Tag Archives: treasure

#writephoto – Lanternlight

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glaston6-024Sue Vincent has come up with another beautiful image for her latest #writephoto prompt, and my response is the next part to the story I started for another prompt, Sacha Black’s 52 Words in 52 Weeks. And here it is:

Later I sat and pondered his words. Alone in a dark corner, rainbow light from the old windows painting the walls. Across the room the bar and patrons were all light and noise, but I sat separate from it all, the colours camouflage enough.

I did like lost things. Although I didn’t think of them that way. To me they were treasure, holding stories like faint fingerprints, reminders of owners past. Sometimes, if I closed my eyes and it was quiet enough, I could almost hear them talking, smell the disappeared world they’d inhabited.

But the man in the junk shop had shaken me. Made me question why I was so drawn to the detritus of the past. Was the fact that they were lost things speaking to something in me, a space for a missing piece I hadn’t even realised was gone?

Am I lost? I thought, my hands curving around my glass. If I am, who will find me?

And, do I want to be found?

If you enjoyed this post and want to read more, you can find me on Twitter @AuthorHelenJ,  Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. Plus my latest book release, A Thousand Rooms, is now available on Amazon.

 

Writespiration – 52 Weeks in 52 Words – Lost Things

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IMG_2112The fabulous Sacha Black has set a rather good writing challenge for the year. Each week this year she’ll be setting a writing prompt, which you have to respond to using exactly 52 words.

This week’s prompt is: Lost Things. Here is my response:

‘D’you like lost things?’

‘What?’

‘Lost things.’ He smiled, gesturing at the old books, dusty hats, faded postcards. Ornaments filled cabinets, gold lace spilled out of a wardrobe door. ‘All these things belonged to someone once. Now they’re lost.’

I stared at him.

‘Sometimes the people who come here are lost, too.’

Now, it appears there’s another little part to this story, which came to me in response to another prompt. All being well, I’ll share it sometime over the weekend. Happy Friday, everyone!

If you enjoyed this post and want to read more, you can find me on Twitter @AuthorHelenJ,  Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. Plus my latest book release, A Thousand Rooms, is now available on Amazon.

Treasure From My Garden

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A little while ago I posted about a horseshoe we found while digging out the back of our garden in preparation for some building work. It was an odd horseshoe in that it was quite small and light, so I shared it in the hopes someone might be able to shed some light on it.

And quite a few of you responded, thank you 🙂 Interestingly, a couple of people commented that it might not have been a horseshoe, but rather a horseshoe shaped heel tap for a human shoe. Looking into it further, this seemed entirely plausible. Then we did some more digging and found something that made it seem even more probable. This is what we found: IMG_3068 If it’s not immediately obvious, this is a last, or a metal sole shaped stand that shoemakers use when making or repairing shoes. It’s very rusty, but still incredibly heavy, and adds credence to the idea that our little horseshoe was in fact meant for humans, rather than horses.

But that’s not all we found…

IMG_3071We also found this old piece of metal, also very heavy. And, upon researching images of old shoe repair sewing machines, it seems very likely it came from one of those.

IMG_3069Then we discovered this old enamelled candle holder, along with a whole host of old enamelled bowls, saucepans and a kettle, all rusted beyond repair.

IMG_3067Plus this sweet little bottle, along with several other old bottles. A quick Google search reveals it to be a Manon Freres perfume bottle from the 1940’s – my daughter thinks it’s just adorable. There were also the remains, sadly smashed, of several cut glass vases, strewn amongst the soil.

And finally, we found this:

IMG_3066It looks Victorian to me, like something you’d see along the line of a roof. Interestingly, underneath all the earth and the remains of the old air raid shelter, we did find several rows of old red bricks. Our house was built in the 1930’s, and I’d been told that the area where we are was, prior to that, all forest. But the bricks and this find seem to indicate to me that there might have been a workshop or some other sort of building here beforehand, perhaps even the mysterious shoemaker’s shop. We are quite near to the Grand Union Canal and the old paper mills where paper was first industrialised, so it wouldn’t be surprising for there to be other industries around the area to support the workers. Of course, it could just have been an old shed or one hell of an outhouse, but I think it might be worth a search through the old town records to see if I can find out more.

