The Trespasser's Companion

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A certain line is snort-out-loud funny because you know the characters so well; you can just picture Detective Conway delivering it. Another scene is creepy because French has built the story up to that moment so well. And I can't quote the whole book to you... so I guess you'll just have to read it! Half of British Kids Can’t Tell You What Plant This Is’, Sky News< https://news.sky.com/story/british-kids-cant-identify-a-conker-or-a-bumblebee-11784960> [accessed 7 November 2022] And that her death won’t stay in its neat by-numbers box. Other detectives are trying to push Antoinette and Steve into arresting Aislinn’s boyfriend, fast. There’s a shadowy figure at the end of Antoinetteʼs road. Aislinnʼs friend is hinting that she knew Aislinn was in danger. And everything they find out about Aislinn takes her further from the glossy, passive doll she seemed to be. This book is about the consequences of manipulating other people's lives by creating scripts for them to live through and getting caught up in stories we create for ourselves. Even Conway, who despises people who live in a fantasy world, has conjured up stories of her own and tries to uphold a certain image. The Trespasser is an interesting story from beginning to end with fascinating characters. It's detailed in a way that made me feel like part of the squad and like I was invested in the outcome. I regret putting off this series for so long, but I'm so happy I have five more of these to read!

If that weren’t frustrating enough, they are also hounded by dirty journalist who will stop at nothing to get the lowdown on their case. When she was a child, Antoinette Conway’s mother told her that her father was an Egyptian Prince, a medical student from Saudi Arabia, a Brazilian guitarist. Her mother never told her the truth, and Antoinette grew up and stopped believing in stories. However, what she doesn’t realize is that she turned the idea of being a Detective on the Murder Squad into a fantasy. From our origins around a little kitchen table three years ago, we've grown to include tens of thousands of supporters. We've made huge progress in taking the Right to Roam across the country and right up to the doors of parliament. The thing about daydreams is that they don’t last. One brush up against reality, and that’s the end of them. To quote the late Labour MP, Jo Cox, I suspect we have more in common than which divides us, and I would have liked to see this book speak to a wider audience. Unlike its predecessor ‘The Book of Trespass’, which goes more deeply into the history of land ownership in England, this is a book specifically designed to turn thought into action to bring about change. The message is too important – and the power of the landowners too great – to miss out on any potential support.

What-if-maybe crap is for weak people. It belongs to the ones who don't have the strength to make actual situations go their way, so they have to hide away in daydreams where they can play at controlling what comes next. And that makes them even weaker. Op.cit., p. 270. Elsewhere Hayes uses more qualified language, but also says towards the end of the book “92 per cent of English land is out of bounds to the public.” The Bloomsbury flier also states “We may be excluded from most of our land – no less than 92% of England…” I read this book slow...BECAUSE the DIALOGUE is juicy--REAL and engrossing!!! I didn't want to miss a thing!!! Antoinette Conway lives inside our heads starting with the prologue when she tells us about the stories her ma made up about her da. She never did get the truth about her absent father -- only "squirted Fairy liquid". Her birth certificate says Unknown. ..... Antoinette is driven and bright, but she also has a chip on her shoulder that may lead her to attribute motives to colleagues inappropriately. Certainly she has been hazed by older detectives, so she has some cause for paranoia, but not everyone wants her to fail. In this novel she is chosen along with Stephen, a man everyone likes, to handle a case that looks straightforward…and turns out anything but.

This book provides a stiffener of the sinews and a summoning up of the blood for those of us who are a bit conservative and fearful of upsetting people. It’s a manifesto for upsetting quite a lot of people, and tips for how to do it really well. It is, as you will have guessed, about whether it is fair for so many people to be excluded from so much land that is owned by others. The author thinks not, and the case is brilliantly, sometimes bluntly, often wittily, and always passionately made here.Regarding the impact of mountain biking, yes, we have some, but there’s no evidence to suggest we are any worse than other users of the countryside. You’re basically rolling around the hills on a pair of soft rubber cushions, not chewing through them like an open-cast mining machine. I did English at university and then I did art foundation. But I realised what you need is time. And doing an art degree is a very expense way of buying yourself time. Moral time as well — so it feels ok to be spending time doing this. So my real art degree was not at college. After my first graphic novel came out I gave myself three years to move from just doing communication in the charity sector to establishing myself in some way as an artist. I gave myself the length of time for a uni course. And after those three years I was still incredibly poor but I had sort of developed a style. I knew I was heading somewhere with it. GREAT police procedural -- TERRIFIC DIALOGUE and INTERROGATION...JUST ENOUGH SUSPENSE TO KEEP OUR INTEREST. The side themes are good too! I must thank one of my dearest friends, Kris, for "persuading" me to read this enjoyable book. Without Kris, I would have not experienced this gifted author. There’s a whole load of people out there on all sides of the political spectrum who just accept English and Welsh access law for what it is – they want to preserve the countryside, they see access as part of that, and the idea that it upholds vested interests and contributes to social inequality isn’t really on their radar. If you go along to a rights of way or parish council meeting, you’ll meet loads of people like this – folk who are often dissatisfied with their access to the countryside, but view the current system as a necessary evil.

