What Katie Didn't Do Next: prequel/sequel/reboot fatigue

As I listened to a rapturous radio review of Death Comes to Pemberley recently, I realised that I am a near-obsessive anti-sequel kind of person. There's been a rash of them recently. Aside from the usual movie franchises there's been every conceivable reinvention of old and new stories...prequels, re-boots, re-imaginings, revisitings, rehashings....we suddenly need to know how Batman begins, what happened after Darcy and Elizabeth got married, how Sherlock and Watson met and pretty much unravel every remaining literary and film mystery for the common enlightenment.
How did this happen? (Maybe I should write a prequel - How Prequels Came To Hollywood...) There's no denying most people seem to lap up the "what happened next/before/inbetween" idea almost with as much relish as reliving the original stories they are inevitably based on. It's not just that sequels are the most obvious form of standing one's own work conveniently on the shoulders of another man's genius (to (inaccurately) quote the beleaguered Laurie in Little Women - and no, I didn't read Jo's Boys. Not sorry.) Sometimes it works - I actually break my own rules for Batman Begins and Wide Sargasso Sea, the latter arguably the highest form of the prequel art in that it morphs into its own, independently brilliant and vivid story. So it's not just that I look down on the laziness of it.
I think it goes back to being a kid, and reading books, and falling in love with the idea of the story - a distinct, unique imagining of a person, place or event in its own fictional space and time. When I got older and learned about character development and back story and plot devices, I still couldn't get past the idea of the perfectly formed 'Once upon a time...'
I distinctly remember crying actual tears at the discovery that Anne of Green Gables was not allowed to remain the carrot-haired precocious little girl of my imagination, but - shock! horror! - actually grew up and like, got married and stuff. I just didn't want to know. It's not that I thought L Montgomery made a bad decision writing about the rest of Anne's life, or that the character wasn't worthy of a life beyond the bullied, ginger little orphan she was. It's just that in my mind, it was done. It was a Thing. A perfectly imagined tale of a perfectly imperfect character who didn't need any more, or less, explaining to make me fall hopelessly in love with her. And that goes for nearly every early literary experience I had - Little Women, The Secret Garden, Oliver Twist (although thinking about it Dickens' main characters based on an exhaustively detailed life story premise, thereby pre-empting his inclusion in the prequel disaster. Clever guy), Alice in Wonderland, The Chronicles of Narnia and even, weirdly, books that were designed to be part of a series, rather than a standalone event - I had one copy each of Nancy Drew and the Chalet Girls which I read over and over again, never wanting to read any more. I'd like to think that this was some sort of juvenile defying the retailers' ploy to get you buying more and more books, but in fact I just didn't want to know anything else about those characters. It was done. Move on.
So apart from Batman Begins I'd say my anti-prequel/sequel/reboot sentiments stand for pretty much every cinematic experience, bar the excellent Before Sunset/Sunrise/Midnight trilogy which arguably stands alone as an experiment in a different kind of narrative continuation, revisiting, rather than rebooting the characters because you know what? They're so brilliantly constructed and the story is so REAL it's just a case of dropping in on them to see what's going on rather than attempting a rewrite of their history or a lame follow-on to their original story. And I'm not talking about SERIES of films either, so you know, that lets the likes of Lord of the Rings, Mission Impossible (no really! I love it!) and Bond (actually hate it but still) off the hook. I'm talking about the useless appendage to an original idea that was, for example,  Batman and Robin, Speed 2, Grease 2 and others marvellously listed (so I don't have to) by RollingStone.com here. I'm not saying I'm onto something original here (although I wish I was then maybe someone would pay me a ridiculous amount to write a sequel) - disappointing movie sequels are well-documented and a pet peeve of many a movie critic, geek or even casual observer.
No, what really gets me is the drift from producers of massive multi-million dollar megahits thinking they can eek a bit more out of the franchise to people, quite sane, normally educated and insightful people (like, say, the interviewers of Radio 4) start raving about television adaptations of these prequel/reboot/rehash fiascos as if they are as brilliant as the originals themselves. WHAT ARE THESE PEOPLE THINKING?! So Darcy dies - WE COULD HAVE IMAGINED THAT IF WE WANTED TO RUIN ELIZABETH'S LIFE! Wickham's a criminal - well, DUR! This is not imaginative thinking. This is the kind of terrible sadistic trick your mind plays when you finish reading a chapter of Pride and Prejudice just before bed and it gets mixed up with your own dismal, boring and frankly unhelpful life experiences. 
Worst of all it intimates a sort of terrible disrespect for your reader, as though the poor souls couldn't possibly fully understand this particular story without someone more informed, like a script writer without an original bone in his body or an author running out of their own ideas, to extrapolate it for them. To these patronising keepers of the televisual landscape I say: We KNOW Sherlock and Watson had to meet! We KNOW Lewis probably did his own detective work without Morse one day. We KNOW Little Women didn't STAY little. We KNOW all these things. We probably thought about them ourselves at some point. Because, you know, reading helps your IMAGINATION. The definition of imagination, by the way, is "the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses." So, by definition, taking us through the history and future of every cherished literary life we've ever known does not edify but encourages a LACK of imagination, the very essence of literary and visual arts and the thing the human race is in desperate need of in all walks of life.
Imagine if we applied the prequelsequel philosophy to great works of art. What if an artist reimagined Van Gogh's painting of the chair from a different angle, or showed us what was missing from Monet's Water Lilies scene, or reconstructed the rest of Tracey Emin's house without the bed (heaven forbid), perhaps revealing that she's not quite the scuzzy bohemian we all thought she was but actually had like, a desk with water bills on it and little post-its reminding herself to buy milk. Would the critics love it? Would they hail it as a great new work of imagination? I guess not. 
TBC...

