A CHRISTMAS TREE NOT JUST FOR CHRISTMAS

A wee seasonal tale! 

As soon as it was carried into the house the Christmas Tree knew it had got the present it had wanted—a home. All those cold lonely days in the Garden Centre, shivering wrapped in clingy sweaty cellophane. All those family feet rushing past to the taller trees with their fuller branches.

The Tree had been hopeful one day when a boy had stopped before it and pointed. `I want that one daddy. ` The daddy ushered his son towards one of the taller trees.

` One bauble and that tree would keel over son`

What about the season of good will pal? That trees minging by the way, with leaf rust! And it’s contagious. Merry Christmas.

All that pain forgotten now though as the Tree settled into his new home.  Not sure about its place in the corner.

Got a really nice window there. I like a view! Still I suppose, the family, even the daddy, nice and cheery as they decorate me. That tickles.

The Christmas Tree catches its reflection in the glass cabinet opposite.

I don`t half scrub up well.

Whoa, what was that? Cobwebs! Aren`t you supposed to tidy for Christmas morning? Don`t go to bed yet, you`ve got work to do.  I never liked the dark. Yikes, creepy crawly multiple legs on my branches! Get off! 

 

A cold Christmas eve into a colder early morning Christmas day.

The Christmas Tree didn`t mind the frost on the window, this is what it should be like, what it had been waiting his whole life for.

The Christmas Tree had never been happier.

A sudden gloom on its mood. 

Christmas tales from other trees in the Garden Centre.

` Enjoy the day for…`

` What? `

` New Year and it’s the scrapheap for us. `

` No. `

The Christmas Tree shivered at the thought, the house, the home, so cosy and, this was its home now, they wouldn`t, they just wouldn`t. 

The joy on their faces when they were making it look its best. 

` This is what family is all about.` The daddy had said.

They would never just throw all that away?  Make the Christmas Tree homeless?

It was then it began to happen. 

 

Excited voices and footsteps upstairs, then louder and closer, and the brother, followed by his sister, crashing into the living room. Both breathless, their faces aglow with expectation. Daddy and mummy slowly followed both breathless and too early for adults.

All four stopped suddenly and stared at the Christmas Tree.

Mummy. ` When did you move it?`

Daddy. ` Why would I move it? I liked it in the corner.’

Brother. ` Maybe it moved by itself. `

Sister. ` Yuk.  A flat spider. `

I told you I liked a view.

Mummy. ` What`s that under the presents? `

Daddy. ` I`m not looking.’

The brother and sister ran to their presents before their mummy and daddy could stop them. Ooos and ahhs and wrapping paper filled the room.

Mummy. `Is that what I think it is? `

Daddy nodded.

Sister. ` I know what it is mummy.`

Brother. `I do too. It’s…

Sister. ` Roots. `

Brother. ` Does that mean the Christmas Tree is staying? `

The Christmas Tree sighed with a contented joy, baubles swinging gently, the Angel on top almost toppling, but not, the roots spreading deep down into the foundations holding the tree steady.

Thank you Santa. You got my letter. A home, and my own family for Christmas.

 

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE MUSEUM OF JOHN AND MARY MASTERS--A SHORT STORY

Pleased to have a short story published November 2020 in the latest edition of Postbox Magazine.  In some fine company indeed as you can see below.

My only wish was to honour my father and mother.  I have been invisible my whole life and like it that way.  I had no burning desire to come into view. 

You bury your parents then return to the everyday world to wait your turn. The way of things, as John Masters, my father, would say. My father died two weeks ago and the world did not stop.  The traffic lights on the way to the graveyard turned red like any other day.  No-one paused their day to stop and bow their heads.  My father died and like the unexpected collapse of an immense monument that dominated my landscape, it left dust and confusion, and rubble strewn across my life.

I don`t remember when the thought first entered my head. Maybe as my father was lowered into the grave and my mother`s name on the headstone suddenly huge, and the aching thought that my father`s name will be added to the cold stone.

I was an orphan, and I needed to re-build my own monument to them both.

My father`s silent house.  Bin bags of his clothes ready for the charity shop, the boxes I was taking with me already in the car, the rest of my mother and father`s life in the skip across the street. All it took was to lay the first brick was a photograph of my father and me walking with the crowds on the way to the football. My father behind me shielding me from the raucous and unpredictable crowd.  I am looking directly at the camera and I feel I should be a ten-year old afraid in this world of adult giants.

I am not.  I am safe.  I have my own giant`s hands on my shoulders guiding me.    

Who took the photograph?  It must have been one of my Uncles. Going to the football was a family affair. 

Uncle John, a man of enthusiasms that burst and lit up his sky like fireworks, and then fell to earth forgotten.  Soon to be replaced by another display.

Photography was one of those sudden and short lived enthusiasms. I hated, and still do, getting my photograph taken.  I am scowling in the football photograph.

