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Today, a true story - although whether you choose to believe is another matter. Nonetheless, I promise you 'tis indeed what happened.

With Imbolc behind us & the snowdrops nodding palely beneath the hedges, it really does feel like the wheel has turned and that we are heading into Spring (although I am obviously tempting fate, & we will thus have another two months of frosts. Sorry!)

Daskarzine had seen much of the world before she ever joined the Itinerant Bizarrium, for she was once a rather successful singer.  From fjord-rooted folkie she grew to be a musician of international repute, although of course her name was entirely different back then. She  toured many countries on many continents, from Andorra to Antigua, Venezuela to Vanuatu seducing young & old alike with the ethereal beauty of her voice.

My latest dive into the fabulously esoteric world of Morbid Anatomy has been a class entitled "Enchanted Matter, Ensouled Objects, & Bodily Possession" - summed up on their site as:

Can I tempt you aboard a train bound for lands mysterious? A train filled with curious folk, all linked to a missing explorer....

Peaches d'Vyne

Appearances can be deceptive, & Peaches is far from the fragile young thing you might assume.  Alongside her renown as a teacher of shibari, she is also rightly famed as an accomplished dirigible pilot - and it is the latter role that she has been dispatched.  At the end of the line await an airship & many coils of rope.  Rescuer or kidnapper?

Alexander von Rothmeier

Among the first of my paper theatres to be released is the steampunk-tinged Bizarrium Express with its complement of questionable characters. 

Let me introduce some of them:

Lord Wylliam Fitzcary & Florence

Sharon Blackie recently wrote an article on Substack about what she terms "psychogeology", the way in which the land upon which we live influences our entire being.  In her case, she relates most strongly to the granite of Donegal and gneiss of the Isle of Lewis - strong rocks which have been formed by intense pressures over millenia:

Somewhere I read that each era gets the cryptid/monster it deserves. So the Enlightenment gave us Frankenstein, embodying the fear of the new sciences; the 19th century produced Jekyll & Hyde alongside the exploration of the psyche; the fall of empires at the beginning of the 20th century saw the rise of The Mummy, the revenge of colonised people; mid-century UFOs mirrored the space race; and the hedonistic 80s/90s were the era of the sexy vampire.

Last year, I took an online class with the excellent Morbid Anatomy which focussed on the history of the Anatomical Venus. Their site explains her best:

"Reclining on velvet cushions with Venetian glass eyes, strings of pearls, and golden tiaras crowning their real human hair, Anatomical Venuses were created in eighteenth-century Florence to teach the general public about the mysteries of the human body. The Venus also tacitly communicated the relationship between the human body and a divinely created cosmos; between art and science, nature and mankind."

Once upon a time, Hellige was not the hirsute vision of loveliness that we now know & adore, but just another pretty little rich girl.

When not playing in the chateau grounds she was taught by a veritable battalion of tutors, schooled in the vital feminine arts of hairstyling & harpsichord, watercolour & waltz, floristry & fencing.

Thus it was at vast expense that young Hellige was moulded into the finest marriage material and looked upon as a grand investment by a father intent upon using her to advance himself amongst the creme of the aristocracy.