Category: writing

Remnant #1 – The Indian Mutiny

On By Mick CanningIn India, Indian Mutiny, writing19 Comments

I recently did a deep dive into the burrows of my hard drive. I’m not sure whether I will write another novel at the moment, but whether I do or not there are several part completed ones that will not actually be completed because I ran out of steam…

One such was a set of preliminary drafts for a story set during the so-called Indian Mutiny of 1857. This piece is part of a chapter setting out the background to what happened. It hasn’t been vigorously checked, but I think the facts are all correct. It’s obviously incomplete, but I think it does stand alone.

And should I post a few more of these remnants occasionally?

9th May 1857, and a dreadful heat sits on the Northern Indian plain like breathless death. The air is full of dust and the land is parched, cracked and waterless, eight months or so since the last rains came, yet the suffocating debilitation of the temperature, well over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit for most of the day and a goodly portion of the night, is made more unbearable still by the effects of the high humidity. One felt that one could almost wring water out of the surrounding air, yet the only moisture visible was the sweat covering anyone foolish enough to attempt to move around in this climate.

In Meerut, less than forty miles northeast of Delhi, eighty-five sepoys have just been sentenced by Court Martial to ten years imprisonment. Muslim and Hindu, they are imprisoned for refusing to bite cartridges that have been smeared both with cow fat that was sacred to some and pig fat which defiled them all. In a move of breath-taking stupidity, the British have decided that this concoction is a suitable one for their native troops to have smeared onto cartridges that work by having the top bitten off, before pouring and ramming the contents down the barrel of the new Lee Enfield rifle. To be fair, after the mistake was realised, moves were made to ensure that the grease was made from different ingredients, but the damage by then was done. The belief was widespread that the grease was still composed of these taboo ingredients and, worse still, that it was a deliberate attempt by the British to contaminate and weaken their religions. The crassly insensitive handling of the issue did nothing to improve matters.

Nor is this an entirely new development. For maybe a quarter of a century things have been going rapidly downhill. There have been a number of ‘minor’ mutinies in the past, but these seem to be on the increase. For High Caste Hindus, ‘crossing the black water’ is prohibited, so attempts to force serving soldiers to sail abroad have been invariably interpreted as caste breaking and resulted both in mutinies and draconian punishments. Both this and the foolishness with the new cartridges have acquired added importance, though, due to the increased activity of Christian missionaries in India. It is possible that the British never fully realised quite how important religion was to the Indians. There never had been an Indian nation. India’s history was one of various states, Hindu and Moslem, shifting empires, conquests and absorptions. The idea of Indian nationhood had not yet arisen. Nor did there exist a universal shared culture. As well as the beliefs and traditions surrounding the different religions – Sikh, Parsi and tribal as well as the predominant two – the massive size of India had meant that most regions knew little about the others, even of their existence.

What mattered most to the average Indian, other than the struggle to survive, was his religion. It was what defined his life. And by 1857 it must have appeared to many that the British were determined to defile and break these religions, and then to impose their own. This was hardly helped by the general change in attitude exhibited by the British towards their subjects.

Much had altered over this time. In the late 1700’s, many of the British who came out to India acquired a huge respect, and frequently love, for the country and its people. Scholars such as James Princep and William Jones immersed themselves in the study of the languages and history of India, carrying out research and making huge discoveries. They treated the educated Indians in their circle as equals, treated others with respect and frequently married Indian wives. More than a few also converted to Islam. All this gradually changed in the 1800’s, however. A major factor in this was a steady increase in the number of women who came out to India from Britain. Debutants became aware of the existence of a pool of marriageable young men who were supposedly earning large sums of money and living in style with servants at their beck and call. They only lacked wives to make their lives complete. What could be more natural than to go to their assistance? Thus the ‘Fishing Fleet’ came into existence.

The impact that this had upon the British way of life in India was dramatic. As more of the British men married within their own, the growing community rapidly came to look down with disgust and contempt on those that cohabited with Indian women. And it was a short step from that to frowning upon those who changed their religion, wore native clothes, or even fraternised with the ‘natives’. Attitudes, too, were changing back in Britain. An increase of Christian evangelical zeal coincided with more information finding its way back from India about the country the British were ransacking, most shockingly that the majority were heathens who worshipped idols.

Within the army itself, the Indian troops noticed a change in their officer’s attitudes. Previously, British officers would happily mix with their men, socially as well as on duty and spoke their languages well. They were now more reluctant to learn these languages, found it irksome to talk for long to their men and no longer went hunting or to social events with them. This, the troops tended to put down to the influence of the church – the ‘Padre Sahibs’.  

