Friday, November 10, 2017

The Wee Grantown On Spey Crime Writing Festival Year 5!

It was that time of year again, off to Grantown On Spey for the Wee Crime Writing Festival.
That's the official name.


As usual, the weather was lovely.

All the crime writers were placed under house arrest in a Big Brother House scenario.
Imagine all the MIE bloggers in the same house from early Friday to lunchtime Sunday. Would we survive. The Moray Lodge had beautiful grounds, plus this arched bridge over the stream that led to the lochan.
The lochan.

A typical Grantown house. The greyness of the stone has a warm hue.

Our house for the weekend.

The venue for  the world premier of Carry On Sleuthing 2
Murder At The Knickerage.
( It's about the death of a man who made his millions selling ladies apparel) 

Grantown, rush hour, November.

The first event, Michael J Malone and Daniel Shand.

The crime writers were placed in a room for a lunch of soup and sandwiches.

Douglas Skelton and Mason Cross were the first to sit down.

A few photos of the dinning area of the house. A village lady make us a huge vat of bolognaise.

And left us wine!

The living room

Log fires, big furry rugs, big tv.

And a sun room

A huge kitchen

with informal dinning area and..

this  through the wall from my bedroom....it was a big pool
There was a Jacuzzi in the corner.

Sunloungers looking out to the car park.


Occasionally, some nerves  were rattled.

The world premier- we went down a storm. Here's Letitia Luvibod (me),  Phil McCracken
 the plasterer and Bunny ( terrible gossip, he's all ears...)
Letitia and Bunny sort out the plot... and the script!
You can see the knickerage in the background.

A few folk here you might recognise.

The twins from the play- tim and tom tomtin.

Some had to take severe measures to get through it.

Sunday morning,  doing serious signing after a breakfast event with bacon butties and coffee.


My favourite pic. Douglas is channelling Alec Guinness... and Rampling Sid Rumpole. He kept putting me off script by saying 'These are not the droids you are looking for..'

I had no idea what he was blithering on about!

Huge thanks to Avery Mathers for the photos that I am in! Very talented photographer and, as a writer, one to watch!

Caro 10 11 2017

13 comments:

  1. Caro, The zaniness of that weekend seems to have spilled over into our blog. Does anybody know what day it is?

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  2. It seems as if Saturday came before Friday this week!

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  3. As doth something before the storm...

    Sorry about that, Caro...er Ms. Luvibod...as I went to bed believing I'd selected Saturday only to learn this morning that my computer was calendar challenged. I shall attempt to make up for my wee transgression by having my post go up at 7AM New York Time, because those photos of your terrific cast deserve encore time.

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    1. Your response is not only fair, it's generous, Bro. Are you sure you're a lawyer?

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  4. As the MIE bloggers know, I live in my own space time continuum, and so as heid the baw says 'make it so' . Or in our case, 'may the farce be with you.'

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  5. As best I can tell via the Urban Dictionary, "heid the baw, refers to an irritating, idiotic, dim-witted person - a right daftie, basically (though the term also applies to football, where a player heads the ball)." A/k/a known in Glasgow as a "balmpot," though Glaswegians tend to use it more to describe those attaining that state through drink rather than birth. Whatever the meaning, when the shoe fits I wear it.

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  6. Bro, now we know, neither you nor your shoe is tight!

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  7. It can also refer to him whose name you can't be bothered remembering. 'You know, heid the baw. Orange guy wi' weird hair and a wee mouth. In charge of America? Aye, well him!'

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    Replies
    1. Ah, lassie, if only we could stop remembering the pouting guppy.

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