I marvel at the efficiency of modern rail travel

I am making good time on my return journey from Halifax, a small town in the north country between Leeds and Glasgow. The speed of modern travel is breathtaking and I will almost certainly - weather allowing - be home by the day after tomorrow. I had decided to go to Halifax having learned that Mr Priestley had been nominated for the Calderdale Children's Book of the Year award.

Mr Priestley's book, Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror, has been nominated for several awards but so far, he has not managed to win one. Not one. This award proved to be no different. It is embarrassing to be connected to such a person and have my name associated with his rejected work, but there is nothing I can do it seems.

I stayed at the same hotel as Mr Priestley but of course he will not acknowledge me in public. He likes to maintain the fiction that he invented these tales and I am contractually obliged to play along. Franz and I ate in the hotel dining room and listened to Mr Priestley taking credit for the children's stories. Franz became very agitated.

Calm yourself, Franz, I said. The time will come. The time will most definitely come.

Oundle

I hear that Mr Priestley is off to Oundle School today. I knew a boy who boarded there many years ago. He told me a story that chilled me to the bone. It was a tale so terrible, so ghastly, that I can hardly bear to recall it even as I sit here in the security of my study at Pity's End, a cup of Earl Grey cradled in my lap.

This boy - Bernard Taylor was his name - told me that one evening he had been reading alone in the library when he had looked out of a nearby window (the library overlooked the churchyard apparently) and had been horrified to see -

But Franz has reminded me that I promised Bernard that I would not repeat that particular tale for fear of permanently upsetting the present young boarders at the school. Franz is quite correct. I did make that promise. Sadly.

I shall leave you to imagine what it was that Bernard saw. Suffice it to say that the poor boy had never fully recovered from the experience and was given to much involuntary twitching and whimpering.

The scrimshaw imp

I had collected scrimshaw work for many years before I ever came across poor Edward Salter's tale. Here are a few examples. These evocative engravings, carved into whale's teeth, once gave me an inordinate amount of pleasure. But I cannot now catch sight of one without immediately bringing to mind that grim story: a story Mr Priestley recounts in Tales of Terror from the Black Ship in a tale entitled The Scrimshaw Imp.

I do not count that sailor's scrimshaw tooth among my cursed possessions. There are some things too deep, even for a collection such as mine. No, that tooth is somewhere in the world. Like the Demon Bench End, it simply moves from host to host. At least you who have read the tales have been forewarned. Avoid these objects at all cost.

Franz says that they often turn up on eBay.

Whatever that is.

The old inn

This is a rather lovely old postcard of the Old Inn, the ancient tavern that is the setting for Tales of Terror from the Black Ship, Mr Priestley's most recent publication.

I visited this old place some years after this picture was taken - Mr Priestley makes an allusion to it at the end of the book. By that time the old place was vacant and on the verge of being ruinous. The storms in Cornwall are ferocious and the inn was in an exposed position, perched on a precipitous cliff face. It seemed only a matter of time before it tumbled over.

I was taken to see it by an old friend called Hugh who knew of my interest in the strange, in the uncanny. For the inn had a story to it: a story of two children called Ethan and Cathy, of a sailor called Thackeray, and of the legendary Black Ship. This story is bound up within a secret and it would spoil the book to tell you more.

Though, as I said, I was sure the Old Inn would in due course crumble and fall into the waves below, I am told it still stands though shunned and derelict.

I would give you the location, but I think we should leave well alone. Leave it to the birds and bats. Leave it to the beetles. Let it be.

Wedding bells

I am very honoured to be asked to attend the wedding of Miss Helen Szirtes and Mr Rich Horne tomorrow in that fine city, Norwich. Franz will accompany me as always and I can only hope that he does not disgrace himself as he did at the Cholmondeley wedding last year. I never thought to receive another invitation.

Weddings can be tedious affairs of course, though I am sure this one will be the talk of Norfolk society for many weeks to come. I was rather more meaning they can be tedious for children. I have memories myself - distant ones now of course - of such events: insufferably drawn-out affairs involving distant relations. Tight clothes and false smiles.

Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror has story set among the poor victims of such a wedding set in a large house. It is in actual fact young Victoria Harcourt's story as she has just pointed out to me. I am well aware of that, Victoria. There is no need to scream.

In the book, the story is called A Ghost Story. How does Mr Priestley keep coming up with these titles?

Some notes on the impertinance of illustrators

This is a still photograph from the moving picture Nosferatu, a rather diverting piece of work, directed by the esteemed German director F W Murnau, a reimagining of Mr Stoker's Dracula.

The children have pointed out to me that there seems to be some similarity between Mr Roberts' depiction of 'Uncle Montague' in Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror and Max Schreck in the role of the vampire. But I fail to see what this has to do with me.

Time and time again I have pointed out that I have not even met Mr Roberts and that he has simply chosen to make that allusion himself. It is not a drawing of me, I protest. Yet still the children taunt me, pointing at the illustration and then at me, laughing most horridly.

It is very hurtful.

Reflections on a fear of mirrors

Eisoptrophobia: a fear of mirrors. I have met many people over the years who have this fear. As one gets older, of course, a fear of mirrors is perhaps understandable. I think you know what I mean, ladies. And gentlemen.

This fear of mirrors seems to be a dread that the certainty of reflection will be subverted in some way; that the mirror will ad-lib, so to speak. There is a story in the Tales of Terror collection that addresses this fear, but I cannot tell you which it is without ruining the denouement.

The photograph above is from a favourite motion picture of mine called The Dead of Night. A mirror reflects not the room in which it hangs, but another room in another time and the scene of ghastly crime. The Dead of Night is an example of the 'portmanteau movie' - a collection of stories held together by another. Mr Priestley has 'borrowed' this device for his Tales of Terror books.

Let us be kind and call it an homage.