Years ago, DBA Lehane had a website of Short Short Stories, now defunct. I’m delighted to see it’s back at https://dailymicrofictions.com/
Mr Lehane often visited Wayfarer’s and over the years our exchange of comments is worthy of being disinterred from the sands of time, like this fellow:
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2008/01/03/norfolk-house-2/
It’s not often that I am drawn to seek out someone’s blog(s) because of the beauty of comments they have left elsewhere, but yours I have on the strength of comments you left on Living A Quotable Life. And I’m not disappointed either. I shall be returning, this is for sure.
08/01/03 at 7:10 am
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2008/01/02/norfolk-house-1/
Beautiful. Subtle. Powerful. Sad. Joyous. A wonderful piece of writing that quite simply left me sitting here in awe.
08/01/04 at 6:19 am
Let’s be honest – men only whine about colds more than women, simply because women have more practice at being ill!
08/01/05 at 2:04 pm
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2008/01/06/norfolk-house-4-vignettes/
“Deficits shouldn’t define us: they free up space for strengths.
What a wonderful and optimistic last line. Every writer should, at the very least, print out that quote and stick in near their keyboard.
I do enjoy the non linear structure of your memoirs. And the revisisting of certain incidents again is an interesting one. Time changes us and the way we look back at things and remember ebbs and flows with the passing
of time.
08/01/08 at 9:11 am
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2008/01/07/fog-on-the-solent-norfolk-house-5/
Intriguing for me in as much as I am also a keen photographer in addition to my love of story telling. I think the truth is some pictures can speak more than a thousand words, some words can say so much more than a whole series of pictures. The key, I believe, is to be able to identify the stronger. This is very appropriate to the life of a writer when deciding whether an *idea* is a short story, a poem, a novel, a screenplay, a stage play, etc, etc. We all know it very rarely works across all of these.
And to answer your subsequent question…the day *I* stop making up stories will be the day I draw my last breath I suspect.
08/01/08 at 9:18 am
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2008/02/03/cherrydown-1/
My parents were both huge Buddy Holly fans so I must admit to having a soft spot for the bespectacled Lubbock rock n roller. And It Just Doesn’t Matter Anymore was, and still is, my personal fave.
08/02/10 at 8:03 am
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2008/02/09/cherrydown-3/
When I was about 17 I bought a book on Astral Travelling and spent weeks trying to master the art so that I could visit girls’ bedrooms and watch them undress. Of course, I never succeeded and my attempts to do the latter by merely asking earned me a slapped face. Still, bizarrely, I wonder if this internet is a form of astral travelling. After all, I can watch girls undress in their bedrooms whilst my body remains firmly at home?
Again another wonderful memoir! And sorry for being a lousy blogger this past month or so!
08/02/10 at 8:12 am
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2008/02/23/the-snowdrop-garden/
I would humbly suggest you are a carpenter, bricklayer and builder of words too!
How fortunate we are able to sit back on our own virtual backfree bench and watch the wonder of your blog grow.
08/02/24 at 3:45 pm
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2008/05/01/free-as-a-bird/
Damn! I was going to say a contemporary and edgy Poe, and you beat me to it!
Sorry I’ve not been around for a while – lots has kept me from blogging of late!
08/05/03 at 8:28 pm
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2008/05/01/free-as-a-bird/
Damn! I wish I had let you say it first, Lehane, because I was thinking of you anyway & eagerly hoping you would drop by for this. & wondering what you, with your famous twists in the tail, would make of this ending.
I like your pic (logo, icon? what do you call it?)
08/05/03 at 8:44 pm
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2008/05/17/rainy-day/
I’ve always thought that Rickmansworth sounds like a jaded 70s prog rocker. I once worked for a short while in Watford (as one should only ever do) and my boss from Rickmansworth, so although I’m not aware of having ever been there I judge it by how I recall him, neither young nor old, artificial with pretensions that outdo its substance.