The British have always referred to the uprising that exploded in 1857 as The Indian Mutiny. The Indians prefer to give it the title of the First War of Independence, yet there had already been a number of mutinies throughout the time that the British had been in India, even within the Bengal army. In 1765, on the eve of the Battle of Baksar, Company sepoys had rebelled and been executed. Then in 1806 an attempt was made to force sepoys in Tamil Nadu to wear a leather badge, anathema to Hindus, which had resulted in rebellion. And throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there had regularly been mutinies when the British had forced sepoys to serve ‘abroad’, often prohibited by their caste, which was frequently viewed as a deliberate attempt to weaken said castes. And viewed as a prelude to attempting to convert them to Christianity.

There were, of course, many other factors contributing to this outbreak of violence. Over the previous twenty five years or so, the British had steadily been displaying a greater intolerance towards all facets of Indian society than they had done before. The respect that they had previously shown towards India’s long and rich history had all but disappeared, to be replaced by an attitude that they were governing ‘ignorant savages’ who were ripe for conversion to Christianity. And indeed, the company encouraged further Evangelical and Unitarian missionary activity; frequently this consisted simply of setting up schools and medical facilities for the poorer Indians, but this did nothing to allay Indian suspicions. In another insensitive gesture, English also replaced Persian as the official language of both government and education.

So, simmering just beneath the surface of all walks of Indian society was this fear, this suspicion, that the English were determined to break the native religions and to force Christianity upon India. And it only needed a spark like the Meerut incident to ignite a conflagration that would rapidly sweep across Northern India.

Move forward twenty-four hours and dreadful deeds have been done in the Indian heat. In the morning, the remainder of the Indian regiment at Meerut rose up to free their comrades, broke into the armoury, and then began to systematically slaughter the European community.

Even then, it was possible that the revolt might have petered out, if the sepoys had not decided to ride through the night to Delhi, to seek out the aged Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, who ‘ruled’ as no more than a puppet of the English, and to declare themselves as his army of liberation. As they rode, they gathered supporters from the disaffected population and, around dawn, poured into Delhi.

It was the middle of Ramadan, so most of Delhi had been awake for some while, since for all Muslims it is forbidden to eat or drink during the daylight hours of Ramadan, and so across the city meals had been prepared, cooked and eaten before sunrise. At this time of year, too, because of the intense heat, much of the other activity of the city happened around dawn and dusk, whence it was a little cooler. And so, the streets were busy with worshippers making their way to and from mosques and temples, traders and shoppers busy at markets, beggars and hawkers, businessmen and palanquin bearers, soldiers and magistrates, all out and about in the labyrinth of streets and alleys that criss-crossed Delhi between the city gates.

Rumours of rebellion had been abroad for some months before, and so much of the native population of Delhi was in a state of keen anticipation. The rebels immediately found that they had sympathisers who rose in revolt as soon as they entered the city, especially many of the native soldiers stationed there. The British soldiers were mainly barracked outside the city walls and although a few Europeans quickly realised the severity of the situation, in the main events unfolded faster than could be dealt with and the city was largely overrun before the army could effectively intervene.

By nightfall the majority of the European population of Delhi – men, women and children – had either fled the city or been hacked to pieces. The only ones spared during the initial massacre were those few that had converted to Islam.

The next four months saw much bitter fighting across the north, as the rebels tried desperately to widen the rebellion and hold onto areas they had taken, while the British, with any hope of reinforcements many long weeks away, attempted, equally desperately, to break sieges and retake towns and garrisons that had fallen to the rebels. On both sides, tremendous cruelties and massacres were carried out, few more infamous than that at Cawnpore…

The First Christmas Present – repackaged

On By Mick CanningIn Christmas, Fiction, Short story, writing20 Comments

I’ve posted this before, but I’m quite fond of it and it’s, well, seasonally appropriate. I’ve also taken the opportunity to tweak the details a little bit…

The old fellow with the white beard and the red jacket leaned queasily over the side of the sleigh, watching the snow-covered fields passing below. For a while, the moon was peering out between the clouds and he travelled over a scene of sparkling silver, although the sight did nothing to cheer him up.

He hated heights.

He hated elves, now, too. He’d never met one before today, but he knew now that he hated them. The smug little tossers sat right at the back of the sleigh, eating the mince pies that had been left out for him, and tittering whenever he took a wrong turning.

And he hated children. He especially hated children.

