Julia Chalkley

Second hand

About six years ago, I went on an astronomy camping weekend. Surreal in itself; we worried that our telescope would be stolen while we were off in town during the day, until someone pointed out that there was always someone sitting by their tent seeing who was messing with others’ telescopes, and that there were around 250 tents and telescopes set out, some of them a damn sight more valuable than our basic model. If they wanted to steal a telescope, there were three in the next field worth around £10,000 each.

While we were there, we went into the local town and visited the shops (there’s a small pleasure we’ve been missing – wandering into a shop and smiling at the proprietor). I found a couple of 1950’s cotton reels with cotton on them, and, as I needed to do some sewing repairs, bought them. The cotton was stronger than I was used to in modern reels, and I took to seeking out second-hand reels of cotton at antique and vintage fairs, on Ebay, in yard sales.

Today I used a secondhand reel of Coates’ Ivory cotton thread to sew up the hems of our curtains – another lockdown project, getting the extra-long curtains cut to the right size for the window. I’ve almost finished the curtains, luckily as I have also almost finished the reel. Alongside the Ivory reel, I bought others. The names make it worthwhile… Gay Peacock, Carmine, Frog Green, Old Gold. Some reels have just a few metres’ thread left, but the wooden reels and their names remain. And now, of course, the stitches in our curtains.

Clearing brambles

A long silence; we have been busy. We joined a local community wood and volunteered to do some work there. It was meant to be a community day, with everyone allocated a (socially distanced) spot and given a task to do, but when the second lockdown was announced, the organisers realised that this party would break the regulations and cancelled it. ‘But feel free to go down at a time that suits you and do some clearance work!’

So we did. The wood is a ten acre site donated to the village by a local man, in memory of his wife. It was signed over as an open space for walks and parties and just sitting. Looking over the site before we began cutting brambles, we couldn’t believe that someone would just gift this space to others, people he might not even know, as a space to enjoy nature.

The wood was spooky yesterday, with mist drifting across the site and covering the tops of the tallest trees. We cut back the brambles and blackthorn bushes that had encroached on the little cabin. Neighbours passed by, walking their dogs, and we got the chance to say hello from a distance. Today I guess they’ll remember us as we’re thinking of them, probably walking their dogs again in better weather.

As if by magic… on our return, we had a call from someone who lived next door to us up to 2016, just checking how we were doing. He and his wife were early members of the wood, and he did a substantial amount of work building the cabin that we had just rescued from its sea of thorns. He asked whether the cabin was still there, and I could reassure him that yes, it was, and looking very inviting. Can’t wait for the virus to be defeated, when we can gather in the wood and raise a toast to the man whose generosity lets us all wander among the trees there.

Writing out the spite

Reedsy put up some interesting prompts this week. They always put up five, all on the same theme, and this week’s theme is ‘Meet in the Middle’. They’ve set up the beginning and end of the story and challenged the writers to fill in the middle.

I liked the one that gave the first line referring to the happiest day of their lives and the last line as ‘By then it was too late’. I had real trouble thinking of any event other than a wedding that could feasibly fit that first line, and I was thinking of a wedding going seriously wrong. So I Googled ‘wedding gone wrong’ and got a proper Christmas present for writers.

The Germans have a word for it; Schadenfreude (yep, tell me if I spelt that wrong). I’m told it roughly translates as ‘glee at another’s misfortune’. Reading those accounts of weddings gone wrong, I had to laugh, although I had plenty of sympathy for the couple involved who had planned and saved and organised for this day. The father of the bride treading on his daughter’s dress and sending her flying into the pews – the ring dropped on the floor and rolling under a pew – a fight over the bride’s bouquet between two female guests. Most of the brides laughed, a few were distressed.

I was awake till after 3am writing the wedding from Hell and the bride who deserved every inch of it. I couldn’t stop. Between paragraphs about dragging her dress hem through cowshit and finding rat poo in the cake, I was trawling the internet for more wedding splat ideas.

I just love these kind of stories, where the territory is unfamiliar and I have to start reading around it. The kind of stuff you find that is pure fact is often just too weird to survive in a fiction work, and I have to remind myself of the writing advice I was given early on; that it might have happened in reality, but no reader will ever believe it.

Good day’s writing

Made the most of a sunny morning by clearing up in the garden – chucking leaves on the compost heap, tucking the fleece down over tender plants and clipping back some overgrown hedge plants.

Then starting on a batch of pickling onions. The kitchen compost bin is now full of onion skins and we both stink of onions.

After that, I’m free to write. I thought of a good way to get two of the characters moving forward, and it got hold of me. I’ve written almost 4,000 words today, and a lot of them are set in a cold sea in late October. I’ve drenched them, half drowned them, broken one arm and bashed both their heads against the cliffs; left them settling down with a fish and chip supper on the beach, so eyes peeled for heart and diabetes problems in future years.

