Easter Lillies

Easter week-end was getting close and the statement ‘Easter Camp Exercise’ was marked in bold red marker pen on the parade room whiteboard which gave me a heart-flicker of nervy excitement every time I saw it.  As far as I was concerned, I’d joined Ashpriors School Army Cadets just in time to grab a free camping holiday with my new mates.  However, no-one told me that the word ‘Exercise’ was the cadet equivalent of real soldiers going off to war – a kind of, what you’ve trained for, ‘this is it’ moment.

      It all started well enough. A couple of damp Wednesday evenings in the Cadet Hut - playing games and consuming loads of crisps and pop.  It was better than being at home; even TV in those days wasn’t very good, particularly on Wednesday evenings when it was pretty much downhill all the way after Time Tunnel.

     All you did was turn up at this cedar wood shed, tucked neatly within the school grounds; play a few games, do a bit of drill trying not to giggle, and fumble a bit with an old Lee Enfield rifle.  ‘This is the bed block and blade, this is the bolt, this is the safety catch, and this is how you ease the springs’. Then, at the end of the evening, a small dismiss parade – lots of good natured hollering and foot stamping and being made to feel like tough little soldiers.

     In charge of training was the laconic Sergeant George Barkett. A bricklayer and ex-soldier:  hair hogged down at the sides, regulation style; boots buffed up like black snooker balls; his back straight as a tent pole.  He was still Army, right down to his nerve ends. I wondered how he must have hated being a bricklayer, after serving out most of his life amid the hot sands of Africa and Asia with his rifle sights glinting under the desert sun. Now, he’d mostly be seen holding a dulled trowel somewhere in rainy Ilminster with red brick dust under his nails. For him Army Cadets must have seemed like a gift from God. 

     On our last rifle training period before Camp I asked Sergeant Barkett, somewhat naively, about the rifle’s piling swivel.  I’d remembered old Mr Cummings our History teacher intoning with military mellifluousness Henry Reed’s ‘Naming of Parts’ poem from ‘Lessons of the War’ and the words, because of his outrageous delivery, had stuck with me. 

     Cummings had called it a ‘pailing swivel’ in a mock-Sergeant Major accent; but when I asked Barkett about it using that odd pronunciation he narrowed his eyes like an angry snake. He recovered quickly telling me I was thinking of the wrong rifle but added that it was unwise of me to act smart this side of Easter Camp.

     I wasn’t really being smart, I was just trying to join in more, but it backfired. Barkett didn’t seem that keen on any of the four of us who’d just joined.  Earlier I’d noticed him gazing out of the window onto the strange, dusk-filled school playground where seasoned cadets, properly turned out in uniform, were being marched up and down like clockwork soldiers by a bossy kid wearing corporal chevrons. Barkett was nodding approval at the child-like bellows and the precision of the drill movements being instilled by this young chump, probably thinking that here were soldiers in the making, unlike these poetry spouting poofs.   

     The word was that some of these adult cadets were a bit wistful. It must have been hard trading military briefings, battle-drills and bawdy jokes in the Mess, for evenings sat slumped with their wives in front of the telly, sharing a pot of tea and a slice of date and walnut.  On Wednesday evenings however, they could dream.  

      He looked at me. ‘Are you down for Easter Camp?’

     ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘If there’s enough uniform to fit me.’

     ‘Good,’ said Barkett. ‘Maybe we’ll get a chance to talk about piling swivels when we’re on a hill side in the Quantocks waiting for the enemy; if you’re still in the mood.’

      I’d no idea what he meant.  It seemed like a threat, but I quickly dismissed the thought, probably due to my excitement about Camp.  I loved camping: smoke-spiced soup, that stale vomit-like stink in your tent, playing slugs in sleeping bags, your clothes smelling of smoke, and your hair turning to moss and itching like crazy.    

     The school janitor, Hughie Kilgore, a snippy Scot with the snurped face of an ancient cherub, kitted us out.  Hughie had served as a gunner during WW2 until a shrapnel injury allowed him to see out the rest of the War in the regular Army stores. On Wednesday evenings these days, Hughie would put aside his mop and bucket and become Corporal Hughie.  The cadet uniform store was his lair, his hard old janitor’s nose immune to the stench of old leather, dried sweat and stuff called Blanco; a vinegary, wax-smelling concoction used for weather proofing webbing belts and pouches.

     Once it became your turn, Hughie would pull out bits of uniform from his shelves which quickly gathered around your feet like a pile of dead soldier’s limbs.  From the heap he’d find berets so tight they cut off the blood supply to your brain, shirts so hairy you knew how it felt to have trench lice and trousers that fell comically to the floor when you walked. 

     One by one he tied belts harshly round our middles, spun us round in front of a misty mirror, teased us about Easter Camp and screeched about our mothers needing to feed us extra ‘tatties’ because we were, ‘naethin but skin an' bain.’ I remember feeling relieved that Hughie’s trusty shrapnel wound guaranteed wouldn’t be going to the Quantocks with us the next day.   

