Christmas Memories by Nancy M Bell

 

Storm's Refuge takes place at Christmas and gives a stay dog a start at a new life. To find out more about Nancy's books click on the cover.  

Many years ago, I lived on a little farm in Uxbridge Ontario. I'm please to share A Brandy Hollow Christmas with you. This was originally written in 1987.

There is nothing quite like a country Christmas, in this fast paced world it is a very few of us wo have the chance to live with nature rather than against it. I am lucky enough to live on a small farm and experience the joys of working with the land. Recently we sold this farm and I began to say good-bye to all the little things that are so much a part of living here. Suddenly, I realized that this Christmas I wouldn't be in my little house in the hollow. Perhaps because I won't be in Brandy Hollow this year I want to share the Christmas' we did enjoy here.

The times when the snow bloomed against my living room window and laced the cedar trees, bending the woods beneath its weight. In the new light of morning the children and the dogs make tracks across the virgin blanket of the lawn, and the horses when we turn them out blow the snow up in puffs with their snorts and then roll and run and roll again. I want to share the special stillness there is here after a snow fall and especially a Christmas snow. The sun just catching the top of the cedars and the birch in the barnyard and the blue jays and the chickadees already searching for seeds. The gentle hand of the morning air sending sparkles dancing from the delicate fingers of the snow dressed trees. The warm smell of horses and hay when you step into the barn from the frosty stillness of early morning.

The warm glow of my little living room, the sun coming in the window, a fire in the woodstove and the Christmas tree taking over the living room. Every year we re-arrange the furniture so we can fit the tree in and by Christmas morning there are presents under the tree, on the tree, around the tree and presents across the floor and in front of the hearth as well. The cats just waiting for all that lovely ribbon and paper to be theirs.  The lovely peace of Christmas Eve when the children are asleep and the old folks are waiting for Santa. Jessie and Josh, the dogs, sleeping on the hooked rug my Grandfather Pritchard made by the stove, joined by most of our five house cats. There is that special thrill of anticipation that comes on only on Christmas Eve. The warm feeling of the love that goes with the presents. The sharing of joy in giving that special gift. The dark quietness of the night, moonlight throwing blue and silver shadows on the snow as i go out to the barn to tuck the horses in on this most special of nights. The music of the wind in the trees and the starfire crackling in the stillness as I take a Christmas walk around the pond and savour the opportunity to say my own private Thank You to the spirit who created al this wonder.

There is a peace on this farm and always a feeling of love. As this this house and this land have always been loved and blessed. But never is the feeling so strong as at Christmas. All things find refuge here. Strays find their way to my door, both wild and tame and human as well as animal. This is a safe place and a healing place. There is that little bit of Christmas love here all year.

One of the best things about Christmas is the love, the giving. It is the one time in the year we can hug someone and not embarrass them or ourselves, or kiss someone and say the things we think all year but never find the words to say.

This year I'm leaving my little farm and I will miss it terribly. But I will never lose the peace or the love that it has given me. And always I'll carry that little piece of Brandy Hollow Christmas in my heart.

My Christmas wish for you and yours is that you will know the peace and joy that Christmas brings. And that 'all things wise and wonderful' and 'all things bright and beautiful' will be yours.

I wish you a Brandy Hollow Christmas.

Nancy

  

Christmas Stockings - Janet Lane Walters #BWLAuthor #MFRWAuthor #Christmas #Traditions #Stockings

 

 

Christmas Stockings

 

 

I don’t have any one book completely dedicated to Christmas but Christmas is a feature of the Leo Aquarius Connection. It’s also coming up in my next Moonchild story – Haunted Dreams. But Christmas Stockings is what I’m talking about this month.

 

My father was a steelworker in Pittsburgh, PA and often during the years after WWII there were strikes and many of them extended over Christmas. In our house, this meant money could be scarce so my parents spent the year finding things to put in the stockings for their children and themselves. My mother loved to knit and so she made us stockings. These were magnificent and able to stretch to massive proportions. Unfortunately most of them have disintegrated over the eyars and I believe there are two and maybe three left. Those were stockings, she mad for my children and not of woolen yarn. Perhaps the kind still have some of them

 

The tradition continued with my parents filling stockings for children and grandchildren until first my father and then my mother died. I’ve taken on that chore and I really enjoy doing this. Finding odd and different things for each person. Often in all the stockings, there were socks. I still continue this tradition. I stopped sending oranges when the stockings had to be mailed. This was after the year one of the orangers was flattened in the mail.

 

This year with Covid in the air, and children and grandchildren at a distance, I had to make the stockings to be mailed early. So of the fifteen I do every year, 7 have been sent. The rest will be done on Christmas Eve – maybe a day or two earlier and be around the tree and fireplace for everyone. What I wonder is who will maintain this tradition started when money was scarce when I no longer can.

 

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What's that smell? by J.C. Kavanagh

The Twisted Climb - Darkness Descends
Book 2 of the Award-winning series

Have you ever had one of those "Did-that-just-happen?" moments? The kind where you shake your head in disbelief?

