet Two weeks after my roommate's boyfriend moved in, I started taking my evening meals in the diner two doors down from our building on Wilson Street. It was the only way I could get any peace; Cody didn't know what the word 'quiet' meant, and the TV was permanently tuned to the sports channels. He ate like a pig at a trough, and Lesley was too grateful to have a boyfriend to say anything.

The diner was the kind of place where the staff know the regulars, and no one talks unless they have something to say. I started sitting at one of the tables by the window, my netbook open in front of me, where I could write and watch the street as I ate. I often stayed an hour or so after I'd finished eating, and Phyllis would ply me with black coffee and nibbles.

The Wilson Street Mission was across the road from the diner. People would drop by alone or in pairs every night, but on a Wednesday, a whole congregation would turn up. I'd watch maybe fifty people pile into that old red brick building, and at 7:30pm sharp, the doors would close, and I'd watch the light show against the stained glass windows at the front of the Mission. By the time I left an hour later, they were all still in there.

I watched this go on for a month - one night, I even tried to see if they were still there at midnight, but our apartment was on the wrong side of the building, and I didn't want to venture into our street so late at night.

One Wednesday night, as Phyllis was taking away my soup bowl and pouring me another coffee, I asked her about it. She shook her head at me.

"No, I don't know nothin' about that Mission there, 'cept it does a lotta good work for folk in this neighbourhood."

"Why's it so busy on a Wednesday?"

"I guess the pastor got somethin' special to say."

I knew Phyllis wasn't telling me everything but there was nothing I could do - if she didn't want to tell me, then I couldn't make her. I decided to stay a little later that night - the diner closed at 10pm, so I settled down with my coffee, and a slice of cheesecake, and started writing.

The diner was empty by 9, and Phyllis went home, leaving just Cathy working the front. Marco pottered around out back, bursting into snippets of opera he'd picked up back home. Cathy never spoke to anyone, so I didn't bother asking her about the Mission, and she didn't ask why I was working late. She just brought me another coffee, and went back to cleaning the counter.

My intention had been to see when the congregation left the Mission, but I got engrossed in my work and forgot to look. I'd made good progress on my novel when Cathy coughed, and looked at the clock. 9:55pm. I nodded, shut down my netbook, and paid my check. As I left the diner, I noticed the Mission's doors were still closed, and the light behind the stained glass windows was throwing coloured shapes across the road. A chorus of singing voices filled the late night air, and echoed along the empty street. It sounded beautiful and haunting at the same time, and I couldn't stop myself from crossing the road.

The information board outside the Mission featured special events or forthcoming visits by doctors and priests, but it was blank for Wednesday night. I tried to look through one of the windows but they were too high up in the wall. The singing definitely came from inside, but the congregation sounded like a lot more than just fifty people.

On a whim, I tried the door. The handle stuck at first, but I put all my weight on it, and the door opened. I pushed it inwards with my fingertips, hanging back in case anyone came to see what I wanted. I expected someone to rush over and send me packing, but no one came. Feeling bolder, I poked my head around the edge of the door.

I expected to see a congregation, enraptured and following an enthusiastic pastor, with bright lights shining behind him, lights that I could see outside through the stained glass. Instead, the building was empty and in darkness. I figured it would be like the old soup kitchen four blocks over, but it was laid out like a theatre. A layer of dust covered the velvet flip seats that faced a platform at the end of the room - no one had been inside for years.

I couldn't hear the singing any more, or see the light, so I turned to leave. The door swung shut in my face, and the darkness swallowed me up. I felt around on the door for the handle, but there was nothing on the inside, just smooth black wood. Suddenly, a voice broke the silence.

"Good evening, Celine. We've been expecting you."

A hand touched my shoulder and I screamed.

I've been screaming ever since.

Ode to Autumn

Tweet Our temperature here in Newcastle was a whopping 24°C last Wednesday, dropping to 15°C on Saturday and Sunday. With the temperatures dropping, and heavy rain beginning to set in, the weather forecasters are all adamant that summer has slipped into autumn (though only one has announced that "winter is coming"). While the Autumn Equinox is still some days away yet, there is certainly a new nip in the air, and a sense of melancholy as the nights draw in, while the idea of early morning sunshine begins to feel ludicrous. Was the summer really so long ago?

