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Just Write: Week 7, 10th March – part 2

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Week 7 of this term’s writing class pulled together a few of the themes from the last three or four weeks and focussed on one slightly larger exercise than usual. We all, without a huge amount of thought, came up with four potential characters – just name, age, and profession – which gave us a selection of about 30 to choose from. We picked two and then had to write three scenes – or, effectively, two scenes and a brief ending – with some direction.

First up was a scene in which the two characters are at either a wedding or funeral, second was the start of the overall story, and finally a few lines that suggested the ending of the story. We didn’t know about parts 2 and 3 before writing part 1 and, ultimately, we read back the work in chronological order (i.e. part 2 before part 1) rather than as written. I’ve reproduced here in the order it was written, however.

So I picked Joy, a 34 year old book shop owner, and Grace, a 21 year old student. This is what they got up to:

It was on occasions like this that Joy was given to rue her name. There was something toe curlingly embarrassing about introducing herself at a funeral:

“Hi, I’m Joy”.

There was no getting past it, no matter how sad she made her face, how remorseful her follow up words, there it was. “Joy”. On the least joyous occasion.

She was loitering near to the edge of the room, trying not to make eye contact with anyone, desperate to avoid an introduction. It was worse here – she’d barely known the guy, he just used to come into the shop pretty regularly. An avid comic reader she remembered. Thought it was graphic novels now she’d asked him once, you know “all grown up” she’d added with a smile. Apparently not. Comics, he’d declared, boldly reclaiming the word from her projections of childhood and the Beano and all that stuff. She’d barely known him but his wife had come to the shop, said it was his favourite place and asked her to come.

Just then she was startled away from her thoughts by a young woman entering the room just next to her. She’d somehow caught her foot on the small step on the way in and tumbled forwards, landing at Joy’s feet.

“God, are you alright ?” said Joy extending her hand, pulling the woman up.

“Yeah, yeah. How embarrassing !” said the woman.

“I’m…” Joy hesitated. “I’m Joy”. An apologetic smile.

“Thanks Joy, hi” said the woman, extending a hand. “I’m Grace.”

……

“No, no, no !” Grace exclaimed. “It just couldn’t happen.”

“It would !” retorted her uncle, turning back to the pile of comics on the table. “There’s precedent Grace.”

“Precedent ?” she snorted.

“Yeah ! There was that arc where the Marvel guys came in to the DC universe…”

“That was just money” she cut him off. “DC did it chasing sad old fan boys like you !” Her uncle cheerily winked at her. “Just money.”

“So you really don’t think Bruce Banner would team up with Bruce Wayne ?”

She rolled her eyes. She knew he was just teasing but they both loved these conversations, she wasn’t sure when they’d stumbled on a shared love of superheroes and the fantastic but it had kept them close now for a long time.

“Wayne’s a loner. Banner’s a loner. They work alone.” It was her final word. Almost her final word. “Besides, one argument and you’ve got the Hulk smashing up the Bat Cave and trashing all that hi tech gadgetry. Never gonna happen.”

Her uncle raised his hands in supplication, accepting defeat, and delighting in the act they’d created, each of them playing their part so well. Sometimes he thought it was all he had.

……

She found it tucked in his oldest pile of comics; she’d been leafing through, inhaling the dusty pages, remembering him. The pink piece of A4 fell out, a single name written in the middle under her birth date: Grace Jenkins.

The room flipped as she caught sight of her father’s name.

……

I enjoyed this exercise albeit I felt the results were a little mixed. I was pretty pleased with my first piece – okay the play on the character’s names is arguably a little trite but I thought it worked quite nicely. However, having made my characters meet in the funeral scene and, consequently, making it feel like the beginning of the story, I was then a little thrown by the instruction to make the second piece the actual start of the story. The outcome was that I pretty much jettisoned Joy altogether and it turned into Grace’s story and her, as it transpires, father (uncle). I didn’t intend that at the outset – it was making itself up as it went along.

Second scene works less well for me. I don’t know where the comic thing came from in the first scene and I kind of ran with it in the second. I’m not sure I’d stick with it if I was revisiting the piece overall. It was interesting though (to me) that I ended up with what was essentially a close father / daughter relationship that hints at some deep sadness to come – well, not really hints, he ends up dead. Fairly big hint. This is at the heart of the bigger story idea I have with the character of Emily from the last couple of weeks.

So, not an unmitigated disaster… but still not quite right in terms of the tone I’m looking for. Last week of term next week. Not long to get it right (fortunately there are more terms to come…).

Just Write: Week 7, 10th March – part 1

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Another snappy title… but I haven’t thought of anything pithy to replace it yet. Next term, next term. It’s hardly as if this site is optimised for search anyway…

Have divided week 7 of the writing class into two as there was a fair amount of writing. Part one then covers the homework from last time; writing trigger was simply “No”, he said. Again we were supposed to write early in the week and edit later. Again there was a reasonable amount of the former and relatively little of the latter. I did, however, find that what I’d written fitted together with something else that I had from a few months ago and both pieces spend some more time with Emily, whom we met a couple of posts ago. She’s in there somewhere although I’m still not sure she’s coming out quite the way she is in my head. Anyway, feedback and comments very welcome as this may – may – be part of a bigger piece eventually. Here ’tis:

“No”, he said. He always said no and she’d almost given up asking.

“Come on Wil, why can’t we just try it ? It’s only one song.”

“We don’t play country music Em. I don’t know how many times we have to go through this. It’s not what we’re about.”

“It’s not country Wil” she half heartedly protested. “I’d say it’s more Americana.”

“Americana ?” he sneered back. “That’s what you have at Starbucks isn’t it ?”. He grinned smugly at his own joke and, not for the first time in recent months, Emily wanted to slap him.

“So what are we about then ?” she said instead, pretending to ignore his ridiculous pun.

The smile vanished from Wil’s face immediately; there was nothing he took more seriously than the band. Emily couldn’t decide if he was more annoying when he was trying to be funny or when he was deadly serious.

“Suburban alienation” he declared solemnly.

Emily strongly suspected that the most suburban alienation he’d ever experienced had been when the guy in Tesco Express had taken one look at his fake ID and refused to sell him a bottle of Strongbow but she played along.

“Alienation ?”

“Yeah, alienation. In the suburbs.”

“The suburban bit is important ?” she enquired, tilting her head, bemused. He mistook it for a doe eyed expression of puzzlement and genuine interest.

“Oh god yeah. It’s like everyone in this town is sleeping, not really alive. I don’t belong here Em, I belong in the city but I’m trapped. That’s why I had to start the band, to try to wake everyone up from their sad and cosy lives.”

In ten minutes he would actually belong in double chemistry but Emily resisted the temptation to remind him.

“I’m not destined for Leighton Buzzard” he finished, moodily staring into the middle distance.

“That’s what I’m talking about.” Emily decided to try one last time. “Let’s do a Whiskeytown song. It’s about escape. They’re all about escape those songs…”

“Did The Clash sing country ?” he asked

“I guess not” she sighed. “But they did embrace a lot of styles…”

“We’re not doing it Em. MK Ultra will never be some hillbilly country hick band”.

…… 

“Play something !”

The shout came from someone at the bar, a regular maybe. The crowd were impatient now, sensing that the band perhaps weren’t about to usher in “a rock and roll liberation from comfortable suburban mediocrity” as the posters outside the pub proclaimed. Emily looked out at the audience and wasn’t convinced that they wanted liberating anyway; there were only five people there and she had a sense that the only mediocrity on offer was currently being served up by the band.

“Play something !” hissed a voice to her left. It was Wil, singer and guitarist in MK Ultra. The name had been his idea (“MK Ultra, like the FBI mind control experiments, like extreme Milton Keynes”) but he’d even got that wrong, she thought, it was the CIA not the FBI. The posters had been his idea too – emblazoned with “wake up Milton Keynes” across the top above a picture of Che Guevera, that suburban mediocrity quote running across the bottom. Emily remembered him picking them up from a local printers (“they need to look professional”) and then helping him add the band’s name by hand; he’d forgotten to include it.