      Once we got there, things quickly got worse.  As we unloaded the trucks, two men, almost identical twins and both dressed as Army soldiers appeared almost as if they’d popped out from one of the boxes we’d brought. The haircuts, the bearing, the language, they were obviously Army regulars.  Then, from nowhere it was all: ‘get the fuck off your arses and get these fucking tents up, move yourselves you little shits!’ We all leapt up and did as we were told, stunned into an obedient and frightened silence.

     Relieved I spotted Mr Burbidge, normally a popular teacher who smoked a cherry wood pipe and wore a tweedy newsboy cap. The same cap I watched sail off in the wind whilst he was in the playground in discussion with Mr Hennessey, the gardener, about some floribunda roses that had been beheaded. I remembered saving it from its stuttering leap-frog towards the compost heap next to the vegetable patch.  I remembered that the cap had smelled like an intensified version of Mr Burbidge, a blend of burnt tobacco and musty hair oil. I remembered how he’d thanked me.

      I readied myself for a conversation with Mr, now ‘Lieutenant’ Burbidge, who, I thought, as a specialist in Rural as well as General Science was bound to feel joy being amid the Quantock Hills. He’d have seen the fields of primroses and bluebells on the way in, and the way the grizzled Erica Heather, now exhausted by winter, was preparing for the explosion of red and purple Ling and Bell.  He’d know that during the 1950s, the decade in which all of his cadets were born, it was designated an area of outstanding natural beauty.

        As he looked in my direction his eyes seemed dead, like a sheep’s.  He looked like Mr Burbidge, but I doubted it was ‘my’ Mr Burbidge, particularly when he snapped into consciousness, glowered, and shouted 'why the fuck are you standing around boy, get wood for the fire!’ I looked at his once benign face as if to say:  ‘Mr Burbidge, it's me, remember, I rescued your hat.  And in science when I did that frog thing you said I was brave. And when I correctly identified those spores in the Petri dish, you were impressed, and you said I'd done so well stopping Perkins from drinking that fluid and Whinyates from setting fire to Lucy Spangler’s plaits with a Bunsen.’ Then gave him a weak smile.

      'Move. Your. Fucking. Self!’  He said. ‘And you, and you, and you!’  As he uttered the final 'you' he went to place his foot up the backside of a little kid called Sykes, just missing him. Sykes wailed anyway clutching his rear in imagined pain.

      Mr Hollybery, our English teacher, was overseeing the tent detail. Nearly as short as us, but stocky and busy, like a rugby back. I decided to approach him and ask whether he thought Coleridge and his young wife Sarah had walked here with the Wordsworths during their 18th Century rambles from the nearby village of Nether Stowey. But I changed my mind when I saw him bawling at Dunch, calling him an ‘idiotic little creep’ for bending a tent peg and imploring him to ‘use his fucking noggin,’ before tearing the mallet from him and making an action that suggested he was going to club Dunch half to death with it.

     Dazed from that image of unexpected violence, getting our own tent up was a nervy ordeal which quickly blistered and bruised our fingers. At one point it got caught in a fierce gust of wind, flew off and hung suspended in the air like a giant bat before flopping down in a heap having sailed frighteningly close to the fire. One of the sergeants dragged it back over to us and dumped it at our feet like a slaughtered animal and warned us to stop pissing about.  Later on we were given square tins with fold away handles from which we were to eat our daily rations of porridge or burnt stew.  

    That first evening, under orders, we sat quietly by the fire; roasting our faces, chilling our necks, and swotting sparks from our heads like they were glowing mosquitoes.  The peaceful fire-crackling silence was then broken by Mr Hollybery singing something that sounded vaguely pornographic about a Sir Jasper, whose lady, as suggested by the words, was in the habit of laying naked before him on a beds of lilies. It was one of those bonding songs with a simple chorus that we were forced to shout loudly into the wind, like we were 18^th Century seamen sailing to our doom.         

      I wondered why on earth I’d volunteered to come to this hell. All the adults seemed to be acting like fiends.  Later, from my tent, I could just hear a family of ground-nesting nightjars I’d seen earlier.  I’d read somewhere that any disruptions near their nests and they’d move out. Their unsettled chirruping made it seem they were packing their bags, and I envied them.

      In the morning we all sat in a circle in the middle of the camp, like pint-sized Red Indians, eating sticky porridge from our tins whilst our tents were inspected for signs of poor hygiene. Suddenly there was a clattering of activity and I saw a lad called Wilkins, who’d refused to get up for breakfast and had fallen back to sleep, being dragged from his tent, feet first whilst still in his bag. He was dumped outside still zipped up, looking like a startled maggot. Half his belongings and some of ours rolled out with him, like making it look like he'd been dragged from amidst a pile of rubble. Wilkins and the rubble came to rest close to our feet and under our shocked, silent faces. 

