The Test

Another from Future Learn. I didn't really complete the last course offered by the OU, but I'm led to believe that another one will come along later this year. It's now October so I'm guessing next month perhaps. The example below is from an exercise that was peer reviewed. I don't know how many reviews it received (only a couple I think), but they were generally favorable. I know that the exercise caused some disquiet among students due to the randomness of the reviewing process - the work had to be uploaded, then by some arcane system it would drop into another students working web area who would then be given the task of either reviewing it, or clearing it prompting a new one to take its place. This could take place an infinite number of times so you had to hope that at least someone liked it enough to actually want to review it - everyone had to review a piece of work to enable them to make progress in the course, but no-one had to review YOUR work. I think the brief for this the beginning of a longer story with emphasis of atmosphere and character 

'It was late and already dark as the solitary, slightly hunched figure of drama group leader Christian Robinson slowly read through the list of regular players. He was deep in thought, scratching his invisible beard, draining the last of his coffee slops and buttoning up his coat against the static cold of the old hall. He did a bit of acting himself, but these days was styling himself more as a director. He imagined himself as a creative influence capable of making other people do great things.

By this time everyone else had gone and he’d stayed behind wondering who to cast as the 'prince of darkness' for the upcoming horror play he'd promised the politics club: those fusty old worthies, who shared the Leddington-on Green village hall two nights a week who although rather dismissive of the drama group's work, had surprisingly requested a dark play especially for them. Christian without hesitation had said yes.

He had to be serious about casting this time though. If this went well, he knew at least two of the expected creak-filled audience were sufficiently influential in matters to do with local entertainments that if it went down well the next stop could easily the playhouse in town. The mayor or least his wife would be in this audience so maybe next stop would be The Leddington Athenaeum, Then maybe onto, who knows?  The world and oysters, he was thinking. So, someone tall, he thought, with the right amount of menace at his disposal. An ability to do creepy, yet urbane. Intelligence combined with the cad. Creepily urbane. Cleverly caddish. Sinister. Commanding.

He ran through the options. Paul was too short and didn't have anything like sinister in his delivery repertoire. His ears stuck out too - making him good for comedy. Richard's voice was too high pitched, his hair, foppish, his eyes too wide and his hands too small. This made him a good 'weak man', a hen-pecked husband, or a failing romantic. Malcolm was too effeminate in his manner - great for girl/boy roles or old fruits but not this. Tony, too rigid - too military, good policeman material and does petty officialdom brilliantly, but not this. Lewis, is too music hall. Maybe he could be a Jonathan Harker character at best, arriving at the glowering doors in the rattling rain and simpering against a backdrop of ropy sounding storms - courtesy of Bill and his ramshackle skip of percussive instruments that wobbled and hissed at his command. But someone needs to be there, he thought, someone standing expectantly in the shadows. Someone to frighten him and the audience. And none of this lot are cut out for this.

He suddenly realized how late it was, too late for this place. As he began hurriedly to gather up his things there was a knock on the door. It so hard it shocked him. So hard it echoed through the shell of the old building and made the startled walls moan and the air rumble. He purposely didn't look up. The candle guttered. The shock sound from the dark, kept his frozen eyes down. All he could see was the broken shadow that had slipped silently and unbidden through the hall window and seemed to hang everywhere. Whoever this was, he thought, he either had his man or was in grave danger.  

A Flash of Thunder, a Crack of Lightning

This came from Familiar Words in Unfamiliar Places. Another of the myriad ploys to try to get encourage the writer to be original.  Original in thought and in technique. Easier said than done. 

The children knew from Mrs. Bunsen’s science lessons that lightening only ever flickered when black clouds had somehow turned day into night as if someone was slowly turning the dial of a giant dimmer switch. Thunder would follow with booms and rumbles that sounded to them like sky warriors were bashing and rumbling their shields and preparing to attack Earth. The last time this had happened during one of those lessons Mrs. Bunsen had promised them that there was nothing to worry about as it was only explosions of air pressure, similar to when a squeakily tight balloon has too much wind in it and eventually has to go pop. But this was a hard blue sky day with a sizzling disc of pale orange sun and not a single cloud in sight. What was happening up there made no sense


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Net Result

This little autobiographical vignette was drawn from the section called 'Starting Ploys'. In this case I'm setting up a life writing anecdote which has a calm opening as the scene is set before a violent interruption that changes the tone of the story. Although I didn't really set out the themes other than 'autobiographical' as with many of my early 'life writing' examples' bullying' as a theme often emerges. . 