Wil was crouched on his haunches trying to untangle a broken string from his guitar. They’d been half way through a cover of the Manics’ “If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next” which Wil had sarcastically dedicated to the educational establishment of the Greater Bucks area, before his top E string had snapped, bringing the song lurching to a halt.

“We can’t play anything” Emily hissed back. “What are we going to do with just bass and drums ?” She was the band’s reluctant bassist as Wil had insisted that she couldn’t play guitar and she had gone along with it, content to stay out of the spotlight. The five members of the audience had turned their attention back to the bar, a couple of them talking amongst themselves. One of them finished up his pint and began to pull on a coat.

“Come on Em, do something” muttered Wil, briefly looking up from his unsuccessful attempts to re-string. He looked desperate. Playing in Milton Keynes had been a big deal for him. Besides none of the pubs in Leighton Buzzard would let them play anymore.

“I only know country songs, remember ?”

Wil frowned but recognised that the tangle of guitar string that had now managed to wrap itself around his wrist was going to take a while to sort out.

“About escape, yeah ?”

“Yes”, she said, her heart suddenly accelerating. He gestured with his head towards his acoustic guitar propped up beside his amp.

“Just don’t introduce it, okay ?” he said. Then added, “or, if you do, then say it’s Americana.”

Just Write: Week 6, 3rd March

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It has just struck me, on week 6 of reporting back on my Monday night writing adventures, that perhaps the title of each of these posts is possibly not the most exciting hook…. Bit late now. Will look to rectify when I get to term 2.

This week’s class was broadly a build on the previous two in that it looked at characters, through the lens of archetypes, and dialogue. However, before we get into that here’s my homework from the previous week. With just “Yes”, she said as a trigger we were supposed to write a short piece early in the week and then return to it later in the week and edit. I found the former far easier than the latter – to the extent that I ended up writing two pieces. Voila:

The “fun” one (names changed to protect the innocent):

“Yes”, she said. 

“Ah… god, sorry. I didn’t realise”. So it did only open one way.

We looked at each other, me attempting an expression that wrapped up innocent ignorance, profuse apology, and a cautious smile to suggest that we-might-as-well-see-the-funny-side-eh ? I caught the look on her face, not so thinly veiled rage and exasperation, and rapidly dialed down my cautious smile. Aimed for even more apology. It was difficult to rein it in though and it was threatening to escalate from a cheerful smile into a mischievous smirk. All the more so as the torrential rain was now literally dripping off her face. Abruptly I realised I was standing there under an umbrella. This seemed somewhat un gallant in the circumstances, almost as if I was rubbing it in, and I half heartedly offered up its protective canopy to a now sodden Laura.

“Fucking hell”, she half sighed, half seethed. “I’ll have to go all the way round now”. I decided against asking her to mind the language in front of my daughter. Seemed churlish.

“Sorry Laura, I didn’t realise this gate only opened from the inside. I’m so sorry”.

“Well now you do” she said. “Of course it does, it’s a school gate. They generally don’t want people getting in”.

“I saw you running over…” I started before it occurred to me that this wasn’t likely to make things better. I paused but it was too late. She looked at me, an eyebrow raised in question. Quite a wet eyebrow.

“You saw me running ?”

“Er, yeah. I saw you running towards us, waving, but I couldn’t make out what you were calling…” It was the best I could manage.

“I think it was ‘hold the gate’” she said.

“Yes I suppose it probably was” I replied. “But I didn’t quite catch it and so I pulled the gate shut behind me.” Another unhelpful thought popped into my mind and before I could resist it I added, “It’s a school gate. You don’t want people getting in”.

With that, and perhaps now accepting that the back gate wasn’t going to open any time soon, she let out a final, exasperated noise – if the girls had been studying it phonetically it would probably have been “uurgghh” – and ran off back towards the front of the school.

“Katy’s mummy didn’t seem very happy daddy” said a small voice below me.

“No Nevie, she didn’t, did she ?”

“Was it because you shut the gate ?”

“I think so Nevie”

“And she got really wet ?”

“Yes Neve”

“She was absolutely soaking” she declared and after thinking for a moment she added, “And it was your fault really wasn’t it daddy ?”

I didn’t answer but instead turned my attention to getting us across the road to the car park and out of the downpour. As quickly as I could I strapped Neve into her seat, jumped into the front and pulled the car out onto the street. As we sat at the junction back on to the main road, waiting for a gap in the traffic so that we could make our way home, we both caught sight of Laura, now with Katy in tow, making their way back to to the car park. Katy, coat hood up, cheerfully waved at Neve. Laura, without coat, hood, or umbrella, did not.

“Daddy ? Would it be okay if Katy came round for a playdate soon ?”

“Let’s see Neve. Let’s see….”

……

The “sad” one (entirely fictional):

“Yes”, she said.

Later she realised she hadn’t really understood what she was saying yes to but everything had seemed to happen so quickly. Mum had asked her over and over:

“Are you sure you want to come ?”

She’d asked it gently at first but increasingly she’d pushed the question.

“Everyone will understand if you don’t. Are you sure Em ? Are you sure you’ll deal with it okay ?”

Later she realised that Mum had been looking for her own way out. Maybe she was trying to protect her or maybe she was trying to protect herself. Anything but face up to the reality.

“Of course I’ll be there Mum”. Quietly but firmly.

“It’s such a lot to deal with….” Her Mum held her gaze for a moment before looking back at the floor. In half a murmur adding: “You shouldn’t have to…”

Emily watched her mother, neither of them speaking for a few minutes. She noticed how tired she looked, eyes drawn, bags swelling beneath her lids. It struck her that her mum had looked like this for a while, not just since it had happened but before that as well. She just hadn’t noticed it before. It struck her that she hadn’t noticed anything. Tears rose in her eyes and fell silently down her cheeks at the realisation.

“Em ?”

Emily shook her head and closed her eyes, drawing her knees up to her chest and pulling herself into a ball. She shook her head to deny the tears but they fell anyway. The tighter she pulled on her legs, the smaller she tried to make herself, the more they fell; as if they were being squeezed forcibly from her.

“Em… Em….”

Her mother reached for her, wrapping her arms around her coiled frame. It was awkward at first, all there was to embrace were elbows and knees, sharp points of protection for the softly convulsing person within. Slowly though jagged bone gave way and her daughter allowed her to get close, returning the embrace, laying her sobbing head across her chest.

They sat like that until they both stopped crying. Emily’s mother gently took her daughter’s face between her hands and lifted her head up towards her own. Their foreheads nodded, touched and they rested there face to face.

“Your Dad…”

“Don’t Mum… Don’t…”

“Your Dad would have wanted you there Em, you know that ?”

Emily bit her lip and mutely nodded her assent.

“But it will be hard. It will be really hard. No one will blame you if you don’t think you can go. I won’t blame you.”

“I can’t believe… I can’t believe he’s gone”

Her Mum didn’t respond.

“I just can’t believe he’s gone Mum”

Later, when she’d learned all of it, she realised quite how difficult that moment must have been for her mother but understanding it didn’t make it any easier to forgive her. In that darkest moment she hadn’t realised that she wasn’t offered the truth and that the truth was darker still.

“Are you sure you want to come to the funeral, Em ?”

“Yes”, she said.

