Reading of 'Harps' from Jawbreakers

Anthologies!

I love an anthology of stories. I always read the list of titles first. They make a story in themselves. A story of intriguing possibilities. And not for me the start-to-finish approach like reading a novel. I prefer the chocolate box method, picking out what I fancy first. Sometimes I absolutely MUST find out what a particular story is all about or the title makes me imagine what the story’s theme might be. Or perhaps I recognise the author’s name. I often pick the shortest story as an initial taster then longer one to savour. Then I begin to wonder if someone had carefully put all these stories in a particular order …

So … I’m very pleased, thrilled even, to have stories in two anthologies that have been launched this month.

My flash, ‘Harps’ is in Jawbreakers, the National Flash Fiction Day Anthology, along with a whole collection of one-word-title flashes, some by writers who were commissioned and others who, like me, submitted. Harps is a mere 178 words long, fitting nicely on page 51. I’m especially proud to be in this anthology because two years ago I read some flashes by one of the commissioned writers, David Gaffney, and was inspired to write shorter short stories. Jawbreakers is available on Amazon for Kindle or in old fashioned papery versions (and very nice too) from National Flash Fiction Day 

The other anthology is out today. Called 100RPM, it features one hundred hundred- word stories all inspired by songs on youtube. Lots of interesting stuff and what looks like a wide selection of songs. I intend to spend some time listening to the song, reading the stories and finding music that is new to me. Many of the bands and singers i have never heard. very much stuck in the late seventies when it comes to music. My stories in 100RPM are called ‘Here’, inspired by Some Fantastic Place by Squeeze and ‘My Boy’ inspired by My Perfect Cousin by The Undertones 

100RPM has been put together, from initial writing challenge to finished anthology by writer Caroline Smailes (she writes about it here here) It has an introduction by Nik Kershaw and is being sold on Amazon for Kindle for just £1.02 in aid of a charity called One in Four that helps victims of sexual abuse.

Maybe

You were ten and half pounds when you were born. People kept calling you ‘bouncing’ and ‘bonny’. I told Auntie May on the phone so she knew you were a big baby but by the time her christening present arrived I could see they wouldn’t fit.

Lovely baby shoes. Neatly stitched in soft red and green leather. I remember Rosie and Izzy taking a shoe each out of the box. They turned them round in their hands. The leather gleamed. They decided the tiny stitches and intricate embroidery had been done by elves. This made them both giggle. You joined in from your cot as they dangled the magic elf-made shoes above your head. Maybe that was your first laugh.

Rosie and Izzy did try to get them on your feet. You just kicked the air and chuckled at them. Even when they tried putting socks on you they had the same trouble. Good job you had a Mum and two helpful sisters or you’d never have worn socks or shoes for more than a few seconds. Or hats. What you liked best was being on the rug, in your birthday suit. I know, I know. Don’t look at me like that.

The shoes were put back in their box. We could get good money for those, your Dad said. We advertised them for sale. Your sisters made a poster to go up in the shop. I said put ‘Brand New’ but the girls thought ‘Never Worn’ sounded better.

We sold them to someone further up the hill, a Mrs. What-was-her-name? No, of course I don’t expect you to know. The girls would remember. We’ll ask them later.

I know you’ve heard all this before, love, but I think of those shoes every time I come round here and trip over your size fourteen boots in the hallway.

Where Writing took me in 2011

 The research for my novel, Queen of the World took me up onto Caton Moor getting close to wind turbines, to Blackpool Zoo to stare at the macaws and to the crazy golf and brass bands in my local park. It took me for long walks on Morecambe promenade while the characters had conversations in my head.

My short stories took me to Chorlton in Manchester and to Halifax where I was placed in competitions and did my first readings beyond university. Next year? Well, New York or Venice would be nice but I’d settle for anywhere new in this country. Never been to Swindon, Huddersfield, Kidderminster, Aberdeen …

In my flash fiction I wrote, amongst other things, about a dragon in a takeaway kitchen, a monkey who climbs out of a tumble dryer, a girl who tries to switch the wind off, a Hugh Grant fan who uses her bingo wings to fly and a dried wasp in a pot noodle.

