Short ... and I mean short... stories

Having worked in newspapers, and being a poet, 'editing' is my middle name. (Actually that's not true - it's Marion... although I still regret not changing it to 'Trouble' when I did a Deed Poll last year.)

Short stories - flash, micro, txt - are all the rage at the moment - perhaps because we all have the attention span of a goldfish. The best ones are tiny but perfectly formed and definitely not as easy as they look. 

Ernest Hemingway said that his best piece of writing was a six word story - 'For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.'

Ellie recently blogged some excellent links to Teeny Weeny Writing Competitions but as usual I struggle to juggle the right words in the right order. I've come up with a couple of six word stories, but am more comfortable with 150 characters (SMS-length) or a luxurious 50 words (micro length). But 500 words+ is much, much easier.

So here are a few of my attempts. But before you judge, (a) have a go at your own and (b) have a look at the ones the Arvon Foundation is showcasing or check out sixwordstories.net.

1. Bones beneath the ocean. Tyrannosaurus wrecks?

2. Been there. Done that. Investigation continues. 

3. Opening the bandages – it’s like Christmas 

4. Noah at Tesco’s: Two-for-one.

5. Human skins – prized for their tattoos

6. Postman’s wardrobe. Strangers’ valentines. Unopened.

7. One heart. Slightly used. Unwanted gift

8. Singing nanny. Free to good home.

9. Buttons undone. Another Cinderella / pumpkin scenario?

10. Mirror signal manoeuvre. One more test…

 

Alright, all you clever bunnies. It's over to you now...

Tomorrow - the shortest poems in the world... and I don't mean Haiku

That certainly taught me a lesson!

I read on the Keeping You Awake blog several months ago what the author had learned from different jobs over the years.

It got me thinking - every role we take on teaches us something about the world, ourselves - well, mine have certainly taught me a lesson or two! Then I forgot about it for a while. But when I wrote my recent post on what I learned from being a special constable, I returned to the question.

So I thought I'd share a list of what I've learned from where I've worked. 

• From the bank I learned my alphabet. I knew it already, of course, but years of filing cheques and statements into name order made it more instinctive, innate. 
• From my secondment to a help desk in another area, I learned never to assume anything – especially the level of intelligence of the average person. I also learned that a lone young woman living in a hotel is rarely in want of company.  
• From the kibbutz I learnt many things: In the baby house there I learned just how fierce and protective a mother's instinct is... I mean, I drop one baby* and they go crazy!  In the kitchen,  the art of cutting. In the communal dining room, that nothing ever stays clean. 
• From working on a local newspaper I learned that not everything is gospel, that being in print makes mad people's words assume a gravitas they don't deserve. 
• From self-employment?  That my mum was right about that ‘you are a hat in a shop window’ thing and that I am inclined to put too low a price on myself.  Also, that people take advantage of that – even nice people.  Maybe they don't even know they're doing it. 
• From the voluntary sector?  That one person can move mountains, but it's bloody hard work and there'll be lots of people standing around saying ‘Great idea to move mountains! They should be moved!’ but then don't help and are merely critical of how you're moving them and where to. Also, that some mountains just might as well stay where they are. 
• From running training courses for tenants groups, that people, even quite unpromising ones, sometimes have the capacity to go and move their own mountains when someone finally gives them a bit of encouragement and a few tools.
• From giving grants?  That, depending on who you're giving it to – the same sum of money is one person's peanuts and another's pool winnings. 
• From public sector?  That everyone's too busy covering their backs and following (or writing) the rules to ever, ever do something merely because it would make the world a better place.
• And from the library? Erm, that'd be the alphabet... again.
• What have I learned from writing?  That you don't always measure or understand what you've learned, what you know and how you feel about it all until you put it into words.

So what have YOU learned from what you have done?

* No babies were permanently hurt and there were mitigating circumstances.

 

Holy Wind, Batman!

I've been wanting to talk about wind for some time but I've been waiting for a really windy day.

You know how it is with winds - you're ages waiting for one than a bunch of them come all at once.

Dogberry of Inkyfool started me thinking, way back at the beginning of July with Some Winds where the windy origins of the words kamikaze and Chinook were discussed in his characteristically erudite manner.

But for me the most interesting thing about wind is this: Hebrew has far fewer words than English, and many words have to do the job of two or three English ones.

