Hi everyone! Today I am so excited to welcome back author J.L. Merrow to Joyfully Jay! She is here today to talk to us about her newest release, Relief Valve, which I reviewed here this week and really enjoyed seeing Tom and Phil again! She is also chatting about the parish church that figures prominently in both stories, as well as offering up a great tour-wide giveaway. So please join me in giving her a big welcome!
More Tea, Vicar?
Hi, I’m JL Merrow. Thanks, Jay, for having me here as part of the Relief Valve blog tour. 😀
Today, I’d like to talk about the quintessential Englishness of the parish church and its incumbent.
Ah, the Church of England. What could be more, well, English?
Leaving aside the fact that its titular head, the Queen, is actually of mostly German stock, it’s hard to think of an institution that better encapsulates Englishness. Picture the stately, if crumbling, architecture, and the perennial Church Roof Fund, supported by church fetes in the summer, the last bastion of lavender bags, crocheted toys and corn dollies. Think of old ladies on the flower arranging rota, doddering sidesmen, and cups of milky tea in the chancel after the service.
As in Pressure Head, the church and its employees are heavily involved in the action of Relief Valve. In this latest book, we meet Tom’s older sister, Cherry—and her reverend fiancé, Gregory, who is a canon of St Leonard’s Cathedral. In Pressure Head, of course, we had the troubled Reverend “Merry” Lewis, who was wrestling with his sexuality.
There’s no denying a disproportionate number of gay men and women have always felt a draw to the church. Is it because they already feel set apart from the rest of the population? (Or, all right, for some of them at least, the allure of going to work in a frock?) But by the general public, and no matter whether he is married or not, the stereotypical English vicar (and in the stereotype, it’s always a he) is seen as rather sexless. A staple of early English sitcoms was the horror of saying something mildly smutty in front of the vicar. Presumably the brood of children filling up the Rectory was assumed to be the result of immaculate conception.
It’s probably all rather frustrating to a modern, forward-thinking C of E vicar.
I’ve never actually met one, but I’m confident they exist somewhere *g*.
Question: what do you see as particularly English? Cups of tea? Bowler hats? The Queen? Or something more esoteric?
JL Merrow is that rare beast, an English person who refuses to drink tea. She writes across genres, with a preference for contemporary gay romance, and is frequently accused of humour. Her novel Slam! won the 2013 Rainbow Award for Best LGBT Romantic Comedy.
She is a member of the UK GLBTQ Fiction Meet organising team.
Find JL Merrow online at: www.jlmerrow.com, on Twitter as @jlmerrow, and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/jl.merrow
If you dig up the past, be prepared to get dirty
It hasn’t been all smooth sailing since plumber Tom Paretski and P.I. Phil Morrison became connected at the heart, if not always at Tom’s dodgy hip. Neither of their families has been shy about voicing their disapproval, which hasn’t helped Tom’s uneasy relationship with his prickly older sister, Cherry.
But when Cherry is poisoned at her own engagement party, the horror of her near death has Tom’s head spinning with possible culprits. Is it her fiancé Gregory, a cathedral canon with an unfortunate manner and an alarming taste for taxidermy? Someone from her old writers’ circle, which she left after a row? Or could the attack be connected to her work as a barrister?
Phil is just as desperate to solve the case before someone ends up dead—and he fears it could be Tom. At least one of their suspects has a dark secret to hide, which makes Tom’s sixth sense for finding things like a target painted on his back…
Warning: Contains a strong, silent, macho PI; a cheeky, chirpy, cat-owning plumber; and a gag gift from beyond the grave that’ll put the cat firmly among the pigeons.
Now available in ebook: Samhain Publishing | Amazon.com |Amazon.co.uk
Giveaway
J.L. is offering a free signed paperback copy of 2013 Rainbow Award winning romantic comedy Slam! (she is happy to ship internationally) to a randomly chosen commenter on the tour, plus a $10 Amazon gift certificate!
She’ll be making the draw around teatime on Monday 7th April, GMT. Good luck! 😀
- By entering the giveaway, you’re confirming that you are at least 18 years old.
- Winners will be selected by random number. No purchase necessary to win. The number of eligible entries received determines the odds of winning.
- If you win, you must respond to my email within 48 hours or another winner may be chosen. Please make sure that your spam filter allows email from Joyfully Jay.