I had a scheduled endoscopy procedure at a clinic in Barrie, Ontario. I mentioned this during a Zoom meeting with my girlfriends, telling them I was having the procedure later in the week. They all nodded their heads knowingly. What I didn't know, though, was that endoscopy is a general term for both ends.

On the morning of my procedure, I arrived at the clinic, tummy empty for 12 hours as required. I undressed from the waist up, tied on a hospital gown and waited in the bed. The technician peeked around the curtain, clipboard in hand. He asked a few general questions to which I responded in the negative or positive, always the right answer. Until he said, "Is this your first colonoscopy?"

"Oh no no no no," I responded. "You have the wrong person. And the wrong end."

He flipped through a couple of pages and then nodded. "Right, then. You're here for a gastroscopy."

I gulped. "So... if I didn't clarify, you would have... you would have done unspeakable things to my unprepared bottom-end?"

It was now his turn to say "Oh no no no no."

I pulled up the covers in my cold bed. I wasn't sure which area of my body to double-cover but I sure was grateful for the clean gitch covering my nether regions. If ever there was a time for wearing a rear-end chastity belt, it was now.

"You're sure?"  I asked him. Boy oh boy, if there was a mistake, it would be of epic failure for all involved. I knew that a colonoscopy procedure took place after you rid your bowels of every spec and particle of poop. A gastroscopy, my procedure, involved abstaining from food and water for about 12 hours. Clean stomach only. Top end.

Gastroscopy procedure

He ticked off another box on his clipboard and said they'd bring me in shortly. After pulling the curtain around my bed, I heard his shoes squeak to the bed beside me. He asked the patient similar questions to what he just asked me and then he stated, "This is your second colonoscopy."

There was silence. "Um, yes," my hidden neighbour said slowly.

"And you haven't had anything to eat or drink for 24 hours?"

More silence. Then a soft, choking kind of laugh. "Yeah, sure."

"Are you sure," he countered.

"Yeah, I think so," she replied.

Uh oh, I thought. 

Too late, though, as I watched through the open curtain at the end of my bed. My colonoscopy neighbour was getting wheeled to the procedure room.

It wasn't long before it was my turn. The same fellow came back, pulling the curtains away from my bed with a flourish. He did not look happy.

He wheeled me into the procedure room. 

I gagged.

"What is that smell?"

The doctor, the nurse, the technician and the anesthetist looked everywhere but at me. 

"I own a sailboat," I explained, "and I make sure the toilet tank is emptied on a regular basis. I also use a special liquid that ensures the tank and hoses never smell like it smells in here."

Then they all looked toward one area, to a large floor basket on my left. 

"Oh no no no no," I said, shaking my head. The contents must have come from that patient ahead of me. Proof that she really was not prepared for the back-end procedure. "You know that I'm here for the top-end scope. Right?"

"Yes, yes," soothed the nurse. 

The doctor motioned with her head toward the basket. "You best remove that," she told the technician.

They put me on my side and the offending basket was removed. A gastroscopy is a procedure where you're placed under short-term anesthesia and the doc inserts a long tube down your throat and into your stomach and upper bowel and proceeds to take pics and video. They're looking for ulcers, perforations and alien creatures.

Thankfully, I had nothing to report. No excitement at the top end.

But if you're looking for excitement, adventure, action, suspense and a hint of paranormal, you will love The Twisted Climb series. There's no gagging but there is a lot of 'did-that-just-happen?' moments. A great Christmas gift for teens, young adults and adults young at heart. 

Enjoy the Christmas season and be safe.

 

J.C. Kavanagh, author of

The Twisted Climb - Darkness Descends (Book 2)

voted BEST Young Adult Book 2018, Critters Readers Poll and Best YA Book FINALIST at The Word Guild, Canada

AND

The Twisted Climb,

voted BEST Young Adult Book 2016, P&E Readers Poll

Novels for teens, young adults and adults young at heart

Email: author.j.c.kavanagh@gmail.com

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Twitter @JCKavanagh1 (Author J.C. Kavanagh)

The Enduring Mystery of the Mary Celeste

 

The Mary Celeste (Inset: The captain's wife and daughter)

Finding abandoned ships floating on the high seas are not uncommon occurrences. As an example, the MV Alta, a 2,400 ton vessel, was found floating near the Irish coast in the beginning of this year. It had had broken down near Bermuda and while the crew had been rescued, the ship had been drifting for nearly seventeen months, skirting Africa, the Americas and Europe. The details after that remain murky: the owners might have abandoned it in international waters; it might have been hijacked, and finally, left to drift.

One such abandonment, captured the imagination of the world, and the subsequent varied explanations became a sort of cottage industry. The fate of the Mary Celeste, built in Nova Scotia under British registration and sold to American interests in 1868, remains a mystery to this day.

