The thatched roof was aflame but the conflagration was small and should have been no problem for the local fire brigade, with haste one of the children, the fleetest of foot, was dispatched to gather Cullompton’s brave firefighters. Unfortunately, today was a rather special day for the men of the brigade, it was one of their teams’ birthdays and they had, as was tradition, been drinking strong cider since late morning, by this point in the early afternoon they had reached a level of intoxication that precluded them from making a successful attempt at quashing the fire. 

As the townsfolk desperately tried to direct (and sober up) the crew, the fire spread, the gusts of wind carried sparks from the initial fire into the thatch of surrounding houses – which being dry from weeks without significant rain burst almost instantly into flame, soon all of New Street was ablaze and the fire was spreading in all directions, aided by the wind, falling debris and the panicked scrabbling of two unfortunate rabbits who, with fur alight, managed to set fire to several further buildings upwind. 

Soon more than 100 properties were burning, the situation had progressed far beyond the ability of the local firefighting team to quell it (Even on a day when they weren’t so impaired by alcohol it would have been too great an undertaking) so the decision was made to send a person on a fast horse to Tiverton and then onwards to Exeter to ask their fire services for aid.  

Racing across the parched countryside the hero of the hour flew through Tiverton, rousing their firemen as they went, then went on to Exeter to so the same. 

Now Tiverton is a great deal closer to Cully than Exeter is, so you would have expected the fire crew from there to arrive quite quickly wouldn’t you? Sadly this was not the case, on the way to the emergency a wheel fell off the fire wagon. Not once. Not twice. Three times! Yes, three times the Tiverton crew had to stop and repair the wagon. This slowed them down considerably, so much so in fact that the Exeter crew actually passed them on the road. In a quite inappropriate (but entirely understandable) display the Exeter Fireman did take the opportunity to ridicule the Tiverton crew on the way past. 

Eventually all three fire brigades along with the citizenry of Cullompton managed to extinguish the fires (including, according to legend, the flames on the rabbits) although it took several hard, hot, smoky hours and not before around 140 residences had been destroyed. 

News of the incident spread and much aid was offered in light of the tragedy, Cullompton was rebuilt (with a distinct lack of thatched roofs this time) and even though the fire had been incredibly destructive only one death was recorded (and even that is a contentious point) – that of a young chimney sweep who was hit by falling masonry.  

“When it comes to hobbies, I’d say I have a few; perhaps more than some people but probably a lot less than others – having a good hobby or two is essential to our well-being and social development, through them we can find a few hours away from the pressure of modern life, gain purpose, new skills, have events to look forward to and increase our circles of friendship. 

Of all my hobbies, the one I’m always most happy to talk about is Roleplaying. 

It started in secondary school. I was not a happy student, school was a daily battle against bullies and disappointed teachers – I was an undiagnosed Comorbid Dyspraxic with Attention Deficit Disorder – Learning difficulties didn’t really exist back then, so I was labelled as lazy, disruptive and because my likelihood of being an Ox/Bridge candidate was zero; completely useless in the eyes of a grammar school. 

There was one thing I did enjoy: The company. I made good friends, no, GREAT friends at TBGS. Not just one group either; I had friends that I enjoyed music with, friends I played football with (badly), computer friends, and most importantly, the friends who roleplayed with me. 

Roleplaying games had been around for a while; Dungeons and Dragons had been introduced in 1974 by Gary Gygax as a way of expanding on traditional tabletop wargames, rather than control a unit of cavalry or light infantry you would instead control a single character, using their skills and attributes along with other player characters to collectively tell a story, fight monsters and wield magic, the only limit was your imagination and the consequences of your actions were determined by rolling dice and the Dungeon Master – a non-player who sets the scene and describes what happens within the game. 

I don’t remember who suggested our first game but I remember it wasn’t D&D – we used the Warhammer universe instead. Citadel had released a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying Game and a futuristic space tabletop combat game, we liked both but were upset that you couldn’t roleplay the futuristic side (Warhammer 40.000). We didn’t have the money for official sourcebooks anyway so I set about writing the mechanics for running the 40K universe as a roleplaying game. 

I don’t think I’d ever written for fun before that point. I could be a pretty good Games Master when I put the effort in and ended up running most of the games at school although occasionally Rich or Gareth might have us doing something different like Rune Master, Call of Cthulhu, Middle Earth Roleplaying Game or my personal favourite; Paranoia. 