I remember as a boy when I first went fishing at the local canal. My friend was already quite skilled so he brought everything that we'd need. This included a wicker-basket which contained jars of maggots that looked like cheap penny sweets,ornate floats that looked like African tribal jewellery,and things he called lures that turned out to be undercover devices that deviously imitated fish but were clad in a violent armoury of trapping hooks and clamping teeth. As he set up the rods and tackle I sat quietly on the grassy bank watching a family of moorhens flitting about. I closed my eyes and breathed in the oily damp of the stagnant water and the submerged weed. I was looking forward to my first ever experience at fishing but the day was about to take a spiteful turn.

Characters The Double Bass Histories

In my first year at grammar school I was asked which musical instrument I would like to learn to play. I immediately chose the cello as both my father and my grandfather had both played the double bass and I felt that with the cello I might somehow be maintaining the male family tradition of playing awkward stringed instruments made of wood. Both of these men were quite thick-set with sturdy backs from working in the mines and could handle the weight of the bass, but for a reedy 13 year old five footer like me the cello would be a more suitable instrument.It was during the 1950s when my father played most. Jazz was all the rage and he was often spotted on his bicycle,scooting awkwardly through the town on his way to various dance hall gigs, him standing on one peddle, the spike of the double bass securing the instrument to the other. No one had cars so quite how the drummer transported all his kit remains a mystery.

 My grandfather's double bass career ended rather abruptly when both he and the monstrous instrument, the same one that my father was to inherit,collapsed and fell with a sickening clatter in the music pit of the local picture house. It was reported later that he'd had a seizure whilst vigorously providing the dramatic music for a silent film. 

Characters 4 Teddy the Clown

Another character from my Future Learn experiences. I can't remember the brief - each character sketch or scenario was supposed to help us exercise a specific writing technique - but whatever it was I quite liked this one. 

'I knew a circus clown once, called Theodore William Foofourang. I never knew whether this was his actual name or a made up one with which he could trade easy jokes, along with his over-sized feet, nobble nose and swazzel voice. One morning, one of those cruel, dull, November mornings, Theodore or Teddy-Clown as the children called him,was found dead in the local park fish pond. According to the park keeping attendant who found the body,several koi carp were nibbling at his prosthetic nose and sucking down what was left of the pills that floated from the bottle he still held. His only living relative was traced as his sister,an aged spinster surprisingly named Miss Elizabeth (Betty) Foofourang. She announced to a disinterested world via the Lewisham and Greenwhich Mercury that her brother probably died keeping any joy he might have been born with,still locked away in his heart.'

There is a danger I suppose from accusations that this character is nothing much more than an outrageous cliche: the sad clown.  But to hell with that. Actually now I come to think of it that might have been part of the brief. Whatever the case he's here if I ever need him. 

Characters 3 Trevor

I have chosen another character form my underused notebook.  This one wasn't so much received with thunderous applause and hysterical approval but rather to sound of one hand clapping.  I'd like to think the timing was against me as the creation of Trevor  I thought fitted the brief of the exercise better than many other examples that appeared far more popular. Here it is...

Here in this bleached BBC TV footage of 1970's off-colour, Britain is seen coping with a summer like it's never had. The flickering images alternate between crowds of young girls in various states of dress and distress, and a group of suited young men standing on a stage looking bashful and bemused. A young policeman is spotted, wearing a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled almost to his shoulders. Before the news clip ended he was seen stumbling with near exhaustion,showing the strains of his wiry tattoo-less arms as he carried an unconscious sixteen year old girl from the scrummage of a tearful and hysterical crowd.

