Storming the Lines

I've been asked to contribute a regular column to the campus student newsletter which is published monthly. The remit was four to six hundred words on anything I like. As any poet knows, too much freedom is strangulating. So I was rather tentative as I submitted my first copy. Here it is:

It’s that time of year again, summer is becoming tangible, sometimes you can catch a whiff of it, and the academic year will soon be over. But for now, in spite of longer evenings, the grip of work is tightening. The time-table has been posted. And so exams, once a vague abstract notion, have again become a concrete reality. Essay deadlines, too, are beginning to bite. I have noticed that even the most nonchalant of students, you know the ones: the sort who can actually make a ketchup stain look desirable, even they have taken on that look. Skin slightly paler than usual, eyes just a little crazed, from nights spent trying to identify the caesuras in an apparently simple poem about woodland.

Having done my undergraduate time I no longer have to worry about the evil exam, but I still have a body of work to deliver: three poems and five thousand words of prose. Soon. So my room is shrouded in a storm of paper. Books lie, spread-eagle and abandoned in random piles as I frantically scan my shelves for the one. The book I know is there, that will bring coherence to my ideas, validate my choices. Most days I act like a caffeine fuelled wasp, skitting from desk to bookcase to kitchen to couch. Wondering if it’s too early for a glass of wine. And, ye gads, when did I stop washing?

Being a student artist, artiste, is a peculiar life: having to create to such short, tight, deadlines. The very word ‘deadline is beginning to sound menacing, I say it so often. Deadline, ‘dead’ ‘line’. Why dead? What will happen if I cross one of these lines unprepared? The deadlines are coming and there is no escape. Someone is throwing them my way. And yours, we all have them, they seem to be a feature of modern life, and not only for students. Will I have to negotiate them for the rest of my life? It seems so, but I have survived them before, surely I can do it again. Three poems and five thousand words of prose. About what? About whatever I like. Is it too early for a glass of wine? This newly won freedom is agony.

As an undergraduate I resented being told what to write and how to write it. I seemed always to be chastised for odd things like using too many commas, lack of formality, I was once even accused of flippancy. Now I find the freedom I once craved daunting. I must develop my own style, choose my own topics, decide for myself which genre(s) best suit. It’s what I always wanted, yet, I feel like I’ve woken up in a pantry full of chocolate with instructions to eat everything, whilst ensuring I can still fit into my jeans. If I manage this all my dreams will come true. If I don’t, I’ll be fat and sick.

Still, summer is nearly here, some days it actually feels quite warm in the sun. Soon I will be lying in my hammock with nothing to do except, perhaps, read all the books I don’t have time for at the moment. All those desperate Amazon purchases. And when the next academic year begins I will be, not only super relaxed, but unfathomably well read too. OK, so right now, it probably is too early for a glass of wine.

The Sound of My Voice

Having been made to realise that my own voice gets in everywhere I have been trying to subdue it by exploring other voices. What makes a voice a voice? What gives it its individuality? I wrote this story as such an exercise. I had been staying with my sister and had spent the weekend listening to my fourteen year old niece. Then a little while later I went to a ninetieth birthday party. So I put the two together and tried to see the party as Lois would and then describe it as she would.

Aunt Magg's Ninetieth Birthday Party

I had to go to my aunt Maggs' birthday party because she was ninety. Well, I didn't have to go but mum asked if I would and I didn't really mind cos I quite like aunt Maggs. She's my granny's aunty really and she's just had her cataracts done so she can see colours again. She didn't know that newspapers were in colour these days, I've never seen them any other way! Anyway, because I hadn't seen her since she'd had them done I thought I'd wear something really bright, but mum made me change three times: my red halter-neck dress wasn't suitable and nor was my yellow crop top. And I wasn't allowed to wear my green patent court shoes. Apparently old ladies don't approve of someone my age in high heels. So I just wore my orange jumper with my pink jeans and trainers: Boring...

The party was a surprise cos aunt Maggs doesn't socialise much any more and she never goes out, even though she can see again now. Mum says she's got out of the habit. Granny thought she might say no to a party if it was mentioned so we organised it in secret. We got the food from Marks and Spencer even though I tried to tell them Waitrose was better. All the stars get their food from Waitrose and they do the best cheesecake ever. It's called New York Cheesecake and it's like solid custard, really creamy and vanillarie. Sometimes mum gets one if she's having a dinner party: she doesn't like making puddings. When I grow up I'll always make pudding like my aunty Carolyn, she likes pudding better than the main course she says, and we think someone should open a pudding restaurant. I might do that...

