CATERINA AND THE WAVES (1)

Sometimes trying to create a character can take you by surprise.  I’d been thinking about trying to write about someone with a lot of internal emotional turmoil, and sitting down to write about her – however inadequately - seemed as good a way as any of finding her, but when Caterina first sits down on her bench, I only had the last line as my own lighthouse to tell me where I was heading. Sara, Geoff, Brian and Jeremy - and even the Alderman - all arrived rather unexpectedly later on, and suddenly I’ve got a back-story to play with. This also explores similar ground (once again) to a couple of previous pieces I’ve done recently, but as the man said, “we all have just a few beans in our tin”. I haven’t yet got the foggiest where this will end up going, if it goes anywhere at all. Whilst this isn’t a “fun” piece, it was fun meeting them all.

CATERINA AND THE WAVES (1)

Caterina shivered slightly and pulled the woollen cardigan more tightly around her shoulders. She hadn’t felt at all cold when the night sky had been pitch black, just a few short minutes earlier. Now though, the first fingers of daylight were feeling their way tentatively across the early morning sky, and soft greys and purples were beginning to seep into the black silhouettes of the headland to give them a depth and a form and a substance that they hadn’t had even just moments ago, and she felt a sudden, unexpected chill. She started to wonder quite what she was doing out here keeping the Alderman company on what had all the air of becoming such a very drab day.

The bench was usually her favourite spot, overlooking the bay as it did with a direct line of sight to where the reassuring blink of the lighthouse on the headland slowly ticked the night away. Its regular hypnotic and fleeting flashes of light picked her out every few seconds before returning her to the shadows and her thoughts. A loving someone had paid to have the bench placed there quite some years ago and carved into its robust woodwork was a dedication to the memory of the Alderman, a Mr. John Pennington, a man whom she’d never met but in whose company she now chose to regularly spend her time, quietly admiring the view. Sometimes she would talk to him, and she found his comfortable, unresponsive silence reassuring. If the Alderman ever did start talking to her, then she’d know she was really in trouble.

Below her, the waves lapped comfortingly against the rocky shoreline where the first sounds of the seabirds awakening started to disturb the stillness of the morning. She found the sound of the waves calming and soothing and they helped to distract her from the chaos of thought which had kept her awake for much of the night and which had eventually brought her up here, stumbling along the dark and rocky pathway at some ridiculously early hour, to try and make some sense of it all.

Things had not been going well lately. She had struggled for years with her own sense of self-loathing and lack of self-worth. It was nobody else’s fault, she felt, it was just the way she’d been put together, like somehow there was a piece missing. It was very like that time when they’d somehow ended up with a part left over after they’d finished putting their wardrobe together. They had never really got to the bottom of where it was supposed to go. They’d carefully set that extra little piece aside but after a while, they’d forgotten all about it, and the wardrobe managed to hold itself together for years quite successfully without it. It was only when they’d been having a clearout that they’d found it again and wondered once more what it was for.

“A piece missing…” “Holding itself together…” Christ! She’d sunk so low that she was relating to flat-pack furniture now.

She sniffed the air. It looked like it was going to turn out to be a crisp, autumnal morning. In the normal scheme of things this would have lifted her spirits and she would have felt good, but today it did nothing for her. She knew it should have made her feel better, and it troubled her that it didn’t.

She sighed. She’d been really trying recently, really making an effort, and yet she still felt that she always got it slightly wrong. Every time she got enthused or encouraged about something, or tried to lift herself up with some positive thinking by trying to convince herself that something pleasant might be just around the corner, life had a nasty habit of putting her back in her place, or pulling the rug from under her and sending her crashing back down to where her inner voices told her she really belonged.

Three weeks ago Caterina had just happened to meet Sara again as she was walking across the supermarket car park. She’d been just returning her empty trolley before heading back to her car – Sara just would have to be able to drive - and it had been Sara who had recognised her, not the other way around. After her years of self-imposed isolation, Caterina had been fairly surprised that anyone should greet her in such a way and with such obvious enthusiasm. Sara had been in a hurry that day, something to do with the school run or some other excuse, but they’d exchanged phone numbers and promised to try to meet up soon, and Caterina had got on the bus with her shopping bags half an hour or so later feeling quite optimistic for once at the prospect of reacquainting herself with an old friend when she knew she had so few of them anyway.

She’d phoned Sara that same evening and a man who said he was called Geoff had answered and said something about a parent’s evening but that he’d tell Sara she’d called. Caterina had wondered why Geoff wasn’t at the parent’s evening himself, but decided that too many years had gone by since she’d last met Sara for that to really be any of her business.

She’d tried again the following night, and Geoff had said much the same again about telling Sara she’d rung, so she decided she’d better leave it until Sara called her back and, rather disappointingly, she never had.