……

As mentioned earlier I found the editing (in so much as I did any) quite difficult. I have a load of notes for the second piece in particular which largely say things like “this bit needs work” or “change this bit”. I’m not entirely sure but I suspect that isn’t all that a decent editor does, is it ? Overall I was reasonably happy with both pieces. The tone in the first one is more natural for me and may form part of a series of (mis) adventures based around my six months off work whereas the second one was tougher. However, the second one is broadly a scene – or the beginnings of a scene – from a much longer idea for a story that I’ve had for a while. I hesitate to bandy the word novel around but it would be a story of that sort of length…

In that spirit the piece I ended up writing in the class, following some discussion about archetypes, was based on the same character as the homework – Emily, a teenager struggling to find herself following the death of her father, eventually finding expression through their shared love of country music (which, in itself, makes her something of an outsider in the UK). As luck would have it the archetype I picked out of a hat in the class was “troubled teenager” and the similarly randomly plucked situation for that archetype was “unexpectedly meeting someone whom they thought had died”. The result:

She turned the key in the lock and pushed open the door, reflexively looking at the matt for that day’s post. She barely had time to register that there was a neat pile of letters stacked on the table in the hall, not carelessly scattered across the floor, before she heard the sound.

Three chords softly strummed on an acoustic guitar, echoing up the hallway. Echoing out from the study: from Dad’s study. The same three chords rang in her ears as she walked cautiously towards the study door. It was that Tom Petty song he’d tried to teach her. F. F minor. C. Was that it ? Free falling. He’d loved it, said it was about him – something she’d never really understood until afterwards. Her friends had always teased her about it: “Got your cowboy hat Em ?”. She’d gone with it after a while and told herself that they were right. No one her age listened to that stuff; it was music for old men. Sad old men that left.

She pushed the door and stood in its frame and the playing stopped. A figure she knew, a face that she knew burned in her brain, looked up and smiled.

“Em…” he started.

“Dad ?” was all she managed before the room swam and she fell to the floor, that ghost was the last thing she saw before she fainted.

……

This was odd in the sense that, in the bigger story I have in my head, this scene doesn’t exist – he is definitely dead and definitely doesn’t come back. However, I was quite happy with it, particularly the internal dialogue bits towards the end which start to reveal a bit of Emily and what she’s been through. I may stay with her for a while, kinda irrespective of whether I think the scene is in my story or not, and see what she does…

The eagle eyed and musical amongst you will note that Tom Petty’s Free Fallin’ does not go F, F minor, C but I couldn’t remember what the chord instead of F minor was… and nor could Emily so it was okay ! That song was never really in my head in relation to this story either but popped in during the class. It’s not a perfect fit for the story I have in mind but works well enough if you squint a bit (dial up the i’m gonna leave this world for a while section)… As I’m good to you here it is in all its glory:

Just Write: Week 5, 24th February

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Writing classes resumed after a week’s absence for half term with a focus on dialogue. If nothing else in the past few days it has made me appreciate that the placement of the “” speech-mark on a Mac is one of the few things that’s less intuitive than the standard keyboard position above the 2 found on most laptops. I digress.

Homework had been something of a spying mission; to eavesdrop on some real life dialogue, transcribe it, and note down what struck you in terms of its flow and tone. In a triumph for technology over ethics I achieved this by using the voice recorder on my phone and picked apart a brief piece of conversation that I recorded and, I should add, subsequently deleted. I won’t transcribe it here: it’s not something that I’ve actually written and was done only for the purposes of listening to how people really talk.

A number of (I guess, obvious) things were striking to me. Firstly, the extent to which conversation just doesn’t follow any readily accepted written convention – it really isn’t a series of “turns” by its participants. People interject and interrupt, brief sub conversations start up and die, people get off track, come back to the point, lose it again. Secondly, quite a bit of it is pretty dull. Some of this might be as straightforward as people playing through a set of social conventions (“hello, how are you ?” etc.) and some of it might be just, you know, that all of us have our fair share of moments being dull. Every single sentence that comes out isn’t a pithy one liner worthy of Dorothy Parker or Clive James or <insert your own favourite wit here>. Finally, pace was quite interesting to me as the cadences of people’s speech change dependant on a variety of things, from what they’re talking about to how likely it is they think they’re about to be interrupted, to the emotion they’re trying to convey. That’s a tricky thing to capture within written dialogue itself – without clues that might come off as clunky (she said slowly…).

The exercise didn’t entirely disabuse me of the notion that I like quite stylised speech in books and films; I don’t necessarily want fictional people to talk like real people, I want real people to aspire to talk like fictional ones. I guess the important thing is to try to write dialogue that reveals character. This struck me more as I took on some additional, self administered homework and picked out some random pieces of dialogue from work that I admire – specifically Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” (if pushed, my favourite book), Armistead Maupin’s “Tales Of The City”, and Douglas Coupland’s “Generation X”. I’ve included the snippets as an appendix at the bottom of this piece – no copyright infringement intended and all that.

Whilst stylistically very different it was telling in all of them that, even taken out of context, you got some sense of the character that was speaking – it gave you something to go on whether it’s Michael’s faux melodrama, McMurphy’s glee and mischief, or the Gen X’ers self involvement (pot, kettle, black – I know but technically I am a Gen Xer). The voices are distinct.

The main exercise in the class wasn’t so far removed from my extra curricular work. We were given a randomly assigned line of dialogue from a book and had to work it in to our own free written (i.e. ten to fifteen minutes, whatever comes) piece, ideally with a focus on a conversation. It turned out that I knew the book that my line was from – still not sure whether this was a good or bad thing – and once that was in my head it was difficult not to reference it in some way. So, here it is, with apologies to a couple of old school friends whose names I shamelessly plundered in this piece:

“Three pints ? said Arthur”

“At lunchtime ?”

John sat bolt upright in the bed as he called back the line.

“Let’s not do that”.

“Why not hoopy froods ?” asked Dan.

“We did it last week, remember ?”

“Did we ?”

“Yeah, Willsy was passing that paper round in the back of Latin. Hobbo never suspected a thing.”

“How far’d it get ?” asked a now interested Dan.

“Vogon poetry I think. Definitely past the towels but then Jenkins cam in about that Maths thing for half term and I think he knew we were up to something.”

“God, Jenkins… There’s a guy that doesn’t know where his towel is.”

“What do you want to do then ?”

“Is this a cheese shop ?”

“No ! Not again” all of them said in unison.

“What have the Romans ever done for us ?”

“No, seriously, no Python.”

“Ever wonder why girls never talk to any of us ?”

“It’s a mystery my friend, a mystery….”

Looking at it now it didn’t quite do what I wanted – I had a fairly specific memory of some sort of school trip and a group of lads working their way through a Python recital. It’s in that spirit and some of that comes through but it needs a little more flesh to strictly qualify as prose I think. It’s pretty bare boned at the moment. I also appear to have misremembered the cheese shop sketch as I don’t think the words “is this a cheese shop” are actually in it. The fifteen year old me would have known that. The jump off quote (which I cheated a little by breaking into two lines) is from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy; a book which my friends and I did indeed used to quote at each other.

We also did a quick fire exercise with just the line “yes”, she said as a start point which we had to follow with one line to try to express a girl/woman in a variety of emotional states. This yielded the following (none of which I was particularly taken with):

“Yes” she said. “I wasn’t sure how we’d recognise each other, that’s why I mailed about the carnation.” (shy) 

“Yes” she said. “You’re the little brother, I’m the mummy and you have to pretend that you’ve been really really naughty” (bossy)

“Yes” she said. “It’s what he asked. Turn it off” (sad)

“Yes” she said. “I have had enough, we’re going home” (moody)

“Yes” she said. “He does do that but I won’t leave him” (stupid)

That exercise was a five minute thing at the end and I struggled with it. Of the five the bossy little girl was the only one that really came easily and that’s largely because I have a six year old daughter who, on occasion, does say things like that.

However, all in all, another enjoyable week and much to ponder.

……

It would be remiss of me to not mention that one of my fellow classmates has just co-authored a book that has just been published. It is a non fiction piece on the subject of assisted dying and, amongst other things, compiles some heart breaking personal testimonies on the subject.

