An Ordinary War 2

 One of the intriguing - and delightful - things about doing research, particularly, perhaps, when you're doing it, as I do, in a fairly haphazard way, is that often, serendipity steps in and points the way forward. 

I explained in last month's post what decided me to write An Ordinary War, and how I began to do the research at the Imperial War Museum and at the National Records Office at Kew. Now something happened which could not have been foreseen or planned, but which turned out to be enormously helpful. My son had a new partner - and she was Polish! Hitherto I had known very little about Poland and its turbulent history, but now I had a personal reason as well as a research-related reason to get to know much more. I talked to Richard and Joanna about what I had found out so far - including the location of the two main prison camps Dad had been in. Gradually the idea emerged that I would meet them in Warsaw and we would go in search of the camps at Thorn/Torun and Marienburg/Malbork. (Dad knew the camps by their German names: it's a feature of Polish history that the land changed hands over the centuries, and so place names changed too.)

The staion at Torun

It was in the summer, and it was a hot train journey from Warsaw to Torun. But, I reminded myself, Dad's train journey into captivity from Trier to Torun would have been infinitely more uncomfortable: he would have been in an overcrowded cattle truck, and he would have been utterly exhausted from lack of food on the long march across France to Trier. He wouldn't have known where he was going, or what was coming.

I thought the station at Torun probably hadn't changed all that much since 1940. (This was about seventeen years ago: it may well look different now.) I knew that the prison camp was not purely a purpose-built camp: some sections of it were based on old forts built during the Franco-Prussian war, many years earlier. I had a map of these forts which I'd printed off from the internet. As we left the station, I could see an old wall, which I thought was probably part of these same fortifications.

Looking over the rooves of Torun

Torun is a beautiful town, with copper-coloured rooves, built beside broad waters of the River Vistula. It's famous for being the birthplace of Copernicus, and for its delicious gingerbread. As we sat that evening enjoying a drink outside a cafe, it struck me that Dad would probably have seen very little of the actual town: I knew that from the station, the prisoners were marched across the bridge to the camp on the other side of the river. 

The next day, we set off in search of the camp. There was no mention of it anywhere: even today, if you look Torun up, you are unlikely to find any mention of it. We were at a bit of a loss - but then serendidpity stepped in again. Joanna suggested taking a taxi - and the driver turned out to know all about the camp and its different locations, because his father had been imprisoned there, as many Poles had been. Different forts were used for different nationalities. He showed us where the hutted camp had been. There was nothing there now. We looked across a barbed wire fence - not, I think, the original one - at the plain which rolled out as far as the eye could see. I imagined the winter winds driving across it straight from Siberia, finding their way through the gaps in the wooden huts.

And then he took us to what looked like an old quarry. He said when he was a boy, he and his friends used to play here. We pushed open the tall metal gates - and there was the brick-built fort which I had read about in contemporary accounts: the place where Dad and many others had been imprisoned for part of the time. The place, surrounded by high banks, was dark and dreary. But at least there were trees there, and birds.

My son on the bridge over the moat surrounding the old fort, which his grandfather once marched across.

Torun and all we saw there made a great impression on me, and much of it found its way into the book. It was very moving to walk, at least partly, in the footsteps not just of Dad, but of all those other young men caught by the war, and to imagine something of the bewilderment and fear they must have felt.

We had intended to go on to Malbork, known to Dad as Marienburg. But our time was limited, and in the end we decided to head in the opposite direction, right down to Lublin in the south-west, where my small grandson was staying with his other grandparents. Lublin too has its camp, which I also went to see. But this was Majdanek, a concentration camp, and its story is far darker, and one for another day. Unlike the one at Torun, this camp has not been forgotten. And nor should it ever be. 

On dinosaurs and castles - Rowena House

 

Joan Lennon’s February post [link below] gave me a lot of comfort.

For a dinosaur like me, raised on traditional books – and still forlornly wedded to outdated notions about traditional publishing – it’s clear from commentaries such as hers that self-publishing is a rational and respectable choice for authors of repute and a solid backlist, and thus for someone like me with just one novel and a short story out there, it would be no shame at all. 

Thank you, Joan. Your post got me out of bed this morning.

That sense of relief follows two bruising encounters with reality this past month, both of which occurred during a research trip to locations where my seventeenth century witch trial work-in-progress is set. 

 

Touching the stones that imprisoned the people I’m writing about is depressing. I’ve been to Lancaster Castle three times now, and it is both extraordinarily useful inspiration but also a sobering reminder that real people suffered real horror there.

