Obscurities

By Mick Bordet

Del Fawmer is a solo musican with a blossoming career, but her life is turned upside down when her dying grandmother asks her to delve into the secrets of the past. Visiting the old woman's house, Del comes across a box full of unusual musical instruments, each accompanied by a letter.

Join her as she learns about a homemade, pedal-powered organ, the different uses for a drainpipe and Bob Dylan's unwanted harmonica. Each quirky instrument reveals a story from Del's family history that lead her to a decision about her future.

This novella is accompanied by an album of music by Mick Bordet that includes all the instruments featured in the story as well as an illustrated colour booklet with photographs of everything used in creating the album.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Katharina Bordet
• Release date: May 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301746880

Mick Bordet

Writer of 'Some Other Scotland' and co-producer of the 'Every Photo Tells...' podcast.

Book preview

Obscurities

by Mick Bordet

© Copyright 2010 Mick Bordet

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Obscurities

Del stood on the doorstep and looked back out down the long driveway once more before entering. The garden was a wasteland now, the beautiful rose and hydrangea bushes spindly and withered, the winding paths and the frog pond long overgrown with weeds and moss, the flower beds dried out and barren. So many happy childhood memories had been made in this place, but they felt buried beneath a layer of decay, a reminder of just how far in the distant past they actually were. Now that her Grandma had passed away, it was as though the gradual decline of the place was revealed in all its decrepit truth, like the old lady’s presence here had somehow masked reality, but now the magical curtains had been torn down and the soulless building was all that remained.

It was all hers now, but she would rather have had another five minutes with her Gran.

She opened the door and stepped inside, the familiar echo from the hall greeting her, but sounding as empty as she felt. At some point she would have to make the decision: would she move out of her comfortable, if cramped, flat in the city centre, close to the action, to the venues and the cultural heart of the city, and take up residence here? There would be all the room she could possibly need, space for setting up her whole performance rig to practice without disturbing the neighbours through paper-thin walls, plenty of scope to dedicate a whole large room to serve as a recording studio to get her ideas down and mess around with them until they transformed into polished songs or soundtracks or whatever project she was working on. Could she live like that? Rattling around in a huge house like this, whilst her friends all lived in bedsits and single-roomed flats, spending so much time in this house that was haunted by memories, even if they were almost all good memories? Could she face reminders of her Gran at every turn, every day she lived here? That was a decision for another day.

For now, there was a more pressing matter; she needed to check through her grandmother’s old documents for any information that might help trace her long-lost aunt. That meant a trip into the house’s attic, which was not the most inviting place, as far as she was concerned. Del had never been up there and wasn’t even sure where the entrance was, since she had never had any reason to look for it. Once she had found the entrance hatch, in one of the spare bedrooms at the back of the house, it took her another twenty minutes to find something long enough to reach up and release the bolt that would drop the ladder down far enough for her to grab. With a torch tucked into her jeans pocket, she began the slow ascent of the shaky metal ladder.

The attic space was warm from the heat given off by the hot water tank that sat to one side and smelt of old wood and something that unsettled Del’s stomach. Shining the torch around, she found the source of the smell to be an abandoned bird nest and associated droppings spread all over the area around it. The rest of the attic was largely empty and uninteresting. There were some old loudspeakers at the far end of the space, a large plastic bag full of blankets and bath towels that had been partly shredded by mice and a pile of empty suitcases covered in a thick layer of dust. Behind the luggage, she found what she was looking for: a row of three cardboard archive boxes sitting on top of a fourth, longer box. They were crammed full of photographs, documents, souvenir trinkets and letters, but appeared to have no order to them.

Rather than spend too long in the dusty, smelly atmosphere of the attic, Del decided to carry the boxes downstairs and examine the contents in comfort. The first three boxes were heavy, making them awkward to manoeuvre through the narrow hatch and down the ladder, but with patience it took her about ten minutes to get them out. The larger box they had been sitting on was lighter in comparison and much easier to carry. She took it downstairs straight away, placed it on the kitchen table, filled the kettle with water and switched it on, before returning upstairs for the other boxes. By the time she set the last of them down in the kitchen, the kettle had boiled, so she made herself a cup of green tea and washed the attic dust off her hands before settling down at the table to begin the task of working through her Grandma’s archives.

Starting with the biggest of the four boxes, Del was surprised to discover that there were no photographs or documents inside, but a pile of letters, all addressed to her, and underneath them an array of strange items, some of which she recognised instantly as musical instruments. She took a sip of tea and opened the first of the letters.

I don’t suppose that you remember your ‘Nut’. You were only eleven months old when you adopted it. Other kids had teddies or blankets, bottles or comforters, but you had your Nut.

Grandpa Frank always bought a huge bag of mixed nuts for Christmas and poured the contents into a big glass bowl that sat on the table beside his worn out armchair. He was the only one who ever ate them; nobody else in the family could be bothered with the process of shelling them, so they would last from December until the middle of summer most years. Your Grandpa would pick out a walnut, a brazil nut and a couple of hazelnuts from the bowl when we sat down after dinner and work his way through them, one at a time. I have no idea how he did it, turning them over and over in his hand, squeezing them time and again within the jaws of the nut cracker, but every time, without fail, he broke the shell into two perfect halves. He was a man of seemingly infinite patience.

On your first Christmas you all came over here for dinner