
Life, Death and Cellos
The Stockwell Park Orchestra is in trouble – could this be their final performance?
Guest posts
16/11/2021 | POSTED BY Rob Wilding
In January 2022, The Prize Racket is published: the fourth novel in my Stockwell Park Orchestra series. Over the summer I had a chance to interview some characters from the series.
Isabel Rogers
Author of the fabulous Stockwell Park Orchestra series
I should have expected nothing less. Pearl, viola player and Queen of the Urn, smiled, leaning round an enormous three-tier cake stand. Each layer was so crammed with a mismatched assortment of biscuits and cakes, it looked like the Tower of Babel had been reimagined as a sugary game of Jenga.
P: Milk?
IR: Yes, please. This is amazing, Pearl! You didn’t have to.
P: Oh, it’s just a few little somethings to keep us going.
IR: You are a marvel. Now – tell me about this European tour. What are you most looking forward to?
P: Well, I know David has booked our usual coach company, and they have lovely facilities on their vehicles. I think we’ve even got a little kitchenette in this one, so I can do emergency teas and coffees if we need them!
IR: Never has an orchestra been so plentifully supplied with beverages. Which reminds me, a reader has asked if you’ll be taking your tea urn on the trip, or have you been assured there will be an urn in each venue?
P: I don’t think there’s room on the coach. I’m sure David will have sorted everything out. And anyway, we might be in more of a cold juice situation, weather-wise.
IR: Do you think this heatwave will make it feel more like a holiday?
P: It’s a bit much for me, to be honest. I do like to wear a nice cardigan. The pockets are so useful. But as long as I can keep our players fully refreshed, I’ll be satisfied.
IR: A professional beverager to the last. I applaud you. And how’s the music going?
P: Eliot’s got us working hard, as usual! The quavers in the Figaro overture are a challenge, but at least it’s quite short. Pete’s probably – well. Yes.
IR: Pete’s what?
P: Oh nothing. He’ll be fine with them. Probably. Mini Battenberg?
IR: Thanks. I spoke to Eliot last week, and he seemed concerned about one particular bar of the Bruckner. Do you know why?
P: Concerned? Did he say he was concerned? Oh dear. I’m not going to – I mean – Pete and I are … oh dear.
IR: What’s going on, Pearl? Do you and Pete have something to do with that bar?
P: No! We’ll be fine. Do have a custard cream.
IR: OK. A few quick-fire questions, if you’re up for it? Bourbons or Jaffa cakes?
P: Well, it’s always nice to provide a choice, and some people really don’t like orangey bits, so –
IR: Mozart or Bruckner?
P: The violas do have gorgeous tunes in the Bruckner. But then if the Mozart weren’t so fast we might enjoy it more.
IR: Tea or coffee?
P: Would you like a top-up?
IR: No, I meant if you had to choose, which would it be?
P: What an odd question. I’m happy to make another pot?
IR: Never mind. Very best of luck for your tour. And with whatever this mystery Bruckner bar is.
P: Thank you. Golly, look at all this. Shall I pop some cake in a Tupperware for you to take home?
_________________
If you have a question for any other Stockwell Park Orchestra musician, please send it to me and I’ll ask on your behalf. Find me on Twitter @Isabelwriter, or drop me a line using the contact page on my site isabelrogers.org.
Miss Interview One? Read it here!
Guest posts
30/11/21 | POSTED BY Rob Wilding
How do you write a crime story? Commit a crime yourself, apparently! Well, that’s what award-winning author of eleven or…
Guest posts
22/11/21 | POSTED BY Rob Wilding
Jonathan Pinnock, author of the Mathematical Mystery series, reveals the truths about writing and comedy.
Guest posts
01/11/2021 | POSTED BY Rob Wilding
On the wonderful, sorely missed Writers’ Jolly (by which I mean, ‘very business-like industry conference’) Craft of Comedy at Llandudno, I would regularly annoy fellow writers by pointing at the Hydro Hotel and loudly declaring ‘that’s haunted’. In my defence, it’s a very haunted-looking building. The Victorian gothic grandness adorned with Edwardian and 20th-century modernist additions gives it a feeling of not quite belonging to any one time. Add to the fact that, like so many grand Victorian hotels, it faces out to sea and you have got yourself a building that fills my mind’s eye with creeping ghosts.
Hydro Hotel, Llandudno, Wales
I love spaces that don’t feel quite right. ‘Liminal’, as the kids say, and seaside towns, to my mind, usually have that vibe, especially in the winter, when only a few ice cream kiosks are still open, when eating chips is a race against heat loss and seagull gang violence, when the ‘stroll along the prom prom prom’ is an act of attrition against the weather, being taken by brave dog walkers, joggers, and the sheer bloody wilful. This is a silly little archipelago with coastlines full of these slightly faded Victorian seaside resorts.
I’ve wanted to write a story about a haunted island resort for ages, so when Farrago finally gave me the chance with Wish You Weren’t Here, I took inspiration from some of my favourite real-life seaside spots that make me go ‘that’s haunted.’
I lived in North West Wales as a young girl, and we used to go sailing on the Menai Strait. At night, there’s something about the disparity between the lights of Caernarfon’s streets and castle, right on the water’s edge, and the comparative darkness of the stretch of Anglesey’s coastline on the other side of the black water that I always found in equal parts disturbing and comforting. The idea of a dark island sitting, waiting across the water from bright, busy streets gives me a pleasant, ASMR-like shiver even now. Also, while it doesn’t have the dilapidated Victorian vibe I went with for Coldbay, the tidal island of Ynys Llanddwyn – where we used to sail – has a desolate, limbo-like beauty. I could cross dark water to that place in sleep or death and find a cold, windswept peace.
