A hurdy-gurdy features big time in Meld, the second book of the Doomed? series. The one pictured above is quite a historic instrument with its wooden keys stretching the six strings. Two strings either side of the bridge — I’m tempted to call it the superstructure it is so imposing — and two strings across the top. The wooden wheel at the right-hand-side acts as a bow, and strokes the strings, leading to the hurdy-gurdy also to be called a ‘wheel violin’.

Those of you into gleaning will feel right at home on this blog.

I’ve been writing this series for a such long time that when I googled hurdy-gurdies just now — to find the owner of the above pic — a website promoting its business of making hurdy-gurdies also came to the fore, http://www.altarwind.com

In Meld, the hurdy-gurdy is a hollowed-out electronic ‘modern’ (2150 +/- AD) version with the deeper box that will accommodate the rolled-up bane.

According to my trusty thesaurus, a bane is a ‘scourge, plague, curse, blight, pest, nuisance, headache, nightmare, trial, hardship, cross to bear, burden, thorn in one’s flesh/side, bitter pill, affliction, trouble, misery, woe, tribulation, misfortune, pain.’

The bane under consideration is all those, and more, to the much put-upon hero of the series. It’s possible to get started reading that series with Doomed? Book 1: Mongrel available now as an ebook, and in the not-too-distant future as POD paperback.