Anyway, we ordered the cake from this woman Mum knows. And when we went round her house she showed us loads of photos of cakes she's made for other people. They were really good, some of them. We just got a plain white one with pink roses on it: boring! I think aunt Maggs would have liked the Can-Can dancer, it was well cool.

I hadn't been to aunt Maggs' flat for ages, she lives up in London and mum and granny usually go when I'm at school. I remembered it being dark and a bit scary but it wasn't. The walls were all creamy and there were loads of paintings on the walls. Really big, bright coloured ones, like church windows, that aunt Carolyn had painted. She's an artist. And now that aunt Maggs can see she's given her loads to cheer the place up. It worked! There were loads of photos too, mostly of aunt Maggs and uncle Ben when they were young. I don't really remember uncle Ben, he died when I was seven. He looks nice though, in the photos. They didn't have any children. I asked mum why and she said it just didn't happen. I suppose it was something to do with the war.

At the party there were about six old ladies, I mean really old, and only two men. Men always die first. And all old ladies have the same hairstyle, all sort of woolly. Only one of them had normal hair and she was a bit younger. Not young like but, you know, younger. Even granny's hair is going old now, not completely grey but woolly. I won't let my hair go like that, I'll go to the hairdresser every day if I have to and get it straightened, or I'll do it myself like I do now. I have to cos it's quite curly, horrible, though mum insists it looks better natural. It doesn't. They all wear the same clothes too: straight trousers, yuk, usually navy blue or black; a pink or cream blouse and a cardigan. Oh, and really horrible jewellery. I don't know where they get it from.

They're nice though, the old ladies that is. One was called Betty and she had been aunt Maggs' bridesmaid. They'd met in the war. She made me laugh cos aunt Maggs thought she was only five years younger than her and she said 'Six, Maggs, six!' And when they were talking about the war, which they seemed to do all the time, she said she'd been the first woman to join up and it was just her and a bunch of men and she said 'I'd never had it so good!' but then aunt Maggs came along and then another lady who was also called Betty, they called her big Betty cos she was tall. I'd like to be tall. My dad's tall and he can see over walls and things.

Anyway, Betty wasn't wearing trousers, she was wearing a William Morris print skirt. We did William Morris in year seven, he liked pattern so much he even opened his own wall-paper factory. It was quite a nice skirt. I mean I wouldn't wear it but it was nice for an old lady. They don't bother with fashion which is probably a good thing! I can't imagine Aunt Maggs in skinny jeans really. She liked my outfit though, she said orange is her favourite colour now she can see again. She was almost blind for twenty years, granny says. That means she never really saw me until her ninetieth birthday, properly I mean. She said I was pretty. I just smiled.

It was a bit boring, the party. There wasn't any music just old people talking about the past. Except for this one old man, right, he kept reciting poetry really loudly. He was cool. He had dementia. His wife said this was a good day. What's a bad day, I wonder. He doesn't remember anything. Only poems and songs and stuff. I had to tell him my name at least five times and he still didn't remember it! But when mum brought in the cake he sang Happy Birthday like, oh... you know, that opera singer, the fat one? I was supposed to be filming aunt Maggs blowing out the candles but forgot because I couldn't take the camera off him. It's just as well really cos she couldn't do it so mum had to and it wouldn't have been very nice to remind her of it.

I hope she enjoyed her birthday party and I hope she liked the present I got her, it was a book called Eccentric Style, full of really colourful pictures.

Why Write?

This is a question one of my tutors asked us to consider and it is one that I have been pondering for some time. Why does anyone write? And, more specifically, why do I?

According to Rilke one should only continue to write if one feels absolutely driven to do it. He says it is enough 'to feel that one could live without writing, in order not to venture it at all.' Really? I only began writing about two years ago when I stumbled upon a course on creative writing at university. The course I had wanted to do had been cancelled and this seemed the next best thing. I only did it to make up my credits so I could get my degree. I had lived for forty four years without doing it. It seems perfectly feasible, then, that I could live without ever doing it again. In fact I feel I could live without doing anything very much at all. I could live without ever stepping out of my house again. I could live without my house altogether, even though I have spent years making it into the comfortable (though crumbly) family home it is. I could live without my friends, my family, my books. I could, I'm sure, live without ever reading, writing or uttering another word again. Not happily perhaps, but live nonetheless. So it strikes me that Rilke was being rather romantic.