Even though Coldbay is set near Skegness, it’s much more based on Kent, Sussex, and Wales than it is Lincolnshire. Herne Bay, like Coldbay, lost the majority of its pier to fire and now has a desolate, crumbling zombie of a pierhead left all alone out at sea like a sad little dead wooden island. Sometimes in Herne Bay, you can hear ghostly, echoey explosions from an MoD site on the other side of the estuary, in Essex. This would be creepy enough, but the eeriness is added to by the Maunsell Forts – the rusting, abandoned husks of WW2 gun turrets jutting out of the water on thin legs like alien fighting machines, dead and rotting and the colour of Mars.
Herne Bay Pier, Kent
My husband’s home town, still home to my in-laws and therefore the seaside town I visit the most. A good, haunted-atmosphere British seaside town is like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard – kinda crumbly now but by GOD, you should have seen her in her heyday when the moving pictures were silent. Hastings is like that. It’s actually kind of cool and artsy, a slightly more affordable Brighton, but the seafront itself is all once stunningly grand buildings with little bucket & spade kiosks on the ground floor. Occasionally big chunks of the cliff just collapse and there’s nothing you can do about it. One of the main car parks is underneath said cliffs. Good luck with that. Like Herne Bay, it was cursed with a curiously flammable pier and now has a perfectly nice, very cold little new pier with fairy lights and huts selling nick-nacks, which I based Coldbay’s new pier off. ‘The Ship’ pub is based on the wooden fishing huts on the seafront, which remind me of a shipwreck.
Looking eastward along the promenade towards Hastings Pier
Cold Harbour in Canterbury. Coldbay was named after a set of boarded up council flats in Canterbury, near a bus stop I used to use. They have since been knocked down for a fancy new retail estate. They looked almost certainly like what you’re picturing right now.
–––––
Gabby Hutchinson Crouch
Skegness: It has been rumoured that the name ‘Skegness’ means either “Skeggi’s headland” or “beard-shaped headland”. This is because the Old East Norse word “skeg” meaning beard, or “skeggi” meaning bearded one, is thought to have come from the Viking who established the original settlement. As if you needed more of an excuse to let that goatee loose in the bracing winds. Man buns are not acceptable however – put it away.
Llandudno: During lockdown, the wild goats of Llandudno took the town by storm causing chaos as they deemed neighbourhood gardens fair game for a spot of lunch. The randy Great Orme’s missed out on their annual contraceptive programme due to lockdown restrictions and their numbers have continued to rise. Locals remain hopeful that the herd heads for the hills soon and tire of their adolescent lovemaking.
Hastings: If the Hastings Direct jingle is the first thing to pop into your head when we say ‘1066’ you’ll relish in this nugget of myth-busting goodness. The Battle of Hastings – which arguably takes second place following this summer’s Gurning Competition as the greatest event to grace the southern shores – did not actually take place in Hastings. It in fact took place in a field seven miles away, which is now the appropriately named village of Battle…
Guest posts
30/11/21 | POSTED BY Rob Wilding
How do you write a crime story? Commit a crime yourself, apparently! Well, that’s what award-winning author of eleven or…
Guest posts
22/11/21 | POSTED BY Rob Wilding
Jonathan Pinnock, author of the Mathematical Mystery series, reveals the truths about writing and comedy.
Humorous Mystery and Crime
20/08/2021 | POSTED BY Rob Wilding
Book Hoots – the all things books and authors podcast from Cambridgeshire Libraries – talk to Mandy Morton about The No. 2 Feline Detective Agency series, her background in broadcasting and, of course, cats and food….
Humorous Mystery and Crime
22/04/22 | POSTED BY Rob Wilding
Death and Fromage (A Follet Valley Mystery, Book 2) by TV and Radio comedian Ian Moore is out 1 July 2022. From the auth…
Humorous Mystery and Crime
14/12/21 | POSTED BY Rob Wilding
Join Wolverhampton Literature Festival for a conversation with leading stand-up comedian Ian Moore to discuss the inspir…
First check if the recipient likes to read on a Kindle, or on a different type of reader.
Note that Farrago books are purchasable either as a one-time gift OR for reading by yourself. Ebooks from the Farrago website are watermarked and must not be shared or uploaded to websites or file-sharing networks (here are our full terms and conditions).
On a typical computer running Windows, you first need to install an ebook-reading program, such as Adobe Digital Editions. On a Mac, epub files can be downloaded and opened in iBooks.
On a computer, first click on the ‘epub format’ of your purchased ebook(s) to download it. Or press Download Ebook(s) to download a .zip file which you then need to unzip before proceeding.
Disconnect your device, and the book should be on your device’s home screen.
You need already to have an Amazon account.
The ebook(s) will then appear on your Kindle device (or Kindle app) after a few minutes, assuming the device is connected to wifi.
You need already to have an Amazon account.
On a computer, first click on the ‘Mobi format’ of your purchased ebook(s) to download it. Or press Download Ebook(s) to download a .zip file which you then need to unzip before proceeding.
Disconnect your device, and the book should be on your Kindle device’s home screen.
Drop us a line
Follow us on Twitter
Like us on Facebook