One of the short stories in the Spilling the Tea in Gretna Green Collection has a very British introduction.
I thought my international readers might enjoy it more if I helped by providing some explanation. Especially if I shared it before the book came out, when you all have time to watch a video.
There are NO spoilers.
Author’s Note for
Somewhere Only Sheep Know
People often ask me where the ideas for the Gretna Green books come from.
Honestly?
Half the time I couldn’t tell you.
Most of them arrived while I was out walking with Lucy, my real Bichon Frise, somewhere in the Scottish countryside. Often quite close to home in Gretna Green, especially when it was snowing.
But which walk, and what detail came from where, I couldn’t say now.
A few million words later, those tiny individual story glimmers blur into the background.
But I can remember with sparkling clarity the exact moment the story of what would become the blue gate leading to Aberglas—and therefore the founding of the Pictish realm—began.
It was November 2013. I was curled up with my pup, who was an actual puppy back then (about five months old) while an episode of Poirot played. As the dapper Belgian closed in on his quarry that midweek evening, a teaser for the John Lewis Christmas advert aired.
If you’re not a fellow Brit, perhaps I should explain Christmas adverts were huge back then. Proper events. They were pretty much all we talked about in the staff coffee room for several days after they ‘premiered’.
The big department stores tried to outdo one another every year. Marks & Spencer gave us Joanna Lumley, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French and the Christmas Fairy and even the deliciously sultry voiceovers. “This is not just food … It’s M&S food …”
YouTube will find it if you simply search for that phrase. The voice is unforgettable!
There are also some fabulous videos of Americans reacting to British TV Christmas adverts through the years. They politely avoid—or at least try to avoid—mentioning how strange we obviously all are.
Here’s one of my favourites. And yes, as I’m sure you all know, the Christmas football game in the Sainsbury’s advert on the link above is true.
John Lewis had won the crown of “best Xmas ad” a few times. So, by 2013, we were all eager to see whether they could hang on to it that year.
Want to see it?
As you just watched, John Lewis didn’t disappoint. Their advert was magical, moving—and as the full version aired a few days later, I sat mopping away tears and swallowing hard against the happy lump in my throat as the strains of Lily Allen’s cover version of “Somewhere Only We Know” faded.
Then I wondered, “What if that story went another way? What if it wasn’t a bear and a hare but an exhausted woman and some sheep?”
What if it wasn’t even Christmas?
This short story, nurtured by lots of local history and a visit to the Galloway Picts Project at Trusty’s Hill became the inspiration for the founding of the Pictish realm.
Any of you who love British history, particularly from the Celtic angle, might want to look into all the other things that came out of the Galloway Picts project.
This BBC article will start you off.
Eventually, it led to the adventures of the popular Pictish royal family. But I remember the tale of an unnamed shepherdess every time Breanna rails against the Albidosi strictures. And then I feel strange because none of you have ever read it!
So I thought I should fix that.
The story’s working title for many years was “Somewhere Only Sheep Know.” When I considered including it in this collection, a title more comprehensible for a wider international audience was suggested—perhaps “The Winter Gate”?
But I continued to call it by its old name. In the end, I decided that if I could publish a few books people liked, I could probably be trusted to name a short story. And I found some author mojo and settled on offering a little extra explanation instead.
So now you will find “Somewhere Only Sheep Know” in the Spilling the Tea in Gretna Green Collection.
P.S. If you enjoyed the “Bear and the Hare” you might like to see the behind the scenes of how they made it. A chap from Disney was involved, and a lot of talented animators did some intriguing stop/start thing that, if you don’t know about it, might give you a happy couple of minutes.
Want to read more Behind the Books about the Pict Realm? The history of their iron jewellery is fascinating.
Click here to go back to the Advent Calendar Index and find all the other fun and games 😀