Jeff Ellis

I too had read this one before, and enjoyed it immensely. I'm looking forward to seeing if I can detect the updatings, particularly the new final chapter. This was a story that had a significant affect on my own writing... though Mihangel may not thank me for saying so :-) If you haven't read it before then you must... and if you have, then read it again!

This has reached chapter 6 over on Screeve.org http://www.screeve.org/The-California-Zephyr.html If you like stories set when we (or some of us) were young... the early 1950s when TV had barely started and locomotives still blew steam and had character... then this story of young love, across the boundaries of wealth and nation will appeal to you. It is gently and beautifully written. The blend of old books, rifles, railroads and horses... of love and class... well, it's a delight. I recommend it. He has other work there worth reading too. But, hurry back!

Everyone is right... isn't that nice! Great call Camy, Fifteen is even better and appears to go on forever, or else it feels that way halfway through the first chapter. And... "it"... His writing is so good that he doesn't need to pretend to be coy about "it", and that's a nice change. I think I'm in heaven... Well done Chris for starting the thread!

I'm with Dabeagle on this. Unless your style has undergone a dramatic change since Wicked Boys I would recommend that you trust the acclaim that your work has received in the past. Remember that it's your work. Writing the story that someone else thinks you should have written in a style that someone else thinks you should have used seems a poor use of editors and beta-readers. It's why my stuff still has typos!

Chris tells us that this was an early effort... That only shows in the freshness. Only a prologue and two chapters in so far, but I am already looking forward to more. Whether this is going to be a feel-good story or a downer isn't clear yet, but the two characters we have met are engaging and have depth. More! I need more, and Wednesday is a whole nearly-a-week away!

Thanks for that. Do stay with it. The last of the twenty two is absolutely priceless.

Graeme... that is exactly right... your school accepted that the opportunity was one that they could support and you went with their permission and blessing. There is all the difference in the world between what you did, and how you did it, and the parents in the story who simply went and did it, booking their violation of school rules a year in advance. The real problem is that the kids see their parents treat the school and its rules with complete contempt and think that they are entitled to do the same.

Here is a more balanced account of what went on... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-shropshire-25733272 It would seem that the practise is to book cheap holidays that are cheap because they are during term time, and then discount against the cheap holiday the pretty nominal fine. The parents appear to have attempted to use the "booked it before the law changed" as a loophole to avoid paying the fine. The court that heard the case obviously didn't have any sympathy. I see nothing in any of the articles to suggest that they went to Rhodes for educational reasons... what I do see is that this family that couldn't get a holiday together could find it possible to book a year ahead... in a year whose annual holiday entitlement hadn't even started yet, presumably to get the cheapest possible rates... and then got caught out when the rules changed. According to the BBC article, " He told magistrates he decided to take a family holiday because of problems with his eldest daughter, whose behaviour and school attendance had deteriorated." So, I can quite see why the daughters school principal may have thought that less cheap holiday and stricter parenting would be a good idea. The only reason they are being threatened with Jail is because nothing else has made them see reason. Our government has been trying to raise schoolstandards in the face of this kind of bad parenting, and one of the big problems has been parents who fail to enforce school rules... such as turning up to be educated. Parents who defy the school to the extent of needing to be threatened in this way... would appear to need to be threatened! And, I say that as someone who didn't vote for this government and who thinks that Michael Gove, the Education Secretary is a complete idiot.

I think I feel inclined to differ on this one... The guy's job suggests that he is one of the self-important opinionated jobs-worths that guard front doors to keep the tax payer away from what they have paid for. That he thinks his holiday more important than his children's education and refused to pay the fime designed to make parents think twice before being tossers is simply par for the course. It sounds to me like he got what he was asking for... an opportunity to posture and be news for 15 minutes. PS. The Daily Mail is to UK journalism what the Tea Party is to US politics.

Well said Des! I knew someone could say it better than I could

Des is right. I've twice sat with people while they died... and afterwards thanked the nursing staff for the experience... the opportunity to see that death itself was nothing to fear... the manner of it, now that's another thing... keep checking those tyres! It's profound to realise that death is such a transient thing that it takes a stethoscope to be certain that it has even taken place.

