Still writing the sequel to Wicker Wood, I think, it's draft one, half completed.

 In drafts of novels, I tend to write paragraphs, or sections, quickly. Later I pad them out as the story requires. This will be much longer in Version Last.

In Georgie's mind the question had to be was he ever mad and believing he was his own granny, or was he just dressing up, to escape his sins. Did he believe he was now clean since Father Gaffney had pardoned him: in confession, in a confessional box, all good and catholic. But was the absolution even good now that the priest had give up his vocation and was away on the continent working in a Disco Bar, complete with lap dancers.

Strange world. Anyway his information had been coming from a reliable source. That was the key to him escaping – a reliable pal, a helper, someone in the know. Nursie, as he now called her, was supposed to be his warder, his prison guard. In the so-called enlightened practices of looking after the criminally insane, such names were not used. Attendant that's what they are called. So she attended to his needs and he attended to hers. A sexual relationship at his stage of life, who'd have believed it? With no shame or guilt or rages strong enough to kill as in the past. But none of those girls had welcomed him, like nursie did. Then one of her other charges had died and they put their plan into operation. They dressed the corpse, in his “Granny Clothes”. Moved her to his room and strung her up, as if she had hung herself. Then nursie raised the alarm, laid the red herring trail, while he hid in an empty room dressed in his General's clothes. While alone there he assumed the personality of an old fashioned military man, complete with west-Brit accent, mannerisms and phrases.

Maybe after all he had not been mad believing he was deranged in the personality of Duchess. Maybe he was just a damn good actor and performer.

The fly in the ointment revealed itself when Fanahan had arrived on the scene. That so called detective was now a shadow of what he had been and would never figure out that the lady who had died was not himself in his drag costume.

See, this Georgie was even starting to develop a sense of humour.

Then nursie from her spying position in the next room, through a peep-hole: necessary the authorities said for a patients' safety, saw Fanahan lift the dress. Dirty Bastard. Only a degenerate would think of checking for the sex of the corpse.

They scarpered then and headed for their safe house. One of nursies' inherited properties. A previous occupational vocation of nursing the terminally ill, had made nursie a nice little fortune and a property portfolio.

I'm starting to motor again – dreaming my plot for the WW Sequel.

In the past when I'm well into a book plot I start to dream scenes.

This is a scene from the rough draft of the WW Sequel.

“Missus Green. It's Detective Inspector Fanahan. Can you open the door?”

“Inspector, just a moment.”

The door was opened in a confident manner. Then Shay saw why there was no hesitation. The largest Alsation dog he ever saw was sitting in the hall between himself and Aoife Greene.

“That's not Sheba!”

“No Inspector. Sheba died a while ago. Old age. She went peacefully. This is Davy. He minds me now, don't you boy. Come in.”

“Will he let me?”

“Of course, don't be silly.” Aoife turned and walked down the small hall, and headed for the back room. A kitchen he presumed.

Not fit for the parlour am I? That's where you used to bring Tyre ll.

Carefully he entered, closed the door and stepped around the dog.

After the carefully presented tea and biscuits, arranged on the tray, so that her blindness would not lead to an accident, a cup doped, milk spilled, or a biscuit being replace on the white table cloth after a bite, Aoife asked “ How can I help. Not another kidnapper in the area is there?” Then she smiled.

Jees if you only knew. No nothing like that Missus Greene. It's a new initiative I am working on. Policing in the community, bring pets to visit patients in Nursing Homes. I want yourself and Sheb...sorry what's his name again

“Davy.” At his name the dog stirred, then figuring he was mentioned in passing, not being called to work, went back to his light snooze.

“Davy, to be one of those visiting dogs. Will that be OK?”

“I can go with him. Is that part of the plan...you see...”

“No Missus Greene, that's the plan. If you agree, I will check it out with the office and ring you with the time and place. Then I can collect you. I lost your mobile number, can you write it down.....No can you ring me please my number is....”

Last night I had a dream that Aoife rang retired Superintendent Bob Tyrell to tell him Fanahan had called and that they had visited the Insane Asulyum.

He tells her he knew she had a new dog: some of his ex colleagues rang him now and then with the news from his old station.

When she told him about Fanahan bringing the dog and shoving him in the inmates faces, he twigs that Georgie, who is terrified of dogs is missing and possibly in hiding again.

Up to last night I did not have this plot avenue.

Roll on tonight and more dreams.

Shay Fanahan in another graveyard!

Fanahan yearned for the old days: the days when a policeman had a house and two derelict properties, bought cheap, being “done up”, renovated, to sell or lease out. Nowadays he was struggling to live on his salary. He hadn't been on a real call out job for a long time. He needed a stay away from base, living on subsidised meals and collecting mileage, for visiting suspects in his own car. When he rang Tyrell for a discussion, trying to pick his brain, on Georgie: he almost asked him if there was a job in the offing.