Who is Mrs Jones anyway?

So I'm of the generation that read Bridget Jones's Diary and felt that it was a defining literary moment (before we were told it was a defining literary moment). Me and my friends wrote one another Bridget-style emails (minus the obsessive weight records - none of us cared) and dreamed about Mr Darcy (the literary one and the Bridget Jones one) and we all got annoyed when the film came out because it 1. Featured an American actress in a quintessentially British role; 2. Crassly cast Colin Firth as Mark Darcy, thereby defeating the entire irony that the book's romantic trajectory was based on and 3. Was actually quite good, really (to use a Bridget-ism). So far, so obvious.
But now the third book is out and Darcy, y'know, dies, and it feels like Helen Fielding has forgotten why we all loved Bridget in the first place. Which was because, of course, she was absolutely nothing like us whilst being everything we liked about us but were told we should disapprove of - an over-drinking, under-exercising smoking singleton whose friends were more important than her family and whose career path was as confusing as her love life. So the Bridget of now, the Bridget we'd love to hate but secretly love, would obviously be a happily married yet surprisingly unhappy childless 40-something year old with a fondness for luxury weekends away to remind her of the good life she abandoned to marry her impossibly-21st-century saviour of a husband who insists on doing all the cooking and leaves her feeling like an average housewife who still can't get the hang of the exercise bike and opts for drinking a bottle of wine with friends instead of exercising, occasionally adopting a 'healthy lifestyle' out of guilt but giving up after the first bag of satsumas runs out. Life has turned out pretty well for this Mrs Jones but she finds no voice in the Sunday newspaper columns or on the radio or on the telly, where celebrity super-couples and their 15 children share the limelight with impossibly young singletons with their tongues out taking pictures of themselves as they get drunk (thank goodness there's no digital photographic evidence of our drinking days), all looking so made up and so 'alternative' yet more mass-marketed than ever. It's not that Mrs Jones is the smug married she thought she'd turn into, it's just that she's not sad about not being single any more either. She's found music and books and films that she likes and she doesn't feel the need to share these beyond her immediate friends, who she still counts as closer than family and occasionally goes out with, no selfies required.
Maybe this Mrs Jones doesn't have a media counterpart because she is boring. Or maybe she's just too nuanced to be reduced to the Dear Diary lists she once found so life-affirming. Either way, I'd like to resurrect Mrs Jones and find out what she thinks of this now that we have to live in. So watch this space.
Oh, and read my next post which is sort of a postscript to this one. I know, I'm contrary. So sue me.

Walking like Virginia Woolf

I took it step by step. One after the other, one after the other, in rythm to the music in my head. I knew nothing, thought nothing, felt nothing, except the urge to keep moving, keep walking, keep passing by as quickly as I could as though perhaps I could walk myself into nothingness, pass out of this world completely by the mere pushing of my feet against the limits of the material world. As I pushed, my surroundings receded before me like scenery on a stage, shifting, changing, one vista giving way to another with no thought for the passing of time or the limits of physical movement in space. It was like time travel...walking so fast that maybe I could speed up time and arrive at a new place, free from the constraints of the present and pure in its unrealised state. I knew that this was impossible but still my feet propelled me forwards and my hope increased with the oxygen levels pumping through my body by my hyper-anxious heart. As concrete changed to grassy plains and rocky pathways I felt the scenery shift again, opening up a vast space in which only mist and damp and the sweet smell of soil mixed with rainwater were allowed. I ploughed in with my magic feet, this time pushing harder, wishing I could sink into that bog and embalm myself in nature's bath, like the women in Seamus Heaney's poems, rolling, ever rolling into a freezing calm that intrudes every vacuum in my body, permeating every pore and capturing this moment forever. Instead I dragged my now aching body to the highest peak of the nearest park, high above the city, nobody's home, just a forgotten plot on a topographical map of middle class meanderings. It was cold. Rain coated the side of my body facing the wind. I let my body slap down on the concrete monument marking the peak, like a slab of meat ready to be butchered. I longed for someone to tear away one soul and replace it with another, calmer, cleaner version that could find its way home and be happy. Instead I finally caught my breath and with stinging eyes blinked at my new surroundings. The scenery of my final act. It was high enough to be mistier than the street, my head just poking into raincloud, wet and windy and surrounded by empty moss green fields divided criss-cross by muddy paths, rising to another, lower, peak where I knew, rather than could see, there to be a knoll of darkest evergreens and a rocky face the other side which succeeded in fooling most walkers into a sense of being closer to the Peak District than they really were.
I breathed deep. Now what? I had already walked further than my pain stricken back had taken me for many months. The speed which had propelled me to the top had left my legs heavy and tired. I was on empty and far from help. I contemplated rolling back down the hill but even my tired limbs could not submit to such freefall. I felt the anxiousness that had cramped my entire body into a speed-walking machine melt away. I was tired. I was cold. I needed rescuing. But what from?