It’s an emotive topic but, to my mind, the law in the UK as it stands is wrong on this and we should seek to help people choose the manner of their dying with compassion and dignity. I wish Lesley well with her book and ongoing campaign work.

There are more details here at Dignity In Dying and, for the book, at Assisted Dying: Who makes the final decision ?.

……

That promised appendix (and once again – this is not my work (I wish !) and it’s reproduced solely for reference)

Random snippet from Tales Of The City (Armistead Maupin):

She managed a grin. “That might be nice.”

“Try to control your ecstasy, will you ?”

“I might not be here, Michael.”

“Huh ?”

“I think I’m going home to Cleveland.”

Michael whistled. “That’s not close to death. That is death.”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense right now.”

“You mean” – he threw his napkin down – “I just wasted a whole chicken making friends with a transient ?” He stood up from the table, walked to the sofa, sat down and folded his arms. “Come over here. It’s time for a little girl talk!”

Random snippet from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (Ken Kesey):

“It’s your roll, Cheswick.”

“Hold it a minute before he rolls. What’s a man need to buy them hotels?”

“You need four houses on every lot of the same colour, Martini. Now let’s go, for Christsakes.”

“Hold it a minute.”

There’s a flurry of money from that side of the table, red and green and yellow bills blowing in every direction.

“You buying a hotel or you playing happy new year, for Christsakes ?”

“It’s your dirty roll, Cheswick.”

“Snake eyes! Hooeeee, Cheswicker, where does that put you ? That don’t put you on my Marvin Gardens by any chance ? that don’t mean you have to pay me, let’s see, three hundred and fifty dollars ?”

“Boogered.”

“What’s thum other things ? Hold it a minute. What’s thum other things all over the board ?”

“Martini, you been seeing them other things all over the board for two days. No wonder I’m losing my ass. McMurphy, I don’t see how you can concentrate with Martini sitting there hallucinating a mile a minute.”

“Cheswick, you never mind about Martini. He’s doing real good. You come on with that three fifty, and Martini will take care of himself; don’t we get rent from him every time one of his “things” lands on our property ?”

Random snippet from Generation X (Douglas Coupland):

The first chink of sun rises over the lavender mountain of Joshua, but the three of us are just a bit too cool for our own good; we can’t just let the moment happen. Dag must greet this flare with a question for us, a gloomy aubade: “What do you think of when you see the sun ? Quick. Before you think about it too much and kill your response. Be honest. Be gruesome. Claire, you go first.”

Claire understands the drift: “Well, Dag. I see a famer in Russia, and he’s driving a tractor in a wheat field, but the sunlight’s gone bad on him – like the fadedness of a black-and-white picture in an old Life magazine. And another strange phenomenon has happened, too: rather than sunbeams, the sun has begun to project the odour of old Life magazines instead, and the odour is killing his crops. The wheat is thinning as we speak. He’s slumped over the wheel of his tractor and he’s crying. His wheat is dying of history poisoning.”

“Good, Claire. Very weird. And Andy ? How about you ?”

“Let me think for a second.”

“Okay, I’ll go instead. When I think of the sun, I think of an Australian surf bunny, eighteen years old, maybe, somewhere on Bondi Beach, and discovering her first keratosis lesion on her shin. She’s screaming inside her brain and already plotting how she’s going to steal valiums from her mother. Now you tell me, Andy, what do you think of when you see the sun ?”

I refuse to participate in this awfulness. I refuse to put people in my vision. “I think of this place in Antarctica called Lake Vanda, where the rain hasn’t fallen in more than two million years.”

“Fair enough. That’s all ?”

“Yes, that’s all.”

Here is a sunrise… ain’t that enough ?

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26. Ain’t That Enough ? – Teenage Fanclub

“What will you do ?”. That was the most common question and, no doubt, “what did you do ?” will be its echo when I return. I took six months out from work, six months sabbatical, and the question was always the same: what ? Sometimes people would cautiously venture into      “why ?”, wary that they were poking at something evidently personal, but it was much less common. Generally the safe question was “what ?”.

My answer was almost always the same, a vague “spend some more time with the family”, and something about getting to know my daughter’s school better. Those things were true but, six months ago, I don’t think I genuinely knew exactly what I was going to do. My answer always seemed to engender a very slight sense of disappointment in whomever had asked the question. Only very slight but just discernible. As if the answer everyone wanted to hear was something that, on the face of it, seemed more exciting: I’m going to travel the world, I’m going to base jump off the Sears Tower, I’m going to swim with wild dolphins, I’m going to write a book. And whilst those things sound great (apart from the base jumping thing, never a good look with vertigo) and I would genuinely love to do at least one of them that was never what six months out was about for me.

Some people knew I wasn’t in a great place when I decided to take the time out: this will give you some time to think they would offer gently. That wasn’t what the time became about either. Time to think has never been something I’ve been short of: it’s how I’m wired. I take Descartes to heart. I think, therefore… What had steadily crept up on me though was the old cliché about the mind being a wonderful servant but a terrible master (some more eloquent thoughts on which can be found here from David Foster Wallace via the wonderful Brain Pickings). Six months off didn’t give me a chance to think – it gave me a chance not to.

So the answer to “what…” ended up being this:

Four days a week I walked my daughter to school. Every single time it was the best twenty minutes of my day. We walk exactly the same route but she finds something new every time we walk it: a patch of snowdrops, a skip in someone’s front garden, the moon visible in the morning sky. She talks, babbling excitedly, and I listen to all the small things that are important to her – who is friends with who, why Scooby and Shaggy always have to be the bait, what she is going to play at school that day. We pretend a lot. I spend a fair amount of time being Max, her imaginary little brother, or the owner of Biscuit, an imaginary cat (obviously she is Biscuit), or someone from Star Wars. We practice spelling and she indulges my game of weaving that week’s words into the conversation seemingly by accident – “look at those flowers, what a beautiful purple…. Oh, purple – that’s one of your words, how would you spell that…. ?”. She indulges it with a roll of the eyes but indulges it nonetheless. She asks me questions that veer from the simple to the profound – what happens when people die ? why does Anakin turn to the dark side ? – and I answer as best I can. That Anakin one is pretty tricky, there’s certainly not enough in Attack Of The Clones or Revenge Of The Sith that convinces as motivation. Then we arrive at school and I watch her skip happily into the playground with scarcely a backward glance.

I cooked for my wife every week. I’m no one’s idea of a cook but every Thursday I tried to create something from scratch (my definition of scratch is quite loose). Tray baked fish is my specialty which has everything to do with the fact that it involves throwing everything into one dish and putting it in the oven. Presented rustically is what it would probably say in the review. Dolloped might appear in the same sentence. The point of my culinary misadventures wasn’t really about being any good, it was about investing time and effort and thought into the person I value above all others, the person whose empathy and support effectively gave me the gift of six months off: my wife.

I cleaned the house. I did the ironing. Went to the supermarket. Did all of the mundane, ordinary things that needed doing. I enjoyed them, enjoyed the routine, found value in the tasks in contrast to the lack of value I had been finding in my paid work. I don’t doubt that some of it was novelty, that some of it would become dull in time, but I didn’t reach that point. I actually remember thinking as I was cleaning the toilet that it felt like a better use of my time than the previous few months at work had been and if that isn’t a sign that you need some time off then I don’t know what is.

I took my daughter to swimming every week, sitting in the over heated local baths and watching her plough up and down the pool. I took her to ballet, dropping her off and then retiring to a local café with my notebook whilst she and her peers stomped around and occasionally stood in first position (presumably to distinguish what they were doing as ballet rather than just running about and randomly leaping). I chatted with the mums (and dads – but it was mostly mums) and the nannies and felt like I became part of a new community of people.