- Winners may be announced on the blog following the contest. By entering the contest you are agreeing to allow your name to be posted and promoted as the contest winner by Joyfully Jay.
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- Void where prohibited by law.
I think of the queen as being very British as well as tea time.
Ah, the CofE, God bless it, with its fudged solutions and wellmeaningness.
Polite queues. That’s really Brit.
Oh, yes, Charlie – queuing politely: so very British. As is, of course, seething and glaring silently at any cad who has the temerity to push in!
It’s funny – everyone thinks of afternoon tea as being so very British–even me–but in fact it’s not THAT different from continental Kaffee und Kuchen: you’re still having a hot drink with cake to stave off the hunger pangs between lunch and dinner. Although of course you don’t get cucumber sandwiches on the continent. Or scones with jam & clotted cream (yum!) 😉
And the Queen – that would be Elizabeth von Saxe-Coburg Gotha, right? As she would have been known, had Gramps not changed the family name due to a little unpleasantness with Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1917.
(Sorry – making fun of our monarch’s English credentials is a long-standing British tradition – cf Blackadder Goes Forth:
Darling: I’m as British as Queen Victoria.
Edmund: So your father’s German, you’re half German, and you married a German?) *g*
Dreary weather, gum boots, brollies, taxis’, fish and chips, then the afternoon tea, all of these are “English” to me.
Gawd, yes – you’re right about the weather! It’s been cold, grey and miserable here all day, with just the occasional flash of sunshine to tempt us outdoors in time for the sleet to start again.
I like not this weather. Bring me some other weather! 😉
Despite the fact that I drink (and am American), I find tea to be particularly British somehow. I despise coffee, so I have to resort to other warm beverages….
Heh, and I’m a Brit who hates tea and loves coffee! ;D
I really don’t know. Hmmm maybe drinking tea? But then I know a lot of people who drink tea. I just think of the accent I guess when I think of england “english”
Accents are funny things. There’s a huge variety of British accents, as there is of American accents, but you’d never mistake a British accent for an American one.
I’m sure someone somewhere must have made a study of all this!
I have a problem with identifying something as “particularly English ” because I hate generalisations! But, if I have to: crumpets – never some across them anywhere else. Muffins (the real thing, not fairy cakes). Marmite. Driving on the left (exported to a few lucky places). Cottage gardens. Church fêtes.
And – bell ringing!! Gary’s speciality. If he hasn’t read Dorothy L Sayers The Nine Tailors, he ought to do so now.
Oh, yes – I believe continental bellringing is quite different, isn’t it? At least, I think that’s what Ms Sayers said in The Nine Tailors, which tbh is my main source of info on the subject! 😉 I do love the Wimsey books, and his relationship with Bunter. Never quite warmed to Harriet Vane, though! 😉
Have to disagree with you there; I do like Harriet Vane! Although I agree that it is fun to rewrite Peter’s history with only Bunter as his other half…
Oh, the slash there must be out there somewhere!
I have half a mind to go and have a look for some. 😉
You don’t have to look far… AO3 gets you there. So I’m told!
Oh, the accents. Yes, there’s loads of varieties – but *happy sigh*
And the hedges along the roads. Went to England on holiday back in the nineties and was thoroughly bored driving through the countryside – the hedges along those VERY narrow roads were YARDS high. I much prefer to have a view (also, you can see someone coming your way!)
Were you in Devon? I remember driving in Devon, and it was like being in the maze at Hampton Court Palace! It’s not that bad everywhere, but yes, we do like our hedges. They’re very good for wildlife, you know. 🙂
What I love is going down a lane that’s bordered by trees on both sides that grow up and meet in the middle, so you’re travelling through an eerie tunnel of green. If it’s a holloway (sunken) lane, so much the better. 🙂
Fish & Chips…… we have a restaurant near my house that makes the best and if you get them to go they serve them in paper. I pour a quarter bottle of vinegar on mine. My husband thinks I’m nuts!
Thanks for the giveaway! jasdarts at hotmail dot com
Nobody else in my family likes vinegar, so when we get chips from the local chippy (to share, because what they call a “small” chips would feed a family of five for a week) I’m not allowed to have the guy put vinegar on them in the shop, I have to put my own vinegar on at home. IT ISN’T THE SAME! 🙁
And you’re welcome! 😀
For me, mods will always be quintessentially British. Sure, other countries have hipsters who can sing, but no other country could get the suits right, I guarantee it!