The trouble with death is…

The trouble with death is you have to live with it. Unlike some poets or supernaturalists I don’t believe it’s like a shadowy presence that haunts the living. It’s more like a scar. A part of you that has irrevocably changed, been reversed by a natural process that you have no control over. When the wound that caused it is open, weeping and painful, people tend to it regularly, doing everything they can to help it heal, stop the bleeding, keep it clean and free from infection that might fatally linger. But once healed, the wound slowly starts to fade and before long only those closest to you ever notice it or even remember it’s there. Sometimes you’ll be in the bath and see that little patch of tenderised skin, pallid and delicate where living flesh and blood used to be. You’ll run a finger over it to check it’s still as proud as it used to be, and, disappointed, realise that it’s losing its prominence as the years go by.

I am lucky though. One scar, a mere flesh wound some may say. There are those whose hearts have been broken and crushed so many times, if you could peel away the chest you would see a heart like the flesh of a burn victim, seared and tightening around the vital organ, threatening to strangle it completely. My 90-year-old friend, let’s call him Alfred, has lost mother, father, siblings and two wives. Not a soul in the world is left to him but one brother in Australia who has just lost his wife, and another that’s gone AWOL for no reason whatsoever. He lives, but each memorial that comes around the scar gets a little thicker, its clutch on his heart a little stronger, and his memories of being alive, really truly living, fade like the rhythm of the blood, now barely pumping around his wizened frame.

It’s four years and four months since I lost my mum but that’s not the memorial date I’m thinking of today. August 28^th was mum and dad’s anniversary, and we always made a big thing of it in our house. It was a family present day, all of us getting in the spirit, giving one another gifts and, when my brother and I got older, throwing mum and dad the occasional surprise party.

Since she died we have kept the tradition, although I barely know why any more. It seemed another excuse to supplement the memorial of her death, one day not being long enough to commemorate such a full life, as if two could really make much more of a difference. Or maybe we just wanted to remember being a family, having good times, Greek plate smashing at mum’s favourite restaurant or the fun of trying to guess what she was wrapping for us behind the closed door of her bedroom.

But despite the good memories for me there was always a tinge of sadness in those days. Extreme excitement or pleasure always gets me in the throat like the lump before tears, being, as I fatefully am, never able to switch off my brain to the awareness of the passing of time, the fleeting nature of the very happiness I should have been enjoying. There were years, in the recession of the 90s, when I wished we could ignore the day, forget that there was anything to celebrate because I didn’t want my dad to spend money we didn’t have trying to live up to the idea of a ‘proper’ celebration. There were times when it seemed ridiculous to celebrate a marriage that seemed so up and down, at times strained, as all marriages are. I was young of course, I didn’t realise the rollercoaster that comes with loving someone, and indeed being frustrated with them, as with your own flesh. Another thing mum and I will never get to relate on, now I am married and understand her yet cannot sympathise, because she is gone.

Towards the end, these wedding anniversaries got more elaborate, or maybe more desperate, as if we could distract her from dying by creating a day so special it would drown out the cancer and all the pain that went with it. We took her to Claridge’s and ate til we felt sick, drank champagne and wished it made us feel happy. I suddenly felt that maybe my naïve sense of sadness in those early years was somehow prophetic, that I had known all along there would come a time when all celebrating seems pathetic, a pregnant pause before we can all get on with the process of grieving.

So now, it seems futile to celebrate an occasion that belongs to half of a partnership already rent in two. After all, marriage is about partnership, propping each other up, halving the load. It seems bizarre, macabre even, to celebrate something that has been mortally wounded, like a paraplegic celebrating the day his legs were blasted to smithereens by an enemy shell. Far from indulging in some special treat to mark the occasion, I feel like pulling apart my ribcage and showing the stripes on my heart, proudly commentating on the progression of the wound: “Look! That’s the bit that happened every time mum pumped the bile from her cancerous stomach into a bowl for me to empty in the bathroom sink!” People will remark, appreciatively, and ask if it’s still painful, safe in the knowledge that I will politely reply, “Oh it’s amazing what they can do these days, I barely notice it now. Human instinct to survive, you know.”

 Of course, if marriage is forever and you believe, as I do, that death is merely an interruption, there’s even less reason to mark another year in the gap between the living and the dead. We each have our own waiting to do. Hers in rest, ours in the agitating turmoil of life.

A rare gem

Every now and again whilst browsing around online for my job, I come across some strange choices of words or malaprops due to poor spelling, grammar, punctuation or just the sheer speed at which things are often thrown together in the online world.

But rarely have I ever found a phrase as nauseatingly offensive as this one, used by a certain company that will remain nameless, for their Twitter description:

"Feverishly nurturing juxtapositions from seeds into eggs with the lightest of carbon footprints"

I don't know if it's the use of the words feverishly, seeds and eggs in the same sentence (inappropriate), the fact that they've related carbon footprints to art (which is what the company actually does - would you have guessed it from that description? I thought not) or just the fact that it plain doesn't make any kind of sense, but it made me stop dead in my tracks, turn up my nose, and wish the written word had never been invented and that we all still communicated in yelps and yowls.

