Patterns

[shewhomust]

Yesterday evening we were in Alnwick, at the Gardens, for the launch of Val McDermid's new book, A Darker Domain. I didn't know, when I wrote the previous post, that the book is also set in a mining - or rather, a post-mining - community, not in the North-East of England but in East Fife, where Val grew up. It sounds terrific, and I'm looking forward to reading it, for a variety of reasons. Here's what Val has to say about the book; there's the same ambivalence there about the past, the sense of loss that the industry has gone, balanced with the awareness that this was not work anyone would choose to do, that struck me in that unidentified song.

Last night's event started with a song, too. Val and two of her neighbours sang, a cappella, The Blackleg Miner - and did a fine rousing job of it too. It's a powerful and an angry song, and a good scene setter for a book which deals with the bitter and divisive times of the 1984 strike. But they sang on a dais in front of a wall of glass, beyond which the sun shone on the tumbling waters of the great cascade, and the fountains played - no, 'played' is not a grand enough term, the fountains disported themselves, they arced in arabesques and rose in ranks like the pipes of a might wurlitzer. And we sipped our wine and thought of murder.

Comments

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a lovely time. ;-)