Yet there is something overtly emotional about creating stuff. It doesn't matter what one creates: bread, wallpaper, concertos, spreadsheets, emotion takes over from reason and no doubt some people do feel driven to make what they do. I write because I have something to say and part of the process of writing is finding out what that is. I'm still a long way off from discovering the best way to say it. As Faulkner said: once you succeed as a writer in your own estimation, you'll have to stop. By this I'm guessing he meant once you have successfully said what you had to say you will
no longer have to say it. 

But why choose writing as a way of saying whatever it is? Was it Elizabeth Bishop (Eudora Welty?) who said her first choice would have been music but she didn't have the talent? Writing is merely the medium I'm exploring at the moment. I've tried baking, decorating, all the homey things open to ordinary women. A friend once told me, much to my bemusement at the time, that I was my own work of art. I have been to painting classes - to chum a friend - and I once went on a pottery holiday, also with a friend. My greatest successes so far have been with food, but this isn't getting the thing said. So having happened upon writing, and received a great deal of encouragement from tutors, it seems worth giving it a go.

So, I'm not driven to write, a la Rilke, but I am driven to join in the conversation, use my voice. And doing it with words appears to be the best option at present. And do you know, I didn't know any of this when I began to write this piece?

Marlboro Woman

Here is a little light entertainment, I hope it makes a nice change from my usual themes of conflict and loss. It is a parody of a Western: we were doing genre in class and asked to choose a work of 'genre fiction' to discuss and also to write a parody of it. We could choose any sort we wished: Romance, Science Fiction, whatever else there is as long as it was out of our comfort zone. I went to my local charity shops hoping for Science Fiction but was faced with a choice of Romance or the Western. I looked at all the Romances and decided they were just too far from my comfort zone for comfort, maybe I'd never return. So I chose the Western, it was a bit weird to read, every chapter seemed to say the same thing: there were the good guys, the baddies, the useless but sometimes surprising 'pretty ladies', the sexy squaws who don't wear anything under their dresses and the showdowns. As I began to write I wondered what on earth such an exercise could contribute to my writing, but I soon learned my lesson. I really had to watch my language: the Western lexis is not like the 21st century British one, for example they don't have chaps, or even guys, they have 'boys' or 'men'. I faltered constantly and it wasn't until I found a voice for my narrator - old timer telling a tale around a camp fire, I think - that the words began to come in sentences, then paragraphs. Eventually this turned out to have the highest word count of anything I've had to write to order so far on this course. So see what you think, does it read true to the form or have I missed out something crucial, or included something that doesn't belong?

No place for a Woman

Morty Wormwold was going stir crazy. Trump had warned him that he'd have to keep low until after the primaries and Trump had secured the position of State Governor:
'Until then' he'd said, 'I've got enough to worry about without having my right hand man had up for a felony, I mean what the hell were you thinking about shootin' up a man because of a woman? You're lucky he didn't die. Just yet anyways.' he added with a sly grin on his face.
So Wormwold was having to stay out of sight and that meant no booze, no women and no fun. If Trump won the election he would be free, if not, he was on his own. But Wormwold bowed to no man so he had his men out looking for gold along the Sweetwater valley. His plan was to find him the best damn prospect out there and stake his claim before Trump could do anything about it. A rich man could do anything he wanted and before long that rich man would be Morty Wormwold.

*********

Clint and his team finally made it to Cheyenne. It had taken them two whole days longer than planned and Marla was visibly exhausted. He wondered if he was doing the right thing letting her tag along. The trail was no place for a woman and it was set to get tougher yet.
'You ok honey, you look beat?'
'Nothing a wash and brush up won't mend. Maybe a night in a real bed with clean sheets?'
'Oh yeah, so that's what you're fishing for is it?' He chuckled 'I'll see what I can do, wouldn't mind a night in a real bed myself.'
Unfortunately they weren't going to get to finish their honeymoon just yet. Although Cheyenne was a sleepy little backwater news of the railway coming had attracted the type you didn't want to mess with. Of course, Clint was aware of this which is why he decided to wait to go to the bank until he'd checked the place out fully. They'd all go to the store first to get the supplies they needed and at the same time see who was around. He couldn't take any chances carrying that much cash, yet he had no choice but to make the withdrawal here. There was no other town with a bank in the direction they were going and if they were going to come back with the herd...

