Category: WRITER

Boddington Fort: Inspiration for Tolkien?

Boddington Fort - looking North-east — Boddington Fort – looking North-east

The Ridgeway, England’s oldest road at 7000 years, runs along the Chiltern Hills, as it heads South to Avebury in Dorset.

My stepmother passed away in the last week and my father passed away almost exactly a year ago. I wasn’t close to either in the final decades, but it made me think about the Autumn of life. I suppose post Covid, many of us have lost family, so it seems appropriate to post something personal, because I last did this during lockdown.

(Right-click the image to see the high-resolution version)

Last week, knowing she hadn’t long, I decided to walk part of the Ridgeway, the oldest road in Britain at 7000 years. I walked the first part, going south from Pitstone Hill to Tring Station (~10.5 miles), in the sweltering heat of the 2022 Summer. I thought this section, from Tring Station to Wendover Station (~10.5 miles) would be a doddle. I was wrong!

I believe Boddington Fort is a serious candidate for Tolkien’s inspiration for the hilltop clearing in the Old Forest from The Fellowship of the Ring. Here’s why.

Continue reading “Boddington Fort: Inspiration for Tolkien?” →

Diary Entries: The Hole Inside the Earth

From Green, Chapter 3
Tuma came to a decision:
“I will let you go Llanka. On one condition.”
“Yes, brother?”
“Each time you visit the City you will bring me some of your blood, either in a pot, or fresh, as it were.”
He smiled. Llanka knew exactly what he meant. She stripped and raised her thigh to him. Tuma drew a knife he kept for the purpose, a knife with a thin, crescent blade, and drew it across her thigh, sucking up the blood that dripped from the wound while she moaned in ecstasy. After taking what he wanted, Tuma handed her a jar of paste, made from the foliage of the Dragon fruit. Llanka rubbed the green paste into the wound and pressed the crushed leaves against it until the bleeding had stopped.
“Go,” Tuma told her. “And do not tell a soul about our agreement.”

Introduction – 1 February, 2019
I don’t know when I first conceived of The Hole Inside the Earth, but the idea to write something that spanned the whole of man’s existence from early times to the far future has been around for a long time. I think I first started writing Green and then the other colours in the Autumn of 2015, and I remember needing one more thread, as I only had 6, so I started Indigo on a very cold day in Jan or early Feb 2016. Until now, I often thought I would abandon it. In fact, in the early days, it was just an experiment, and I don’t think I or anybody else thought I would finish it. But now I am through the worst. There have been times over the last year when I just had to make a huge effort to keep going, and I think it affected me physically. I only started this diary in 2019, but then again, it’s the first time I felt that I could see light at the end of the tunnel.
nb: HITE is my acronym for The Hole Inside the Earth.

Continue reading →

Operation Peppermint: Radiological Fallout

Operation Peppermint
The hazards posed to nuclear veterans – whether personnel (including down wind civilians) were present at Trinity, Hiroshima and Nagasaki (included the targeted civilians) or at nuclear test areas thereafter – were well known prior to the formation of Manhattan Project. Indeed, radiation sickness had been fully described by medical authorities in Europe and the US in the 1930s. The radium dial painters – their illnesses and suffering – were tracked by US authorities from the 1920s until the last worker died in the 1990s (making this the first human radiation experiment conducted without victim permission). Many such workers suffered decades of ill health, many died in the 20s and 30s.

Source (no longer online)

Read more about WWII radiation experiments, including the project to build and detonate a Nazi Atomic Bomb in my forthcoming book: December Radio, to be published around 29 January 2016 by A-Argus. Continue reading “Operation Peppermint: Radiological Fallout” →