I’m co-opting their lives for my fiction in the hope that my serious intent justifies that decision. It’s a subject I’ll write about more another time, but mid-development edit, I found those sanitised glimpses of their reality demotivating.

It didn’t help that just before a tour of the former prison within the castle I had tea in the castle’s swanky modern café with its smooth music and yuppy feel to the clientele. It was jarring. The tone of the tour jarred, too, with the guide making light of ‘my’ prisoners, who as ‘witches’ belong to everyone.

Could they conceive of being tourist attractions?

Or characters in novels?

The second unpleasant encounter was with an old version of myself at a book launch event.

The event itself was lovely. Held in Heptonstall, Yorkshire, a large and friendly crowd gathered to celebrate Liz Flanagan’s adult historical novel, When We Were Divided, set in Heptonstall during the civil war. It’s compulsive reading & beautifully written. Congratulations again, Liz. 

Amid all the positivity and fantastic cake, I briefly met Liz’s publisher, and a former self – the pushy woman who got The Goose Road out there – materialised in the space where I’d been standing a second before, all forced smiles and anxiously friendly.

It felt horrible and fake and rammed home this truth: I don’t want to be a needy writer stereotype again. It was unpleasant enough last time around, when I was highly motivated to get published. It would be painfully shabby now. My apologies to the publisher who no doubt spotted the type straight away.

For the time being I’ve retreated to my comfort zone of writing and editing to a deadline. As a pledge that something will happen next, I’ve signed up for an Arvon short course about publication in May and vaguely started looking around at small independent publisher, the whole getting-another-agent thing being way too dismal to think about after mine retired.

Meanwhile, posts like Joan’s and others in the ABBA community have lit a torch in the dark cave of the future. There is another way. Sincere best wishes to everyone battling to get their beautifully crafted words seen.

Good luck and go get ’em.

Link to Joan's post: 

https://awfullybigblogadventure.blogspot.com/2026/02/a-funny-old-journey-in-childrens.html

Wouldn't you know it. Google automatically hyperlinked a bunch of words in this post, but the link I want to be live, Joan's post, no chance. Google also refused to let me upload a photo of Liz's book cover. It might be my browser. Like I said, dinosaur. 

Rowena House Author on Facebook & Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

               

Trying to catch the Fire Horse - by Lu Hersey

 Chinese New Year starts on the second new moon after the winter solstice (17 February this year). Yes, it means it falls on a different date each year, but so does Easter Sunday (which, if you're interested, falls on the first Sunday on or after the spring equinox)

This is an inspirational time to start a new year. The days are getting noticeably lighter and it feels like there's some hope for the coming spring. So much more appealing than January 1st, which is an arbitrary date, not only gloomy and depressing, but a time when the worst of the winter is often still to come. 

If you've already stuffed up keeping your January resolutions (which most people have, because January is horrible and far too long), it could be worth using this Chinese New Year to make some positive changes in your life. You could even try making them more interesting than simply going vegan for a month, or pledging to drink more water. 

New moons are traditionally considered to be the best times for starting new projects. Amplify this with the start of the Chinese year of the Fire Horse, and it's energetically kick-arse time for stamina, growth and independence. A time to look at your life to see what needs clearing out - and what you want to cultivate. 

It's also apparently a good time to take back your personal power. Having spent much of the winter in despair about the blatant lies and corruption involved in daily politics and the news, I decided to start a daily rant on X to dispel the gloom. Yes, the algorithms are against me - I have no blue tick and my aim is to bring down Elon Musk single handed, which he tends not to like. Despite this, I find shouting into the void surprisingly therapeutic.

Perhaps more positively (and sensibly), I've decided to take up opportunities that come my way this year without moaning about the effort involved and ducking out. This Tuesday (which was Chinese New Year) I went to a Banksy exhibition in London, despite the local coach taking 3.5 hours to get there and the same back, which usually I'd use as an excuse not to be arsed. As it is, I met up with a lovely writer friend and had a great time, so intend to be arsed far more often.

I'm also going to try and help the planet out a bit. Tiny things like taking plastic waste off  beaches (a few manageable pieces at a time) and picking up bits of litter (I draw the line at dog poo bags) when out on a walk, rather than my customary ranting about plastics destroying the planet and people who chuck litter everywhere. 

Big problems may ultimately be overwhelming but it has to be worth making an effort. Small steps to make small changes. Managing the despair. Finding some Fire Horse energy and hoping to make a difference. 

And maybe I'll drink more water anyway. 

