don't forget the fairies

This is the third time I've encountered something that has to do with fairies this week. I wonder what that means.

This was in the UK Times.

The Times
November 21, 2005
Fairies stop developers' bulldozers in their tracks
By Will Pavia and Chris Windle

VILLAGERS who protested that a new housing estate would “harm the fairies” living in their midst have forced a property company to scrap its building plans and start again.

Marcus Salter, head of Genesis Properties, estimates that the small colony of fairies believed to live beneath a rock in St Fillans, Perthshire, has cost him £15,000. His first notice of the residential sensibilities of the netherworld came as his diggers moved on to a site on the outskirts of the village, which crowns the easterly shore of Loch Earn.

He said: “A neighbour came over shouting, ‘Don’t move that rock. You’ll kill the fairies’.” The rock protruded from the centre of a gently shelving field, edged by the steep slopes of Dundurn mountain, where in the sixth century the Celtic missionary St Fillan set up camp and attempted to convert the Picts from the pagan darkness of superstition.

“Then we got a series of phone calls, saying we were disturbing the fairies. I thought they were joking. It didn’t go down very well,” Mr Salter said.

In fact, even as his firm attempted to work around the rock, they received complaints that the fairies would be “upset”. Mr Salter still believed he was dealing with a vocal minority, but the gears of Perthshire’s planning process were about to be clogged by something that looked suspiciously like fairy dust.

“I went to a meeting of the community council and the concerns cropped up there,” he said. The council was considering lodging a complaint with the planning authority, likely to be the kiss of death for a housing development in a national park. Jeannie Fox, council chairman, said: “I do believe in fairies but I can’t be sure that they live under that rock. I had been told that the rock had historic importance, that kings were crowned upon it.” Her main objection to moving the rock was based on the fact that it had stood on the hillside for so long: a sort of MacFeng Shui that many in the village subscribe to.

“There are a lot of superstitions going about up here and people do believe that things like standing stones and large rocks should never be moved,” she said.

Half a mile into Loch Earn is Neish Island. From there the Neish clan set forth to plunder the surrounding country, retreating each time to their island. Early in the 17th century, the MacNabs retaliated from the next valley, carrying a boat over the mountains, storming the island and slaughtering most of the Neishes.

This summer Betty Neish McInnes, the last of that line in St Fillans, went to her grave — but not before she had imparted the ancient Pict significance of the rock to many of her neighbours.

“A lot of people think the rock had some Pictish meaning,” Mrs Fox said. “It would be extremely unlucky to move it.”

Mr Salter did not just want to move the rock. He wanted to dig it up, cart it to the roadside and brand it with the name of his new neighbourhood.

The Planning Inspectorate has no specific guidelines on fairies but a spokesman said: “Planning guidance states that local customs and beliefs must be taken into account when a developer applies for planning permission.” Mr Salter said: “We had to redesign the entire thing from scratch.”

The new estate will now centre on a small park, in the middle of which stands a curious rock. Work begins next month, if the fairies allow.

novel progress

I’m up to 13,000 words in my novel. That’s 1000 less than my personal daily word count goal, but still ahead of the one they recommend, so I’ve got wiggle room. Last night was a wash because I had been in Delaware all day visiting a client. We were only supposed to be there for the morning and back in the office by early afternoon, but one meeting turned into four, and we were there all day and didn’t get back until after six. I had been up early to begin with, so I completely crashed when I got home. I actually look forward to my 2000 words a day. It’s not as hard as I thought it would be. It really takes the pressure off when you’re not so concerned with quality. I just put words in to get the word count up, and whenever I get the urge to revise, I just tell myself that I’ll fix it later. I’m better at revising and editing anyway, so I don’t anticipate that that will be a problem. Just getting something down on paper to work with is the hard part.

writing in Boston

I kind of liked Boston, what little I saw of it. Our hotel wasn’t all that great, and there is a lot of construction going on in that particular area, so it was noisy. We had a free afternoon, so my co-worker and I went across the street to Faneuil Hall, which is a marketplace-type area. I had a nice big hot bowl of pad thai that wasn’t overly spicy, and then a dark chocolate peanut butter cup for dessert. It was pretty much the best meal I had in the three days I was there.

Thirty can make the mind reel and make you do strange things, can’t it? I think that’s partly why I’m so into this NaNo thing – it keeps my mind off it, among other things. My mad dash for an accomplishment before the year is out. I am up to about 9000 words in my NaNo novel, which puts me a bit ahead actually, as my goal is 2000 words a day, so by today I should be up to 8000 words. I figure I may as well work ahead early, so that if I start to slack off at some point, which could be inevitable, I won’t have to do too much catch up. I ended up starting by just writing out the plot in paragraphs and phrases as they occurred to me, and then I just keep expanding on it, either adding description or dialogue where appropriate, and skipping around a lot, so if I get bored or stuck on a particular spot, I move to somewhere else in the list of plot points and start on that. Because I know this draft will be pretty terrible, and all I’m after is just a draft to be able to work with and revise (I’m so much better at revising and editing anyway), it’s not been too bad. It’s a matter of getting myself to sit down and do it every day. I have serious discipline and procrastination problems.