The first fruits of leap year shine forth in the case of Miss Belle Harper of Pucketts Ridge, West Virginia who shot a man because he refused her offer of marriage.

Toler Tribune
February 7, A few years back

The other day I got a call from Nicky. He found ‘Buffy Holt’ after a friend of a friend pointed out I’d been writing about his grandfather and that summer in France; he sent me a lovely photo of the three of us and said I should post it.

I said “No thank you. I’d just as soon leave you shrouded in a shred of anonymity in case I want to repeat something I shouldn’t.” I find this approach works best with a family who keeps an entire firm of lawyers on retainer…just in case. So, the old man’s dear face will stay out of my blog. Nicky’s words to me will not.

He called to moan. To call himself “poverty stricken”. He does this every now and again. Calls me to grieve. Because I’m the only person he knows without a trust fund and he assumes I understand what it’s like to be poor. (Note: Poor in Nicky’s world does not translate to poor in any other.)

His grandfather left him a fortune, but it’s tied up in rules and stipulations and he hates it.

“Can you believe it, Buffy? I had more than this at Uni.”

Of course he still has regular use of family homes, cars etc, but he doesn’t get a cent above two million a year (Dollars or Euros…I didn’t ask) unless he has a legitimate job – as determined by a Trustee – then he gets more.

“If I have a job,” he said, “Why do I need more? It’s when I’m unemployed that things are hard. Pappou never made things easy for me.”

‘Easy’ is being able to buy a Spyker C8 and not feel the pinch.

I laughed until I almost threw up. “Oh, puhlease. You’re calling me to moan because your grandfather is making you draw out 90million 2 at a time?”

“You say it like I’m over reacting.”

I swear, that’s what he said.

Nicky is a darling. When he’s broke. He can eat supermarket cereal, laugh with you at Family Guy and be friendly to your friends.

When he has money. He is a mystery. An unpleasant one. One with no time for anyone or anything that matters. His grandfather knew it. And he knows it. (You know you do.)

I told him to shut up.

“Go buy some goats,” I said. “It’ll make you feel better.”

It’s what I do. Treat guilt with goats. Through sustainable livelihood programs like Neighbours Initiative Alliance (NIA) and the Peri-Urban Agriculture Project. It sounds flippant. It’s not.

“Do you have any idea what kind of herd you could buy with 2 million? And I know you make more than that with ‘X’.” When Nicky has a job, it’s as an investment banker at ‘X’.

“Buffy. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not good with other people’s money. I can barely manage my own. They don’t want me there.” *Sigh* “I don’t think I’ve ever been this depressed.”

Nicky told me this from a Loft in Chelsea. The one he didn’t buy. He was still in bed. Eating someone else’s eggs. Waiting for a driver to pick him up and take him to a job he didn’t work for.

Money may not buy happiness. But at least you can be miserable in comfort. Nicky is comfortable misery if he’s anything. He’s hard work. But aren’t we all. We’re all wasteful. Gluttonous. If we don’t feed on food it’s power, prestige or designer duds. It’s sometimes difficult to see beyond our circumstances. To see the world outside our own. But what kind of people are we if we don’t?

I go on about Nicky. I roll my eyes and sit and wonder. But I threw away two bags of half eaten thanksgiving dinner last week. Big. Bin. Bags.

Wonder how many goats that would have bought?

Pumpkin pie. Apple Pie. Cherry Pie.

Reece Cake. Chocolate Bunt. Pecan Strudel.

Banana Pudding. Mint something. Butter Cream.

And Caramelised Casserole. Of a sort. The name of the sweet-potato-and-butter-flavoured-brown-sugar-with-pecans-on-top-pie escapes me.

Generation ‘X’ took on the Turkey and more. Our mothers took photos. Their’s stood by and looked the lady. (My grandma is delicate and perfect and pure European.)

Everyone brought a sweet. “Whatever you fancy.”

They fancied southern…comfort…food.

Sugar for thirty – times two.

Thanksgiving is at the brother’s this year. The brother is single and away in Montcove…or somewhere there abouts. So I’m the hostess.

Every thing’s a mad rush. I got in just before ten last night. After a weekend of laughing little ladies and super spicy food. Found fifty pounds of turkey – half frozen, half fresh – and a mile of garland. A couple of table cloths and some candles. I’ve sent for reinforcements. To help roll napkins and tie ribbons and put up lights on the lawn; because holiday spirit is what I’m made of.

The downstairs needs airing because it hasn’t been lived in since May. The gym equipment needs moving and the ice needs re-stocking. The t.v. needs growing and the panties need removing – from the boar’s horn. But first he needs to check for spiders. After he gets me Mr Muscle’s Magic Erasers.

I’m peeling sixty potatoes. Starting not-now. Then I’m trial running a desserty dish I’ve decided to steal from one Miss Greek Tragedy. If all goes well, I’m feeding it to the family tomorrow.

Mallorie will be here in the a.m. To help with the cranberries and gravies and other things I’ll mess up more than I’ll get right. She’s good like that.

In the meantime, I’ll stress. But it’ll be fun.

Marcus Ulpius Nerva Traianus, or ‘Trajan’, was the second of the Five Good Emperors of the Roman Empire. The Empire reached its greatest territorial extent under his rule. The Column was raised by Apollodorus of Damascus at the order of the Senate and stands in what remains of Trajan’s forum. Inaugurated in AD 113, the relief portrays Trajan’s two victorious military campaigns against the Dacians (Romanians); the lower half illustrating the first, and the top half illustrating the second.

