STORY NOW DIVERTED FROM HERE, AS IT’S DUE TO FEATURE IN THE CHARITY ANTHOLOGY CHRISTMAS LITES 2019.
As a holiday extra, greydogtales offers you an exclusive short story, Something Annoying This Way Comes, by the renowned British author J Linseed Grant. Mr Linseed Grant is well known to our listeners, and to lawyers throughout the developed world, for his charming and light-hearted tales of unspeakable abominations on the Yorkshire moors.
The history of this particular story is also well known. Written in 1982, during his enforced exile in the Orkneys, it was submitted to an American magazine, Astounding Fantasies (incorporating the Amateur Bicyclist) in the November of that year, and rejected seventeen minutes later. After a series of injunctions, Mr Linseed Grant agreed not to submit any further stories to the United States. Ever.
Fortunately the original draft, most of which was written on a discarded sheep*, found its way to us at greydogtales.
*The sheep, a ram of the North Ronaldsay variety, lived to be an astonishing twenty three years old, though it never spoke again after the incident.
greydogtales returns after Christmas, unless you’re very good…
After our recent South American adventure, we lurch surprisingly north. Come with us now to Scandinavia and see the work of Danish artist, Jørgen Bech Pedersen, who produces terrific interpretations of those dark creatures which skulk in Nordic folk-lore.
greydog’s own introduction to Nordic folklore, decades ago, was through many un-related sources: the Marvel Thor comics (not always accurate, funnily enough), bits of Alan Garner‘s Weirdstone of Brisingamen, and Jacqueline Simpson‘s marvellous book Icelandic Folktales and Legends.
our ancient copy
Living in a small community by the North Sea, we had a natural feel for those stories. Seal rocks at the bottom of the cliffs – were those really only seals down there? And what actually came in with the sea-frets which washed over the fields? Our ruined chalk farmhouses weren’t so far from those of folklore books, after all.
When we moved inland, years later, other Yorkshire folk would say that our accent was half Danish. So it was a pleasure to discover the work of ‘Bech‘, who agreed to be interviewed for this very programme (all paintings/drawings should be clickable for a larger version, by the way)…
greydog: Welcome to greydogtales, Jørgen – you are our first Scandinavian guest! We initially noticed your work on-line through your bestiary of troldfolk. Is your involvement in folklore a recent thing, or something from your youth?
jørgen: My fascination with folklore is a recent thing that started about 8 years ago. But I guess it really began in my childhood as a fascination for fantasy and fairy tales. At some point I discovered Dungeons & Dragons which further sparked my fascination. But I was aware of the difference between the elves depicted in popular culture and the ones I’d heard about in folk tales. I remember always wondering : why do Danish elves have a hollow back? I had also heard H C Andersen’s fairy tale The Elfin Hill in which the hill opens up and the elves pour out of it. But how?
These questions stayed in my mind for a long time until, at one point, I sat down to figure out the secret behind hollow elves and elven mounds that rise up on four glowing pillars of fire. Once I started reading folk tales, I was hooked. Luckily, I work in a library that keeps a nice section on folklore. When I started digging, I found more and more literature in our archives. I noticed that the majority of literature was quite old. Furthermore I found that folklore illustration was often put together from serveral artists and therefore inconsistent in style and expression. These things gave me an idea to make a bestiary and illustrate all the creatures myself.
vildejaeger, bech
greydog: Is there much interest in Danish folklore in Denmark itself?
jørgen: Not in general. There’s been a handful of new fantasy books that focus on folklore and we have seen a couple of small scale Nordic movies that deal with the subject (Huldra – Lady of the Forest and Troll Hunter)
elf, bech
greydog: The Troll Hunter film is superb, and most unusual in its take on the subject. One of greydog‘s fiction projects for 2016/17, The Children of Angles and Corners, is about the re-emergence of huldrefolk or huldufolk. Tell us something about the nature of troldfolk, as depicted in your art.
jørgen: When I made troldfolk.dk, I set out to make a bestiary, or field guide, to all of the folklore creatures of Denmark. What that means is describing the traits and abilities of each creature – their nature, if you will. That was a hard job, because the literary sources don’t classify each type of creature very consistently. Furthermore, to visualize my bestiary, I also had to bring each creature out into the open and draw them top to bottom on a blank background. Again the sources aren´t very helpful. Details are sparse and inconsistent. So again I had to try and capture their look and draw each creature my own way. The field guide therefore, presents over two dozen Scandinavian folklore creatures, that are each cleary documented and visualized. In that way it can be useful as a tool for fiction writers or for implementing these creatures in roleplaying games or computer games.