I bought a bike and started cycling. I won’t be troubling Bradley Wiggins any time soon but it did enable me to discover, on one of my meandering rides, that there’s a llama farm in the town where I live. If I’d been minded to write a diary of my sabbatical months then “Llama Farmers Of Suburbia” would have been in the running for its title. “Zen And The Art of Llama Farming” perhaps. I also took up a pilates class and discovered another new community of people. Mostly a community of middle aged ladies who routinely put me to shame in the strength and flexibility stakes. Still, not only can I now see my toes but I can also touch them without displacing something in my spine. All that stuff about exercise being good for depression ? It’s all true.

And I wrote. I didn’t write a book but I did find a way to start. I wrote 40,000 words. Some of them were quite good words and sometimes they were either preceded or succeeded by other quite good words. Rarely, a sentence would emerge that wasn’t half bad and a couple of times I think I nailed a paragraph. I discovered a lot about writing in the last six months but chiefly I discovered that the important thing – for me – to do is just to do it. Irrespective of any aspirations I might have to write a novel or make a living from writing the most important thing is to do it. Turns out it’s a part of me, an outlet for expression that is as critical for my emotional health as getting enough fruit and veg is for my physical health. Initially I grappled with writing in a public space (like this blog) given that I wanted to deal with some issues personal to me but it turns out that’s important to me too. Comments, words of encouragement, some recognition, however small, have all been hugely important to me. And deeply appreciated. If you’ve ever taken the time out to read any of this then thank you: it’s a slightly astonishing thing to me and means a great deal.

One of my stock responses when asked about my sabbatical was to say something like: “I can’t afford a Porsche and a ponytail really wouldn’t suit me so I thought I’d better have some time off instead”. A jokey acknowledgement that all of this might look a bit like a mid life crisis manifest. It didn’t answer the question as to what I was going to do nor, indeed, why I was taking the time. It was a light hearted deflection. I didn’t have a plan for the six months and, now at the end of it, I don’t regret that; I have no sense of having “wasted” time. Quite the opposite in fact. What I did and why I did it ended up having the same answer and it turned out that my vague “spend some time with the family” that I reflexively settled on before the sabbatical was right.

Experience some time might be better phrased. Experience some time, be present in those moments and not lost inside myself, and appreciate the truly important things in my life. Of course there’s been a certain amount of taking stock and a regaining of perspective as well; I’ve had time to not think but me being me there’s inevitably been some thinking. I had lost sight of what mattered to me and some time has helped bring that back to focus; my family have helped guide me home, guide me back to myself.

This morning, on the walk to school, my daughter was beside herself with happiness at the first signs of Spring, birds singing, flowers budding, and the sun in the sky. It wasn’t the first time in recent months that I’ve found the irony in life chucking me another free metaphor (watching Disney’s Frozen at the cinema and having way too much empathy with the lead character’s emotional repression and resultant disaster was my personal favourite) and I’m sure there will be ups and downs to come – there are as many winters as there are springs after all. But those moments are enough. They might be all there is. You probably all knew that anyway, I’ve been a bit slow on the uptake. Teenage Fanclub had it right all along.

Just Write: Week 4, 10th February

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Session 4 of what is steadily becoming the highlight of my week was largely dedicated to idea generation, particularly with respect to potentially funny ideas. The homework from the previous week had been to write about something that had made you laugh and the class followed on from that.

I had actually found the homework pretty difficult. I just didn’t have a particularly funny week and, in turn, this made me reflect on all sorts of vaguely depressing things about how, actually, things just were less funny now than they used to be. Only I could turn homework that was designed to put a smile on your face and find a way for it to make me miserable. Lol. As I believe the young folk might say.

Anyway, I didn’t actually do the homework in time for the class as the piece I was going to write just wasn’t funny or didn’t strike me as in the spirit of what was asked for. I probably should have written it regardless. However, I have now found – hopefully – a happy balance between light and shade in something that did happen to me last week. I won’t outright claim that it’s “funny” as only you will be able to judge that for me. I quite like it though:

“You’re not going to make me look permanently surprised are you ?”

The hairdresser stared at me in the mirror quizzically. It had been a joke. She hadn’t got it. Maybe, to be fair to her, it wasn’t really a joke. 

I hadn’t given much thought to my eyebrows before but now, apparently, they were the main event. Cause for discussion. Cause for judicious pruning. It had started about six months ago on another visit to the hairdresser; finishing off my hair the woman that ran the place had casually asked if I wanted my eyebrows doing. Caught unawares I’d stammered some sort of refusal and left. Surely that had been some kind of mistake ?

Then it happened again the next time I was in and this time with a different hairdresser. Again I was caught off guard and refused but now I was concerned. Twice can’t be a mistake. Not with two different people. I inspected my eyebrows in the mirror at home with new found curiosity. What would constitute out of control eyebrows anyway ? I mean, they’re pretty big and bushy but not running amok across my forehead. Small children aren’t pointing and laughing in the streets. No one has given me a pair of tweezers as a subtle gift.

So this time I was ready for the question, was ready to engage in the world of eyebrow depilation. The sheet draped over my clothes, tucked in to my jumper like a giant napkin, was slowly covered with dustings of my hair. I was struck again by the changing proportions of dark to grey, black to white, like some elaborate game of chess played out on my head. The grey and white pieces are starting to win and black’s position looks lost without chemical assistance. The face staring back at me doesn’t look like one of those “Just For Men” faces. Not yet at least. For a start my eyebrows are evidently too big.

Daydreaming about the disconnect between the age I feel in my heart and the reality presented to me follicly I am thus, once again, caught out by the question:

“Do you want me to do your eyebrows ?”

I just catch myself before I blurt my standard demurral.

“What needs doing to them ?”

I ask it in the least defensive way I can. It still sounds pretty defensive.

“Just tidy them up – take off the long hairs”

She clearly thinks I’m mad. Which men of your age don’t have their eyebrows trimmed her reflected stare is screaming ? I mean, look at those furry monstrosities. So I surrender to it. I make a mental note to draw the line at getting one of those nose trimmers but accept that it’s only a matter of time before my ears need some attention.

“Okay… You’re not going to make me look permanently surprised are you ?”

She didn’t. Besides I spent most of the remaining day with my newly shorn brows furrowed in a frown anyway. Time – and facial hair it seems – waits for no man.

The idea generation in the class involved making two separate lists of nouns or proper nouns alongside each other – first things that came to mind – and then looking to combine any two of the randomly selected words and running with it. We had everything from the mundane – iron, table, paint – to the unusual – ventriloquist, taxidermist, leggy blonde (a running gag in the group) – and a variety of people and places – Gordon Brown, Mick Jagger, Tring. A whole host of others. From this it was surprising how easily you could end up with some potential jump off points for, at the least, vignettes. We had the ventriloquist in a steam room and there are some good possibilities there in voice throwing, face hidden. It got a bit out of hand when we put a bishop, the leggy blonde and Gordon Brown in with them…

After that we were given (in a similar vein) a character and a specific trait and had 10 minutes to write something. So here’s my obsessive compulsive driving instructor:

“Hands at ten to two please”

I adjusted my grip.

“No Mr Robson. Not 14.12. Ten to two please.”

Cautiously I moved my hands a fraction on the wheel and glanced across for approval. I was met with the sensation of my seatbelt catching me as the car ground to a halt. Hands reached over, moved mine a further half centimetre on the wheel. A pocket watch appeared in front of my eyes.

“See Mr Robson ?”

I looked at the watch face.

“Ten to two ?” I ventured.

“Ten to two”.

I checked my mirror and let out the clutch, ready to move on with the lesson.

“Why don’t we try the three point turn Mr Robson ?” asked the voice to my left. “Please turn the car around and line up with the kerb facing in the opposite direction.”

The road was narrow and, for fear of hitting the pavement, I clumsily turned the car around.

“A three point turn Mr Robson” sighed the voice. “Again please”.

