A deal with Death

Some years ago, my wife and I spent a week at Shute Gatehouse, a place owned by The Landmark Trust that you find by turning off the main road, passing between two half-collapsed stone posts, and finding yourself on a narrow route that seems to take you a couple of decades back in time. The mist closed in and we spent a few days exploring the local woods, pubs, and footpaths. 

One afternoon we came across a steep driveway lined with pumpkins - rotting, puckered and caved-in on themselves in the week since Halloween, but which must have marked out the way to a bonfire party. The story “A Wrong Turning” arrived in my head just like that, in one piece, a gift from the otherworld. 

The premise: it's that time of year when the veil between life and death is so thin that to stray off the path could easily take you on a detour via undiscovered country. Guy Wasserman has already suffered one bereavement, and when his car is forced off the main road he finds Death waiting with an impossible demand: "You, or your son." 

“A Wrong Turning” is my homage to the old Warren horror comics of the 1960s and 1970s. The tight, atmospheric pencils are by Martin McKenna, and you’ll see right away why he was so in demand for movie storyboarding. His artwork on this little tale reminds me of the great EC Comics and Creepy artists like Gray Morrow, Reed Crandall, Angelo Torres and Al Williamson.

The marvellous, the mysterious and the spiritually peculiar

I'm just back from a week in Cornwall where Roz and I stayed in the Egyptian House, the first of many Landmark Trust properties that we've visited over the last 18 years.

Among many nice surprises, my greatest delight came in discovering that Harris's restaurant on New Street is still there. Normally if I like a meal the place is doomed to shut down inside a week, but the distance between London and Penzance must have attenuated the hex power. This time we both had the lobster - sweet and succulent, as fine a dining experience as you will find anywhere in England, so if you are looking for an reason to go to Penzance, there's one right there.

It was disappointing to miss the Ogden Sisters, latest incarnation of Trifle Gathering Productions, whose performance of "A Curious Evening of Trance and Rap" was scheduled for a few days after we left. Yes, I said trance and rap. Think black lace and ectoplasm, not the KLF and Dr Dre. I mention it here because of the recent posts about "Ghostly Goings-On". If you're in Penzance on Thursday, the show is at the Acorn Arts Centre and starts at 8pm. And when you come out there'll be time to nip around the corner to Harris's for a bite - with a glance down the street at the Egyptian House on your way.

Curios and bric-a-brac

This is one of my favourite Mirabilis pictures (from episode 3 “A Pottage O’ Trouble”) and it conceals an iceberg’s worth of inspirational source material.

Jack’s visit to Selsey was a nod to the town’s most famous resident, the great British eccentric Sir Patrick Moore, who has instilled an interest in astronomy in many generations of young TV viewers. The germ of the idea for Comet Meadowvane will have been planted one of those magical evenings in the '60s when I was allowed to come down after midnight to watch The Sky at Night.

The cricket pavilion that houses the local museum was inspired by the collection of Sidney Sime’s artworks in Worplesdon. Sime is most famous these days as the illustrator of Lord Dunsany’s fantasy stories, and as Dunsany is probably the #1 influence on Mirabilis it was quite satisfying to be able to loop the loop with our hommages like that.

The witch bottle itself is very similar to one that I have often found myself drawn to in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. Mr Massey, the Selsey museum curator in the story, owes his name (but no other characteristics) to Dr Alan Massey, who analyses the contents of witch bottles for real.

The daffy ideas for the curios in the museum came partly from the library at Magdalen College, which still displays the fossilized wig worn by Dr Routh, president for half the 19th century and more, and partly from local museums that Roz and I have explored while staying at a whole string of Landmark Trust properties.

Lastly, though it has nothing to do with how the scene came to be inspired, take a look at that bright wintry glare in the doorway. I doubt if Nikos has ever been in England to see the quality of light on a January morning after heavy snow. But he has caught it perfectly, just as Leo has caught the grain and even the smell of the wooden planks of the hut. When you find a couple of geniuses like these guys to work alongside, you don’t have any worries. Whatever I write, inspired or not, I know they’re going to make it look fabulous.