Charles Heath's writing blog

Here’s the thing...   Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.   I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.   But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.   Once again there's a new instalment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.   ... I had expected to find the rocks we were slowly and carefully chambering over to be smooth, worn down by the constant washing over by the waves. They were, to a certain extent, but there were places where the jagged edges were as sharp as a knife, and I had more than one cut on my hand. Even with the stiff breeze coming in off the water, it was still hot, laborious work and it took over an hour to reach the first part of Sandy Beach, a thin strip below the rock line, and soaring behind it, a rocky cliff face that would require rock climb training to scale, and then notwithstanding a lot of safety gear. It didn't surprise ...

Here’s the thing...   Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.   I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.   But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.   Once again there's a new instalment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.   ... With Nadia seeking gold at the beach at The Grove ... I was waiting to be picked up at the bus depot by Nadia, trying to keep out of the public eye, knowing very few people I knew would be there at that hour. It was early for me, not long after getting home from the night shift, with just enough time to change and get something to eat at the diner a block from the depot. Nadia didn't understand my obsession with anonymity, but being seen with her was just going to raise questions, and, if either my mother or Boggs found out, that would be two very interesting conversations. I just didn't need the aggravation. I was not su...

  Here’s the thing...   Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.   I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.   But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.   Once again there's a new instalment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.   ... Back at the newspaper archives ... Boggs didn't come home. His mother and I waited until way after dark, and when I raised the possibility that something might have happened to him, she didn't agree, nor did she look all that concerned. The fact he had experience in cave exploration and used to camping out with his father and later Uncle Rico and had told me he might not be back for a few days was not cause for concern. It didn't register that he might get into trouble considering the instability of some of the caves, nor the fact they have warning signs and or been boarded up to stop explorers. It bothered me. He ...

Here’s the thing...   Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.   I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.   But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.   Once again there's a new instalment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.   ... Where is Boggs ... It was getting to the point where I couldn’t remember the last time I saw Boggs. I’d dropped by his place and found his mother having a cup of coffee before heading off to her day job.  Boggs, she said, had gone off somewhere, these days he didn’t tell her what he was doing, and wouldn’t be back for an hour or so. But, seeing me, she stopped cleaning and invited me in for coffee, and a chat.  I knew it was going to be about what Boggs was doing, rather than what he was supposed to be doing, getting a job. “Ever since he found his father’s papers in a box in the attic, he’s ...

Here’s the thing...   Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.   I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.   But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.   Once again there's a new instalment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.   ... Ormiston from the library papers ... It was a question of what was I looking for.  It would be easy to say I wanted a piece of paper that definitively said where the treasure was or find a map that led straight to it. Instead, there was, in one box, a dozen journals filled with the ramblings of a madman. Searching for treasure had sent Ormiston senior mad.  For an hour, perhaps longer, I tried to decipher the spidery writing, and then gave up when it switched to German. I assembled the journals in order of his expeditions and found the first easy to follow because it was a time of excitement and expectation, tha...

Here’s the thing...   Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.   I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.   But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.   Once again there's a new instalment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.    ... The Ormiston story, and that of the thousand or so acres between the sea and the mountains now known as Patterson’s reach, but once called The Grove, began in 1865 when the original Henrich Ormiston arrived from Germany. Originally intending to go to Australia to grow grapes in South Australia, instead, his fate turned West to the Americas, and, eventually, this part of Florida.  He started out with the intention of growing grapes, but when that failed to materialise, he moved on to Oranges, hence the name, The Grove. He had married before leaving Germany and had two children, Marta and Gunt...

This is currently available at Amazon here :  http://amzn.to/2CqUBcz   I’d read about out of body experiences, and like everyone else, I thought it was nonsense.  Some people claimed to see themselves in the operating theatre, medical staff frantically trying to revive them, and being surrounded by white light. I was definitely looking down, but it wasn’t me I was looking at. It was two children, a boy and a girl, with their parents, in a park. The boy was Alan.  He was about six or seven.  The girl was Louise, and she was five years old.  She had long red hair and looked the image of her mother. I remember it now, it was Louise’s birthday and we went down to Bournemouth to visit our Grandmother, and it was the last time we were all together as a family. We were flying homemade kites our father had made for us, and after we lay there looking up at the sky, making animals out of the clouds.  I saw an elephant, Louise saw a giraffe. We were so ha...