What Pegman Saw: Of Mud and Trade

Posted on July 15, 2019 by crispina kemp

Great Yarmouth, seen from the estuary: 20 July 2018

It formed where the three rivers joined, between the island-guarded northern bank and southern cliffs, at the estuary the Celtic Iceni called “Noisy Mouth” (for the strident gulls that roosted there). The Romans helped.

They built a fort on the northern island, and on the cliffs to the south a receiving station for grain and wine. But more, they turned their ploughs loose on the soil. Disturbed, with every storm, silt filled the rivers. The rivers carried it down to the sea. And where it settled it formed a spit.

Plants moved in. The Romans went home. The Saxons used the grass-grown spit for summer grazing, and later invited the Vikings to trade.

One “Orme of the Orkneys” made of the northern island his second home and founded upon the former sandbank his entrepot. And so Great Yarmouth was born.

In 1086 seventy burgesses traded there.

Wordcount 146

Written for What Pegman Saw: Great Yarmouth, UK

Posted in History, Photos | Tagged , , | 55 Comments

Sunday Picture Post: In a Bind

Posted on July 14, 2019 by crispina kemp

This Sunday, I feature bindweed …

Sea Bindweed: 5th July 2019

Hedge Bindweed: 8th July 2019

Hedge Bindweed: 8th July 2019

Buds of bindweed, thinking about blossoming soon. The video below follows the process, from bud to open flower.

And yes, I know these are every gardener’s bane. But seen in the wild, where they belong, they are delightful.

Posted in Photos | Tagged , | 31 Comments

By Sand, Stone, Sky and Sea

Posted on July 13, 2019 by crispina kemp

Sheringham cliffs, North Norfolk Coast: 5th July 2019

Sheringham, a quaint fishing village on the North Norfolk Coast was my resort of preference when my children were young. In those days, at low tide, there were rock pools with sea anemones and hermit crabs. But erosion and accretion has changed so much of our coastline. The beach has risen! Those groynes used to tower above me. Now I can hop over them.

For me, this is as close as I can get to The Great Outdoors, which title I claim for the #2019picoftheweek challenge

For details of #2019picoftheweek challenge see MariaAntonia

Posted in Photos | Tagged , | 35 Comments

Vagrant Whispers

Posted on July 12, 2019 by crispina kemp

The fourth poem accepted by Whispers and Echoes—Tattered Remnants—is published today.

Tattered remnants of desiccated leaves …

See Whispers and Echoes for the rest of the poem

Tattered Remnants was written in 2003 and posted on crimsonprose in my first weeks of blogging (14th December 2012).

Whispers and Echoes is an online journal that publishes flash-fiction of up to 100 words, and poems up to 10 lines (excluding blanks); see here to submit. It is chiefly edited by Sammi Cox, well-known and loved for Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompts where she punishes us with impossible targets, and thus pushes us through the gates of inspiration.

Earlier issues of Whispers and Echoes can be seen on the Dreaming Spirit website.

Posted in On Writing, Poems (Some Silly) | Tagged , | 22 Comments

Friday Flauna: A Snail’s Trail

Posted on July 12, 2019 by crispina kemp

I love the pretty shells of our native snails, and having caught these two napping, I thought I’d share …

photo 8th July 2019: copyright crispina kemp

I don’t know enough about snails to name either of these. I checked out wikipedia. And came away exhausted. TMI! Anyway, both were found along a footpath between Oulton Broad and Carlton Colville Marshes … if that gives anyone more knowledgeable than me a clue to their identity.

photo 8th July 2019: copyright crispina kemp

Posted in Photos | Tagged , , | 23 Comments

CCC#35: John Brown’s Wedding

Posted on July 11, 2019 by crispina kemp

Crimson’s Creative Challenge #35

John rose early that day and dressed in his best. He left his mother in a pother and his father in a stomp. But he was of age and didn’t need their permission, and Old Betts over at Fishley Farm had let him a cottage, though tied to the job.

Ahead lay a walk of six or more miles, a walk he’d grown used to since he first flirted with Sarah at the cattle market held at Acle. His family sniffed at her, bastard-born woman of a bastard-born mother. But he’d not have his first child bastard-born too. The banns had been called three times at St Edmund’s and at St Mary’s, South Walsham. Now no one would stop him.

Based on a true story… in as much as in 1817 at St Edmund’s, Acle, one John Self Brown of South Walsham married one Sarah Mutton, daughter of Sarah Mutton of Acle. And these two begat… and more begat… and way down the line, my grandparents begat, and my father was born, in 1920… 99 years ago. It’s his birthday this coming Monday. Happy Birthday, Pops.

Written for Crimson’s Creative Challenge #35

Posted in Crimson's Creative Challenge, Mostly Micro | Tagged , , | 29 Comments

Crimson’s Creative Challenge #35

Posted on July 10, 2019 by crispina kemp

CCC#35

Welcome to my weekly challenge—open to all—just for FUN, FUN, FUN

Here’s how it works:

Every Wednesday I post a photo (this week it’s that one above.)
You respond with something CREATIVE

Here are some suggestions:

  • An answering photo
  • A cartoon
  • A joke
  • A caption
  • An anecdote
  • A short story (flash fiction)
  • A poem
  • A newly minted proverb, adage or saying
  • An essay
  • A song—the lyrics or the performance

You have plenty of scope and only two criteria:

  • Your creative offering is indeed yours
  • Your writing is kept to 150 words or less

If you post a link in the comments section of this post I’ll be able to find it
If you include Crimson’s Creative Challenge as a heading, WP Search will find it (theory)
by ‘Searching’ in the WP Reader (fingers crossed)

Here’s wishing you inspirational explosions. And FUN.