Before the decade was finished,Trevor, having impressed his bosses over the years, had ditched the blue uniform for a brown coloured suit which matched his tie which matched his shirt, which matched his hair and sideburns which he now wore fashionably long. His car was brown and so were the fingers of his right hand from the tiny No 6 cigarettes that he burned to the hilts between tensed fingers whilst trying to understand how troubled souls worked. 

Today, a slightly shambolic Detective Chief Inspector of a run-down Auckland police office, with three broken marriages, a drink problem, a rented flat and at least one health scare behind him,Trevor gathered himself to make his belated retirement speech to a group of assembled worthies. One of those amassed to pay their respects, hidden in the crowd and very alert,was a 58 year old Billionaire American Business woman called Ms Emily Pargetter who after many years of searching had finally tracked him down.

Characters 2 Mervin the Busker

Another go at creating characters yielded this fellow. I post him up for no better reason than to know where I might find him should I need him.


I mean busking is a kind of, trying to get better... upbeat activity. You know, done with an energetic purposefulness with qualities of simpatico, laced with a morsel of musical talent. These are the basic elements required of the busker to draw in the punters and to tempt purses and wallets to be loosened and to allow a fluttering of notes a new life for a life, or at least some hard coins from the tucked-in interstices of passing pockets to tinkle near the busker's feet. But Mervin is not a good busker. And not a natural showman. The guitar case as money-grab is a dead seal, its body ripped open and emptied of its entrails. And Mervin, true to the busker image, looks like shit with his weaselly beard, and skinny man's throat. His ears poking out by the tightness of a bobble hat are made to look like a joke set and his pick and mix clothes are at best refugee-chic. His battered roughed-up guitar is self consciously slung across the bone field of his chest - the strings as loose as his apparent bad luck, and are strummed inexpertly and his props amount to little more than a grimed up, empty tea cup. His breath smokes through the cold air. 

These are the things we know. We can see them. What we don't know is that he's needlesssly putting himself through this. He doesn't need to be on the streets. He's making some kind of point which makes sense only to him. But that's because only he knows why he's there.

Characters: Wilson Squarebridges

This Future Learn course - which I shall have to either revisit, or re-register when it is relaunched (I wonder what you might call a three way repetition of 're' prefixes in the same sentence - all these things have names: grammar is like cricket, everything is collected,collated and classified), as again I have fallen away.

However I have been working my way through some of the exercises.  This one below, which was subject to the most stringent word limit (the course writers have a clever way to enforce the limit by ensuring that the blank template for uploading your work ceases to function once you hit it), is about creating a character snapshot which should include unexpected elements - playing with the readers expectations I think it what it was titled.

I drew this one out pretty quickly though what I could do with him now that he exists I am not so sure. The flower caused me to have a near fit with auto correct - it is correctly spelled, and nothing to do with the human senses. Anyway here he is:

In the mid 1950s Wilson Squarebridges spent his working days huffily teaching boys metalwork at a well respected public school. Boys he considered nothing more than polished turds, destined to become MPs or barristers; professions Wilson regarded as obscene and other worldly. Foul tempered and ancient looking he had served as a gunner and reserved blacksmith during the war which had conspired to render him quite deaf. His unruly white hair which collapsed around his ears, his wrecked, calloused hands, his stubborn attachment to his hissing gas bottles, lump hammers and shrieking files, combined with his deafness, made him a bad tempered figure in his spattered overalls which failingly protected his frayed suit. Wilson avoided the cushy and sociable extra-curricular options available to the schoolmasters. He had little interest in sports and even less in school travel days, preferring to spend his days in his fuliginous refuge: the Hades of the filthy workshop which was to him a natural habitat and comfort zone, but to others a diabolical network of forges, flames, filings and the whispered profanities of other, 'f' words. But no one could guess how often tears pooled in those white-heat and war damaged eyes. And few knew of the exquisite artistic beauty of the intricate metal sculpture work he crafted to lift the spirits of his terminally ill wife, or the fragile natural beauty of the auriculas he cultivated for the hospice staff.