Suddenly I have three shoe boxes of his photographs before me and feel bad that I am scowling in almost every photograph. 

In one of the rare ones where I am smiling we are somewhere I don`t recognize.  A group photograph of the aunts, uncles and cousins. We are in a museum and standing before a display case.  I can`t make out what it is displaying but it must have something interesting to the cousins and me since we are not fidgeting and carrying the look of wishing to be elsewhere.

My Uncle John is in this one, so someone, a member of staff maybe took this photo, someone that couldn`t work the zoom to catch what was being displayed.

My father is there.  The lover of museums.  I touch his smiling face.

Bin bags emptied, boxes emptied, skip retrieved.

Like being guided by those giant hands I began to design the Museum of John and Mary Masters.

First thing is the sign.  I commission that from the local sign maker Kennedy and Son.

` A museum for your father? ` Says Old man Kennedy. 

` Father and mother. ` I reply on the verge of asking him for quotes.

` On the house. ` He replies.

I tell him no, this is a proper museum.  Old man Kennedy smiles.  ` You tell me what you want and I`ll tell you the price. `

We nod in agreement.

Next is John Masters work shoes.  Black, always black, scuffed and the sole beginning to say goodbye to the rest of the shoe.  When the glass cabinets arrive I place the shoes in one with a quote from John Masters himself.  ` A few miles left in them yet. ` Every day he walked to the factory.  For many years I assumed he built every car that passed us on the road.

Next a bookcase with a glass front.  Inside on the top row and arranged in alphabetical a series of Under the Bonnet manuals from the cars he owned over the years.  Starting with the Austen Allegro and finally the Zephyr

On the next two shelves below were the Tom Murphy Western Novels, and under them the Readers Digest magazines going back to nineteen sixty nine

I fill one wall with a chronological arrangement of photographs starting before I was even born.  Father and mother caught by a Glasgow street paparazzi when they were `walking out together. ` Father serious as if `did you ask permission for taking that? ` Mother smiling. ` The man`s only doing his job Johnny. ` I inscribe under that photo `Like Bogart and Bacall. `

I struggle to remember what my mother looked like.  Dead when I was five, she seems a stranger in the photo. 

I continue the photographic story across all four living room walls.  I do this by year, some years more filled that others. 1975 has one photo.  The year my mother died.  

I order a rope barrier for the bottom of the stairs with the legend attached. ` Staff only. `

January 1975.  The only photo from that year was my mother making a mock annoyed face while clearing out the ashtrays after the Hogmanay party.  

Other cabinets include scraps of letters from John to Mary, and from Mary to John.  I name them their courtship letters.

` Missing you. `

` Didn`t mean to stand on your toes. `

` Smile John, it won`t hurt your face. `

` Three weeks Mary, three weeks. `

They lived across the street from each other.

I am hammering the Open/Closed sign in the garden when the lady from the council arrives.

Summary of conversation.

`You’re not allowed. `

` Why not? `

` You can`t just open a museum in a council house. `

` Why not? `

` Health and safety for a start.  You can`t have visitors if…`

` We had visitors, family and friends for years.  Are you saying their safety wasn`t important? `

She left to fight another day.

I did not charge for entry.  I opened on the Monday and waited.   A few curious neighbours but no-one ventured in the front gate.

The council lady came and went again.  Less questions, or slower questions as she wanders around.  Once she mutters to herself as she stared at the courtship letters. ` My dad was never one for letters. `  

A week goes by and you can count the visitors on one hand. Drop ins who had been passing and took a chance.

None of the neighbours until Mrs Rowan from number seventy two.

She has a photo with her. ` Your mum and me at the bingo. Up at the Parish Hall.  That`s Father John, the Bingo caller. ` She glances at 1975.  ` I thought you might have a space or two.  I have others if you like? `

` Thanks. `

The rest of the street arrives over the coming days.  The kettle is never off.  Most come bearing gifts.

Photos, an old football, a lawn mower my dad had loaned but had never been returned.

The museum fills.

Then Mrs Rowan died and I close out of respect.

A week after her funeral I am woken by hammering across the street.  Pulling back the bedroom curtains Angela, daughter of Mrs Rowan, is with difficulty hammering in a sign.

The Museum of Jennifer and George Rowan.

I realise I hadn`t known Mrs or Mr Rowan`s first name.

I hesitate to help, I don`t want to seem patronising.

` God, yes help. ` Says Angela.  ` My arms falling off trying to get this thing in. `

When it`s done I say. `A fine sign. Your mother would have approved. `

` I hope so. ` Says Angela.  `Fancy a coffee. `

` Don`t mind if I do. ` I say. ` I`ll just turn my sign to `back in a while. `

` I`ll have to get one of those. `

` Tons of them online. ` I tell her. 

I have never been in Mrs Rowan`s house, just like Angela has never been in mine.  Just like my mother and father had never been in the Rowans and vice versa. 

