Flower Show

I'm going up to the village flower show next week. Unfortunately a lot of the houses are now occupied by people who commute to Glasgow and don't have time to get really involved and it's not like the old days when someone ate another's carrot from their display and got them disqualified but a few old friends are still there and make a point of turning up for a chat. Unfortunately, we're all too old for a proper jig afterwards but can still manage a dram. I love writing about the kind of characters that were around in the fifties and the event led to Jinks and Broon and Best in Show.

www.sullatoberdalton.com/books/best-in-show

Cooking for one

I wrote Welcome to Oakhaven to entertain my wife. That's her looking at Table Mountain. Unfortunately, she died three years ago and before she taught me to cook. Which means I have had to learn to cook for one. She made all kinds of delectable dishes needing multiple pots, which I cleaned and which left me terrified of any recipe that needs more than two pots. My kind of recipe is the one she used for shortbread. You chuck everything into the bowl and switch on the mixer. Just don't switch it on too fast or the ingredients explode and get thrown all over the kitchen, which is worse than cleaning multiple pots.

www.sullatoberdalton.com/books/welcome-oakhaven

Caffeine free

A friend  of mine was feeling the need of a restorative but had his mother-in-law staying so didn't want to have anything she might criticise and went into one of the new coffee shops. He asked for a coffee. The attendant asked him what kind he would like, pointing to the long list of varieties he could choose from. My friend looked at the list, couldn't see anything that looked like just coffee and left, even more stressed than when he went in.

www.sullatoberdalton.com

Sunburn in Oakhaven or Cairndhu

One of the things I like about writing village stories is that they bring out memories to people. this recent spell of hot weather reminded me of one of those episodes that many people can recall. A teenage friend got sunburnt one day and couldn't sleep. He went to the bathroom cupboard to get some calamine lotion to cool it down. The bathroom switch was one of those with a string you pull, make a CLLLICK and waken the whole house, so he probed around in the dark, found a bottle and rubbed the liquid on. Ten minutes later the whole house was awake anyway as he scrabble back to the bathroom and turned the light on to wash the stuff off. When he looked at the bottle it was Deep Heat.
More like Best in show than Welcome to Oakhaven, but Elaine's grandson would be a candidate for that story.

www.sullatoberdalton.com/books

Luck of the Irish

People ask where story ideas come from, then tell you something like  - we were in Ireland and Father decided we should go to Sunday service. We shuffled into a pew, James first, then me, then Mother and Father. James was talking and not paying attention and when he sat down there was a crumpy noise. When he felt under him he pulled out a flattened bowler hat. There was a grunt from behind and we all looked round to see a BIG Irishman glaring at James. James slipped out when the prayers started and everyone had their eyes closed. It could be either Oakhaven and Mrs Boniface with someone, or Broon in Cairndhu!

www.sullatoberdalton.com/books

Fit for Heroes

With the last two posts I'm in danger of becoming a 'when-we'. The trouble is I have met so many wonderful people, not just as a journalist but in ordinary life. I wrote used one, an old teacher as a model for A Land Fit for Heroes and then added two to the cover, my mother as a young girl and an uncle who was one of the wonderful people. My wife liked the cover so that is four on that one book. I also remember some who were unconventional and their early lives are recorded in the same book. They became intermingled, bits from one attached to bits of another and a little of a third and through that, they grew into the characters who make up Cairndhu. I enjoy devising a plot but the real fun ios when those characters take over the tale.

sullatoberdalton.com/books/land-fit-heroes

Butterflies

There are white butterflies dancing about outside my window. I can't tell the difference but I  understand they are trying to find a mate. Unlike in my young days (at the time of the Suez crisis and the Korean war), the females seem to be just as frantic as the males. Of course, then it was the young ladies who looked like butterflies, our uniform was grey flannels and a nice tie, not too gawdy, but colourful. At the Palais, a drink meant orange juice, or Appletiser and if you'd had a dram to give you Dutch courage, you smelled of peppermints and the young ladies knew why. I tried to create the atmosphere in Sadie's Boy but only managed a sniff of the perfume.

www.sullatoberdalton.com/books