We began our rural living experiment in 2015, permitted by the local planning authority to live in our woodland while a disused structure was being converted into our new home. That project has stalled, and we now find ourselves living off-grid while restoring our wood and caring for a range of rescue animals. We would like to stay, but two main external politico-economic forces – which we never for a moment envisaged when we first moved here – one of which concerns the proposals contained in Hayes’s book – may well drive us away. Hayes believes people are entitled to enter land owned by other people as their wellbeing depends on it, and because it is a legal fiction that strangers walking on such privately owned land is harmful to its owner 3 (actually, it is, but I’ll come to that later). We, however, dread the thought of people entering our sheep field, camping, lighting fires, burying their poo with trowels, 4 and it enrages me to think people would do the same in woodland, when we expressly refrain from entering over 90 per cent of our wood.

The other interesting point was what happens when you get in to a “confrontation” with other trail user groups. English lads were explaining how they’d discuss the situation with the other party etc. The Trespasser is so well plotted, the characters are memorable, the atmosphere is creepy when it suits, there's a lingering melancholy after the book ends, and I literally laughed out loud several times. What more could I want?

A practice-led collaboration with dancer and movement professional Dr Sharon Smith forms a live iteration of the experience, an improvised movement piece for an invited audience. Now is the time to return to one of Hayes’s early premises, that “trespass is harmful to the landowner,” and as such is a ‘legal fiction.’ 57 It depends upon who is considered to be the owner. If people were to trespass on what is legally my land, it would cause me harm, emotionally, psychologically, to the extent I would have to move away, but not for the reasons most would assume. It is because, no doubt arguably in an also fictional manner – but with a fundamentally practical outcome – I have given my land to someone else, and the harm done to them by trespass is easily demonstrable. Hayes evidences this himself. 58 You know, I actually have very little author loyalty. By that I mean I can easily dislike a book by an author I have previously loved, and vice versa - a second or third chance can lead to a new favourite. But at this point, I feel completely safe going into Tana French's novels. I settle down to read them with such faith in the author because she is so consistently good. For me, I don't have to wonder whether this one will be good, or that one will be good, because the author just is that good. Christophers, Brett, The New Enclosures - The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain, 2nd edn (London, Brooklyn, NY: Verso Books, 2019), p. 384, The British LibraryBeing on the Murder Squad is nothing like Detective Antoinette Conway dreamed it would be. Her partner, Stephen Moran, is the only person who seems glad she’s there. The rest of her working life is a stream of thankless cases, vicious pranks, and harassment. Antoinette is savagely tough, but she’s getting close to the breaking point. I shall read this with interest as somebody who before CROW regularly trespassed on various grouse moors and I’ve always ” trespassed ” on farmland but never walked through the middle of crops when doing so. I’ve been threatened, ranted at, had the garden argument tossed at me vehemently, twice as a teen had loaded shotguns pointed at me. These I generally walk where I like without problem even taking our near blind trained sheepdog with me, our local farmers know he is safe with sheep and he is terrified of cattle. There is too much countryside especially along waterways and in woodland denied us much of it to “protect” fishing and pheasant shooting. Doctor Jon Moses: is not a doctor of phenomenology any more than I am a doctor of sociology; we both have PhD equivalents. There lots of famers that would encourage people to be on their land. But it is crucial that you do a few things: keep your dogs on leads when required, not drop litter, leave gates as you find them. These are really important. If we could guarantee these things then there are early indicators are the farming community would be supportive. Except that the case turns out to be more complicated than first thought. It’s more than your “bog-standard domestic”, a much-too-common “boy beats girl” story. Something smells rotten about the case, and the rot may just extend all the way to her own (much-hated) squad.