The word 'ruah' (the 'h' pronounced as in Scottish loch) is the word for wind, but also for breath, spirit and ghost. 

This explains why the 'Father, Son and Holy Ghost' of my youth became 'Father, Son and Holy Spirit'. I'm only disappointed they didn't settle for 'Holy Wind' or 'Holy Breath', but I get that what they're talking about is Holy 'Unseen Force' (and I hope you're impressed that I'm not adding 'Batman!' to the end of any of these - showing tremendous restraint, don't you think?)

There's more about 'ruah' in the Old Testament at the Franciscan Cyberspot - no, I'm not making that up - and the Vatican's website.  I particularly like the fact that the Vatican, when thus perplexed, has this to say: "In this regard it is better to give up in part the pretenses of neat reasoning in order to embrace broader perspectives." i.e. Translate it as fits best to your nefarious practices.

All of this only confirms one of my favourite quotes:

'Religion is man's attempt to communicate with the weather.' (origin unknown). 

Here's that part in The English Patient, where Count Almasy speaks of winds described by Herodotus (there's a transcript here about two thirds of the way down the page):

Blows me away, this!

I'm no Sherlock!

I've just been watching the new BBC series of Sherlock Holmes, set in modern times. I do like the texting and the way he has a GPS in his head, although I deduced it was the cabbie in the first one ages before he did.

Crime's a massive genre for the fiction writer. They always tell you to 'write what you know' but unless you're planning on turning into a cat burglar or serial killer (you know who you are) the only way to experience a life of crime is on the right side of the law.

This was half of my thinking when I became a Special Constable (the other half being quite genuine altruism). It was the early eighties, Dixon of Dock Green hadn't long been off the air, and I'd try anything once.

Here's me in my uniform. I was, as you see, a mere child who knew no better.

Special Constables* are unpaid volunteers who have identical powers as regular police officers, despite minimal training. You're supposed to accompany a 'real' officer but all the local regulars hated the Specials (and they were a dodgy bunch - this is, after all, where I met my ex-husband) so we went out in pairs.

I did it for less than 3 years, but that time did include the Toxteth Riots - which I wasn't at but we had to provide cover for. (Some honeymoon that turned out to be!)

It was an insight into police work at its most basic level. I learned the following:

• people do actually hurl abuse at you just because of the uniform
• sometimes the emergency services put their sirens so the chips don't get cold on the way back to the station
• it isn't like on Dixon of Dock Green
• ladies have smaller truncheons than men
• I really wouldn't like to be a police officer (and not just because of the truncheons)
• I'm never really surprised any more by incidents like the Ian Tomlinson one.

I wasn't very successful in my role. The others were gagging for something to kick off but I was scared every time I went out. Some of my colleagues just wanted to arrest as many people as they could, but I always tried to defuse situations. I only ever arrested one person and they were unconscious. I stopped various youths causing annoyance, assisted with the flow of traffic and I may have prevented thousands of burglaries by my mere presence. But if all this makes me sound like I did ok, I probably ought to mention that I was also inadvertently responsible for a small fire in the bridewell. Which is frowned upon.

Deduction, I can do. But what I'm particularly bad at, and one of the many, many reasons I could never be Sherlock Holmes, is observation. Even if I was knocked down by a car I wouldn't notice the make. I could talk to you for hours and have no idea later what you had worn. Also - I'm appalling at giving directions. There is no GPS in my head. Not even an A-Z. All I have is a vague picture of the street I'm in and the next one, then it gets all fuzzy. It's all I need - I just about keep one step ahead of myself. But ask me to tell you the way to somewhere beyond this mini-radius and you're doomed!

So if I were to write a crime novel, and if it included a heroic police officer, fearless, eagle-eyed, not lost at all and with a very large truncheon, you'd have to deduce that I was making it all up - a work of fiction.

Melon Entree, my dear Watson.

* p.s. Charles Dickens was a special constable in Liverpool

A Ladybird Book Changed My Life

"Books can be dangerous.  The best ones should be labeled: 'This could change your life.'"  - Helen Exley

Did a book you read when you were young ever send you in an unlikely direction?

When I was about seven or eight I had amongst my Ladybird books a couple of slim volumes from their 'Travel Adventure' series. I think the central premise was a businessman father who took his children on some of his business trips. 

