A Lipogram – have you ever written one?

If you’re not familiar with the term (and I wasn’t) a lipogram from the Greek ‘to leave out a letter’ is to write with the constraint of not using a certain letter or letters. I belong to a local Writing Group and we recently set ourselves this challenge to write a story on a theme of ‘A walk at midnight’ without using the letter ‘E’. It’s harder than you might think and definitely makes you focus! Here is the story I wrote.

 

A Final Kiss Goodnight

 

It’s past midnight and balmy warm with my thoughts so far away. So still and calm a night for our night patrol. A distant hill on a horizon lit by stars and a fading moon sits in shadow. It’s our mission, just to look, to find out, to spot and spy. You’ll do it within an hour, informs our Captain. No harm will fall your way and no hazards to mar your path if you follow instructions, but avoid no man’s land and a fatal smooch with its mud. Our chaps laugh. Faith and trust in my words and follow your map and compass. That distant hill, always to your right. Now go, act swiftly, don’t catch sight of dawn’s rays or a cock’s first crow. Chat softly with your cohorts and bring back your account. Just watch for dawn, our big push, whizzbangs and that mud.

But a waning moon and dark clouds scudding brought driving, soaking rain and hid our hilltop to our right. Shrub and scrub and rock and sapling now mar our trail and our clock is slowly ticking. Our band of six is now down to four as night plays its tricks in our midst. Soon four is two with no cry or sound of warning, just chaps vanishing softly in this swirling mist. Still it rains and now a light wind moans laughing at our plight. It blows away our shawl of night baring all to us, only all is nothing. Totally lost, and now with no map or compass, no waypoints, no hill on our right to act as our pilot. And dawn is now but an hour away.

Mud, it’s found us again. Thick, cloying stinking mud. It sucks at your boots, drags you downwards, grabs at your limbs, saps your soul. No slipping its hold or flying its grasp. I’m caught in no man’s land with dawn approaching. How inauspicious, what can I do.

How I wish I could fly, not back to my position, my chums, my captain, or to our front. No, fly far away and back to my old roost, to hold again in my arms my loving folk, my kith and kin. Alas a vision too far this night, this yawning day.

Dawn is born and proclaims its birth bringing forth purgatory with its warriors raising Cain on wings of war. This malignant doom, it’s all too much, I can’t abscond, I can’t call out. Just shrink into a muddy morass. And so I bow down to this brown liquid clay, its touch warm and soft upon my lips in a fatal drink soothing my throat, a toast to my tomorrow, my final kiss goodnight.

Deja vu

It was one of those moments when your hearts misses a beat and a shiver runs down your spine. A moment when you come face to face with your past.

We had come to the coast for a few hours, for no other good reason than it was Good Friday and we didn’t want to stay in, even though it was bitterly cold and trying to snow. I had seen a news item saying Redcar’s new ‘Beacon’ was open, (I shall post another article with pictures on the ‘Helter Skelter’, sorry ‘Beacon’ shortly), so off we went for a bracing walk along the beach and a trip up the ‘Beacon’.

After scaling the ‘Beacon’ and suitably refreshed with a coffee and a scone we walked (briskly) back along the prom passing the museum housing the world’s oldest surviving lifeboat (I should also write an article on this too). Anyway, with snowflakes starting to blow horizontally, we went inside. And that’s when it happened, the déjà vu moment. I was looking at a display of the town through the years when a black and white picture from the 50s of a miniature beach train with open carriages caught my attention. And there in the second carriage sat a little boy snuggling up to his mother. It was me. Plain as plain could be.

It’s made my day, made my Easter.

Happy Easter everyone.

Inspiration, a wizard, battenberg and a camel

Many writers bemoan inspiration, or a lack of inspiration for writing the next piece, short story or novel. For me, inspiration comes the minute I sit down and start to write. It simply feeds off the words that went before. However, sometimes my problem is actually sitting down to write in the first place!

