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.

Hello again, you spooky people

I'd hoped to have some really big news by now, but it turns out it's bigger than I thought, and will require Leo to dust off his copy of Adobe Acrobat to get some PDF/X-1a files converted to X-1a: 2001. Sorry you asked, I expect. Oh, you didn't. Anyway, not long now, hopefully, and then I'll be able to announce a whopping great Mirabilis book with all-new material.

In the meantime, here's another mini-instalment of Ghostly Goings-On. (For those tuning in from overseas, the rather forced tone of music hall humour is an intentional pastiche of radio in the UK, where laughter is still rationed under the 1948 Wartime Leisure Pursuits and Public Disturbances Act.)

In the picture getting rather cold bums are (left to right) me, my wife Roz, Aimee Quickfall and Martin "Quatermass" McKenna, on a ghost-hunting jaunt to Chillingham Castle, one of Britain's most ectoplasmic piles. Oh dear, it's terribly easy to slip into Round the Horne mode, isn't it. Bona nochy, dally coves.

*  *  *

Sound of bustling train platform. A whistle, "All aboard!", etc

Sound of compartment door sliding back.

HECTOR: Ah, here are some empty seats. Do you need any help with your bags, Madame Blavatsky?

MADAME B: Eees pretty 'eavy, I won't-a say no.

HECTOR: Manny?

MANNY sighs, grunts as he hefts the bag up onto the rack.

MANNY: Blimey, did you pack the kitchen sink?

MADAME B: I thought you say thees castle 'ave da modern conveniences!

HECTOR: It's just an expression. What have you got in there?

MADAME B: Ees my spirits. I jus' gotta check 'em. Hieronymous, knock if you een there...

A knock echoes inside the case.

MADAME B: An' Thumper, you give mamma a knock too?

Another knock.

MADAME B: Gaga? You know-a da drill...

Another knock.

MADAME B: All there, good. I can't-a go nowhere widout my knockers.

Sound of compartment door opening.

CONDUCTOR: Tickets, please.

MANNY: Ah yes, we'll take three.

HECTOR: And a choc ice.

CONDUCTOR: No choc ices. What about a drawing of a sumptuous banquet?

HECTOR (pause) Oh, all right.

Sound of furious scribbling.

CONDUCTOR: That'll have to do. I'm in my pointillist phase but it's murder on the pencil.

Sound of sheet of paper being handed over.

MANNY: Oh, very good. Hang on, what's this supposed to be? Is it a spotted dick?

CONDUCTOR: Huh? Oh that, no, that's King George III stuffing his mouth.

Silence.

CONDUCTOR: Look, I was trying something, okay? Apparently it didn't work. Let's move on. Where are you folks headed?

HECTOR: Three for Chillingham Castle please.

A gasp. A clatter as the ticket machine hits the floor.

MANNY: You've gone as white as a vanilla blancmange that's just been told it's pregnant.

HECTOR: Also you dropped your - Wait a minute. This isn't a ticket machine. It's a camera!

MADAME B: What you' game? Pinch-a his nipples, Manny.

MANNY: I'll have this false beard, first.

CONDUCTOR: No, wait!

Very loud and drawn-out sound of painful tearing.

MANNY: Oh, sorry.

CONDUCTOR: Ow.

HECTOR: Even without the beard, I recognize him. It's Sam Serif of the Daily Bother, isn't it. Better come clean, chum.

SAM: Okay, but it's a long story...

Fade out. Sense of time passing. Fade in to the steady clack of train wheels, their journey now under way.

HECTOR (irritably): We're still waiting.

SAM: Oh, I assumed you weren't interested. I've started doing the crossword now.

MANNY: That's the sudoku.

SAM: I thought there were a few too many 9 downs.

Mirabilis on Kindle!

You'll be forgiven for a sense of déjà vu. Hot on the digital heels of our NOOK release, the first eight issues of Mirabilis are now on Kindle. Admittedly, you're going to need a tablet. I don't think the regular old black-and-white Kindle is going to do them justice. But iOS, Android, take your pick. 

Here are the links (colour-coded for US and UK sites - don't say we don't spoil you) and yes, the first issue really is just 77p.

 Oh, and this isn't the really BIG news we've got in store. Just wait and see what the green comet brings in a few short weeks...

Mirabilis on the NOOK

Thanks to the good digital comics fairies at Graphicly, the whole of Mirabilis season one is now available in NOOK Books. Issues 1 and 2 are free, and the others are $1.99 each.

Graphicly are also converting these issues to iBooks and Kindle formats, so watch out for updates on those shortly. And in a few weeks we'll have news of a stunning deluxe edition collecting all of season one and a sneak preview of season two, in a single full-colour volume at a price that'll make your jaw drop. Stay tuned.