` Do you think they`re annoyed at us for doing this? ` Asks Angela.

` Your mother gave me the photo. ` I say.  `She came into the house.  I think they always wanted to but…For a coffee like this. But different times. `

Her living room is filled with photos, and pride of place a cabinet full of trophy`s and medals.

` Your mum did country dancing? ` I say.

`Scottish Country dancing don`t you know. ` She indicates a photo.

`My mum as well?!`

Angela nods.  ` I hardly have anything of my dad. `

` You have more about my mum than I do. ` I say.  `Still have boxes to look through mind.`

` Do you think they`ll close us down?`

` Probably. ` I say. ` The council lady said to me.  `But your mother and father are not even famous?   I`d told her I wanted the museum on their tourist trail. `

` Good for you. What did you say? `

` Who decides what stories to tell? `

 Angela suddenly stands up.  ` Somebody`s stopped. `

A couple coming up Angela`s drive.

` We heard about it on Facebook. ` The man says.

` We`re orphans now as well. ` The woman says.

` Brother and sister? ` I ask, and they nod.

` We have nothing left of our mum and dad. ` Says the man.

They stay at Angela`s for over an hour, and then they come to me.  As they leave another car draws up, and another couple get out.  Both couples stand talking at the road edge then the new arrivals come up my drive.

` A friend told us about this place. Can we come in? `

` Of course. ` I say.  ` And there`s another great museum across the road.`

` The couple were saying. ` says the man.

They stand in the middle of the living room and stare around. The man takes the woman`s hand.  She squeezes it tight, and says.  ` I`m an orphan now. `

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DEVIL GATE DRIVE` the play, and other thoughts on theatre.

Devil Gate Drive performed live on Zoom October 2nd  2020.  

Click the image to hear a fresh glam version of a classic glam song.

Musical arrangement by Mark McClelland
Vocals by Kirsten McClelland
Written by Nicky Chinn & Mike Chapman.

Image design by Patrina Finch

Devil Gate Drive: A theatrical journey back in time to the narcissistic days of 70s glam rock.

The setting, the City Centre Café (it might be known as Mimi`s Bakehouse.)  Edinburgh October 2019.  

Director Andy Corelli of Awkward Stranger had an idea.  A play about six teenagers who grew up during the Glam Rock era and discovered who they were through the music. Not a musical, or a singalong, but a drama. A drama that explored what it was like to grow up in the 1970`s especially in the daily battleground of school, and society`s expectations of who you were.

The play would incorporate excerpts of Glam Rock songs but adapted to different music styles to suit the mood of the play and characters.  For instance we could have `Blockbuster` by Sweet performed in a bluesy style, sung by the musicians, or actors.  The songs though would not be an interlude from the story but integral to it and the life of the characters.

Would I be interested in developing a play on that premise?  I don`t think Andy had finished asking the question when I said yes!

The nature of the eventual Zoom premiere determined that the full ambitions for the music had to wait for another day, when it would be presented as originally envisioned with the musicians on stage. Still musician Mark McClelland and vocalist Kirsten McClelland   produced their own highly original adaptations of some of the original songs.  Have a listen to the graphic, if you haven`t already, at the head of this essay and be amazed.  It was a joy to work with such talented musicians.

The above was in the future though.  Before we reached that point during the following months from the meeting in the café we discussed the finer points of what play would be all about. Not about the songs or the history of Glam music but focussed on the characters.  Taking Sweets song `Six Teens` as an inspiration but only that, not expand on the stories in the song, but develop different stories and characters.   

It would be a story about the search for self against teenage doubt, the bluster, the bullying, the pressure to be the stereotype you were expected to be by your family, your upbringing and maybe more crucially yourself.  It would be about the characters making choices good and bad, with consequences for themselves and others that reached into the present day.  The music would be the catalyst, or open the door, for those choices to be made in a time when education, that should have been the catalyst seemed remote and failed to stir the inner them.

The music, the songs, the desire to be more, did.

Talk is good but a writer writes. 

I`ll start with a statement. 

I don`t believe there is any such thing as flashbacks.  Or even memory really.  Flashbacks or memory are artificial divides in drama and life between then and now.  Everything exists in the present, the future never arrives either, as tomorrow is actually today when it is.

This was one of the things I wanted to work on in the play as a conceit and device to tell the story.   What the characters ` remember` even if they contain facts, is only a reflection of what they emotionally feel in the present, in the moment of `remembering.`

Dramatically I was aiming to break down the artificial barriers in other areas that exist between the various elements of storytelling.  Feeling and imagination are not fantasy, or escape from the truth but the real reality of the individual characters and the group.

Andy`s idea of all six characters in 1974 and the present played by older actors appealed to me greatly.  There would be no shifting to the `younger selves` during the `remembering` scenes.  Everything shown or heard would be contained in the older characters consciousness.  

