HELP FROM THE OTHER SIDE?

Did I receive help from the other side while researching Tyneham, the Dorset village that died? Well, judge for yourself as I tell you of the coincidences (or synchronicity?) that led me eventually to write my novel OUT OF TIME (published in hardback, but soon also to be available via Kindle Direct).

Like I said yesterday, I had to wait for seemingly ages before even seeing Tyneham, it having been strictly out of bounds when I first read the snippet about it in the EVENING ECHO.  Yes, years went by - and then, when I was planning a Kimmeridge picnic with my two small daughters, I saw a road sign en route for Kimmeridge proclaiming 'The road to Tyneham is OPEN'.  So, my heart beating like a hammer, I went there - driving down a winding hill into the valley that had been hidden from prying eyes since wartime.

How profoundly that visit affected me!  How I vowed from that day onwards to find out more about Tyneham's story - and tell it to the whole world!

After asking in my local library for information on Tyneham I was handed - much to my surprise - the book TYNEHAM - A LOST HERITAGE by Mrs L.M.G. Bond.  (I had expected, you see, magazine articles or newspaper cuttings - never such an informative 'find'!)

After reading Lilian Bond's graphic account of an idyllic childhood spent in Tyneham's Elizabethan Manor House and of her family's subsequent banishment, thanks to a series of broken promises, I was soon firing on all cylinders. 

My telephone directory revealed that a Lieutenant-Colonel A.R. Bond lived at Creech Grange - a manor house quite close geographically to Tyneham's - and, concluding that he might well be a relative of Lilian's, I wrote to him immediately.  His widow phoned me the very next morning to put me in touch with Major-General Mark Bond - Lilian's nephew and heir to Tyneham House - who now lived in Owermoigne.

I wrote to Mark, expressing my interest in his old home, and heard from him by return of post with an invitation to telephone for an appointment.  I did so at once and later that week he welcomed me into his home.  As he was serving overseas at the time of the 1943 evacuation from Tyneham, he said that the best person to help me would be Philip Draper, who now lived on the Arne peninsula.  The Major-General readily gave his blessing to the writing of my proposed novel - and, later on, to the use of his Aunt Lilian's beautiful poem TYNEHAM as my frontispiece.

On the day that I posted my first letter to Philip Draper I also went to Worbarrow (the beach beyond Tyneham) to start absorbing atmosphere.  Up on Worbarrow's cliffs, I did a spot of pilfering - removing a small piece of Purbeck stone from one of the ruins there.  This I placed under my pillow - and soon started dreaming many remarkable dreams about Tyneham.

Philip Draper telephoned immediately on receipt of my letter and we arranged an appointment for the following week.  Visiting him and his wife at their idyllic cottage on the shore of Poole Harbour, right at the tip of the Arne Peninsula, I discovered in time that the stone I had taken was from the ruin of their old home!

Let's leave the story there for today, ending with the question - given the ease of all my discoveries and the quality of my dreams - was I already receiving help from the other side?