A great title brought to you by my pal storyteller Ken Johnston, who coined it for the Scriptorium launch. One of those strange words which conjures up all kinds of giddiness! We Angus Writers are, if not exactly giddy, very excited to be starting on a bold new venture- a month-long Angus Writers’ Circle Residency at the New Scriptorium based in the grounds of Arbroath Abbey. What a wonderful, inspirational setting! The Scriptorium has been designed by artist Bobby Niven and commemorates the acclaimed work of the Benedictine monks who once copied and illuminated world-renowned manuscripts on this very site. The project has been made possible by Hospitalfield, Historic Environment Scotland, the 2020+1 committee and many more.

It was a real privilege to be there this week with my writing buddies Dawn, Elizabeth and Gillian. We had coffee and flapjacks to add to the creative vibe and it was interesting to imagine what life might have been like for the Benedictine brothers in their scriptorium of old. One of the interpretive boards at the Abbey describes the ‘architecture of solitude’, a cloistered existence which would be alien to modern-day writers. We are free to listen to a playlist, eat biscuits, surf the ‘net. Maybe we even enjoy the constant backdrop of traffic noise and hubbub of voices. Life must have been very different for those who had taken vows of poverty and silence, working under a strict regime, with no distractions. Perhaps that’s the secret of producing such gorgeous, transcendental art!

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June is the perfect to time to look back and take stock of the year so far (and also to feel guilty for not updating this blog!). It’s hard to stay positive with everything that’s going on globally and at home, but good things do happen, so time to give a few of them an airing…

In March I was incredibly lucky to have been selected for an international residency at beautiful Moniack Mhor. I’d always wanted to visit, and to do so in that context, in the company of such lovely humans, was a high point in my life. So, a big shout out to Efe Paul Azino, Titilope Sonuga, Nadine Aisha Jassat, Sunnah Khan, Puja Changoiwala, Carly Brown, T.J.Benson and of course amazing Debris Stevenson, the Jessie Kesson Fellow and Translator Extraordinaire, Gemma Rovira Ortego.

Aided and abetted by Rachel and her amazing team, we quickly became like family- eating together, laughing together, chasing spiders, drinking wine, walking, talking and writing. What could be better?!

Here are some favourite moments:

Many a writing nook and the neighbours were wild…

So many beautiful views, and a few late nights…

We got out and about…

Read some books and enjoyed the odd glass of wine or two when the writing was done!

Thank you, Moniack Mhor- it was an amazing experience!

I’m a day late, but hope you’ll enjoy the final part of Scrapefoot! It’s been really exciting to write this story in serial form and thank you for your lovely comments. If you’ve liked what you’ve read, do check out my books- dark and twisty with a glimpse of the mythical past!

Scrapefoot #6

I told him he could stay. He wasn’t doing any harm, and he seemed to know more about the house, about my mother and about me than I did. He was clever. I left quietly by the front door. It had been snowing again, and the path wore a new, glistening blanket of white. I was at the gate before I came to my senses. What had I done? Given the green light to a complete stranger, a squatter, a vagrant. How had he tricked me into that? Scrapefoot, indeed!

As I turned to march back to the front door and give him a piece of my mind, I noticed that my footsteps were absent. Even heavy snow could not have obliterated them so soon. What was going on? Slipping and sliding, I made my way back to the house and flung open the door. The fire was still blazing merrily, but there was no sign of the man. I  checked the sitting room and the bedrooms. even the bathroom and the back garden, in case he was chopping more wood, but Scrapefoot had vanished. I twirled slowly in the middle of the sitting room. Something was not right. I could smell that sharp musky scent I’d noticed before. There on the new cushion, in my mother’s favourite chair, lay curled a white fox.

   “How did you get in?”

It surveyed me steadily. It’s eyes were a sharp, icy blue. Something stirred in my head- words- although from whence they came I really couldn’t say.

   “I’ll stay until your mother comes home, and then I’ll be gone.”

Was it a promise, or a threat?

This time when I turned and left. I didn’t go back.

 “Mum, I’ve been doing some thinking.” I held my mum’s tired hand. It was 3 pm and the tea trolley was on it’s way. I could smell a fresh brew and custard creams. A nurse was rearranging the medicine trolley, checking items against her clipboard. “How would you like to go home?”

   “Go home?” The words were tremulous, sweetly hopeful. “Home to my own house?”

   “Yes. I think we could manage. If I relocate and work from home- your home- we could manage well enough. What do you think?”

    “Oh Rebecca!” My mother’s grip tightened. “It’s what I’ve been dreaming of, but I couldn’t tell you. You have your own life to live.”

     “Let’s just say I had a sudden inspiration. Experienced a guiding light, so to speak.”

    “It would be like old times!” Her eyes were bright and a little bit teary.

    “Steady on. I am a grown-up now, you know. I’m too old for stories!”

    “Even the one I used to tell you about Scrapefoot?”

A peculiar feeling twisted inside me; part fear, part joy. “That is a story best left for another day. Wait until we get you home and I’ll tell you everything…”

THE END

Scrapefoot is a traditional folktale, said to be the inspiration behind Goldilocks and the Three Bears. In this story, Goldilocks is a wily fox!

This is the penultimate part! No artwork this week, as I’ve been prepping for some of my classes, so I’ll leave you with a rather nice photo instead!

Scrapefoot #5

He wandered away and I followed him. It was like he owned the place and I felt silenced. There were many things I wanted to say, but my tongue was stubbornly mute.