Ugh.

I feel the need to read something beautiful as an antidote. Any suggestions?

Feelin' feline

We’ve got some new additions to our family. Meet Margot and Inez – our new kittens!

This is them when they just arrived home:

 

They’re just moggies really, although their mum was half Burmese so that makes them about a quarter I guess?! They’re beautiful if a little timid.

It throws up some interesting loyalty issues with our delightful first cat, Enid (a boy – we thought it was a girl to start with and when it turned out differently, well – why wouldn’t you want a cat called Enid?! So he’s gotta live with it). We love Enid like he was a real child. Issues, I know. We’ve got issues. But my lovely husband decided he wanted more kittens and when we found these little lovelies we couldn’t resist.

Already they’ve got stuck in the piano, refused to move out of the safety of their bed, and got their heads stuck in the holes of the makeshift box we used to transport them home.

Something tells me we might rue the day we made this decision…although there’s something deliciously LARGE about our new family when you list us by name. We are now:

Nick, Natasha, Enid, Margot and Inez

I think the phrase for it is Safety in Numbers. And it feels good. Just ask these two:

Stuff I've forgotten I learned #1

There are many advantages to living next door to a school. The natural alarm clock that is the morning school run. Seeing the moments only parents normally get to experience - first day, bad day, home-early-feeling-sick day. The constant reminder that life used to be divided into such tiny chunks. (Really, it's amazing they get to do any actual learning in between all those breaks...)

Of course there are disadvantages, which include potty-mouthed parents, litter blowing over the wall into our garden and a constant refrain of "MISS! CAN WE HAVE OUR BALL BACK?!?!" every single time I go home for lunch. But still.

One of the benefits I noticed today (whilst walking home for lunch - when do I do any work?) was being reminded of stuff I had forgotten. Specifically, that most exciting of events known mysteriously as 'cycling proficiency'. Even the word, 'proficiency.' It's got to be the only time that word is used in a sentence.

Cool stuff like that gets pushed out when you get older, one-in, one-out style: in goes another internet password, PLOP! Out goes a times table. In goes a useless piece of marketing jargon, PLOP! Out go the lyrics to the first musical you were in (Wizard of Oz - I was a flower. Aaah).

I watched over the playground fence as they wobbled around, cycling helmets on (another thing I haven't used since school), attempting to ride one-handed and learning how to move to the middle of the road ("what?! IN FRONT of the cars?!") when turning right...it all came flooding back.

I'm still not sure what I was most proud of, that I managed to get through my test without wobbling off, or the shiny green rectangular badge I got at the end of it, that I wore proudly on my school jumper for ooh, at least a week, until I realised it wasn't "cool" which was why I was the only one wearing it. Even then I only downgraded it to my pencil case.

It got me to thinking of the other things I probably learned and have since forgotten - like how to convert pounds into kilograms, how to make a dove joint, what pipe cleaners are for or the first time I read a story all by myself (when did I learn to read? I imagine that was a pretty cool eureka moment, but I've yet to find anyone who can objectively remember the exact point they worked it out. Weird).

Anyway, I'm not one for pointless nostalgia but it was nice for a moment to remember how little things like that were so exciting.

And besides, I reckon the impact of school sticks with us in even more profoundly biological ways. Like the 3.30-4pm slump. A narrow but distinct window during which my body gives up and only caffeine or chocolate (or both) will get me through to the end of the working day. Try telling me that's got nothing to do with my body still being fine tuned to the sound of the school bell...

Being a sponge

Typed 'culture overload' in Google image search and this came up - cool!

So the best thing about changing job and starting afresh, seems to be that my brain is suddenly waking up after a period of extreme asceticism, culturally speaking.
When I'm so stressed out thinking about everyday things or facing a big change, my brain is so active trying to work out that problem I can't seem to explore the wider world of music, arts, and culture. I listen to Radio 4 pretty much constantly in my car, but other than the odd film of an evening to relax and escape, the rest of the world's artistic output seems to woosh straight over my head.
But here I am, new laptop (big plus!) and part time once again and I'm inspired to soak it all up and hopefully kickstart my writing again.
Highlights from the last week:

Bernice Bobs Her Hair - a short story by F Scott Fitzgerald recommended to me by the lovely IT manager at my new office! It's a lovely little slice of humorous 1920s American fiction, but more than that he amazingly gets right into the head of teenage/young adult girls and their bitchiness. Seems some things never change...meow.

Dreams of a Life - a really harrowing film/documentary about a woman from Hackney who died and wasn't discovered for three years. Supposedly tackles issues about modern society and how disconnected we are, but I didn't feel it really got to the heart of the story. The filmmaker obviously had problems getting people to speak - for example she contacted the woman's family but they wouldn't get involved with the film - and the ones that did were so disconnected it's hard to believe what they're saying. The filmmaker herself refrains from making a comment which is a shame as she's done so much research she probably has the best view of what happens - but she has chosen not to express an opinion, so the viewer is left wondering, which is never a satisfying experience.

Also due to exciting technological developments I have been able to subscribe to a gazillion podcasts and do geeky things like organise my favourites so I can have easy access to all my most inspiring avenues of cultural exploration...truly, living in the 21st Century has its benefits.

