THE HONKEYMOON CAFE

During the 1930s two children playing by a sandpit see the ghost of a man which they are able to describe accurately.  Many years later after the children are both killed as adults fighting in the WW1  they appear to a man dressed identically as the man described nearly a hundred years before. Coincidence?  How can someone appear as a ghost to two children before he was even born and then be haunted by them? To the east of our village on the edge of the Blythe estate there is a deep hollow which is an ancient sandpit. It gives its name to the lane nearby though the lane has long since ceased to reach the pit other than by a footpath. The sandpit is famous for the experience that a pair of twins had there before the first world war. The children, who were closely related to the Blythe family, were supposed to be under the supervision of a governess, but they had found the sandpit and were playing in the sand, as children do. When the governess eventually found them their s...

The storyteller returning from a walk shares a bench with a stranger  who tells the story of a visit to his birthplace, but does he, or the place, exist?  It was late afternoon by the time I had descended Croft Hill and the rise onto the common from where the village settled in the valley below becomes visible. A commemorative bench has been sited where the view is best and it begs you to take a seat. A man of perhaps eighty or ninety had arrived before me so I asked him if he minded me joining him. He shook his head so I perched on the end and I took out my OS map with a view to identifying what I could see. I’m no stranger but it fascinates me to see in print what lies over the miles before me. ‘Been walkin’ then,’ the man said. I answered with a smile and asked him if he did. ‘Not any more,’ which I thought was a bit of a contradiction considering where we were. I was about to put the map away and continue down to the village when he asked me if I’d ever heard of a place ca...

An introduction. A family steeped in academia but without an iota of common sense and who’s motto should be, ‘An accident waiting to happen’. Throughout history the Dawsons and their ancestors have been associated with some of the greatest catastrophes and mis-haps but somehow have always survived and even prospered. They live on the edge of the village and their tradition continues. Besides Blythe Hall which owns much of the surrounding land, village interest is most easily sparked by the antics of the Dawsons. Their home is Brimstone a Victorian gothic pile complete with clock tower and porticoed entrance. An elaborate bell push to the right of the substantial oak door is typically ‘Dawsonesque’, in that is has all the appearance of intellect without any certainty of it working and with the probability of malfunction and possible injury. The Dawsons were a family of renown booksellers selling specialist books for academics, education and the arts. They were bought out by one of the h...