Choosing this perspective for troldfolk.dk also meant that you lose some of the original mystery concering trolls and fairies the way they were traditionally perceived. Don´t forget that these creatures were very real to farmers in the 19th century. Not just children but grown ups actually believed in brownies, ghosts and elves. Traditionally, there are some general traits about their nature. They were most often perceived as dangerous and something you should avoid dealing with. Elven maids look beautiful. They dance and sing in the fields at night, but if you join their dance, you may die. Other folklore creatures are benign or even helpful if you treat them right. Some of them are mortal and they grow old and die like normal people. Other creatures are more similar to ghosts and the undead.
drage, bech
greydog: You told us recently that you have been looking into British folklore as well. What areas interest you?
jørgen:I want to look more into the differences and similarities between the fairy world of the British Isles and Scandinavia. When I set out to study folklore, I thought the Danish creatures would be very unique to Denmark. That wasn´t the case. Folklore is subject to cultural exchange across borders. Just look at dragons. But especially I want to learn more about the British tradition of the fairy court. One of the things that fascinate me about British fairy lore is the strong ties between the fairy realm and human souls and the afterlife. I belive that idea is far more widespread in your area.
troll, bech
greydog: Your fabulous illustrations are how we spotted you. Which artists do you feel have influenced your style?
jørgen: I have a lot of influences of course. I´m very fascinated by the old Nordic illustrators of the 18th century. They really conceptualized the look of the Nordic trolls and their style is carried on today. Look at Theodor Kittelsen or John Baur. Modern inspiration inclues Brian Froud, Iain Mccaig, Tony Diterlizzi, Paul Bonner and Justin Sweet. Hmm, I could go on. Must make a list on my website.
bragist, bech
greydog: And although we know a couple of those, including Brian Froud, we must look some of the others up. Could tell us a little about your painting techniques?
jørgen: The illustations for troldfolk.dk are all hand drawn and colored digitally. Recently I chose to work in traditional media again and I use ink, watercolor, guache and acrylics. I´m really not set on a specific style. I like to try out new materials and styles. Just take a look at bechart.dk
treeman, bech
greydog: We know that you accept commissions. Do you have serious commercial ambitions for your artwork, such as a printed bestiary, or is it mostly for your own pleasure?
jørgen: For me art is first and foremost a pleasure but I’m also dead serious about it. I accept commissions that I feel are in tune with what I want to do. Originally I wanted to make a book, but I decided to make a website to reach a broader audience. My goal has always been to inspire people to learn about Nordic folklore and to that purpose a website is more useful. However, I´m still planning to supplement the website with a printed book at some point. This will include a lot more illustrations of each creature and hopefully show them in their proper surroundings.
lygtemand, bech
greydog: Folklore is a major source for fantasy literature. Do you read fantasy or weird fiction yourself?
jørgen: Even though I´m a librarian, I don’t read a lot. I use most of my spare time drawing and when I do read, it´s mostly non-fiction, folklore sources or sometimes a piece of classic literature. I read slowly, so I have to be picky. I do enjoy fantasy a lot and I´ve read Tolkien, the Dragonlance saga, Beowulf, but also a lot of Poe and I´m fascinated by Lovecraft’s dark universe.
ringwraith, bech
greydog: Good man! One question out of curiosity – in recent years, Scandinavia has become renowned for what many call ‘Nordic noir‘, in books and films. Denmark is often thrown in with Norway, Sweden and Iceland, as if they were similar. Is this fair?
jørgen: I’m not bothered by it. There’s a Nordic kinship that I appreciate. I dont feel Danish identity is in any way threatened by this generalization.
baekhest, bech
greydog: And finally, any plans for your art in the New Year? More bestiary entries, or something new?
