"You are confined only by the walls you build yourself."
-Andrew Murphy
Hello there,
I hope you are keeping safe and well.
Thank you to Joyce for posting the above quote on our substack chat. That chat thread will remain open if you have a quote you’d like to add:
I'm writing this on the road with Mrs C at the wheel. We're on our way to Cheltenham to visit family and to take part in a running race. I'm going for the half marathon and Mrs C is taking on the 10k.
It's poignant for me because the Cheltenham race was my first attempt at this distance. Will I do better this year? I hope so, but I keep reminding myself that I'll be there to enjoy myself. It's a hobby for goodness sake.
Many of us take our hobbies seriously, of course. Out on training run last weekend I passed a field in which a dozen or so men were walking around slowly while wearing headphones and waving a long stick. Yes, I 'd discovered a coven of detectorists. I can only refer to them as such I was a fan of the BBC series of the same name.
I love a good character based sit-com. In The Detectorists, Lance, played by Toby Jones, had some great lines. I remember one in particular:
Tea without sugar is essentially vegetable soup.
It tells you so much about his character, and we can recognise his humanity. We all have our failings and foibles. I'm not sure that Lance would approve of my use of coven as the collective noun, but what might be the alternative? A bleep, perhaps?
At any rate, as I ran past the real-life detectorists, I was hot, sweaty and dishevelled while they looked serene, enjoying a few peaceful hours in the sunshine. I had to wonder whether I'd picked the right hobby.
I think I've made a good choice, and I often wish I'd started running years ago.
By the way, talking about collective nouns, I received an email recently from Mark Leslie Lefebvre, an author whose podcast I follow, in which he asked for a collective noun for a bunch of editors. It immediately occurred to me that it should be a commission of editors since this mingles the verb and noun use of the word.
Featured Photos
Mrs C and I went to Torre Abbey Near Torquay to watch an open-air performance of two modernised Shakespearian comedies, each one condensed to 40 minutes and performed with only 4 actors. The cast did a great job and had the crowd laughing along.
I hadn’t been to the abbey, and the grounds were lovely. There were gardens, sculptures, a huge glass house and the ruined walls of older buildings, which fits nicely with our theme. I hope you enjoy the photos, and my apologies for any confusion I caused about how to expand the images.
In the email version of this post, the photos can’t be expanded. In the substack app they’re shown as individual images, and on the website version, there’s an interactive gallery.
Bookish News
I will share a snippet of the upcoming book in the next post and email. I’ve decided to give a free copy of the ebook for all upcoming books to paid subscribers of the VIP Reader Club. It’s an extra perk and a way of saying thank you.
Amazon has decided to put the ebook of Valley of Lies into a special deal in the UK, so it’s 99p for my UK readers:
If you already have it, please feel free to share this info with a friend, and here’s a handy button to do just that:
The Blank Page
I’ve added another piece of short fiction to The Blank Page section of the VIP Readers Club, and for everyone’s convenience, I’ve added the text versions of the story to your subscription, otherwise it would’ve been fiddly for you. It is, however, very straightforward f you want to opt out of those emails. Simply select "Unsubscribe" in the footer of the email and click on "Turn off emails" next to each section you'd like to unsubscribe from.
I’ve also produced an audio version of the story - it’s a perk for paid subscribers because it takes me quite a lot of time and effort to produce.
What Next?
I’m not sure that I can write this newsletter and The Blank Page every week, so I’m thinking of alternating them. That way you can have something to read each week.
With that, I’d better sign off. Lots of walls to break down, not least on the race circuit. Lots of new words to get down too.
Until next time, all the best and take care,
Mikey