More to come.

Ch-ch-ch-changes #2

I can’t believe October was the last time I updated this. Suffice to say it’s been hectic.

But more than that I think I sort of lost the idea of the blog. I was so focused on writing about writing, or trying to write stories, I sort of backed myself into a corner. I have lots of thoughts. I like to write some of them down. I should just do that now.

So the blog is changing. I still have stories I’m writing. But I think this is more useful to me as a sort of diary. Isn’t that what blogs used to be about? Before they became vehicles for self-publicity or substitutes for magazines. So this isn’t meant to be proper articles or even stories or essays. It’s just thoughts. From my head. Which never stops. As my husband will tell you – he gets to sleep in about 30seconds, it takes me hours…

Today I’m mostly excited about a potential new job I might have. It’s been one of those weird things where it’s come out of nowhere and seems to be, if not perfect, very, very convenient. Which is a nice change because I’ve been starting to think that good things don’t happen to me. How wrong I have been…

Anyway, it looks like I’m going to be back in the world of PR, which is no bad thing for a brain that needs constant stimuli. I love radio, but it’s time to move on. I’m excited about my life revolving around my home, here in Leicester, rather than being stretched across my new and old life, travelling back and forth to Northamptonshire all the time. It will feel like, after more than two years, I’ve finally MOVED. In one place. Good for getting your head together.

That’s it for now. More may follow. Just heard this on BBC Six Music and love it:

http://soundcloud.com/wichita-recordings/best-coast-the-only-place

Short story: Untitled

This is a story that, to be honest, I like but I don't like this version.

I love the idea and the character of the little girl - but I was trying to fit it into short story format as per the course I've been doing, and it just wouldn't go. The ending isn't right and I had loads more ideas around this story that I think would make it something a bit more lengthy. Would appreciate any feedback!

Short story homework, unfinished

“NEXT!”

Josie jumped at the sudden sound. She had been absent-mindedly shuffling along in the queue for over an hour, which wasn’t as long as usual but in the damp November twilight it was long enough.

The human centipede of a queue wriggled and writhed with the fidget of stamping feet. Hungry people sheltered against empty shop fronts for the memory of warmth they once offered. Like every other High Street in the country, it had long since died.

Shop signs had been flipped to ‘closed’ in every window, fancy displays looted by the Revolutionaries. Stark red sale banners still hung like party flags, warnings of a calamity no one had wanted to hear.

A few people in the queue could remember going to those sales, thinking they’d grabbed themselves a bargain. But not Josie Whyte. At the time of the Final Crash she was “knee high to a chromosome” as her scientist dad would joke. Even though he used to be something high up in the government health department, they had to queue like everyone else.

It was starting to get dark. “We’re lucky,” Josie’s dad had told her one day, before he got too weak to queue with her. “This old town still has gas lit lamps. Fancy doing this in the dark?” She shuddered. It looked pretty dark to her as it was. The flickering light cast a damp mud glow over the rows of figures, each with a ghost of their own breath for company.

Most people came alone – it wasn’t worth a whole family catching cold for half a loaf and a tin of condensed milk. Josie wasn’t the only child, but at nine-and-three-quarters she was one of the youngest.

She knew she wouldn’t see the other kids today, because she had got here early especially. Now here she was, next in line. Dad would be pleased.

“Straight there and back now,” he had warned, pressing the tokens firmly into her mitten-clad hands. “I’ll be watching the clock.” He said it cheerfully, but she knew he was worried. It had been weeks since he last had his medicine and his cough was getting worse. Today was Delivery Day. She had to get some medicine, or they would be waiting another month and then who knows what would happen.

The ration station was an old chemist’s. She walked up to the high counter, where a flustered woman in the government issued uniform was counting ration coupons and attacking them noisily with a rubber stamp.

BAM!

“Who’s next?”

Apparently she couldn’t see Josie, who had to jump up and grip onto the edge of the slippery white counter with both her hands. Her mittens dangled at her sides from the string inside her smock coat. The one thing her mother had knitted her before she died.

“I need my dad’s medicine please.”

BAM!

“No medicine today, Missy. Can I get ye anything else?”

Josie nearly lost her grip in shock, but pulled herself up again, wide eyes just peaking over the counter at the woman’s smocked breast and the pile of coupons in front of her.

BAM!

The stamp swooped past Josie’s nose and made her blink as it landed.

She had to speak. She had to do something.

“But…”

BAM!

“We saw it. On the ration newsletter. It said today was delivery day?”

The woman put down the rubber stamp and peered at her little customer over her reading glasses.

“And who be the ‘we’, if yous don’t mind me asking?”

“Me and my dad. He’s sick. He needs medicine. It said there was a delivery today. I came early, especially.”

The stamp woman’s expression softened and she glanced up, for the first time that day noticing the cloying mist swirling around the door. Was it getting dark already? She sighed and rubbed her face with her hands.

“Ye came on yus own?”

Two wide eyes nodded. Josie clung on, the tips of her fingers now white and hurting from the effort.

People were shouting from outside.

“Come on!”

“What’s the hold up?”

“Get a move on, some of us want to be home before dark.”

