When I was studying, I used to get a part time job in the post office and loved it. I worked in the sorting office when the parcels and cards had proper addresses, not just codes. Sometimes a parcel came through that was a bit ragged. The regulars would take time to patch it up, make sure the address was clear and send it on. I had one parcel with an odd address for somewhere in the Highlands on it and showed it to the regular. He laughed and said, 'That's from the kirk minister who used to be in that village but he gets the address wrong every year.' He changed the address and sent it on. It was little things like that that made Christmas in the Post Office so special. www.sullatoberdalton.com/books

So many of the old country villages have become dormitories for people who work in nearby cities  and it is the retired residents who create a community, often people who have moved to be near children or just to downsize into something that allows them to live without the stress of a large property. They have time to smile and bid each other good morning. They have provided places like libraries and charities with volunteers and are re-establishing a strong community spirit. You have to be ready to accept amateur dramatics and talks by people whose qualification for speaking is a belief other people want to see their holiday snaps. The main attraction at these lectures is often a chat with friends and a tea and cake. Like being held up by a tractor, that's the country.http://www.amazon.co.uk/Colonels-Ducks-Oakhaven-Best-Plans-ebook/dp/B00XPHOMAE/ref=sr_1_6?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1452518897&sr=1-6

I sometimes watch these Escape to the Country programmes, where people want to change their lifestyle from an urban environment to slow and easy country living. Maybe they should read Welcome to Oakhaven first and find out how country people are comfortable living together. It's not just nice walks and fresh air, it's involvement in the community. It's not being on holiday or slipping down to the pub for a quiet drink on a warm summer evening, but being prepared to contribute to community life. It's allowing people to take an interest in your affairs and sharing in theirs. In other words, Welc

ome to Oakhaven!

I'm asked where I get characters. They are all around, they sit beside you on the bus, they stand next to you at the checkout, or apologise for getting in the way in the street but I like to know a lot more abo

ut my characters. What is Mrs Boniface's house like, for instance. She never eats in the kitchen and sets her table properly. Her front room has a glass fronted display cabinet with her good china displayed in it. There is a table at the window with two brass candlesticks and a small posy in the middle. A photograph of her husband, who left her well provided for, oh, very well provided for, indeed, stands on a small desk she still writes letter at. The picture was taken during WW2 and her husband is in uniform. He was in  the Pay Corps and that's where he learned to handle money, some unkind people say he handled some of into ... Well, least said soonest mended.

While the colonel hadn't done anything about his dream of a rest and recuperation house for servicemen in Welcome to Oakhaven, in the sequel, he has been prevailed upon to apply for planning permission. Simple enough? For a start, Planning Committees can take their time and sometimes there are wheels withing wheels and Mrs Boniface is concerned about the kind of soldierthat will be sent to the village. One does have one's standards, after all! Then things run away with the colonel and he finds himself caring for ducks as well as the soldiers, hence the name The Colonel's Ducks at Oakhaven.http://www.amazon.co.uk/Colonels-Ducks-Oakhaven-Best-Plans-ebook/dp/B00XPHOMAE/ref=sr_1_6?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1452518897&sr=1-6

One of the things about village life used to be that people shared their worries and joys so that sympathy and rejoicing were shared and Post Traumatic Stress generally avoided. Nevertheless, it has been said that it is the newcomers who make a village a community. I tried to use this in writing about Oakhaven. For example, Elaine Jackson had adjusted to her husband's death before she arrived in Oakhaven but her relationship with the Colonel and Mrs Boniface's annoyance over their friendship was another matter. As people took sides, the community matured.www.sullatoberdalton.com/books/welcome-oakhaven

I worked as a Mining Engineer and, in that industry, everyone comes to terms with people being killed and maimed but I've always felt it was much different for people from the army, navy or airforce. We teach them to fight, then expect them to slot back into civilian life and be tolerant of all kinds of opposing views. It can't be easy, I remember chaps from WW2 and Korea whose personalities had been changed beyond recognition and, in writing the two Oakhaven books, I wanted to remind people that these men and women need understanding and help to adjust to a system that bans the death penalty and torture. I have always felt that in the country among country people was the best environment to allow them to readjust and rebuild relationships with their families. The colonel may not have done much about it in the first volume but he has made a start in the second. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Colonels-Ducks-Oakhaven-Best-Plans-ebook/dp/B00XPHOMAE/ref=sr_1_6?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1452518897&sr=1-6

When Elaine Jackson side stepped Mrs Bonifaces attempts to get her to tell her the details of her past, Mrs Boniface smells a mystery. Being determined, Mrs Boniface plays detective and pursues her investigations with vigour and it looks as if her suspicions will be confirmed. That's part of life at Oakhaven!

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I've been asked several times how I chose Oakhaven as a village name - I felt it was an English village and there is nothing more English than an Oak tree. When I researched the rest of the name I found there were all kinds of places called Oaksomething, the only one not on the reference list was Oakhaven. I have since discovered Oakhaven is an ideal name for a rest home, or a esort, or fpr several different kinds of service. For me it is a good name around which top build Mrs Jackson's story. www.sullatoberdalton.com/books/welcome-oakhaven

I wrote Spook the gamekeeper into Welcome to Oakhaven because he is, or was, when I was a lad, part of the countryside. He is often depicted as an enemy of the gamekeeper but I found they tended to shared a real love of the country, the woods and the wildlife. Those old poachers didn't rape the countryside but took only what they could eat, or a few birds or fish for an old woman or someone needy. That's what I remember of the country village, how they helped each other.
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People say it's peaceful in a country village, nothing ever changes. For me it is in the city, things never change. In the country, every day is different, the trees change, the birds grow silent and after the daffodils come the crocus and then all the border flowers. Maybe that's why I find it easy to write about country people, They adapt easily to the seasons and always seem more interesting than townies hurrying to beat rush hour through the same buildings in the same streets.

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When we moved to Aberdeen, people told us the people were like the granite, hard to chip. My wife's vivacious personality soon overcame that. Her outgoing personality was infectious and from a rather sombre dull laddie I became a bit of an extrovert. I had to,there a flow of relatives came to 'make sure she was all right'. She was a town girl after all and was now in the depths of the country, going for walks  and getting involved with the Brownies and community gala day floats.  
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What I enjoyed about writing Welcome to Oakhaven was that the characters just came along as the story developed. I didn't have to plan a protagonist or an antagonist, heroine and anti-heroine, as I prefer, they just belonged in the village. It makes the planning of a story so much easier and I've tried in later books to have the same experience with some success. I'd hate to write detective novels where one must have all kinds of obscure plots and clues, I'd need a chart as big as a living room.http://www.amazon.co.uk/Welcome-Oakhaven-Mrs-Jackson-Settles-ebook/dp/B00LUNMD24/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406736695&sr=1-1&keywords=sullatober+dalton

While I have had many complements from readers from Cape Town to Scotland about Welcome to Oakhaven, there are inevitably, those who would like Mrs Jackson to have a warmer, even hotter, relationship with the colonel, or feel there should be this, or shouldn't be that. I wrote it to entertain my wife. She approved and, while I welcome advice for future sequels I will leave Welcome as it is in her memory.
Sullatober Dalton

Moral limits, village life, community life, Canada, Africa, Australia, dreamy country villages,  I've been asked how I came to include Mrs Boniface in Welcome to Oakhaven. I had always been fascinated by people like Mrs Boniface, people who maintain the morals and general intellectual level of a community. People complain about them, laugh at them, even ridicule them, but they are part of the fabric of a living village community. They are, in a way, the limit of the village's tolerance, the limit to which a person can go in trying to dominate others. The rest of the community understand they must stop short of that limit if they wish to be included. It's like a town drunk, nobody challenges for the job, he sets the limit. There are other examples, even in corporate offices and undertakings, I've seen them in Canada, in Africa, in Australia and even in dreamy country villages in Britain.

I was raised in a small village and have moved about and lived in twenty five small communities full of the kind of fascinating characters that appear in Welcome.
Sullatober Dalton