Lucy M. Boston, her birthday and her memoirs

The English novelist Lucy M. Boston, who is often known as L. M. Boston, was born on December 10th 1892. She was over 60 when her first book was published, and she lived to the age of 97.

She is of interest to me mainly because of her book An Enemy at Green Knowe. The enemy in the title is the scholar, black magician and demon-possessed witch Dr. Melanie Powers, who has been mentioned in passing in a few articles. This is the only book in which Lucy M. Boston writes at length about the battle between good and evil.

There is little in Lucy M. Boston’s life to explain where Melanie Powers and her very familiar characteristics and behaviour came from; unlike Nicholas Stuart Gray’s and Diana Wynne Jones’s witches, she was not based on the author’s mother: Lucy M. Boston’s mother was unhappy and neglectful, but not cruel and evil.

However, the magical house Green Knowe, whose name appears in the titles of her series of children’s fantasy books, is taken directly from Manor House, which was built by the Normans around the year 1130 and was her home for almost 50 years.

Manor House is still in the Boston family and is now open to the public. Maybe I will go to see it some time.

Popcorn time and popcorn timing

I really liked the expression 'popcorn time' when I heard it for the first time a few years ago. It is a spectator sport alert, a neat and clever way of telling people to get ready because an amusing show is about to start.

I have seen it used a lot recently, and this has reminded me of a popcorn-related incident from the past.

It all started when I took some young children to a shopping centre to see the Christmas attractions. There was a popcorn-making machine there that fascinated my young friends. The popcorn danced on a jet of air; they watched this for a long time.

It was obvious that they wanted me to buy them some popcorn, but a small paper cup cost a small fortune and the popcorn didn't even look very good. As a matter of principle, I won't pay exorbitant prices for low-quality products.

The youngest girl cried and I felt guilty. I remembered getting some really good popcorn from Marks & Spencer a while back, so I promised them that I would bring some with me the next time I came to see them. 

I went to one branch of M & S but couldn't find the popcorn I wanted, which was one big bag with eight small individual bags of Butterkist inside, delicious and ideal for distributing to children. I went to another branch and looked everywhere. I remembered to check the sweet stands near the tills, but the popcorn I wanted wasn't there.

I decided that M & S must have played their usual game of bringing out something edible that people like very much then discontinuing the product. 

Unseen influences: good luck and good timing

There are people for whom nothing ever seems to go right. It seems as though someone has cursed or put an evil spell on them. They make bad decisions and miss opportunities; their timing is always off; everything they want seems out of reach, and if they do get something they want it turns sour; they get bad service and never seem to find good bargains; they find unpleasant people everywhere they go. They may feel paranoid – for good reason.

I have had experience of this, and attribute it to being under the influence of energy vampires.

It is possible to break the spell, lift the curse, turn bad luck into good and completely turn our lives around.  This gives us feelings of positive paranoia: we feel that the universe is arranging things just for our benefit.

An example of this happened to me as recently as yesterday. I had been looking for some weeks for an item for my home office. Nothing I found online or in shops seemed ideal: I didn’t know exactly what I wanted, just that I would know it when I saw it. The model I liked best was in the US and would have cost a fortune in shipping fees, so I thought that I would have to settle for something unexciting that would merely serve its purpose.