Finally, last night, she’d decided to swallow her pride and rang up again, despite having totally convinced herself that it was completely the wrong thing to do and that Sara had obviously just been being polite and actually didn’t really want to have anything at all to do with someone so very wretched as she so obviously was.

This time Geoff had been quite brusque with her. He’d told her that Sara didn’t live there any more. Told her that if she wanted to talk to Sara she’d better ring “That bloody so-and-so Jeremy!” and put the phone down on her. Well, after that she could hardly call him back and ask for Jeremy’s number now, could she?

On top of that, of course, Brian had then pitched in, wondering why she kept ringing up this Geoff “bloke” as he’d called him, and nothing she could say or do for the rest of the evening seemed to be able to calm him down. He’d taken a couple of bottles of beer out of the fridge, drunk them angrily and eventually gone to bed without her.

She looked out across the water and sighed again. “Waves” she thought “everything just comes in waves…” How on Earth had things come to this? She wasn’t a stupid person. At school they’d considered her to be one of the brighter ones and assumed that she was bound to do well for herself. Somehow things had never quite worked out like that. Dreams had become nightmares, hopes had turned to ashes and then, well, she’d met Brian and she’d fallen into a kind of isolated domesticity that she’d never really planned for, and after all that somehow she felt… What? What was it that she felt?

She glanced again at the vast, wide-open, empty expanse of the ocean in front of her.

“Empty” she thought. That’s the word for it. “I feel empty”.

“SHATTER!” (A Story that failed)

This was a story I wrote for a Dr. Who competition earlier in the year that failed to set the world alight, for pretty obvious reasons, I’m sure. However, I do feel that despite the lack of any real story, the characters come over quite strongly, and the very wonderful and vivid performances of that rather fabulous late-1960s lineup of Patrick Troughton, Wendy Padbury and Frazer Hines seemed to speak to me very distinctly as I was writing.

It’s also very nearly 44 years since Patrick Troughton first took on the role, so I thought it might be a good thing to mark that event in my own tiny and underwhelming little way.

It does coincidentally seem to share a lot of the themes and imagery of enshrouding darkness in an earlier post, so I thought it might make a mildly interesting contrast, which is why I’m choosing to publish it here now, despite the personal sense of utter distress I feel whenever I do so.

Incidentally, the competition rules set a 2500 word limit and the pieces were intended for audio performance. I can’t imagine who I thought might get to perform it, though.

SHATTER

The sound of the glass shattering woke Zoe with a start. The TARDIS was tilted at an alarming angle and Zoe had to reach out her arms to grab desperately for the edge of her mattress and hang on for all she was worth as the ship started to right itself.

Within seconds the ship was stable again and she lay in the dark for a moment waiting to see if any further jolts were likely. Satisfied that things had calmed down for the time being she got up, shrugged on her dressing gown, staggered out into the gloomy corridor and edged her way cautiously along to the door of Jamie’s room, calling out his name in an urgent whisper.

“Jamie?”

And then more loudly…

“JAMIE!”

The young Scot’s gentle snoring coming from beyond the door proved to her that he was completely unaware that anything unusual was happening.

Zoe petulantly stuck her tongue out at the door and moved away. She was surprised to find herself shivering. The darkness of the long corridor seemed to be closing in around her. She felt a strange prickling sensation at the back of her neck and spun around, jumping slightly as she caught a glimpse of her reflection in one of the polished surfaces of the metallic corridor.

She relaxed when she realised what it was. She remembered how, as a child, sometimes when she was looking into a mirror, she would imagine seeing something move in the corner of her eye just as she turned her head away. This fond memory caused her to smile to herself, and she wondered whether she’d feel any safer back home than she did right now. Life in the TARDIS with the Doctor and Jamie was always eventful, and they did look out for her as best they could, but just once in a while she would feel a slight touch of homesickness.

She blinked herself back into the present. Had she dozed off for a second? She normally rarely noticed the constant gentle, insistent humming of the ship’s inner workings but the noise was now drumming annoyingly inside her head. She rubbed her temples and stared out into the gloom surrounding her, and shivered once again. Pulling the dressing gown tightly around her, she tried to tell herself that she was probably imagining things because she was still half asleep.

But was she imagining things?

The corridor was getting darker. She was sure of it. As she peered intently into the darkness she felt certain that, just for an instant, the darkness shifted. She looked again. The shadows ahead, just beyond where the corridor curved off to the right, moved.

Now a little frightened, she backed herself up against the wall and, not daring to look away from that patch of darkness, used her hands to feel her way along the wall until she half stumbled backwards through the control room door.

“Ah! There you are, Zoe!”

The Doctor stood in a pool of lamplight in the unexpected blackness of the control room, his dark hair danced wildly as he smiled towards her. She was immediately calmed and reassured at seeing the familiar friendly figure. She realised she’d been holding her breath for longer than was good for her and breathed out.

“Did I wake you? Sorry about that…”

“Doctor? What are you doing?” From his manner she guessed that, far from being sorry, he was secretly delighted to have some company.

The Doctor was in his shirtsleeves and braces and in front of him part of the main TARDIS control panel had been dismantled into a mess of wiring and components.

“Ah, well…” he blustered “The, er… Do you remember when we landed in that museum…?”

“Yes…”

“Well, the scanner controls seemed a little stiff. I thought I’d try and fix them that’s all…”

“In the pitch darkness?”

“Yes, well… I had to disconnect some of the electrical circuits. Safety first, eh, Zoe?”

“But all the lights have gone out!”

“Hmm! Yes, well, that was a little… unexpected…” he muttered, adding brightly “Still, not to worry! You were both asleep. And you really should look after your circadian rhythms, shouldn’t you? Especially with our lifestyle!” he beamed.

Despite herself, Zoe smiled back.

“Now - where’s Jamie?” asked the Doctor, purposefully.

“Still asleep, I think…”

“Yes, well. Sleep through anything he would!” He grinned at her. “Still, now you’re up, you can help me with this, can’t you?”

“Of course, Doctor! Only…”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed and he murmured defensively “Yes?”

“Why did the TARDIS suddenly lurch like that?”

“Did it? Did it really?”

“Oh, Doctor you know it did!”

“Yes, it did, didn’t it? Thought I’d imagined it…” The Doctor frowned thoughtfully towards the controls. “We should have been safe enough out here… Tucked away… Gently orbiting this nice, obscure little sun…”

“But we’re not, are we Doctor?”

Suddenly resembling a naughty schoolboy, caught out by one of his teachers, he muttered thoughtfully, half to himself “You see… It’s a question of gravity…”

“Our gravity?” asked Zoe.

The Doctor’s eyes flickered with alarm. “Well I hope nothing else is out here…”

“You mean you didn’t check?”

The Doctor was momentarily flustered “How was I to know a meteor shower would come along just as soon as we got here?”

Zoe looked at him sternly. “Oh Doctor! You know perfectly well that the TARDIS’s own gravity will draw all manner of debris towards it! You can’t have forgotten!”

The Doctor was getting rather used to Zoe’s occasional lectures on Astrophysics. If he was honest, he quite enjoyed them. “Well, that explains it! That’s all it was… Just a couple of passing asteroids! The TARDIS got a couple of bumps and you got woken up! If you slept like Jamie, you’d never have known anything about it…”

“I suppose so, Doctor”, said Zoe, sceptically. “I think it was that glass breaking that actually woke me up, but…”

The Doctor beamed his most pleasant smile. “Well, there you are then! Now let’s have a look and see whether we can get this lot back together, eh?”

Before she knew what had happened, the Doctor had tucked himself back underneath the controls and was busy rummaging about within the maze of electronics.

His hand suddenly reappeared and passed her a complex looking piece of circuitry which he had extracted from within the control panel. Zoe looked at it curiously for a moment.

“Doctor?” she asked.

“Yes, Zoe?” came the distracted reply.

“You haven’t disconnected the TARDIS’s main defence circuits have you?”

“No, of course I haven’t!”

“So what’s this then?”

She handed him back the circuit.

“Well, it’s the… it’s the…” He paused. “Oh my!”

The Doctor slowly stood up and looked sadly at the component in his hand.

“Zoe…” he muttered very quietly.

“Yes, Doctor?”

“Do you think it’s getting darker?”

Zoe looked around the control room. The shadows seemed to shift and separate and recombine as she stared into them.

“What did you say woke you up?” he asked urgently, his voice barely above a whisper now.

“The glass breaking…”

“What glass? A water glass, perhaps?”

“I suppose so. I don’t know, I just heard some glass breaking and it woke me up…”

The darkness surrounding them now seemed very intense. Blacker than black. Looking all around her, she stepped instinctively back into the pool of light surrounding the Doctor.

“Now listen, Zoe. It’s very important that you remember…”

His grave tone made her aware of how desperately important this must be. She closed her eyes tightly and tried to force herself to remember.

“It wasn’t in the room, I’m sure… Further away… Like… like someone had dropped something and… and smashed it. Oh, I don’t know, Doctor. A tray of glasses, maybe… a window… or a painting…”

“Or a mirror?” the Doctor prompted.

“Yes… Maybe.” Her eyes were now wide open with alarm.

“Oh dear!” he said solemnly. He fell silent for a moment, thinking.

“Zoe?’ he asked “Did you close the control room door behind you when you came in?”

She looked out into the blackness, then back towards the Doctor “I think so. I… I can’t remember now… I was feeling… frightened.”

“Frightened? Of the TARDIS?” The Doctor tried to appear reassuring.

“No, Doctor! Not the TARDIS.” She paused. “Something else…”

“Oh dear!” said the Doctor quite gently. Then he looked over her shoulder, beyond her, into the darkness surrounding them.

“What’s the matter, Doctor?” Zoe tried to turn around and see what he had seen.

“Zoe!” he shouted, the urgency in his voice building on the sense of panic she was already feeling. “Listen to me very carefully. Whatever you do, stay in the light! Do you understand me? Don’t step out of the light!”

Zoe didn’t need telling twice, and she pressed herself tightly against the Doctor, hanging on to him for dear life as if he was her only hope. The Doctor and that tiny pool of light seemed to be the only things between her and oblivion. She stared out into the darkness all around them, now convinced she saw movement everywhere as the shadows seemed to divide, merge and divide again, the blackness becoming more and more intense the harder she looked. She could feel herself trembling now as the fear started to overwhelm her again.

“This is ridiculous!” she tried hard to convince herself “I’m supposed to be a rational, logical human being! Why am I suddenly so afraid of the dark?”

“Doctor?” she asked, trying to calm herself “Why are you so concerned about a mirror breaking? Surely you don’t believe in ‘seven years back luck’ or anything? Those sorts of ideas went out with ion rockets…”

“Well” said the Doctor slowly “The thing is…”

He paused. A soft, comforting smile crossed his wise old face.

“Fear of the dark is perfectly rational, you know, Zoe…”

Zoe’s eyes widened. Was he reading her mind?

“All kinds of terrors can hide themselves in the dark. It’s only natural to be scared of them… But sometimes they get trapped…”

“In a mirror?”

“Yes…” he said, a faraway tone in his voice, “…and sometimes they get out!”

The air crackled and fizzed as if there was a storm coming. The shadows crossed, multiplied and divided again, and Zoe noticed for the first time that the usual reassuring gentle humming of the TARDIS had now been overwhelmed by some kind of continuous low animal moaning. Zoe shivered fearfully. Then the moaning became a raging, howling scream and there was a loud thump, as if something huge had stamped their foot in a fit of rage. In response, the entire TARDIS seemed to lurch off its axis and she had to steady herself against the control panel.

“Doctor?” she asked.

“It seems our friends are getting restless…” said the Doctor, thoughtfully.

“Friends?”

“Well, maybe not friends exactly…” He paused, gathering his thoughts “I would normally suggest that we run, but there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to run to…”

“We’re surrounded!”

“Yes, it looks that way…” He looked around as if seeking inspiration.

“What we need…” he murmured carefully “is to throw some light onto the subject…”

“Quickly, Zoe! You’ll have to help me…”

“Oh, I see!” said Zoe, suddenly understanding. “Oh, why did you have to disconnect the scanner, Doctor?”

“Eh?” He looked at her bemusedly.

“The light from the screen…?”

“Oh no, Zoe.” He shook his head “That wouldn’t do at all. Nowhere near bright enough!”

For a moment, Zoe looked crestfallen. The Doctor paused, as if struck by a sudden thought. He suddenly smiled at her encouragingly.

“Good thinking, though, Zoe. And, do you know…? You might be onto something…”

“Really Doctor?”

“Oh yes! Now, what we need is…”

The Doctor picked up his jacket and began busily rummaging through the pockets, pulling out a bewildering variety of objects. Each item was examined then dismissed and flung in amongst the tangle of electrical wire and other components as he frantically increased the pace of his search. He stopped for a second as if he’d just had a brainwave and tugged gently at one of the wires lying in from of him. It refused to budge and neither did any of the others when he tried them, so he returned once more to his desperate search.

“”What are you looking for, Doctor?” asked Zoe, her confusion mounting.

“A-ha!”

The Doctor beamed triumphantly and held up a battered, long forgotten yo-yo that had been lurking in one of the furthest corners of his pockets. Zoe just stared at him, wondering quite how a child’s toy was going to help them get out of their predicament. The Doctor examined the yo-yo and his face fell in disappointment.

“Oh dear!” he said sadly, holding it up for her to see. “No string!”

He tossed the now useless object aside and carried on looking.

“What is it you need, Doctor?

“A longish piece of string or rope or something like that…” he answered urgently. He twanged at his braces thoughtfully and started to unbutton them from his baggy checked trousers, a look of slight concern crossing his face as he considered the potentially embarrassing consequences.

“Oh well…” he muttered to himself “Not ideal, but these’ll have to do!”

“Would this do?”

The Doctor beamed as he saw what she was holding.

“Just the thing! Well done, Zoe!”

Zoe handed the Doctor the belt from her dressing gown and thrust her hands deep into the pockets to hold it closed and keep herself warm whilst mentally willing the Doctor to get on with whatever it was he was planning.

Very quickly he hooked the cord around one of the levers, and, holding on to both free ends dived underneath the control console. Zoe didn’t need much prompting to do the same and when the Doctor shouted across to her to close her eyes and hold on tight, she gripped the base of the hexagonal control panel, clamped her eyes shut and held on for all she was worth.

As the lever shifted down, the TARDIS doors started to open and the light from that nice, obscure little sun blazed into the control room. The air suddenly started to be filled with howls and screams of torment and the TARDIS started to jump and writhe about like a bottle in an angry sea, as if battling for its very soul.

Then, just as suddenly, it was quiet again. The doors slid closed and the familiar hum of the TARDIS was all she could hear.

“It’s all right, Zoe, you can open your eyes now. It’s all over!”

Zoe opened her eyes. The control room was lit normally again and the Doctor was standing there holding out his hand to help her to her feet. He smiled reassuringly, and seemed just about to explain everything to her when Jamie barged into the control room demanding to know what all their racket was in aid of.

THE END

I suppose I should mention that the DR. WHO characters and the TARDIS are all ©BBC, and I’m really not intentionally trying to cause them any pain by publishing this little piece. Any pain suffered by its readers, I’m afraid, I can only apologise for.

DARK DAYS

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, the words simply won’t come. This is an attempt to put down into words just how gut-wrenchingly bleak that feeling can be. It’s kind of in the spirit - if not the style - of the late, great Douglas Adams who had a theory that you can always try to turn the problem into the solution, and, in trying to come up with something that was highly improbable, came up with the “Infinite Improbability Drive”. This is nowhere near as witty, but it does have an angsty adolescent “leave me alone” feel going on which I quite liked.

Feeling very low today. A black fug has descended and everything seems pointless and worthless. Every word I find seems leaden and damp. Any sense of vim or vigour, or shine or sparkle just seems a long forgotten memory or something that only other people have the key to unlock.

The black dog is barking and only I can hear its roar. The endless grind of gears spinning and whirring and screaming in the dark. I look around, the simple secret of happiness seems known to everyone but me as they plod along - oblivious - through their sad and pointless days. Can’t they see it? Don’t they understand the emptiness of it all? The hollow core at the centre of the day? The nothing…? The nowhere…?

It’s inevitable really. Unavoidable. Every up must have its down, every yin its yang. Somewhere there’s a party, another place a wake. The darkness must chase away the light, the day must be swallowed by the night. The balance of the universe, the equilibrium of existence, an infinity of blackness divided by the light remains an infinite night. Every smiling face must be counterbalanced by another one which wears a frown. Every happy event finds someone holding back the tears. For every birth a death. For every death a birth. Only because of this can harmony be maintained, balance retained. The world always keeping its accounts in check.

I can hear the noise of others living their lives. Oblivious. How can I unpick the mystery? What is their secret? How did they find it out? This secret they all seem to know, so simple for them to find but still lost in a swirling labyrinth of the unknowable to me. Did they lower their expectations? Don’t they care? Or do they just not see it? Do they not have any perception of the yawning abyss or do they just choose not to think about it, get on with their lives? But how can they? How can they…? The empty hollow tunes blaring out of the radio of life. Popular, empty, meaningless. The three minute pop mantra they all sing along with until the words all lose any meaning, any value. The banging of the hammers and the chisels, toiling away at making the building someone else will tear down again one day. The familiar jokes and phrases they all share, and all laugh at, even though they’ve heard them all a thousand times before. Thing you say. Things you think you’re supposed to say. Things people expect you to say just so they can say back what they’re supposed to say. This hungry blackness is so all-consuming, so overwhelming, how can you carry on as if it simply isn’t there?

I need something to help me turn the corner, pep me up, bring me round… but there’s nothing there to do it, no bright spark to reach for, no silver lining to be found. I’ll just sleep it off instead and hope for the miracle of tomorrow, the something different, the change, the new point of view, the fresh start I hope for but which never actually comes.

Perhaps I’ll wake up and I’ll dash headlong into tomorrow with a mind full of hopes and dreams, and all the dead words of yesterday will dance and laugh and sing, until I hit that wall again and crash back down in flames and learn once again the pointlessness of chasing after those fragments and glimmers of joy that dance in the air like dust in a sunbeam but can’t be held in your hand. The black dog will still be behind me, howling with the thrill of the hunt, and in the end will drive me into another blind alley with no way to escape, and we’ll do our mirthless dance again, as we always do, one or the other winning the round, but the outcome of the game remains in doubt, with everything and nothing still to play for. All still up for grabs. Is the black dog blocking me, or can I block the black dog?

When the words won’t come, it’s so hard to tell.

Block. Block. “Tick-tock, still blocked”.

How quickly the mind unravels, how quickly the bitterness seeps in, how quickly the bleakness gives way to utter despair.

It’s unravelling fast now. Fast… faster still… This whole house of cards collapsing… the hope being swallowed by the emptiness and the darkness that yawns its way around me and swallows me… devours me.

Darkness falls.

I see a sea of blackness all around me. A thick, sticky blackness that clings to me no matter how much I claw away at it.

It’s everywhere. I can smell it… Taste it… Hear it… Feel it…

Feel it flooding my mind.

A void. An empty nothingness…

Nothing I do… Nothing I try…

Nothing has value… Nothing has point… Nothing has substance…

Nothing matters…

To nobody…

…and never will.

“MORSE LIVES!” (A review)

Whenever I’m struggling to write and I’ve convinced myself I can barely string a coherent sentence together, one of the ways I get out of it is by going off and writing a product review for the online retailer Amazon.

It helps you to string a cohesive argument together in less than 1000 words, focuses the mind on actually putting some words down, and might just prove prove “helpful” to some anonymous someone as well. I don’t know, maybe it’s a bit “sad” or maybe it’s making me something of a “muggins”, but I found it a quite therapeutic way of convincing myself I was still actually writing when I felt I really, really couldn’t.

This was one of my favourites, (and possibly one of the more bizarre efforts) and I sincerely hope that Amazon don’t have an issue with me sharing my own words with you. It’s for the old 33 DVD Box Set of THE COMPLETE INSPECTOR MORSE and having watched all the films back-to-back, the voices seemed very clear to me.

Anyway, all of 10 people found it “helpful” over the last year or so, so that’s nice:-

Morse Lives! (6 August 2009)

"LEWIS!"

"Sir?"

Lewis rubbed his head where he had knocked it against the television stand at the unexpected sound of the Inspector's voice.

"I may well have been attempting to rest in peace for much of this last decade, Lewis, but I keep getting interrupted. Can't think in these modern urns..."

"Ah, well that'll be these DVD releases, Sir..."

"These what?"

"DVDs! Ah, they're great, man! After your time I expect. Like - I dunno - a Compact Disc, I suppose... only with pictures..."

"Never really took to CDs, Lewis..."

"Sir! All 33 of our cases - from over 13 years on the telly - all in one box! Ah! It's magic!"

"You'd think people would be sick to death of them by now..."

"Not at all, Sir! I watch them again and again. They're really good! Whenever I think that one of them's going to be a bit... over-familiar like... it still always manages to surprise me somehow..."

"Now why doesn't that surprise ME, Lewis?"

"Be fair, Sir! There's some great actors in there... doing their thing... and Oxford looks grand!"

"They must seem pretty old fashioned by now I suppose..."

"Not a bit of it. Fresh as a daisy. I mean there's the odd turntable record player and some clunky old computers of course, but they don't really matter that much..."

"Sounds dreadful..."

"Ah the sound's brilliant! Pictures too! Nowadays, you wouldn't need to keep going to all those concerts of yours either! You'd be amazed at how good your Waggoner looks on one of these..."

"Wagner, Lewis. Wagner. As in vase..."

"Which is where I keep you, sir... On the mantelpiece... next to the photo of the wife."

"Thank you, Lewis..."

ART IMITATING LIFE IMITATING ART IMITATING LIFE…

Here’s the story behind a story which might be of interest to anyone who saw it and is hopefully the last you’ll need ever hear on the matter…

I’m not the world’s most sociable soul. In fact the thought of attending any kind of social function can put me into a tailspin of fear that can lead to the kind of self imposed mental and physical torture that really isn’t anyone else’s problem, but can be not a lot of fun to live with. Once more I raise a metaphorical toast of thanks and gratitude to the elusive beloved and her infinite patience with and understanding of me and my little ways.

Anyway, because I was feeling a bit lost, I stuck my nose out of my hovel and decided to engage with the world for a little while and see whether it still remembered I was here, and so it was that I found myself dallying with the dubious delights of electronic communication and, as luck would have it, chose a time when all manner of chaos was breaking out amongst a certain section of my friends and former colleagues.

