It's Been a While.

Haven't posted in ages. No-one else from A215 has either. This is a shame. And I should be ashamed, and we should be ashamed. Shame to us all. But there you are, it's difficult with Christmas and TMA deadlines being so close to both it and New Year. It's difficult for me, it's difficult for everyone. It's just all too bloody difficult. Right now I don't feel anything like a writer. I feel fraudulent if anything, but I'm hoping this is just a passing feeling.

I'm really not sure about my 2200 word story The Party Lines. Characters are pretty shallow, plot seems to be a contrivance to satisfy two anecdotes told by a central character in first person narrative voice. My story as produced for this assignment is really those anecdotes and if I could have got away with them and only them I would have. But I needed, or felt I needed, to justify them by giving them a framework - which of course was also a drain on the word limit. In short I tried to do too much in too short an allocated space. Now like everyone else I have to sit back and wait to see whether I'm on the right track or not. By that I mean, am I on the right course - not journey, actual course.

Anyway TMA02 went off about 19th December I think it was. I'd written it obscenely early - some time during early November and although I tweaked it quite a bit, most recent changes were connected to the awkward (for me at least) word limit. I never really did change it for the better, just continually recast sentences, erased lines, blended or obliterated paragraphs, converted everything I could into a contraction, trimmed acres of flab from the edges and forsook some of my darlings. Buffed, polished, groomed and dressed in its best clothes it went off, and I've basked in several shades of idleness since.

And it's poetry next. What the Hell? I've had a tentative look at the Chapter, which looks fine and makes poetry seem unbelievably accessible. I'm sure it's not though otherwise we'd all be poets already, right? I'm sort of looking forward to it, but there's a little dread attached to that excitement too. Probably because of the word 'form.' As a word it can freak out the nascent writer in one don't you think? A kind of anathema to the creative creature the word 'form.' Poetry seems to start off with an implication that you should be as creative as you want to be, 'go on just splurge all your feeling out and what the hell eh?' Then whilst you're at it in a volte face of terrifying magnitude, 'make sure that it's 5 stressed feet from 10 syllables per line within a tight set of quatrains or cantos. Or if mood and tone suggested it forsake the iambic pentameter for, say, the trochaic quatrometer and group together in 3 lines...I'm paraphrasing here of course because I hardly have a clue, but this is it, the fact that we have to start considering form I think is frightening the 'bejesus' out of everyone. Well me anyway.

Clown Monologue

Saw this in the BRB. Way way off the diary track. Doesn't matter. Doing nothing is the bad boy, not breaking the study plan. And at least I'm doing some activities. I like this guy. I started where the BRB writers prompted us...

...‘Now for the application of big red lips. I see red I see red I see red mist. Show must go on. Show nothing to punters of the desperate state of my life. off with the funny man's face. Off his face. I'm a cliché, the sad clown. People actually expect clowns to be sad these days, not moronically happy like in the old days but crushingly, suicidal-sad. It's not a shock. It used to be a shock, the idea of the sad clown - the tears of a clown and all that. But now we're all tortured souls, weirdoes, and folk devils. Coco the clown came to our school when we were kids. We all loved him, I cried when he left; as he was driven out of our school gates a little bit of us all died. Our day became grey and glum and boring. Nowadays if I visit a school, half the buggers shit their pants. At one school a little girl had to be practically sedated after I offered her a balloon. Not quite the kind of response I was looking for. I was in the park the other day doing a little song and dance routine and a bunch of 15 year old chavs threatened to beat my head in. All very funny. There was a survey done recently asking adults between the ages of 25 and 45 what in the world they found most scary. No mention of the bogey man, or the serial killer, nothing about hairy monsters under beds or wicked witches that could turn up and transform you into a stinking toad. No ghosts woo-wooing you into a state of terror and turning your underwear into a sludge catcher. Oh no. Even the likes of death or illness didn't rate anywhere near the top. Do you know what was at the top? Clowns. People are statistically more afraid of clowns than anything else. Ain’t That Grand? We're paid, sometimes, and we're put on this planet to do this job. We put crap on our faces, wear stupid noses that people try and snatch off, wear these damn stupid shoes that people stamp on just in case I really am a freak with size 19 feet, and I shout ‘ouch!’ and ‘Oof!’ And then they laugh, but only because they think they’ve hurt me. It’s funny winding up the sad stupid freak. And I laugh with them, but they aren’t laughing with me, they're laughing at me. Make people laugh, put a little sunshine in their otherwise sad drab little lives, and how do they repay us? They fear us, they hate and they pity us. Ooohh! they say 'The sad clown frightens me!' ‘And he's probably a child molester’ they think; ‘otherwise he'd have a proper job.’ And now the bastards are conspiring against us, ME, by chucking me out of my home. And I'm supposed to go and make them laugh. A sad, homeless, feared, pitied, miserable, fuck up of a clown.

Time for a few Activities

I'm a world class bad OU student. I've done very few of those activities in the legendary Big Red Book despite sitting on my arse and reading everyone else's efforts on the Student Cafe. My study programme, such as it is, seems to be consisting of sporadic readings of the BRB, tinkering with TMA02 as it progresses through to some kind of completion and posting smart arse comments on the A215 Facebook site whilst avoiding most of the SC fun threads because most of them are unconscionable crap.

But I'm changing. I really am enjoying this course, I'm probably feeling a bit chippy because I work full time - no fewer than 12 hours a day with a wife who works abroad and only comes home at week ends. Guess what I'm not doing at week ends, even if I want to. But here I am tonight writing the blog and considering putting something on it that isn't a TMA (after all you have to do those don't you) and preparing to be a better student.

Today I found time to do two things. The first of them was a taking part on the tutorial forum in a little exercise involving points of view. We were invited to write up to three hundred words on two or three examples of third person omniscience, and the same for third person limited omniscience. (there was also an invitation to have a crack at objective omniscience? eh? Maybe later with that one, Hell I'm only dipping in at the moment, tsk.