I don't know why it attracted me so much, but there was one picture in 'Flight Six - The Holy Land' that stuck in mind so strongly I can still see it. The travellers visited a kibbutz and the picture was of pretty young women wearing dirndl skirts and picking oranges. The sun shone and everybody was smiling. My imagination was seized.

So when, years later, I finally escaped from A High Street Bank, where else was I going to head? It probably would never have happened if I hadn't read the book. I wouldn't have known what a kibbutz was and it would have sounded much dodgier (this was 1990 - just before Saddam Hussein started lobbing missiles at Israel to retaliate for the first Desert Storm) if I hadn't had this mental image of sun, oranges and, yes, dirndl skirts.

I think this photo of me must have been taken at more or less the same spot as the illustration on the cover. It's the southern end of the Sea of Galilee with Jordan in the distance. No dirndl skirt or sheep, but you have to admit they're pretty whacky shorts. 

It certainly was an adventure - the rest of my which, I'll save for another time.

What books have changed your life?

"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book." - Harold Bloom

Pools, fools and broken rules

It's been a funny old day with one thing and another. 

I got a bit wet with all that rain - which was odd because I was inside the library. I'm reliably informed this happens all the time (although presumably only when it's raining) and we're waiting to see if we can have a new roof.

Then someone was passing round a list of real questions people have asked librarians:

'Do you have books here?'

'Do you have a list of all the books I've read'?

'Do you have any books with photographs of dinosaurs?'

'Can you tell me why so many famous battles were fought on National Park sites?'

'Where in the library can I find a power socket for my hair dryer?'

'Do you have that book... it's by a local author, I don't remember the name of the author or the title of the book, but it's a big one.'

There are more of them here.

Meanwhile, there have been missives from The Powers That Be regarding money-savings, which include a biscuit embargo and severe cutbacks on 'casual photocopying'. I'm not entirely sure what 'casual photocopying' is - maybe it's when you do it in your PJs. Someone suggested they mean 'frivolous or unnecessary copying' and in an attempt to clarify this I asked whether it was when you are photocopying your own arse?

Then I remembered - I had promised myself I wouldn't say 'arse' in the library again.

Then My Favourite Artist visited and made me say 'penis' again so my copybook is well and truly blotted now. Just a fortnight away from finishing my probationary period too.

But by far my favourite line of the day was from a little old lady this afternoon. I was having trouble making out what she was saying when she announced: 'Oh, I've just realised - I've come out without me teeth!"

My Lake District Hell

I'm off to the Lake District for a few days tomorrow - that'll make it rain. (Have you SEEN the weather forecast?)

Having never really been there before (just a couple of days a few years ago, or driving through en route to Scotland) - which is crazy considering some of the places I have been - my impression has always been of somewhere bleak and damp, looming hills, without the easy charm and ice-cream-scoffing nuns of say, the Italian Lakes.

It will be heaving with holiday-makers, awash with torrential floods and snooing with* murderous taxi drivers.

So I was delighted to find in a guide book in the library a couple of quotes that matched my own (probably errant) expectations:

William Gilpin, on Grasmere: "The whole view is entirely of the horrid kind. Not a tree appeared to add the least chearfulness [sic] to it. With regard to the adorning of such a scene with figures, nothing could suit it better than a group of banditti. of all the scenes I ever saw this was the most adapted to the perpetration of some dreadful deed."

Daniel Defoe, from A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (English Library) on Westmorland in the 1720s: “a country eminent for being the wildest, most barren and frightful of any that I have passed over in England, or even Wales itself.”

This quote is especially enjoyable as it manages to put the boot in about Wales in the same breath.

And was it not Wordsworth himself who wrote (in an early draft):

I wandered moaning with the crowds
That blot the highways, hills and vales
When all at once I saw some clouds
Oh bloody hell, it's grim as Wales.

Let's hope I'm wrong. It happens. After all the Lake District was voted Britain's greatest natural wonder ahead of Scottish Highlands. Of course I daren't say anything against the Highlands or The Good Doctor will bite my knees.

So I may or may not be online before Sunday depending on wifi - but feel free to agree or disagree wildly in the comments if you feel inclined.

* This is an expression my mum uses but most people claim never to have heard of such a thing - this might be one for the Inkyfool