jørgen: I’m hired in to do some concept art for a game production and that will probably keep me busy for a while. Can´t tell you anything about it yet, though. Besides that my plan is to do a lot of art, prepare exhibitions and try and sell some 🙂
robot, bech
greydog: We wish you much luck with that and thank you, Jørgen Bech Pedersen. As mentioned, you can find the Bech Bestiary here:
For each illustration in the bestiary, there is also a text piece which is well worth reading. Don’t be put off if you don’t speak Danske – we merely copied the text and pasted it into the google on-line Danish to English translator. It’s not perfect, but there’s lots of great information there. And Bech’s art in general is on-line here:
That’s probably the last of our ‘Weird Art’ theme for 2015, but it will return next year. Do keep tuning in – greydogtales continues over the festive season, thought perhaps in a slightly more random “surely I didn’t drink all that brandy” manner…
We’re delighted to be joined today by an outstanding and award-winning illustrator of what we loosely term ‘the weird’, John Coulthart. We glide through artistic techniques and influences, discussing John’s cracking website, his own writing, Lovecraft and Ligotti along the way. And we have an exclusive view of the original cover design for his Axiom project. It doesn’t get much better (unless you were hoping for a photograph of Django running into a tree).
We would say something else nice and introductory about John, but really the interview and the art tell you what you need to know. So let’s just do this thing…
greydog: Welcome to greydogtales. For once we’re not sure where to start. Not only do you produce striking illustrations, but you also write, and you provide a website packed with fascinating articles, weird trivia and the work of other illustrators. Do you see yourself as an artist with sidelines, or a multi-media person?
coulthart: Art has always been the dominant thing, and it’s how I make a living, but I realised I enjoyed writing when I was about 9 or 10, and that I had some facility for it. The first thing I had published in any form was a poem in the local newspaper when I was 10. In secondary school I won the art prize but a year or so later I was thinking seriously about getting fiction published somewhere. I’d been writing and illustrating a lot of derivative fantasy stuff, and working on a novel that never got very far because I kept writing and rewriting the first few chapters. Shortly after that I was creating album artwork for Hawkwind but also writing another novel, a wildly uncommercial thing that was almost wholly dream sequences and “experimental” prose. I only stopped the writing when I started adapting the Lovecraft stories since that was a very labour-intensive process. I’d also realised by that point that I needed to think more seriously about why I wanted to write fiction when things were going well art-wise.
steampunk, john coulthart
greydog: For some people, achieving a blog like feuilleton would be enough in its own right. It’s like greydogtales, but produced by someone who knows what they’re doing (greydog is an unrepentant grasshopper, and about as complex). Is the multi-layered nature of feuilleton a reflection of your own personality, or are we reading too much into it?
coulthart: Ha, I didn’t know what I was doing at all when I started. The thing appeared on a whim after someone asked me to helped them put a website together. I installed a database and WordPress so they could have a blog/news feature then realised a) that it was relatively easy to set up, and b) I could do the same for myself. It didn’t feel at all serious until 2007 when I wrote a lengthy piece one weekend about the album cover art of Barney Bubbles who I felt was under-represented on the web. That one post received a huge amount of attention, and led (indirectly) to a book of Barney’s work being published, and my name appearing in the New York Times. The discipline of making a daily post has helped hone my writing, at least where non-fiction is concerned. It’s also led to my being asked to write a few paid pieces for design magazines, something I never expected at all.
It’s very much a reflection of my personality since I don’t write about anything I’m not interested in. I like the flexibility of the form: you can write short or at great length or even only post links as I do each weekend; you can include visuals or videos or music mixes; and you control the platform more than you do in social media. I’ve found individual posts to be very useful for having a fixed statement or essay available in a public space. I’ve spent years telling people about David Rudkin’s TV play, Penda’s Fen, for example, but there’s no need to repeat yourself at length when you can send someone a link to something you’ve written.
tentacle latitudes, john coulthart
greydog:Penda’s Fen was our introduction to Manichean dualism (we don’t get to say that often) many years ago, and left a lasting impression. If you watch it as a teenager, it raises so much about your identity, your sexuality and your belief systems – and somehow indelibly writes Edward Elgar into the mix. Everyone should see it. And you’ve written at length about David Rudkin‘s work in the recent book Folk Horror Revival: Field Studies (link on sidebar).