I tried again.

“Three Mr Robson. Not multiples of three.”

“It’s too narrow… I don’t think the Highway Code is clear that it has to be three” I muttered.

“The code is not precise enough for me. Very well. At least align the vehicle with the kerb”.

I looked down out of the window. The car appeared straight.

“I don’t understand…”

“Align. Line up. Parallel. Please Mr Robson.”

Half heartedly I moved the car forwards, turning the wheel slightly, before stopping again. My instructive nemesis unsnapped his seatbelt and wordlessly left the car. I watched him in the offside mirror – he was pulling a tape measure from his suit pocket. He disappeared from view.

“Rear… 3.27 centimetres from kerb” he announced. I daren’t look as he moved up the side of the car. “Front… 3.39 centimetres”.

There was a deep sigh from somewhere down to my right and he then appeared at my window.

“Is that aligned Mr Robson ?”

“It’s very close…” I offered.

“The road is no respecter of very close Mr Robson”

And that was where I ran out of time and inspiration. In the class I didn’t really like it and I’d decided I didn’t really like it about half way in – I thought it was a one note idea and it ran out of steam pretty quickly. Also I couldn’t think of how to finish it. However, looking at it now – and reflecting on feedback in the class – there are elements that work okay. The perspective is quite interesting and there is something there of the atmosphere when you’re learning to drive so it’s not an unmitigated disaster. If I was going to finish it then I’d probably manufacture some accident that befalls the instructor, arising directly from his fastidiousness. Comedy gold.

Break for half term next week but, in the meantime, as ever, any thoughts or comments very welcome.

Just Write: Week 3, 3rd Feb – Part 2

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Much of week 3 in the writing class was taken up in listening back to everyone’s homework from week 2 – I wasn’t the only one that had taken the random poem trigger and run with it. My piece is the previous post – here.

I learned a lot through this exercise and ended up somewhere wholly unexpected. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima is a subject that has long fascinated and horrified me in equal measure; I’m currently reading Paul Ham’s non fiction book “Hiroshima Nagasaki” and am a long time admirer of Stephen Walker’s “Shockwave” and John Hersey’s “Hiroshima” (an extraordinary book). It’s not a subject I had ever anticipated writing about.

On day one I had an image and that was it. I had an idea of seeing one of the infamous bomb shadows reflected in water, and the idea of that water then being disturbed and the image disappearing. Some kind of play on the idea of permanence and transience I guess although I have post rationalised that: it came purely as an image. The first section deals with that image although looking at it now I would probably rewrite it as it doesn’t quite do what I set out to try and conjure. In that first paragraph I also needed someone to be looking at the image and that’s where Katsu came from – literally just someone to be looking at this stage.

Whilst working out what to call Katsu I started poking around at the meaning of Japanese names; Katsu broadly translates as “victory” in so much as my limited research reveals and I liked the bitter irony in calling him this. Having called him something it became apparent to me that he must be there for a reason and so began a snapshot account of his life as a bomb orphan – told backwards effectively – and his mother’s life just before the explosion, told forwards.

Towards the end of the week it became apparent – to me at least – that the structure of the task was potentially going to constrain this story. I think I’ve stumbled on something that would support a much larger narrative. I ended up finishing it to reach some kind of closure (Neil Gaiman’s advice ringing in my ears: “Whatever it takes to finish things, finish. You will learn more from a glorious failure than you ever will from something you never finished”) and to have a complete story.

However, there are big chunks of the story missing – Katsu growing up in the countryside away from the city (with hinted at abuse), Katsu surviving in the orphanage under American occupied Japan, and then there’s a massive bit missing about how and why he ends up in the States and why (other than seeking some form of closure with his mother) he comes back. There’s also a lot that could be fleshed out in Yuri’s story.

That said I was reasonably pleased with what is there. I’m least happy with the college scene and it possibly suffers as I tried to crowbar the poem (the original story trigger) back in. I’m not sure that the later hint that the man that raised Katus pre-orphanage referred to his mother as a ghost is strong enough to explain his reaction in the class. I was trying to get across that he obviously had an unhappy time of it in the States at that point – I don’t know but my supposition was that Japanese immigrants might still be viewed with suspicion post World War 2.

The orphanage scene was more successful I think although walks a fine line in exposition and I was pretty happy with the scenes of Yuri and her co-workers on the way to the factory. Still not satisfied with the end (there was going to be an alternate one which really wasn’t very cheerful) but there are a couple of phrases I would keep. The Cousins character is real. Norman Cousins established a “moral adoption” program in the States in the 50s for survivors of the bomb and he did visit Ninoshima. Someone I will be reading more about.

The other major learning for me – which I sort of knew but had never experienced in quite this way before – was that writing and editing aren’t the same thing. Not the same thing and best not done together. In fact, the latter really gets in the way of the former. I didn’t help matters by trying to do research at the same time as well. Again, it’s a different thing. Switching off that internal editor whilst writing (and returning to edit later) will be a hard discipline for me to nail I think.

So, all in all, a qualified success I think. Would be interested to know what you think oh loyal readership ? Both of you.

The only other exercise in the class used a set of true, but ridiculous, 999 calls to the Fire Service as our writing trigger. We came up with ideas in groups then individually picked one and bashed something out on it in five minutes – and it really was five minutes. So here’s mine. In stark contrast to atomic bombs and orphans and displacement it’s a knockabout, throwaway kids story I guess:

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. Why do I always have to be the quick one ? Jumping. Bounding around. Probably running myself to exhaustion. Why can’t I be the dog ? Look at him: lazy. Gets to lie around there whilst I jump over him. As if I’m going to jump over some dog anyway. Probably bite me. They’re not very bright. We’re the smart ones – infamous for our cunning – so why am I the one doing all that needless leaping and bounding and jumping ? Being quick ?

“999 Which service do you require ?”

“Fire Service please. You must come. There’s a fox in my garden with ever such an odd look on its face…”

That last line, of course, was, apparently, a genuine call. You will have to believe me on this but in a brilliant bit of irony it just took me several attempts to type “the quick brown fox…” despite usually being relatively nimble on the keys…

Just Write: Week 3, 3rd Feb – Part 1

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I have divided week 3 of my writing group/class into two sections, principally because the homework task from week 2 turned into a relatively long piece. We were given two lines of a poem selected at random and asked to write for 5-10 minutes each day using it as a starting point, progressively building on the previous day’s writing.

I’ll make my own comments on it, as well as update on the rest of week 3, in the next post. For now, here it is – the opening line is taken from the aforementioned poem fragment.

……

The ghost of a woman, her body overboard laid, in the waters around

Katsu muttered the words under his breath as he stared at the reflection in the pooling water beneath the steps. It had rained heavily last night and the city now glistened, the sun radiating back from hundreds of puddles that dotted the streets each time it found room between the clouds. He disturbed the surface of the water with his foot, just a light tap to send ripples racing towards the edges, and the reflected figure slipped from focus, breaking apart and reforming, undulating, until finally he could see only black.

He looked up at the steps themselves, at the source of the reflection. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t anyone anymore. The bomb frozen shadow etched forever into the concrete wasn’t his mother. There were no features to discern in that dark silhouette beyond a leaned-on walking stick but it didn’t matter. His mother hadn’t used a stick but that wasn’t how he knew that it wasn’t her. She hadn’t been here. She’d been on the river just as she was each day. She’d been on the Motoyasu river right before it boiled.

The ghost of a woman, her body overboard… he murmered again, turning away from the steps, and continuing on towards the river.

……

Yuri Mori hurried down to the boat, jostling amid the throng of women making their way towards the river. It made no sense, she thought, to live in the city and take this trip every day, down to the factories. Why didn’t they just move everybody down there, down towards the harbour ? Nothing made much sense to Yuri anymore.

