APRIL ADVENTURES

Trying to find monthly adventures to go on with my husband, Andy despite having absolutely no money has been quite a challenge.  But it’s also been quite a lot of fun!

We searched through all our reference books for ideas, and yesterday came up with a double adventure.  There is a small churchyard a few miles from our house, which contains one famous resident and on 24^th April the possibility of seeing spectral visitations.

Driving into the tiny village of Haresfield we saw the church steeple in the distance, but couldn’t find our way to the church.  The village was deserted, but then as if by magic a man appeared.  Stopping the car we asked for directions to the church, and the reply came, ‘I’m on my way there now, I’ll meet you there in ten minutes.’

We followed his directions through a closed gate, and along a road marked ‘Strictly Private – No Entry’ and finally came to the church.  Passing the sign warning us of unexpected rabbit holes we quickly got on with videoing ‘Jarek Adams Investigates’ before the man appeared.  He then produced an enormous iron key and let us into the tiny church.  Our eyes were immediately drawn to an ancient oak chest with two further giant iron keys sticking out of the lid.  He explained that in medieval times the vicar held one and the verger held the other, and that the church valuables were stored inside.  Our imaginations immediately worked out how to use this glorious object in our books.  Brighton Bites, which I’m working on at the moment will feature it in a hopefully unexpected way.

The very nice chap also pointed out the empty fields surrounding the really eerie graveyard, and explained that these had been full of houses until medieval times when the plague drove everyone away, leaving the church as it is today in a tranquil island of its own, with only the crows, and our mysterious guide visiting daily.

Although we’d love to have the money to skip off to the Caribbean, our monthly adventures are turning out to be just that.

You can see the video by following this link.

http://youtu.be/7cOyBFVfHg8

     

Spooky coincidence or portent?

What would it be like if we could see the future?  What if there is some pre-set pattern that we’re all following to our eventual demise?  Although I’m not sure I believe that, my recent birthday made me ponder a few strange patterns in my life.

Like the day I woke up with an ominous feeling that I shouldn’t leave the house that day.

Yes, I often wake up feeling like that, but this was different in a way that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.  I was supposed to drive to Cardiff to see a friend, and it would have been easy to cancel the trip, but it seemed stupid to say to my best friend, ‘sorry I can’t see you today, because I’ve got a funny feeling.’  Superstitious nonsense that I chose to ignore.

As it turns out I had a completely uneventful journey, a lovely visit with my friend, and made it all the way home to Gloucester before an uninsured driver ploughed into the back of my car causing over a thousand pounds worth of damage!  Coincidence, or was there something to that feeling of foreboding I woke up with?

Something else made me think about portents a few weeks ago.  My husband is a Londoner, and I grew up in Wales, but we decided to make our home in neither place, choosing to live somewhere in the middle.  We searched several towns for a home, and eventually found our house on Stroud Road in Gloucester.  Along that road, a little way from our house is a small Rose Garden, and I recently discovered that the lovely space we’ve enjoyed since we moved here was created when a house was destroyed after an aeroplane crashed into it.  Although the pilot was killed, 85year old Florence Drury, and her companion 69year old Ethel Hutchins who lived there both stayed downstairs that day and were unhurt.  Did something tell them not to venture upstairs?  But there’s more to this mystery.  We thought our move here was a random decision, but it turns out that the crash happened on the very day I was born.  Spooky coincidence or a strange portent?