One of the people our Sunday School teacher made a hero of, was Samson. Of course, it was war time and there were Nazies to hate but, since then, there have been a number of terrorists/freedom fighter organisations who have made me re-examine the Samson story and the lessons it teaches. When Samson arrived, the Israelites were dominated by the Philistines. Samson grew up, killed thousands with the jaw bone of an ass, married someone from their culture, was betrayed, blinded and took his revenge by pulling down their place of entertainment, thereby killing, not only himself, but more than he had when he was alive. After all that, the Israelites were still dominated by the Philistines. So, apart from the death of many Philistines, what had Samson achieved? It doesn't seem to have been a great deal, so what lessons does the story teach?
Firstly, as has been proved over and over since 1945, killing people solves very little. 
However, these notes are meant to deal with personal and relationship problems and it is necessary to look more closely at the incidents in the story. Samson was betrayed by his wife, a wife he had taken from outside his culture. That's not the same as race or social class, it's the philosophy we live by, how we see our social responsibilities. For a relationship, social, work, or business to work, partners' cultures have to overlap. For some reason, it is better if they have areas of difference that have to be worked on, but the overlap must be considerable or one partner will betray the other.

Then there is the question of revenge. Samson’s efforts may have altered the demographics but each tit following a tat only escalated the confrontation and solved nothing of the general problem of Philistine domination or equality between them and the Israelites. The same applies in relationships. Paying back some slight only encourages another. It’s not good to allow oneself to be trampled on but, ideally, one should leave the other party an honourable way out of a dispute.

Food stories continued

I made a list of some story lines that might suit the Writers' Magazine competition on my website but they needed fleshing a bit. The one that seemed to have instant drama was the one where the two survivors are eating one of their dead companions and wondering which of them will be next.
That led to me thinking the possibility of rescue or survival would influence what happened. If they have no hope, they may just decide to die but if they are expecting rescue, or are close to safety then another dynamic is introduced. Suppose one is big and the other small and skinny. Then the bigger chap would be stronger and better able to survive but he would represent more meat and the skinny guy would live linger. Who is the point of view character? The big guy may not be too worried, he can always choke the smaller one but the small chap needs some devious way of killing.
That's a bit gruesome but was triggered by seeing something about the North West Passage to the Far East.
The funeral idea where the eaters wonder who will inherit as each dish is the favourite of a different person seemed all right but how does it finish? I'm not sure it would be believable.
Let me introduce an additional line of thought. Let's assume it is in the days when there was a royal taster and the taster knows the food may be poisoned. Will he eat it? If he refuses, will he be forced to eat it or will he be forced to tell how he knows, then have to eat it? In other words, is he going to die anyway? That would depend on the ruler. Can he find a way out? The ruler loves his dogs, so that is out.
Then we have the WI scone confrontation. A's husband is a butcher like Gillespie in 'Best in Show' and can influence the judge with fillet steaks and legs of lamb, but he is having an affair with B. What will he do? If B wins what will he tell his wife? I think this is one for the sequel to Best in Show.

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Looking forward

When Jephthah led Israel several of the neighbouring rulers claimed back land that the Israelites had captured three hundred years earlier and went to war to reclaim it. After some negotiation, the two went to war and the Israelites won. This sounds like a good historical tale but if we look at it in the way Ancient stories, like Aesop's fables are told there is a good deal more to be learned from the story. The lessons are usually from the losing side, so what does that tell us? The bordering kings had held a grudge for three hundred years and when they wanted it redressed, it reacted badly on them. They would have been better to accept the status quo and get on with life. That lesson applies to most human interaction, individuals, groups and even businesses. Remembering must be for the right reasons. We do not remember Auschwitz for what it did to the Jews, we remember it because all who were involved in it were human beings and it reminds us of the kind of things human beings can do to each other. Using up energy and resources to get back at a rival reduces the energy we have to improve ourselves. If we start from how things were a year ago, we will never progress tomorrow.  There is merit in analysing to prevent future mistakes but analysing the past to apportion blame only keeps opening the wound. There is merit in recalling success to motivate further improvement or mitigate gloom at some reverse, we can be that nation again as the Scots sing, but the starting point of tomorrow is today.