Anyway I misread the instructions and entitled the first one full omniscience and the second third person with no limitations. The tutor knows me by now and pretty much understands what she's dealing with, so she let me off lightly. After all I didn't have to do it at all. Out of the group she has I reckon 80 percent of them are kicking back with the Havanas with a copy of Titbits in their hands and letting the remaining 20 percent sweat their butteroos off. Never mind. I'm pretty good at sitting back and doing sod all, so let 'em and good on 'em too. It's not their fault I'm undergoing some sort of transformation. Though how long it'll last is anyone's guess.

So exercise one - the old points of view. Before anyone thinks about slating the story, we were told, under no circumstances were we to put any imaginative effort into the exercise. This was all about techniques. Enough of this flab I here you say, here's the hot skinny straight off the bat as it were:

1. I’m thinking full omniscience for this one….

It was the afternoon of Alfred Altringham’s 90th birthday and everything had gone well so far. All three of his beloved daughters Patricia, Mary and Betty, together with their husbands two of whom he cared not one jot, were in attendance at Greenfield Park where Alfred now calls home. He enjoyed being the centre of attention. He always did.
     Patricia was the eldest. Alfred adored Patricia, what a shame, he thought, that she had to drag that waster of a husband Brian with her.
   ‘Happy Birthday Dad,’ said Patricia. She looked askance at Brian waiting for him to join in.
   ‘Oh, yes... Happy Birthday old boy', said Brian. Brian looked as if he wished himself anywhere else. There was insincerity in both his voice and his manner. I wish we could bugger off now, thought Brian, the match is about to start on Sky Sports.
  ‘Thanks’ sad Alfred. Bloody leech, he thought, can’t wait until I’m dead, he only sticks around for the the money.
   What neither Alfred, nor Brian nor Mary nor Betty knew, in fact what no one knew except Patricia, was that Graham was standing outside. And Alfred and Graham hadn’t seen each other for well over thirty years.
   Graham was standing outside, wishing he hadn’t come. He’d said to his wife Shirley that he was popping out for a pint. She didn’t believe him, then again she never did. It was impossible to know what Graham was up to half the time. Alfred was supposed to meet Graham for a pint thirty years ago. That never happened either. In fact you never really know what’s going on with Graham, always the wayward one.

2. For this one third person limited omniscience

  ‘Happy Birthday Dad’ said Patricia. She thought he looked well today. And she knew that having the whole brood around him would be pretty much the best thing he could wish for on his 90th. 'Brian’s here as well’ she continued, indicating where Brian stood. Brian put out his hand and shook Alfred’s.
   ‘Happy Birthday old boy’, said Brian
   ‘Thanks’, said Alfred’
    Patricia winced slightly, she knew in her own mind that there was no love lost between them and detected that lemon sucking face her father seemed to reserve for occasions such as these.‘The rest of the Altringham team are here as well Dad.’ She had wondered whether to remind Graham about Dad’s 90th. The two men hadn’t spoken in years. But she, Patricia, was the oldest, and had decided that she would try to use this day to reconcile them. She’d visited Graham three weeks ago and told him what was happening and where.‘I’ll see’ Graham had said. Patricia asked if that was it. Graham had shrugged saying something like he'll be there if he has nothing else on.‘Don’t come in straight away, stay by the door, Patricia had told him, 'I’ll judge the mood and sort out the timings.' she didn't really believe he would come.

The Doulton Lady (TMA01)

'To enter the charity shop', wrote Peregrine Short in his journal, 'is to negotiate two separate barriers: one physical, the door; then the perceptual, the invisible wall that traps the fusty smell of moth balls, old paper and cheap detergent.' He didn't mind giving money to charity but if he thought there was nothing to be made from a find, he wouldn't bother. And he was in one of those charity shops right now.

On arrival, he surveyed the colourful blotches of junk assembled, wondering if there was anything of value. This to Peregrine meant monetary value. He began rummaging through the blue plastic box placed close to a lady’s hat stand which he thought looked rather like a tall plant that had spawned hats as flowers. Edith wore hats, he remembered. He continued his rootle through the box, and whilst slipping a nest of beaded costume bracelets coolly through the cracks of his fingers as if they were small snakes, his thoughts wandered.

He thought, on hot summer days like these, the customers cooked through the plate glass, and sweated with the heat and the effort of the search, whether screech-dragging the tightly squeezed hangers along the steel rails, doing endless, seam- splitting squats to check out the lower shelves where the shoes and heavy items are stored, or doing creak- inducing back stretches to reach the top shelves where the tiny ornaments are displayed. The charity shop, Peregrine searched for the simile, ‘junk shop, sauna, and gym; fitness centres to exercise the unwary.’

Now 63 and retired, he felt too old for gyms, and his knees too arthritic for golf. But this new hobby, with all its bumping, and shuffling around, its smell, the unwanted workout, was worth it for that valuable find. The antique hunt is my new golf he thought; life is pretty empty without an interest, whether it’s lowering golf handicaps or outwitting Miller’s Guides.

As he creaked up from his wicket keeper's squat, another old sport from long ago, he felt the clamminess of his clothes. But he knew that come winter, things would be even worse: people in damp smelly overcoats hogging his sections; pushchairs shoved in with muddy rattling wheels containing wool- swaddled babies peering out of their spattered plastic covers. And the paraffin heaters, all fumes and flickering, stinking in the corner, emitting just enough heat to stop the old ladies behind the tills from freezing to the spot, all adding to the smelly mix of paper, rubber and cloth.