So there you go. Treasure from my garden. It’s probably not worth anything, other than curiosity value, but it’s been wonderful to discover.

A Little More Ordinary

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Treasure Chest

As I wrote in my last post, my daughter and I were heading to a nearby village to visit The Treasure Box, a seemingly magical store where you could find just about anything. However, what I didn’t write was that there was a reason we needed to go there this weekend – the store was closing down, and Saturday was their final day.

I know – sad-face, right?

Well, we certainly were sad when we got there and saw the store filled with people going in and out, cards strung across the room from well-wishers. It turns out that, after thirty-three years in business together, the charming couple who run the store are retiring. When I asked if someone would be taking over, they said no – a Simmonds Bakery was moving in.

I managed to sneak a couple of interior shots, just to give you an idea of what it was like

I managed to sneak a couple of interior shots, just to give you an idea of what it was like

You know, I like a baked good as much as the next person, but to hear that a chain store bakery would be taking over such a magical little shop was disappointing, to say the least. However, if I find I can go into this Simmonds and ask for any type of baked good I can think of, and they can then go into ‘the back room’ and get it for me, then I know that they’ll have tapped into the magical portal of wishes, or whatever it was back there that gave each shopper whatever it was they were looking for.

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When I took this shot, I was standing next to several boxes labelled: ‘Plumbing’, ‘Leg warmers’, ‘Beads’, and one that contained slippers.

So my daughter and I rummaged through the boxes one last time, coming away with an eclectic assortment of goods including ribbons, a nail brush, metal skewers, a saucepan vegetable strainer, an umbrella and, our crowning glory, a giant bag of mixed buttons, which has kept the gorgeous girl busy for the better part of today as she sorts them into individual bags. We could have bought more, but budget and shopping bag constraints meant we had to be reasonable. We paid, then wished the couple well in their new life, thanking them for everything.

Then we stepped out the door for the last time, into a world a little more ordinary.

Tea, Updates and Vampire Stories

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CNW_Winner_1500-1

I know there’s a weekly thing where bloggers catch up as though having coffee, a conversational get-together with updates from the past week. I’m more of a tea drinker, myself, so, if we were having tea, this is what I’d tell you:

So, this happened yesterday.

Yay! I reached my 30,000 word target with Silver and Black, the vampire novel I’ve been working on of late. It’s far from finished, of course, but I have a good framework in place, as well as the knowledge of where the story needs to go and what the characters have to achieve, so I’m pleased, overall. I’m still thinking about serialising the whole thing on my blog, as the response to the small snippets I’ve posted so far has been pretty good.

The weather here this week has been quite mad, one minute bright sunshine, then the next snow and ice falling from a clear blue sky. At one point last week we were walking through the park on the top of the hill where we live, and all around us, in almost a perfect circle, I could see vast towering grey and white clouds dumping rain and ice, while above us the sky was blue. A bit of Spring weather madness, I guess. But the tide seems to be turning, so to speak, with sunshine and warmer temperatures forecast for next week – with May Day just around the corner, this is welcome news.

And I’m also expecting, finally, to be able to publish Hills and Valleys, the third instalment of my Ambeth Chronicles. I knew I was cursing myself by putting a publishing date at the end of No Quarter, and so it came to pass that the whole thing has taken longer than planned. However, the plus side of that has been more time to finetune the book, including finding (and fixing) a small continuity error. Plus, my editor thinks this is the strongest instalment yet, so it’s been worth doing the extra work. Everything happens as it’s supposed to, I guess.

And now it’s the Bank Holiday weekend. Rain is forecast, as is expected, though at the moment we have brilliant sunshine. The gorgeous girl had an excellent school report this week so, as a reward, I’m taking her to one of her favourite places, a craft store where she can do a project in store. They provide the paint, glue, apron and workspace then, for a small fee, she can choose something from the shelves or pottery collection and create a masterpiece. We are also going to visit The Treasure Box, the magical store I wrote about in a previous blog post, where she will no doubt spend time rummaging through the ribbons and buttons, looking for treasure.