     Another lad called Potts was foolish enough to fight back and was wrestled out of his sleeping bag and bundled towards a ditch for a dunking. As his sleeping bag fell away I was astonished to see he was wearing orange striped pyjamas rather than the oversized green vests the rest of us casually bedded down in. I noticed his pyjama bottoms neatly tied with a white bow as if his mother had put him to bed that night. But his scattered hair ruined the image. Like ours, it looked stiff and filthy from the heat and ash of the fire we’d sat around the previous night, singing awful songs about lilies and mucky old Sir Jasper whilst peeling potatoes until our hands looked like pig's trotters.  

     I started to feel homesick for Potts as well as me – especially when he went and sat on a log by the ditch, sobbing in embarrassment and looking ludicrously orange and displaced against the predominance of greens and browns.  

     Over the next two days we walked miles with maps, tired, hungry, wet and sad, and a bit like Potts, weeping; except we kept ours on the inside. Apart from a few, we would all rather have been at home. There was some more cowboys and Indians war stuff, running and shooting with deafening blank rounds, and getting hollered at for pointing our rifles too close when firing because blanks at close quarters, we were told, 'can still be dangerous!'

     Then it was time for the final exercise. We walked to the hillside to prepare for the night ambush. On arrival Sgt Barkett produced a tube of camouflage cream.

     ‘I don’t want to see your faces shining in the moonlight like a bunch of Easter lilies’, he said.   ‘If I can see you, so can the enemy. Cover up’ 

    He squeezed a fat slug into each of our outstretched palms and we streaked our faces and necks until we looked like wretchedVictorian street urchins. Then we unrolled the grass from a series of outlined rectangles and dug shallow trenches to hide in. Then like little troglodyte carpet fitters, reapplied the grass rolls to the freshly dug earth to fool the enemy into believing we weren’t there.

      We sat silently in the holes, turning into anonymous black shapes as we watched a Quantock combe become shrouded in black. As we waited my nose leaked clear snot and my fingers went numb.  

     Hours later I looked at Sergeant Barkett’s inert, lumpy black shape on my left and thought, slightly deliriously, about the piling swivel conversation we’d had in the warm cadet hut. It seemed ridiculous now. Then I caught sight of a scramble of shapes purposely making ground towards us. The trip-flares popped, splitting the silence, freezing a tableau of human shapes inside the flickering lights.   

      ‘Enemy front!’ roared Captain Hollybery.      

      This was it! On the command we popped up like glove puppets and rattle-raked them with everything we had.  Then there was silence. The air reeking with the smell of burnt pencils from the cordite and humming like white noise as the residue of the racket that split the night, ebbed away,  A sporadic series of snaps, pops and harsh whispers filled the void.  
And that was it.  The whistle was blown to indicate that the both the exercise and the week-end’s playacting was over. We all trudged back to camp relieved that we would be going home first thing in the morning.     

      Once it was light, we ‘broke camp’. Gleefully, with the industry of a nest of ants, we packed the tents up, stuffing the smelly canvas and clanging poles bag into their bags and throwing them onto the trucks. We extinguished the fire and jumped into the waiting coach.

      I rested my head against the window of the coach feeling the campsite grit prickle my scalp and reflected upon the awfulness of this odd Army experience. It wasn’t until much later I learnt that the adult supervisors were expected to expose us to some hard character building treatment, typical of Army life, to deter those of us who thought joining up was an easy option to leave school early. At the time, I didn’t know what to think.  

      As the coach neared the end of the track where the tarmac road began and the Quantocks ended, I spotted a pond on the corner containing a cluster of water lilies, which appeared to be slowly emerging, shyly showing their waking faces to the sky. I closed my eyes, and let the image swirl around my mind as the rumble of the coach engine slowly rocked me to sleep.    

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                                                         Commentary

The original idea of ‘Easter Lilies’ came from a notebook entry (Ragan, M. 2011 p56-66) following a memory exercise from Activity 21.2 (Workbook, 2006). I’d expanded it later as a possible TMA04 fragment for continuation through-line for TMA04. As I developed it further, I thought it had the potential to stand alone as an autobiographical piece so placed it to one side for a possible future EMA.         

     At one level this work is a light hearted account of a short spell in the school Army cadets which incorporated a week-end’s experience when things got tougher. But, to work as the final EMA, I wanted to take the opportunity to demonstrate as fully as possible, how my writing skills have developed throughout the course. I wanted it to have depth by exploring a theme within the life story account - in this case childhood and the notion of learning about life through exposure to new experiences. 

     For Easter Lilies I’d in mind a kind of confessional in the manner of Nigel Slater's Toast, (Slater, N. 2003) showing a sensitive, bemused boy with added authorial observations and wisdom from my older self. But unlike Slater’s style, I wanted to give the responsibility for the narrative completely over to my older, knowing self, closer to the Martin Amis style (Workbook, 2006 p307) to show a retrospective understanding of the experience.  I wanted the humour and the pathos to be expressed by me today, rather than leaving it to the reader to work out what’s happening from the confusion at the time.  I thought this a better way to showcase my final piece of writing.

