The house was full of paintings and pottery, the pictures give some idea of house and garden.
There were probably around sixty or seventy people on the march and another fifteen in the band.
In the town square there were speeches, but the megaphone broke, so there had to be shouts rather than speeches; some were better at this than others.
I was given one end of a rail union banner - not very well made, I thought. - and though I wanted to get back to the shop I found there was no way of putting my end without shamefully letting the side down. Eventually I handed it to someone else and ran away.
I think it is important to support these public displays of opposition, but looking at the ragged collection of demonstrators I could not help thinking my Dad would have said 'Fred Karno's Army!', if he had been there.
Viv found a drowned magpie in the pond in Arnside and took this picture. A tragic avian Ophelia.
Today I buried the bird.
The chief mourner was a dove and a kite carried the coffin.
A rook read the service. It was a piece of luck to have them there, the three of them had just come on from burying a robin in next door's garden.
By an odd coincidence Dorset and the Dead Magpie is the title of the crime novel I'm working on.
DI Dorset is an unimaginative and inept detective who only holds his job because of his perfect record keeping and paperwork. Patzi Portland is a totally inept filing clerk under constant threat of dismissal but with an extraordinary imagination and a Holmesian talent for solving crime.
Secretly the two characters swap roles for mutual advantage when an unidentified young man in evening dress and wearing a bird mask is found drowned in the garden pond of Sir Hergist Lullworth.
Lullworth is a retired horologist with a passion for collecting musical instruments made of Venetian glass, and an unsavoury reputation in the world of antique clocks as an impenitent frotteur.
Dorset is presented with what seems to be an unsolvable case. Lullworth is the Chief Constable's brother- in-law and Dorset's career depends on his unravelling the mystery.
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