Followers of my blog will know I attend a local Writing Group and we task ourselves to write a short piece for our next meeting. This time we each wrote a random word down and then said, ‘Ok-write a story using the following:- lampshade, wizard, panda, coal bunker, twelve, armchair, camel, jellyfish, battenberg, bettingslip and wellington boot’. This is what I sat down and wrote……(you can have a go too if you like)

“Doreen, don’t answer that, it’s someone going door to door!”

The shouted warning from upstairs came too late. Doreen had already unlocked and opened the front door.

“Good evening madame. Are you the proprietor? I should point out straight away I’m not here to sell you anything, merely to annoy you and take up a lot of your time.”

She found herself staring at a man of average height dressed in baggy trousers tucked into wellington boots and wearing a high viz sleeveless vest. He sported a goatee beard and a felt conical shaped hat which flopped over at the top. A laminated card dangling on a piece of red twine around his neck proclaimed ‘Wearer’s official status guaranteed’. Doreen thought his appearance rather mystical but she said nothing.

“My name is Wizard Prang and I’m here tonight to ask for a sizeable donation in exchange for a twelve per cent stake in my company, ‘ThirskWriteNow’. Thank you for your forbearance and for inviting me into your home tonight.”

And before Doreen could protest he had pushed his way past and into the living room plonking himself down into an armchair by the fireplace. Rubbing his hands in the warm glow of the fire he muttered to no one in particular, “A fresh bucket of coal and a mug of hot chocolate wouldn’t go amiss.”

“What did they want this time?”shouted her husband Roger from upstairs. “Hope you gave them short shrift. I hope it wasn’t that animal rights group with their sponsor a camel for the Tuaregs again?”

“Roger! I think you had better come down. We have a Wizard in the front room.”

“Bloody hell, Doreen. What did you invite him in for? You know its Tuesday and I’m supposed to be going out.”

“He just came in. Says he wants to offer us a share in ThirskWriteNow. “

“I’m putting my trousers on. Doreen you’d better put the kettle on and pander him with some of your homemade cake. It’s not every day you get a Wizard popping in and we don’t want him waving his wand around.”

“So Mr Prang, how long have you been a wizard and what is it you wizard exactly?”

“Oh please Roger, call me Denton. By the way that’s an awfully nice looking brocade lampshade in the corner. Exquisite macramé work and fringed with drop down tassels too. Do you mind if I try it on?”

“Tea, Denton, and would you care for a square of battenberg.”

The wizard did and much to Roger’s consternation chose pink, eating both squares and removing the marzipan from the remaining yellow ones.

“Simply delicious, thank you. Now without further ado I suppose I had better persuade you to invest in my company and relieve you of your money. You won’t be disappointed. Roger and Doreen listened intently as Wizard Prang embarked on his spiel setting out his aspirations for ThirskWriteNow. He concluded with a little demonstration, and with a flourish produced several betting slips from an inside pocket which he promptly turned into a chapter of Thrills International and a dastardly fiendish murder plot.

“Hey presto, our unique selling point and the end of my presentation. Are there any questions?”

There certainly were. Roger wanted to know how he’d arrived at such a ridiculous valuation for a writing company and was eager to drill down to the underlying hardcore financials. Doreen on the other hand was sceptical and rather bemused to hear a group of writers variously described in such terms as ‘free swimming’, ‘gelatinous’, ‘umbrella shaped’ and having lots of ‘trailing tentacles’. It sounded more like a jellyfish to her, but there again she wasn’t a writer.

She coughed politely. “Wizard Prang, I’m going to say I’m out. Now unless you have anything else in your pockets that might burn this wicked witch of the west is going to trip the light fantastic down the yellow brick road to the coal bunker. Goodnight!”

And with that Doreen promptly disappeared.

Words don’t always come easy!

He stared at me, pupils dilated to the size of ink spots either side of a hideous, bloated bulbous nose. Daring me to hold his gaze. His lips parted in a wide grin revealed a mouth of undulating broken teeth. Wild, unruly and unkempt long hair flared out behind him. He was a throwback to the Neanderthals, right down to the rock clenched in one hand, the stick held menacingly high in the other.