There’s nothing like a good day spent being cruel to a pair of fictional characters.

Excellent weather for writing

The forecasters got it right, for once; woke up to rain, which hasn’t let up all day. Excellent excuse for sitting indoors writing.

I’m just about keeping up with my NanoWrimo count, but my OU writing group has a challenge going for a 500 word flash competition. Sadly, the piece of mine they liked has been accepted for publication in an OU shorts anthology, so I spent the day writing another.

Just to gee me up a bit, the group had a Zoom meeting scheduled for this afternoon. We agreed to meet up in person after we graduated from the OU’s creative writing courses, and have met most of the Novembers since. This year, the shared house booking was cancelled and we met seven times on Zoom instead, catching up on what each other has been doing and just chatting.

Every year we finish with a round up of what we plan to do in the next twelve months; every year, the first session is the reading of last year’s writing promises followed by the question; ‘So… how did you do?’ It’s a great way to get me writing, and to get me time to write.

I finished the 500 word piece and posted it for others to give feedback on – important, as they catch bits that don’t work, mistakes that I’ve missed. I commented on the work others have posted, too. Now I get time to put mine in for the competition, and to get working on the next instalment of my Nano project. Due to be raining even harder tomorrow. Excellent.

Mowing the lawn. Honestly.

It’s been raining here for the back of September, most of October and every morning or noon in November, so the grass has been, er, making hay. Long green grass. Today we finally got the chance to mow… and we did. Filled up the compost heap completely. Grass everywhere.

It’s been a relief to get back to writing. I’m stuck on the plot; I know where I want it to go and who has to shuffle where to get the story where it needs to go. Right now, it’s degenerated into a series of family arguments. A lot of editing needed, I think.

It’s useful to get outside and do some hard physical work rather than sitting down writing all the time. I came indoors keen to get stuck into this story. Family argument number eight coming up.

Planting tulips

This is the time of year when you plant tulips. Apparently. It feels too cold and damp to take them out there, but if I wait for the rain to stop I’ll be waiting years. I dug the holes and laid them in, put the plug of earth back on top and hoped. I know I’ve missed the right time of year to plant daffodil bulbs, but I might give it a try. I won’t know if its worked until next spring, and that feels like a long way off at the moment.

Cutting back the hedge

When we first moved in here, there was a sort of hedge and fence around the garden. Overgrown elder, dead elm, and a mix of fence materials ranging from corrugated iron panels to iron railings to lengths of loosely anchored chicken wire. It was a mess.

We spent our first year getting rid of the scraps of makeshift fencing. We talked to our neighbours and got their agreement to put in a proper fence, one that straightened out the boundary rather than wandering in a wavy line.

The second and third winters we planted a hedge all the way around, both sides and across the top. Bare-root trees; mainly British native species, chosen for a mix of attractive bark, fruits for the birds, nuts for all kinds of wildlife and bright leaf colours in autumn. We planned to keep it trimmed to six feet in height.

It was slow getting going. Six or seven years after the original hedge went in, some of the plants had managed to get to six feet tall. The next we knew we had some seriously tall trees. It’s settled into a constant battle in autumn and early winter – cutting down the plants to as close to six foot tall as we can get. Whoever encouraged us to get dogrose and hawthorn as a kind of natural barbed wire should come back here and give us a hand.

It’s been mild and sunny most of the day, and there’s been bees bothering the flowers on the elaeagnus. I’ve found one borage plant still stubbornly flowering in the hedge, and the honeysuckle’s back in flower. More like early spring than November, and I’m not going to complain.

Wet days

We got some work done in the garden, at the expense of wet feet and damp knees. It’s a sombre time of year. The brilliantly coloured leaves have largely been blown off their trees and into soggy browning piles, everywhere is damp and there are very few vegetables still growing.

Whatever prompted me to grow cabbages this year was spot on in one way – they’re coming up a treat, close-packed heads and all. Now I have to face the fact that I don’t use enough cabbage to make full use of them. I have offered them elsewhere, but it seems they aren’t that popular. This week’s challenge is to find a recipe for cabbage that we enjoy eating. Any suggestions, Mr Slater?

On the plus side, it does mean a lot of time to get on with Nano. We swapped prompts in our writing group and I spotted one that gave me an idea. Eighteen thousand words on, it’s still going strong. Which is what I’m going to do now.

What started all this?

I’ve been part of an OU graduates’ writing group since 2010, contributing to their anthologies of short stories and poetry in 2014 and 2015.

I didn’t take writing too seriously while I was in paid employment – holiday diaries, OU courses, small competitions. As other members of the group began to succeed in their writing careers, they suggested that I might join them in the blog race.

I have a few publishing credits – a dozen short stories in various anthologies, a couple of competition wins and shortlisted places. I’m hoping to publish my first novel early in 2026; the first two chapters took third place in the Scottish Association of Writers’ Constable Stag competition, and I have been working to improve the whole work ever since.