Add-ons of criticism

I went off for a wee break visiting the flower show in my old village and a bit of a think about getting into my character’s heads. It proved worthwhile and I got back to my old method of putting myself in the physical situation and looking round at what I see and what I am doing. In one instance my hero, Fergus Findlay from ‘Drover’, was in a Glasgow ballroom in 1820 with the elite of the city and I realised they would be merchants and people with factories. As the setting was the insurrection of that year it did more than give me the scene, it let me understand what the character would think of the gathering and that added a layer to the situation, which I hadn’t imagined. I was going to write ‘a layer I hadn’t thought of.’ but that would be ending a sentence with a preposition and ungrammatical and would have to have been ‘a situation of which I had not thought.’
The other incident is where one character takes a letter from a spy without knowing it. I had just assumed that when someone asked you to take a letter for them, you didn’t enquire into its contents or its reason, you just helped out but my mentor, Lorraine Mace, pointed out that in times of trouble you would certainly be suspicious and reluctant. I don’t entirely agree but it led to a nice way of exposing the spy and a little twist to the plot and a lifting of the tension.
What’s really annoying me is that I had thought the whole thing was fairly tight but Lorraine has seen gaps in the thinking and opened opportunities I didn’t see. Her comments have also turned a quasi history book into a human story that is beginning to fascinate me in a way the original didn’t. I think that is because what I now call the draft was falling between the stools (sorry about the cliche and I can’t get the little sign above the ‘e’) of historical accuracy and a good yarn.

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Reminders

One of the things that interrupts the smooth flow of the Israelites taking over everything is their inability to conquer all the tribes in the area and the idea that this was for their own good as it trained those who had never experienced war in its dangers and tactics. For our present generation there are things like the obsession with germs and the belief that children should not be exposed to them, which leads to lower resistance to disease. I think it was in the war of the worlds that the aliens were killed by a common cold virus. Are we in danger of getting to that stage? In the corporate world it is easy for the staff to become complacent in the belief that the company will continue in its current state for ever, ignoring the virile competition of new arrivals in the industry. In these circumstances, as with sports teams, a good helping of competition works wonders.

On a relationship level, complacency, taking a partner or friend for granted, is a death sentence and we need to be remember what it was like before the relationship was established and keep it fresh; recalling why we started the relationship and our joy at that time needs to be relived from time to time. Instead we tend to view the relationship in its current state, forgetting it got that way through our forgetting.  

When we remember on a personal level, it is so easy to forget our successes and see only where we failed.  It’s easy to concentrate on the failures and regrets and forget what we achieved. Many of the regrets people worry about are small and insignificant but they will dismiss successes and times of elation of a similar level as of no account.  The cake that tuned out a success is just as important as the flop but what do we remember? The bus we missed is an event but how often did we catch it? The name we can’t remember is a tragedy but what about the smell of the roses.

It’s in ways like this that the Bible can teach us how to live.

Stories from history

I'm writing this to clear my thoughts as I try to get into the head of a character in The Cauldron Bubbles. The story is set in the 1820 uprising in Scotland following the Peterloo affair. It concerns a deaf lad who has escaped threats by running away over the moors of South Lanarkshire. I know the moors and they are a place of sanctuary from life's problems. The deaf lad is from the north, Dornoch and doesn't know the area and it has been pointed out he will be terrified and desperate. I can understand he might be in spasms but the moors are empty and while that might worry some people, I have always found them friendly, places where the curlews cry and the skylarks sang. A place where the wind that sighed through the brown grass was scented by the heather. Maybe what I can do is make the lad be alternately terrified and calm. Be a bit lyrical about the scenery compared to the threat from enemies. The contrast might even created more tension than trying straight terror.
One of the reasons I find this difficult is that I normally write light humour about village life but this story came to me from the last armed uprising in mainland Britain, which played out along a strip between Falkirk and Strathaven, pronounced Straven, in South Lanarkshire. I was brought up in the area and taught about Marie Antoinette and Jane Seymour at school but only learned about it this local confrontation after I retired. That is also true concerning the first Scottish parliament, which was held in Lanark at the time of the battle of Stamford Bridge 1066 and all that. I went to school in Lanark but nobody thought to mention the parliament when talking about the Norman Invasion, nor did they mention Roy of the Ordinance Survey, who had attended the school about the time of Bonnie Prince Charlie.

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Writing novels is fun at every stage but it's like building yachts, the biggest job is to get the hull laid up but it represents only about a quarter of the cost. The real money is made by the add-ons, the galley, the electronics and the rigging. With novels it's the publicity and advertising and all the personal appearances and talks that are wearing. It's easy to self publish but the rest is a minefield for the unaware. With help from a professional consultant, Lorraine Mace, I have begun rewriting what I self published. While I may give out a few of those to friends and try a market here and there, I am determined to get an agent. If, after the first hundred, no one is interested, then the books won't sell enough to cover their cost of production anyway and I'm not going to rush madly about trying to be a salesman. The annoying thing is that I've been going for several years and have a core readership who are continually asking when the sequel to Welcome to Oakhaven is coming out, or when O'Reilly's Daughter will become a novel. I'm looking forward to the writing but not the energy sapping add-ons. In the meantime I'm trying to earn enough from short stories to pay for advice.

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