Back to business. We’re asking all our feature artists something about the professional process, for those who don’t work in this field. You’ve undertaken a lot of commissions from publishers. How much creative freedom do you tend to get when executing a book cover?
coulthart: It depends very much on the publisher and art director commissioning the work, but most mid-range publishers, and all the big ones have specific ideas of the direction they want to see you following. Some novels make certain cover designs seem inevitable whereas others might suggest any number of different approaches; if the book is in the latter category then it helps to have someone dictating the direction before you begin. The worst kind of job for a designer or illustrator is one where the client doesn’t know what they want but insists on guiding the project, or—worse—changes their mind once you’ve started work.
necronomicon, john coulthart
greydog: Often the first thing that we notice when we see a Coulthart piece is the amazing intricacy of your style. With something like the interior illustrations for The Haunter of the Dark, for example, how long would a single page/plate take to be completed?
coulthart: All those Lovecraft pages took around two weeks to draw which is why I stopped using such fine pens when I started work on the Lord Horror comics. At the time I only had one Rotring drawing pen which had a 0.2 mm nib. Rotring pens are expensive precision things, and I didn’t have the money to buy a set so I got used to shading with extremely fine lines. By the time I started on the Lord Horror comics I had a few more pens so I switched to 0.5 which is still a fine line but it halved the production time.
cthulhu, john coulthart
greydog: A number of your pieces remind us of the detailed work of Victorian and Edwardian illustrators. Gustave Doré springs to mind immediately. Is this an area you mine for inspiration, or an accidental reflection of earlier approaches?
coulthart: Yes, the atmosphere of Doré’s work was something I was aiming at when I began The Haunter of the Dark. I wanted to get away from the poor science-fiction art I’d been creating for Hawkwind, and also try and present Lovecraft’s stories pictorially with the same seriousness they had on the page. I dislike the EC style of horror comics with some chuckling host popping up at the end to crack a joke. The initial impetus came from Berni Wrighton’s Frankenstein portfolio which borrows from Doré’s Ancient Mariner in two of the plates. (He was actually working more in the style of Franklin Booth but I didn’t know this at the time.) Wrightson has done a lot of EC-style art but the Frankenstein drawings were intended as illustrations not comic panels. I’ve often said that my Lovecraft strips are really illustrated stories presented in a sequential form rather than comic-strip adaptations. I’ve never really considered myself to be a comic artist, I’m an illustrator who happened to choose the comics medium for those stories because it gave you access to every part of the story. The page layout and drawing style is much closer to European comics even though the subject is predominantly American.
r’lyeh, john coulthart
greydog: When it comes to artwork, from which single project of yours did you gain the most personal satisfaction, regardless of reception or remuneration?
coulthart: That would be Lord Horror: Reverbstorm, the collected (“graphic novel”) edition of the Lord Horror comics I worked on with David Britton during the 1990s. Reverbstorm was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a comic series that was excessive and transgressive knowing all the time that it would still be published. My ink drawing in Reverbstorm is the best I’ve done anywhere, while the comic itself throws Modernist literature (mostly Joyce and Eliot) and Cubist/Expressionist art into a soup of material from Burne Hogarth’s Tarzan comics and the cosmic horrors of Lovecraft and Hodgson. There’s never been anything in comics that offered these kinds of juxtapositions over so many pages.
lord horror: reverbstorm, john coulthart
greydog: Let’s escape art for a moment. We grew up on the albums Hall of the Mountain Grill, Warrior on the Edge of Time and Michael Moorcock‘s New Worlds Fair, and you’ve done cover art for Hawkwind. Were you also interested in that musical ‘zone’, or was it just another job?
coulthart: Yes, I liked Hawkwind a great deal circa 1980, and I still like the albums they made in the 1970s. I also liked a lot of other music at the time that was more of its time – groups such as Cabaret Voltaire – but Hawkwind were attractive for the loose mythology that surrounded their albums and the group. A lot of the mythology was simply the product of Barney Bubbles’ sleeve designs so the combination of those two things – design and mythology – led me to start drawing a series of Hawkwind-related pictures. In the summer of 1980 I was lucky to meet someone who knew the band so that in turn led to my being asked to work for the group shortly after. This was a great opportunity at the time but it was also frustrating as I was trying to produce designs as well as illustrations but without having access to any of the facilities – or contact with the printers – that you needed to create graphic design. The disaffection – and dissatisfaction with my own work – pushed me to quit the album cover work and do something completely different which was the HP Lovecraft comics.