Now…Am on my way to Pa’s. To collect veggies and to ready for the Big Bird. Need dessert ideas. Because I’m pumpkin pie and the turkey – and I don’t like pumpkin pie. Any ideas (i.e. super secret family recipes)?

It’ s a little crazy in the Eternal City. A certain celebrity couple have taken it by storm. Shame, really.

We have a bit yet before Turkey Time. Before we head to the hills – for the first time in nine years – for family and food.

Until then I’ll be grazing on anti pasta, warm red and brie. I’ll have crusty bread and call it healthy. Because I’m convinced it is. I’ll do it beneath a pashmina of pink and a patio lamp.

I’ll watch it rain on my toes and get cold in Trastevere and wont care.

Short and sweet. The Piazza di Spagna. Roma at night.

This bi-weekly paper edited by one Mr Cumpton Cline – who is Hazel’s husband – is devoted to bringing the latest news and information to the good people of our community, Toler Mountain, West Virginia.

We have correspondents in Pucketts Ridge, Lex and Pike. Birchey Vance also sends us news from Huntington and the Kanawha River Valley. Sometimes.

Our court reporter, namely the unemployed lawyer Virgil Sturgill, spends twelve hours a day at the jail and court house ready to report on local ne’re-do-wells District Attorney King sees fit to bring before Judge Toler and that other judge from Pennsylvania who we don’t yet know the name of. Virgil thinks it’s a kind of Polish name and we will write it here as soon as he tells us how to spell it.

Our hunting and agriculture columnist, Bill Joseph, will once again be seeing us through Sweet November and muzzle loader season.

Ms Mildred Muncy, who has headed the Social Section for over twenty one years, is back from sabbatical and a foot operation. Mildred is taking church bulletin news and says the ladies auxiliary can start submitting recipes for her Thanksgiving Special on Thursday.

The Bailey Sisters will be continuing their Neighbors Column where they report on all the varied things your neighbors do that you ought to know about. Don’t worry. They do not gossip.

Look out for more news clippings re: the town and it’s folk and weekly editorials by Mr Cline himself.

The Toler Tribune Editorial Staff

The room settled in around me. Clumsy cousins of other cousins sat side by side on cheap wooden pews, dressed in Sunday’s best for a Saturday evening wake.

Aunts with faces longer than their years cried and talked religion and swapped recipes.

I stood up. Forced myself down the rows.

A woman upholstered in her living room carpet fluttered by the coffin, pointed a Polaroid and clicked.

The picture slid out. Green and filmy. A dead man’s face.

I moved to the back of the parlor where mourners queued by a candled podium. To put pen to paper. To sign and say that they were there so they wouldn’t have to be anymore.

I waited, then drew my name.

Apologies to all those experiencing problems with the blog these past two weeks. Seems Internet Explorer has had trouble reading a bit of my wonky html from an earlier post. I’m a Firefox girl myself so I didn’t notice the glitch as soon as I should have (Thanks to Wendy for putting me onto it).

Hopefully things are now back to normal – with another fresh post tomorrow.

Any problems viewing the site please let me know by contacting me via the side bar.

Thanks and have a great Sunday.

I’ve spent the past twelve months trying to figure out who I am as a writer. This, on the back of a 78,000-word bit of book that’s sat in my desk from then ’til now because I’m just not sure if it fits.

I started out at the end of a chic lit binge and my writing mirrored it. If I’m being truthful, and I try to be, I’d say this is me. Because I am woman, amongst other things, and relationships and streams of thought and the odd ‘does my bum look big in this’ make sense to me. In many ways ‘supermodel’ is the most real thing I’ve written here. Not just because I lived it. Breathed it. Gained and lost thirty pounds because of it. But because that’s just the way I talk. When I’m on the phone with my sister, sounding shocked and annoyed and pitching my voice up and down. I’m all about ‘Sure, she has a lot of teeth, but so does my horse!’.

But I didn’t do me. I didn’t do ‘write what you know’. I did that other thing. And here’s what I discovered. It’s fine to write what you don’t know. But you better make it believable. And I wasn’t doing that.

Cosmo Buffy didn’t fit Toler Mountain. West Virginia Buffy did. So I went back to my roots. To the mountains. To that person I never really was, but maybe would have been, if I had come along 50 years earlier. ‘Course I did it in a library in the middle of England. But I did it. I dove into the classics. I re-read Faulkner and Twain. Lee and Williams. Wondered if Hemingway knew what he was on about when he said “…you cannot do something someone else has done…” and decided to ask my Pa.

That’s when I stopped reading (southern stuff) and started listening. I found that life I might have had in my grandfather. And I found my voice.

I used it in ‘potholes full of shine’, ‘the death watch’ and just about every other piece of fiction I’ve written for this blog. Oh, and for that little matter of 78,000 words.

It doesn’t exactly belong to me. The tone or the rhythm. But it does belong to him. And I know him as good as I know anything.

I set myself a deadline when I started this blog. One year in. That year ends this month. Three more weeks of rewrites. Three more weeks of edits. Then it’s time for the querying. Time for the fingers crossed. Time for I-can’t-wait.