For those interested, the photo shows the footpath through the fields between Upton and Acle. Yet the church, just visible behind the trees belong to neither parish, but to Fishley … which exists now as a farm and the church and nothing more.

Posted in Crimson's Creative Challenge | Tagged , | 59 Comments

Lost: My Mind

Posted on July 9, 2019 by crispina kemp

Down upon the woodland floor
Amongst the toadstools thin and tall
In wistful whispers for you, I call
Seeking your invisible door

Lost, my mind, in your enthral.

I crawl and slither, worm and squirm
Tear my hands on bloody thorns
Scrape my knees on fallen horns.
Why did you leave me? I’m infirm.

Written for Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt

 

 

Posted in Poems (Some Silly) | Tagged , | 29 Comments

What Pegman Saw: Don’t Listen to Local Talk

Posted on July 8, 2019 by crispina kemp

Portsmouth by Zee Tseng on Google Maps

You say Jean de Gisors founded Portsmouth? On land that he bought off Adam de Port? But that can’t be true.

In 1172 Henry Plantagenet exiled Adam de Port for his involvement in the Scottish Lion-king’s invasion of *the Borders*; confiscated Adam’s lands, including Buckland in Hampshire where Portsmouth was soon to appear.

How then could the wily trader Jean de Gisors have bought it from him? He didn’t, he bought it from the king.

Jean de Gisors saw the advantage of an English port, a place of his own. Wood and wine from his homeland, from England, wool and grain. No doubt he turned a tidy packet. But not for long. He joined the wrong forces in a Norman rebellion.

By then, Richard Lionheart rode the throne. Lionheart confiscated de Gisors’ land, including Portsmouth. It was the Lionheart developed the port facility of PORTSMOUTH.

Wordcount 145

Written for What Pegman Saw: Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK

Inspired, you might say, by what I found when I sought the origins. Yes, de Gisors did found the town. But he did little more. And he didn’t buy the land off Adam nor any other de Port.

There was no such thing as freehold property back in that day. The king owned it, and granted it out on various terms. And kings were notorious for snatching it back, e.g. between the death of the lord and installation of his heir. The additional income helped swell their coffers. Land was confiscated immediately upon any misdemeanor, even if later it was reinstated. So there is no doubt that when Adam de Port was exiled in 1172, never to be heard of again, the *Crown* reclaimed the estate. And the same is true when Jean de Gisors got caught in a rebellion.

BTW, tucked away behind Portsmouth is the much older port of Cosham, featured on the Bayeux Tapestry, it being in the hold of King Harold, as was Buckland prior to 1066.

 

 

 

 

Posted in History | Tagged , , | 43 Comments

The Spinner’s Game e-book Update #20

Posted on July 7, 2019 by crispina kemp

July … and I’m thinking Christmas will see the publication on Kindle of The Spinner’s Game. The first three books – The Spinner’s Child, Lake of Dreams, and The Pole That Threads – then a month later, the final two: Lady of First Making and Asaric Sins (working title).

In the meantime, I’ve two items of good news to report.

Book Four: Lady of First Making (working title Asaric Sons)

Always with the return of beta readers’ questionnaires with their various comments, there are revisions to be made, minor or major. I put this work on hold while I focused on Book Five, and it seems to have bubbled away on the backburner for soooo long. But now, finally, I can attend it.

Once complete (hopefully by next month’s update) I shall reveal the book cover for this fourth book. Oh, excitement!

Book Five: (working title Asaric Sins)

O Yay, O Yay! Rewrite complete! I feel like a pressure cooker, the weight now released. Wow! I want to dance, to laugh, to sing. Hmm, so that’s where my protagonist gets it from. 😊

So now …

I hope to be able to welcome back my regulars. This project couldn’t have happened without you.

But newbies too are welcome. I know it’s off-putting, that you’ve not read the earlier books and fear you’ll be diving into unknown waters. Yet I would dearly love to have your reactions as a new reader. What is it like to read this fifth book without reading the rest?

Interested? Contact Me. But first I am duty bound to warn you, this last book contains material some people might find upsetting.

Book Five (working title Asaric Sins) Blurb

When shamanic wise-woman Kerrid visited Idiglat Plain as a child, few people dwelt there. Now, faced with a flood of refugees, she leads her people there to find the only land available is in the outlying foothills. An Asar known as the Qar of Lohanit grants her and her Gusrikt the use of it. There she grows a plant that yields the lightest, strongest fibres. She intends to use it in a renewed attempt to reach the divine world, a vital move if she’s to complete her task to eradicate the snake-demon Neka. But things don’t go as she planned.

Who is this Qar of Lohanit? And what’s his connection to the Southern Lord, closest ally of the snake-demon? And what is this hold the Qar has over her?

In this last book of The Spinner’s Game, Kerrid finds herself faced with the consequences of two broken oaths. And if she doesn’t make amends, humanity will die.

The Spinner’s Game
Set in the between-time, when hunter-gatherers turned to settled agriculture, when spirits and demons morphed to gods, the five books of The Spinner’s Game takes Kerrid’s story across continents and weaves through ages fraught with floods and droughts to become the prototype of our most ancient myths.

Bs 1 and 2 and 3 cp

The Spinner’s Game book covers, designed by Lauren Willmore. © Lauren Willmore

 

The next e-book update will be … Sunday 4th August.

 

 

 

Posted in On Writing, The Spinner's Game | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments