A Short Story for a Long Day

To celebrate the longest day of the year, well, clearly not the longest, but the one with the most sunlight, I've added a very very short story of mine to the blog. I hope you enjoy it!

Photo courtesy of Paul Wilkinson on Flickr

The Addict 

by Sarah Schofield 

He was addicted to tobacco and sulked like a child over the lollipops that his doctor offered as a poor cigarette substitute. The satellite navigation in his Mercedes helped him find the confectioners he’d looked up on the internet.

“What did you like, when you were little?” the woman in the saccharine-lined shop asked.

“I cannot recall,” he said. A pink sugar mouse peeped from under the counter. He rattled the cash in his pocket.

“Coltsfoot rock and liquorice, that’s your sort,” she said and patted him on the hand. His eyes softened at her understanding.

Standing in the shower he looked at the remnants of rose soap his wife had left dissolving in the porcelain dish and sucked coltsfoot out of his molars. He cancelled his afternoon appointments.

“More liquorice?” she asked, as he walked into the shop, shaking her fringe out of her eyes.

“How about dinner?” he said.

The restaurant was beige. She sat opposite him. He was used to seeing her framed in multicoloured fudge and Uncle Joe’s and jelly babies.

But she had brought the aromas with her; candy floss and cola pips. Her earrings dangled like sherbet drops.

“Marzipan fruits are my favourite,” she said, picking at her bread.

He watched her longingly and started to salivate.

“Fisherman’s friends,” he said.

She pushed the asparagus tips round her plate with the fork. He imagined that if he sucked her fingers they would taste sweet, from trailing through the candy jars all day. If he breathed her in, he might head rush, like that first cigarette he’d stolen from his father all those years ago.

The restaurant was starting to empty, and he felt the familiar pull of panic. The mildly frantic gnawing at his thoughts as he glanced round.

He took her hand and asked her to come home with him. She smiled. 

Object of my Affections...

Don't we all just love stuff. Things, tat, tut, flotsam... Whatever we call it... human nature has an obsession with objects. They don't have to be worth much in monetary value (although sometimes they are...) We are intrigued by archeological digs. We adorn the walls of pubs with items that have long since lost their purpose. We carry useless things around in our pockets, handbags, dangling from our keyrings. We obsess over museum artefacts... 


We hoard. Old bits of this and that. My friend kept the condom wrapper from her first sexual encounter. I inexplicably keep a ticket from a Canon and Ball gig that I found carefully preserved under the carpet when I moved into my house. 

This handbag was something found in a second hand warehouse, Bygone Times. It is too fragile to use, so therefore is useless. But the lipstick marks and curious perfumed scent inside, the hints of past owners, are too intriguing to disregard. It has been well used and I keep it because I hope perhaps in some way it will reveal its secrets to me... or at least suggest them for stories.

And this might look like a plop. But actually it's the first thing I ever whittled when my dad bought me a pen knife and taught me how to use it safely. Incase you're wondering, it's a mouse, sans ears or tail; they take a whole lot more years of whittling to master. The mouse fits perfectly in my palm. I've carried to every house I've ever lived in.


On one of those Channel 4 documentaries, that's really a freak show, a man of noble gentrified descent had had to sell his country manor and most of the content. The few old possessions he'd saved, he put into a storage unit. These possessions included a tupperware box containing dust and hair balls gathered from around the parquet floors. To him this stuff was precious. Significant in a way that was hard to quantify.


This obsession with objects was discussed in a short story workshop with writer Carys Davies recently, looking at its function in fiction. Her workshop inspired me to write 'Still Life' which made it into Writer's Forum, about a nodding dog. And if you think of almost any story / film / poem there's often highly significant objects that weave themselves into the narrative. Think Snow White and the apple and her stepmother's sycophantic mirror, think Dorian Gray with that portrait in the attic, think Donoghue's 'Room' where many of the objects take on special potency.


Roselle Angwin, writing in her Mslexia column Writing Your Self: The secret life of objects says 'Humans have known forever the power of objects... sometimes it's to do with the whole concept of the numerous human lives that have passed across the surface of that object, or created it..."


This was the aspect I was keen to capture in a 'Write on the Night' evening I organised this week at the Ormskirk's Owls Writers Group using the objects shown in the top image as a stimulus to creative writing. I asked the writers to select one to spark the first inklings of a story. The Owls writing Group is positively bulging with creative talent. Many members are widely published. And all have original voices and styles. It didn't take long before the fledglings of eleven fantastic stories were hatched. It was an exciting process. I'm looking forward to hearing where these stories go in the next few months.


The story I started, based around an old locked leather diary, will unfortunately have to go on the back burner. I've got a rewrite of a story for People's Friend that needs some serious editing and the Guardian short story competition deadline is looming. The story for this is behaving like a cat that doesn't want to go in its vet box. I'll keep wrestling and treat my scars with alcohol when it's done. 

Flashing Good Fun

So! It was nowhere near as bad as I'd thought. Actually it was lovely. 


This time last week I was feeling decidedly pukey at the thought of reading my flash fiction at the Flash Mob, Flash Fiction Competition as part of the Chorlton Arts Festival 2011.


But it wasn't scary at all.

The Flash Mob Team worked so hard to make it a great event. From lining up a great programme of fun, non-stuffy readings from themselves, the prince of Flash Nick Perring, who read from his collection 'Not So Perfect' and from all of the shortlisted writers. The evening was broadcast live on Chorlton FM (no swearing please...)


I read first, which was a blessed relief. People clapped kindly when I stopped reading. Also a blessed relief.


There were twelve pieces on the shortlist. Unsurprisingly, my flash didn't get further than the shortlist. But I was delighted to be beaten to the top positions by three incredible pieces of writing. Third place with 'The Dryer Monkey' was Sal Page, second place, with 'Marked' was Michael D Conley, and first place was Socrates Adams with 'Water Pressure'. Three brilliantly varied pieces of work. The whole twelve shortlisted flashes are included in a downloadable myebook. Definitely well worth a read. 


My actual personal favourite was the second placed entry - 'Marked' by Michael D Conley, in which, one day, alphabet letters fall from the sky. It appealed to my fascination with obscure supernatural events occurring in a otherwise measured and understood setting. Lovely. It made me wonder what incriminating words would appear on my skin after an alphabet shower. It stayed with me, which is what I reckon a good flash fiction should do. Each word has a far more powerful resonance than in a longer piece. 'Marked' is full of gorgeous ideas and images, without feeling heavy or overly condensed.   


Many thanks to the superb Flashmob organising team, the Dulcimer for hosting such a great event and all who read. I'm already looking forward to next year's do! 


PS...
On a course recently, I mentioned flash fiction in passing during the coffee break. A bloke took me to one side and asked me what flash fiction was. "Tell me..." he asked with a blush and a little smile some might have called salacious... "Has it got anything to do with... erotic fiction?"  


How tempted I was to say; "Well, actually yes. It's designed for the gentleman with a penchant for displaying his wears in public... a story of similar intimate brevity, and an equivalent size..." But I worried he would take me seriously and felt for the poor judges of flash fiction competitions everywhere... so put him straight. And gave him a wide girth... I mean berth for the rest of the day.  

Reading Out Loud

I am paralysed with fear today and have done no writing whatsoever… I am doing a very short reading at the Flash Mob Flash Fiction writing competition event at Dulcimer in Chorlton. It is part of the Chorlton Arts Festival. The prospect of standing up and reading makes me feel like I’m actually going to throw up.

Probably most people’s first ‘reading out loud’ scenario would be school assembly. There’s the awful lining up outside the hall, all clutching sweaty bits of paper with a few lines on to read out about something no one really cares about but you have been rehearsing for weeks. There may even be the worrying prospect of singing multi-faith-relevant songs (I went to a right-on primary school…) the feeling of possibility to fail epically rumbles from this time like a troublesome appendix. Back then in the 80’s primary school hall, staring at the hypnotic orange print curtains, trying to remember what you are supposed to do, desperately needing a wee, under the eyes of your peers, the school bully and the lad in the top class who you've sent a Valentine card to for the last three years and think he might suspect… to actually open your mouth and say actual words feels like the most alien prospect in the world.  

Today I feel those same familiar rumblings. Minus the Valentine sending, and I’m sure there won’t be bullies in Chorlton… and I’ve no idea what the Dulcimer’s décor is like… but that permanent needing a wee feeling… 

It’s because I look up to and massively rate the other people that will be at the event. The ones I know a little about and have read their work, are brilliant, and those that I don’t I imagine are also uber cool, street, hip, with it, effortlessly stylish, totally not fazed, and ultimately will spot me as a wannabe writer who doesn’t really know what she’s doing.

