I
love creating with maps because it gives me the opportunity to have a good look
at the place names while I work. I may be biased, but I think that Britain has
the best place names. Some elicit a
schoolgirl titter (Broadbottom, Wetwang Slack, Thong) while others are deeply
poetic (Ryme Intrinsica, Land of Nod, Fridaythorpe). The two-worded place names are often the
best, then you can play that game where you pretend it’s a person’s name and
describe that person’s character. For
example, Milton Keynes may be a retired RAF officer. Lytchett Matravers is probably an ageing
stage actor who once had a small role in ‘Z-Cars’. Read your Dictionary of
English Place Names, and you can begin to work out what the name tells you
about the geography or history of the area concerned. It’s endlessly
fascinating.
 |
| Puckeridge is very near Nasty. |
Of
course, one of our best known champions of the English place name is John
Betjeman. If the poem was not actually
about a specific town, then he liked to give a sense of place by
referencing the names of towns and villages. His poem
‘Dorset’ lists several wonderfully named locations.
So
a couple of years ago, when I wrote my novella ‘Dear Mr Betjeman’, I named the
two leading characters after villages. The story is about a woman from
Lincolnshire, who joins a local campaign to save the county’s railways. My inspiration was the 1970 closure of much
of the county’s network, especially the station of Firsby, a description of
which I stumbled across during research.
I decided to give her the name of Mavis Enderby – a Lincolnshire
village. It seemed apt somehow. When deciding what to call the hero – a frayed
old British Rail stationmaster - I was influenced by my family tree
research. I gave him the name of Newton
St Loe – from the Walters’ homeland near Bath. ‘Dear Mr Betjeman’ is sent from me to
Lincolnshire, in sadness that it lost its lovely old railway and now suffers
from weekly carnage on its roads.
Here’s
a couple of extracts:
Mavis left the
house, buoyed by her new look and its underlying ambition. She felt wasted on a train ride to Lincoln,
she could take on London. But she went
to the station and the ticket office with enough money in her hand for a return
to Lincoln. Newton was at the ticket
window, already dealing with an old man who was determined that he should reach
Manchester before 11.00am the next morning without having to change trains more
than once. He looked briefly up from his
timetable to acknowledge the beginnings of a queue behind his awkward
passenger. And then he needed to look up
again to verify that it was in fact Mrs Enderby. Mavis, looking like the woman from the ‘Visit
Norwich’ poster. Looking the best he’d
seen her since that evening she went to the hospital. It was all he could do to keep his mind on
the nuances of changing trains at Sheffield for the passenger before her. Like the ‘Visit Norwich’ poster, she beckoned
him away from his daily existence to something a little more...engaging.
The march began
as planned at Barmby Junction. Only a
handful of people were there. People
with proper walking boots and well packed rucksacks. There was a drizzle in the air, but
fortunately it didn’t turn into a full downpour. The walkers kept as close to
the rail line as roads and bridleways permitted. Hoobythorpe’s vicar took the lead with a well
folded Ordnance Survey map, the route marked in smudged blue pen. A few more joined in each village that they
passed through, and on the third day, a respectably sized group of windburned
marchers arrived in Hoobythorpe. A group
gathered outside the station, ready to join in with their placards. Mavis was among them in her slacks and
headscarf – and her plimsolls which she had only ever worn on the beach. She hoped that they would stand up to
concrete, but rather knew that they wouldn’t.
Stood next to her, Newton wore his sturdy work shoes, which looked
incongruous with his rather startlingly orange cagoule. He had taken a one week
holiday for work to join – and recover from – the march. Miss Shacklady, who couldn’t get the
necessary time off, stood with Joe who was perching on a bollard, ready to
cheer the group along. Joe formally
presented Newton with the petition and the report for the local newspaper
photographer. Then, with a blast from a
whistle and a wave of a green flag, the group set off towards Lincoln. They left Hoobythorpe behind, passing the
church where the vicar’s wife, in pinny and gloves, waved a duster at
them. She was cleaning up the previous
night’s accommodation and not slacking, she wanted to assure them all. The group began to separate into bunches as
the walk progressed. Mavis clung to the
edge of a group that had formed around Newton who wanted to ask him rail
related questions. Happy to be on the
edge, she took mental notes of the landscape and drafted rhyming couplets in
her head.
You can download 'Dear Mr Betjeman' for Kindle, or buy the book from Sarah's Amazon page here:
