January beginnings: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,…" (Charles Dickens)

January:  This  month is named after Janus, the two-headed  Roman god who looks both ways, to the past and to the future.  So too do novelists, and I will mark each new month of 2019 not with famous first lines, but with  opening paragraphs, chosen almost randomly, from a wide range of authors.
Wishing you all a Happy New Year.

Spring Woodland,  Ivon Hitchen  © the artist's estate    Manchester City Art Gallery

"About a mile to the north of the village of Rapstone there was an area of mixed woodland and uncultivated chalk downs.  The woods included some beech, birch, field maple and yew.  The grassland, owing to the centuries of peace it had enjoyed from the depredations of farmers and builders, was rich in plant and insect life.  The violet hellebore and the bird's-nest orchid did well there and gentians and wild thyme proliferated. The Duke of Burgundy's fritillary and the Chalkhill blue butterflies were to be seen, as were the trapdoor spider, fallow and muntjac deer, badgers, foxes, adders and slow-worms.  At the foot of the hill there was a stream said to be haunted by two kingfishers, although their nesting place had never been found.

One afternoon in April a Volvo stopped on the road by the stream." 

So begins the battle for Rapstone Woods, between the Society for  Countryside,  Rural and Arboreal  Protection (SCRAP) and  the department for Housing, Ecological Affairs and Planning (HEAP), and the Minister, Leslie Titmuss MP. is caught in the crossfire.

Quotation from John Mortimer's 1998 comic novel, Titmuss Regained, part of his Paradise trilogy.

Billet doux

" 'I don't think you understand, ' Mrs Thripp smiled patiently.  'He hasn't spoken a word to me for three years.'
'Three  years ! Good god! How does he communicate?'  The instructing solicitor laid a number of little bits of paper on my desk.
'By means of notes.'

I then discovered that the man Thripp, who I was not in the least surprised to learn was a chartered accountant, used his matrimonial home as a sort of Post Office.  When he wished to communicate with his wife, he typed out brusque and business-like notes,  documents which threw a blinding light, in my opinion, on the man's character.

'To my so-called wife,' one note read, 'if you and your so-called son want to swim in hot water you can go to the Public Baths.  From your so-called husband.'  This was fixed, it seemed, to a padlocked geyser.  Another billet doux was found in the biscuit tin in the larder, 'To my so-called wife.  I have removed what you left of the assorted tea biscuits to the office for safe keeping.  Are you determined to eat me into bankruptcy? Your so-called husband, F. Thripp.'

I made two observations about this correspondence, one was that it revealed a depth of human misery which no reasonable woman would tolerate, and the other was that all the accountant Thripp's notes were written on an Italian portable, about ten years old.

'My husband's got an old Olivetti.  He can't really type,' Mrs Thripp told me.

Many years ago I scored a notable victory in the 'Great Brighton Benefit Club Forgery' case, and it was during those proceedings I acquired my vast knowledge of typewriters.  Having solved the question of the type, however, got me no nearer the heart of the mystery."

Rumpole and the Married Lady  John Mortimer