Also the fact the musicians would be present on stage would break the convention of the musicians as separate from the actual performance.  The music is central to the characters, they should exist in the same present space.  As said because of the nature of Zoom it wasn`t practical to have the musicians live performance alongside the actors.  It will be on a stage.

Older actors playing both sets of roles set me thinking further about the artificial divides and where emotion, and which drives the characters actions, lies in stories. 

If someone visits a place either familiar or not the refrain heard is about an `atmosphere` that comes from the very walls of the place.

I wanted to use and challenge that.

Example.  Before and during the thinking and writing of ` Devil Gate Drive` I was developing my thoughts in a series of short plays around buildings and spaces.

In my play `Death of a Factory`   a factory is the central character and is about to be demolished (die!) A very different play from `Devil Gate Drive` but looking at ways of `collapsing` the story divides to get deeper into the truths of the situation.

 

This is the opening of the play.  The workers Joe and Sam are setting up the machines for the final shift.  Joe is humming and part singing.  `Highway to Hell. ` The Factory addresses the audience.

I am factory. I have had many names.  In this age my name is Catriona Mill.  I have been many things. In this age I am a textile factory.  (Takes a piece of yarn out of its pocket.)  In my Golden years nothing but the finest cashmere. (Joe and Sam hands Catriona pieces of yarn.) Now the cheapest of the cheap imitation. And look where that has got me.  (Puts cashmere in one pocket, the other yarn in other pocket. Re Joe/Sam) On this day of all days I should care about them. I have watched them so many times set up the machines. And the machines are part of me. But they don’t care about me. They moan and groan but they’ll go on living. Of a sorts.  And I’ve got mice running up and down my arms that can sing better than that one. (Joe.)

In this play there is no set, only characters. What would usually be a static representation of a factory is a walking breathing about to die character. It speaks the emotional memories of all that have walked through its doors.  It is not one character but hundreds but at the same time an individual entity.  

It feels its own death approach, the betrayal of those who have benefited from its existence.  It has brought so much to the surrounding community but soon it will be gone and more than likely forgotten. Whether those feelings are true in the sense of facts, they are true to what the character of the factory feels.  It is its reality.

To to me no such thing as a ` feeling` when you enter a room or a building, or walk through a graveyard.  Everything emanates from you.  Like the `remembering. `

You bring the energy, the `feeling.`  That is why to me having a factory set peopled by characters coming and going telling you their story, their memories are better served as drama when the artificial visual walls come tumbling down, and everything on the stage, including the factory,  is active.

Being active meant displaying the actual emotion without judgement, or moralising, or blame.  Judgement, moralising or blame put up other barriers which stops us seeing the characters as they are, but as whom we think, or wish, or need them to be.

The characters in Devil Gate are, yes buffeted and influenced by peer and society forces, but their feelings are theirs, their choices are theirs, the consequences of those choices are theirs—not society`s, their parents or teachers. I didn`t want a separation between the characters and the world they lived in, because the actual world that they live in, in 1974 and in the present is their consciousness.  To try to get to that with `Death of the Factory `the factory has a voice. With Devil Gate it was the same `collapse` of barriers, the voices of parents or teachers, or the songs themselves held in the consciousness of the characters.

`Devil Gate Drive` is about many things but one of the most important is having a place inside your head which you can go…a safe place.  That rings true to me because I have always lived inside my head.  To me most people do to one extent or another.  My internal world of imagination defines me more than the outer markers such as where I was born, how I have earned my living.  I used to work in a textile factory.  All the characters in the play are searching in one form or another for this safe place. Of course it is there all the time but for our characters in Devil Gate the music is the key.  For me it was writing.  

Devil Gate cut scene:  the characters as young in 1974.  They build Devil Gate Drive out of books, and pencils, what is at hand in the classroom.  To be quickly put back to the rational objects when the teacher turned round.  It was cut because I felt it put up a barrier to what they were searching for inside their head. The safe place wasn`t static or solid but could shift with need.

Only in Devil Gate Drive did their lives and thoughts truly `come alive. `

No spoiler alert here but in Devil Gate they encounter aspects that are usually in another form but `come alive` to them through their emotional need.

Another aspect I wanted to explore was that their  `remembering` in the present could cross over between the various characters, not because they all went to the same space ie school, but were connected through the emotional need of the music.   This manifested itself in the drama with my take on the ` flashback. ` The `flashbacks` are fluid from one character to another, also shifting in a moment between then and now.  The `flashbacks` not actual memories in some realistic order that can be checked with the historical record but emotions crackling inside their middle aged heads.

The unreal reality of it all is the constant flux of feelings. 

This was my basis for telling the different but connected stories of the Six Teens.  They had their own stories, and more importantly as mentioned they were responsible for their own choices in how those stories unfolded.  I aimed to give them the respect to make their own choices and suffer or gain from them.

