The Solitary Review

Belphegor!

Now available for Kindle -

Belphegor: Chantecoq and the Phantom of the Louvre

There's a ghost in the Louvre! Reporter Jacques Bellegarde isn’t convinced. What kind of ghost murders a guard and sends threatening notes signed “Belphegor”? An ancient mystery surfaces in Jazz Age Paris.
Another thrilling case for Chantecoq. King of detectives, master of disguise.

A new translation of Bernede's classic novel of strangeness and crime. A tale of cunning disguise, narrow escapes, skullduggery, terrible poetry, and dogs.

Buy "Belphegor" at Amazon

Thunderbird

The sunset sky had led thousands of painters, good and bad and indifferent, to paint it, and given its colours to the clothes and jewelery of the native people who now lived in trailers and on the edges of officially-sanctioned space. The weird shapes of the horizon were stark black against the orange and scarlet and cinnamon splashes of that darkening sky which even now was growing more purple. Night itself would fall like a blanket across the outlands. But none of this occurred to Jed Richmond, who was propping up the bar in the Dead Horse Saloon. A pianist was playing something forgettable, and by the sound of it he’d forgotten some of it too.
Jed was on his third whiskey when the out-of-towners came in. A thin man in a grey suit and glasses and a sandy-haired woman who was probably his wife. He’d heard about these two; they’d been staying at the hotel for a day now but as Jed divided his time between his workshop, his rooms above it, and the saloon, he hadn’t run into them so far.
“Howdy,” said Jed, as they came to the bar.
“Hello,” said the man. He had a Down Easter accent.
“I’m Jed,” Jed said. “What brings you to town?”
“I’m Sam,” said the man, “and this is my wife Rebecca. Pleased to meet you, Jed. We’re looking for birds.”
“Birds?” said Jed. “Well, lemme see, we get vultures and hawks and the occasional eagle.”
“Eagles, eh?” said Rebecca. “How often do you see those?”
“Only after sundown,” Jed said. “Maybe if I’ve had a few of these.” He hefted his empty glass.
“Allow me,” said Sam.
“Very neighbourly,” Jed said, as the barman poured.
The conversation flowed like whisky. After a few minutes Rebecca said,
“Do people ever speak of more, well, unusual things?”
“Such as?” Jed said kindly.
Rebecca frowned.
“You mean the thunderbird,” Jed said, putting her out of her misery. He knew this had been building, knew it as surely as the thunderclouds rose over Dead Cat Mountain. The thunderbird. The ole Indians told stories about it, but most of the Indians were long gone. Something Jed remembered from his childhood, fifty years ago or more.
Rebecca’s eyes glinted and her husband leaned forward.
“No,” Jed said. “Never been seen. Sorry to disappoint.”
“Oh,” Sam said. “But might anyone else ...”
“Fella,” Jed said, “I was born here, lived all my life here, and I know everyone. I’m the carpenter. I make cradles for their babies and coffins for their dead. People talk to me the way they won’t even talk to the preacher. If anyone had seen it I’d know. Sorry to disappoint. Enjoy your stay. Thanks for the drink.”

The out-of-town couple had gone. Jed Richmond walked his weary whisky-fogged way back to his rooms. Sitting in his small living room, with its solid homemade furniture, he leafed through his old photograph album.

There were the pictures of his grandma and grandpa, outwardly stern but with eyes twinkling with mischief; his pa as a small boy with the driver of a train holding him on the footplate; pictures dad had taken in the war, doomed young men with rifles and knapsacks.
And the centre piece of the collection.
A sepia picture. Four men standing outside a barn, spade-bearded in the late 19th-century style, two of them holding old guns of the type still used by hillbillies.
And behind them, pinned against the wall of the barn, the outspread wings and lifeless body of a bird. The wings must have had a span of thirty feet. The head was twisted back in death, its hooked beak like a condor’s, designed to feed on already dead flesh; the eyes closed. The plumage was dark, and the photograph was clear enough to make out each of the great long wing feathers.
Jed smiled. He reached into a drawer and took out a feather; iridescent purple and black and green, he drew it softly across the back of his hand.
Sometimes at night he could hear them calling.

