Ayr June 2022
I’d long looked forward to visiting Stephen Cashmore who has edited my scribblings over the past ten years, but this never came to pass until after my wife of thirty years, Jennifer, passed away. She developed small cell cancer which is the kind you get if you’ve been a smoker (she’d smoked for many years). So when he kindly invited me to visit over a weekend my reaction was: why not? He has more books than me and more importantly, more SF books than me. And it was time to think about how to reset my life.
My internal life is in a parallel universe – when someone passes away, I keep them in my heart – things said, deeds done. This is how it works for me. Jennifer returns to me in dreams. Sometimes she complains that she is dead and in others, merely asks to see what can be seen. Can this be healed or even removed? Not required in my view. She is a part of my internal landscape – for good or bad.
So back to the visit – Stephen Cashmore lives in Ayr, Scotland which is a journey of 200 miles. Ayr is also the setting for Kindred Spirit – written by Stephen Cashmore – a tale of ghostly goings on. This was an opportunity to take in the vibe; I’d be making notes and taking pictures; a blog post beckoned.
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I geared myself up by packing laptop, mobile phone charger, Kindle + charger + well favoured collection of SF short stories (which I confess to barely reading a page of). The journey took a good 4 hours – rather more than I’d allowed for – and my planned stopping place for a bite to eat, just after the junction of the M74 with the A70, never really emerged. Not a miscalculation, rather an oversight due to having never travelled this route before. My journey continued until about 30 miles up the M74 – as I was passing a heavily wooded valley, not long after Auchen Castle I guess – an unlooked for feeling of déjà vu came over me. For some reason this fed into memories I’ve held since I was two / three years old – but there was nowhere on the M74 to stop and check things out. Eventually I found a make-do place to stop in order to consume a carefully prepared sandwich – such tough stuff we authors are built of – I continued my journey. As the A71 drew me closer to Ayr, I reflected that I’d need to make some attempt to soak up the local character and I hoped to be able to get photos of places mentioned in Kindred Spirit to help visualise events.
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In due course I arrived. My destination lay in a quiet cul-de-sac, not far from the sea front. Cashmore has an eye for carpentry and his house is replete with bookshelves from ground floor to attic. Well do I recall my clumsy attempts at woodwork in school – far from my strongest point. With the benefit of hindsight, I could have made more of those days – something I bet most of us could say. Just can’t seem to recall the name of our Woodwork teacher though – I was at Burnley Grammar School between 1967 and 1974.
His attic was a treat – a real-life children’s playroom – the kind I used to read about as a child. So I fixed my camera by the table and did a couple of 360 degrees turns – yes it does seem rather jerky – bad preparation on my part. I later took in the rest of the converted attic – for the child in me. What a joy this was to be in.
Next day was a tour of Ayr; Ayr is a quiet, gentle town; it’s character is far from the hustle and bustle of other seaside towns like Blackpool and Morecambe – in part this must be due to a long ago decision to limit sea front commercialisation, by keeping an extensive tract of sea front land for families and festivals only. A seaside town that turned away from brash and in your face.
Sheriff Court and Justice of the Peace Court, Wellington Square, Ayr
Beachfield Park
Beachfield Park
The seafront at Ayr
The seafront at Ayr
The Beach
Civilised
In the evening I was kindly taken to a screen showing of Top Gun Renegade in Glasgow. After viewing, Cashmore duly delivered a review which, although withering in parts, was a fair assessment of what we’d seen. I expressed astonishment at the levels of g’s (gravities) endured by the pilots – certain the scriptwriters had ramped up the stresses and strains of flying experimental planes to stellar levels – I was assured that actually this were fairly realistic. The roads between Ayr and Glasgow were nowhere near as congested as in my neck of the woods in Lancashire.
After, I retired to my room and reverted to Writer’s Retreat mode – I began a new work in progress (Anasinthe). I rarely do more than 200 words in one sitting and sure enough this didn’t last.
front cover
Kindred Spirit begins…
…as a newspaper style reporting of facts that at first seem unrelated to the premature passing away of a local council official. After a jaunt through the darker and seedier aspects of humanity, Kindred Spirit comes to a satisfactory conclusion, weaving the various plotlines and events together into a complete whole. On my journey I got to meet Harry, the taxi driver who gets more than he expects from what proves to be the final fare of the central character; Claire the room-share prostitute, a watcher spying on who goes in and out of her flat, abuser-guy, self-harmer-girl plus shy guy who wants to get into self-harmer’s knickers. Things come to the attention of Tully, newspaper reporter and part time ghost sleuth, and the lives of people are changed, not all for the better. As I read, I was reminded of the challenge facing the author, especially in SF and Fantasy, of moving events from the mundane and the real to that intended other-worldly place.
‘Giant blue diggers looming over both ship and coal’
‘It was an Edwardian mid-terrace house’
‘The big oval dining-room table’
‘A tiny affair above what used to be a video rental shop’
‘Where this train terminates’
Kindred Spirit adds a perspective on the causes of other-worldly goings on that I hadn’t expected. I used to be fond of genre fiction where the outcome was predictable. This left me guessing and yet the story logic worked. There’s enough sordid goings on and recurring gory dreams to sate the palate of the average jaded but under-loved and under-sexed stay-in.
Further info
Kindred Spirit is available through Waterstones at:
https://www.waterstones.com/book/kindred-spirit/stephen-cashmore/9781913746988
Afterthoughts
One thing with Jennifer is it was never peaceful. Another thing was if she wanted it to be peaceful, it was peaceful, or else. So my father was one of the Parks in Skipton – his father a Park and his mother a Clarke. Studying the census returns in Skipton for 1891 suggested that the majority – if not all – with the Park surname had Scotland as place of origin. It was likely that my dad had Scottish roots.
The last time I was in Scotland was on honeymoon thirty years ago; I took Jennifer to Loch Lomond intending to go as far as Fort William with the possibility of a going on to Loch Ness. As things turned out, I seemed to driving more and more above the frost line. With the best will in the world, I didn’t trust my ageing Vauxhall Cavalier or my driving skills to do well in wintry conditions so I chickened out. No to Fort William, not even down the west coast, or even as far as Glencoe, rather my motoring tail between my legs, I retraced the route past Lock Lomond. A far cry from the summer of 89 when I drove to John o’ Groats one way and Penzance the other.
I work full time and expect to host I am hosting a Ukrainian Refugee Family. Otherwise my interests are writing related. I host a self-published author stall at Burnley Artisan Market and I have written two anime–manga themed works, one of which (Door Witch) is published, and I am writing a further two works (Anasinthe & Demon Fire). Manga has less focus on big name authors but rivals the market for SF and Fantasy. In 2021, 80% by value of the US market for graphic storytelling, was represented by manga.
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