Outside of school I had a D&D group run by an older friend – he lived in Kingkerswell but drove to the Bay to pick us all up in his Devon Computers work van, four teenagers crammed in the back with no seatbelts, sliding across the floor of the van every time we took a corner at speed – it was the highlight of the week. 

In our third year, Rich decided that we should have a roleplaying convention at the school and went on to organise it. I’m pretty sure I helped a little bit but this was mainly Rich’s idea and one of the first times he showed exactly how good he was at doing this sort of thing. People came from far and wide; there were stalls and games and live roleplaying, it was quite an incredible achievement and it got us in the paper too!  Our success however drew us to the attention of another group. 

During the late 80s, a certain degree of controversy had sprung up around Roleplaying (specifically Dungeons and Dragons) – there was a very vocal contingent of Christian groups who believed that the game was a gateway to devil worship, they also had similar notions about heavy metal music. This is now referred to as “Satanic Panic”. Rich and I liked both of these things and as we each had long hair in our press photo, we must have set off some kind of emergency Christian fundamentalist beacon. 

Within the week we were called to the Deputy Head’s office (not an irregular event for me) and shown a letter from a “concerned” group who demanded that we attend a tea party to discuss the imminent danger to our immortal souls. 

We went, we met them, we laughed at the fact that they lived in Hobbit Road, we ate cakes, drank tea and we tried earnestly to explain that it was just pretending, it was harmless fantasy, and that generally you played heroes and heroines, slaying demons, not raising them. Yet they wouldn’t have any of it. We realised nothing would be resolved and before either party became too frustrated we went our separate ways our pockets filled with cheaply printed cartoon stories of D&D induced suicide and devil worship. 

Today Roleplaying games are more popular than ever with hundreds of Youtube channels, and millions of players. Very few people still believe that they imperil your soul; rather, their usefulness in treating depression, building confidence and awakening people’s imagination are finally being recognised. 

I still game every Thursday with my predominantly Exeter-based D&D group, there’s also a group at Kent’s Cavern I recently started playing with – they really are the things I most look forward to in the week”.

Will you be taking up a new hobby in January 2023? What’s a hobby that has changed your life for the better? Perhaps you might bring a new hobby with you into 2023; whether that’s something social and creative, a new sport, or a commitment to learning more about funghi. The world is your oyster!

As it’s Keep Britain Tidy week, I wanted to explore a little of the history of our relationship with refuse and how our attitudes and practices towards waste have changed over the years, shining a spotlight on Torquay in particular.

 Now, rubbish isn’t a new thing by any means; as long as there have been humans there has been human refuse. First and foremost, there’s our biological waste… which is significant. 

 The average human produces 145 kilograms of poo (approximately a grown pandas worth) and 135 gallons of pee (two bathtubs full) per annum, so as you’d imagine, an efficient sewage system quickly became a necessity for our ancestors. Neolithic people dug shallow ditches to channel their waste away from their villages more than 12,000 years ago and by the time of the Roman Empire, underground sewers developed by the Etruscans became the template for cities across the world. 

 Yet humans produce more than just biological waste and bringing us straight up to the present we now produce staggering amount of rubbish as a society. This rubbish is taken away from us by various governmental or private firms; some (although not enough) is recycled, most ends in landfill and some is burned in specialised stations. This was not always so. 

 As a guide at Kents Cavern, more than 15 years ago, I was on the crew helping to clear the woodland area around and to the side of the caves. The woodland trail was created to give a bit more value to the average cave visit and includes displays and replicas of the beasts that once roamed Ilsham Valley. 

 The area was professionally prepared; several trees were taken down and a circular, levelled path was cut throughout. Kents Cavern staff then headed in to tidy up. We quickly discovered that beneath the leaf-litter, ivy and soil there lurked a rather unpleasant surprise: years and years of trade waste and litter from the Caves! 

 See, when the caves came into the ownership of Francis Powe in 1903, there were no regular bin collections in Torbay and in fact, even up to the 1970s, local businesses had to manage much of their own waste. The most cost-effective solution that that time was incineration and at the top of the woodlands there is a kiosk (and a Cave Bear – it’s not easy to miss), this was the site of the incinerator, everything that could burn was burnt – sink a spade into the earth here and you will reveal layer upon layer of ash-streaked soil, striations of red earth, black, white and grey, like a slice of particularly unappealing Walls Vienetta. 