(c) Chris Amies 2013

Coffeeology W6 - Cafe Review

Coffeeology W6

Clearly an old house, likely mid-Victorian with its high ceilings and wooden floors, though this is every inch a cafe there is of the quirky pub about it, the nice and modern sort of pub where you have beers called things like “You Made that One Up.” Several sections – brisk tables in the front with the bar, low couches behind. On one of those couches I sat and had cortado and courgette cake and drowsed as though I had been in one of those pubs, but this is 2019 and instead we have coffee and people come in to work on That Novel in the back room with its animal pictures on the walls.

And further back another room with its own coffee bar. And beyond that back room a garden.

Who lives in a house like this? Well I do, sort of, having exiled myself from the fabulous beast where I used to live, and which felt more like an long-unseen old relative than a place when I wandered past it on my way here towards Great Church Lane and Broadway.

Coffeeology’s website (https://coffeeology.me.uk/pages/coffeeology-london-locations) informs us it’s in Chiswick but long years of wandering informed me that Chiswick doesn’t start till you’re at, or past, the Ritz Cafe (there since 1983 at least) to its west.

Cortado and courgette cake £5.80. Very palatable. Hot dogs and vegan treats and prosciutto, and salmon salads on the menu. The Pink Crush sounds epic (although the name sounds like a drink, it’s really an eat).

Would I return? My dreaming self informs me that it still lives in West Kensington, and it is no walk up King Street to Kings Court and little Coffeeology kindly beneath its wing. My waking self is nearer Richmond and they have another premises in that town.

 

Coffeeology

308 King Street
W6 0RR

Website

Jack Sprat

Jack Sprat was a cat who lived with one of my friends. He sadly passed away recently aged about 15 (we're not sure). This painting is from a photograph taken in April 2017.

Acrylic on canvas panel, 30 x 23 cm

Swallows, Tienshan Mountains

For a birthday card, June 2019. Acrylic, liner pen, coloured pencil. 15 x 10 cm

I seem to like this kind of scenery for cards. 

Great Yarmouth Beach

Great Yarmouth Beach

Acrylic, 40 x 50 cm, June 2019

Done partly in evening light but I am trying to up the colour values anyway as my pictures have not had sufficient contrast until now.

I wrote this in 1988 or so. So sorry I seem to have invented online troll threats ...

19. The Violent Threats To Mervyn J Chang Company Of Bunkum, Nebraska
The Violent Threats to Mervyn J Chang Company was founded in the little town of Bunkum, Nebraska (population 12) by Melvyn Barf, an unemployed 32-year-old car mechanic. Armed only with a PC, a modem, and a warped imagination, Barf set out on his crusade to bring down one of the USA’s finest academic minds.
On Sunday 11 November 1990 (Veterans’ Day), he sent the following message to Dr Chang’s Email address:

to: mchang@nysu.edu
from: anon@erisia.com
X-ref: anon@anon.penet.fi
Dear Merve the Perve,
It is with great pleasure that the Violent Threats To Mervyn J Chang Company announces its five-year mission, to make violent and savage threats to yourself, Doctor Mervyn J Chang of New York State University. I am sure that you will be quaking and shitting yourself with astonishment as I, Melvyn Q Barf, announce the range of hideous and sadistic things that I am threatening to do to you.
Don’t you love threats, Doctor? Don’t you just love the feeling of mortal and hideous terror that comes over you when somebody posts you an Email message saying, I am going to cut your daughter’s head off and send it to you by Federal Express from Norfolk, Virginia? Then consider the feeling of abject fear when you are informed that the battery of your 1986 Chevrolet Caprice is wired to a 20kg pack of Semtex explosive, and that when you turn the ignition switch it will blow you to bits.