I loved writing this play; it was a joy to work with such a fantastic and imaginative director such as Andy.  With a group of actors-- Janette Foggo; Kirsten Maguire; Estrid Barton; Dougal Lee; John Love; Andrew McDonald--who despite the newness of the Zoom form, gave their all to the process and the roles.  The issues and situations the characters find themselves in are not easy, as they shouldn`t be in a drama that has ambition to explore real feelings, whether in a naturalistic setting, or surreal as Devil Gate.

Zoom brought up particular challenges luckily not for me really as a writer but for the director and actors.  Watching a supremely imaginative risk taking director, and actors willing to go for it, reminded me why I`m quite happy being a writer thank you very much! 

My experience of Zoom theatre makes me realise that it is not a substitute for ` real theatre` but a storytelling form in its own right. 

Zoom theatre to me is an exciting discovery and working with it as it is, is the way to explore it capabilities.  It can have its issues with delay in sound, sudden loss of internet signal, and the biggest for the actors not being in the room or on the same stage to interact directly as characters.

Some of these issues—sound not working when it supposed to—can happen in any live show whether theatre or not.

Why don`t we consider these aspects not as issues but as virtues.  Use the delay, the sudden loss of signal, even the remoteness of the actors (characters) as a new grammar in storytelling.   I don`t have answers how to do that but throw it out there as thoughts.  It could very well be the beginning of a new era. Early film was exactly that, early, in other words, young, stumbling trying to find its artistic feet. Inventing language and grammar to suit itself not merely taking conventions from the stage and transferring them onto the screen.  If we imagine hard enough we can do the same with online theatre. 

Also theatre itself!  Are we in danger at the moment of being sentimental about its absence?  Did it work all the time, or even most of the time?  Was it challenging enough in form and content?  How was the experience for the audience?  What audience did we reach?

With Zoom the potential is there to reach hundreds or more for each performance.  There were seventy in the audience for Devil Gate.  With Zoom, if you are like me with extreme loss of hearing you nearly hear every word.  I love going to the theatre but many a time I am exhausted not by the exhilaration of the story but straining to hear and follow it. Also regardless of the weather outside its always the perfect night for theatre on Zoom.  One of the crucial elements that needs to be addressed if Zoom theatre is to flourish is money!  At the moment it is mainly volunteer, or if anyone is paid at all it is by donations.  That can`t really continue long term.  Buying a ticket has to become the norm as with any live performance.  

Returning to theatre theatre.  Is it time to get more raw in our storytelling? By that I mean to stop focussing on the production values of something and concentrate on the rawness of the emotional lives of the characters.  Has theatre become too comfortable in its setting?  The `night out` aspect of it.  Are we challenged enough when we go to the theatre?  

When was the last time you were truly challenged? When was the last time you weren`t told what to think, but challenged to think?

When I write, the person first and foremost I need to challenge is myself.  I voted to stay in the EU but if I was writing a play about it would be from the perspective of someone who voted to leave.  Again, and crucially or it would simply me telling myself I was right and therefore superior, I would aim to tell it without judgement, moralising or blame.  It would be trying to reach that character`s reality.

I understand why it happens but part of me thinks standing ovations should be discouraged. Applause, appreciation yes for the actors and director, and maybe even the writer but…shouldn`t there be a pause, a hesitation, at the end of the play. 

A disturbance in the inner being of the audience.  Or is it merely a pat on the head and validation that what you think when you enter the theatre is correct?  The surface never mind the depths undisturbed. 

I am not talking about subject matter here but the questions, not the answers, brought to the surface by what happens on the stage.  Whether that stage is in a theatre or online.

John Peel once said that he received hundreds of demo tapes every week.  The vast majority he could have an instant opinion. Good or bad.  A few he couldn`t decide what his opinion was. 

Maybe that is what art is after all?

Food for thought?

Hopefully `Devil Gate Drive` will come to a theatre near you in the not too distant future.

In the meantime as someone once said…A writer writes!

The play I`m working on just now asks, amongst others, the question.

What would you do to live even a little longer?

This is the opening of `The Lazarus Option. `

PROLOGUE

(Prisoner 4500 in prison uniform and Sarah in business suit face the audience.  They are in different spaces, prisoner in her cell, Sarah on a train on the way to the prison. They speak to the audience.)

SARAH— My name is Sarah and I am dying.  I have one chance to prolong my life.  To continue with my good work.  The Lazarus Option.

4500—I am prisoner 4500.  My name has been erased.  I have no problem with that.  Didn`t like it anyway.   I am a murderer.

SARAH— I am a good person.  A moral person. I believe in the concept of right and wrong.  Consequences for your actions.

4500— I was due to be executed last week. Got as far as needle touching skin. They stopped it because of the Lazarus Option. I have no say in the matter.  Okay by me.

