Mapping a Story

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:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sarah-Miller-Walters/e/B00DZPX09U