But is autumn as a season really something to be dreaded? John Keats certainly didn't think so - back in 1819, he considered it to be the season of "mists and mellow fruitfulness", and waxed lyrical about the ripe fruit, and the specific songs of autumn that differ so vastly from the songs of spring. I must admit, I'm no fan of going to work and coming home from work in the dark, and I'm even less enthused about the daily drenching as rain plagues my commute, but I'm trying to think positively about the changing seasons. So here are my top three things about autumn.

1) The Clothes
No more worrying about needing to have a "bikini ready" body, or needing all visible limbs to be in tip top condition - I'll be spending the next few months in comfortable jumpers, squishy handmade cowls and warm boots (though, in all fairness, I practically live in my Doc Martens even when the temperature goes into the mid-thirties). I can bust out my collection of hand knitted accessories, and choose from an array of hats, handwarmers, scarves, cowls and shawls to keep myself cosy when the nights draw in.

2) The Comfort
There's something comforting about making it home just in time to see the heavens open, and being able to sit by a fire while watching the downpour outside. Grey skies, chilly winds and falling leaves seem oddly romantic in their melancholy way when you're enjoying them inside, hopefully while enjoying the smell of freshly baked cinnamon biscuits. Plus you've got more of an excuse to ply yourself with hot drinks and comforting snacks.

3) The Colours
I love spring when the world comes back to life, but I equally love autumn as the trees prepare for the coming winter - this year I'll be heading up to Howick Hall Gardens to see their collection of New England trees burst into dazzling autumnal hues. The blaze of red and gold somehow takes the edge off a dreary morning, and the beauty of the season seems to be nature's way of compensating us for the cold darkness that lies ahead. Also, if you're anything like me and you find beauty in sad, doleful things, there are few things more glorious than a tree repainted in autumn's finest colours looming out of an early morning mist.

What about you? Do you love autumn, or do you yearn for spring already?

Using Silver Clay

Tweet I've always enjoyed messing about with anything that lets me use my hands, and I was a big fan of Fimo Soft for a long time. I've been making jewellery for a little while now, and I always enjoy finding new materials or techniques to try. I was browsing available one-day workshops around Newcastle when I came across a Silver Clay class at the Mushroom Works. I've known about metal clay for a while but haven't been able to get my head around how it works, so I thought I'd go along and give it a go.

Silver clay, in this case Art Clay Silver Standard, looks just like regular polymer clay when it first comes out of the packet. You can roll it out, cut out shapes, all the usual jazz you'd expect from clay. I made these shapes by pressing the clay into silicon moulds, the type of thing you might use with sugar paste for cake decorating. The ammonite on the left came out looking like that, but I added the last of my clay as a tiny ball onto the heart on the right.

Next stage is to dry the clay - we used heat guns but you could leave it out overnight. Once it's dry, you can use emery paper to smooth off the edges and buff out any imperfections or fingerprints, and you can use a pin drill to make the holes. Then it needs to be fired.

We used a kiln, in this case at 650°C, and it comes out white (you can also use a blowtorch or a gas stove). The pieces also shrink by up to 10% because the binding agent holding the silver particles together burns off in the firing process, leaving behind 99.99% silver. Using a brass brush, you brush off the white coating, revealing the silver underneath. An agate burnisher helps to buff it up to a mirror shine.

Next, I used the pin drill again to make sure the hole was big enough, and I attached a jump ring so I could hang it from a cord. A length of 3mm black satin ribbon helped turn the heart into this choker...

And I repeated the process for the ammonite (which I only realised looked like Ursula's shell from The Little Mermaid after I was finished).

It still baffles me how I could now have two pendants made of silver which started life looking like clay, but it's definitely something that I want to experiment with further. I think I'll try the copper next as it's cheaper, and while it can't be fired on the stove, it can be fired with a blowtorch, making it a more accessible route into metal clay jewellery!

Have you ever used metal clay?

#FridayFlash - Death On The Moor

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It is early November. The trees huddle in copses, their leaves ablaze in hues of copper and gold for a final fanfare. Creeping mist crawls across the moor, reaching to the heavens to meet the leaden sky in an endless sea of grey. The harsh call of a solitary crow pierces the silence but I need no formal announcement. There are none here to hear it. Indeed, the men who lie at my feet have long since departed their earthly shells - I have already partaken of their ruin.

