The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #121939   Message #2668870
Posted By: Jack Blandiver
01-Jul-09 - 09:42 AM
Thread Name: The re-Imagined Village
Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
So then... once we've determined the gender of the clog-dancers and made significant improvements to the Pub Menu (a Wetherspoons franchise would be more than acceptable) and replaced those Salix sepulcralis with some proper English riverside trees (Salix fragilis I remember well from my BTCV days) The re-Imagine Village would have to have a haunted church, quite possibly an old abby, like Dore Abby, which we visited a few times whilst staying near Vowchurch in Herefordshire a couple of years ago. Whether Dore Abby has a resident demon I couldn't possibly say, but we visited the nearby Templar church at Garway which recently featured in an episode of the woeful (but mildly entertaining inspite of itself) Bonekickers (2008) as well as Phil Rickman's thoroughly splendid novel The Fabric of Sin (2007) which touches upon a real life incident in the life of M R James of which he wrote in a letter to a friend We must have offended somebody or something at Garway... Next time we shall know better. Oo-er... In any case, if you don't know Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkins Novels yet, and you've a yen for cracking English detective fiction that reads like an episode of the Vicar of Dibley has somehow morphed into Cracker (as someone said) shot through with a supporting cast folk singers, pagan teenage daughters, charming rustics, assorted ghosts and other bucolic delights - not to mention the heroine herself, a young single-mum woman priest who finds herself the Diocesan Exorcist for Hereford Cathedral - then check 'em out!

'An absolute treat... essential reading for anyone with a special interest in MR James's place in the supernatural pantheon.'   Ghosts & Scholars M R James Newsletter.

'It's Midsomer Murders on hallucinogens and it can only be a matter of time before it hits the small screen, so get in there first, folks.'    Irish Times

'Nail-biting, yet thoughtful and complex. What T.S. Eliot did for Canterbury Cathedral, Rickman does for Hereford.'   Jane Jakeman, Shotsmag.

'God alone knows, no English Village, imagined, re-imagined or otherwise, would be complete with some resident horrors residing in the wainscoting...' Suibhne O'Piobaireachd, Mudcat.

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Further to Monty & Ebay - I bought an original 1908 edition of his paper on The Sculptured Bosses of the Bauchin Chapel of Our Lady in Norwich Cathedral off ebay for £5 a few months back.