It wasn’t the first time we had met and he had barred my path. But today was different. Before I had ignored him. Now I couldn’t. He just kept staring, and I just kept staring right back. No words passed between us, nothing was said. That was the problem, the cause of the trouble. No words.

He wasn’t going to speak. It was not his way. He just stared, standing there barefoot, eyes unblinking.

Usually we looked at each other for a while, then I would smile and move on. Not today. Today I wasn’t smiling, and he never did. Deadlock. I tried a few words. Nothing. I glanced away trying to think, a way of phrasing what I had in mind to say, but the right words wouldn’t come. That was the problem, my mind was empty. I looked up again and of course he was still there, the rock held firm, the stick pointing in my direction.

I bunched my hands into fists, nails digging into the palms and tried again. A few words sprung to the fore, no gushing torrent as there should have been. A slow sentence dribbled out. Not that it made any difference. I knew it wouldn’t. He was still staring. He knew I was drawn to his ugly physog. He was right. I was staring. This time I knew he was winning.

I knew it couldn’t continue. It made no difference to him, he had all the time in the world and would still be there tomorrow. But I needed to be somewhere else. There were plenty of places I should be in, I wanted to be in, not here staring at him. Relax, I tried to tell myself, just ignore him and look away, take a step back. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, rubbed the tension out of fingers and hands and slowly exhaled. I opened my eyes and instinctively knew the spell had been broken, that for now he was gone, out of sight and out of my way. And of course that’s when the right words sprung to mind.

Fuck it, don’t you just hate it when you can’t think what to write!

How to frustrate a witch

Yorkshire folklore includes many references to witchcraft and the measures taken to frustrate their plotting and find protection from their spells. The collection of ‘witch wood’, more commonly known as rowan or mountain ash, was one such way to prevent untoward happenings. However, it was not an undertaking to be entered into lightly and t was necessary to observe the following:

The branches of the tree could only be cut using a household knife.

The tree had to be ‘unknown’. This meant the tree could not be a local one, ie on your own farm or land and thereby known to the witch.

If finding the tree meant travelling some distance you had to ensure you came home along a different route to the one you set out upon.

And finally the wood could only be cut and gathered on St Helen’s Day, 2^nd May.

Once gathered a piece of wood was often placed at the bed-head, carried in the trouser or apron pocket, placed in the dairy or about the farm. No right minded person would consider driving horses and wagons along the road without using a rowan tree gad, a long straight sapling used in place of a whip.

Still the witches worked their spells and sometimes did their worst. And  then there were the bogles…but that’s another story altogether!

‘Where yers been, Pet?’ Bumping into Shazza.

In many respects the London Underground and the Tyneside Metro are very similar, but apart from their obvious disparity of scale and size there is one major difference which sets them apart. Ride the Metro and you will notice it immediately. It’s the passengers. They don’t all sit glumly in their seats staring into the void, reading a book, fiddling with an ipod or clutching at a strap their nose inches away from their next traveller’s armpit. And the journey is not made in complete silence. Complete strangers will smile in your direction or engage you in conversation. There’s a hum of gentle chatter, a burble of voices in the air from young and old alike.

“Cold day, are yers gannin’ shoppin’? I’m meetin’ ma friend Elsie doon the toon for lunch. She catches the bus from Heaton every Thursday. Been doing it a canny while now mind.”

I was about to reply when a louder, more strident voice, cut through the air.

“I don’t believe it. Would yers look who it is.”

A few folk checked their chatter and looked up.

“The guy I had breakfast with in Paris. Ee, man, what a night that was. I was knackered for days!”

The journey had become interesting and everyone now fell silent, heads turned, wondering who was speaking and to whom, waiting whilst the train rattled on. Everyone that is, except me.

Silently they watched as a tall, long haired lady wearing a short tweed jacket over a low cut black top threaded her way along the carriage,  stopped in front of Elsie’s good friend and plopped herself into my lap flinging her arms round my neck.

