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Remember those surfing scenes from The Tainted?
Here is the reality of it, Malaysian style. Which includes crocodiles. Darn it, I never thought of including those…
From the Tainted:
I heard it first. Even above the crash of waves and the howl of wind, I heard it. A roar, unearthly, seemingly unnatural. A swathe of sound that silenced the storm. This was a barricade of water on the move. A wild piece of the ocean, ripped from its place and sent forth as a curtain wall, bearing down on us from shore to shore, sweeping all before it. I glimpsed it as lightning flashed, a tantalizingly frightening second of impending disaster, seen and then obliterated from sight by the blackness of that turbulent night.
Above: journey started in the train from Cardiff to Paddington. Snapped on an iPhone by Paul McGuigan from the seat in front.
Below: Early morning light over Sri Lanka
Had 12 hours sleep last night as I did not sleep more than half an hour over the previous 33 hour period! Which I reckon is the best way to deal with jetlag anyway.
Below: on top
Below: if you look hard you can see a black dot in the foreground of the photo below – that’s the car parked next to a wall, where we started.
Below: the cairn on top, the Bristol Channel in the distance
Here’s the 
Look at this old farmhouse above. The next two photos are the same place. What impressed itself on me most about these early farms: how dark they were inside.
As you can see, this was a bright spring day, but inside these homes it was dark. Blessed if I know how they could see to do the cooking, let alone anything else. And presumably, if you couldn’t afford glass, you probably couldn’t afford much in the line of candles or lamp oil either.
Above is a pigsty. Why is it round? Apparently because pigs tend to dig themselves out of styes that have corners. True or farm legend? I suspect it might be because a round one is easier to roof!
If you have plenty of slate – as you did in parts of Wales – then you used it, even in the most humble of farm buildings. Those huge posts? Blocks of slate! Tiles – slate too.
That pink flowering stuff above is heather. The shed is to store the peat for fuel.
The farmhouse above had a single large entrance. To the left was the barn for the animals, and to the right, the living quarters for the family. So you could be both dark – and smelly! The house was rebuilt in the early 1730s, and had room for 12 cows…
Above: a woollen mill, still operating.
Another kind of barn with walls woven from split wood.
One thing I work hard at with my fiction, is making my worlds believable. And one way to do that is to think hard about how it all fits together. Practical research helps – looking at the reality of pre-industrial societies, for example, and finding little snippets of information in odd paces.
The other day we went to St Fagan’s National Park, which is just a couple of miles down the road. It’s an open-air museum, which includes a working farm, a manor house (above, basically a 16th century home that was inhabited and refurbished over the years, well into the 20th century), and numerous buildings moved from their previous sites and re-erected in the grounds. Many thanks to Cheryl Morgan for suggesting this destination. We had a lovely day poking about.
Note the pinkish building above – odd sort of colour for a farmhouse. Apparently, it was a mark of wealth to be able to afford to add colour to the whitewash, so this was one way a farming family could tell everyone how prosperous they were. Nowadays you’d upgrade your digital bling or your car…?
Above: Spring gorse
Above: Note the climbers. Needless to say I didn’t get down to the beach by that route.
I actually could have flown out to day. Trouble is, when I discovered there was a spare seat on today’s Sri Lanka Air first flight out, it was already too late for me to get to the airport. So I guess I will have to settle for the flight I had already booked to replace the cancelled one – on the 29th. Earliest one possible…
And the above photo was sunset night before last, taken from the lounge room window. Would that be ash in the sky producing a lovely sunset? Hmm.