     I utilized certain writing techniques such as memory, research and theme all learnt and improved upon during the course, to help give the story life, depth and readability. I have found the TMAs, tutorials and tutor feedback  useful here reinforcing the importance of illuminating moments of experience by ‘showing’ rather than ‘telling’(Workbook, 2006, Tutorials 1-4, 2011/12 ), a harsh lesson learnt after TMA05's lack of an illuminated emotional moment. I believe I’ll always do better work when I keep this in mind.

     In this EMA I made reference to ‘Naming of Parts’ (Reed, 1946) partly because of its subject matter, but also to invigorate the tone; blending the prosaic harsh realities of the moment with some creative musings about the settings and background. I also included Coleridge, known by all characters in the story, as a rare famous person from this area.  I mixed up the tones for effect hoping to add pathos to the humour, always keeping it creative in style rather than reported anecdote.  

     I tried to imbue my (real) characters with sufficient complexity letting my imagination add colour to the facts. (Workbook, 2006 p276, p325). I drew on memory and research to organize the narrative, ensuring that the setting was consistent with late April, as my exact memory on seasonal specifics, needed help.  I reminded myself of the importance of ‘associative memory’ when recalling in sensory detail: sitting around a fire, putting up tents and waiting on cold hillsides. (Workbook, 2006, p318 p326)

     As the course has progressed I now try to get the right balance of similes to help enrich my descriptive prose, but to reflect the importance of the EMA I wanted this time to include symbolism and metaphor to show that I now have a better understanding of the many course writing techniques discussed.  The use of water lilies, which are buried in sludge before they can mature fully developed  are a kind of metaphor for the young cadets, and the character Sergeant Barkett can't help but notice their faces shining by moonlight, as lilies might. The lilies I’d seen from the coach window continue the symbolism and permit me as narrator to make the connection.  

      I’d decided that autobiographical Life Writing would be a good option for an EMA as most of the fictional writings and even some poetry I’ve written for the exercises, TMAs and tutorials have included lots of autobiographical material which suits my style. But I was also keen to extend the breadth of my work by challenging not just my memory and research vital to any autobiographical work, but to use a range of techniques from fiction and poetry to help bring my EMA to life. I hope now my writing skills have improved and sharpened in preparation for the advanced course.

  

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References:

Haslam, S. (2006) in Linda Anderson (ed.) Creative Writing: A workbook with readings. Milton Keynes/Abingdon: The Open University in association with Routledge

Ragan, M. (2012) Private Writer’s Notebook P56-66 under title: ‘Through Line Options.’  Not published.

Ragan, M. (2012) ‘Oddments of an Odd Life’. Tutor Marked Assessment 04 TMA04 for A215 Creative Writing. The Open University. 

Ragan, M. (2012) ‘The Seaside at Night.’ Tutor Marked Assessment 05 (TMA05) for A215 Creative Writing.  The Open University. 

Reed, H. (1946) Lessons of the War. 1. Naming of Parts.  http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lessons-of-the-war Accessed: May 16^th 2012

Slater, N. (2003) Toast: The story of a boy’s hunger, London: Fourth Estate

The Open University A215 Creative Writing Tutorials, 1- 4 (2011, 2012) http://learn.open.ac.uk/mod/forumng/discuss.php?d=866925 Accessed May 7^th 2012. 

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


.

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. 

This Much I Remember

                   

  It had only been minutes since our mothers had walked away from the school gates and leaving us in the charge of Miss Fielding.  She bundled us quickly together - some in tears, others stunned into a confused silence - before leading us all into a squarish room, chaotic with wooden desks sat at angles on a red tiled floor strewn with a rubble of damaged toys, lettered bricks and ragged books. The walls were stark, creamily bricked  like the inside of a prison, but colour-splashed with impressions of blazing flowers, disjointed animals and mini-sized hands: scumbled onto beige, peeling paper -  patty-caking at odd angles; the ghostly residue of a previous term's pupils. The windows were opened wide with the skinny bunched curtains ruffling at the edges. It looked as if something or someone had been trapped in the room and had with panic and relief bolted outside into the swarming heat, amid the exploding bushes and the emerald expanse of tightly cut grass. 