moorcock, john coulthart
greydog: And we are, at heart, a blog about weird fiction, a term thankfully hard to define. Which written works in this field stand out most for you as a reader?
coulthart: There’s too many to choose so I’ll concentrate on man-of-the-moment Thomas Ligotti. I dug out my old copy of Songs of a Dead Dreamer before the new Penguin edition came out, and I’ve recently read Teatro Grottesco and Grimscribe, neither of which I’d read before. A lot of contemporary genre writing bores me because it reads the same: too many authors whose unobtrusive prose styles would render them indistinguishable from each other if you removed the names from their stories in a collection. You can’t say this about Ligotti: his prose and his obsessions are as immediately recognisable as a few seconds of animation by the Brothers Quay. Grimscribe is good but Teatro Grottesco is even better, and is essential reading. It’s disgraceful that books of his are currently out of print but then this was the case with Robert Aickman for many years, and it’s still the case with other exceptional writers.
nyarlathotep, john coulthart
greydog: The author Ted E Grau, who we interviewed here last week, is also a huge Ligotti fan. Tell us about your own fiction. You’ve written a number of short pieces, both fiction and critical reviews, and you have a long term project, Axiom, on which you’ve been working for some time. Do you have a specific ambition as regards your writing?
coulthart: At the moment the ambition is to get my two novels published. Since 2001 I’ve been labouring on the Axiom project which has become quite a substantial thing although little of it has been made public. When you have a career in one medium it can seem like folly to be trying to pursue a separate career in another but as I said earlier, I’ve been writing fiction for years. The difference this time is that the new work is the first I’ve produced that I was at all satisfied with. The Axiom project emerged after I’d finished work on Reverbstorm: I’d spent several years collaborating with other people and wanted to return to creating something substantial of my own. Reverbstorm has an invented city as its location, and it was while working on that I realised that taking this in a different direction would give me something that reflected my own interest in real or imaginary cities, in architecture and so on.
So the first novel, Axiom, establishes a setting for a proposed series of works in different media. The frame is such that this could support a narrative with few (or no) generic features, or something that was full-on cosmic horror. A city always is a useful device if you want to tell a variety of stories, and there are many fictional precedents. Axiom (the novel) is four connected narratives that describe a year in the life of the city, the tone being dark fantasy grading to horror. I have an agent who’s tried the book with all the main UK genre imprints, including a number of places I wouldn’t have considered if I’d been sending it out myself. We did get an offer from one UK publisher, and things had reached the contract stage when they promptly went into receivership. I’ve been surprised by some of the reactions towards the sexual content: this, more than anything else, seems to have been a problem for the book being accepted. It sounds ridiculous in 2015 to say you’re being rejected on account of this but that’s what we’ve been told. One of the reactions made me wonder whether they’d read any Ballard or Barker or Burroughs. This situation has been a surprise mainly because I don’t regard what I’ve been writing as being particularly transgressive, it’s just that one of the things I’ve been exploring (which was also touched on in Reverbstorm) is what I call the Eros of the Monstrous, in other words giving your abominations a sexuality. It’s evident that some people aren’t keen on this but it’s a subject that interests me, and I’ve been working on new art and writing that explores this further.
Another stumbling block seems to have been working in an area which (to me) is midway between the genre world and the literary world. I like these hybrid zones wherever they occur but the business of publishing isn’t always encouraging of things that don’t easily fit their boxes. We took a similar approach with Reverbstorm which I’ve called a psychopathology of heroic fantasy: the trappings of adventure comics were present throughout, especially references to Burne Hogarth’s Tarzan, but the narrative veers continually away from this into Modernist styles and techniques. This is the perfect way to limit your audience: you alienate the people who want the swashbuckling adventure stuff, and you get little interest from the art crowd who are put off by the vulgarity elsewhere.