A woman in front stumbled and fell to her knees as the crowd moved forwards. Other women pulled her to her feet. She looked down at her grey overalls now scuffed from the dust on the ground and raised her hands in mock dismay.

“My monpe. My beautiful monpe. However will I find a husband now ?”

“You are lucky Aiko” shouted another. “Now you have an excuse to visit Fukuya Store”

There were some weary laughs from those close to the exchange and the steady procession towards the river renewed. Yuri didn’t laugh. A year ago perhaps she would have. Defiant and proud bringing her son into the world and naming him for victory.

She shook her head, refusing to think of him, and pushed her way forwards towards the boat again. It must be eight o clock by now and she did not want to be punished for being late.

……

“Kats !”

The call brought him to attention and he pushed himself upright in his chair.

“Thankyou Mr Anderson, that will be all.” Katsu’s English professor turned his gaze from a grinning Mr Anderson round to Katsu himself.

“Mr Moore, nice of you to join us again. Now, please, if you would, read us the passage on page nineteen”.

Katsu looked down at his book and began to read: “Give me the splendid silent sun…”

“No Mr Moore”. He was interrupted. “Much as you would all learn much from Whitman we won’t have that pleasure until next semester. Something more contemporary to get you started. Page nineteen please. It begins ‘the ghost of a woman, her body overboard’ “.

Katsu flinched at the words and began to shake his head slowly. A memory pinched him. He couldn’t quite grasp it, half remembered and hazy, but the words troubled him deeply. He knew that they would be painful to say.

“I can’t… Not that passage. Please Professor. Someone else ?”

“Mr Moore, this is not a good day for you, is it ?”. The class laughed. Someone called out “Look out Sir, maybe that Kats has lost his claws” and the class jeered again. “Please read the passage”.

The words swam on the page before him now. Ghosts and women and bodies. He felt a rush of embarrassment, of shame, on realising that tears had formed in his eyes. Angrily he pushed them back with his thumb and forefinger.

“Read it Kats” sneered the student next to him. The class took up the chant “read it, read it, read it” as the Professor half heartedly gestured with his palms for them all to calm down.

Katsu abruptly pushed his chair back from his desk and stood up, the chair legs scraping across the floor and quelling the mocking chant of the other students. He rubbed at his eyes again.

“Katsu. My name is Katsu. Katsu Mori. And I will not read this thing for you”. He glared around the room before running for the door.

……

The boat nosed out into the river belching diesel fumes. Yuri stood at the stern, as she always did, and watched the city start to slip away from her. She scarcely noticed as the boat sounded its horn to signal its departure, lost in her own thoughts. Her world – their world – was full now of sirens and horns and klaxons. She vaguely remembered the all clear sounding out just an hour ago. A cacophony of warning for a catastrophe that never came.

That was why they’d sent him away. He will be safe in the hills they’d said. It’s your duty. Japan must have men for the future and you must work for its present. It is the right thing, the honourable thing, to do.

He had been barely a year old when the military police prised him from her arms, tears running freely down her face.

A distant “burr” pulled her back from her thoughts. She raised her head to locate the sound, different to the usual, abrasive aural interruptions to their days, and picked out a lone plane in the sky. Just a speck in the distance. But coming closer.

……

“What’s your name child ?” asked the tall man in the long coat. He didn’t look like the others. He was American, Katsu was sure of that, but he didn’t wear a uniform like the ones he’d seen on the streets coming into the city or the ones in charge of the boat they’d taken him on.

“He can’t understand you. We only took him in today.”

“Another from the hills ?” said the tall man.

“Yes. Far as we can tell he’s been there for six or seven years. The farmer didn’t want to give him up – he told us we were taking a good worker.”

“You think he was mistreated ?”

“Perhaps. Life in the hills is hard Mr Cousins. Life in Japan is hard but we can support him here and educate him. When you go back tell them about Katsu – tell your friends about him and the ones like him. That is what we use the money for.”

Cousins bent down to look more closely at the boy. His face was dirty and he carried scratches and bruises; perhaps the kind of scratches and bruises any eight year old boy might wear. Perhaps. He gently pulled the boy’s face up, lifting his chin so that the Director of the orphanage might also see. He raised his eyebrows by way of question.

“Beatings are common Mr Cousins. The man who had him was no worse than many in the hills. It is difficult for you to understand how it has been since the war. For some the sense of shame in defeat was too hard to bear and they took it out where they could.”

“He had no family at all ?” asked Cousins.

“None that we can trace. The farmer says he was taken from his mother when he was very young. He was given him by the police. It happened a lot, to keep the children safe.”

“The mother ?”

“She was in the city” said the Director. “We don’t know where but she must be dead. What was it the farmer called her ?” He paused, thinking. “Yurei. Yes, that was it. Yurei.”

“Her name ?”

“No, Mr Cousins. Yurei. It is not exact but in your language it means ghost”

……

The women on the boat gazed upwards at the plane high overhead.

“Another one ? What do they want with us today ?” said one.

“Don’t worry Miyu. Look how far away it is. Those cowards don’t bomb us from up there anymore”. It was Aiko who spoke, her overalls still dusty at the knees from where she’d slipped over.

“Perhaps they are bringing you your new monpe Aiko” laughed another woman.

“They are taking photographs I expect” said Miyu.

“Yes” said Aiko. “Photographs of us beautiful Japanese women in our fine clothes ! Their American women are too ugly for them !” She looked up at the sky, leaning back to present her dirty monpe, and gave a broad smile. The other women laughed and joined in with Aiko’s clowning, posing for an imagined photographer’s flash.

Yuri looked up the boat, turning her eyes away from the receding city, and briefly allowed herself a smile at her fellow women. Temporary respite from thinking of her lost son, her little Katsu. She clung to the hope that the war would soon end and she could take back her child.

It was her last thought before the world turned white, the boat was thrown from the water, and she and the women were burned to ash.

……

Katsu Mori leaned on the railings and stared down into the depths of the Motoyasu, the first time he’d seen it since leaving the refuge on Ninoshima all those years ago. Light danced on the water rippling against the wall of the jetty as the sun broke cover. The river was choppy here, continually broken by passing boats. Katsu shielded his eyes, raising his hand to his forehead, as if to try to see past the shimmering surface.

What had he expected to find ? There were no answers here. He wasn’t even sure he knew what he was looking for anymore, just that he had spent his life dislocated. A ghost. Perhaps not quite a ghost. Ghosts were the souls of the dead that were unable to find peace, he thought. He lived but he lived with the nagging, restless displacement of those orphaned by the bomb.

A cloud overhead rolled across the sun dimming the twinkling lights on the water. Katsu gazed down, his own reflection now visible, staring back at him. A woman’s face appeared in the water next to his own, smiling up at him; a quizzical, concerned smile.

“What do you see Katsu ?”

Katsu looked up from the water and turned to his wife.

“I see my home Asuka. I see home.”

She placed a hand on his shoulder and, together, they looked back down at the river, back down at their own reflected, ghostly faces. A plane taking off from Hiroshima airport climbed above them and they watched its silhouette in the water before the sun reemerged and it disappeared in a dazzle of lights on the waves.

Just Write: Week 2, Jan 27

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Second week of my writing group / class kicked off with our homework from week 1. We had been asked to think about an item of clothing from childhood and what it meant to us and write a short piece about that. Here was mine:

It was a black shirt. Just a plain black shirt.

Except of course it was so much more than that. Since I’d seen that Sisters Of Mercy video on Top Of The Pops it wasn’t just a black shirt anymore. It was a new identity. It was freedom. It was rebellion. Still quite a polite, “no, actually, I don’t think I will take those posters off my wall and no I haven’t done that History course work yet” kind of rebellion if I’m honest. But, nonetheless, rebellion. Sticking it to the Man. Sticking it to him by sitting in my room listening to doom laden bombastic music. Goth music. In my black shirt.