Online Stories

Takeaway on Pygmy Giant

The Dryer Monkey in Flash Mob Writing Competition The Shortlist 

Wind on 330 Words

Kirsty and Shane on 330 Words

Running man, Hemmed-in-Horse on 330 Words

Reconstituted  - shortlisted in Chorley and District Writer’s Circle National Flash fiction Competition

Bingo, Dec 10th & To do list, Jan 5th on Paragraph Planet

Those Tigers

As there will only be extracts from the winning stories on the Calderdale website, here is the whole of 'Those Tigers'

 ***

  

It was on the Friday when Jean first saw the fishing net on the ceiling. She’d just woken from a nap: glasses sliding down her nose, book squashed on her lap, neck all stiff. Her eyes gradually focused and the net undulated, as if it was floating in water. She blinked several times, trying to concentrate on the wobbling squares of white artex. She couldn’t make any sense of what she was looking at. She closed her eyes and sank back into sleep with vague thoughts about dreams. She remembered the net later but flicked the memory from her mind, dismissing it as something she didn’t have time to dwell on.

On Saturday, coming back from the shops, she was shocked to see a man in her kitchen. He was little more than three feet tall, dressed in a dark frock coat, breeches and a waistcoat. He was leaning back, his head on the cutlery drawer. He was in the way of the kettle. Her heart thumped. She stood completely still, unsure of what to do or say or whether to do or say anything. She decided on her usual approach to new situations, that of doing nothing and seeing what happened.

The man watched her as she pottered around the kitchen. She put away the shopping and made a snack. Since she couldn’t get to the kettle, she poured herself a glass of water. She took her tray through into the living room and nearly tripped into a swimming pool. Steadying the tray, she looked down into the pool. Its ruffling wavelets were clear and aqua but with, she noticed, her paisley rug at the bottom instead of tiles.

She began to wonder what her niece would think if she knew what she was seeing in her bungalow. Over the past thirty years, Susie had become a mother, not only to her son and daughter but also, mysteriously, to Jean.  She had begun to tell her what to do as if Jean, now over eighty, was a child again, needing guidance and not understanding those simple things she had known for well over half a century.

Jean decided not to mention the net, the pool and especially the ghost man in the kitchen, if that’s what he was. She began to imagine what Susie would say. She feared what she would do when she found out. She felt she had to tell someone but what would they say?

By Monday the net was back again, this time above her bed.  Some creatures were trapped in it. Their squished, fishy faces stared out at her. They scared her. They made no noise but looked as if they wanted to. The net wobbled, as before, and the little faces swivelled and bobbed about. They were more populous around the lampshade, peeping out from between pink pleats. She couldn’t just lie there and stare at them. Whatever they were they were giving her the creeps.

She clicked the bedside lamp off and waited. She didn’t know what she was waiting for. Sleep was impossible. She found a toffee under her pillow, unwrapped it and put it in her mouth. She felt the creatures were still staring at her. She pulled the soft duvet over her head, breathing in Jasmine and Passionflower fabric conditioner. She began to feel a little safer. She reached out from under the bedclothes and switched the CD player on. With her eyes closed, she sucked the toffee and, with Frank Sinatra crooning, everything felt normal again.

The next morning she woke to watch black spheres float around the room and bounce off the dressing table like slow motion snooker balls. She got up and went into the kitchen. The man was still in his place in front of the kettle. She sighed. A whisper of irritation crept into her fear and blossomed slightly.

‘Tea!’ she said, in what she hoped was a forceful way. She leaned round the man and put the kettle on. Why didn’t he move? This was her kitchen after all. Should she offer him a cup? Then she noticed he had brought some friends with him and she knew she didn’t have enough cups. Most of them were women who wore long dresses with just a trace of her kitchen cupboards in the skirts.

The hall had turned into a fast flowing stream that Jean waded through as she took her tea back to the bedroom. She crossed to the window. She had a strong urge to see other people. She just didn’t know what to do. She went to the window to look outside, hoping to see someone walking past or cars in the road. Just anything of the real and outside world. She pulled back the curtain and got a shock that knocked everything else she had seen over the past few days right out of her mind.

In her front garden, obliterating her fuchsias and the pots with herbs in was a pair of enormous tigers. The shock of seeing them was nearly as strong as the surprise at her doing what she did next. She saw her hand go up to the window, form itself into a fist and bang on the glass. There was no response from the tigers.

‘Shoo!’