08/05/20 at 6:29 am
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/back-in-the-rain/
I can’t help seeing the irony in a post about life’s travels and the lonely traveller (good book concept, by the way!) – and here we all are lonely bloggers traversing a rather lonely wilderness that is the blogosphere. Funnily enough, my first tentative steps into the blogosphere (before I settled on Short Short Fiction) was with a blog I called The Accidental Web Tourist – in which as a lonely blogger I travelled the world wide web, randomly guided by that word of the day. In many ways, years later, the blogosphere can draw many parallels with the urbanisation of the Costa Del Sol!
08/05/27 at 7:46 am
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2008/06/11/accompaniment/
“To me, a library is a citadel of learning and literature, an open door to the past.”
And, more than likely, a portal to the future.
Wonder how many of the “I’s” were mind “I’s” as opposed to body “I’s” in the post?
08/06/11 at 9:00 am
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2008/09/24/toreador/
Me being a city boy I think I may have sprinted like Dwayne Chambers on happy pills had I encountered a field full of living, breathing quarter pounders! Give me an estate full of hoodies anyday of the week!
08/09/26 at 6:50 am
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2008/11/13/valley-reverie/
Lehane, don’t you wonder if there is a wish-granting angel, or a bottle-raised Genie, listening to your every utterance, oblivious to your figurative rhetorical expressions?
Give me an estate full of hoodies any day of the week!
“Yes, O Master! I shall choose the day, when you least expect it!”
08/09/27 at 3:26 am
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2008/11/13/valley-reverie/
The most powerful writing transports one to place too – and I was there, if not walking in your shoes, seeing with your words. Place matters to everything. We all long and need to be somewhere – whether it be standing still or travelling – and wherever that somewhere is it will influence our moods and emotions.
08/11/16 at 10:33 am
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2008/11/13/valley-reverie/
Lehane (do you mind me calling you by surname only, it makes you like a fellow-pupil at my boys-only schools a century or so ago?):
Yes that longing to be somewhere, or more accurately the acceptance of actually being somewhere – not a reference on a GPS map, but actually having two feet planted on the ground, or pacing the earth or the tarmac – that is what keeps us sane in the way that an animal is sane.
Or perhaps gets us sane, if the vibes and circs are right. For how can we live (truly, madly, deeply) without the embracing of our precise current environment? Can we really be content unless we are able to say that wherever we call home is the best place in the world to be? And is it not possible somehow by an heroic effort of embracing, to love that which surrounds and touches us? Effort is always involved, even if it comes automatically; for there is also a part of us which finds this whole world alien, as if we have dropped from a heavenly cloud, with vague memories of something so much better than this.
08/11/17 at 4:58 pm
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/back-home-in-blighty/
Good to see this Blog is still floating out there in the ether. Quite interesting to be reading this after the (non?)election and subsequent formation of a “government”.
You touch on a point within it that slightly irritated in the post-election analysis…and this notion that the country votes for local MPs and not a Prime Minister. I think this is a little naive. Yes technically this is correct, but I think most of us recognise that in general elections it’s not local issues that sway votes but national issues and who the prospective PM’s are. We only need to look at 1997 and the ongoing recognition of the “Blair Effect” on voters nationally.
10/05/13 at 10:31 am
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/back-home-in-blighty/
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/back-home-in-blighty/Good to see you back here, Lehane! And to have the opportunity to argue. I prefer being technically correct to following common misperception. What was the Blair effect on voters nationally? Speaking for myself it was not a nice effect, and it got worse.
10/05/16 at 3:48 pm
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2010/08/06/homing-instinct/
Been quite a while since I’ve inhabited the blogosphere and read in these here parts. Thoroughly enjoyed this post Vincent (meant in a genuinely non sycophantic way) and loved that last line, “to understand is to look through other eyes whilst still looking through your own eyes.” That’s definitely every writer!
10/08/12 at 3:50 pm
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2010/08/06/homing-instinct/
Thanks Lehane! I was delighted to see you are busy online and I loved your new story published here which you were too modest to publicise yourself.
A very satisfying read, and I hope our hero was a carrier of rabies, whilst remaining immune himself.
