Out of the Blue

I do love it when a new project infatuates me out of the blue...

Caturday

The 2nd Armada Ghost Book

Armada were quick to follow the success of The Armada Ghost Book with the publication of The 2nd Armada Ghost book the following year.

Christine Bernard retook the helm as the ghost story compiler, but her choices in this second volume suggest this book might have been a bit of a rush job. The clue to the kind of tales required for this book was surely in the title. But Bernard's collection of far-flung tales appears as though cribbed from a possible alternate venture, and hemmed within the Armada Ghost Book franchise as a quick cash-grab after the popularity of the first in the series.

Whether Bernard's selection really was a misunderstanding of her brief, or she was annoyed the change of book title had made her anthologising skills look questionable and so turned down the offer of the third book, the lack of ghosts within the pages of this second book in the franchise did not go unnoticed and a new editor took the helm of the series for the third Armada Ghost Book...

Gino D'Achille's 'running boy' motif artwork kept the franchise's visuals on point, with the cover art appearing to depict the lad racing from a ferocious bat borne from the fiery pits of hell itself. Only when the book is flipped over to read the advertising blurb does the reader realise the location is actually an ancient graveyard with subsiding tombstones, set beneath a stormy blood-coloured sunset.

Armada Ghost Books

With my Seth's Christmas Ghost Stories up-to-date (it turns out the book I am waiting for doesn't reach these shores until May), I decided to grow the odd few Armada Ghost Books I have into a real collection. 

I will share them as I add each next volume in the series to my shelves, but I wanted to use today's post for the very first book in the series, which by 1978 came in two editions.

With the plume of ghostly anthologies being published in the gloriously creative 1960s, it was hardly a surprise when, in 1967 Armada produced a children's version of the great and hugely popular Fontana and Pan ghost story collections:

Whilst the collection was aimed squarely at older children, their covers promised genuine eerie content and their intended audience lapped them up with relish.

The Armada Ghost Book's cover featured a young lad racing from a huge and terrifying spectral lady in white. The whole scene is beautifully illustrated by artist Gino D'Achille with a suitably crooked tree and a ragged fat crow completing the front image: 

The rear cover continues the scene and introduces more crows and an archetypal haunted house in a stage of creepy disrepair. A sole light shines from a window beneath its tall tower and suggests the boy, has awakened something he oughtn't have whilst investigating the decrepit property. 

It's a great cover, and, to ensure a prospective reader purchases the book whilst browsing its pages in a bookshop, the artist was commissioned to illustrate several of the stories contained in the volume.

The book contains 11 eclectic tales and was a huge success for Armada, spawning another 14 entries in the series before concluding in 1983.

To blend the book seamlessly with its sequels, it was republished with a fresh reworking of the original cover art and a new title in 1978:

The book's contents, however, remained identical:

Lophophora

I couldn't resist purchasing one of these these rare sacred cacti plants from the garden centre today 🙂

Explore Gower - Faery folklore on the Gower Peninsula

Pwscat proof-reading my book

I unexpectedly booked a day off work today, and spent it completing the update to my Explore Gower book - The Verry Volk ~Faery folklore on the Gower Peninsula:

A Day in the Garden

 Today felt like the end of an era as I continued work dismantling our no-longer-needed chicken run.

It felt good to spend some time outside in the open air again and see the signs all around me that the horrible winter has finally passed.

My Chalice Well sycamores are really starting to come into their own now. I grew these three trees from seeds collected from Glastonbury many moons ago now:

Happy Budhha continues to smile no matter what circumstances he finds himself in - a guide for us all:

I caught this earthy fella mid-snack as I lifted him to his feet again after he'd spent the last winter face down in the soil:

It really was an enchanting afternoon, well spent in the rare Welsh sunshine!