I has a location!

[erastes]

After poring over photos and maps and gawd knows what of the Norfolk Broads for the last few days, I think I have a location.

Horsey Mere This is actually Hickling Broad; Horsey Mere is the smaller body of water to the north and is the nearest Broad to the sea. The straight canal is Catfield Dyke.

Broads and Dykes, eh?  And all featuring in a book about homosexuals!

I think this is suitably remote, specially going back a couple of hundred years.  There's notably no large manor house in the area, but I shall invent one! It's not as if Standish was really in Dorset, after all.  Still haven't got a name.  Thinking of "Mere Mortals", perhaps

Comments

[queeredfiction.livejournal.com]

'Mere Mortals' seems a great title given what I know of the opening of the novel and glad to hear you've got 'location, location, location' for it! ;)

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

:)

[the-sea-to.livejournal.com]

Oooh that is gorgeous.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Isn't it? I'm guessing it would have been even wilder when I'm writing this - less cultivated fields and more marsh. It's a bit close to the coast, but I think it's remote enough for my purposes

[the-sea-to.livejournal.com]

Your purposes better be nefarious!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

They are never anything but!

[mzcalypso.livejournal.com]

If I didn't know better, I'd think "Norfolk Broads" was some sort of women's sports team... rugby, perhaps.

Gorgeous picture, excellent title!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

It's a very silly name, and causes much punning. :)

Thanks you!

[haydenthorne.livejournal.com]

Damn. I wish we met ten years ago. We stayed in Norwich for a few days during our holiday, and we went cycling near the Broads, too. I could've had tea with you!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Well, back then, I was living in Bournemouth, so not useful!

:)

[leni-jess.livejournal.com]

You are going to look up all the engineering changes that have (almost certainly) taken place in the area since the great 18th C explosion of works, aren't you. Note the lack of a question mark. For that matter, it might give you useful plot elements, a la Sayers's The Ten Tailors.

Potential title sounds good!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I'd heard about The Nine Tailors, but that's in the Fens, I believe. I'd better not get influenced! It's a different kind of drainage - but you are right, I will need to know more about the way the Broads were drained - when the windpumps were built and where they were. There's two at Horsey, I believe. Luckily Horsey is only about 3 miles from here, so I can pop over and have a look around. There's also a Broads Museum up the road too. Much easier than trying to research other locations in the UK!

[leni-jess.livejournal.com]

Same problem of an occasional excess of water that's not going anywhere for a while, though. Stick with that big fat book on the Broads!

Where you have wetlands you have drainage works, and where you have big construction projects you have corruption and big business disregarding local welfare and where you have those you have both conflict and disastrous failures - probably as true of the Broads, though it has more lakes and less marsh, yes? Where you find plot.

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

I would bet that before all those engineering changes, there were, on occasion, serious floods in this area. It looks like that sort of area to me.
I mean, in case you were thinking of Dramatic Events or Dramatic Deadlines or whathaveyou.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Yes, there were - hence the windpumps - the country was covered with them at one point, but now, sadly it's all done by big machines and the windpumps have been allowed to fall into disrepair.

Not as often as you'd think though, because they aren't tidal - but they are (even now) affected by storms and heavy rain. I remember one year when we rented a cottage instead of getting a boat like we normally did (because I was in plaster from toe to waist due to a horse riding accident) and woke up to find the front garden flooded and ducks swimming around on the lawn!