Despite her fear, a part of her wanted to giggle, an old lady shouting ‘Shoo’ at these two beautiful and terrible tigers. Perfectly still and relaxed, their big soft paws flopped over the path and their rope tails disappeared into next-door’s hedge. The brilliant, orange, black and white stripes made the rest of the garden and the street look dull and sepia toned around them. Jean gasped as one of them yawned, displaying a set of frighteningly sharp, off-white teeth.

What Jean had always thought about tigers, when she’d seen them in pictures or on television, was that if she ever met one, which until a minute ago she had thought unlikely, she’d look into it’s wise, yellow eyes, and feel an urge to touch it. She would want to reach out and stroke the plush fur and soft muzzle, at the same time knowing that the tiger could tear her head off with one lazy, playful swipe.

It was too much. It was the last straw. She couldn’t live with tigers in her garden. She just couldn’t. She made a decision, grabbed her coat and handbag and left by the back door.

*

‘It’s your brain making up for gaps in your sight. As it tries to make sense of what your eyes can see it throws up all these images. I know it’s a bit disconcerting but I can assure you it’s nothing to worry about.’

Jean wondered, if the doctor had herself seen those tigers, she would have chosen the words ‘a bit disconcerting’ over ‘absolutely terrifying’, but she didn’t like to mention it.

‘It’s a normal reaction to deteriorating sight.’ the doctor continued. Jean bypassed ‘deteriorating sight’ for now and clasped at the word ‘normal’. Never before had she been so happy to hear the word, although she didn’t feel normal sitting in the doctor’s surgery with those black blobs bouncing round the room. There were some shadowy figures in one corner but she didn’t turn to look.

‘It’s called Charles Bonnett Syndrome.’

‘Syndrome?’ Jean echoed, trying to concentrate on the doctor’s words.

‘It’s just called that after the man who discovered it.’ The doctor smiled the same smile Jean often saw on Susie’s face. ‘If only you’d come earlier. We always try to warn people if we can. Had you noticed any change in your sight recently?’

‘Well, yes … but I kept putting it off.’ Jean felt foolish now. She didn’t like to mention her fear of the opticians, of getting those bewildering tests wrong; seeing the wrong light or overreacting to that cold blast of air they forced into your eyes for an unexplained reason.

There was a pause, which Jean felt she should fill but she didn’t know what with. She looked up and noticed the fishing net had followed her on the bus and was hanging from the surgery ceiling.  She checked that thought.  It was her eyes. Then she remembered the worst fear of all.

‘Those tigers?’

‘There are no tigers. They’re not real. People see patterns, figures dressed in different costumes, animals, buildings, landscapes, often bigger or smaller than in reality.‘

This all sounded familiar to Jean. The doctor was still talking, saying something about an appointment with a specialist but Jean couldn’t take in anymore. Just knowing that this happened to other people gave her such a rush of relief.

*

Around a month later, Jean carefully folded clothes and layered them in her suitcase. The net above her swayed and the tiny faces nodded. They seemed friendlier these days but she usually managed to ignore them. She zipped up the case and dragged it off the bed. She left it in the hall and went to fetch her sandwiches from the fridge.

‘Morning, Charles.’

Jean had been surprised that Susie had listened to her without interruption while she’d explained what had been happening on the phone. She’d even laughed when Jean had told her about Charles. He never answered her when she spoke to him, of course, but someone at the hospital had suggested she talked to the images she saw. A way of dealing with it, they said.

She quite liked the way Charles appeared to be listening to everything she said. Sometimes he even looked as if he was interested but that was probably her imagination. If he ever did answer her, she supposed she would have to go back to the doctors and enquire about hearing tests. She did wonder why Charles couldn’t be taller and the tigers smaller. It would make more sense that way round but she only had her own brain to blame.

The shrill voice of the doorbell cut through her thoughts.

‘That’ll be my taxi. See you in a couple of weeks, Charles.’

She assumed he would be there when she returned from her holiday. Or perhaps he would be in Susie’s kitchen. As she walked to the front door she noticed the stream in the hall had run dry and there was just beige carpet instead. It made it much easier to walk to the front door but it was a bit boring.

She opened the door and said hello to the taxi driver. He took her case and she followed him down the path. She felt nervous as she walked past the tigers. She didn’t look to either side but saw their bright stripes and amazing bulk out of the corners of her eyes, the parts that worked best. She had not yet attempted to speak to them. She looked down at the path and concentrated on the crazy paving at her feet. Crazy paving! She chuckled. And that was real. That had been there forever.