This new interest would have suited Edith he thought. She loved her pottery. Until that is she made what she considered to be a schoolgirl error, by accidentally boxing up a particularly treasured, if slightly damaged, lady dancer figurine with some cheap ones and packing it off to a school jumble sale. How upset she’d been, and his response was no help, disdainfully telling her to grow up as it was worthless, before going out to play golf. He’d shown no sympathy. As he watched an old couple engaged in spinning the wobbly carousel that held all the romantic novels, he winced at the memory.

She always said they should 'do things together' as she simply 'didn't do sports' herself even when young; with the singular exception of being the best girl high jumper at Arundel Grammar for girls when as sixth former she was the first girl to ever clear six feet utilising the western roll technique rather than the scandalous 'Scissor-leg method.' (‘Boys should never see young ladies open their legs,' Edith used to declaim in the haughty tones of her old school mistress - ' it is far better to fail and fall on your face with dignity than to show your undergarments in quite such a way!’). Peregrine smiled sadly. Doing something together never really occurred to him. A good mimic, Edith, he thought; amusing, fun, caring. He forgot to remember this when she was alive.

He made his final sally to what he always referred to as the ‘what-not shelf,’ typically a spinster’s clutter-clear out of twee Lilliput houses, chunky glass candle holders and ugly photograph frames from the 1970s - loft rather than house clearance items. As he turned disdainfully away he almost missed it, tucked in the corner, a smudge-swirl of pink and white. In a heart jolt he recognised it, the colour, the pose, right down to the tiny wound in the foot. Trembling he reached for it, and held the dancing lady figurine gently in his hand.

Thoughts on TMA02

I have no business even thinking about writing about TMA02 since submission of 01 was only last Thursday - less than a week ago. But I am thinking about it because it's a longer TMA, 2200 words as opposed to the niggardly 750 we were given for 01, and it will certainly take me longer to complete. This years Happy Christmas, is going to be contingent on whether or not I'm well ahead of the game with 02 nicely tucked away long before all the Christmas parties start, and certainly before the big days.

So since submission of 01, and I still await my marks, I have been wondering what I might write the 2200 words about. I have had a few ideas, most of them have been killed at birth. One has stuck with me whilst all others have been strangled on the alter of 'impossible to do' because of x y or z.

I thought about a WW1 yarn; all that emotion being poured out in found letters and diaries. But have concluded that I don't really know enough about the subject. I thought about - bizarrely, the life of a film projectionist - a whole life lived vicariously thing - daydreams, imaginings, never quite having a real life, under the spell of films to an extent. But couldn't really imagine the day to day process of getting those reels on, the touch and smells, and the tensions all of which would have to be authentic. If I could get access to my dad's memories I'd have a chance, he was a film projectionist back in the 1970s - I had various posters on my bedroom wall to prove this point. Charles Bronson looking lean and muscular in Street fighter. Sly Stallone in Rocky looking even more impressive, both looking down on my weedy teenage body.

But I forgot to ask Dad all about the process. Except I remember him saying something about the knack of getting the new reel on before the old one finished - otherwise there was an unwanted gap, and a collective groan would be directed to his ears as he faffed about trying to get the film going and maintain the tension. I'll see him next month. I'll have to take my interviewers head with me. And the rather underused notebook.

I have drafted a start on one. Bit more than a draft actually, I've written a whole story based on the 'all friends together prompt' but if I'm honest it's not very good. The descriptive passages are fine, the characters are fully rounded, but the story is pants - wouldn't register anything special with me if I sat down and read it if it was presented to me as a piece of original work, author unknown. But I'll probably persist with it, I know what I'm like, I tackle TMAs all the same - I need to either have it done early, or have it as a work in progress throughout the module that leads towards the TMA. That way I can relax a little bit and take in some of the new stuff without panicking about deadlines looming and having no idea how I'm going to go about the assignment.

Memory.

I was rowing. Pulling my wire to a different tune, pulling a load against maximum air/magnetic resistance. Pulling with vigour. Back straight - posture checked against a blurred duplicate also known to me as my less photogenic twin. Always a risky business, reflection checking in the vanity fair of gym-world. I would simper something about "health concerns" if I was ever challenged about looking at myself during a live act, not checking is simply too dangerous. I accidentally applied the back- bent posture a few years ago having taken my eyes off my double for a session and could barely walk for a week - not a good option, the bbo. A silent accusation of preening is a small price worth paying.

And I was rowing. Seat doing the coaster slide, feet clamped for better purchase, legs pumping, hands callousing, arse aching, feet cramping. The Concept 2 Model D Rower. Rowing to health, rowing to fitness, twenty eight to thirty two revolutions a minute. Drag, drag - what a drag. Good sweat, heavy breathing, heart pounding, calorie burning.

I could just about see the TV screens helpfully positioned for the exclusive use of the two rows of exercise cyclists, regiments of super-models and the odd natty-fatty, all immaculately turned out in a sports designer's wet-dream vision of carefully arranged lycra, and not a composure threatening sweat droplet to dampen their brought-to-read-whilst-exercising mags. No sweat, no pounding. No need of the TV screens. But with a little head craning, a carefully stolen squinny, a frozen moment between rows, I spotted on the nearest screen a feature on the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams. Famous also for . . . making a rowing machine - a Concept 2 Model D rowing machine, his last sitting place.

I had read somewhere that he died - mid row. Rowing to keep fit in a Los Angeles gym. Died of a heart attack. At the age of 49. An age not a million miles from mine. Curiously I felt less like rowing as this nightmarish image flashed up in my mind of me keeling over like a floppy toy which then squatted there like an obstinate toad. The top part of my body grounded, my legs stubbornly lashed to their foot holders, an obscene tangle of limbs and somethings gone badly wrong on rowing machine number 7. The nearest the corner TV screen machine. The end machine.

NB since this piece was written I have learnt that it was actually a treadmill that did for DA. So I'm back on the rower and now giving treadmills a wider berth.

