"* Did the girls make plasticine figures? [jp]
Jackson maintains that Juliet made plasticine models and these were displayed on the mantle at Ilam, according to several eye witnesses. It isn't at all clear that the girls made the plasticine figures of their characters; this may have been a clever and effective artistic device used by Jackson to bring the girls' imaginations to life for the audience. Anne Perry (Juliet Hulme) denies that she made plasticine figures as part of role-playing games."

MY HOLIDAY HOBBY
During the holidays my main hobby was modelling horses out of plasticine. So far I have only made herds of wild horses. I never make New Forest, Exmoor, Dartmoor, Welsh Mountain, Fell or Highland ponies as most of these have thick hair that is hard to model as it only makes the ponies look fat.
In most herds I have made there has only been one stallion. I usually have him black, white, red roan, or pinto, as I make a study of a real horse or one out of a book.
This time there will be about thirteen mares, fourteen foals (I like to have one set of twins), three or four fillies, three or four colts. five or six yearlings and perhaps a stray riding gelding that may have joined the herd.
Nearly always I make the stallion first, as then it is easier to get the others in correct proportion.
The most predominant colour depends on the colour of the stal lion and that of his dam and sire.
This time I have a black stallion and the predominant colours are black, chestnut, white, and roan. There are a few piebalds, greys. bays and palaminoes. Grey foals are rare because they are usually born piebald or skewbald. As the stallion is black there are a fair number of black foals.
I have them all on a green shelf in my bedroom. On the shelf is a hill with an imitation clay bank on one side.
When making them I start at the poll, go down to the nose, do the ears, down the neck, along the back, then back to the chest and along the stomach; after that the rump and legs; last of all the forelock, mane, tail, nostrils and sometimes a poverty mark.
Before this one I have had about six herds. My first stallion was white (taken from "Thunderhead"), the next was black (taken from "Black Velvet "). Then I read "Pinto the Mustang" and the next two were pinto, coppery red and white. This one is a black (taken from "Shetan"), which is Arabic for "the devil". He was a killer and a throwback to the ancient Arab horses.

She (Pauline) spent much of her time from early childhood in modelling either wood or plasticine. She showed talent and was encouraged by her family.

march 1953: Pauline was modelling a plasticine family based on their fictional characters and held a masked ball for them.
Her fictional family intruded into the diary with bewilderingly frequent and tangled escapades; there were bedroom scenes, highway robberies and often more than one violent death a day.

Juliet is a brilliant child. She can quote volumes of classical poetry, she is interested in classical music, she did clay modelling, and her embroidery is amazing.

They planned a masked ball for the plasticine characters they created.

... and in her diary Pauline wrote of making "puppets of clay", obviously to gain a satisfaction she could not quite find in manipulating the impalpable puppets of her imagination.

Herbert introduced her to craft-modelling in wood and plasticine. What started as a distraction rapidly became a passion.

My crush on death

Some deaths were real (apparently)
but most were in detective books.
People died in libraries
and shearing sheds and country clubs
in beds and baths and bell towers.
Agatha and Dorothy and Ngaio spun
their dainty tales of death.

Murder was a puzzle, amusing till the day
they sat me down for a chat so weird
that the air got squashed
and I didn’t know whether to faint or sob
and the blood sank into my feet.
I was fourteen when I found
that a real life murder isn’t fun
and it isn’t a puzzle.
For everyone knows who done it
and murderers can be girls
fresh out of your own classroom
girls you tried to be nice to
but in your heart you do not like.

That’s when I learned that murder hurts
everyone, even the public
who go feral with theories and fear
even the murderers who had been
so vain about their work
and I learned that every teenage girl
must be prised away, sliced away
from her best friend
in case they go all lesbian
and kill their mothers too.

That’s when I learned to feel guilty
for not seeing what was obvious
for only writing twice to Juliet in jail
guilty for not saving her, guilty for retreating
when our mothers tried to make us friends
guilty for not liking her plasticene horses
guilty for not feeling as guilty as I should
because it was all my fault.

That’s when I learned that life
is not a book. And that was how
I lost my crush on death.

Two wise women
set me free at fifty.
Only then was I allowed
to talk and talk and talk and talk
and weep.

~ Rachel McAlpine (How To Be Old, Cuba Press 2020)