He had moved from his city apartment to a place in the country: a dream some people had, a nice bungalow, a few acres of land, a few outhouses and in the phrase of the old days ...room for a pony. Instead he was living in a one horse village, in a so called new house, bought at the top of the market, and now, like a lot of others in The Village, it was pyrite cracked and he was fighting with the developer to try and get it remedied. Bloody pyrite no one ever heard of it until recently when it was discovered in filling under foundations. It apparently caused the footings: sub walls, under the wall bricks, to move, maybe even crack. The results was that the door frames, and window sides, went on vacation from the places they had been fixed into.

The kip, hadn't even got a decent pub. It had two: family owned, one at the bottom of the main street was called the Bottom Shop, and the one at the other end of the street was called the Top Shop. A group of visitors on a pub crawl recently remarked that the local patrons resembled each other, and followed that with a derogatory remark about their origins. But there was some truth in his observations because for generations farmer's sons, married farmer's daughters. This ploy kept farms, and land, in family ownership for centuries.

The clientele also had men on the scratch, the local name for welfare, who always seemed to be drunk and making a nuisance of themselves. Shay suspected that some subsidies were being paid outside of the tax system.

He went for drink early in the evening, apart from the welfare pay day the place was relatively quiet. Since no one knew his profession, his day job, he sometimes overheard so called confessions about this folding money, payment for working on farms for cash. He kept this information for a rainy day, when he might have to assist Revenue in one of those dawn raids: with a press release later that read "Illegals arrested", working without work permits. A raid that only yielded welfare spongers would not be news.

One night, feeling shattered, after a dressing down about the lack of progress in the hunt for Georgie, he stayed drinking most of the day and into the weekend lock-in. He fell over on the way to the cigarette machine. Someone suggested they pick him up, call for a taxi, and send him on his way. They searched his pockets for his address, found his warrant card, with his name and rank. He woke up later: where he had been thrown, on a flat gravestone, above a crypt, in the nearby graveyard.

Introducing Redser (Wicker Wood), the soon to be computer hackers enemy.

Redser should have gone to prison for poisoning his uncle Paddy – well he wasn't his real uncle: he was his aunt's husband. But everyone insisted he called him uncle. Redser hated him. Ever since he started telling him his hair was rusty from standing out in the rain.

Auntie Polly loved making soup, all kinds: potato, vegetable, broth from leftover meats. Redser liked them, but Paddy loved them, and drank big bowls of them with brown bread and country butter at lunchtime. That was up to the day Redser slipped some wild stringy long stemmed black capped mushrooms into one of the servings. Black Caps, Ink Caps, he later found out were hallucinogenic, and could lead to some very odd behaviour, particularly when the person who eats them consumes alcohol. And Paddy was a drinker.

But Paddy running down the outside streets of a country town shouting that he was Ali Baba and could fly, was surprising. The fact that he also felt very warm: became red-faced, and threw all of his clothes off and gambolled naked, from the pub, was also frowned upon. The plonker later told everyone that two old ladies were so upset that one of them had a stroke, but the other couldn't catch him.

When the incident was being discussed and the Garda called, Redser said I ate the soup, so did Auntie Polly, and we did not go Ga Ga. Must have been the drink. The Garda agree and that was that.

Redser was not an eager student, well unless it was Maths: Geometry, Propositions, Theorems, things like that came easy to him. As he saw it Pythagoras got it right when he said that the son of the squaw on the hippopotamus hide was equal to the sons of the squaws on the other two hides. That was Redser's secret: changing the definitions he would not remember to something he would easily recall. He had lots of those tricks.

“Dunne, yes you. Empty head.” Pointing at Redser, “Square 16. That's right 16 mult.....”

“256, Sir.”

“That was an easy one. 36 squared?”

“1295. Sir.”

“What are you laughing at Dwyer? What's 25 squared?”

Redser converted the problem in his head using a formula his Granddad had taught him. Round up, round down, Add the real square. So 25 by 25 was the same as 20 by 30 and then square the end number 5, get 25 and answer 625 Sir.

"You're useless. Dwyer, Anyone know?”

Redser knew he was not included in that invitation but nevertheless answered “626." Sir”

He got a wallop on the side of his head for answering.

“No one asked you. Boy”

“Am I wrong? Sir.”

“Get out Dunne. Stand outside the door 'til I send for you.”

Redser walked slowly to the door.

“Hurry up. Get out'f me sight.”

Redser left, walked to the bicycle shelter, took his bike, jumped aboard, and peddled for home.

“Sir. Sir. Out the window, Dunne's riding out the gate. He's going home!”

When he got home his Granddad was working in his workshop, shaping a shaft for a pony trap.

“You're early.”

“Wiggy! We were doing maths. He threw me out.”

“Were you cheeky?”

“Well we were squaring. And he was picking on me.”

“I told you to slow down. Stop firing out the answers before the question is over. He told you to clear off home?”

“No out the door. Stand in the hall, 'till he sent for me. Probably cane me when he had steam up.”

“He'll be up to see me so.”

“What will you say to him.”