In December of 1872, off the coast of the Azores, the Mary Celeste was discovered floating alone, in a disheveled but seaworthy condition, by the Dei Gratia, a Canadian merchant vessel. The ship’s ample supplies, its cargo and all the crew’s belongings remained on board. Only the lifeboat, a small yawl, was missing. The ships’ log revealed nothing out of the ordinary. It seemed that the ship had been abandoned in a hurry, yet no reason for its abandonment could be discovered and the ship’s crew could never be found.

The Dei Gratia

The story might have ended there, except for two things. One was the personal tragedy of the Captain, Benjamin Briggs, who arranged to have his wife and baby daughter on board. He left his son, who was seven at the time, with his mother. The death of the mother, the daughter and the orphaning of the son aroused public sympathy.

The second reason was due to a fictionalized report written by a twenty-five year old ship’s surgeon named Arthur Conan Doyle. While he had no connection to the Mary Celeste, the creator of Sherlock Holmes wrote the report in the first person, claiming the disaster to be the result of a white-race hating fanatic named Jephson, who commandeers the ship to Africa.

While thoroughly un-factual, the story caused a sensation when published in the Cornhill Magazine. Immediately, other publications came out with even more fantastic accounts. Other “survivors” told their tales (despite the fact that no survivors were ever located,) each more lurid that the rest.

The accounts included thievery, murder, madness, treasures of gold and silver, giant squid and even “mystical experiences” that somehow tied the ship’s abandonment to the lost continent of Atlantis. The more bizarre the story, the more it was lapped up. In the 1930’s two well-received radio plays aired, movies were filmed in 1935 and in 1938, and a play performed in 1949. In 2007, the Smithsonian Chanel aired a documentary on the subject.

In the end, the Mary Celeste, could not outrun her bad luck. Despite being made again sea-worthy, she sat in a dock unused, having gained a reputation for bad luck. After a change in ownership, she sailed again, resulting in heavy losses. Her owners, in desperation, ran her aground on a reef near Haiti, hoping to collect insurance. Their plot was discovered, resulting in the suicide of one of the owners, madness of another and the impoverishment, death and disgrace of the third, three months after the trial.

Mohan Ashtakala is the author of "The Yoga Zapper," a fantasy, and "Karma Nation," a literary romance. He is published by Books We Love (www.bookswelove.com) 

Flowers to Remember Christmas...by Sheila Claydon

The cover of the latest edition, published by Books We Love 

Click here for my BWL page

A second edition ebook published by another publisher no longer operating

The original cover when the book was one of 2 full length stories published together

In recent blogs I have written about how the covers of some of my books have changed over the years as new editions have been published. How, too, I have transitioned from using the pseudonym Anne Beverley to my own name of Sheila Claydon, and how this also affected the publication. (see above) 

Today I am blogging about the third of these vintage books, Bouquet of Thorns, and I have chosen this one  because of the flowers and because it is almost Christmas. My mother was a very talented florist and because florists are always very busy in the festive season, I sometimes got to help her in those long ago  Christmases. Although I was given the unskilled jobs such as sweeping floor and filling vases with water, occasionally far more exciting things happened, and these are the seasonal memories I cherish. 

I was born and raised in Southampton, England, which is a coastal city with a port used by liners from across the world.  Nowadays it is the busiest cruise terminal and the second largest container port in the UK. In those far distant days, however, when cruises were only for the very wealthy, people would spend days and weeks aboard ship travelling to places such as South Africa and America, instead of flying as most do today. And that was how, from quite a young age, I was able to accompany my mum when she went on board what were then some of the most modern liners in the world, to decorate the state rooms, the various lounge and dining areas, the ball rooms and other communal places, and deliver personal bouquets to individual cabins. Sometimes I even got to do the personal deliveries myself...not exactly knocking on the cabin door and handing over the flowers, but taking them to the correct deck and searching out the bedroom steward who would then take charge of them.

Walking up the gangway carrying a bouquet of flowers or a box of plants made me feel very important but even better was going down to the galley to see the chefs at work, and then being served a meal that was far more exotic than anything I got at home because it was in the days before we all began to adopt the dishes of other countries and cultures. I would often be given chocolate, cakes and fruit to take home too. I  tasted my first Hershey bar courtesy of a steward on an American liner, long before they were sold in the UK. Pineapple too, and mango. And many other things that are available most places now but which weren't then.

So Bouquet of Thorns not only reminds me of those far off Christmases, it also reminds me of my mum, and every word written about the flowers and the floral displays in the book comes from that. Helping her taught me a lot, and it's thanks to her that I know how to care for cut flowers, how to revitalise them when they start to droop, and how best to display them. I know the best way to pot up plants too, and care for those, and, like my mum, that has tipped over into loving and caring for garden plants as well. So although those visits to the vast and glossy liners in the port of Southampton are long past, I still remember how it felt to be accepted by the crew and, probably because I was young, given so many treats. To this day I still remember most of the things my mum taught me about flowers, the same as I remember the joy of those Christmases past.

If you like flowers too, then you can find a snippet from Bouquet of Thorns on my Website.

Happy Christmas and I hope you are able to make some happy memories that stay with you, even in these difficult times.