First memoir exercise

And it's in games that I find some answers. Or more properly, PE, Physical Education for children. Children, circa 1964, including yours truly. The boys turning out in voluminous shorts, before they became fashionable by way of the kind of shorts-minimalism that made Glen Hoddle look, on reflection, like he was playing football in his jockeys, and the girls, stripped down into heavy duty, industrial strength, navy blue serge knickers.

What was the deal? Why were they made to do it? Even the slim girls looked horrid - though I suppose this was intended - boys get weird palpitations and uncomfortable stirrings from an alarmingly young age and I guess the old serges were the best defence against any of that twitching in the 'Y' fronts and embarrassing bulges business. But all the same, I would have thought the outlining of these female backsides in the company of dozens of mini priapics an unnecessary distraction and unhelpful to the cause of good health through innocent physical jerkery and honest endeavour.

Putting myself back into the arena through the power of memory and imagination, I do recall that one 'serge wearer' during these regular outings was slightly larger than the rest. So large in fact that I can only guess that she would have been a serge wearer because she was permanently excused all physical activities and instead sat out most of these bracing sessions, fatly, on the sidelines.

Extremely fat and even more unpopular. And, if God hadn't been cruel enough already, ensured that her eyesight was such that she would permanently need the assistance of National Health Specs to see, and that her vast body would be impervious to the cleansing and scenting properties of soap and water.

There was a time also, when I was less than popular. At just about this time as it happens. One of those short periods that probably lasted a few months but felt like a lifetime. I wasn't quite ready to engage in any side by side empathy out on the fringes of school child society, out in the frozen wastes of the bleachers with fat . . 'Olive' but, as I too was stricken with less-than-perfect-eyesight, was also forced to wear National Health little round speccies, and therefore considered an 'anyone who's different is odd, oddity. Bit like Olive, but without the buzzing lies and usually hidden, serge knickers. And I suppose it was this that brought us, momentarily, together. On one school games day.

The usual ramshackle of events - lots of hopping and things involving buckets. But sandwiched between the egg and spoon and the sack race was the wheel barrow race. The Wheel Barrow Race. Girls pushing boys. Girls choosing boys to push. Boys legs tucked under girls arms and pushed along, wheelbarrow style. Prizes for winners.

I guess the rationale behind the gender chosen roles was that boys had stronger arms to propel themselves along, and boys legs scrawny bits at the best of times, aren't that heavy and well within the strength zone of the average girl. And my legs were going to be held, I was going to be involved in the wheel barrow race.

As the pairing off neared completion, feelings of dejection came over me in waves as pretty soon only one girl and two boys remained. The slightly more confident, slightly more popular girl made her move selecting the none specs wearer. There was to be no wheelbarrow race for me. No more pushers were left. The pushers had left the building.

But wait. There was a rousing of a commotion. A swirling of school mams and mothers, all flouncy dresses, beads, and good natured chivying; pulling, patting and fussing over what appeared to be at first glance, a baby calf being dragged, reluctantly into the open. This turned out to be Olive, sprung from the safety and anonymity of the spectators seating and ordered (this was the 1960s) to strip down to her mighty serge knickers and plug the gap. I was going to be a barrowed after all - but I was going to be wheeled by a mini homunculus.

On the sound of the starting whistle the surge of the serges and their hand crawlers began. Boy's legs were being dropped by weedy, ringletted and ribboned girly-whirlies. Tears and tantrums quickly followed. I was being pushed by a pile driver, my bony legs clamped tight by ham-like arms and the pent up emotions of a friendless soul, making a desperate pitch for a win and instant hitherto unknown popularity.

My twiggy arms and hands were a blur of desperate skittering. They had to be. If I hadn't kept them going I would have fell, painfully onto my face - an accidental wreck of bloody nose, grass-stained teeth and comically twisted specs. My chest - what there was of one - heaved, fear of worse pain drove me on. And on. And on. This great lump, this horrid fat nightmare in serge knickers was pushing too hard, too hard. I'm bound to fall, I will fall. And I did.

But not before Hephalump and I crossed the winning line first.

Back to Blog

I need to keep this blog alive, so a bit of a dear diary entry just to keep it ticking over.

This week-end I have had it easy as the TMA, not due until the 27th was submitted on the 20th whilst I was at work. I pretty much had to do it at work as I have real trouble submitting using my laptop at home. The problem is easily surmountable I suppose, I only really have to convert the file, but the more complex the operation the more anxious about the submission I become. And I don't need to increase my discomfort any more than I have to.

That said, I already have. Like an idiot I forgot to put my name or personal identifier on my work before clicking the submission button, and I didn't want to get into what seems a complicated process, the trying to reclaim it business. Quite how I forgot to do this most simple of tasks I don't know, this is my fourth course for Heaven's sake, I'm not exactly a rookie with the OU. I know the mechanics of the business I must have submitted at least 25 assignments before this one. Schoolboy error.

The assignment itself proved to be quiet a challenge. Earlier on, at the beginning of the course I glanced at the Assignment booklet (once I realised I had to print it off, an odd change if ever there was one) and read the TMA01 details. At this point I thought it looked unbelievably simple. I was even looking forward to it, something that has never happened before. Bit of a free write, short auto biographical memory of some sort, then a little reflection on how I felt about the thing, Oh and how did the book and all its advice help me. I stored something like that in my memory which remained there until I arrived at TMA time at a canter.

The free write was no problem. I'd done loads. I wasn't at all bothered about losing consciousness whilst writing. Losing consciousness whilst driving, or during meetings at work, that concerns me - for the latter I might be sacked or at least feel embarrassed and old, in the case of the former I might turn my wife into a widow and my children into orphans. Neither are good conclusions. And I do lose consciousness during a free write when I sit in bed at 1130ish and I'm knackered from my day's hassles at work. Frightened myself a bit the other night as I watched my fingers try to type 'there are dead people in the...and I pulled back with a heart thud in case the word 'room' materialized. Quite frightening, but no-one is going to lecture me on how to free write. Got it down to a fine - if slightly disturbing art. Or rather it has me down to an art.