I walk among the fallen men, and wonder at their folly. The survivors have abandoned them, taking what dignity and pride they had left. No pennants snap and flutter in the breeze. No monuments will be built, the tears of their families the only sign of mourning. I lift my head and breathe deeply of the cold air; snow is coming, and soon the final traces of the battle will be buried until spring. The autumn has died along with these men.

The beginnings of winter stir in my soul and I shiver. Even I am not immune to the season. I think of the victorious duke, and the roaring fire in his great hall. His castle is well guarded, but I find that no fortifications can withstand me. I think I shall pay the duke a visit, and cut short his celebrations as his warmongering has cut short these wasted lives.

The crow utters a farewell as I slip through time and space.

Icy Goes Owl Daft

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Anyone who follows me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or Google+ will know I make things. In fact, I make a lot of things. I've been knitting since December 2008, crocheting since around January this year, and making jewellery since around April. That's not to mention the twenty years I've been taking photos, fiddling with Fimo soft or fixing broken clothes. Yet I haven't been blogging about it.

I think part of the problem comes from the fact that all of the blogging gurus originally told you to keep one topic to a blog. According to them, your baking buddies wouldn't be interested in your DIY tips, and your fiction writing friends wouldn't care about fishing. That's one reason why I originally put all of my design related stuff on a separate blog. In trying to promote my writing, I didn't think anyone would be interested in anything I'd made. But due to the way a lot of us now tag and categorise our blog posts, there has been a sea change, and I asked my favourite blogging guru, Kristen Lamb, if I should keep my writing and crafting separate. She said no - you never know which of your writer buddies might also love knitting, and how many of your knitting friends might like your writing.

I also got involved with the inaugural #craftblogclub chat on Twitter this evening, organised by Emma Berry, and decided I'd start blogging about my crafty endeavours. After all, they take up a lot of my time, so why wouldn't I talk about them?

I thought I'd blog about my most recent creation, Sidney (the little owl pictured up there). I originally got the parts as a kit from Let's Knit magazine, and all I had to supply was the needles, the stuffing, and the time. I took the yarn to London on the train last week when I went to the Pompeii exhibition at the British Museum, and ended up knitting the whole thing - I finally assembled him on Sunday. I'm rather proud of him!

I love owls. I've got owl ornaments in my room, a satchel I got in Bonn that's covered in them, various necklaces with owl motifs, and now a cuddly one. As much as I love puffins, I think owls are possibly my favourite birds, particularly snowy owls (Hedwig FTW) and barn owls. They often represent wisdom, in part due to their ability to see in all directions, and they're the bird sacred to Athene. The ancient Greeks even featured them on coins to keep a watchful eye on commerce. English folklore hasn't been so kind, with superstitions tying them to death as heralds of an imminent passing, and tales linking owls to death also appear among First Nation tribes in North America. Regardless of their associations, I think they're magnificent birds, and I'm proud I've now made one!

#FridayFlash - The Intruder

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At 1:53am, the shadow of Edith Warfield woke up. It had only ever been dimly aware of the world as it brushed up against daily life, dragging along a pavement here, or bumping into a table there. Yet for the first time, the shadow could see. Dust motes danced in the weak moonbeams that sneaked through the gap in the curtains. The shadow could hear. Somewhere in the house, a clock ticked away the minutes until dawn.

The shadow drifted across the room to the window, but found itself caught. It turned and looked down, seeing its feet attached to the comfortable slippers of its owner. The shadow bent down and tugged until it tore itself free, and continued in its slow meander across the room. It passed dark fingers across mementoes from places it barely remembered, and inspected photographs above the fireplace of people it barely knew.

The shadow made its way to the door, where it spotted the pencil marks on the frame. A year was noted beside each one, marking the growth of Edith Warfield across fifty three years. The shadow would have smiled if it had a face, recognising its own growth recorded within the graphite dashes on wood.

A crash sounded at the back of the house as glass shattered and fell inward, scattering across the kitchen floor. The shadow looked at Edith, but she remained asleep, a single snort her only concession to the threatening noise in the next room.