What could not be incinerated was dumped, over time this formed the very basis of the wood itself and so under every patch of soil hid forgotten discarded relics of the past. There were broken bits of Kents Cavern pottery, cans of popular soft drinks (including Quatro, hands down one of the best carbonated beverages of all time), bent clothes hangers, a few horse and cow bones (one of which is still used today in the Stone Age Trail display) and innumerable crisp packets, glass bottles and plastics.

 It quickly became obvious that the further we dug the more we would find and so the executive decision was made to just stop digging – we covered up what we could and left nature to swallow our shameful secret refuse. To be fair she’s done a pretty amazing job. The woodlands look great today and when I’m taking school groups round watching them excitedly track down all the stations on the Stone Age Trail it is very easy to forget that this once was just a secluded space to dump rubbish in. 

Back for its seventh year, the 2022 Great British Spring Clean takes place 25 March – 10 April. This year the message is simple. Join the #BigBagChallenge and pledge to pick up as much litter as you can during the campaign.

Let me start by making this very clear: I do not love to write. Well, at least not mechanically.  

Being a comorbid dyspraxic has meant my life has been a constant struggle to get down the words in my head and transfer them to a physical medium, I cannot touch-type, my handwriting is almost illegible, 98% of it in block capitals and contains more misspelt words than you would expect from a gentleman with my erudition and vocabulary – sometimes the frustration and embarrassment of my condition is such that it will styme my efforts from the start and I regularly go months without writing at all. 

However, occasionally the mood will take me (or a deadline approaches and I find I can procrastinate no longer) and I pick up a Red and Black A4 notebook, one of my beloved Parker Jotters (black ink, never blue) and start scribbling down my nonsense. 

Whether it’s a ballad, a workshop plan, RPG scenario, a letter to a friend or just something completely silly, it all goes into my notebooks, some of it eventually gets transferred to a Word .doc but not much – mostly it stays in those A4 books, they get filled and filed into the bottom of my wardrobe and now at 45 years of age I have a small tower of them, 30 or more years of stories, ideas, poems, doodles and observations. 

Now I’m here writing my first Blog post.  

Blogging is one of those things that simply hasn’t ever appealed – the idea that strangers might enjoy reading my writing or be interested in what I have to say is laughable to me, having said that I hope someone does enjoy the effort – you should know that it took a lot longer than you’d imagine. Here I go… 

Autumn has well and truly descended upon us and with it all the colors, smells and traditions of the season. Reluctantly I return my shorts to the back of the wardrobe and pull forward the thicker, warmer clothes for Winter. Yet I am not miserable because with the colder weather comes Halloween, Bonfire Night and off in the distance there is the Winter Solstice and Christmas soon to come.   

As much as I love summer, this time of the year is my favourite, I have incredibly fond memories of bonfire nights at the Marshal’s family home as a child (I was the only one of my peers deemed sensible enough to light some of the fireworks) and Halloween has, at least in more recent years, been my preferred holiday. I enjoy the cold and crisp evenings and welcome the opportunity to sit out under a clear sky next to a flickering fire and tell ghost stories. 

I vividly remember the first ghost story I was told – it is a classic from the 80’s – Young lovers in their car drive into the woods. During the evening a thick mist descends, and the radio reports the recent escape of a brutal manic from an asylum in the local area. At one point the boyfriend has to leave the car, he insists his young lady opens the car door only when he knocks on the roof three times. Much later and with the woman in a state of high anxiety she is relieved to hear a knock on the roof and is about to open the door when the knock continues, well past three consecutive times, the knocking carries on all night and all through the night she remains huddled in terror within the automobile. Until finally, daylight arrives, the women gathers her courage and exits the vehicle…to find the severed head of her beau bouncing atop the car, suspended by a rope of intestines hung from a tree above. 

Hardly a subtle psychological thriller but I remember the shiver it gave me and the way it stayed with me long after the tale was told. I have enjoyed ghost stories ever since. 

So when Kate at Torre Abbey asked if Taleblazers wanted to put on a guided tour of the Abbey, focusing on the more spooky and supernatural stories that have grown up around the site we jumped at the chance and “The Terrible Tales of Torre Abbey” was born (Cue flash of lightning and roll of thunder). 