The free write I worked with was the genuine one. I took Charity Shop as a prompt and ran with it. Typed all kinds of crap - even worse than this blog entry. The only issue was that it was way over three hundred words so I had to edit quite severely, the challenge was to maintain the essence of the freedom that went into the free write. But I managed this quite well, ensuring that the final line which was to be my jump off point for the 750, stayed in place - though I added a little element to it (cheating? I don't think so) to allow the join to be seamless.

The 750 words was pretty tough if I'm honest. I was determined to test myself by going for a piece of fiction rather than something I would have found easier - I'm here to learn and I have to stretch myself. Got myself into a right old tangle with points of view and tenses, and disappeared up my own backside several times with the story, its purpose, its length, its characters. But I felt myself to be learning through the pain and the tears and the blinding headaches from too much screen-staring. I also had moments of confusion over the fragment versus completed story debate that was ongoing on the various forums. I was determined to go for something of a conclusion, and even if this loses me points, I feel that I have at least completed something this early in the course and consequently I feel that these are points towards the greater good, if not towards the course.

Tutorial exercise

My offering for Tutorial 1: Write and outdoor scene using the present tense. Piece should include (I'm paraphrasing like mad now) as many of the senses as possible, look at the bigger picture then focus on the minutiae, something like that, and it must be in the present tense. Seems the course people love the present tense. There is a reason for this. I just need to work it out! Anyway, as it was written (which is actually, in the best traditions of how real writers write, an accentuated, edited, bulked, polished version of a previous entry on the blog. How's that for magic? ......

.....My turn I guess. This really did happen, I had my notebook with me, but I was afraid that if I took it from my pocket it would fly off, and I would never see it again. So I made mental notes ;)

I've stopped the car on my way home, as I always said I would, to walk in an area that sits tantalisingly close to the road I travel daily. The sea is the colour of lead and is leaving. The sky, grey but bright. The sand yellow where it's dry, then brown then pockmarked then shiny. On the horizon where the deep sea grey meets the washed out grey of the sky, there are two boats. They look like children’s bath toys, or drawn features on a canvass, put there by an artist to break the monotony of the two vast empty spaces. They're sitting still and indifferent to this little local ritual. Untroubled and unaffected by the seas seeming indecisiveness.

As I’m walking, I notice that the wind, now quite fierce, is ripping through the soft powder sand; gusts are zipping along the dry parts making a daunting yellow smoke that's rippling along the surface. Some of these fine grains are stinging my face, getting trapped in my hair, and my eyelashes are feeling crusts newly made from tears and salt and dust.

Further down where the sea is on the retreat, it's leaving new damp sand behind, impervious to the wind, it's flat and smooth but with a hint of grain, like the surface of polished wood. Like pine or light oak. I look at it closer and it reminds me of something else; the 'grain' in the sand caused by the swirl of the retreating sea has made it look almost like tanned leather.

Further along the line where damp sand meets dry, small stones appear to shimmer, wetly, like jewels washed up and abandoned by the receding sea, breaking the silky smoothness of the sand grain. And I see a new texture here that reminds me of flattened cake mixture, patted and rolled - each stone now either a currant, a sultana, or a raisin.

At the sea's edge, the tiny, thinly rolled waves of dirty white froth, helped by the wind, are making that unbroken waterfall sound, not punctuated by ebb and flow and rattling, but a continuous susurrus sound as it’s being drawn back, almost reluctantly it seems, back into the sea’s belly.

Further along the shore, I notice little semi circular holes appearing in the sand, six rows per section, looking like a succession of half buried cheese graters, all lined up, like soldiers ready for inspection. And everything is orderly once again. But as I look behind me from the direction I came from, where the sand dunes live, and are never troubled by the sea, the smoke sand is reaching its destination, swirling up into transparent yellowish clouds as if the dunes are being reinforced by the ghosts of a thousand mermaids.

Apropos the Tutor Forum

I'm getting better with the notebook - though I'm still not as organised as I would like to be or as mindful as to why it's with me. I took it with me to IKEA on Saturday and was going to do some little character pen portraits whilst lunching on my Swedish meatballs - but only really used it to jot down the stock and aisle numbers of the two items I went there for. But I at least took my notebook mentality around with me, and noticed a lot of little things to add to my character creations (all human life is to be found in IKEA, better than almost anywhere else I think.) The blog however is where I pull myself back into the reckoning as an active student. The privacy settings on the OU blog system allows me to write complete tosh which I can save for later then return to and edit, change, tidy and improve at my leisure.

The OU Blog is without doubt my 'free writing space’ and has thrown up plenty of surprises along the way. Anything that looks sufficiently polished then gets transferred onto my Blogspot blog which has accumulated an impressive 14 followers! All members of this course, no normal people ;) One or two have actually left comments on this (public) blog, so I find myself trying harder to make the writing look, at least, decent.

I guess it's all good training for later. But I will pursue with the notebook as well - even if it's the little daily diary app on my iPhone which doesn't require a pen (they keep snapping in my pocket) and at least has the advantage of making note taking look like you're sending text messages to your friends and family. Where in fact, you're actually jotting down the fact that the lady who's just served you lunch has forearms like mottled hams, or the chap in front of you in the queue seemed to be dressed in his 1960's Army demob suit.

(Copied from TF)

Freewrite Exercise (gussied up a bit)

When I see that starlings thing. Man it freaks me out. I'm always put in mind of iron filings. Something I remember when I was a kid. Shifting the little iron metal bits with a magnetic pen and making shapes on a man's face that exhibits boggle eyes, a snubbed nose and more skin than the drumming section of a brass band. Maybe it was the Magnetic Man who came fully unrealised with bald head and face.