One strategy I use to deal with situations that frighten me is to think, like that well loved fizzy drink, what’s the worst that could happen… I have made a list, in no particular order…

1. Loss of some sort of bodily fluid (vomit, wee etc…) while everyone stares on not quite knowing what to do or say... think Alan Partridge after he impaled his foot…

2. Swearing by mistake… saying the C word by accident is one of my worst social phobias. Words I try to avoid in readings would include constable, continued, incontinent, vacant…

3. Falling over. I trip and / or fall over quite easily as it is, which mostly is funny but usually I can pretend it’s because I've drunk too much. Walking across a room to do a reading on the couple I've done before suddenly my legs become Bambi like and wobbly, and my feet grow extra snagging corners that catch on the finest carpet pile.

4. Reading the wrong piece of writing. I panic, thinking perhaps I have printed the wrong story off or have got the wrong end of the stick, where everyone knows what they’re doing and I don't and will only embarrass myself… 

So these are possible strategies I could employ:

1. Don’t go. But this is spineless and I’m really looking forward to hearing everyone else read…

2. Have a very lot to drink before hand. However this will increase the chances of most of the worst case scenarios above.

3. Pretend to be someone else, a writer I respect and admire… restricting this to my own head of course. Instead of 'What Would Jesus Do?', the adage of Christians everywhere, perhaps it could be 'What would Rushdie / Atwood / Donoghue / insert other/ Do?'   

Right. I’m off to man up. And decide on a writerly outfit. Can’t wait to get there and hear everyone else's stories. Hopefully everyone will be at the bar ordering drinks when it comes to my turn.

The Slippery Business of Snake Keeping

My husband owns an incredible snake… yes, yes. Let’s get all the juvenile giggles out and over with now.

It’s a Corn Snake called Geoff (after Buckley and a favourite science teacher from years ago) Geoff slithered into my life one day under a strict premise. “We’re just minding him for the weekend," husband, the science teacher, muttered. "He’s for school... live vertebrate specimen… he’s only a baby.” 

Geoff looked whimsically, some might say hypnotically, into my eyes as both he and husband played on my very vague maternal urges towards anything small and orphaned and I agreed he could stay in the spare room. He’s only quite little, we will just not feed him too much, I thought. 

Geoff having his tea.

As Geoff grew on his diet of pinkies (dead baby mice that look worryingly like the nicest of the jelly baby packet) we came to an understanding. He was very beautiful to look at but I really wasn't interested in handling him. (yes… that’s nearly a line if your playing innuendo bingo) People popped over just to see him. If he really liked you he would leave a little mouse-scented poo in your shirt pocket. At parties, people would ask after him in polite conversation as though he were perhaps a toddler who was too young or rambunctious to attend. “Eating well? Getting big now?” He liked sitting on his rock or curling under the lid of his box. His box that incidentally husband found on a skip. Lidless. The lid he designed was a couple of sheets of glass over the top. This, perhaps, is where everything went wrong.

Geoff escaped. 

I would have been Very Very Cross. But husband stood at the top of the stairs nearly in tears and I found myself patting him gently as we peeped under the loose floorboards. “Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll turn up,” I said. “We’ll waft a dead mouse around and it’ll tempt him out.”  


It didn’t. There was no sign of Geoff. We spent a forlorn few days prising up carpets and setting up complicated mouse-and-heater apparatus in order to spread the smell of brained rodent into as wide a radius as possible. I worried a bit about him finding his way through the pipes and turning up, horror movie style, in next door's toilet pan. Or wrapping himself around their child’s throat while they peacefully slept. We didn’t mention his escape to the neighbours. We felt it might harm our defence…

Six months later, I felt it was time we put the rubbish, lidless snake box on ebay, and someone else with a desire to loose their snake bought it. But that very same day Alfie, our one eyed cat, grew intensely interested in certain areas of the house. He spent hours staring into a corner, then under the dishwasher. A while later, I happened to wander into the garden through the open kitchen door. Alfie was patting a piece of rope under the garden table. “Where did you find that bungee cord?” I asked him. He didn’t reply, just gave me a withering, one-eyed look and I realized it wasn’t a bungee cord, but Geoff. Looking a bit thin (yes, really) and startled by all the attention.

With Geoff safely tucked into his transport box at home we hurried to the pet shop for a new extra secure vivarium and freezer-ready mice for our hungry snake. I was holding it together quite well – despite being surrounded by a desert’s worth of reptiles all bulgy eyes and flicky tongues on me in a very confined upper salesroom. Then, in walks a man with an enormous pet python draped scarflike around his shoulders. They stood in the narrow doorway blocking the light and the exit, like they were about to audition with some horrific act in the first round of Britain’s Got Talent.