Other than that, we’re planning to let the weekend unfold as it will, plans subject to change, depending on the weather. Hope you all have a lovely weekend, and that the sun shines on you, wherever you are. 🙂

 

 

Everyday Magic

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Treasure Chest

There’s a shop in the nearby village which I swear might be magic.

It’s not a large shop, not much bigger than my living room, yet it is packed floor to ceiling with stock. The window display boasts everything from slippers to antique jewellery to thermal underwear to shovels, and the table and racks outside have a similar array of goods.

Yet what is magical about the shop is that, no matter what you go in and ask for, they seem to have one. Or several, in different colours or sizes. You can look around the whole shop and not find what you want but then the shopkeeper, her dark eyes shining, will say, ‘Can I help you find something?’

‘Yes, I’m looking for a…’

And she will smile, then turn and reach into a shelf or box or tiny cupboard, and produce just the item you’re looking for. Or, she will send her husband, bespectacled and cardigan-ed, to the ‘back room,’ where he will emerge a short while later, the item you want in hand. And this item can be anything from a specific type of button to drain unblocker, an umbrella or a length or ribbon. Incense or a frying pan or garden tools or a tiny silver charm, shaped like a dragon. I’ve not yet asked for car parts or an elephant, but I’ve no doubt that if I did, something would be produced.

I have visions of their back room being of warehouse proportions, yet I know there is nothing out of the ordinary at the back of this row of shops. And yet, each time I go in there, they have just what I need. Sometimes my daughter and I try to challenge them by asking for an unusual item, something we may have had trouble finding somewhere else.

And yet another cupboard or drawer is opened, and the item appears.

I don’t know about you, but it seems like magic to me 🙂

 

Treasure Hunting

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Last summer my husband, daughter and I went metal detecting in our local woods. Of course we had dreams of uncovering some sort of golden hoard, left in days past by desperate refugees fleeing advancing armies, but we figured the reality was more likely to be an array of soft drink cans and old screws and nails, left by not-so desperate people who just couldn’t be arsed to find a bin (but that’s a whole other rant).

However.

It seemed like a fun thing to do, the weather was nice, the woods green and glowing, and an afternoon in the fresh air searching for treasure was an afternoon well spent, as far as we were concerned.

So, what did we find?

Well, it was a surprisingly fruitful mission. The woods in question were once part of the grounds of a Jacobean manor, sadly demolished in the 1950’s when death duties and a collective sort of madness seemed to grip those in charge of our heritage homes. So the house was gone but the woods remained, and into the green we went, venturing off the beaten path in hopes of finding something special. We found loads of coins, actually. Coppers and a few no-longer shiny twenty pence pieces, enough to keep the gorgeous girl very excited. Sure, there were a few bits of tinfoil, some old rusty nails and, on one lengthy dig, the sad realisation that the large response we were getting was from a nearby drain cover, but for the most part we found stuff that was worth digging for. We even found an old penny, George V by the very faint silhouette barely visible on its worn surface, the edges nibbled away by its time in the ground. And then we found this:

IMG_1387

What is it? It was fairly deep down, six or seven inches below the surface. It’s obviously man made, but for what purpose? For me, and this is entirely a gut instinct kind of thing, it feels as though it had something to do with the war. Like it was a gun sight or something. The piece is surprisingly heavy and very solid under all the rust, measuring about 15cm long. We were all fascinated by it, our first piece of ‘treasure.’

As we walked and listened for beeps and talked and enjoyed the day, a small boy and his mother came along the path. We were digging at that moment, and the little boy was fascinated, asking us what we were doing. I replied ‘we’re looking for treasure,’ and his face lit up.

‘Can I help?’ he asked, but his mother, smiling, told him they needed to keep going, and perhaps they could look for treasure themselves another day. So he watched for a few moments more and then they went on their way. And, as we went home under the fading sun, dirty and tired and clutching our little bag of booty, we all appreciated what a good day it had been and that maybe, the treasure we found was not something that could be measured or weighed, but something infinitely more valuable.