The idea was that with a little skill and perhaps not much ingenuity one could uproariously give him a full head of hair and an impressive beard. Puberty and a hair transplant in a sitting. A magnetic pen that could imitate a cosmetic hair punch. Predictable, I suppose so. But the starlings I watched moving the other day - swirling and dropping like a million pieces of lead showered out of the back of a passing helicopter, then picked up on the wind, conjoined and swirled into shapes the likes of which I haven't seen since I was given a box of Spirograph for Christmas.

Spirograph might be a more accurate memory here rather than magnetic bald man with no beard. Perhaps the spectacle could best be described as part Magnetic Man part Spirograph. Up and down then folding in on itself. Side to side then dropping like shotgun pellets fired in the air by the Devil himself at the soaring like Angles late for their return to Heaven and to God. And expecting God to be standing at the gates checking them in saying you're late you're late and not really acknowledging the irony of the word and the location working somewhat symbiotically. And not knowing the shower of danger they may or may not have flown through.

Morning Pages (Remember them?)

Morning Pages today concerns two dreams worthy of being recorded. The first one involves feelings of fearfulness and vulnerability finding myself living in a tent, alone, in a dangerous land of bears, tigers and wolves. The sense that these creatures had access to the outside of this tent but for some reason not the inside of the tent provided a sense of uncomfortable, nervous, protection. I could not leave the tent, nor given that it was nothing but flimsy cloth supported by cords, could I hope to feel secure within it with such dangerous beasts always nearby. Most of the time I spent shaking with fear inside, knowing that if I set one foot outside, it was goodnight all.

The second dream was more literal. It involved a disused hospital that you could visit and learn something of its terrible past. For a fee of 25 Euros per head you could visit this now disused hospital where forced abortions had been carried out on pregnant woman who weren't married and who were regarded as nothing more than scandalous aberrations. Within the walls of this place hundreds of women were sent to have their pregnancies violently terminated. And there was talk that it was haunted by the ghosts of these unborn children, and of the mothers who died during the procedure, which made the place diabolical for reasons other than the medical actions that were performed.

Cheery stuff eh?

Free write exercise

I did a couple of new free writes today. It's unlikely I'll find much time for study this week-end, so taking the view that raw writing is the best exercise there is when time is tight I've done two, three actually if I count the one I put on the Tutor Forum. And my intention is to buff them up a bit so they look at least partly sane to be put on the blog whilst maintaining enough of the original text, shape and content to give an accurate representation of what came out.

The wind today is blowing great gouts of God's breath threatening everything in its path. And finding things not in its path, to threaten. There's no flying at the nearby flying base today here because of it - except leaves and branches and birds being buffeted by a wind so strong, it's enough to stop them dead in the air where they pause to reflect on the science of flight. Feathers alone are not enough, they may conclude, to guarantee flight against the odds. Already there's the weight thing. Not light as a feather or even a feather boa whatever one of those is. And it's unlikely to be of use if the boa is a boa constrictor. Watch out because he'll squeeze you if you meet one, and he won't stop until your bones splinter and eject them from every orifice of your body then falling to earth like dust before being blown into the sea by the prevailing wind. How many dust clouds will the wind pick up today? How many dust clouds will be the bones of squeezed people who met with an unfortunate encounter with a boa constrictor. These clouds could go all the way up to the sky and form cumulus clouds of a rare off-white colour. When there gorge full they would burst and rain down dirty little droplets instead of pristine rain, dirty little droplets composed of bone and moisture, and people will say umbrellas, no, not good enough, we need shields and reinforced garments, helmets and gas masks to safeguard us from the noxious make up and the gritty texture of the spurtings coming out of these clouds. God knows what they're made of. And he will know.

Morning Monologue

This is the nearest I'll ever get to Morning Pages - perhaps the least spoken or written about 'how to become a writer training exercises as described in the beloved BRB. It was actually a spoken monologue during my morning commute. Fortunately I drive alone, I doubt any passenger would have found the material as engaging and interesting as I do. I felt like getting it off my chest, and actually woke up in a cold sweat this morning with my lips trembling, so keen was I to articulate it somewhere, somehow. Cue the blog...

It's the striving for originality that will make most of the difference to your writing when you have completed this course. But there is no magic vial that's going to insert itself into your hide during the course that will give you a lottery winning idea for a best selling book with multi million pound filming rights and the associated merchandise that will become curiosity antiques in a hundred years time. A Hogwarts, a Wardrobe, or Looking Glass World were all ideas. There isn't a course that can teach this.

Those who are capable of coming up with a winning idea - will do so anyway. Nothing to do with creative writing. Ideas are a different skill altogether. They can happen to anyone. This course is about learning, reigniting and inspiring you to write with greater originality - the way you craft your sentences based on your experiences and the way the course writers want you to think about how you might explain or describe something with more originality than you would normally have done. This is done through the use of effect techniques borrowed from poetry and through being able to convey information in different and innovative ways. That's it in a nutshell. Ideas come as bonuses. Ideas might come from some of the practice rituals in the course, but they might not.

Tutor Forum Icebreaker. Shared.

Introducing Mike Ragan

Mike? Oh yes, I sat next to him at school. I suppose he was pretty good at writing stories. Most of his were read out at the beginning of English lessons by the English teacher Mr Gifford. But he never became a writer or anything like that. Then again, some of the kids in the same class were good at maths but I know of no eminent maths professors who went to Clanceworthy Secondary in the 1970s.

At the start of English lessons it was always the same, you knew whose homework stories had been selected to be read aloud Mr G by the colour and design of the exercise books he had in his hand as we slouched in. The pile changed often, but there were two that always seemed to be there, nestling in his hand - one was covered in pictures of lambs gamboling about in some improbable green field. That one belonged to Poppy Salisbury. The other was a battered looking magnolia thing, distinct only by its blandness. That was Michael's. All the books were covered with wallpaper for their protection but had the unfortunate effect of also showing our parent's taste in 1970's home decor.