“I tell ye what child, I’ll do you a deal,” said the stamp woman, looking at Josie’s whitening knuckles. “But first, come round here, or you’ll do yeself and injury and I don’t need that just before rush hour.”

Relief gushed through Josie’s veins along with the blood to her numb fingers as she let herself drop back down to floor level. Pins and needles flooded into her arms. She made a mental note to ask her dad what pins and needles was, trotted round the counter to the bit where part of it lifted up, mounted a step and came face to face with the stamp woman’s whole body. Most of it was covered with her smock, but Josie could see a nice skirt underneath and proper shoes. She must get paid alright, thought Josie. Everyone else had worn through nearly every pair of boots, and it was not even half way through the winter.

The woman crouched down and took Josie’s hands in hers. Instinctively, Josie withdrew them and clutched the tokens to her chest. The woman laughed.

“Come on now, I’m not going to swizzle ye. I just want to see how much you’ve got.”

She smiled and Josie thought it might be OK.

“Have you got any medicine?”

“You’re a determined one aren’t ye?”  She held out her hand. “Show me the money and we’ll see if we can’t help ye, and your pappy too.”

More shouts came from outside and there was scuffling. Josie knew she was pushing her luck already and that if people rushed in the woman would forget all about her and shut up shop to stop the looters getting in.

Slowly, carefully, she held out one hand and uncurled her fingers. The coupons were squashed and damp from being held under her sweaty mittens.

Still looking Josie straight in the face, the woman slowly and carefully picked up the notes.

She thumbed through them. “Ten, twenty, thirty…my! Where’s your pappy live, eh? Wouldn’t I like to know.”

Josie shifted nervously on the spot.

“Can I have the medicine now?”

The woman jumped up without warning, nearly bashing Josie on the chin. She stumbled backwards off the step onto the shop floor, only just keeping her balance. The woman was back behind the counter with her stamp.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she said.

BAM!

 “But…”

“It’s someone else’s turn now. Race home to pappy now and not say a word, if ye know what’s good for ye.”

BAM!

Josie stood, dumbstruck, on the pale shop floor, her face ashen in the low energy bulb light.

“SCRAM!”

She ran out into the damp November night, pushing her way through the cold but somehow warm legs of the people scrambling to get through the door, hot tears mingling with the ice cold mist which stung her face. She sobbed. Was it true? Had it really happened? As she ran, visions hung in the fog around her and she batted them away with her flailing arms, to no avail.

Red flapping sale signs were floating down, down, down onto a bed where her coughing father tossed and turned, moaning with pain and despair: “Josie! Josie! My Josie-Jo! What have you done to me?” She couldn’t bear his sad face, his hacking lungs, gasping for breath…she tried to reach out to him but he was drowning under the red banners which fell faster and faster…now they were turning to giant notes like the ones she’d seen in pictures with the Queen’s head on…strange, bodiless hands appeared from every angle clutching and grasping in vain at the notes as they fluttered midair.

Defeated, Josie fell to the ground, the vision evaporating into the mist.

She wept, hearing the brutal STAMP! of the woman as though it was right above her. Somewhere in the distance another victim presented their coupons to be stamped.

BAM!

“Can I help ye?”

ENDS

Short story: The Videotape

For the aforementioned short story course I was doing, we had to work on a 1,000-word story to read out in the final week. This was my story. It's sort of adapted from an idea I had for a collection of stories about people with sad tales to tell. The collection would have more impact than one story on its own (well that's my idea anyway) but this had to be butchered quite a bit to get down to the word count, and in order to try and put into practice the tips I received on the course I gave it a 'twist' which on reflection, I probably wouldn't do in the final story.

But anyway, here it is! Comments/constructive criticism as always, much appreciated:

The Videotape

The day I found the videotape had been just like any other.

Breakfast, put some washing on, think about what to do with myself in those long dead hours in the afternoon, between lunch and the six o’clock news, when my tea would be ready. I found myself envying the vegetables I was chopping as I put them into the slowcooker, knowing each carrot, parsnip and swede cube was nestled safely and purposefully in its own place, only one eventuality to become them all. Ha! Silly old fool, I told myself. Envying veg. What next? Better to put the long afternoon out of mind, work on your cross stitching, watch the news, and count your blessings before bed.

Except this Wednesday, I never got to the news.

A report on the radio reminded me of the talk at last Thursday’s social. Something about technology. As if a dozen or so widows cared about new technology! But it made me think about Bill and his love of gadgets.

In that instant I could see him, in his armchair nearest the telly, slapping his hands down on the arm rests and shaking his head.

‘It’s no good. We’ll have to get a new one.’

And that was it. I never asked why, or a new what? Just nodded and let him get the catalogues out to start comparing prices and models and specifications with faint pencil notes in a tiny red notebook.

I don’t know why I remembered the notebook, but I had a sudden urge to check – check that it was real, not imagined, that something tangible of dear Bill still existed. Before I knew it I was rummaging around in his precious Back Room.

Piles of books, magazines, papers and old boxes nestled together conspiratorially in the musty darkness. We’re safe, they seemed to say. Nothing ever changes in here.

As I tugged at one of the drawers in the old fashioned bureau that belonged to Bill’s father it came out clean in my hands, bits and bobs flying everywhere. My heart leapt – what would Bill say? Then I remembered, with a funny feeling in my stomach, that he couldn’t say anything because he wasn’t there.

