Some Weeks in the Life of Penny Pepper

An Ongoing Effort in the Playground of Good and Bad

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The dark comes as autumn moves to winter. And I wonder, after this frustrating long gap of not writing a Substack post, how I can develop a structure that might help me create something regularly. I promise to try once a week, particularly as a thank you to my supportive paid subscribers.

Naturally I am surrounded by unexpected challenges and trapped in the circular routes of failing systems. Systems that include everything from the rather dull plod of attempting stability with my health to some farcical shenanigans with my housing that would be amusing if they weren't an absolute shambles that affects my already overly-complicated life on a daily basis. Talk about enforced barriers and a disabling society. I’m in deep, living it.

After September's shit show of night-time break-ins and grinding challenges with benefits, (read my last few Byline Times if you want more) and a repeat savaging with Covid, October bequeathed happier moments. Albeit that they came with some lessons learnt.

Let me first tell you about my glorious encounter with a majestic water serpent known as the knucker. He’s a bit of a fierce, greedy long-bodied dragon creature and lives in the knucker holes of West Sussex. Circular ponds, said to be bottomless and maybe connected to each other. And on a crisp autumn day, with the sky as perfect blue as a painting, I found myself with my friend G, navigating in my power chair through the graveyard of Lyminster Church. One of those Sussex places that aches with history, birdsong and impossible peace. Where timelessness becomes a cliché but no less powerful because of that. Of course we have a water dragon in such a place!

The churchwarden was helpful and informed. Apart from manoeuvring around metal ramps to give us access into the early Norman church, he told us all about the mythology of the knucker which added greatly to what I already know.

I also saw the knucker slayer stone, which my erudite friend speculated was actually a striking tombstone of a Templar knight. He was an archaeologist once, and he’s something of an oracle on these things, so I have to trust him. Whereas I claim tenacious is often my middle name – others may say reckless – and I managed to tease my chair onto the layered and little rolling graveyard in order to see the Norman wall of the church, with its occasional vestiges of Anglo-Saxon work, and take a photo or two. Ah, G and myself, have done many such travels to see marvels of this nature. I never get bored to behold and delve into history.

Later we went to a wildfowl centre, which was the epitome of tranquillity, nature doing its wonders in healing me a little bit. So many spectacular birds! Dalmatian pelicans with bright orange beaks and crazy punky white feathers rising on their heads.

My favourites were the eider ducks (spectacled?) with their distinctive patterns around their eyes. The males were grey and white, while the females were a range of browns. They bobbed through their thoughtfully designed environment of pretty waterfalls and rock pools. I couldn’t stop smiling.

This was my first true break away from home in over a year now since the brain haemorrhages. Previous stays away have been connected to hospitals which have been essential as they are endless.

Once back home, I did pay something of a price. Even the most accessible hotel can present a hindrance for me now, although my PA did a great job in making the room homely and as comfortable as possible. Despite the barriers, I’m glad I did this break, happy to pay that price of resulting pain and exhaustion.

There have been some positive developments with my writing, including my place in an anthology called Elemental, with my short story, Breathe in the Water, which concerns how ‘the people of the Dry confuse the people of the Sea, yet they will always welcome them when they are discarded by their own’.

It will never cease to thrill me to have my fiction published, and, more than that, to know that it’s enjoyed. I work a lot, as in, I write a lot. Essential. Yes, yes, writers and all their silly mooning and wondering and questioning. Maybe. And it’s the heart of me. I ache with it, burst with it. So many stories to tell. Fuck fatigue, fuck illness.

Having survived that bout of Covid with the usual battles of the failing NHS, I look forward to finding further glimpses of joy and optimism wherever I can. Despite the gloom and in defiance  at where our world seems to be going.

For me, for a lot of my time now, that’s in binding good words together.

More next week. Promise.