The remit: A 45 minute tour around the site for 2 nights tours, 3 tours per night, spooky but family friendly. 

Kate and Matt provided me with a whole heap of information including accounts of ghostly goings on stretching back through the Abbey’s 800-year history. There were regular sightings of apparitions, reports of poltergeist activity, horrible tales from the past and a few observations and feelings claimed to have been experienced by psychics on the occasions where they were allowed to survey the site. 

A lot of the information was very useful, I immediately saw potential in several of the accounts and fables but I found the psychic stuff left me cold – It might come as something of a surprise to hear that I am a sceptic…I don’t really believe in an afterlife, an immortal soul or the notion that the dead can communicate with the living. However, I am fascinated by the paranormal and further to that I enjoy stories, folk tales and mythology from all around the world – many of these things require you to suspend your disbelief and just roll with it for the sake of the story, something I am more than happy to do. 

I decided I wanted to include as much as I could that would complement the activities we already do with the fine folks at Torre Abbey, so I made sure I wrote sections that covered the Spanish Armada of 1558 and the Siege of the Abbey in 1351 – the two workshops we currently have available running at the site – and linked those into the ghost sightings. There was a wonderfully grisly tale of a fellow called William Anning who had his leg amputated in the Cary dining room, some various other reports of ethereal figures and I ended the tour in the Undercroft with a straight up Ghost Story that I wrote many years ago called “Blood and Gold” It has no basis in fact nor does it contain anything remotely historically accurate but it’s a great yarn in my opinion and well tested as I have been telling it for more than 15 years. 

I heartily enjoyed the two nights and the event bought in some lovely people (many who dressed up for extra spookiness) – we have some email addresses and hope to send out a little questionnaire later this month, all in all a great success, many thanks to the Torre Abbey crew and everyone who attended – I hope we can do it again next year, bigger and even scarier. 

My mother could never resist a good rummage in a skip and indeed, this one had treasure within: books, hundreds of books, a lifetime’s worth of books. They had been dumped unceremoniously into this skip and were now waiting their inevitable destruction. 

We saved as many as we could.

It soon became clear that the books must have belonged to a man who would probably have been in the Royal Air Force or at the very least had a great love for aeronautics, engineering and military history. Tucked in amongst the musty technical manuals, military histories and pulp war novels was a paperback book of erotic verse compiled by Erica Jong.

It had a nude woman on the front. A nude woman with absolutely no clothes on. I did what many prepubescent boys would have done in my stead and I hid the book away for later examination.

The book contained pages of poems and sonnets, ditties and odes; all containing evocative imagery and language far too advanced for my 9-year-old brain. I was about to resign the book back to a pile destined for charity shop when I turned the page and there in between the far more laudable works of Shelley and Shakespeare was a dirty, disrespectful ribald ballad called The Ballad of Deadeye Dick and Eskimo Nell.

9-year-old me loved it. It was rude and vulgar and its rhyme and rhythm lent itself to memorisation. I quickly committed the whole thing to memory and performed it at the next social gathering of my mother’s drinking companions.

It got a lot of laughs. I went on to learn many more humorous poems by rote, particularly enjoying the works of Spike Milligan, C.S. Lewis, Roald Dahl and Kipling. Yet it wasn’t until my mid teens that I started to write my own raucous adventures. Poetry became a great outlet for me; a way to complement those closest to me, to vent my anger and frustration over the things in life that I could not change and to comment on the sociopolitical and cultural landscape in a light-hearted fashion.

The Ballad of the Thirsty White Dragon Inn was one of my earliest efforts and there is no doubt that it is heavily flawed. It is perhaps culturally insensitive, most definitely historically inaccurate and arguably purile. Yet it is still great fun to perform.

It was dedicated to two awesome girls that used to hang out with us in school.

 In rural Japan the men tell a tale,
 One set to a backdrop of lightning and hail,
 A story as gory as gory can get,
 With bile by the bucket and rivers of sweat,
 With murder and killing, and two kung-fu women, a villain named Big Willy Chin,
 Swords by the score and bad guys in hordes, and this is the way we begin.
   