So I ploughed on.

Old receipts, shopping lists, instruction manuals, light bulbs, screws and nails and wall hanging hooks. It was all there, just where he’d left it.

‘What on earth were you planning on doing with all this?’ I found myself wondering.

Instinctively, I started sorting things into piles, until I realised I was clearing out this bureau and I intended to do a proper job of it.

The notebook still hadn’t appeared when something else caught my eye. Hidden beneath ancient alarm clocks, radios and floppy discs was the old video player.

‘Videos? Pah. It’s all about digital versatile discs now love,’ I remembered him saying. But it was the only bit of kit I was interested in using. I used to tape old films to watch in the day, whilst ironing or stitching or the like. I didn’t fancy re-training to the new DVD player.

Now, with no accusing eyes watching, I grabbed it with both hands and pulled it free from its hiding place. Grabbing a few videotapes from an adjacent mountain I triumphantly bundled my booty back to the living room. After a few minor rearrangements of plugs and sockets, I heard the blip telling me the video welcome screen was running, clear as day. Where had this tech-savvy woman taking over her husband’s beloved technology come from? I barely knew myself.

In a daze, I shoved the first tape into the player and waited. The machine whirred and hesitated and seemed to get stuck, and I suddenly felt tired. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. My knees ached and my heart was racing with the sudden burst of activity. There was all the rubbish to put out and I’d have to unhook the damn thing as it looked so cumbersome and out of place in my neat living room.

Giving up, I left the machine clicking away and put the kettle on. Suddenly, I heard music.

Faint at first, then louder, but not like a film soundtrack, more like it was being played inside some other room. A voice, slightly muffled, was speaking in a few short sentences at a time. Curiosity got the better of me and I went to see what this strange film could be.

It wasn’t a film at all. It was a home movie. People, wobbly and faint with the passing of time, were dancing in pairs, in some kind of community hall. Then it twigged. Our anniversary party! I knelt right in front of the telly and turned the volume up.

Ahhh, look. The happy couple! It was Bill’s work colleague, Ian something or other. As he spoke, the shaky zoom focused and refocused again on a couple, dancing awkwardly in the centre of the room. It was me. Cradled in Bill’s arms. Clutched, more like. He always held on too tight, but I didn’t mind. We span amateurishly across the floor, all the while Bill catching people’s eyes, ever the friendly neighbour, chit chatting and making jokes with his friends. I basked in his being, allowing myself to be spun and twirled and shunted around the dancefloor like Cosmo dancing with the dummy in Singin’ in the Rain.

Then, as abruptly as it started, the screen flickered and was gone – replaced with static.

I struggled to rejoin the room. Where was Bill? What had happened?

It was just a normal Wednesday. Yet now it felt like the days and weeks and years had melted and merged and were swimming around in my vision like the black circles that formed when I looked away from the snowstorm of the screen at the disappearing sunlight. I closed my eyes and let my head sag down to my bony chest. That chest. It had been so close. So wedged in to Bill’s ample torso, squeezed until I could feel his heart beat against my bosom. Together we span, one person, never questioning the closeness that bound us, never contemplating how fragile that moment was, how quickly it would be gone. By the following Christmas, he was dead.

Slowly, carefully, I unplugged the wires and buried the video in its place back in Bill’s room. I shut the door, went back to the kitchen and made a cup of tea to drink before the news.

The last thing I remember is a warm, solid pressure against my chest. I imagined it was Bill, squeezing me tighter and tighter until I knew that my last breath would take me to him, I would be safe in his arms once again. When they found me, I was still smiling.

ENDS

End of the short story writing class...and other things

Wow it's been a while since I updated this. Technology at home is one of the reasons, plus any spare time I had was devoted to various writing and other assignments for the Writing a Short Story course I was doing at Leicester Writing School.

Now that's finished and I'm still deciding how I felt about the whole thing. Overall it was a positive experience, I met some really nice people and I felt that it was a very good use of my time.

I'm not sure what I expected to happen. I think I hoped that it would ignite a spark to write that would produce a never-ending array of new works in progress which would eventually satisfy my desire to 'write something worth reading.'

In reality I wasn't all that pleased with most of the stuff I wrote. I am still struggling with WHAT to write about. And I'm not sure I can do the whole 'story arc' and 'satisfying ending' things that publish-able short stories apparently need to contain.

But none of that is the fault of the lovely tutors who I really respect and appreciated their advice and encouragement. I think Bead shouting "Just write something! Anything!" at me during one of the exercises the first week of the course will stay with me forever!

Maybe THAT'S the best thing I got out of it........just to keep trying!

Argh.

Will post a couple of new things as a follow on to this, sort of stuff i worked on during the class.