My apologies Merkin. What I really meant to say was that it was not sufficient for the UK government to recognise that having driven to suicide the man who single-handledly shortened WW2 took the shine off their nice museum at Bletchley Park. That homosexuality is only acceptable in retrospect if you have done something special for the nation is profoundly insulting to those whose contributions have been deemed insufficiently special to merit a Pardon. If anything it leaves the majority in a worse position than before. The gay community of Britain isn't enhanced by this Pardon, it is diminished. Logically the efforts of the heterosexuals who are proud to have worked alongside him diminished his validity as a person... it was after all only the singlehandedness of his effort that earned him a "pardon". What the State of Victoria is doing is much more profound... a general acceptance that the law was wrong in the first place. It is that general acceptance that the state was wrong, that there was no crime, that the conviction was wrong in law, that the punishment was inappropriate and unjust, and finally that the state profoundly regrets all the ruined lives and many deaths that resulted from the law and its enforcement. That was what I meant by apology, not an "oops sorry, we weren't paying attention" Germany cannot adequately "apologise" for the Holocaust, but it has made it illegal to so much as express doubt at the awfulness of what the state did. That period is anathema to the point where it is even illegal to print the words of the Horst Wessel song. It's that level of absolute rejection of what happened to our fellow homosexuals that I would consider a state making a valid attempt at apology. That is why it would be an act worthy of the European Union, which didn't exist when homosexuality was illegal. An act whereby the EU informed the nations of the Union that they were fundamentally wrong then and were required to set the record right now... That would be an act worthy of the Union. It would also send a message to those states that think intolerance is an acceptable vote winner.

Well said Des.

Now that I DO consider progress... decriminalising tens of thousands of men... even if most of them are dead at least their relatives will feel good about it. Well done Australia... well Victoria. In the UK on the other hand, all that has been managed is a Pardon for Alan Turing... now that's all very nice for Turing... oh yes, but he's dead too. But, a Pardon? a pardon for what? For being gay? Being gay doesn't deserve a pardon... it deserves an apology, from the state to all the men and boys who suffered at the hands of the state. Perhaps the place to start, for once, could be the EU Commission. If individual European countries cannot find it in them to admit a mistake, then perhaps the EU could do it once and for all for all of them... They could include in passing the thousands of pink triangles who suffered under the Nazis.

and irony has been dead for even longer than that.

The version of the banana myth that I subscribe to goes thus. There was need to harmonise rules in general but sometimes only one country had a rule on a particular subject. When that happened it was agreed that all countries would follow the one country's rule until a problem arose. Hence because one country believed in straight (or at least not small, highly curved) ones the rule got adopted and UK newspapers and weirdo politicians of extreme view thought it a bad thing... Me? I thought it was a good thing... the one country was the UK and the rule had been introduced many years ago to protect the market for high quality bananas that came from the West Indies, and it did so by excluding the small curved wizened ones that came from Honduras. My memory may be at fault but I think the rule was originally part payment for the loss to the West Indies when the Royal Navy did away with the rum ration, a tremendous blow to the economy of Jamaica. On the latter subject, Churchill stood in Parliament and said that the loss of the rum ration in the Navy was a sad day because it left only one of the the three great Naval traditions... Rum, Sodomy and the Lash!

I think the problem is that Pec is quite wrong... there is a documented case, and three days was exactly as long as brain function had presumably ceased. That is where the expectation that irrational hope and faith will be sufficient comes from

Great kid. Let's hope that the guys listening were there for more than the attendance allowance, coffee and biscuits

Tremendously powerful. I remember James Baldwin... this has the same raw energy.

Like Eric and Eugene, when I was kid the war in Vietnam was being fought by the French and homosexuality was illegal... not it's not-legal illegal but years in jail illegal. Eric and Eugene's love is set against that background, and is beautifully portrayed. Now times are different, but not different enough... So, if you live in a country dominated by religious fundamentalism and ultra-right politicians, then this story is a call to arms!

Oh crap... sorry... I just started a thread in Readers Rule... still two is better than none, and Jack's a fine young man.

A wonderfully wise and gentle story. I enjoyed it immensely. http://awesomedude.com/dabeagle/short_stories/jack_in_the_green.htm He says that it's the first in a series, to be told from different viewpoints... so you had best get started. It's a short story, so you can easily get it read before someone blurts out the plot :-)

I'm worrying about Cole, he seems out of sorts... complaining about a lack of pussy!

I love it, it's brilliant!

I wonder if anyone else can remember the precise moment at which their voice broke? It was a Carol Service for my sister's Brownie Pack. It was a carol for the audience to join in, and as it got into its stride I waited for the point for a descant to join in. Prepared to soar up and away above the adults, and ... absolutely nothing! It had gone. I was quite devastated.