 A group of old men drinking beer from wood flagons,
 Sat in a bar called the Thirsty White Dragon,
 It was raining and windy with little going on,
 ‘Cept smokin’ and drinkin’ and playing Mah Jong,
 When into the pub, swung five surly fellows,
 They strode up to the bar and one of them bellowed;
 “Give us some drinks or I’ll cut off your head! ”
 The barman complied; he believed what was said,  
 For the huge ugly bruiser was Big Willy Chin,
 A disreputable rogue who revelled in sin,
 And was wanted for murder in twelve feudal lands,
 Many had died at his coarse hairy hands,
 For an easier life the inn-keep poured drinks for the men,
 One drink became four drinks, four drinks became ten,
 Until all of the bandits were uproariously pissed,
 Chin rose to his feet and slammed down his fist,
 “For a year and a half I’ve pillaged Japan,
 With my trusty Katanas and this nefarious band,
 They’re cutthroats, they’re robbers,
 They’re men with no honour,
 They obey me ‘Cos I’m in command”
 

  A band of thugs they were indeed, shocking to behold,
 They’d end your life, abuse your wife and steal away your gold,
 Two were brothers, Ninja trained, dark and lithe and deadly,
 They had no names and neither spoke, not men you’d mix with readily,
 One was massive, built from bricks, as dumb and hard as rocks
 His name was Tele; he was fat and smelly,
 ‘Cos he never washed his socks,
 Apart from Chin that just left Wang, a tall and handsome cur,
 A letch and a looter with a prominent hooter and a cape of finest fur,
 When Willy Chin introduced his crew, 
 The bar did fill with dread, 
 From this point on,
 Each man knew,
 Willy Chin would leave them dead.
 

 Then all of a sudden their fear was no more,
 For two women of legend had walked through the door,
 Armed to the teeth with rain in their hair,
 ‘Twas Samurai Sarah and Kickboxing Clare.
 Now these two hard-core lasses were known through the land,
 They were the Shoguns’ assassins, his vengeful right hand,
 And for a month and a day they’d tracked Willy Chins’ mob,
 Prepared to repay those He’d murdered and robbed,
 The gang stood stock still, not one of them blinked,
 The brothers flexed muscles whilst Tele just stinked,
 Wang grinned like a rictus impressed by the sight,
 Of Sarah and Clare in their armour so tight,
 But not one of them moved, they waited their cue,
 From their leader Big Willy He’d know what to do,
 “Banzai!” screamed Willy and drew forth his blades,
 The murderous marauders advanced on the maids.


 The brothers spun and cart-wheeled,
 A dizzy dance of death,
 Clare just checked her fingernails,
 Far from being impressed,
 When it came down to raw Kung-Fu,
 She knew she was the best,
 And she knocked them aside’
 And bruised more than their pride,
 With a swing of her steel shod chest
 

 “Hello dear Sarah!” Oozed Wang,
 Drooling, he stared at her thighs,
 Past her bottom and hips her neck and her lips,
 But he stopped as he met with her eyes,
 His ardour then dampened and his legs turned to jelly,
 For her stare promised death, but it didn’t faze Tele,
 Who charged at young Sarah, rabid froth on his lips,
 Sarah’s’ hands shot with speed to the swords at her hips.
 

 One brother was dead but the other quite hale,
 Clare’s’ lightening fast feet made him seem like a snail,
 She delivered an axe kick with deadly intent,
 His shoulder-bone shattered, through the floorboards he went.
 Wang (dressed in sable) jumped onto a table,
 Drew daggers from the folds of his coat,
 As shocked and surprised the fat Tele died,
 From a back-handed slash to his throat,
 Wang leapt from the table (ready, willing and able),
 Determined to go for the kill,
 Sarah threw Sai right threw the mans eye,
 Then he fell to the floor and was still.
 

 Willy Chin roared as he saw his men fall,
 And charged into battle not thinking at all,
 Sarah flashed steel; Clare led with her head,
 Chin was nutted then gutted,
 Then fell down quite dead.
 

 The whole place went silent in the absence of violence,
 After such a display of raw skill,
 Then many men cheered and called for more beer,
 Whilst others were noisily ill  
 “That was” said the inn-keep ”one hell of a fight!”,
 And he turned to give thanks to the pair,
 But into the darkness and then out of sight,
 Went those heroines so courageous and fair.
 

 And all through Japan they remember that day,
 When two fighting women made Willy Chin pay,
 For all of the evil that he bought to bear,
 Girls called Samurai Sarah and Kickboxing Clare.