For Poppy, it was the lambs (70's sentimental tosh, obviously chosen for her bedroom). For Michael, Mike, it was the magnolia coloured wood chip - cheap, practical. Those two, always there. Dinner money bankers, both. The Superman paper came and went, the psychedelia seventies' gold and orange swirls dropped in and out, even a stately flock deigned the occasional appearance, but always, always, the lambs and the dirty looking magnolia thing.

Poppy went on to become senior features editor of the Manchester Globe and has had several books of short stories published. Michael took a steady job with the civil service. It's interesting that he's showing an interest in writing again. After all these years.

(Bit longer than I had hoped. Sorry.

Between sleeping and waking

I wrote this during the morning as a kind of 'morning pages' free write hybrid. I imagine as the course progresses I'll do more of these diced and spliced jobs. I need to remind myself that the course means nothing without the writing, the actual writing. I don't really want to do the minimum just to get through the 9 months or so and score an, admittedly useful, 60 points. That's just part of the story. If I'm honest the last couple of courses that was exactly how I approached them, do enough, no more. As far as this one is concerned it's about taken the skill of the writer to another plane, to a marketable level instead of just a hobby or distracting pastime. It's actually more important to do do well than to bluff it if you see what I mean.

Anyway, this morning's hybrid:

It's happened again. Desperately trying to silence the din. It's a fire alarm or something and it's making me feel desperately uncomfortable. I don't know why. It doesn't feel right. It's too shrill, too incessant. Must. Make. It. Stop. Through the fug of confusion and agony, I see it. There it is, the bell, and there's the button that will stop its ringing its dinging - I can't conceptualize the word because its hurting, it is somehow drilling into my head, deafening me, driving me half mad. I'm pushing the button -'no response'. I find levers, I pull on them, they come off in my hand - still the infernal noise. It's seems to be in my head now. I cannot make it stop. Over there, a hammer. I'll break the thing, then it will stop, It'll have to stop when it's broken because it will simply cease to be. I take hold of the hammer and club the bell and all its connections, I smash it into fragments - I'm swinging this hammer like the God of Thunder. Still it rings. It persists. I take hold of electrical wires and forgetting all I know about the dangers of live electrical wires, so mad I now feel, I start to drag them out of the wall, my hands now hold great clumps of coloured wire,fizzing, the stench of smoke filling my nostrils my hands sizzling, and still the noise, the noise the noise, the NOISE! I see myself - as if standing on that bridge holding my ears like that character in the Munch's Scream, and I'm about to throw myself over it before I open my heavy eyes and see, the alarm clock. Ringing. Plaintively telling me to silence it, telling me to please get up.

A walk for my mind

The other thing I'm struggling with, if I'm honest, is the idea of the notebook. I fully understand how vital taking notes is, but I never seem to have the damn thing with me, or a pen, or the pen doesn't work, or the notebook is with me but its now bent/broken/pages falling out, or the pen has snapped leaving my clothes and parts of me covered in ink - you get the picture. So today, I took my customary walk on the beach, just a few meters from where I work and armed not so much with a notebook, but more of a notebook mentality, as discussed and encouraged somewhere in the BRB.

Pretty soon I noticed that in places, the damp sand - the sea, having moved out, looked flat and smooth but with a hint of grain, like wood. Like pine actually, or light oak. I looked at it closer and it looked almost like tanned leather - the 'grain' in the sand caused by the swirl of the retreating sea made it look 'hide' like. I looked further along the line where damp sand met the dry, where stones had been deposited, washed and abandoned and noticed an appearance and texture that reminded me of flattened cake mixture, patted and rolled - each stone either a currant, a sultana, or a raisin. Further along the shore little semi circular holes appeared in the sand, in straight lined sections which at times looked almost like a succession of kitchen cheese graters, all lined up. I would never have made that comparison had I not 'looked' as hard as I did today. And I thought, I don't have a notebook, but I have a little internal recorder in my brain if I remember to switch it on. If. I. Remember. To Switch It On.

Freewrite Exercises

Just added a handful of freewrites to this blog which I have brought over from the OU blog. The spelling mistakes, lack of paragraphs and grammatical eccentricity are entirely the fault of that site which has refused to help me in those areas. And I'm so lazy I've cut and pasted them in pretty much as they were.

Freewrite

I can't help but notice that all my free writes so far have been anecdotal based. Does this mean that they aren't real free writes? I fear it may. Therefore if I begin this one with a course prompt and go straight in it won't be. Will it? Anyway.... I was on my way to the car park when...I noticed that three nuns including the nun driver, were making a hash of parking their 1972 Triumph Herald in a slot that frankly would not have received my 1996 Smart car which to the uninitiated is only a snit and spit-squirt bigger than something that would have come out of the Matchbox factory circa 1968. It's not as if the Triumph H is a big car. On the contrary size was never its abiding feature. It was much more style - with its innovatory bonnet, 'up and there's half the car pointing towards the heavens' - Good heavens. Good Heavens dude where's the (front end) of my car, sounds like a bit of a cut price film title for a cut in half car. The nuns, it should be added were all fine when they emerged blinking into an unsuspecting car park. Once they'd squeezed themselves from the doors. One of them it has to be said hadn't seemed to have kept any food denial Lent asceticism for quite some time, if she was a chocoholic or a pie eating champion before last Lent, I think it's fair to suggest that she is one still.

