Engine Punk

Aloha from the Himalayas I was entranced by film footage of the Darjeeling and Himalaya Railways many years ago and a preserved locomotive from the DHR visited the Launceston Steam Railway over the summer. It didn't come all the way from India for it now lives a life of restful ease in the UK. What captivated me from then start was an aerial view that must have been filmed by a helicopter of a small but big-hearted little train struggling up the sort of scenery a fantasy writer would like to have imagined. It was obviously working hard but seemed to have lost its way slightly for it went round and round in circles while climbing all the time. It looped around conical hills with an abyss in every direction and sometimes gave up climbing and went backwards - except it didn't go down the hill but lost its way again and, in a cruel trick of fate for a train that must have wanted to freewheel downhill so much, it went up the hill backwards (just like the David Bowie song). Ho...

We received an exemplary service from The Harbour Bookshop in Dartmouth and hope you will, too Is this the Harbour Bookshop in Dartmouth the nicest bookshop in the west? My mother and aunt recently celebrated their joint 80th birthday on a visit to this fine town and wanted to revisit this bookshop because it had once been owned by none other than Christopher Robin Milne. They had spent some years of their childhoods living in Ashdown Forest and we were all brought up on Winnie-ther-Pooh so it was encouraging to see the shop was apparently thriving in these hard times. A birthday shopping spree was inevitable and when my mum enquired if they had the recent biography of the Queen Mum the staff took the time to check the shelves and then opened up the boxes of the latest deliveries to find one. We mentioned our intention to visit Agatha Christie's house and the lady behind the desk (who looked about 21 but assured us she daughters of that age) suggested we left our books behin...

Ideal holiday reading? Both The Horsepower Whisperer and The Wormton Lamb enjoyed a small burst of popularity over the summer and I recently received these photos from Mr Graham Poyntz who chose The Wormton Lamb as his holiday read. Here it is on a balcony overlooking the Amalfi coast. Having been to Amalfi myself, I know what competition there is for one's attention from the scenery so I'm very pleased that Graham managed to drag his eyes away from the view to look at what I've written. Now that the evenings are drawing in, I feel more inclined to write again, although before I do that I have to do an awful lot of planning. And I know that I haven't publicised my existing books as much as I would like. Regular readers of the old Anarchadia blog will knmow what an uphill struggle this is, especially if you do the obvious things. It seems everyone is doing those and it's easy to get lost in the noise. So I'm thinking about the less obvious ways to do this, ...

Just before anyone says anything, there's a Ferris wheel behind the screen of this Velocette Vogue There was a good variety of machinery in the motorcycle ring at the Great Dorset Steam Fair this year and among some very interesting bikes was this Velocette Vogue. I'd never seen one before and afterwards had the chance to look it over outside the marquee as the owner made some adjustments to it. I really have to hand it to the Goodman family, the people behind Velocette. If I had to choose just one bike as an example of the archetypal British single it would be the Velocette Thruxton but there is a subtle irony here because this archetypal British motorbike has a name that sounds French and owed its existence to the the Goodman family who were comparatively recent German immigrants and had changed their name from Gutemann. Which only goes to show that national stereotypes are dangerous things. The Goodmans they'd done a good job on their 350 and 500cc singles but ...