Reviewing The Eleventh Plague presented me with a problem, I received the book fully intending to make copious notes and give a thorough and page by page, chapter by chapter review. So what happened to all my plans, why am I sitting here working out a fancy way of saying, stop what you are doing and go by this book. Or more accurately stop what you are doing and go buy the first two books in the Cornelius Quaint Chronicles (as the Eleventh Plague is the second of the chronicles with The Equivoque Principle being the first).

Well, I’ll tell you what happened, Cornelius happened. Cornelius has been described as a mix of Sherlock Holmes and Harry Houdini with a hint of Indiana Jones thrown in for good measure, and when you read the chronicles you can appreciate that description. He’s not your traditional action hero, but he does have an element of Holmes given the era the books are set in and his cerebral approach to problems. Not that he thinks on the situation at hand as much as Holmes, nor does he have the drug issues Cornelius is every bit the showman Houdini was, and you’ll just have to read the Eleventh Plague to pick up on the Indiana Jones element.

What does make these books a pleasant change from the norm is Cornelius’ companion, he doesn’t have the mindless dogsbody that can’t think for himself, or the vacant headed bimbo that many seem to acquire. The companion for Cornelius in the Eleventh Plague is a rather mature fortune teller called Madame Destine, it’s almost as if rather than take Dr Watson along Sherlock took his house keeper Mrs Hudson to meet the hound of the Baskervilles. While Madame Destine may sound like a strange companion for Cornelius she actually works very well in the role to the point where her character is as strong as Cornelius throughout the book and often has a story line to match – no weaker underlying story for Destine, she gets level pegging

Darren Craske writes with just enough description to immerse you in the World of Cornelius and Madame Destine without bogging you down with irrelevant details. The places he writes about in The Eleventh Plague are familiar in many ways I would imagine to most readers and so he does not need to spend pages describing every element of the landscape, but he certainly gives you enough detail to draw you into the book and keep you there.

There is one minor niggle with the book(s), each chapter has a playing card printed beneath the first few lines of text which makes it difficult to read at times. I don’t really like being dragged out of the moment to try and work out what something says. Maybe it’s just me (and perhaps it’s my ex-graphic design eye shouting in protest ) but I do like books to have a clear text to read.

Luckily there is another book in the pipeline to look forward to, and believe me you’ll be looking forward to the third instalment when you’ve read the Eleventh Plague. I would imagine that Darren has had a movie company or two knocking on his door by now as these chronicles are shouting out to be filmed.

The first book in the series is available online via Darren’s website link

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Signals cleared for the last Southbound passenger of the day -

View from the balcony -

Can you see the ghost?

Sunset -

Venus above No.3 signal

Appleby North box at night -

Notes – It’s called Appleby North because at one time there were a number of signal boxes dotted around Appleby.
All photographs were taken at a time when there would be no compromise to the safe passage of trains or personnel.

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I obviously don’t mean I suddenly need to find a road map to set me back on the right track, but lost in a World of my own where the landscape around me transports me in an instant to a World of fantasy. It’s easy to drive by rolling hills dotted with trees, cows, and sheep without seeing anything but the grey in front of you, but it really is worth stopping the car every now and then and getting out to see what surrounds you.

This particular stretch of road makes me want to paint scenes from Shire, I know I’m a bit obsessed about Tolkien at times, but I ask you, if you’ve read either the Hobbit or Lord of the Rings how could you not feel the urge to illustrate a page or two when you are standing in front of a view like this -

larger version link

Perhaps it’s the greens that shout Shire, or perhaps it the way the hills roll away from you, I don’t really know – as an experiment I tried one of the images in black and white and it still inspires me you splash paint on paper for a while.

Splashing a little paint on paper may not be enough though, maybe I need a huge canvas and attempt to drag the images out of my brain and into reality, who can’t see a couple of Hobbits wandering down the side of these fields, maybe stopping for a picnic by a tree for a while -

Finally I took two images of the same scene 13 hours apart, and whilst the first image says ‘the Shire’ the second one, taken just after dawn screams of magic and unknown adventures.

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This morning when I returned home from work the cloud was hanging low over the Pennines and the light was catching some of the fields in the valley. So, after sorting out the chickens I grabbed the camera and took a few photographs. None of them were Earth shattering masterpieces that would pay may way to retirement, and yes I’ve taken similar images in the past but the desire to pick up the camera more and more can only be a good thing. I hope.

Here are my rejects, well, you only upload one photograph a day to blipfoto so some have to fall on the darkroom floor to be swept up at the end of the day

Now it’s time to list to a bit of Mark Knopfler’s Get Lucky, whilst I start on Darren Craske’s the Eleventh Plague which looks interesting (I received a review copy from Darren Craske yesterday thanks to the wonders of technology and twitter )

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St. John’s Church, Bassenthwaite, Cumbria

Looking towards Skiddaw, Cumbria.

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People say you never really notice the passage of time, and it’s true, in fact at times it does feel like only yesterday I was doing this…

Obviously it wasn’t, developing ichthyophobia means I no longer feel the desire to play with a net in the river, and the jumper no longer fits (which I don’t consider a problem).  Time has passed since that day playing in the river. My hair is no longer blonde, in fact it’s no longer there, and I’m far from being ‘cute’

So why was I sitting in a classroom thinking someone was old? Well, they used to read out notices at the start of each school day, normally it was things like please stop trying to throw your classmates out of the windows. One day however the notice was a bit different, the teacher announced with a smirk that another teacher was celebrating their 40th birthday. Which is of course why I had the “…he’s old!” thought.

My perception of ‘old’ has changed over the years, and now being two days away from my own 40th birthday it’s obviously the age of someone in their prime and certainly not an age that could be considered old There are still too many items on the to do list for me to be feeling the 40 years (or 350610 hours*) I’ve been around to date.

In other news…

I’m currently working on an update to this website to incorporate my gallery and a weekly challenge to upload something new every week

*If I’ve slept on average 6 hours every night this means in the past 40 years I have slept for 3652 days – what a waste, I could have been doing something!

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