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Somerset is awash with mystical, historical & just plain weird places, with Myths & legends, spirits & inexplicable traditions: the ghosts of the Battle of Sedgemoor & of Shepton gaol, the witch of Wookey Hole, castles aplenty, phantom horsemen & the stone circles of Stanton Drew.

At this time of year, when the sun begins to shed the merest hint of heat upon one's back, I invariably start thinking that I should be making all things merfolk.  So out comes the pile of background reading

I also began mentioning the subject to friends, who have added their stories to the mix.  I especially like the one shared by Linda Duriez from Days of Grace (fabulous vintage clothes shop in Budleigh Salterton), who told me about the Mermaid of Nately Scures in her native Hampshire:

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: