Celtic Noir Podcast

For the next couple or so of weeks, StoryPod is going mini-bijou: a handful of short 3–5 minute films and spoken pieces from Exmoor, caught while I was there and still carrying the weather, land and stories with them.

Bonewood’s heart for me …

The river that births the Dragon Bridge I showed you before. It’s magic here. I’ve been coming here all my life and this particular spot, a little tiny bay that looks across to the Island is very special indeed.

The Island is that stretch of greenery you might think was the opposite bank but it isn’t, the river is wider than this again on the other side of the Island, and the Island itself is as wide again. Just up to the right from here is the Dragon Bridge and that’s a hundred and eighty feet wide … so you can get an idea of how big the river is.

The valleys here in Bonewood are all river-made, so they’re steep sided, carved out by thousands and thousands of years of water flowing through them. That always makes me blink. Water is so, so powerful. It can seem gentle and tame, it seems so here where I’m standing, but it has tremendous force … like Obi-Wan Kenobi’s “Force”!

My favourite river is a Force, and I always feel May the Force be with you as I stand here.Let’s feel the Force together …

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For the next couple or so of weeks, StoryPod is going mini-bijou: a handful of short 3–5 minute films and spoken pieces from Exmoor, caught while I was there and still carrying the weather, land and stories with them.

The Dragon Bridge is perhaps my most favourite place in all the world.

It’s been with me all my life, I was still a baby when Mummy dangled my toes in the water. Whenever I come back to Exmoor I have to go there, revisit, it’s like visiting a loved and revered ancestor … and one who will (I hope) be there for many, many generations after me.

It’s a place which appears, and is a character, in many of my novels and stories.I used to take students there on retreats and workshops …And they all, every one of them, to fall in love with it.Many made that bridge, that river, part of their own initiation rites.

To me … and to them … the bridge is the backbone of a dragon.

Come with me now … likely we’ll come back here again.

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Here in Bonewood, this season, we’re just celebrating the First Harvest, what’s often called Lammas and starts on 1st August.

Eastbourne Lammas Festival

One of the rites we do to celebrate is John Barleycorn, so I thought I’d tell you a bit about it …

In the Old Ways, and here at Bonewood, we know death is necessary for life to flourish, without death life dies. In the past, humankind the world over acknowledged this relationship between death and life and harvesting grain for bread, beer, and whisky, as well as seeds for next year’s crop, through rites and rituals.

The presiding figure was the feminine, the goddess, and the Corn Dolly – made from the last corn to be cut – was her symbol for the harvest.

She is also the symbol for rebirth as the Corn Dolly is ploughed into the First Furrow at the first ploughing, six months later at Imbolc.

I grew up with all of this, and we continue the rites here in Bonewood …

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Welcome to Bonewood

I live in a place called Bonewood, at Hollowbone Farm, with my black witchy cat Kellan, my mad-scientist partner Paul, and a host of Wild Life.

It’s right out in the back of beyond, and you have to walk between the worlds to get there.

Other people might call it my website – but it’s a lot more than that.

Bonewood is a place you can ramble.

It’s a place full of digressions, where it’s deliciously easy to lose the thread … only to find you’ve been handed a much better one than any you could ever have thought of.

So now, on the StoryPods, I’ll be taking you into Bonewood and showing you some of its places and stories.

I wasn’t sure which one to set off with and then The Lane grabbed me.

We call it … The Lane Nobody Notices because it really is.

It’s small, quiet, and you can’t see where it’s going to take you, and it can be a bit rough underfoot. When you do notice and glance down it you get a feel in your bones that it might just take you where you need to go, even if you don’t know where that is, not yet, and provided you’re not in a hurry.

How about we go there now? Yes ?

Right then … off we go …

Want to visit Bonewood? Click HERE … scroll down to the Map mouse-over the places and click a Hotspot 😺

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Last week I read you the very beinning of my novel Tresor.

Like I said then, it’s coming on apace and I do think I may be able to get all the work done, finishing writing, editing and getting it out there as an eBook and a paperback by Autumn Equinox. Barring accidents! And I did have a pretty hair time with it last w/end but it’s all back together now, and saved in three different places 🥵😵‍💫

So finger crossed … 🤞

Enjoy the second half of this first chapter, I’ve left almost on a cliff edge … again!

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A bit different today.

I just felt like giving you a taster of my latest novel - Tresor - that’s going like the clappers right now. It should - barring accidents! - be out for Autumn Equinox.

It continues the story of Jehanne and Jack that began in Dancing with a Daemon, continued in Hollowbone, and comes to a climax with Tresor.

The trilogy has one current running underneath it, but you can enter the river anywhere, each story is complete in itself and you don’t need to read them in order. And each remains a story in its own right.

It all began years before they met, and has been moving towards the moment of Tresor ever since. The three books are a lovely progression:

Dancing with the Daemon: they find each other.Hollowbone: they become what they need to become.Trésor: they discover what all of it was for.

but you can enter anywhere ... and travel either direction …

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I’ve loved this story all my life.

When I found Jackie Morris had painted it, several times, and done her own version of the story, I had to have those pix and the book.

This is my version of the story, not hers. It’s and ancient, ancient form of the testing tale, and built around 3-ness, not just the old Grandmothers but even the wind - 3 refusals before the girl can get her answer. And then only on the third try does she get to see her prince. And even the washing has 3 failures before success.Three is a very important number in the Old Ways of likely every land …

Picture by Jackie Morris - one of my favourites.

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Here’s a little story from way back in my past the helped shape my life.

It’s of when I first met Elen of the Ways, in the flesh, many, many years ago, back in 1969, whwn I was at Uni and had come back up to Exmoor for a weekend of chilling out on the moors, in the woods and valleys, and byt my favourite River Barle.

A meeting that changed my life …

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Long ago and far away …

Great opening line 😹, and it takes me into a journey from long ago that took me far, far away and into wonderful adventures.

Back in my days at Uni when adventures really were possible, and oft times back in those days enjoyong riddles made us not scared to be scared …

And forward into when I got deep into storytelling and taleweaving …

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