Somehow, mostly due to my own idiocy about these things, but also due to a certain amount of needing to insulate myself from the pain that friendship can bring along with it sometimes, I had managed to lose all touch with pretty much everybody over the years, and was rather resigned to my new non-existence as “the forgotten man” when a short email popped into my inbox, courtesy of those little electronic feelers I had so tentatively put out with such little expectation of result, telling me of this impending crisis and other news of a shocking and disturbing nature. In my head people should always remain the same as when I last saw them, so major changes in their life tend to take me a long while to adjust to, so anything like that shocks and disturbs me. Think about how much your own life can change in a decade and you’ll hopefully realise a little why I have a tendency to run away from you screaming.

Anyway, a few days later, another email arrived telling me that in order to “celebrate” the passing of the company that had so long employed them (and for a decade or so back in the day, myself as well) they had decided to throw a party. I was confused for a while about this. Was imminent mass unemployment a cause for celebration? I know that if I’d been in their position, I’d’ve been running around in headless chicken mode, howling with rage and panic and fear and probably disappeared under the duvet for six months, emerging only for the occasional whimper. “Obviously these folk are made of sterner stuff than I am”, I thought, but it threw up another problem: The party was open to any and all past employees too, and would I like to attend?

Tailspin.

Weeks of fear and dithering and non-commitment followed and ultimately I did go along, had a great time, renewed some old acquaintances and everything was fine and lovely and smashing. In case you were concerned, they all seemed to be doing reasonably well in themselves despite it being a terribly difficult time for them all. They’re a strong and supportive group who are looking out for each other and hopefully will continue to do so.

At about the same time as the initial email (“of Doom!”), I got another email telling me that the local amateur theatre that I still have (very) loose connections with were planning an event to help launch their new Studio Theatre project and they were interested in presenting some new writing as part of an evening of entertainment, short pieces of around ten minutes if at all possible.

I had nothing.

Nothing at all.

But I had a couple of ideas, and over the next couple of days “Alaskan Ally” was born. “A jolly little tale of suicide by the great outdoors” as I later dubbed it. I don’t know whether it’s really any good or not, but people who’ve read it seem to have enjoyed it. The other idea was more of a problem. I’ve been thinking about a “workplace comedy” for a while now, but nothing seemed to gel. Perhaps if I sat my five lads (later four - “Andy” was despatched to wherever great beyond unused literary creations go, but I hope he and “Aunt Agatha” are having a nice chat wherever they are now) down at a table in a pub on the night their old firm closed down…?

Pretty soon the four old lads were sitting in that very anonymous pub discussing the demise of their firm and were later joined by a sinister misfit who they vaguely remembered working with a dozen or so years earlier. Once again, my jolly little comedy had turned into something a tad more sinister with a little hint of the consequences of careless talk and the horrors of stalking thrown into the mix. One short slice of an evening of their lives in which they failed to discuss their worries about future employment (that came after a few more beers, I’m sure) but touched upon pretty much everything else. All of this because I was a bit frightened about going to a party and so I had to consider what the worst that it could be might possibly be.

So, I’ve explored those characters now, and they now seem to live and breathe in my head as fully rounded individuals with unique and distinct voices, and hopefully I can now take them on into their journey, and start on the full length drama that will be joining all the rest in that dusty drawer sometime in the near future. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe, if the workshops ever happen, everyone involved will all discover more about them too, but for now, they’ve only got that ten minutes to shine in, but I hope people enjoy being in their company for that brief moment.

As to myself, I know that having actually enjoyed my night out won’t stop me feeling terrified and anxious next time an invitation comes around, but the point I think I’m trying to make here is that writing comes from the stuff that’s happening all around you all the time. You pluck these little moments from your life, turn them around in your imagination, and turn them into something else. “The Bitter End” (as I eventually called that piece) is not autobiographical and no real people or events are involved in it, but it was born out of my own fears and doubts and worries about what such an evening could be like, and probably, in the end, says more about me than it does anything else.

A NIGHT OF “STUFF AND NONSENSE”

[As I first dipped my toe into Blogfordshire with thoughts that it might be a useful device to keep a small group of writers I'm involved with motivated between gatherings, I hope you'll forgive this slight lapse into self-indulgence. Blame the insomnia if you like... (normal service will be resumed).]

INT. THEATRE BAR. EVENING.

The scene is busy. A performance area is marked out and people are going about their business. Lights are being tested. Sound is being checked. The bar is being prepared for a busy evening. A few early arrivals sit chatting. An organiser frets.

A writer enters. He’s made an effort - put on his other jacket so as not to be seen wearing the same one yet again. He greets the director and buys a bottle of mineral water from the bar and takes root in the obscure corner spot he plans to occupy for as much of the evening as he can get away with.