T

Writing School Leicester short story course, Weeks 2 and 3

Yes, I know. I missed a week. It's been busy. To recap:
The homework got done and handed in, albeit I had flashbacks to school when I left everything to the last minute and had to hastily re-write it during the break thanks to not having a printer. In the end I continued my imaginings from the group discussion in class and sort of grafted a description of my nan's front room onto a character called Barbara Morris, who was loosely based on the idea of that woman who insulted Gordon Brown that time. The piece had an MP - with an appropriate sounding name, as learned in the lesson - visiting The Morris woman's bungalow to heal the breach. If I get round to typing it up I'll post it. it was good practice in just DOING some thing and then handing it in, rather than my usual doing it then hiding it away becausse I fear it's not good enough.
To my complete and utter surprise and delight, week two of the course started well with good feedback from Bead - hooray! - and an opportunity to do some free writing in class which I was brave enough to read out to good response. I hope this does not sound like boasting, but it is so great to finally get some encouragement after what feels like forever writing into the wind.
enthusiasm suitably increased, boldness mustered up, I left week two abounding with ideas and...promptly did not do my homework. life conspires against me yet again. or is it just laziness?
still, week three has offered another twist in the road - poor Bead has a problem with her eyesight and has had to withdraw from the rest of the course. Her replacement, Rachel, is completely different and has a very different style. she's lovely quite quick-moving which I like and very open to discussion. she encouraged us to share and work in groups as she doesn't take homework home and give personal feedback. I have to say this is disappointing as surely that's the main thing new writers need? But it motivated us as a group to share our work, so I have set up a forum for us to do just that. my fellow course members are turning out to be a lovely bunch and there s a lovely sense of camaraderie by the end of the leson which I really hope continues.

homework this week is mixed, nothing that really inspires me so I'm going to return to something I started for Bead but didn't finish. It's the story of a dystopian future middle England, where the financial crash has landed society in post war conditions, with rationing, shops shut down, electricity turned off, disease rife. we pick up the story from the viewpoint of a little girl, queueing to get some medicine for her sick father, who we learn was once a government scientist. Like the idea of a child caring for a parent and at the same time coping with extreme adversity with stoic, childlike acceptance. but of course, and I already feel sorry for the poor little thing, something has to go wrong.

It's actually good because in the class this week we discussed short story structure and the used of conflict to move a story along. I really needed this because this idea I feel has potential but when I first wrote it there was no conflict, no idea of where the climax or resolution would come. I discovered from the group work in class that unlike some of my fellow students I struggle to find the resolution in plot planning. Rachel suggested that maybe I'm the kind of person who can't Decide in advance and just needs to keep writing and see where it takes me. I like this idea although I've always thought it's not very productive. but she has given me confidence to give it a go, so I will see where it takes me.

Until next time, then.

P.s. Sorry about poor spelling, punctuation etc. In this post! It pains me not to amend it but I'm using a borrowed iPad and it's a nightmare! Can't work out how to edit! so will have to amend another day! SO much for 21st century gadgets......

Writing School Leicester short story course, Week 1

The plan is backfiring.

This morning was the first session of six with the lovely Bead Roberts at Writing School Leicester. We’re writing a short story. Or few. And already I’m floundering in a sea of unimaginative excuses as to why I have writers’ block, even when the other nine individuals in the room can come up with SOMETHING, upon request. Whereas I can’t. Or won’t. I’m still not sure which.

It’s like Scrabble. All my friends and family have always assumed I’m great at Scrabble. And crosswords! “Oh Tash, she’s into books, she MUST be brilliant at Scrabble.”

Couldn’t be further from the truth.

I’ve always thought it’s the reporter instinct – give me a happening, an event, or whatever, and I’ll re-tell it. I’ll make it sound better or more pithy or more entertaining or just straight if that’s what you want. But ask me to INVENT something, for no reason at all, other than for the purpose of inventing, and I just draw blanks. Which as dedicated Scrabble players will tell you, score nothing.

The other students in the class are a varied bunch, some brave, others shy but everyone, every single one of them, when prompted, came up with something they weren’t so embarrassed not to share with the group.

Still, it was fun, and everyone was nice, and Bead, the tutor, is lovely in a sort of no-nonsense Radio 4 play writing sensible shoe wearing good humoured academic kind of way. Which is a good thing – as already covered on this blog, I’m a big R4 fan.

So I want to please her, I really do. Impress her, even. But I won’t do it unless I get over this stupid “I can’t think of anything” phase. A phase which has lasted ooh, YEARS now! Ridiculous. I listen to radio. I read newspapers. I speak to people, real people, all of the time. I have been places and seen things and observed and commented and memorised just like everyone else. So why can’t I recall any of these things and use them creatively when prompted?

Hopefully this course will help me find the missing link. If nothing else, the sheer brutal experience of being asked to come up with something in minutes then speak it to the whole group without chance to self edit or prevaricate or equivocate or any of those lovely words, and this week after week, should bludgeon my reluctant brain into something approaching obedience.

So then, what better place to start than homework?! Which, if you're reading this to see if you want to do the course, I should point out is optional and given in the kindest and most constructive terms possible, with a promise from Bead to give personal feedback which is actually the single most terrifying and yet desired outcome of this whole exercise. What does someone else, a professional storyteller, THINK of my writing?

Gulp.

The homework is to imagine a familiar setting, then have an unexpected character (for whom we have to get the name right, see earlier post) walk into the setting, notice three things, and react. Additionally, we need to write a paragraph or so in that person’s voice, first person, explaining what they want and what’s standing in their way.

Simple you may say. Endless possibilities!

That’s what I’m struggling with.

I may post the results, and Bead’s comments, here. Seems only fair.

Wish me luck.