   As it was so hot once our bags were dropped we were taken outside to sit under a willow tree to cool off, and in some cases, dry our tears. We were placed in a concentric semi-circle with Miss Fielding sat in the middle to our front  - all of us surrounded by the drooping fronds of the buzzing willow tree. After asking all of us our names and ticking them off, she suggested that today as it was so warm and sunny we would sit right there and listen to stories until it was time for lunch. Those who were still inconsolable after the still recent parent child separation episode, sat slightly apart, their moans quietly irregular - tucked inside the hushed breeze and the faint birdsong. The rest of sat with mute acceptance, waiting for Miss Fielding to open the book and read to us. 
   I had not been overly upset at the wrenching some had felt when their mothers walked away, but was contently confused to go along with what was happening. I sat quietly under the tree, my naked legs feeling the pin pricks of the nipping ants and the grit-sting of the small stones, and my bottom going steadily numb. I could feel the cold tickle of the grass blades on my wrists and smell the wet hum of the tree as I listened to Miss Fielding, her unbroken voice creating an invisible wall, trapping me to the spot, gradually rendering all of us silent. 

 After a while, new feelings of discomfort caused me to fidget. Unable to break the spell of Miss Fielding's voice a sense of panic throbbed through me. I knew what was going on, but I was powerless to do anything about it. It started as an itchy fidget, which I knew I could handle. Then, it changed to something more pressing, more urgent than usual - painful almost. In no time at all I knew that something had to give, and I knew I had the means to make things better, to let go, to turn pain away. My eyes closed and a warm, moist, oozing filled my pants, a damply sublime, guilt-filled relief.
    Gradually a terrible smell wafted through the half circle of children, who started to fuss and whine and pinch their noses. I wished it wasn't me. I wanted the cause to be something, anything else but me.  My heart punched my chest and my eyes tightened as I visualised the vapour trail snaking towards Miss Fielding’s nostrils, who seconds later after a moments exploratory pause, closed the book with a thud. 

   I was extracted from the group by the headmistress who marched me to the place considered the sole domain of Mr Dickson the caretaker. I remember seeing his brown coat draped over one of the chairs and noted the frayed collar and the little row of screw drivers and pens sticking out of the top pocket, and a copy of the Racing Post rolled up and poking through a lower one. His glasses were sat on his chair as if placed there to reserve the seat. There was a smell of disinfectant from a tin bucket with a mop planted in it like a stake, the head looking like a dead sea creature, lifeless tentacles partly concealed in a scummy fizz of poisonous water. On the drainer there were two tins of Ajax, a slab of soap, a nail brush, a yellow glove that looked like a dismembered hand, a bunched up cloth and a silvery bloom of wire-wool all placed out like a janitor-themed Kim’s Game. 

 A nurse in a blue coverall and plimsolls silently appeared.  She nodded at the headmistress who then clacked quickly away along the corridor. The nurse then blasted steamy water into a large ceramic Belfast sink which bubbled and foamed. My punishment was to be publicly washed in a sink normally used by Mr Dickson for only the dirtiest jobs. I was stripped and dunked roughly into the wet boiling heat by the nurse who proceeded to wash me as if I was muddy pet, continually sluicing me as if trialing a new torture technique. Each sloshing leaving me momentarily breathless, my secret tears melting into the brown froth. The air was full of steamy soap-scented excrement and the distant shrill sound of children’s voices. I felt sad, confused and worried.

The nurse said, ‘Stop moving, there’s no one around who can see you.’ I was turning my head like an owl, checking desperately.  No one was around. But it didn’t help.

 ‘Right, you’re done,’ she said, and lifted me from the sink. ‘Dry yourself and put these on.’ She showed me a set of clothes that looked like they’d been retrieved from a nearby orphanage, like the ones I’d seen my father wearing in the creased black and white photograph he kept in old musty cabinet drawer in the shed.  Dressed, I looked like one of those evacuees you see clambering on and off trains in those wartime news reels.

 As I tidied myself I saw a lone girl peeping from behind the bag pegging area. She’d watched the whole thing in complete silence. She had ginger hair shaped like a wasp’s nest, and I liked her. But she’d seen me undressed, scrubbed and sluiced like a dog so I hated her instead.  I never wanted to see her again, but a bond was already quietly forming.  Later, sports day brought us back together again. 

                                               

Sports Day.

On the day the boys wore capacious shorts. Those tight-squeezers that made footballers in the Eighties look like they were wearing swimming trunks hadn't yet caught on.  The girls were even more unfortunate, forced to strip down into what appeared to be heavy-duty, navy- blue knickers which made even the slim girls look horrid.  I suppose this was intended to thwart the stirrings we boys tended to get and the old navy blues were a good defence against any surprise twitches or unscheduled bulges appearing on sports day.

   Looking at the group of girls mustering I noticed the ginger frizzy- haired girl sat with a teacher. She was fully dressed, quite plump.  

I was also going through an unpopular phase as that toilet business hadn’t been forgotten, and I’d started to wear glasses to correct a squint recently spotted at the clinic. But at least I would be involved as soon as the pairs were settled. 

   Once the ramshackle of minor events involving sacks, buckets and plastic objects were over, the wheelbarrow race was announced. Girls must choose boys to push.  Boy’s legs to be tucked under girl’s arms and pushed along, wheelbarrow style.