The bar fills up. Fills up! Performers arrive and are greeted warmly. A few last minute hitches are smoothed over by the organiser. Time ticks by. In the obscure corner spot, the writer is joined by two more writers. They chat, but as these newcomers are also scheduled to perform their own material, the conversation eventually falters as other things need to be thought about.

The general “house” lights dim. Spotlights pick out the performance area. We’re off…

On the outside the writer seems calm. On the inside, it’s quite a different story.

Okay... okay… People have turned up at least… God! I’ve got enough nerves for the lot of them… Don’t know how these performers do it… Shouldn’t have had that pizza earlier… Yep! Just belched the lot up… Rancid pepperoni… Marvellous… I hope I’m not standing close enough to anyone for them to get a whiff of that… Seems a pretty good crowd… Better than the dozen or so who came to the last one of these I saw… Hope we don’t have to lock them in… Of course they might just stay for the half-time food and then disappear…

Well, the introductions went okay… Warmly welcomed… Mind you, he’s a popular chap, people like him… What’s this…? A spoof theatre meeting… Did he mean to do that at the start or was it just some actorly “business”…? Went well though… In-jokes though, isn’t it…? Bound to work well with this crowd… Suddenly my foolish bits seem wrong for this kind of event… Keep it light hearted in future… “frothy”… My bits aren’t on until the end anyway… Maybe if we’re over-running I can get them to pull them… That’s it… I’ll ask him to drop them at the interval… No harm done… That new Kenyan piece was warmly greeted… Dignity… Gravitas… Yes, that works… Should have done something more like that… The poor woman having a coughing fit… Hope she’s okay… Ah! Someone’s taken her a glass of water… I should have thought of that myself… What is that strange humming noise I keep hearing…? Oh and sirens, too… the Saturday night soundtrack… And the planes… I forgot that we were right on the flight-path… Nobody else seems bothered by them though… Ah now we’re on to some old favourites… That’s more like it… That’ll keep everyone happy… Yes, they’re warming up now… Ah! A lot of swearing in that one… Still… Theatre crowd… Probably used to it… I think there’s a “ruddy” in one of mine but I generally thought it best avoided… These actors, they’re all doing this very well… There was me thinking it’s all just a bit of fun and they’ve taken it all very seriously… Never expected that… Must learn not to always have such low expectations… Okay… We seem to be running late now… Another new piece to end part one then we’ll see how many come back for part two… Powerful, dramatic… and wonderfully received… Can’t follow that… I’m definitely asking them to drop my pieces now…

Intermission… Food available, but I can’t eat… “Well done’s”  to the various performers I know… Brief chat to one of the actors playing in my pieces… He seems to like them… Seems to have enjoyed doing it… So much effort put in, I’ll have to let them go through with it now… Seems interested in doing some more work… Could this thing be actually working…? Still not hungry… I can still taste the pizza anyway… Why did I forget those mints…? Buy more water… and a spare bottle to help get me through part two… Brief chat to yet another writer… Why doesn’t he seem to have any nervous tension…? And he’s another one who’s performing as well… I’m such a lightweight…

We’re back… At least no one seems to have gone home… Maybe they’re enjoying it… Nah! That’s too much to expect… A sense of duty perhaps…? I’m such an idiot… Why can’t you just accept it might be going okay…? Those new monologues went down a storm… A lot for me to learn from them… Surprise twists, yes I like that… and that ironic one that just felt like a little bit of “stand-up comedy”… Why didn’t I think of that…? Uh-oh… My first one’s coming up… Should I try to record it…? Will the machine bleep…? Mind you, there are enough bleeps coming from God knows where… Again no one else seems bothered by them… Maybe they’re in my head…? Well that’s going well… Surprisingly well… These guys are really good… The allegedly funny bits seem to be getting laughed at and they’re not laughing at the allegedly dramatic bits so that’s promising… Actually, it seems to have actually gripped the audience… You really could hear a pin drop… Guys, you’ve done a terrific job with that… I’m so pleased I can feel an unfamiliar sensation… I think I’m grinning… Another new piece… funny… poignant… Goes like a bomb… Then it’s my other one… and that seems to have worked too… Couple of fluffs, but you can’t have everything… and no-one else will have noticed, I’m sure… Nicely done, chaps… nicely done… Couldn’t have asked for more… Relief… The final item… A few glitches but by now it really doesn’t matter… I think we’ve done everything that could have been asked of us…

House lights up… Just got time to track down as many actors as I can find and thank them personally… Think I found all the ones who performed my bits anyway… Got to dash… Not sure I can take it if I overhear any bad stuff… Some kind words, however… Got to learn to take a compliment… A brief post-mortem with the organiser… He’ll let me know anything he hears over the next few days… And information about another writing group… I’ll read it later… Text home: “I’m on my way!”

EXIT.