But with his pension stretched to breaking point just to cover his rent and what might be described as a minimal diet, the constant threat of having his electricity cut off, and a particularly cold spell of weather forecast, he felt he had no option but to find some work. Not that he was looking forward to long nights at the sorting office, or lugging a bloody great bag of Christmas cards from door to door. But it seemed he’d left it rather late, and there was nothing left. At least, nothing for someone of his age. Eventually, he found himself in a tiny little room on the second floor of a run-down office building in a backstreet, the home of an agency that he’d never heard of and with a staff, it appeared, consisting of one gentleman who he initially took to be a caretaker and who introduced himself as Victor.

‘You’ll do nicely.’ He said. With time-shift, it meant that there was no need to cram all of the deliveries into a single night; they could be spread out over the whole year. In fact, they tended to use two of them, these days.

‘Two of what?’ His mind reeled.

‘Why, Santas, of course. But even then,’ Victor went on, ‘it’s difficult when one goes sick for two weeks. And so this is where you come in. What is a problem,’ he explained, ‘is E.U. Working Time Directive no.735 sub 21 clause 18 tum. This rules out night work for anyone over the age of fifty employed as a mythical being. So you’ll have to do the deliveries during the day. Still, time-shift takes care of that.’

‘But, Brexit…’

‘It makes no difference.’

He still didn’t entirely understand, but he took the job.

The SatNav was crap. It took twice as long. The first time he tried it, he was terrified to find the sleigh suddenly hurtling between buildings that seemed to be no more than a couple of feet apart, at what must have been close on three hundred miles an hour. It then banked and turned in a tiny back garden, subjecting him to a force of about a hundred g, and then shot back down the same terrible alleyway. It then parked itself on the rooftop next to the one that he had just left.

The elves tittered into their hands.

He quickly found it better to just leave it to the reindeer to sort out. They obviously knew what they were doing.

And then it was impossible to tell how much time had gone past. If he noticed the time in any of the houses they visited, it never made any sense. One clock said ten fifteen. Some while later, he noticed one that said nine forty two. The next said four thirty. For a while be began to check the time at each house, but quickly gave up when the times appeared to be completely random. He shrugged. More of this time-shift stuff, he supposed. It made it very hard to decide when he should be on lunch break, and he made a mental note to speak to a union rep. at some point.

Another house. Impossible to know how many he had visited. After the thing with the clocks, he was even wondering whether he still had to visit some of the ones he’d already visited.

No, that was too confusing. He shrugged again, and stepped out of the sleigh. The elves followed him with their sacks, and then they all stepped forward, and next thing they were standing in a hallway, just inside the closed front door. Yes, that was weird, too. The elves obviously knew where they were going; he followed them into a darkened front room where a little glass of liquid stood on the table beside a plate with two mince pies. There was a little note that said ‘For Santa, love Benjy’.

He dropped the mince pies into the bag that he wore around his waist for the purpose, and poured the sherry into the flask. He hated sherry, anyway, so the little tossers were welcome to that. With luck, they’d fall out of the sleigh at some point.

The elves stomped noisily out of the room and up the stairs, reached the landing and opened the first door on the right. Inside, a child was asleep in the bed, a large pillow case draped across the duvet.

‘Greedy little bastard.’ He thought. He picked up the pillow case and held it open, whilst one of the elves seemingly poured in presents randomly from his sack. And then he froze. There was someone coming up the stairs; that wasn’t supposed to happen! All this time-shift stuff was meant to mean that everyone would be asleep from the moment he entered the house until he left again. It all happened in less than a fraction of a nanosecond, in any case.

The footsteps came nearer, and then stopped. A small child appeared at the doorway, but all that he noticed were her sad eyes. She did not seem surprised to see him, nor did she appear overjoyed.

‘You never come to me.’ She said in a quiet, flat voice.

‘I visit all the children!’ He replied, struggling to stay in character. ‘Ho, er, ho ho’.

‘No. You never come to me. You never have.’ He felt himself squirming under her steady gaze.

‘What’s your name?’ He said at last.

‘Mary. I live with my mother. In one of those flats over there.’ She pointed out of the window towards a few yellow lights that seemed to randomly puncture the darkness.

He glanced at the elves, who shrugged unconcernedly, then sighed and pulled a list from his back pocket and put his reading glasses on.

‘I’m sure we, I mean I, do. What’s the address?’ She stepped towards him and gently took the list from his hand, looked at it for a minute and then pointed.

‘There. But you don’t go to our flat; number three.’

He ran his eyes down the list, clicked his tongue irritably, and then looked a second time, certain he must have missed her name. But no, it definitely wasn’t there. He looked up, to meet her gaze again. Oh, hell. He could take one present from, say, three or four others. They would never miss them, and no one would know.