"Ghostly Goings-On"

If you live in the United Kingdom, you'll probably agree with me that the funniest thing about BBC radio comedy shows is that you can listen to them for half an hour and not laugh once. Oh yes, I know there are exceptions. Count Arthur Strong is a hoot, The League of Gentlemen began on the radio, and The Goons - well, maybe not as hilarious to us today, but still recognizable genius. But three swallows doesn't make a summer, and the rest of radio comedy is like listening to a bunch of am-dram performers who've been told they have to improvise a comedy sketch to avoid the firing squad.

A couple of years ago, Martin and I were planning a trip to Chillingham Castle (way up in Northumberland, where the north turns nice again). Turns out we were essentially planning a long weekend in the car, as I live in Battersea and Martin lives in Nottingham, but that's a detail. It was the castle's reputation for ghosts that attracted us - not the ghosts themselves, as neither of us is that credulous, but the possibility of sighting some choice fruitcakes on the midnight spooky tour.

It may seem like I'm rambling, but to pull these two strands together: I invented an imaginary BBC radio comedy show called "Ghostly Goings-On" to liven up that long, long car journey. Here is a fragment:

BBC RADIO ANNOUNCER: 

And this Sunday lunchtime we have a brand new series of "Ghostly Goings-On", starring:

Angus Deayton as HECTOR PLASM 

Also starring: 

David Tennant as MANNY FESTATION 

and 

Catherine Tate as MADAME ZIGGY BLAVATSKY

[Sound of knitting. A door opens.] 

HECTOR: Hello, Madame Blavatsky. You look as if you've seen a ghost.

MADAME B: Why you no go bake you' eayd?

[Audience laughter at silly foreign accent.]

HECTOR: I think you mean boil my head.

[Audience laughs again, not having realized that was what she meant.]

HECTOR (contd): Unless we get a case soon, I won't have to. My head will just fall off for lack of money.

[Cautious tittering from surrealist contingent in audience.]

MADAME B: Wait! I senses a presence tryin' to communicate...

[Clatter of letterbox flap. Thud of letter dropping onto mat.]

MADAME B: It ees a message from da other side!

[A knock at the door.]

MADAME B: Rap once for-a yes, twice for-a no!

HECTOR: Oh good grief.

[Sound of door opening.]

MANNY: Hello you spooky people. Did I just see the postman?

HECTOR: Kevin Costner will be delighted.

[Single laugh from sole audience member who recalls the movie; he turns the laugh into a cough.]

[Sound of letter being ripped open.]

HECTOR gasps.

MANNY: What is it, man? You've gone as white as a sheet.

[Long, tense pause. ]

MANNY: Sheet, Madame Blavatsky. Not shit.

MADAME B (with relief): Oh-kay doke!

[Audience roars with loudest laughter so far.]

HECTOR: It's a laundry list from Chillingham Castle! Oh no, wait...

[Sound of paper rustling.] 

HECTOR (contd): On the other side - a note scrawled in very red sticky ink.

MANNY: Give it here, let me see.

[Sound of paper being snatched.]

MANNY (contd): That's not ink, it's... Oh no, it is ink. I've got a pen like that. They're rubbish.

MADAME B: Ze note, what does eet say?

MANNY: "Help, I have been given a fatal poison and have only minutes to live."

HECTOR: You look perfectly fine, old chap.

MANNY: Not me, you fool; the note. And there's a P.S.

MADAME B: A peees?

MANNY: "Come at once and catch my murderer!"

HECTOR gasps loudly.

MANNY: What?

HECTOR: I left the teabags in the pot. It'll be stewed!

Tall stories

I've blogged before about A J Alan, radio raconteur of '20s and '30s Britain. Think of an English Rod Serling, only on the wireless instead of the TV and with considerably less formulaic a cast to his storytelling.

That era was the Burgess Shale of broadcasting, when interesting experimentation trumped genre, ratings and tribally narrow tastes. A J Alan's tales of the odd, the quirky, the (mildly) racy and the (sometimes) supernatural were definitely perfect for long winter evenings by the fireside with tendrils of grimy London fog pressing up against the window panes. Not "the Twilight Zone" so much as "the Velvet Hour" - which, I know, some say is dawn, not dusk, but I think of it as the time when cocktails may be respectably mixed and drunk and one might start to think about dressing for dinner - at least, in the world that Mr Alan and his listeners inhabited.

I mention this now because Spark Furnace Books have just published a paperback edition of But That's A Detail, my collection of A J Alan stories. So if you want something different, and really rather good, I'd say it's an absolute snip at £3.99.

Book Two preview

The second Mirabilis book was due to go on sale in May, but we've just learned that the entire print run is currently in Germany. The shipment started off in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the publishers are based, on February 20th, so the books are approaching Britain at a rate of about four miles a day. We're hoping they'll speed up now. If not, expect them in time for Christmas.

In the meantime, here's an online preview of Book 2 courtesy of Myebook, or click on the BookBuzzr widget above. You can still order the gorgeous hardcover edition of Book 1 here and you can pre-order Book 2 here. But, if you can't wait, the paperback edition is available here.