The Blocked Out Life of Elizabeth Montague

Elizabeth Montague was a good wife and mother. Everyone said so. Always clever and bright, she had only missed university by a couple of points,and indignant at what she considered an unfair selection method, refused a by for which she was entitled, and leaving education completely scuppered any hope of the legal career she had always dreamed about. In her mid teens, angry and gradually burdened with a sense of failure, she turned from a hard working optimist to a lazy and troublesome girl. Eventually, after refusing to cash in on what were pretty decent 'A' level results and taking one of the good career opportunities she was being offered, she instead accepted a low-paid, menial job at the local shirt factory packing men’s shirts. No one was in any doubt that this was an act of protest. She settled in to it though, paying sufficient attention to learn astonishingly quickly the awkward technique of folding and pinning the newly minted shirts and sealing them into polythene envelopes which were then tightly sealed by machines. Although work of mind- numbing mundanity this procedure required dexterity and care and no-one could remember anyone who had picked up the routine quicker than she had. She seemed contented and secure and refused to give way to any lingering sense of ambition she might still have had.
After a few months she met and married Paul, an amiable mechanic and vigorous shop steward who had recently joined the company on promotion. Paul who fancied a stab at local government quite fancied Elizabeth, and the feeling was mutual. Soon they were dating. Over glasses of Taunton cider and endless packets of Embassy Golds,(the cheapest and nastiest option available then),he introduced her to socialism and the principles of Marxism, something that had completely passed her by whilst at school.  In time she quickly earned herself a reputation for being feisty,standing up for herself and others against what she’d quickly realised were quite exploitative bosses who had hunkered down in the backroom offices of the Grant Fenton shirt factory. Pretty soon Elizabeth eclipsed Paul’s knowledge and enthusiasm for politics. After a short while they were married to no great fanfare, and, when Elizabeth fell pregnant with Emily, typical of the 1970s, she left the factory to a supposed life of dedicated domesticity. Paul now settled as a married man, buried any lingering ambitions he had and slumped to work everyday dutifully bringing home the bacon.  
  After a while Elizabeth grew restless and announced that she was going back to college to, as she put it: ‘tie up some loose ends.’ In 1982 having completed her part time politics degree, a few part time students were organising a trip to Greenham Common to make a protest about US nuclear missiles on British soil. She signed herself up and promised Paul and Emily that she would return that evening. One of the other students, Katherine – also a young mother, brought a tent along just in case of a late finish. After an exhausting and, to Elizabeth, exhilarating day, both women stayed that first night, drank copious amounts of wine and sang protest songs about warmongering governments and fascistic police. Both felt intoxicated with life and at some point that night decided to stay on a bit longer. After three weeks of living in the little tent, relying on food parcels and hand outs, reveling in the newly comforted of delighted sorority whilst using the great outdoors as a makeshift bathroom and probably smelling like a couple of old kippers, Katherine decided that she missed her husband and sons too much and told Elizabeth that she was going home, her work done. After a blazing row – Elizabeth decided that the future of the planet far out weighed any pathetic little domestic concerns she herself might have – and stayed. And stayed for seven years..As time passed she grew bitter through the endless battles she had with multiple forms of authority: police, council officials, court staff, politicians,servicemen. All lumped together in her mind as government backed brainwashed shits. She refused to wash, change her clothes and would only eat hand outs. Paul and Emily were always in her mind somewhere of course, but their memory was becoming shadowy, pushed to the margins by this new obsession. Her family had been consigned to the back burner of her life, to be dealt with later.Over the years she broke onto the base numerous times, damaged military equipment, assaulted a female soldier,and set fire to the runway. Throughout this time she attended court, was rude to several stipendiary magistrates and was sent to prison no fewer than 11 times. Always she returned to the 'Peace Camp', as it was now styled and listed as her permanent address by the courts, ready to take part in whatever 'action' was being planned next, whether lying in the road obstructing traffic,painting the gates,or breaking onto the base naked and embarrassing the soldiers and police who had to coyly and self consciously gather them up and escort them to the exit gates.  And then, in 1989 the bombs went. And the inhabitants of the camp disappeared, and Elizabeth, realizing there was nothing left to protest about, wondered how on Earth she could go home.