Ends. I never know how long these free writes are suppose to go on for. The length of this one is fairly typical - but I can see the worth in keeping going for the greater likelihood of the nuggets that are suppose to reveal themselves as you go along. I read earlier today for example that one person sets his store out and writes for about an hour. I don't suppose it's Chekhov when he metaphorically puts his pen down, but that isn't the aim of the exercise. It's more an exercise of the imagination and if I - as I seem to - put too much store on it being readable, grammatically sound, spelt more or less correctly, a buffed and almost finished piece by the time I get up - this may not be a good thing for the raw creativity purpose for which this exercised has been devised. Then I'm pleasing no one. How are we supposed to sieve out the dust heap to find the diamonds if they've already been located, polished and sold on before the work is done. How in fact can we disinter the golden nuggets that may pop out from a torrent of water that has sunk every stone in the vicinity into the earth. We need that big splash and the gurgling mud, and the shovel and the sieve and more water - what we're looking for is hidden. Its often the fact that it's hidden that makes it worth looking for. And look I've ended a sentence with a preposition which for this exercise is a marked advantage.

Another Freewrite

Just noticed that the book is asking for three or four. Damn! Ah well...'The truth is'... I really didn't want to buy the Dark Aubergine Ford Mondeo that was sat gleaming in the showroom during the month of November in the year 1996. I mean the car was nothing more than a revamped Sierra and they were driven by reps and grandfathers only. I was barely 35 years old. Too soon to put conventionality before style. Too soon to come over all pragmatic rather than outrageously stylistic, there was after all a lovely little Alpha next door. Probably breakdown every five minutes, but what style you can break down in. And consider what kind of a bird you're going to be standing on the roadside with - thanks to being an owner of an Alpha Romeo. Pragmatic? Go hang. Give me uncertainty. Keep your solid reliable hunk of boredom for your pots salesman's and Sunday driving 70 somethings - I'm not ready.

Done. In one lick. A lot of it is true too. But am I doing this right?

Another Freewrite

Just noticed that the book is asking for three or four. Damn! Ah well...'The truth is'... I really didn't want to buy the Dark Aubergine Ford Mondeo that was sat gleaming in the showroom during the month of November in the year 1996. I mean the car was nothing more than a revamped Sierra and they were driven by reps and grandfathers only. I was barely 35 years old. Too soon to put conventionality before style. Too soon to come over all pragmatic rather than outrageously stylistic, there was after all a lovely little Alpha next door. Probably breakdown every five minutes, but what style you can break down in. And consider what kind of a bird you're going to be standing on the roadside with - thanks to being an owner of an Alpha Romeo. Pragmatic? Go hang. Give me uncertainty. Keep your solid reliable hunk of boredom for your pots salesman's and Sunday driving 70 somethings - I'm not ready.

Done. In one lick. A lot of it is true too. But am I doing this right?

Freewrite Exercise

Utilizing the first prompt given to me by the course book writers, and playing the game of not taking pause to consider today's prompt is: 'that smell reminds me of'... 'The time I suffered the insufferable and excruciating embarrassment of being scrubbed clean in a cloakroom Belfast sink by the headmistress of our school after I had lazily defecated during a storybook reading whilst sat under the school willow tree in the spring sunshine. I'm sure the experience wasn't a memorable one for her either - though no one asked her to attempt this task in the full view of a passing form of children filing in from the playground on their way to lessons. If she felt bad, is it possible to even guess at how mortifying the whole experience was for me, even if I was only five years old and recently had been of an age where frankly these public viewings of my naked body were of no considerable moment? And the smell! a blend of watery excrement and carbolic soap mixed with the kiddie sweaty gym shoes assembled in rows beneath the clothes pegs. And the omnipresent disinfectant of the cloakroom which had recently been attended to by the cleaner caretaker who had been pressed into service after yet another pupil had urinated on the floor with fear having entered the school via the rear entrance which was located close to this Diabolical Belfast Sink.....'

Done. Though I did have to revisit as there were some awful spelling mistakes and laughable typos. But this was a first hit from the keyboard with no preparation. Somehow I don't think I'll be doing too many of them by hand, handwriting always wrecks my fingers. The problem I have now is whether I should open them up for other students to see. Frightening when you don't have the safety blanket of the constant revise. What crap is this? people will say.

Freewrite

Breaths. *Flexes fingers* *Cracks.* 'It surprised me when'... I walked to the beach the following morning after our midnight arrival to our apartments in Crete. I expected golden sand, or sand at least. I expected to see people sat on the sand - with row upon row of multi coloured parosals lined up like regimental guards, with the occasional one recumbent, like regimental guards parading in the beating sun. I didn't expect to see stones, and jetsam and a solitary dog walker hunched over against the wind mournfully watching his dog snuffling around the sand like a truffle hunting pig. And no one in the sea. No bobbing heads and shouts of glee and splish, splash splosh and the pock pock plop of bat and ball. Just a lone bouy, bobbing about like the bloated corpse of a failed channel swimmer.

Done in a hit. One typo. Corpse became corpose which I don't think is a word. I won't do any more for a bit. Looking at the book information this is what I should be doing: 'we permit ourselves to associate freely. Write down the first words that occur to us. Then what that makes us think of and following the train of thought wherever it goes.' Hmm, mine so far stack up as little descriptive stories and perhaps lack the freedom that I should be showing. Anyway it should...'take you into your deepest ideas, feelings and memories.' These can be developed in your work. So we'll see how these go as the course progresses

The Writing Course

I have begun this blog to help with the writing course I have just started with the Open University. Not writing a blog hardly feels like a serious option whilst on a writing course so here I am, on Blogger. Or rather back on Blogger, as I have dipped in and out of Blogger and blogging generally for the past ten years. And they're still out there, the old blogs, somewhere out there, whereever it is old blogs go to die. A bloggie graveyard perhaps. Anyway, I don't intend for this one to be put to rest for a while. Today, after all, is its birthday; and it should be alive until at least the end of this A215 Creative Writing course. More of this later.