*********

Solomon Peters watched the new arrivals with a feeling of unease. They looked a decent enough bunch, and they had a woman in tow, but these days you could never tell. Prospectors hungry to make a quick buck were stopping over more and more often and some of these boys didn't care how they made that buck. Some of them would shoot a man for the boots on his feet. What's more Peters had noticed someone, or something, moving in the shadow of old Ma' Hendry's place and got the distinct impression that he wasn't the only one to notice the new folks in town. He could just smell trouble in the air, one way or another his sheriff's badge was going to be called into action before night-fall.

*********

Clint gathered the men: 'OK, here's the plan: we'll all go into the store together and get what we need. We don't have to rush but we don't wanna take all day about it either. Meatball, you get all the provisions you think we'll be needing, we may not find another store for the next three hundred miles. The boys here will help you carry it. Once we're done you all go back to the camp, Marla and me's gonna find us a hotel room for the night. That way I can go to the bank after dark, when there's less folks around, and put the money in a safe for the night. I don't like the idea of being seen making such a big withdrawal and being followed back to camp. OK?
'Sure boss.' they all answered at once.
'Hey you think there's a saloon around here? I could sure use a long cool beer.' said Chase
'There may well be' Clint answered him 'but I suggest you stay out of it, we can't afford any trouble. Let's go.'
They all went into the store which turned out to be a great disappointment to Marla 'Don't they have any women in this town?' she groaned looking at the paltry selection of trimmings and fabrics, 'I was hoping to get something to make myself up a nightgown.'
'I prefer you without one.' Whispered Clint grinning at her
'That may be so, but winter's coming and I don't want to freeze to death on some god forsaken plain.

As he'd been talking to his little wife Clint had been checking out the joint: there was a squalid little saloon in the back and a table of drunken card players had got him a little worried, Especially as they all turned to stare at Marla as she spoke. But then he noticed a man wearing the badge of a deputy sheriff and he rested a little easier. And the card players turned back to their game when they saw Marla was with him. At just short of seven feet tall in his boots Clint McCabe wasn't someone most men wanted to mess with. It was just unfortunate that the deputy wasn't most men, and that Clint failed to notice he hadn't taken his eyes of Marla from the moment he set them on her. As Clint and the boys were examining the hard-wear and Meatball was ordering sacks of beans and dried apples Marla wandered over to the trimmings. The deputy saw his chance and eased over in her direction.
'Looking for anything in particular pretty lady? I know this place pretty well, hell I'm in it most days.'
No, I'm just waiting for the boys here to get their business wound up.' she answered
'Yeah, you wanna do you're waiting with me?' she felt his creepy eyes all over her.
Miller, the store owner who had been watching this exchange cut in now by pulling out a gun and aiming it straight at the deputy: 'You leave the lady alone now Jude or I swear I'll blow your head off. That ain't the way we treat ladies around these parts.'
'And you can't kill a law man in these parts, Miller.' He said tapping his badge and smirking.
'Sheriff Peters is a good man, so I'll take my chances. Get away from the little lady.'
Clint, who had looked up from his business the moment he heard Miller mention Marla, stepped in and took Marla away from the deputy. 'Thanks Mr. I think I've got all I came for, I'll just get my wife out of the deputy's way.'
'Hey, you bring her back here, I ain't done with her yet.' Jude shouted to Clint
'Oh, I think you have had all the time you're gonna get with my wife.' Clint replied
'He's drunk' said Miller, 'the sheriff's office is just past the bank, you wanna go get him so he can take his darned deputy out of my store?'
'Sure, we'll go right away. Come on boys.' At that they all left the store.
'Chase, you head on up to the sheriff's office and tell him his deputy is causing trouble. The rest of us will load up the mules. Then I think we'll all just head for camp and I'll come back to the bank in the morning when that deputy is sleeping off his hangover.'

Chase set off up the road but he hadn't made it to the sheriff's office before the deputy came out guns blazing. Luckily drunks are lousy shots and he missed Clint by a hair's breadth as he was fixing the saddle on one of the mules, and he wasn't going to get another shot. As Marla was the only one of the group not occupied she pulled out her colt, the one Clint had given her to keep her happy, and shot him right between the eyes.
Chase came running back. Miller came out of the store, 'Well little lady you're some shot but I suggest you all get on your horses, get out of here, and don't come back. They hang folks around here who kill law-men whether they had it coming to 'em or not. And women don't get no special favours. I'll tell sheriff Peters what happened but...'
'Thanks buddy, don't you worry about us. Come on let's get out of here.' said Clint anxious for Marla.