“I'll give him short shrift and tell him I'll see him in the pub later. He will be shitting himself, waiting for me to come in the door. So I'll got to Nealons for a change. The pint is not as good: but it won't kill me this once.”

“Why don't you go to the normal place and invite him to play a game of twenty five.”

“Cheeky, go on in and tell Polly I'll be in soon.”

Looking after him as he headed for the back-door, Old Bill muttered what he had said to Polly so often in the past. “ He's a good lad, but I think his father's wild streak will get him into trouble. That and living with a quick brain in a town of slow plodders. We will have to get him out of this place!”

When Redser passed his school leaving examination with distinction and qualified to sit an additional test to join the national airline, the head of the Brothers asked him if he could check the letter to see if a mistake had been made. “We did not put your name down on the forms to be considered by the airline, on the basis of your leaving results. There must be some administration error.”

“Well there it is,” Redser replied, holding out his hand for the return of the letter.

Later Granddad chuckled when he heard of the exchange. “So that's what you were at when I caught you practising signatures. Who will he find out signed it for you then?”

“The careers man, the lay teacher. Dinny.”

“The one who retired and went back to Dublin, after the exams were finished.”

“The same man.”

“God bless him so. If Nixer contacts him what will Dinny say.”

“We all believe Nixer forced him out – he was also a good maths teacher, and Nixer wanted his job. So he will listen carefully and then say he did sign it.”

“When you are up in Dublin, look him up and buy him a drink.”

“Buy him a drink? Sure, I don't drink.”

Granddad smiled. “Yet.” 

Georgie is out and about and looking for the goods, the booty!!!

The ticket collector at Port Siney railway station had been warned by phone from Kingsbridge, Dublin to have a ramp ready for a wheelchair passenger. The old man and his companion negotiated the dismount in an expert fashion. He directed them to leave the station by the goods entrance, wider and more suitable, and they moved away walking and pushing down the Station Road. Curious he thought, a car would be more suitable, it's a good walk to the town. But what taxi around here is wheelchair accessible, they have no choice.

Georgie sat slumped in the chair, eyes alive, darting here and there, watching, seeking for a deep gated entrance. He knew one was along the road, nearby, suitable for the quick change.

“There, next left, he hissed to his helper, in there, quick.”

Once inside he sprung from the chair, folded it quickly, and propped it against the high wall, behind some concealing shrubs. He linked his nurse, smiled and said, “Now off to the old place and have a look at it, then the General, me dear, will treat you to a repast, somewhere in this God forsaken town.”

Bowen Court was gone! The perimeter walls had been removed, the main building renovated to provide offices, and a health clinic. The garden was now a large housing estate and the stables housed a canteen, a restaurant, a Kaf as the commoners misprounced the French word. My God: the outside menu even misspelled the beverage Espresso.

He marched around the estate, searching, trying to find familiar landmarks. The trees had been felled, the privet hedge flattened, the lake a dried up weed covered hollow. The graves? The graves were now paved over and a memorial wall had been built. It contained the names of his victims, and called him a savage, a deranged murderer!

How much had the house been renovated? Was any of the original remaining? What happened to the confession box and the hidden room? The passageway, from the stables had it been removed? Was the booty and the ledgers, the journals still intact?

Half an hour of sightseeing, like a house hunter, scoping out the houses, perhaps considering a purchase, brought them to where the back wall to the walled garden had been. The door would still be there, hidden behind vegetation, inside the weeping boughs of a solitary willow tree. He knew it was. 

Have a great Solstice day.

Summer Soltice

The above means Summer Solstice in WebDings, or some such thing.

Why did I do that – because I can't write it in Ogham.

It's the longest day of the year here in the Northern Hemisphere, and today a lot of people in various groups, will celebrate in several ways, music, poetry. story telling and the like (and “the like” covers a lot).

For me - well I fixed a puncture(s) in a tyre on my grandson's bicycle – three times and then when it deflated again found three more holes: as we say in Ireland the tube is Banjaxed, left far to long in the garage deflated.

So I was deflated as well, when “she-who-must-be-obeyed” said, “You better buy him a new tube.” YOU as if it was my fault, well it wasn't. But so that, I don't get notes like “Yer dinner's in the dog!” when I get home: I will obey.

Got version 2 of Wicker Wood loaded to KDP Kindle, but the “Look Inside” has not been updated to the new version yet: sent an Owl to KDP Support, so here's hoping it will be updated soon.

Have a great Solstice day.

Note:- Version 2 W.W has a new cover, and some text changes. Did you know some people out there don't know where "It's life Jim, but not as we know it." comes from? Others think our local dialect, fecken, shaggin, talkin, and their spellings are misspellings. One even, it seems, had an issue with the word "Hoor" thought it was incorrect spelling of Whore: not in Ireland, in Cavan or Kerry dialect.

Changed me bleedin' mind - didn't I.

My old boss, who was young then, once said, Don't ask for advice - 'cause it will mess you up, when you get it.


So...so someofyays didn't like the new cover ......

So how's this then?