Liner Notes For Filthy Night
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It’s a story the pub landlord is telling you. It’s something to do on a rainy night. It’s a werewolf/selkie romance baby!
How much does the landlord know? Obviously he knows more than he’s letting on to start with. The lovers – the parents – have trusted him with something. The pubs called the Ware-House, or maybe the Where-House, or perhaps the Were-House. He’s not your standard landlord is what I’m saying. He doesn’t just pull pints, he keeps secrets and hosts strangers.
Anyway, the idea of two family farms getting together to hash things out in the pub rather than involve lawyers is loosely based on some things I know happened, though mostly in the context of when they actually had to get lawyers involved and everyone blaming the others for why they couldn’t just sort it between them over a pint. More work gets done in pubs than you might think, though not actually that much.
The flood is very loosely based on a real event.
This was an early story, written before I decided to make a year’s worth of Strandbridge tales. In many ways it’s kind of a companion piece to The Red Cap Of Old Hobb Mill, another pub-centred yarn, about something a bit old-school folktale going on in a modern town. Of course one of these got published elsewhere, the other gathered rejections until I realised it was part of a series.
The birds stripping the tree is an image from a different thing altogether but it seemed to fit.
I thought I’d signalled clearly enough what was going on, but for the record, the landlord is talking to the child of the two. They eloped together, abandoning the coats that represent the shape-shifting magic of their families. Now the child is back, seeking to reclaim their heritage.
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