Lu Hersey

https://www.lu-hersey.com/

Sophia the Sphere by Steve Way

Generally, most ideas come when actually writing though I don’t know about you but for me many can pop up at unexpected, usually inconvenient moments. In my case, it’s often just as I’ve crawled into bed and got comfortable (particularly on a cold evening) or first thing in the morning when I’m just beginning to wake up and could justifiably spend up to another half an hour warm and cosy under the covers. I’ve learned from cruel experience though that if I try to persuade myself that I will easily remember the uninvited ideas at a more convenient time that I’m deceiving myself. When the convenient time finally arrives, the idea has sneaked away irretrievably, into the ether. So, I have to decide to crawl out of bed if I want to preserve the idea. I suppose on reflection it demands that I make a harsh editorial decision… the comfort of my bed or the preservation of an idea…

The genesis of my latest idea was even more mundane. As a friend of mine once pointed out, shaving is pretty boring and becomes mechanical and automatic, allowing the mind to wander. In my case while carrying out this riveting activity, I was thinking about some of my visits to schools where I’d told my story about ‘King Cube’ becoming overweight and turning into a sphere.

The story has a curious history. While studying my PGCE (junior) course, my fellow students and I were asked to prepare a maths lesson about solid shapes. My studious classmates produced – as reflected in many of them receiving excellent grades – a variety of lesson plans and resources. In my case I wrote the above-mentioned story. Our tutor clearly made a deliberate beeline for me as our marked efforts were returned and gently informed me, clearly intending to head off disappointment, that, ‘we couldn’t give you a good grade because it was too original’.

Well, it served me right I suppose…

Sometime later an editor who was considering the story became convinced that the infant children the story was mainly targeted at, wouldn’t be able to cope with the idea of a cube transforming into a sphere. Despite me pointing out that by this time I had told the story to several hundred, possibly a few thousand, children and that none of them appeared to have found this concept beyond them my appeal fell on deaf ears. I appreciate my bias in this situation but the children seemed to enjoy the story, particularly when I kept deliberately-on-purpose dropping King Cube, now in the form of a tennis ball sphere and then ineptly trying to retrieve him as he bounced towards them.

The one consistent difficulty I did notice that the children commonly experienced however, was that many of them found it difficult to pronounce the word ‘sphere’. The most common mispronunciation sounded like the girl’s name ‘Sophia’, though a few pronounced it as ‘spear’ (causing me to duck down in fear of attack – any excuse for getting a laugh!) and occasionally as ‘fear’.

This is where my revelation in front of the mirror comes in – it finally occurred to me that I ought to write a story about Sophia the Sphere, possibly a warrior who wields a spear – and if she’s got any sense does so with fear. In the meantime, I realised I needed an ‘aide-memoire’ and came up with the following attempt at a limerick.

 

There once was a sphere called Sophia,

Who guarded her riches with fear,

But the cube was no fool,

So, he made her a tool,

Now Sophia the Sphere guards her hoard with a spear.

 

For some reason, while I was in limerick mood, the following pair of verses popped up.

 

There was a mad man from Dundee,

Who foolishly married a bee,

They honeymooned in a boat,

Rowed by a pig and a goat,

That mad married man from Dundee.*

*And his wife of course

**I wonder if he ever called her ‘Honey’.

 

There was a mad man from Dundee,

Who decided to marry a bee,

But a keen legal eagle,

Declared the marriage illegal,

For his not yet divorcing a flea.

 