SARAH— Like now I travel every day to Edinburgh, to work, on the train. Today is not every day.

4500— Even at the distance of one mile…the distance from the station to the jail…I can hear the whoosh of air as the train stops. It is not an official stop but the driver does it to torment us.  To let his passengers catch a glimpse, maybe, of the evil ones.  A nice little earner I hear. That’s okay.  I would do the same.

SARAH—Today I will get off at the station.  It has all been arranged. You can see it from the station. A forty storey prison that disappears into the clouds some days.  I have heard some people on the train angry at this.  ‘It should go down the way.  To hell. ` When it opened I remember the headline. ` A monument to wickedness. `

4500— Apparently we have become quite the tourist attraction. We are good for business. A whole little village of stalls by the track to cater for those who stop to gawp.  At a safe distance of course. They don’t want to catch our evil. I feel we should get a percentage. This cell could do with a spruce up.  A coat of paint.  Maybe a little portrait gallery of my victims.

SARAH—I’m not one to stand and jeer at them. I find it undignified.  I bring my own coffee. I relax and read a good book.  Or I work on the train. My work is important to me.  To others.  This is the thing you must understand.  My whole life has been for others.  I do this for others. Not for me.  Maybe they will gawp and jeer at me when I get off at the station.  Maybe they will think I am visiting a relative.  Do I look like someone who would have a relative in such a place?  Of course not.  I am a scientist. They might recognize me!  I have made the mainstream news of late. 

4500-- I wonder if I will end up on her wall?                    

SARAH-- I have always thought of the prison an eyesore. It despoils the symmetry of the surrounding countryside.

4500-- She will be here soon. 

SARAH—They are less than human. She is less than human.  I have read her file. Not strictly meant to.   She is bad and I am good.  There is no debate. I am certain.  It is my right.  It is for the greater good.  For others. Always for others.

4500-- They say it`s what I deserve.  No argument there.

 

 

THE LOST LAND

 

A short slide show, inc video of me reading `The Lost land.` An impressionistic memory.

My dad had a factory that delivered eggs, chickens, cheese and much more to hospitals, shops and factories. The photo is of my dad in his place of work.

Both my dad, and the factory is no longer here.

AND THEY DANCED TO KEEP WARM--A SHORT STORY

 Previously published in Southlight Magazine and in Biscuit International Competition Prizewinners anthology.  Set in an imagined future. 

Currently writing a play version.

The day after tomorrow!

 She watched it turn blue and she knew their lives were over.  Sandy would say different of course.   Sandy the optimist, the champion looker on bright sides.  

No, not this time.  Especially Sandy.  He would know this couldn’t be fixed with a joke and a waltz around their living room to the music inside their heads. She smiled at the time he’d been made redundant at the factory and they’d danced, and she’d asked him.  ‘Sing the song.’

‘ You to.’ He’d said.  ‘Ready? One two…’

They’d both starting singing, badly,   Stuck In The Middle With You.

Not this time though. This time they had made the one mistake they couldn’t make.  The one thing that wasn’t allowed with Sandy being Sandy.  If they found out…What was she on about?  If.  They would and…Michelle choked and grabbed tightly at the sink…Would they even get to say goodbye?

She washed her face and stared at herself in the mirror.  How could they be so stupid? One mistake and everything changes forever.  At last they’d found a half decent place.  By their standards anyway.   Okay the cottage was damp and looking its age—the farmer had told them it was going on fifty years.  Michelle reckoned you could double that.

She didn’t mind though.  It was theirs.  And she was slow but sure getting the place like she wanted.  She had to work on Sandy of course.  He would have lived in the barn if she’d let him.  But he always came round and she loved travelling, picking up bits and pieces of furniture here and there from second, or more likely third hand shops.  They had painted and sort of decorated most of the cottage.  Their bedroom was the last to be done.  The paint for it was sitting in the hall. 

What was she going to do with all that paint?

The farmer had even put in newish windows in the living room.  A gale still blew through the cracked brick work on either sides but they wore jumpers and scarves and laughed.

And they danced to keep warm

The farmer liked them.  He’d told them.  Glad of good reliable tenants after that last lot, that’s what he was forever telling them.  She had asked but never got a proper answer why ‘that last lot’ were so bad.  Maybe they had made the same mistake as them?

A gale still blew through the cracked brick work on either sides but they wore jumpers and scarves and laughed.

And they danced to keep warm

A gentle knock came at the bathroom door.

‘Michelle.’

She stared at the blue.  ‘ Nothing yet.’

She heard him lean against the door.

One silly, stupid, bloody mistake. 

She thought about that April night. The both of them curled up, fully clothed, in bed, the heating gone again, and the farmer promising to get there before the country chill set in but never making it.

They were warm though.  They were together.  And she had said it.

‘I think we’re going to be okay.’

Stupid bitch that she was for saying something like that.  Tempting bloody fate.

