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.