The New York Police Department decided that this was not a nut, kook, or otherwise person who did not have an identical mindset to that of a New York policeman or of a jamfilled donut (the two are largely indistinguishable), because of the reasonable nature of the letter and also the fact that at no time did Mr Barf express any admiration, longing, or feelings of an otherwise sexual nature for the good Doctor. When this precise statement was made in court, Mr Yail Bloor, prosecuring, stood up and blasted a hole in defending counsel Myrna Loy Beachpolluter, and declared, “You goddam daughter of a hawg. There’s only one good Doctor and that’s the Doctor.” It was later decided that he had to have been referring to Dr Hunter S Thompson, journalist, painter, reincarnation of Hawaiian king Lono, and the most famous denizen of the town of Woody Creek, Colorado. The hunt for the perpetrator then switched to the Family Arsenal of the Worldwide Church of Gonzo, a shadowy organisation devoted to net hacking, weapons, beer, and acts of frightening sadism. The game was afoot.
The Family Arsenal, situated in an old nuclear weapons dump outside Bunkum, Nebraska, was put under siege by two hundred FBI agents armed with bazookas, laser cannon, rocket launchers, miniguns and copies of “The Blue Lagoon” which they played repeatedly on fifty-foot high video screens placed around the arsenal. After forty of the FBI agents had gone bananas and committed such acts as cutting a dog’s head off and fucking the neck hole, holding a competition to throw grandmothers over an electric fence, and ravaged the nearby forest with an intent to kill not only every female animal but also every female plant in the area, this strategy was discontinued. On the 21st day Melvyn Barf gave himself up. The FBI shot him and then decided it wasn’t him they were after. Members of the Gonzo cult would appear standing on the wall, naked and daubed with red and green paint. Their charismatic leader, Marlon Skunkshagger, granted an audience to FBI agent Bernice Thrush on 6 December 1990. She was in there for days. She was even in there for weeks. On Christmas eve the Gonzies arranged giant loudspeakers on the walls and played a selection of songs by Harry Connick Jr and the Doors, terminating with a rendition of “The End” punctuated by the screams of obviously tortured men and women. This was followed by a ten-second silence and then Skunkshagger himself appeared on the wall, naked, arms akimbo, head shaved and painted green. He stood there while the speakers launched into, predictably, the “Ride of the Valkyrie”. As the music grew louder and louder, blood began to trickle from Skunkshagger’s nose and ears. Finally he threw himself off the wall and impacted a hundred feet down. The FBI were all drunk or deafened or both by this point and when the Gonzies burst from the gates of their encampment, armed with machetes and warclubs, the G-men were in no condition to offer resistance. The Gonzies slaughtered every one of them before sunrise.
Then they trooped back inside, congregated in the Great Hall, formerly a hangar for nuclear bombers, and standing in lines, each unwrapped and swallowed a cyanide pill. Several hours later State Troopers broke in and found 453 bodies. There were no survivors; or, as the Gonzies would have put it, there were no failures.
Dr Chang ignored the threats and went down to his car. He sat behind the wheel, turned the ignition, and the resulting explosion took out half a city block.

https://psychcentral.com/lib/affect-dysregulation-and-c-ptsd/

Clattern Bridge

Clattern Bridge, Kingston. Acrylic on canvas, 21 x 15 cm. I am practicing for doing larger canvases but this is a small one for now.

The Clattern Bridge (so called for the 'clattering' of horses' hooves across it back in the day) is the oldest in-service bridge in London. It crosses the Hogsmill near its confluence with the Thames in Kingston, and it dates from the 13th century - a new brick superstructure was added in the 18th and 19th centuries, but the arches are the original. It is in everyday use as it forms part of Kingston High Street.

Kingston Market Place

Kingston Market Place - for a birthday card.

Acrylic and pigment liner.

February 2019.

Cafe Review: The Retreat Kitchen, Richmond

The Retreat is on Hill Rise in leafy Richmond upon Thames, not too far from the river or from the shops of the centre of town. A woody interior and large-paned windows onto the street that may once have been more interesting - above the door line older panes of glass show better detailing. The Retreat is proudly vegetable-based and excellently run by Claire and Maggie and with its origins in a BBC TV show also called The Retreat and whose background is detailed on their website. 

I had: a vegan brunch (£10.95) which was excellent - who would have thought scrambled tofu could be so tasty? and it was. And an Americano with oat milk (£2.30) - in a handle-less cup which should really mean a coffee that has cooled to the temperature that you are supposed to serve coffee at (why does it have to be so hot so many places? A takeaway culture I suspect). There are also salads, quiches, muffins, wraps, herbal teas and smoothies.

 

The Retreat Kitchen

16 Hill Rise
Richmond upon Thames
TW10 6UA

020 8127 0700

http://theretreatkitchen.co.uk/index.html