They had made love that night without a thought and…now it was July.  Outside she knew the sun would be weaving patterns across the gathered haystacks.  Outside everything literally was coming up roses.

Another knock at the bathroom door.

A hesitant voice.  ‘Michelle.’

She could lie of course. 

No, she couldn’t.  They lived enough of a lie without lying to each other. 

The bathroom squeaked open. 

‘Michelle.’

Staring in the mirror she saw his eyes searching her reflection for any clue.

He found it.

‘You’re pregnant.’

She didn’t nod, or say anything. 

No need.

 

They’d never stopped talking in the three years they’d been together since that late night at the bookshop, Michelle taking Frank Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ from him, and asking.  ‘ Do you ever read anything else?’

He had been coming into the shop every day for a week.  He had bought nothing but Kafka.

‘I don’t read.’ He told her.  She’d waited.  He said. ‘I thought it might impress you.’

She laughed and that was that.  He walked her home every night when she finished work.  Occasionally they would go to a café and talk.

She told him all about studying Law, and now not being sure, how she was thinking of giving it up, but she only had a year to go.

He persuaded her to carry on.

He told her he wasn’t allowed to go to University. He’d told her why.  He’d watched her when he’d said that.  She didn’t hesitate.  ‘ Like I said not all it’s cracked up to be.’

She’d got her degree but never practised.  She couldn’t after they were married and she knew that.  Sandy had wanted them to live together.  Then the world would never have known. 

‘ But I want to get married.’ She’d said.

‘ But…’

‘I know.’ She said.  ‘Will you marry me?’

Now the silence between them. 

For three days they had tried test after test and all with the same result.  The blue stayed blue no matter how many times they closed their eyes and prayed together quietly for a miracle.  For three days they lay quietly together in their high ceiling bedroom, eyes gazing through the skylight, numb to the stars gathering and fading into the blue of the morning. 

During the day Sandy worked on the farm. She typed in the estate agents.  Sandy baled hay with an energy the farmer wondered about.  She cried in the toilets with love for the dream that was their cottage.   For three days they never talked about the one thing they had to talk about.

What were they going to do?

As it turned out they didn’t need to.  For there were plenty of other people who could talk for them, or more particularly about them.   The lady at the Chemists for instance.  When the knock came at the door Michelle knew at once who had told.  After all there was money to be had for telling.   That first time Carol from the office had bought the kit for her.  But you can only say false alarm once.  After that she had shut off thoughts of getting caught and gone to chemists herself.  She had to be sure. She had hid the kit of under aspirins and shampoo of course but she couldn’t hide it from the lady behind the counter.

One swipe of her card and it would have flashed up. 

An illegal purchase.  There they would be on the system.

Mr and Mrs Sandy Williams.

One phone call from the lady in the chemists and she would be in the money. She would say she had no choice but to report them of course.  Sandy had a criminal record.  It was an offence for someone like Sandy to father a child.   The lady in the chemist was acting for the good of society.

For the briefest of moments thoughts crept up from Michelle’s belly and gathered like bile in her throat. They threatened to spill over the policeman taking notes from her third hand green baize couch.

She had done her best with the cushions but the springs in the couch had long ago hardened like ancient arteries.  The policeman shifted every few seconds and she was glad.

No she wasn’t.  For he was young and embarrassed to be asking the questions he had to ask.  They could have least sent a woman.

All the time the questions were getting asked Sandy paced around upstairs in their bedroom.  The first thing the policeman had said was that Sandy wasn’t allowed in the room. A wave of anger had passed over his face.  Michelle had never seen that before. She had urged him with a look to do as he was told.

Eventually he had.

Once the pacing had turned into silence and the boy policeman had glanced upwards and he had changed into law enforcement man before her eyes.

She had to say.  ‘He’s upset.  But he won’t do anything.  That’s all in the past.’

‘So you know all about his past?’ The policeman said.

‘ He was a wee boy at the time.’ She said.

‘Sixteen.’

‘Yes, a wee boy.’ Said Michelle.

The boy policeman was gone for good now and law enforcement man glared across at her.  And Michelle hated him for her having to apologise, to explain her own husband.

My God but was he right?

No, no, no.

The policeman handed her the blue appointment card.

And with that he was gone with a parting glance at Sandy who now stood at the top of the hallway stairs.

‘When?’  He asked.

His voice was angry.

She hesitated. ‘ Tomorrow.’ She said.  ‘ There’s still a chance.  There is Sandy.  We’ve got to believe that.’  She saw the anger leak out of him and he shrunk with it.  He swayed and for a terrible moment she thought he was going to crash down the stairs. 

She said.  ‘Those tests are not always right.  I’ll go myself.’

He turned back into the bedroom and closed the door. 

She patted her stomach. 

