Tuesday 06 October
Wow, 200 posts! I didn’t know I had it in me. I wained a week or so ago, thinking I would need to reduce it to a weekly account of the previous seven days. That may still come, but right now, although the material has changed direction slightly, I reckon I can keep this up.
At the weekend thousands of runners completed the virtual London Marathon around their local areas. Hats off to them, but this is my own marathon of words. The finishing line is still a way off but I am nearing the two-thirds-of-the-way-there stage, that must put me around Canary Wharf?
So, I’ve had an idea for a supernatural short story. It centres around an apple orchard and involves a creature/being called an ‘orchard crawler’. Fruit farmers across East Anglia have heard various versions of the same tale. As word of mouth told the tale during the ages so they became localised. Each town or village with an orchard of note has a specific local name for theirs. The local children in this story sing about ‘Scrappy Jack’ in rhymes passed down by parents and relatives and even in school assemblies. There’s even a special day when the villagers come together to give thanks to him for allowing a bountiful harvest and for not stealing any of their children.
That’s what he does you see. Medieval tales tell of bad harvests leading to his appearance and if he is not satisfied children went missing. But not really, that was just a silly old folk tale, wasn’t it?
Scrappy Jack’s limbs resemble the branches of the apple trees, crooked and knarled. His arms are longer than his legs. He crawls, spider like, head close to the ground as soon as the first windfalls drop to the ground. His elbow and knee joints can bend both ways. Up and down, between the rows of trees, only lifting himself upright to look over the treetops. Above the scent of apples, sniffing for unsuspecting children that it sees as a threat to the harvest. If/when his face is seen by an adult, a child will be taken. The see-er can never describe the face – they simply cannot recall what it looks like.
So, a couple of ideas within a simple premise. All the best supernatural stories keep it simple.
Obviously I have been reading lots of ghost stories lately and books on the history of Essex too. It can’t help but stimulate the imagination. I’d love to write it a short story but a) I don’t have the time and c) I would miss chunks out (funny). I also don’t have the skills, but one should challenge oneself, especially when you get to fifty. Bucket list and all that.
The Bald Birder 