Oh, yes. The suits, the parkas, and most especially, the scooters!
I’m from the Isle of Wight, where there is a mod festival every year – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2402039/We-mods-Thousands-gather-worlds-largest-moped-festival-Isle-Wight.html
…although most of them tend to leave their suits at home for the weekend. 😉
Rainy weather and tea are probably two of the biggest. Accents, too, but that’s not necessarily just an English thing. 😛
Sadly, I’d have to agree with both rain and tea. >(
Oh, and summer hosepipe bans, which are a sick joke on the part of our water companies imposed every time the sun dares to shine for more than a day at a time!
I am an American who refuses to drink coffee.
And I’m a Brit who refuses to drink tea. Us rebels should unite and conquer the world! ;D
I feel like tea time, bowlers hats, and red mail boxes (er..post boxes) and red telephone booths are very English. I want top say accents too but it’s not just a British thing.
Oh, yes, bowler hats – although that’s been slightly undermined for me since learning (can’t remember where) that in fact the bowler was the hat of choice for men in the American West in the days of the cowboy.
But red pillar boxes, oh, yes. With the E II R on them for the Queen.
There was one in Cambridge that in my day, students persistently painted to look like a mushroom; I wonder if it’s still the same? 😀
A mushroom? LOL. That must have been a sight.
The British sense of humor. I like it. It’s different from an American’s although hard for me to pinpoint exactly what makes it different and why I like it better. Also the architecture. Cathedrals especially.
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Heh, yes – I do like British humour, unsurprisingly! Hmm, I’m not good at articulating the difference between Brit and American humour, either, but I think irony has a lot to do with it. But all humour is good – we all need a laugh, don’t we? 😀
I love a lot of Brit architecture too–when I was a student in Cambridge I spent much of the time cycling around staring at old buildings and thinking OMG I am SO LUCKY to be here–although I have a sneaking suspicion we borrowed much of it from our continental neighbours! 😉
Well, I was a foreigner living in England long ago… What I will always remember as so typical there is the weather conversations. You can spend hours talking to perfect strangers about the weather. It was fun. Also, if I have to think about something exclusively English is humour… they have this strange sense of what is funny that nobody else in the world seems to understand (though I must recognize that I love the Monty Python’s Flying Circus)
Oh, yes–the weather! You see, in Britland we hardly ever have either a proper summer OR a proper winter. Just a lot of greyish rainy sky with occasional patches of sunshine. We can’t really plan for outdoor events; all we can do is cross our fingers. And I do believe this might have a strong connection with our singular sense of humour! 😉
Thatch-roofed cottages. I know they also exist in European countries, but I still think of them as an English thing. And clotted cream. Steak and kidney pie.
Mmm, I love a thatched cottage. They just seem so cosy and reassuring. And clotted cream is the only kind of cream worth eating.
You can keep the steak and kidney pie, however. Kidneys? I mean, come on, I never liked the taste and that was BEFORE I found out what they do! 😉
I think of David Beckham as being very British & incredibly hot!!
LOL! I’d have to say he’s not exactly typical of the way British men look, though! 😉
tea and the Queen
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*nods* They’re a classic for a reason. 😉
Definitely the tea and fish & chips. They mention them so often in movies and tv shows.
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Heh, tea and fish’n’chips are a classic for a reason – I really am a bit of an oddity, as a Brit who doesn’t drink tea! Come to that, I don’t like fish, either.
*starts to wonder if she’s some kind of changeling* 😉
Fish and chips with salt and vinegar is distinctly English, as opposed to a deep fried haggis supper with salt and sauce (‘sos’) which sums up Scottishness for me (with a slight bias towards Edinburgh over Glasgow in general). Evidently I need to research Welsh, Irish and islander chip-based takeaway options more thoroughly (I’d say fast food options, but the Chatsworth Fish Bar in Chesterfield took their time cooking my fish and chips when I called in just before closing on Thursday night — it was well worth it, though).
Mmm, I’d go for the chips with salt and vinegar – you can keep the fish! 😉
I like haggis too, but I’ve never had it deep fried – srsly? O_o
Would Irish be scampi and chips? They’re supposed to be Dublin Bay prawns, aren’t they? One of the few types of seafood I do appreciate (ironically, given my fishy moniker *g*)
For me, tea is very English, but I’m also very partial to British accents.