She didn’t know if any of her images would show up while she was away or whether there would be new ones. Nothing really surprised her anymore.  It was amazing what you could get used to, she thought, as she got into the taxi. She would never get used to those tigers though.

***



Those Tigers, Halifax and Perseverance

I’m very pleased to say I’ve just removed the words ‘still hoping for a first one day’ from this blog’s intro. I got my first. I won the Calderdale Short Story Competition 2011 with my story ‘Those Tigers’. When I received the email telling me I had to read it five times before believing it. On Friday (14^th October) I went to the event at Halifax Central Library to read my story.

Having only read properly once before, and not that well either, I was very nervous but also determined to improve on my previous performance. Last time I read a 350 flash but ‘Those Tigers’ is over 1800 words. I would certainly have to remember to breath.

After a lovely journey across country from Morecambe to Halifax (a place I’d never been to before) I walked through the town centre, found my hotel and waited until it was time to head to the library, just round the corner from the hotel. I sat on the end of the bed, looked in the mirror and tried to make my hair as big as possible, feeling sure this would help.

I got there early and found myself talking to a pair of shortlistees who seemed delighted to be chatting with the winner. I suddenly felt rather important and heard myself talking like an expert and offering advice about writing and entering competitions.

The judges, writer Kate Pullinger and owner of Alma Books, Elisabetta Minervini began proceedings by talking about the winning stories and about what made a good story. There was some discussion and questions from the audience of, I guess about seventy. Then they handed out the prizes to myself and the one runner up who was there and not in Portugal like the other one.

Why would anyone want to be in Portugal when they could be in Halifax? No really! My previous experience of Halifax was my Nana’s saying ‘What the Halifax?’ so it definitely exceeded by expectations.

The Portugal man then read his story through the organiser of the competition and Sarah Dunnekey read ‘Katy Bush and the Chainmail Bikini’. She read well (I was starting to get worried) and it was a funny story with great characters and really Kate Bush and not a weird cousin of George Bush, thank goodness. Then it was my turn and I went to the front and started reading.

How strange that when I’m sitting at home reading I am able to perform the story quite happily, remembering to breath. It felt as if I was walking up a steep hill at the same time. I tried to slow myself down and concentrate on reading it how I’d rehearsed. A tiny part of my brain tortured the rest with the thought of having to stop and what people would say if I did. But I carried on and relaxed into it. I was determined to make the most of the description of the tigers (not real but they seem like it) and then I got a few laughs in the right places and managed to look up at paragraph ends. I didn’t even throw away the final couple of lines.

Afterwards I chatted some more to a new writer friend and to one of the writers who’s published by Alma Books and to the judges. Then my new writer friend and I went for a drink in the very quite Wallace Simpson Bar by the station. Halifax was very quiet that evening. A policeman told us that they were ‘all up the other end’ but perhaps it is true that ‘staying in is the new going out’. I’ve always been ahead of the trends.

 The prize was £300, which has bought me a new electric toothbrush (mine died around the time I heard I’d won), paid for the train fare to Halifax and the night in the hotel, a piece of silver jewellery and allowed me to make a donation to You Can't Stop The Beat fundraising for Birmingham Children’s Hospital Heart Appeal (where my niece, Jasmine had her heart transplant at the beginning of this year). I think it’s for them to buy what I, as a cook and writer, will have to just call a ‘bleep, bleep machine’ but it probably has a more technical name.

My main bit of advice about competitions is not to assume your story is no good if it doesn’t get anywhere. ‘Those Tigers’ had been in two other comps and ‘The Bread’, that came second in Greenacres, had been in three before it got placed. I suppose it depends on the competition, the judges and who else is entered. It’s all very subjective. So, perseverance is important, or as the published writer my new friend Denise and I spoke to on Friday put it ‘You have to be bloodyminded.’ I'll remember that ...

A Letter to Nana

This week I went to my Grandmother's funeral ...

Photo taken by Peter Page, 1966

A Letter to NANA

This is a picture of me sitting on your knee at three months old. It probably isn’t the first time we met but that’s how I think of it. Previously I was probably not so aware and wouldn’t have been grinning like this. We just look so pleased to see each other. As always.