‘We’d know!’ The first elf glowered at him.

‘You can’t do that!’ The other one pouted. He looked from one to the other, and then back to the little girl, and came to a decision. He reached into Benjy’s pillowcase, picked out a couple of presents and held them out to her. She did not move for a moment, but then she gently smiled, reached out, and took the nearest one. Then she turned and left the room, and he heard her footsteps going down the stairs. He darted out to the landing, but already she had vanished.

‘You’ll be in big trouble.’ A spiteful little voice behind him said happily. He said nothing but did the thing with his fingers he had been taught, and they were back in the sleigh again.

It had been their last call. Now he was watching the elves smirking and whispering to each other, as the reindeer ran smoothly through the clouds. Casually, his hand strayed towards the SatNav, and he pressed the ‘over-ride’ button. The sleigh stopped immediately, and spun round a hundred and eighty degrees, catching the elves completely by surprise and throwing them out of the sleigh and into the night sky.

He hated elves.

6th November 2025

On By Mick CanningIn Art, blogging, folklore, travel, writing29 Comments

When I began this blog, some ten years ago, it was for the express purpose of both promoting my writing and discussing writing in general. Since then, although I have certainly used it for that purpose, promoting my books and zines, posting the occasional poem, writing the occasional review of other books, and posting discussion topics on the subject, the blog has almost inevitably drifted into other waters. Since I enjoy travel so much, I began to post photographs and memories of those travels. I put up pictures of my artwork, since this seemed an obvious (and free!) place to promote them. Articles on the British countryside, mythology and folklore, and customs. Like most people, I have wide interests and this is a good format to record them in.

The Old Weird Albion, by Justin Hopper. Reviewed in 2019

One of my great pleasures has been the meeting of minds. We follow each other, read posts and comment, foment discussions. And it is a safe place! Unlike social media, it is very rare for strangers to barge in and attack other users. And on the very rare occasions this happens, it is easy to just block them. This makes it a much more enjoyable place to spend time. And there are no algorithms pushing contentious posts at the reader.

Mount Everest, photographed from Tengboche in Nepal from a post in 2021

But for the last couple of years I have been rather tardy in both posting and reading other’s blogs. Part of the reason for this is that since being retired, for some reason I seem to have less free time than I did before. I’m not really sure why that is. But I’m still here. And to get myself back into the swing of things, as well as writing some new posts, I’ll probably re-post a few of the posts I put up a long while back, which many of my current followers won’t have seen.

Recycling is good, after all.

A piece of my artwork.

Writing Update

On By Mick CanningIn Work in progress, writing34 Comments

I haven’t done one of these for a long time. For anyone wondering what has happened to my novel in progress, it’s finished. Hurrah! I know there were two earlier versions which got discarded as soon as I had finished them, but I’m really pleased with this one – it’s the book I had visualised when I began it nine years ago. Only better. When I had finished the earlier versions, I felt relief they were finished, but no joy. This time, I’m really happy with what I’ve written. I know it’s what I want to say.

Irrelevant photo. Because.

It has had the attention of several beta readers and is now all the better for their suggestions. It has also had what I hope will be the final edit, and I am beginning the process of looking for a publisher or an agent. This means a lot of research and writing both long and short synopses. And then, I suppose, months of waiting to see whether I have any luck.

There is also poetry and zine-making going on sporadically, plus some currently vague ideas for another novel.

It’s all go, I tell you.

Where Do The Dead Go?

On By Mick CanningIn novels, poetry, publishing, short stories, writing30 Comments

I know. It’s been a while.

I’ve been thinking about how I publish my poetry and stories, and concluded that the simple way is the best way. I don’t wish to spend a lot of time and money submitting them to competitions and magazines, putting them to one side where they may end up forgotten or just unpublished while I decide to submit them ‘just one more time.’ I’m not interested in putting a lot of time and energy into chasing the best deal or the most prestigious publications.

The whole purpose of writing is firstly for myself, and secondly because (naturally) I’d like to be read. It doesn’t have to be a large audience, I’m quite chuffed when anyone let’s me know they’ve read something of mine and enjoyed it. In which case I might as well just write some more zines and publish work on this blog. It feels like far less pressure. And the novel I’ve finished (Long Shadows) and which is still being edited I might submit to an agent or two, but I’ve no intention of spending months and years trying. If I’ve no luck I will quite quickly just self-publish it.

Anyway, putting my writing where my mouth is, here’s a poem.

Writer’s Notebooks (2) – The Purge

On By Mick CanningIn Work in progress, writing38 Comments

I’ve been doing some clearing out.