Boys with their strong taut little arms would crawl, whilst their bitty legs were tucked under the arms of the girls who would then push them along like a barrow, as fast as possible towards the winning line.

    As the pairing off neared completion, feelings of dejection began to come over.  The final girl made her move and selected the boy next to me. The balance was wrong, and I was left out.  There was to be no wheelbarrow race for me. No more pushers were left.

Suddenly there was a commotion, a swirl of mums and teachers, all permanent waves and flouncy dresses, fussing over someone reluctantly being pulled into the open. It was the ginger girl sprung from the safety and anonymity of the spectator’s seating. She was ordered to strip down to her knickers and fill the gap. I was going to be barrowed after all, by this little ginger tank.  My secret ginger girl.

The starting whistle was blown shrilly and, before its pea stopped rattling, the navy blues and their hand crawlers began. Pretty soon boy's legs were being dropped by slim pig tailed girls, their ribbons flicking in the wind. Tears and pouting accusations soon followed.   But I was still going, pushed by a pile driver, my bony legs clamped tight by pudgy arms and the pent up emotions of this strong girl. 

    My twiggy arms and hands were a blur of desperate skittering. They had to be. If I hadn't kept them going I’d have fallen face first into a wreck of bloody nose, grass-stained teeth and comically twisted specs. She kept pushing. My weedy chest heaved; fear of worse pain drove me on and on. My lungs felt hot and sore and I could taste sweet acidy fluid in my mouth. But then, other feelings deeper inside me changed: I felt angry and proud and I wanted to win. I could tell that she wanted it too, the frizzy ginger girl, as determined, intent and as full of desire to win as I was.  

                                              

The Little Fishes

I made a massive chore of learning to swim on account of being a bit of a coward. Actually, as a baby, I could always swim. My body understood the rudiments of breath holding and doggy-splash, even though I couldn't know it did. No one told me it was one of the purposes of survival, and that God was smart enough to give us this basic survival tool - our lungs being well attuned to watery breathing due to the whole getting born thing.  And I guess there always existed the possibility that when you clambered out from your warm soaking prison, you’d slip into a cold river and live long enough to break the water’s surface like a pearl diver.  
It’s a bit like the giraffe thing, they’re all born as walkers: shaky and uncertain, but solid enough to wobble into a safe area once they've slid into the world, instead of lying down and glistening with animal sweet-stickiness waiting to be gnawed alive by any lions lounging in the neigbourhood. But having unlearnt to swim over the next 6 years or so, I had to find my fins all over again if I was ever to swim properly in the junior school swimming pool and receive the coveted width distance certificate. 
   As time progressed, and certificates and praises were received, I was one of the last ones still flapping about unable to swim without the aid of enough buoyancy assistance to keep a blacksmith's anvil afloat. Water wings pumped up so tight you could almost hear them squealing in agony, and floats shaped like little tombstones made of polystyrene that squeaked in your hands as you squeezed them between your meagre thighs to keep your bum upright in the water. These floats had minds of their own and lines of them could be seen making little bids for freedom all-round the pool, leaping out of the swimmers thigh-grips and jumping into the air like shoals of passing river salmon on their way to safer waters for breeding. As time progressed the last little group, which included me, were told to dispense with the floats and make do with the arm bands. Reluctantly we did, which left us swimming about with crazy arm movements, scrunched eyes and legs that felt as if medicine balls were tied to our feet. But a momentum had been established and today the Z group were going from concrete lumps to slick mermaids. 
   It was time for the great con called the 'graduated confidence process' (though they never told us it was called that). Each time we managed to shimmy-splash our way clumsily to one end of the width, Mrs Spangler would release a little air from our taut arm bands. Even with the smell of chlorine rinsing through my nostrils I could smell that rubbery wind as it hissed out of the valves that bubbled, and I heard them blow mini raspberries at Mrs Spangler as she fumbled the caps back on. How I envied them their brazen impudence. Then more widths, then more air releases before being told to give up the floats.  Gradually as all kids emerged shaking slightly, glistening like frogs, each of them dropped their float before reluctantly clambering back in.  A jumbled white heap emerged by the benches looking like a cluster of discarded teeth pulled from a giant's mouth. A pile of white flotsam. 
   Up and down we swam, splashily; eyes tight and sore. Mouths, chemically dried, throats raw, noses numbed, lungs on fire; hearts flicking through our skinny chests like little gasping fish. 
By this stage I was happy, I'd made enough bragging progress to get out. One arm band looking sad and deflated, the other no longer in full bloom; the old pumped up look now consigned to the shrieking dwarves in the shallow end. I had achieved enough; the certificate would wait another week. I looked forward to getting out and enjoying the sublime comfort of dryness. But no, I wasn't allowed out. Miss Spangler was on a roll and no-one was getting out yet; no drownings to report - the great Health and Safety push was a long way away in the future, germinating in the back of someone’s mind - perhaps one of these little would-be eels struggling along with me. It would have taken a drowning to call the session to an end. Even Stuart Stickler’s tears weren’t helping:
   ‘Stop being a baby!’ I heard Mrs Spangler shout as Stuart wiped a bubble of snot from one of his nostrils. I made a mental note: tears aren’t working today.
More deflation visits to the side of the pool. I couldn't work out why they bothered as by now it didn’t make any difference. I'd rest my elbows on the cold slippery surface, shaking and making spluttering comments that made no sense, listening to the trebling echoes and shouts of encouragement all around me and the stuttering snuffling and mad splashing coming from Stuart who was going the opposite way with a face that was part terror, part grim determination.  Then with another gurgled hiss from one of my arm bands I was tapped on the head and ordered back across again. I was swimming. I was a winner in everyone’s eyes, except my own as nobody had told me I’d been swimming for 10 minutes and attributing my success to two flat pieces of plastic and rubber that hung limp and breathlessly from my arms.