I’m sure some of you are wishing I’d grown a beard!

~~~~~~~~~~

I was once asked to do an extended visit to a school in Preston where they were engaged in a school project about dragons. For the visit I wrote one and a half stories (I still have to finish the second one). However, the first one, which I read to the school in an assembly, is about a girl called Jasmine who turns up at school on pet ‘show and tell’ day with what she claims to be a dragon’s egg

The Egg

By Steve Way

Illustration by Brian Way

 

 

 

ASIN : B0GGJG2YQC  (The 0 is a zero)

Locket & Wilde's DREADFULLY HAUNTING MYSTERIES The Ghosts of the Manor, by Lucy Strange & Pam Smy, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

 

This is an absolutely gorgeous book, heavy and glinting and choc-full of illustration and story. 

Lucy Strange has written a ghostly mystery full of wonderful characters and humour and genuine ghosty thrill  ...   despite one of the child heroes being one of the ghosts. Pam Smy's wonderful illustrations on almost every spread, filling some spreads, properly play the story between words and images, again achieving atmosphere, character and humour. And the odd clue to spot! 

Matilda has to play 'dead Edna', a ghost child brought to life during her Aunt's ghostly stage show, but then the two of them, along with Uncle Barnabus and Colin the parrot, get employed at a mysterious manor house where there seems to be at least one real haunting. There is. But there's also dastardly thievery afoot, and its up to Matilda and the ghost boy she befriends to bring the culprits to justice. Meanwhile, exactly what are her 'Aunt' and 'Uncle' up to? 

Great fun, and offering the highest quality illustration and writing for middle grade readers. I'm very glad there are more stories about these two to come!

 

                     How I Learned to Read by Lynda Waterhouse

I have always been fascinated by the mysterious process by which a child learns to read. In my experience there is always a moment where all the mechanical parts - the letters and sounds, the handling of books, the listening to and shared enjoyment of stories, the musicality of language in songs and poems - all come together and everything clicks into place.

I’m not even sure what reading is. The dictionary defines it as ‘The activity or skill of looking at and comprehending the meaning of written or printed matter by interpreting the characters or symbols of which it is composed.’

That covers the mechanics but what about that inexplicable process where the words transport you into another world? Or provide you with information and food for thought?  As Dr Seuss says, ‘The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.’

It got me thinking about my own reading journey.

Early memories

My grandfather, William Waterhouse, from the age of 11, was a ‘half timer’ working for half a day in the local cotton mill and receiving half a day of schooling. This left him with a thirst for knowledge and he educated himself. As a child we had many of his books on our shelves. Reading was a form of self-betterment for him and his family as well as a form of escapism. He died before I was born but his legacy lived on in the many books he left behind.

At home we had a very old book of Bible stories. Each page folded out to make a 3D image. This book was fragile and had to be handled carefully. We were not a religious family, but my Mum believed in hedging your bets and liked the social side of the local church. My Dad, coloured by his own experiences of intolerance during the war, was scathing about it. I was about three years old and I recall ‘pretending’ to read the words that accompanied the pictures to the delight of my parents who encouraged me to continue doing this.

The subversion of words

I was in infant school, about Year 1, and our teacher read us the A.A. Milne poem Furry Bear. The whole class shrieked with delight and made her read it over and over again for days. The reason was these lines

‘For I’d have fur boots and a brown fur wrap

And brown fur knickers and a big fur cap’

We were making our teacher say ‘knickers’ over and over!

All was going smoothly, I was reading, writing and loving words THEN I BECAME PART OF AN EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT.

ITA Experiment

With no explanation nor rhyme nor reason, our school introduced a new way of teaching reading called ITA or Initial Teaching Alphabet. This method was created by the MP James Pitman, the grandson of Isaac Pitman who devised a shorthand system. He was not an educationalist. It was an attempt to simplify English and accelerate learning. I had to learn 44 symbols for each of the sounds in English. To add to my confusion the spellings were presented with sounds of someone who spoke with Received Pronunciation, not an Oldham accent.

It was traumatic and made no sense to me but being a compliant child I went along with it and went from being a successful reader and speller to being a slow learner needing extra help.  Then after a year it disappeared without explanation and I was told to go back to the way I had learned to read before and that I was not a failure after all. It has left me with a distrust at the over reliance on synthetic phonics.

The library is my lifesaver

Once I had recovered from my ITA experience (although my spelling never really did) I became and remain a voracious reader. During the summer holidays I had many reading adventures thanks to Oldham Library and the access to books that it provided to me for free.

Reading for pleasure remains one of the joys of life, alongside making up stories to the ‘pictures’ I see in art galleries and a love of subversive language. How did you learn to read?

USING COLOUR IN CHILDREN'S BOOKS - BLACK AND WHITE by Sharon Tregenza

 BLACK AND WHITE

Children's books usually use bright colours, but black and white illustrations can be incredibly effective. They can have a quiet magic of their own. 

A black and white picture can have the children guessing at the possible colours which deepens engagement. Also, the strong line work and contrast can express tension and movement as much as colour - sometimes even more. Many early reader books use black and white illustrations because the images don't overwhelm new readers, they just reinforce the text. Another plus is activity books where children can colour the pictures themselves.

Here are three examples of children's books using black and white pictures:

In this book, Cybele Young creates beautiful pen and ink drawings to tell a story about ten birds crossing a river. 

BIG CAT, little cat by Elisha Couper. A sweet book about friendship. Here the monochromatic illustrations help set the gentle tone of the story.

Chris Raschka's minimalist picture book uses expressive black and white drawings to convey, movement and storytelling without using colour.

On a practical note - black and white books are often more affordable to print. This means lower costs for publishers and therefore more books for libraries and schools. 

www.sharontregenza.com

sharontregenza@gmail.com