“Oh,” I said. Or something along those lines. Geoff suddenly seemed tapeworm sized in comparison. This man’s python was several feet longer than me. Thigh-wide and not overly friendly looking. The crickets in their Happy Meal boxes started leaping. I looked for an open window to jump from.

            

“We just came for his rats,” the man said, tickling his snake friend under where his chin would be if he had one.  “Don’t worry. He’s very sociable. I take him out with me all the time.”

I muttered something about public health and safety.

“People are more likely to get bitten by a dog,” he said. It sounded like he’d had this argument before. 

Well, yes, I reasoned. That would be more likely, because no one else is stupid enough to take their snake out shopping with them. The snake, incidentally, was big enough to easily eat a ten pound baby, ready-dislocated jaw and strike distance permitting. I had a notion that if the python did decide to veer off his usual rat and chicken diet amidst the rich pickings of our Lancashire town progeny, the owner seemed like he would be as effective as Rod Hull trying to restrain Emu. It made me reflect that although we had been a bit rubbish about allowing Geoff to escape, we were perhaps not so irresponsible as to own a pet that could actually eat small children.

But pythons aside, I'm surprised by how pleased I feel that Geoff is back! And how attached we all get to our pets.

It made me think about the dog on the fells I wrote about last time. And hope that he did make it home. And also gave me a prompt to get on with writing his story. I did promise and instead I’ve been writing about canapés. So this week I will leave the pre dinner nibbles for now and chew over my dog story instead. He will definitely not be a baby eating pet. 

A Purple View from the Bridge.

 I recently went to see Arthur Miller's “A View From The Bridge’ at Theatre by the Lake, Keswick.

I had picked up the tickets thinking it would be a great thing to blog about. And, indeed, it would have been. Miller’s story, about Eddie Carbone, an Italian American Dock Worker who lives with his wife Beatrice and orphaned niece Catherine, seems so relevant (probably why so many theatres are returning to this play, unless I’ve missed some significant anniversary or something) because of its exploration of immigration issues, which are so pertinent to today’s society. I wanted to talk about how fantastic the acting was. How the accents were downplayed just enough to avoid corny distraction. I wanted to talk about the fantastic revolving set design... But during the performance there was something equally fascinating, and dare I say less quantifiable, going on in the auditorium... 

Apparently when you get past a certain age, it is de riguer to attend theatre matinees. Did everyone except me know this? We took our seats (the bar stool ones to the left within the actor's spit range) and watched the auditorium fill. It slowly dawned on me that in a room with maybe two hundred people, we were a minority group. ‘We’ being anyone under the age of seventy. I counted five of us. Fair play, I thought. Husband leaned over on his perch and whispered, “A prize for spotting who was a hotty back in their day.” I scoffed, disgusted at his blatant ageism, and then noticed a rather dapper looking gent in jeans and shirt, with a sweep of carefully coiffed silver hair. “Four rows back next to the lady in the turquoise,” I muttered, hating myself a little. “What about you?”

But just then, the lights began to fade, and we dutifully sat back and shut up.  Ambient lighting filled the stage, and a cast of Brooklyn residents set the scene. But my eyes were drawn away from the action, back at the audience where there seemed to be a general consensus that they were entitled to finish their indepth and long winded conversations before entering into the spirit of quiet observant theatre goers. It was tempting to shush loudly. A reflex response. But everyone knows you can only shush people younger than yourself. Which left precious few options.

If this were the only misdemeanour, it would be forgivable. But next, began the great toffee unwrapping. As a child, I was only permitted non wrapped sweets in an uncrackly packet at the theatre or cinema. And if crackly-packeted was the only option, then I would have to wait until a moment of clapping or loud dynamic action to dive in and quickly unwrap. I knew the consequences… Apparently this octogenarian audience didn't - had never had such an education - and rustled their toffee papers with gay abandon. I’m not exaggerating, the auditorium positively crackled like TV static with the mass unwrapping of Werther's and Chocolate Limes. (Funny how some older people refer to all brand of sweets, whether fruit based, chocolate or caramel, as toffees - gross generalisation, I know... and more senior readers, feel free to put me straight on it!) But rustling abounded. Do I sound precious? Even husband, who never had the non-wrapped toffee rule enforced, found it distracting.

