From The Honkeymoon Cafe bookshelf - The Dark Side!

A council operative is called to investigate a flat in a medium high rise. There are flies around the door frame, and the operative has a good idea what he might find inside.

Commissioned by a local radio station as a Christmas Special, this is a 'dramatised' short story. A couple find their perfect country cottage but it has been neglected for many years, and no one knows why, or won't say. Opening up what appears to have been an old library, disturbs something from the past. 

Why had the cottage been deserted? Why had the door and the window in the room at the back been bricked up? Why was the room full of bibles? When the new owner moved in after the builders had finished, and started to record his ghost story, it was too late to start asking questions. That would have to be left to other people.

Local knowledge consists of rumour and invention, but at its centre may be a nugget of truth. If a quizmaster is going to ask questions, they have to be verifiable and unambiguous, so the truth has to be found. In the search for truth, there may be other discoveries along the way.

What is it about Pub quizzes that makes normally placid people so competitive? If the questions have debatable answers all hell can let loose, and it will be the quiz master that gets the blame. So called ‘Professionals’ stalk the nights and one way to confound them is to have a round of ‘Local Knowledge’, but who do you believe when there are so many versions?

Dotty was an eccentric every village would be proud to have. Her theatrical fantasies, her imagining she appeared in silent films and on the stage, and her relationships with the stars she claimed were friends were fanciful beyond belief. What did it matter if none of it was true. Except . . .

Taking up an interest can not only be a way of filling one’s spare time and be a change from our daily routine, but sometimes a way of finding ourselves and even a liberation.

The past is only ever just behind us. If something disturbs it, it takes very little for it to catch us up.

What makes us think we have any control over our lives? If we are lucky do we put it down to our determination, our skill, or craft? And what of those that have no luck, do we blame them for where they are, what they do not have? The line is very fine between success, if that’s what you think it is, and failure, and some people are in no way to blame for where they are; but we’d be better people for offering them a hand, should they need it.

More Dawson catastrophes. Charles Dawson and his part during the WW1 in Egypt alongside Lawrence, then Captain Nathanial Dawson, accidental discoverer of islands and coloniser, both knighted for their services to the Crown.