Mornington-By-Mere – (86) Light the Blue Touch Paper

 

Mornington-By-Mere is a small country village lying in the Finchbottom Vale nestled between the Ancient Dancingdean Forest and the rolling Pepperstock Hills.

It is a quaint picturesque village, a proper chocolate box picturesque idyll, with a Manor House, 12th Century Church, a Coaching Inn, Windmills, an Old Forge, a Schoolhouse, a River and a Mere.

But Mornington-By-Mere is not just a quaint chocolate box English Village it is the beating heart of the Finchbottom Vale and there were a number of cottages and small houses on the Purplemere road and Dulcets Lane which formed the part of Mornington Village known as Manorside and it was on that side of the village where Smithfield’s Farm was located where 26 year old Kathryn Smith lived and worked.

But on November the 5th she was not at the farm because on that night she was up at Mornington Field for the annual fireworks display.

 

When the show was over they skulked in the shadows until everyone else had left before they themselves, headed out through the gates.

It was dark in the lane and just ahead of them they could see there was a dog walker smoking a cigarette while some kind of Terrier snuffled in the grass.

The man took one last drag on it, making his face glow red and then he flicked it into the darkness and it span through the air like a Catherine wheel.

This, Norman Hargrave thought was quite appropriate as he and Kathryn had just been to a fireworks display up at Mornington Field and the smell of the gun powder was still thick in the damp night air.  

 

But despite the cold and damp of the night neither Norman nor Kathryn were in any particular hurry to get home.

So they walked slowly hand in hand as if they were teens on their very first date together, or even their first ever dates, a couple of virgin teens wanting their first date to last forever.

In fact they strolled as slowly as it was possible to go without actually standing still.

The reason for that was that they were not eager to return to their own homes.

So although they were in love like a couple of teenagers that wasn’t the reason they ambled so slowly in the cold damp night air because while their hearts were filled with love, their minds were full of fear at being discovered by their respective family’s, which was why the kept to the shadows until the time came for them to be able to walk openly in the sunshine.