The second novel in the Axiom project, Vitriol, is a 217,000-word doorstop featuring invented psychedelic drugs, sword fights, occult rituals, para-dimensional monstrosities, an alchemist war, and a great deal of gay sex. We had a very nice rejection for this one from a major UK publisher who said they loved the book but didn’t think it was commercial enough. I’m hoping this isn’t the consensus as I spent seven years writing Vitriol, creating the kind of book I’d want to read myself but which I couldn’t find on the shelves; on that level it’s the most satisfying thing I’ve done, and it’s also a better novel than the first one. Many people have assumed I’d opt for self-publishing these novels which is still an option – I design books, after all – but publishers have the advantage of marketing and distribution. In the meantime, I’ve been working on material for a new Axiom book that will combine short pieces of fiction with graphics, and also thinking about a new novel.
original axiom design, john coulthart
greydog: We can only wish you good fortune on the whole Axiom venture. As we grew up reading Burroughs and books like Samuel Delany‘s Dhalgren (pretty wild for teens from a small Yorkshire town) it seems retrogressive that sexual content in this sort of fiction should be a block.
Now, we love discovering new illustrators of the weird. Can you suggest someone else working today who stands out to you, someone with whom we might not be familiar?
greydog: Glad you mention Santiago Caruso. His work is particularly stunning, and we’re currently obsessing on the range of fine South American illustrators (see earlier Sebastian Cabrol post). We hope to have more of them on greydogtales in due course. So what other Coulthart project(s) can we look forward to seeing in 2016?
coulthart: On the shelves at the moment there’s The Gods of H P Lovecraft, a collection of new stories from JournalStone Publishing, edited by Aaron French. I illustrated six of the stories, each of which concerns a different Lovecraftian creature or entity. Also out in January (I guess, because I haven’t been given a release date) is a book design for a large US outlet that I’m not saying much about at the moment since I want it to be a surprise. But it’s going to be a lavish production so I’m looking forward to seeing it. And I’ve just received a commission for another project that will have to remain mysterious but this will be an alternate history by a well-regarded author scheduled for release in late 2016. Further off, I’ve agreed to illustrate William Hope Hodgson’s The House on the Borderland for Swan River Press. There’s no schedule established for that one but I’m planning on starting work in the New Year.
reverbstorm 3, john coulthart
greydog: Thank you so much, John Coulthart. We highly recommend John’s website, feuilleton, which is a miscellany of thoughts and wonders, and can be found through this link:
(Of course, we also highly recommend that you check out some of the previous posts mentioned on greydogtales as well, but our site is better described as a bucket of things we tripped over when trying to avoid the dogs. Interviews with Ted E Grau and Sebastian Cabrol can be found by checking on the left.)
Apart from The Gods of H P Lovecraft, you may also want to have a look at John’s Haunter of the Dark book while you’re browsing. The UK link is on the right-hand sidebar:
In but a few days we bring you one of our finds of this autumn – a heavily illustrated feature on the terrific Danish folklore/folk-horror artist Jorgen Bech Pedersen. We’ll try to fit some more longdogs in before the end of December. And we might have a few days off, you never know…
It’s an all-dog post today, before we drift back to some stupendous weird art and illustrators. We present some of the greydogs pack, and offer you
A Morning With: J Linseed Grant
Being a writer isn’t all about exciting awards ceremonies and expensive yachts. Today we are delighted to be joined by man-about-town, fashion icon and millionaire recluse, J Linseed Grant, who shares with us some insights into his whirlwind life.
The author of the notorious dark-horror novel ‘Sandra’s First Pony’ (currently under investigation by three separate Congressional Committees), Mr Grant spoke to us at his palatial North Yorkshire mansion. We asked him to outline a typical morning with his beloved hounds. The hounds themselves, Django, Chilli and Twiglet, have not been named for legal reasons…
the start of a busy morning
(A note for delicate listeners: We have to admit that the following tale of terror might be entirely true, unlike some of our usual bunkum.)
0845. Whine whine whine. Longdogs are bored. Try to go back to sleep with pillow over head.
0900. Whine whine whine. Longdogs are still bored. Push one or more dogs off the bed, get up. Go downstairs, tread in pee patch. Incontinent labrador.