                                               

       The Lockable Diary

When I was about 8 and 10, always at bedtime, and providing she left her door open, I’d watch my older sister sitting on the side of her bed with her legs crossed, hunched like a crab, writing something into a red leatherette covered book. I'd watch her peering through her little Gandhi spectacles, writing in that round curly lettered handwriting of hers as her plaits dangled in front of her. Then she’d dart the page before locking the book with a little in-built padlock and attach the key to her constantly worn charm bracelet. My interest in this item grew from bored curiosity to a maddening need for answers. It was the lock that did it.

 She had a money box too; like a miniature bank cashbox – an ugly black square thing that looked like it had been made from left over armoured plating from a tank factory, totally immune to the hairgrips and paper clips I’d used to try to get it open. But I knew the contents of the box amounted to little more than three apple snail shells, a folded picture of Cliff, and a couple of defunct farthings. Compared to the book, this was only of passing interest, fuelled mainly by brotherly menace.

 After several attempts at stealing this mysterious book thing from her desk and prising open the pages, nearly breaking my finger nails; and a failed attempt to obtain the key once by slipping her charm bracelet into my pocket after she’d left it lying around outside the bathroom, she informed me that it was her 'secret diary.’ After allowing for this exotic fact to sink in, I dug out my ongoing Christmas list and looked at the items listed, staring at it with new eyes. I then scratched out the number one entry: ‘Magnetic Robot ‘and inserted the words ‘lockable diary’ in its place.

   That Christmas, I got one. It wasn't lockable. Instead it was a ‘Scout’s Diary,’ full of kids doing stuff I didn’t do like tying knots and earning merit badges for good deeds. But it was a diary. My initial disappointment that it wasn't lockable waned when I found a loose floorboard in my lair and a secret cavity in which to stow it. I could now record my life in complete secrecy; I’d write in it every day and one day show it to an astonished world.

                                              

            Not Feeling Well.

Thursday 18 October 1968.’ Dear diary, I felt poorly at school today and had to sit in the assembly hall with my sister. She was made to sit with me until I told the truth. Spangles is always suspicious if we say we feel ill in class.’ (Age 12)

    

 My sister sat and glowered at me. Her hair now brushed moodily forward, tumbling over her suspicious face where her girlish plaits once hung sweetly. I was her brother; therefore I was a liar as well as a thief. And here I was, lying my way out of lessons. She was relieved and skipped off to her friends when Mrs Spangler, who made no pretense of her dislike of boys, her patience exhausted, sent me home. The hobble home wasn't a tough, sports injury limp, it was one of those clutching belly, ‘I feel fragile’ hobbles. I felt sick and depressed. One light however shone my tortured route home: it was a Thursday, and my new Tiger comic would be waiting for me.

 Very little interrupted my comic obsession, whether sadness, illness or pain. I’d stuck with my Tiger through crippling migraines, breaking off only to stumble to the bathroom to release the headache demon by inducing warm, sour, throat-scoring vomit that filled my nose with the sore-stink of acid. But, eyes still fizzing, my mouth sluiced and sweetened with toothpaste, I’d be back to the comic. Even when the words wavered, and the superheroes looked like smudges, I’d carry on. Comics were my solace and my comfort, a sublime private entertainment no matter how I felt. On new comic delivery day I’d be almost paralysed with delight.

  Home at last, stumbling through the door, I looked across the hall and saw my Tiger, sleeping on the worn mat in the porch; pristine, lit by a dusty ray of late autumn sunshine, shimmering with seductive newness. I took it to my private lair, slinked away with my prize as a real tiger might, then sat on my bed to inhale the inky flavours of its print, its pictures and its promise. Wrestler Johnny Cougar would face another terrible adversary, Skid Solo would be racing against cads with superior technology, and the opposing football team would be out to knobble Roy of the Rover. It didn’t matter that I knew this. It was the familiarity I craved the most.