With that black shirt I could stalk the streets of the West Country, maybe in a long trench coat, quoting Poe and Coleridge, my raven hair lustrous beneath the full moon. Like that guy in the Sisters Of Mercy… Look at him in the video striding through a post apocalyptic wasteland in all that leather. All that leather, and his black shirt, with just that similarly clad dominatrix for company. That could be me. That could be me in Plymouth. That could be me, in Plymouth, in my black shirt.

I’ll have to wait for some of the stuff obviously. Dying my hair seems like quite a big step. Can’t really afford any leather and I don’t know any dominatrixes. Dominatricies ? What is the plural for that anyway ? Whatever, I don’t actually know any women as such so, I guess, it doesn’t really matter what the plural is. I suppose I don’t really need a trench coat either; I’ve already got that ski jacket. It’s reversible – so, practical but quirky. You don’t see many Goth’s skiing though.

But I could memorise some poetry. And I had that black shirt. That bible black shirt. See, poetry. The black shirt was working its dark gothic magic already.

I only wore it once. My mother washed it. Not washed it so much as boiled it really. It came out an insipid washed out grey and shrunk to a third of its former size.

Now it was a grey shirt. A tiny, grey shirt. No one strides through a post apocalyptic wasteland in one of those. No one even strides around Plymouth in one.

Best do that History coursework. Maybe take a couple of the posters down.

I actually had a couple of the bits for this already in a previous post – way back at the start of writing about 42 records in my second entry about “This Corrosion”. The stalking the streets of the West Country paragraph is lifted from that and I think I started there and then worked the rest around it. I liked this one and it came out pretty much how I wanted – tonally I think it works reasonably well although it should perhaps concern me that I still find that “voice” relatively easy to write in some twenty five years later…

The bulk of the class was dedicated to looking at characters and playing around with unusual or quirky traits that might lift characters out of cliche. We used a variety of professions as a route into this and then wrote about one. So:

He started to straighten his tie, catching sight of himself in the mirror outside his office. It was loose, top button undone. He turned his face to examine his profile and ran his hand across two days of greying stubble. His hair was unkempt and his eyes were shot with blood.

It had been like this since Grace had left. Emotionally immature she’d called him. A child. She’d raised their children already. Didn’t want to raise another one. What was it she’d said, he thought ? Incapable of expressing himself ? Something like that. Perhaps he should talk to someone about it she’d yelled at him that last time they’d seen each other. A professional she’d sneered.

He left the tie. Thought about straightening it again before, finally, taking it off. People liked casual now anyway. Less intimidating. He was sure someone had told him that. Maybe it had been Alice but he tried not to think of her now if he could help it.

He looked away from the mirror and toward the door with its familiar sign. William Rogers: Psychiatrist and Marriage Counsellor. 

This was more of a mixed bag for me than the homework piece. Having started the exercise looking for ways to render characters as non caricatures I feel a bit like I fell into a great big “psychiatrist with own emotional problems” sized cliche hole. I don’t mind his inner dialogue though and I threw the Alice hint in quite late (if there can be a quite late in the space of ten minutes) and it does provide a bit of a tease. I have also noticed that I seem to write in quite short, staccato sentences a lot. Like this. Particularly when I’m on the clock. It can be effective. But also a little wearing when over used. As here.

All of that self flagellation aside it was another highly enjoyable couple of hours. Some of my fellow class mates came up with some great character sketches and it’s fascinating to hear just how many different directions twelve people can go given the same jump off point.

Just Write: Week 1, Jan 20

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Quite by chance – reading a community centre notice board whilst waiting for my daughter to appear from one of her after school activities – I discovered that there was a creative writing group / course running locally. Thinking that it would be something fun and interesting to do in the new year I had signed myself up prior to Christmas and thought this would be as good a place as any to record my output.

So the first session was last week and it was pretty nerve wracking. I am entirely comfortable speaking and presenting in front of people – it has been a large part of my job for a long time – but there was something very different about reading your own work aloud in front of what were (at the time) a bunch of strangers. Albeit lovely strangers as it turns out.

I will type up each week’s work without tinkering. That does mean that some of it will be pretty raw and some of it will undoubtedly be dreadful – most of it is written in the class in the space of about ten or fifteen minutes so it is largely unedited. However, fortune may favour me with the occasional sentence that isn’t half bad. Even if it doesn’t then I can have a good chuckle back at this in my dotage.

Exercise one in week one was to take a blank piece of paper and brainstorm (that’s not politically correct anymore is it ?) five words that you associate with the word “write”. Then to take each of those five words and come up with five additional words for each – so thirty one words in total as a rough and ready mind map.

Here were mine with the initial five words in bold: Escape – Runaway – Holiday – Job – Calling – Dream – Sleep – Romantic – Future – Ideal – Wonderful – Stuck – Procrastinate – Blocked – Choked – Unsure – Blank – Painful – Failure – Struggle – Esteem – Poor – Fear – Communicate – Reach – Stories – Me – Inside – Touch.

Let us not trouble ourselves too much with amateur psychology at this point… (or the fact that I seem to have missed a word somewhere). The second part of the exercise was to spend five minutes writing a short piece that used all of the words you had come up with. So I had:

The holiday was supposed to be an escape. A chance to runaway. The job was going nowhere, career blocked, and she was facing up to thinking of herself as a failure. The dream, of course, had been different. Now she just thought it was romantic nonsense that had filled her head; stories she’d tell herself about her ideal future. She’d thought it was a calling, not this painful thing it had become.

But the holiday, like the job, like everything, had not been an escape. It was a struggle. Of course it was a struggle; she couldn’t escape herself and what she carried inside.

Again, we may not want to trouble ourselves with the amateur psychology. I didn’t hate it, I guess that’s a decent enough start. I didn’t really like the end though as it felt a bit cliched to me even on first writing, let alone on reading back, but for five minutes scribbling from nowhere I thought it was okay.

The second exercise involved talking about our personal bucket lists (i.e. things you’d like to do before you die) in pairs before picking one of them and free writing about it for ten minutes. In this context “free” writing is simply starting to write and not letting yourself stop for the duration, trying to disregard any internal editing process. That latter point is something I find particularly hard but also may be a big reason why I never make very much progress. Anyway, my piece was about meeting Bruce Springsteen:

The great man, as it turned out, was smaller than I’d expected. Not Bono short. Or Kylie short, but still appreciably less tall than his reputation suggested. He was Bruce Springsteen and if he was at all bored of yet another meet-the-fans-handshake-and-a-few-cursory-words then he didn’t let it show.

“How you doing ?” he asked.

Momentarily I was frozen, utterly terrified. I was having difficulty separating the myth in my head – the quasi mystical mythologiser of American dreams and nightmares – from the man who was extending his hand towards me. The touch of that handshake brought me round. His hands were still slick with sweat, fresh from leaving the stage, and the basic physicality of this made him real to me again. Holding it together I blurted out:

“Great set, great set, it’s… you don’t know what it means to me to meet you…”

He responded with a broad smile and clapped me on the shoulder.

“Hey no problem. Thanks for coming out”.

And then he was gone, on to the next out stretched hand in the queue. The next fervent believer. I watched him go. Definitely smaller than expected but always a giant to me.

Again, I don’t hate it. I do seem to have acquired a habit of pay off lines that might come off as a little too derivative but I did want to give the piece a sense of being self contained, of having a close to it. Not sure why I gave Springsteen the same vocal mannerisms as Joey Tribiani from Friends either… Obviously my short hand for New Jersey. At least he didn’t offer me any “cwoffe”. But I did like the height thing as a way in and he is only 5’9″ ish so it’s entirely possible that I would be struck by that if I ever met him.

And that was week one. It was really good fun. If I’m going to be a frustrated writer then I might as well enjoy being a frustrated writer… and actually write some stuff.