“It’s been a while, Pet. Howay, don’t look so shocked that I’ve found yers. Gie us a kiss, man.”

“Shazza,” I started to say.

“Least you’ve remembered my name.”

She then landed a smacker of a kiss, winked and whispered long and softly in my ear.

“Sorry, if I’m embarrassing you. But you’ve got to admit I’ve just given you something to write about. I’m dying to tell you what I’ve been up to and catch up with you too. It’s been too long. And I’ve got a writing project you might be interested in. Over lunch, it’s on me. Least I can do.”

“Shazz,” I started to say again.

“I know yers shocked, but yers repeatin’ yerself.”

“Shazz, I’m meeting someone on the quayside.”

“Bugga them, Pet. Yers coming with me, and this is our stop. Howay, shift yersen.”

Seconds later I was on the platform at Gateshead, arm in arm with Shazza watching the train slide past and aware of all the faces at the windows looking at us.

“That’ll give them something to talk about all the way to Monument. Shazz, you are naughty.”

She laughed. “Moi? Seriously, do you have time for lunch at the Baltic. Leastways you should be able to see your friend on the quayside from there!”

So if you’re reading this, Ged. That’s why I was late, mate!

Now where did I put them?

Their real names have been altered to save embarrassment, but you’ve got to admit it’s funny! And everyone knows an Alice, and probably a Joe too. You may even be one yourself!

It all began with a quite innocent ‘Come on; let’s go to the cinema this afternoon. James Bond, ‘Skyfall’ is on. We can be there in half an hour and if we hurry we’ll make the start.’

‘Great,’ said Joe. ‘Ready when you are, got your specs, Alice?’

Joe was on medication and the doctor had told him he couldn’t drive for a couple of weeks. Not that he was complaining. It made a pleasant change being in the passenger seat.

‘Joe, I can’t find my glasses.’

‘Well when did you last have them?’

Alice didn’t need her glasses for everyday, just for driving.

‘Err, just the other day when I drove onto town to go to the opticians. If you remember I had lost them, then I found them and put them down near the sink. Only when you came in with the shopping….’

Joe remembered. The shopping bag had been particularly heavy that day and anyway it was a stupid place to leave a pair of glasses.

‘I know they’re here somewhere, Joe. I just can’t put my hands on them. Never mind I’ll just borrow Lucy’s. She won’t mind.’

Joe sighed and didn’t reply. He’d heard it all before.

The cinema was one of those multi-screen complexes half an hour away so parking was never a problem and as it turned out the roads were quiet so they made it with time to spare. They had just taken their seats when Alice said, ‘Joe, I can’t find Lucy’s specs in my bag.’

‘Well you probably left them in the car. You don’t need them to see the film.’

‘No, I’m sure I was holding them in the same hand as the car keys.’

‘You haven’t lost the car keys have you?’

‘No, Joe, I haven’t!’

It was dark when Joe and Alice came out of the cinema and climbed into the car. Alice’s glasses, or rather Lucy’s, were nowhere to be found; certainly not in the car, the cinema, the handbag or a coat pocket.

‘Just drive slowly,’ said Joe, ‘and you’ll be ok. The road’s a familiar one and it should still be quiet.’

They had almost reached the exit when Alice slammed on the brakes. ‘I wonder if I dropped them when I was getting out of the car. I told you I was sure I had them in my hand along with the keys.’

She did a U turn and found the parking space again. Sure enough there on the tarmac in the headlights was a spectacle case.

‘Ooo, what a relief. I don’t know what I would have said to Lucy. You know she’s only got the one pair at the moment.’

But Alice’s joy was short lived as Joe retrieved the errant spectacles and opened the case.

‘Bloody hell, Alice. You must have driven over them!’

The rest of the journey was uneventful and passed in silence.  No sooner had they arrived home and walked in through the front door when Lucy came down the stairs to greet them.

‘Mum, you haven’t you seen my glasses have you? I’m sure I left them on the sideboard this morning……’