And it didn’t end there. The performance was punctuated with inappropriate laughing, comments and exclamations. Saucy moments were deemed raucous beyond the chortle it mustered from me, leaving me wondering if there was some generation specific joke that had evaded me. Other moments inspired ooohs and tuts and giggles like they were watching a Carry On. Here and there someone would call out some witty rebuff about the action. The actors battled on. I bit my tongue.

The crunch came at the end. Eddie was in the throes of his climactic dramatic death. (Sorry if this is a spoiler...) I sat with bated breath. But in the dramatic pause before the narrator stepped forward to complete the play, several audience members decided that that was enough of an ending for them and upped and left, before an applause could even vaguely start. Well, they’d seen him cark it, so why wait?

Do you think I’m being too harsh? I don’t. This blog is heading in the direction of a badly told anecdote and it's tempting to end weakly with that old line “you had to be there.” I had felt temporarily disgruntled by their bad behaviour. Until I thought about it a bit and brought to mind the poem by Jenny Joseph Warning which begins 'When I am an old woman I shall wear purple'. This audience all had their ‘purple’ on. They were having a ball. They enjoyed themselves and responded to the play with emotional honesty. It reminded me of a time I took a group of young people to see a production of Romeo and Juliet. Juliet was wearing an ill judged length of skirt for a raked stage, which the boys in the group openly perved up. At the end when Juliet, sorry to spoil it again, died (à la Primary School murder-in-the-dark) it was met by open laughter and cheers. I did my best to quell the baying audience. But in all fairness it had been a dire performance and I concurred with the general reaction.

So I have resolved, based on observance of the old and the young, that I need to get over myself and that I, too, should become a miscreant theatre goer. I will book cheap, last-minute seats to performances and leave all my reserve with the ushers at the doors. I will laugh when I think it’s funny, even if no one else does. I will chew, suck and chomp toffees loudly and rattle the packet as I pass it along the row to vaguely grateful strangers. If I need a wee / walk around / drink in the middle of the act I will just get up and go. I will be a purple wearing theatre goer before my time. I will not be a passive watcher, but become part of the action. Isn't that so much better?       

A (Camp) Site for Sore Eyes

Having spent the last few months hunched over the laptop until my hands resembled claws and my pallor turned the sickly yellow of Birds Custard I stepped blinking and squinting into the sunshine and decided to go camping. A writing research trip. I promise. Tent - check. Sleeping bag - check. Cool box crammed with chocolate and beers - check.

We are working our way through the Cool Camping book, a brilliant compilation of the most exciting camping locations throughout the UK, including yurts, pods and teepee sites. And we’ve made a commitment, that I think we are soon to break, never to go back to the same place until we’ve tried them all.

This time we found ourselves at Syke Farm in Buttermere, Cumbria. It is testament to the fact that I’ve spent too much time online recently, because it was a real stumbling block not to read Syke Farm as Skype Farm. This in itself was reason enough to go. And secretly, I was hoping it would inspire some fresh story ideas. 

By some fluke of nature the weather was incredible. Hot sun, very light breeze – exactly what you would book for camping if you had access to climatic authorities. The Syke Farm camp site nestles along the Newlands Valley. A little stream babbles agreeably through the camp site. It is surrounded by a horseshoe of trees that in the daytime twitter and rattle with chaffinches and woodpeckers and at dusk releases skitters of pipistrelles. 

A walk around Buttermere felt worthy and challenging enough to justify sitting with a beer afterwards before a brief stroll down to the pub. 

I included a visit to Keswick Museum and The Theatre on the Lake Matinee for cultural content. More on those in future posts.

So this trip, with its spectacular scenery and glorious weather quickly stirred a few story ideas. Definitely a setting to inspire some late summer, or autumn themed stories, which is what the women’s magazines are buying at the moment. 

But then, as I walked back to the tent one afternoon, feeling sun soaked and peaceful and like the world was a good place to be, I found a poster for a missing dog. He had disappeared whilst he and his owners were walking the fells the day before. The dog in the photo was handsomely shaggy and black, with heartmelting eyes. “He’s probably fallen and impaled himself on a cliff branch or something,” husband helpfully said. I shook my head and glanced up the valley, hoping to see a blur of black bounding over the bracken. I tried not to cry. I will probably never find out if he made it home or not. So this will be the story I will write next. Written in that dog's honour. And I don’t care if you think it’s unrealistic, but it will have a happy ending. If I'd wanted to write factually I would have gone into journalism... Then again...