When I went to senior school everyone started having their ears pierced and my friend told me that her ‘Gran’ said that if we were meant to have pierced ears we would have been born with them. This seemed such a contrast to you who would never say such a thing but you did buy me earrings. I remember that a lot of the other kids had their grandmothers living with them or at least round the corner. We went to visit for holidays and every second Christmas so it was more of a treat. We had chunks of time together.

For decades you kept asking me what I would want from your place and I always said ‘the little wooden chest of drawers’. I’ve filled it with ‘keepsakes’, the sort of things you keep for no reason other that the memories associated with them. In one of the drawers I have a thirty-something year old lavender bag in the shape of a mop-capped teashop lady from the gift shop at Tatton Park. It now smells of dust, rather than lavender. I wonder why? I also have a post card of a cartoon mermaid you and Bampa sent me in 1974 when I had got my swimming length as well as many other examples of your distinctive curly handwriting in various letters and cards.

When staying at your house as a child, you gave me little jobs to do in the kitchen. Unwrapping the butter was an important job. No good leaving it wrapped, is there? I have a vivid memory of feeling very important, having been promoted to washing the lettuce while my cousin unwrapped the butter.

Once, when two things were accidently broken in a day, you sent my brother and I outside to smash an old saucer. I remember thinking it was funny and also feeling slightly unsure about being asked to purposely break something. We went outside and smashed it on the flagstones.

I also remember going to see you and Bampa when you were staying in a hotel on holiday. The weather was cool, dull and breezy and seemed to fit in with a feeling of dislocation in not being at home or at your house. We went up onto a cliff top that over looked the Wash and you taught us how to sit back-to-back and lean on each other. 

You were always very interested in everything I was doing, however dull. You would want to know what I had seen at the theatre, had I bought any new clothes, what I was reading at the moment and all the details about my work, friends and holidays.

I really believe that this is one of the best things you can ever do for someone you care about; take an interest. I often have to remind myself to do this, preferring to glean information rather than question people but I think it came naturally to you.

It was a standing joke in our house that we always wanted to send you the skin off the custard through the post because we knew you liked it and none of us did. We never actually did post it though. Or even attempt to cram it into an envelope.

During my visits, we talked and talked about everything, sometimes lingering over the breakfast things, in our dressing gowns, for far too long. You taught me to play scrabble and then I started winning every time. I’ll never have that cross-word-finishing-perseverance of yours though. We often talked about food and I heard tales of how you coped with rationing in the war. We share some favourites: beetroot, marmite and bread sauce. Not together obviously. When you moved into the care home I dared not ask whether you ever got any of these things. But some of the food was all right you said. And at least you got tea. I would love to know how many cups of tea you drank in your 97 years.

I always enjoyed a few days rest from work, just chatting and eating and going on ‘The Great Carlisle Shopping Challenge’ when I was sent into town with a list of things I had to find. Before you lived in Carlisle you were in Wilmslow so we did a lot of shopping there too. Back then you were driving. I know you never passed your test because there was no such thing when you learned to drive. I remember you stopping at the butchers and getting back in the car with a chicken in a plastic bag and just throwing it over your shoulder onto the back seat of the car. Only very recently I reminded you of the day I was going to go to Southport and you went out before me and locked me in your flat. You remembered this and we laughed at the fact that I never did get to Southport.

There is one event that particularly sticks in my mind. I think it was on the day of Great Nana’s funeral. I went upstairs to look for you and found you in your mother’s bedroom, sitting at the dressing table. You were brushing your hair and looking in the mirror. For a fraction of a split second I thought it was Great Nana. A ghost perhaps or a just figment of my imagination.

My Mum says there’s a saying that you don’t become a woman until your mother has gone. You looked like your mother, as though now you had subtly changed, the colour of your hair, perhaps the way you were sitting, as though you’d stepped across an invisible line.

Maybe you saw my face and my reaction, in the mirror, because you turned round and smiled at me. Your smile was reassuring but also as though I had broken you from a reverie. Was I intruding on something? I felt instinctively aware that you had been thinking about your mother. I felt I was reading your thoughts like you would a character in a film or on television. 

Whenever I went home after staying at yours, you would stand at a window to wave me off. I would turn and wave as many times as I could as I left and you’d always still be there.

You said you just wanted to fly away and you told me that every night you prayed the fairies would take you.  Then you said you just wanted to die.

I’m so pleased you got what you wanted.

You will live on in my memory.  You were one of my best friends.