I must have had around twenty notebooks on my shelves. However, once they’re filled up, they are almost never opened again. Once finished, they’re put in a drawer, or on a shelf, and then pretty well forgotten.

Taking up space.

Occasionally I might be writing something and vaguely remember noting down something that might be relevant, but I’d never be able to find it again, so I usually didn’t bother. Anything worthwhile I might have written down while out for a walk or on a journey someplace, never seen again.

Yet when I actually come to sit down and read through them again, there tends to be nothing I want to use. Nothing that seems relevant. Either superseded by other ideas, or simply not any good.

Then there are the notebooks I used to develop novels, short stories, etc. No longer needed when the work is finished. Why hang onto those?

So they’ve all gone. It feels very cathartic.

The Footpath Book

On By Mick CanningIn books, footpaths, walking, writing28 Comments

Once, I thought I’d write a footpath book, a guidebook for an area I walked frequently and knew well. As well as the practicalities of walking the paths – pointing out turnings that were easy to miss, alternative routes, the geography of the paths – I would also discuss the history and geology of the area, the wildlife and architecture, the folklore…

I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of examples of these books.

But that, naturally, would require me to walk each path carefully noting every point at which I would need to remark on these details. But I know me. I would be coming up to a point where I knew I needed to take note of the vagaries of the route, or points of special interest, and then a mile or two later I’d realise I’d been working on a poem in my head and had forgotten all about the task in hand….I would just find it impossible to keep my focus on the technicalities while walking. And I don’t really do technicalities very well, anyway.

And to have to do this for every step of every part of these routes, well, it’s not what I do. While walking, I’m inclined to drift along, my mind wandering, my focus flitting from one thing to another – whatever catches my eye at the time.

It will just have to go down as another of my discarded projects. The footpath book is for someone else to write.

Phew!

On By Mick CanningIn A Good Place, editing, Fiction, publishing, writing32 Comments

A mere ten days after mentioning I thought I was close to finishing the final draft of A Good Place, it is, in fact, finished. This is the second novel I have written that’s set in India, this time in a fictitious hill station in the Himalaya, amongst the English diaspora remaining behind after Independence.

Having discarded two previous drafts, the skeleton of the story is now essentially the plot I visualised way back when I started.

There is a lesson in there, somewhere.

It will shortly go off to a couple of beta readers for their comments, and then hopefully after that it will just be a case of one final edit, then the hard part. I intend to at least have a go at finding a publisher and / or an agent.

But for now, I think I’ve earned a beer.

D’You Know, I Can’t Even Think Of A Title For This?

On By Mick CanningIn blogging, writing37 Comments

I’m still here, although you might be forgiven for not realising that.

One or two of you might have noticed, though, that I have been an occasional visitor to your blogs over the last few months, but mostly I’ve kept away from WordPress in that time.

Of course.

Life quite often has a tendency to get in the way of my writing. It gets in the way of most of the things I do, actually.

That’s my excuse.

But I’m still plugging away at A Good Place, my novel set in Northern India about the English left behind after Independence, and am now very close to finishing it. I’m also working sporadically on Echoes and Imaginings Issue 2, now I’ve decided what I want it to be about. It’s gonna take a while to finish, though.

Cos life, you know.

Life getting in the way. What a drag.

But as for posts on here, I just seem to have just run out of ideas for now. It has been rather tempting to post the odd political rant during the last few months, but I don’t do politics on here. It would just make me cross and I’d get into arguments and I don’t want to do that. The point is I haven’t felt I’ve had anything worth writing. And I’m a great believer in that if you haven’t got anything to say, then don’t say it.

So for now, I ain’t saying it.

100 Word Stories

On By Mick CanningIn Fiction, murder, music, short stories, writing18 Comments

I know one hundred word stories are a thing on here, or ninety nine word stories, someone supplying a prompt – either a word or a phrase or perhaps a photo – but I was just playing around and came up with this. So no prompts, just a bit of fun.

Those of you of a certain age and musical heritage may identify with it…

‘This was a particularly brutal murder, sergeant.’

‘Yes, sir. With around three hundred people watching. Open and shut case, fortunately.’

‘And he was the keyboard player?’

‘Yes. He was about fifteen minutes into the Hammond Organ solo when he was killed.’

‘Who did it? A member of the audience?’

‘No, the vocalist. She bludgeoned him with the microphone stand. Really vicious. All she’s saying is this was the eighteenth night of the tour and there were still twenty seven to go.’

‘Didn’t any of the other band members attempt to stop her?’

‘No, sir. Apparently, they were egging her on.’