We arrived at my mother’s bedroom. This was not a good idea, my inner voice warned. This wasn’t where you should be going, but he flung open the door and my mother’s room was just as she left it, with the bed made and the dressing table tidied. The faint smell of the powder she always used at bathtime made me so sad, tears sprang to my eyes.

  “See what I’ve done here,” the man said. He flipped open the quilt. “This mattress was terribly lumpy, so I got one of those toppers. Your ma will think she’s sleeping on a cloud from now on.”

   “You shouldn’t have done that,” I said weakly.” It’s not your place.”

An evil little voice said no, it was your place to do all those things, but you never did. You were always too busy. The man is still speaking. He looks ridiculously pleased with himself.

   “I tried the other beds. The spare was way too hard and that little sofa bed in the box room was so soft and saggy it would ruin your back. Now this one_” he waved a hand. “Is just right.”

I gathered my wits. All I want to do is thank him, but I could not. He was a home invader!

   “Look, Mr- I don’t even know your name.”

He grinned. His teeth were white and sharp. “Scrapefoot.”

   “Mr Scrapefoot. You cannot stay here.”

“But it’s empty, and I have nowhere to go.”

“You’re homeless?”

When he didn’t answer, I sighed impatiently. “That’s as maybe, but this is not your house, and there are charities which deal with- all that.”

   “You forgot about the star.”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake. What about the star?”

“It’s a sign of hospitality and compassion.”

“In what way?”

“Think about that family, the homeless family, who lived in the stable all those years ago.”

“Are you talking about…Bethlehem? That’s got absolutely nothing to do with this, and anyway I’m not religious or even remotely spiritual. As far as I’m concerned, that’s just a story.”

“Like a folktale?”

“Yes, if you like.”

“A bit like the ones your mother used to tell you? The Artic Fox and the Northern Lights, and what was that other one? The very old one that eventually became Goldilocks and the Three Bears. What was the name of that one again?”

My blood ran so cold, I felt like I’d been standing out in the garden for an hour or two. Had I told him about those stories? That my mother used to tell them to me by the light of the fire? I don’t think I had. They’d popped into my head, certainly, after seeing that white fox, and the animal tracks and the flames licking at the chimney. But if I hadn’t told him, how on earth did he know?”

“Have you remembered the name of the story yet?” He asked again.

“Scrapefoot,” I whispered.

My current ‘Finding Inspiration Through Folklore’ course is drawing to a close. Among other things, we’ve been looking at stones. From beach pebbles to standing monoliths, stone is significant, symbolic and often sacred to us. Think of henges, cathedrals and statues.

You’ll have to allow me a little digression here, because although my blog posts are usually fairly frivolous, how can I write about statues and not mention the seismic changes that we’re now experiencing?

The year 2020 has really shaken us to the core, hasn’t it?When the pandemic first hit, we were fairly resigned to the inevitable lockdown. It made us stop and think, we said. This is a chance to slow down, to reconnect with what’s really important. Family, friends, baking our own bread and playing board games and family quizzes. It made us switch off our screens, go out and meet the neighbours, even if it was only from our doorsteps, and at a safe distance.

As the weeks wore on, despite the heartbreak of lost lives and lost livelihoods, we made peace with the ‘new normal.’ Many of us decided we didn’t actually want to go back to the way we were before.

Since we had so much thinking time, 2020 decided to give us something to really think about. The senseless death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers was beamed into our living rooms. There was no escape. We saw it all unfolding, in real time – one of the most horrific and brutal things I think I’ve ever witnessed. A rising, powerful tide of anger rose up and engulfed many nations, and as I write, the figure of Edward Colston, a man I’d never heard of until last week, has just been fished from the bottom of Bristol Harbour. Quite what happens to him now, who can tell, but it’s clear we must find a way to acknowledge the death, suffering and disempowerment he and his ilk were responsible for.

We were right – we cannot go back to the way we were. I feel shaken, by all the things I didn’t know, and all the voices I’m hearing. The words of historian Kate Williams really resonated with me.

I’m going to paraphrase, but she said it’s always been the powerful elite who

‘choose who we should venerate.’ The ‘city fathers’ of Bristol (and every other city) could have chosen to honour an abolitionist, Williams suggests, such as Olaudah Equiano, a freed slave who dedicated his life to the abolition movement and in 1789 published his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of or Gustavus Vassa, the African.

I read this book when I was a second-time-around student, and it was my first real glimpse into the horror of the slave trade and Britain’s part in it. Strangely, we’d barely touched on this subject at school, which is really part of the problem, isn’t it?

But let me get back to my starting point. Stone. This time last year- 2019 seems like a different planet- I was conducting research into witch trials for my forthcoming book, Sight Unseen. As we know, thousands of women and some men – we don’t know the full extent- were summarily executed for witchcraft on these shores. They suffered terrible torture and deprivation before being forced to confess. What has this got to do with stone and statues? In my research, I came across this encouraging article about a proposed national memorial to those accused of witchcraft.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-49754814

We have many wrongs to right, but perhaps the democratising of our nation’s statues might be a good starting point.

Who would you choose to commemorate?

Below is one of my favourite stone memorials.

Maggie Wall’s Monument at Dunning, Perthshire. The graffiti says

‘Maggie Wall burnt here 1657 as a witch’.

Although the name Maggie Wall does not appear in the parish records, and there is no reference to her execution, writer and researcher Geoff Holder discovered that a field named Maggies or Muggies Walls was known in the 18th c and in later maps, a Maggie Walls Wood appears.

The monument to the unknown Maggie is in effect a monument to all of those souls caught up in the hysteria and horror of the witch trials.