The power of a curse

Signs, salvation and saviours

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  • Published 20241105
  • ISBN: 978-1-923213-01-2
  • Extent: 196 pp
  • Paperback, ebook, PDF

IT WAS JANUARY 1995 when my father showed me how to lay a Gypsy curse. I had just published my first novel, Crazy Paving, and I happened to be spending a weekend at home in the East Midlands bungalow where I had been raised and where my parents still lived. On the Saturday morning, my father walked into the kitchen holding a newspaper and said, sympathetically but with an unmistakable hint of relish, ‘You’ve had your first bad review.’ He put it down in front of me.

There it was in The Times. ‘Playwright, critic, journalist, Louise Doughty is a woman of many talents…’ it began. I knew a ‘but’ was coming. The ‘but’ turned out to be the rest of the review.

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Slapton Sands

You’ll also find a Sherman tank overlooking the water. Stay with me.
Slapton Sands is not that easy to get to if you don’t have a car – the nearest railway station is Totnes, a three-hour train ride from London, and from there it’s a bus to Kingsbridge and another to the Sands. When you arrive, you’ll find that the beach is actually made of pebbles, but that’s not important right now.

You’ll also find a Sherman tank overlooking the water. Stay with me.

Slapton Sands is not that easy to get to if you don’t have a car – the nearest railway station is Totnes, a three-hour train ride from London, and from there it’s a bus to Kingsbridge and another to the Sands. When you arrive, you’ll find that the beach is actually made of pebbles, but that’s not important right now.

You’ll also find a Sherman tank overlooking the water. Stay with me.ON THE SOUTH coast of the United Kingdom, in the county of Devon, there’s a triangular sprawl of land that juts out into the English Channel. At its southern tip lies the wealthy sailing town of Salcombe, where a latte costs as much as it does in Shoreditch, and in peak season you’ll queue down the cobbled street for half an hour to get it. Approximately thirty miles up the coastline, there is one of Devon’s most deprived conurbations, Torquay, which sits at the heart of an area known without irony as ‘the English Riviera’. Halfway between the two is Slapton Sands.

Slapton Sands is not that easy to get to if you don’t have a car – the nearest railway station is Totnes, a three-hour train ride from London, and from there it’s a bus to Kingsbridge and another to the Sands. When you arrive, you’ll find that the beach is actually made of pebbles, but that’s not important right now.

You’ll also find a Sherman tank overlooking the water. Stay with me.

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Mustard seed

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