0910. Sit at computer with pint of tea. Adobe plug-in has crashed. Check e-mails sent out at 0230hrs (under influence of Spitfire Ale) for libellous comments, wrong e-mail addresses etc. Ring solicitor to say she may be earning extra this week.
0920. Lift tea to lips. Bark bark bark. Incontinent labrador needs helping down stairs. Due to dodgy vertebrae of both participants, perform morning ritual of kneeling on each step and letting dog tumble down in stages. One or both of us hits head on front door.
a disappointed girl with empty cuppa
0922. Whine whine whine. Longdogs think sound at front door is signal for going out. All rush downstairs. Step in pee again. Go up to get shoes. Longdogs think this is also signal for going out. All rush upstairs. Bark bark bark. Incontinent labrador thinks I am going back to bed, wants to come up as well. Gets excited, pees herself.
0930. Take everyone downstairs again. Mail has fallen in pee. Mop up pee. Put mail on radiator to dry.
0940. Cup of tea is cold. Adobe plug-in has crashed, Windows 7 no longer recognises sound card. Restart everything. Put tea in microwave. Microwave is full of raw minced chicken defrosting for dogs. Bark bark bark. Labrador wants to go into garden. Trip over labrador.
a boy and his teddy
0950. Start writing.
0955. Stop writing when remember that greydogtales was supposed to go out this morning. Find that I have saved most pieces in the wrong folders, and lost half the article. Search folders with increasing sense of despair.
1005. Whine whine whine. Longdogs want to go for a walk. Tell them I am master here and they will have to wait. Put kettle on for hot cup of tea.
1007. Going insane due to high-pitched whining noise penetrating entire house. Take dogs out.
1115. Get back plastered in mud, with soaking wet shoes. Go upstairs to change. Bark bark bark. Labrador thinks it is nap time. Try to go to toilet before labrador starts climbing the stairs herself. Too late. Abandon toilet. Turn labrador around half way up, tumble down step by step. Hit head on door. Longdogs think we are going out again. Whine whine whine.
a girl who has stolen someone else’s teddy
1135. First hot cup of tea. An unknown computer error has occurred. Also, unwanted McAfee Anti-virus programme now using all CPU memory. Woman phones to say she is not selling anything. Tell her that I am, and she rings off.
1140. Whine whine whine. Male longdog thinks it is lunchtime. Bark bark bark. Labrador believes him. Gets excited, pees herself. Man knocks at door offering to cut our trees down. Go to door, trip over labrador. Tell man I have less money than he has. Would he like to buy a short story? Man leaves.
1155. Start writing.
1200. Realise I am editing wrong version of story. Find right one filed with missing blog pieces, note on cost of Edwardian cutlery and photograph of a sea-cucumber. Can’t remember why that’s there.
teddy-less, a boy turns to drink
1205. Londogs, bored again, pull stuffing out of armchair and throw it all over living room. Labrador looks as if she has been wading through deep snow. Pick up stuffing. Uncover and brush down labrador. Count number of legs etc.
1220. Start writing.
1225. Back hurts from moving labrador up and down stairs. Lie on floor, am joined by three dogs who think this is game. Try using computer pad to write on. Battery too low. Something I don’t recognise has crashed. Male longdog sits on me. Whine whine whine. He thinks this game is boring.
1240. Stand up. Trip over labrador. Bark bark bark. Labrador is hungry. Now both longdogs think it is lunch-time. Whine whine whine.
1245. Try to check e-mail. Adobe plug-in has crashed. Optical mouse full of dog hair. Restart everything. Abandon cup of tea and give to labrador.
a girl gets her own cuppa at last
1255. Another productive morning is over. A fatal error has occurred in my writing career. Sob sob sob.
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And that’s why so many children these days dream of being writers and owning dogs. What can being a fire-officer or an astronaut offer in comparison to the thrills of a career with longdogs, lurchers and other monsters?
On greydogtales before Christmas: Cracking features on renowned illustrator and writer John Coulthart, and on the talented Danish folk-lore artist Jorgen Bech Pedersen. We might pack in some more bits over the festive period if we have the energy left…
Haunter of the Dark US