The shadow stood in the centre of the room, frozen with indecision. The door knob turned as it weighed up its options, and the man was halfway through the door before the shadow decided to act. The man, tall and wide with a balaclava covering the lower half of his face, spotted Edith. He narrowed his eyes, and inched forward. The shadow darted forward and fastened dark hands around his meaty throat. The man clawed at the insubstantial hands as they squeezed the life out of him, and surprise contorted his face into a mask of confusion as his body fell to the floor.

The shadow looked down at the man for a full ten minutes. Satisfied that the man posed no further threat, the shadow reattached its feet to Edith's slippers, and lay down on the floor. At 2:08am, Edith Warfield's shadow fell asleep, content that it had had enough excitement for one evening.

Original image by Loovie. Edits by me.

Visit to Howick Hall Gardens

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I took advantage of the good weather on yesterday’s Bank Holiday Monday and took a trip with my parents up to Howick Hall Gardens and Arboretum in Northumberland. Howick Hall is notable for being the former home of Charles, the second Earl Grey, and creator of the famous Earl Grey tea. The tea was specially blended by a Chinese mandarin since the water at Howick is flavoured strongly by the lime rock in the area, and bergamot was added to alter the flavour. Lady Grey began serving it during her trips to London, and it became so popular that Twinings began marketing it. Unfortunately they didn’t register the trade mark and they’ve never made a penny from the sales.

The second Earl Grey is probably the best known member of the family, and he became Prime Minister in 1830. Two years later he introduced the Great Reform Bill, which set Great Britain on the path towards our modern form of parliamentary democracy (much to the chagrin of the Duke of Wellington). His statue currently stands at the top of Grey’s Monument, at the top of Grey Street in Newcastle, and he gave his name to Grey College in Durham University.

Howick Hall itself is only partially open to the public, with a new visitor centre located in the entrance hall of the main building, and a tea room in one of the wings. Originally built in 1782 by the Newcastle architect, William Newton, the house was enlarged in 1809 when the entrance was moved from the south side to the north, and a terrace was constructed on the south side (seen in the photo on the left). There are beautiful views from the terrace, with a plethora of agapanthus providing food for the many bumblebees and butterflies that visit the gardens. Sadly the main house was gutted in 1926 by fire, and it was rebuilt in 1928. The family moved out shortly after the death of the fifth Earl Grey in 1963, and in 1973 the present Lord Howick converted the West Wing into the family home. The small visitor centre is very welcoming, giving information on the various plant species that can be seen around the gardens, but there are further plans to restore the whole ground floor. It would certainly be a good addition to what is already on offer, particularly to provide somewhere to go if the weather takes a turn for the worse!

The main attraction to Howick Hall is the gardens and the vast arboretum. The gardens are primarily the work of the fifth Earl Grey, as they adopted an informal, natural style of gardening, and they boast some wonderful plants brought from various parts of the world that have managed to thrive in the somewhat alien Northumberland landscape. There is the wild Bog Garden around a small pond which was created in 1991, which features plants from China, India, Japan, New Zealand, North America and Europe. There are also the borders around the Hall itself, which only date to 2005, a rockery (behind me in the photo on the right), various woodland gardens, the meadows around the large pond, and the arboretum itself. The rockery concentrates on alpine plants and shrubs, and features many species that flower in summer to compensate for the spring-flowering plants elsewhere in the gardens. The Arboretum covers some 65 acres of woodland walks with over 11,000 trees and shrubs planted from 1988.

There is also a small church on the site, St Michael and all Angels. Howick as a parish dates to 1158, and the original Norman church was replaced by an Ionic temple in the mid eighteenth century. It was destroyed by fire, and the present building was built in 1849. The church is still in use, celebrating a parish communion every second and fourth Sunday in the month. The tomb of the second Earl Grey is inside the south wall, while the small stone gargoyles on the outside north wall were all carved by the third Countess Grey, Maria. It's a beautiful little church, with a rambling graveyard, and boasts the sort of peaceful atmosphere that you only seem to find in those small, out-of-the-way places.

Howick Hall Gardens and Arboretum doesn't boast some of the amenities enjoyed by other attractions, but it has toilets, a tea room, and plenty of quiet woodland to enjoy. It's probably not well suited to children, unless they like wildlife and being out in the open air, and the rambling nature of the paths make it unsuitable for wheelchairs. If you're in the area, it's quiet and peaceful, and makes a wonderful change from the fast pace of city life.