10/08/12 at 4:14 pm
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2010/09/18/the-secret-life-of-strangers/
Are you trying to do me out of a job Vincent? Would it also be sad to say that, through you, I’m kind of infatuated by this girl? Maybe on the way to falling in love with her. Perhaps it’s the notion of her studying Russian literature in Cambridge. The appeal of a Cold War femme fatale.
Oh, and you simply must allow me to use the line “an alchemic crucible for the momentary mingling of souls” at some point in the future. I’ll promise to get all my apostrophe’s in the right place!
ps The advertisement isn’t strictly true…I think there’s a beer in it somewhere for you!
10/09/26 at 3:10 pm
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2010/09/18/the-secret-life-of-strangers/
Listen Lehane, as that girl’s pimp I have to tell you it’ll cost more than a beer. She’s mine, do you hear? I keep her on a tight leash.
10/09/26 at 5:52 pm
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/making-a-start/
He quivered over the keyboard wondering how to begin his comment. Some writers prefer to open with an outpouring of context; others a shorter, sharper point at where the action starts. Hmmm. Where does one begin a comment? Frustrated, he pushed the computer away and went back to the newspaper. The Sun, page 2 politics. Now that’s how to convey complicated information in a short, precise opening!
10/10/05 at 8:34 am
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/pygmalion-galatea/
Infatuation…the very point at where fact and fiction merges.
10/10/05 at 8:37 am
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/pygmalion-galatea/
“Thou speakest wisely, Lehane, perhaps more than thou know’st,” spake Vincent, puffing sagaciously on his meerschaum, after a long silence in which loudest sounds were the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece, and the settling of a charred log into the ashes, sending up sparks and a new tongue of flame which momentarily lit up the rows of books all around them which had gone invisible in the gathering crepuscule as they waited for the butler to turn on the light and bring in a tray of whisky and soda.
10/10/05 at 9:17 am
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/making-a-start/
As the highest-paid writer (per word) in Hollywood, you can afford the short precise style, Lehane.
By the way, you have a namesake in Boston, Mass., who writes short stories in the noir style: Dennis Lehane. Or is he your elder brother? Jacob vs. Esau, Dave vs. Ed?
10/10/05 at 9:24 am
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/making-a-start/
Yes was certainly aware of Dennis Lehane and read a number of his books. He does look a little like my brother, but there is no direct family connection as far as I know.
Let me see if I can start with either Sun beginning at some point.
10/10/05 at 1:23 pm
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/making-a-start/
Lehane, with a common last name, some family resemblance and a common talent this sounds like a not so distant unknown cousin (or uncle)
10/10/05 at 1:33 pm
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2010/10/05/angels/
My favourite is butterscotch flavour, oh, hang on, we’re not talking about Angel Delight here? Ok, serious head on…I actually found this a fascinating conversation and a top notch post Vincent. I think I like to believe in the idea of angels, in the context of messengers as you set out, and I’ve certainly “experienced” making decisions as if guided from somewhere else. But the rational part of me just wonders if that’s just the vanity of humanity in not willing to accept that things are just random and chaotic and there’s not really anything guiding us? If I had the answers I’d be a very rich man, instead of the most highly paid hack, per word, in Tinsel Town. But this is all excellent food for thought…which kind of links nicely back to where I came in…
10/10/06 at 2:12 pm
https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2010/10/05/angels/
Lehane, we’re agreed, both about the butterscotch flavour and the vanity of humanity. For myself I think it appears chaotic and random most when I’m so way off track that I can’t listen to the guidance or follow it.
10/10/06 at 8:02 pm
a wayfarer’s notes 
Goodness! Did I really say all these things? Good to make your acquaintance again. It’s been far too long. Thanks for the promo!
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“DBA Lehane is a screen & fiction writer now residing beside the sea in North Somerset, UK. His short stories have been widely published online and in print. He likes his vodka neat.”
Are you English? I’ve always assumed you are American. A huge number of films are based in Buckinghamshire, especially the Chilterns. See this site bit.ly/3XDoWiU
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There’s a High Wycombe Monopoly game as well.
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