 

They went together to the hospital.  At reception Sandy got the look up and down, and Michelle the sneering, you stupid little madam, look.   They took their seats amongst the other mother and fathers to be.  The walls were covered with help and advice and this phone number and that if you wanted to talk to someone, anyone, about anything.

A box of colour and well worn toys stood in the corner. Smiling faces smiled up at them from magazines scattered on tables.   

Then the unsmiling face of the receptionist was looking down at them.

‘Not here. Blue tickets are down the other end of the corridor.’

Heads snapped up.  Eyes met theirs. Heads were buried in magazines.

They got up and hand in hand walked the long bare corridor.  Behind them murmurs and mumblings grew.

They were the only ones at their end of the corridor but it was an hour before the doctor appeared and led Michelle into the small examination room.  Sandy stared at the bare walls for another half an hour.

When Michelle returned still in her blue hospital gown she sat down without a word.  She stared at the wall.

Two hours later the doctor ushered them into his small but cosy looking office.  Plaques on the wall told you he was a proper doctor.  Photos on his desk told you he was an upright citizen—three children, two boys and a girl grinned up at them.

Michelle so wanted to lay the photo flat on the desk.  To throw it against the wall.

Two printers sat on a table behind the doctor.  One with blue paper, one with white. 

The doctor was writing notes, and then he looked up at Sandy.

‘ What was it then?’

‘Sorry.’ Said Sandy.

The doctor waved the blue ticket. ‘ These tickets never tell you anything.  Just being curious. Hope you don’t mind.  Nothing violent I hope.  I have got a panic button here you know.’

And all with a smile and the writing of note after note.

Sandy never said a word.

‘ Okay then.’ Said the doctor.  ‘ It’s just I had a shoplifter in here not so long ago. She just blurted it out.  Couldn’t get her to shut up.  Some people.  ’ He looked up from his notes. ‘ The thing that gets me is I can never tell.  Five years doing this you’d think…I mean, you look so normal.’

‘I am normal.’ Said Sandy.

Michelle squeezed his hand, she could feel it pulse.  She thought again how she had never seen him angry.

‘Did she keep her baby?’ Asked Michelle. 

The doctor almost laughed as if it was the stupidest question he’d ever heard.

‘Course not.’ He said.

He said it like a doctor.  He said it as a printer buzzed into life behind him. It spewed out their future in blue paper.

The doctor told them in that matter of fact doctor way that they didn’t have any. 

‘ Confirmed.  You are pregnant Mrs Williams.  It is my duty to inform you that it is an offence to be impregnated by a criminal.’

‘ I was sixteen.’  Said Sandy.

‘Sit down Mr Williams. We have security.’

Sandy sat down slowly.

‘ Now.’ The doctor went on.  ‘  You know the choices you have to make.’ 

She knew.  Abort or the baby taken into state care. 

‘ Now?’ Asked Michelle. ‘ I have to decide…’

‘ No, no. Don’t worry Mrs Williams.  It used to be like that but…We’re not barbarians are we?  No.  I understand that this is a traumatic experience for you.’  Sandy’s hand squeezed hers to breaking.  She glanced at him. He eased his grip.  ‘You go home.  You decide.’

‘And tomorrow you force us to separate?’ Sandy said.

‘ It’s not me Mr Williams.  It’s the law. ’ 

‘ What happens to the babies when they’re taken into care?’ She asked.

‘ They are regularly tested for any criminal tendencies that more than likely have been passed on.’  Michelle felt sick.  ‘ If they have such tendencies then…the state takes care of them.’

‘ What does that mean?’ Said Sandy.

‘ It means the state takes care of them Mr Williams.’ The doctor closed the file.  ‘ But that is not your concern.’

‘It’s our child.’ Said Sandy.

The doctor sniffed loudly.  ‘You have made your wife a criminal that’s what you should be thinking off.’

Sandy stood up quickly. Michelle grabbed his arm as the door behind them opened. Two security men stood there.

‘ Goodbye.’ Said the doctor.

It was raining as they were escorted to their car.  Passing the chemist on the way home Michelle had an urge to turn the car and smash right through the counter.  If she was a criminal now anyway.

But she didn’t.  Instead she turned the car like the good official person she no longer was into the lane that led towards their cottage.

They hadn’t spoken all the way home.

That night they lay and cuddled, and as the night turned to day she said.

‘ I’m going to keep it.’

‘ You can’t.’ Said Sandy. 

‘ It’s my…our baby.’

‘We can’t even be together anymore.’ Said Sandy. His voice was shaky and quiet. 

She turned to face him.  ‘ It’s my fault.’

He kissed her.  ‘ Mine.’

She said.  ‘We could make a run for it.  We could have the baby and…’

He kissed her. 

‘  We could still meet.  In secret.’ She said. 

‘ Maybe.’ He said.

They kissed.  

‘ I love this cottage.’ She said.

 They fell asleep as the sun hit the skylight.

They woke to harsh knock at their front door.