  And then the unthinkable happened. My interest waned. I was page flipping, not getting to the end of the stories. Suddenly Roy of the Rovers didn't seem quite as captivating. I closed the comic and lay down. Put on my pyjamas and sat in bed clutching my belly. I looked at the comic. The strength of my feelings for the comic now locked in battle with my pain. I picked it up again and read the cover. Then I was flipping again, backwards and forwards.  Finally, I dropped the comic to the floor and it flapped lifelessly to the carpet like a flattened hero. My eyes felt full.  Fluid rattled in my nose. I didn’t feel like being brave. Further down, my appendix grumbled, preparing itself to explode and fire poison into my blood.

                                                       

     ‘Monday 11th August 1972. ‘Dear diary,  the reason I stood today in a carpenter’s workshop wearing my new blue bib and braces overalls with four corned beef sandwiches and a flask of tea with sugar, stowed in a tartan duffle bag slung over my shoulder, was because this was my first day as a proper adult.’ (Age 16)

 ‘Am I in the right place?’ I said to a fat man wearing a brown overall as I wandered into the yard. This turned out to be the foreman, a notorious hater of new apprentices, due to, as I later learned, their callowness and youth being disruptive to the old guard of grizzled ex national servicemen who preferred to work grumpily alone. The scrappy remains of his hair were tar black but greying bits were fighting through and looked as stiff as wire wool. Filaments of hair poked from his collar showing despite his bald head, hair was thriving everywhere else. Spiders legs crawled from his eyebrows and his heavy-lidded eyes were as brown as the bundles of teak stacked by the door. I noticed a stumpy pencil behind his ear, conveniently placed, like a cigarette stub.

‘Depends who’s asking,’ he said.

            ‘I’m Mike,’ I said, putting out my hand as my dad had said I should. ‘I’m the new apprentice.’

    He ignored my hand as if handshakes were the preserve of men who’d done something to earn one. ‘Stick that thing in the grub room,’ he said. ‘And meet me by the mitre saws.’

 I nodded. The 'thing' was my duffle bag. I was never that keen on it myself but never thought of it as a 'thing'. I looked at it now in a new light, my old PE duffle bag, a saggy, toggled-up blob of a reminder of this most recent cross-over from childhood. School was all the duffle bag and I knew. We’d both once taken a beating from Billy Murray, one of the feared school bullies who God had, perhaps rather perversely, made twice the size of the rest of us.  A stomach punch for me and a kick for the duffle which rolled down the school corridor before juddering to halt at Mrs. Hardcastle’s, frozen-to-the-spot, brown brogues and twilled tights.  Now that same bag was moving into adulthood with me, now it was full of manly things like flasks, newspapers and sandwiches - both of us now prepared for the land of working men.  I didn't know what a grub room or a mitre saw was, but didn't want to ask too many questions so early on

 I guessed the ‘grub room’ was the place I first went into where two old guys were sat slurping muddy looking fluid from dirty looking flask cups and reading red topped newspapers. What the hell a mitre was, was anyone's guess. The only one I could think of was the tall hat I wore in drama when I stole the role of Archbishop of Rheims from Melvin Foreacre after auditions, due to being slightly taller, and impressing Miss Strummer with my high, flat toned diction when reading aloud. It felt a long time ago then now that I was 16 with no school kids anywhere, just old guys slurping coffee and talking about mitre saws and grub rooms and pursing their lips at pictures of semi-naked women.

 On my way home I’d mused about my strange first day in the timber yard. ‘It’s not wood,’ I was told, ‘It’s timber, it’s always timber’.  A strange day of standing in a daze watching men work and hearing them swear with an easier familiarity than I ever thought possible in an adult. I’d heard my dad swear once when he accidentally dropped a hammer on his toe whilst attempting to nail to the wall one of my mother’s  plaster of paris plate impressions. The word that sat in the air like a demon’s call put my sister and I into a shocked and fearful silence. My God fearing mother however went into the kind of hysterics I’d only ever seen her perform once before, when a black bird flew through our sitting room open window sending everyone, including the bird, dizzy with madness.  Like the bird, we were ushered out, slightly traumatized, but also relieved.

As I neared home I thought about those workmen and their odd insularity, particularly their Page 3 obsessions. If I’d wanted to see a naked female body, I thought, I only had to ask Samantha to take her top off, which she would, if her dad wasn’t home, and if she was in the right mood. Sometimes I was even allowed to take her bra off, a devilish task of finger trembling complexity that reminded me of those obsessive travails with my sister’s lockable diary and money box about eight years earlier. I’d thought about my diaries as well. At 16 I was an adult now and thought perhaps I should end them.

                                                         Today…

 I’m sitting on the floor of my lounge reading through a box of really old diaries. There are boxes everywhere decades worth.  I’m reflecting on my obsessive nature and my need to write.  If I can put find some plots amid these memories, I’ll make a start on my autobiography. I’m sure everything I need is right here.