Meanwhile Clint and the gang were by no means out of trouble. Dorian Fawster had seen them come into town and was, this very minute, informing Morty Wormwold that Marla and her new husband were in the vicinity.

Keeping the Momentum

So, I have learned much from putting Old Friends out in the world for criticism and scrutiny. Thanks especially to Sam and Doc.

The workshop was hilarious: the tutor and one of my peers had quite a fierce disagreement about the ending. Tutor saying that the ending didn't work at all and that the conversation between Gemma and her daughter Milly detracted from Gemma's realisation that she had been neglecting her friend and allowing the stressful aspects of life to take over. And Mike (the peer) saying that that is absolutely how it would happen in real life, that most people need someone to point out the mistakes they're making even when they are beginning to realise them. But I do wonder now if I am taking a rather easy way out by giving Milly the power, so to speak.

The tutor also criticised the time line which he said was 'all at sea' saying the end of the story seemed to take place before the beginning. So I need to do some work on that. He also gave me a slap for using 'shorthand' when I say that Aggie had been popular with men and women alike: what I need to do is show this rather than tell it by having Gemma recount what she saw to make her think this. And, he thought the paragraph in which Gemma is stuck in traffic is 'packed' and needs to be 'separated into it's constituent parts'. He did commend me for my use of the comma in the first sentence.

This is what he wrote on the bottom of the piece:
“There's a very touching story in here, but it needs a lot more thought, ie what is the story about – Gemma or Gemma and Aggie? If it's about Aggie I don't think that Milly should decide for Gemma that Ag is OK. That has to be a deep realisation of Gemma. I believe the part about watching the character at a remove and re-seeing her, but there's work to be done in revealing to the reader the significance of the sight.”

So there you are! Now for the next one which probably needs a bit of explaining. It is part of my novel which is written 'snap-shot' style, that is, it is very short chapters that give a series of brief glimpses into the life of my character Cristina. This particular chapter comes about a third of the way through the novel when we already know Cristina as a woman who lives alone: it's a flashback. The point of it is to show how she got to be the rather odd creature that she appears to be. My thinking is that when you meet someone for the first time you see them how they are now and make a judgement. Then as you get to know them you find out more about what made them the way they seem to be now. It's not usually until you have known someone for a little while that you get to hear the really juicy stuff like this, if you ever do. You may only hear it second or third hand and not from the person in question at all.

The reason I'm posting this chapter and not an earlier one is that I am hoping to put it into my portfolio at the end of the year. I have a very tight word count: five pieces totalling no more than 2,500 words, and this is particularly short. I am going to be discussing it in a one-to-one with one of my tutors on Thursday. Here it is and you are invited to lay into it, as usual:

Cristina Re-runs the End

Cristina had been in the kitchen as usual, slicing the tail of a monkfish when Jerry slunk in through the door and asked her to sit down. She told him that at this precise moment that would be impossible, she was far too busy. He politely conceded and as she took up her knife once more added ‘But don’t cook for me I won’t be dining here tonight.’
She let the knife drop, ‘You could have told me earlier darling, I… well, no matter: we can eat the monkfish tomorrow.’
‘Nor tomorrow night. Look do sit down I have something important to discuss. Why don’t I make you a gin and tonic?’
‘At two o’clock in the afternoon!’
‘Yes, I’ll have one too, a little oiling and all that.’
She went to the table and sat down: lifting the chair so it didn’t scrape the floor as she made space for herself. Jerry bustled about making the drinks, going to the fridge several times to take things out and put things back. Cristina mentally winced at his inefficiency. She would go to the fridge once to get everything she needed, make the drinks and then put it all back when she was done. He sliced a lemon on the chopping board alongside the monkfish with the slimy knife and she turned her head so as not to see. When he came to the table with the drinks she tried to unfocus her eyes so as not to see the fishy fingerprints now dulling her best crystal. He started to speak but she interrupted him with news of a phone call from their elder child – Josh – received that morning. He was coming for the weekend and bringing a new girlfriend for the first time and Cristina tried to interest Jerry in a game of I wonder what she’s like. But he didn’t want to play. She could see seriousness in him, his breathing was deliberate, but he allowed her to witter on for a while. She was silenced by the clearing of his throat which made her feel like one of his patients rather than his most intimate companion. He began his speech but all she heard was ‘I’ve met someone, fallen in love for the first time in my life…’ After which his voice merely became a soundtrack to her thoughts. Met someone. Fallen in love. FOR THE FIRST TIME. She had never been loved. She would never be loved. Why did he marry her twenty seven years ago? Why did he talk to her, touch her, give her children, a home...? He introduced her to his mother, his friends, his profession, his passion for late eighteenth century architecture. He gave her life; they made life together, yet only now has he FALLEN IN LOVE FOR THE FIRST TIME. But he had told her he loved her, he had sworn it in church, in front of all their friends and family. Had she misremembered? Misinterpreted? When he asked her to marry him, stopping, for a moment, their walk along the Seine back to that charming little pensione, having just eaten Steak Tartare and sharing a bottle of the new season's Beaujolais, towards the end of the hottest summer in living memory, their first proper holiday together: clichéd Paris, city of lovers, had he meant he merely wanted a housekeeper?
The sun hit the over polished table and dizzied her. His drone stopped abruptly and he got up from the table forcing his chair to drag along the Cornish slate floor. He started to walk away but turned again, ‘You won’t have to worry about money, we’ll sell the house, that should amply provide for you if you’re careful. You’re not a spendthrift.’ He patted her head and went upstairs. What will she tell the children? What does this mean? SELL THE HOUSE? She picked up the glasses and took them to the sink, his was empty hers was full, she drained it now. Then Cristina set about tidying: tossed the monkfish into the bin, washed up, dried up, put everything neatly away in its place and wiped the surfaces of the counter top and table, first with a damp cloth then with a dry one. She stopped for a moment to look around then opened the door to the cupboard under the sink and pulled out a tin of lavender and beeswax polish. Clutching that and her soft dry cloth she made for the sitting room.

Calling all editors

Ok, I'm laying my life on the line here and posting a story I have written for a workshop. This is maybe a third or fourth draft and I know it's not great, it's not how I would write if I wasn't still a complete novice but what better way can I improve than by sharing my inadequacies with you and asking for your input. So feel free to evaluate, ask me what I'm trying to achieve so I have to explain myself and come to understand. Ask me why I wrote that there or used that syntax or punctuation. Ask me anything and I will try to answer and not burst into tears.

Old Friends

The children were in bed, Matt was away at a conference, it was the first time she'd had the house to herself in months. She opened a bottle of wine, chosen because of it's screw cap, and put her nose to the glass to smell the rich berry fruits with a touch of oak, the two year maturation process and the vast Chilean hinterlands. As she sat down in a comfortable chair for the first time that day the phone rang. It would be Aggie. What's Jed done now? She couldn't imagine: he'd already sold the house from under her so that she'd had to move into a two up two down terrace in the cheap part of town, he'd already turned the children against her by buying them expensive gifts at every visit and taking them to fancy restaurants, allowing them to have anything on the menu, and then taking them on holidays to exotic climes. In short, treating them to all the things Aggie could not afford. Poor Aggie, she was taking it all so hard, and was apt to become hysterical even though Gemma had tried to come up with practical solutions to her problems, help her put a positive spin on things and to see Jed's perspective, he wasn't such a bad man and he was probably afraid of losing his children. Nothing Gemma said seemed to help and so she hadn't been answering the phone lately. She'd been letting it ring out while she reasoned that she too had a hard time of it what with Milly, now sixteen, throwing tantrums just about every single day about her P.E kit not being washed, or not being given enough time in the bathroom, or her room being invaded, but Christ the room had to be cleaned once in a while, cleaning was part of her job as a mother and wife even though she also went out to work as a branch administrator in the town's busiest recruitment company, running after idiots who couldn't be bothered to do their jobs properly, didn't want to answer the phone, couldn't deal with the pressure, and now she was just so tired.

Today had been a particularly difficult day what with Matt running around looking for the right shirt, unable to pack his own suitcase, Jack needing a fiver for a school trip she hadn't even known about until that moment, and Milly locking herself in the bathroom so that Gemma couldn't get in to clean it before leaving for work. Then at work she'd nearly had a stand-up fight with Paul over some letters he needed done urgently, expecting her to drop everything else as though she was his own private secretary. And then the journey home, god! It was her keep-fit night, the only night she ever got to do something for herself and she needed to get home sharpish to feed the kids, get changed and get back out again and tonight she'd have to find the time to clean the bathroom too, so she was already feeling stressed when she turned onto Holm Street to find the traffic had ground to a halt. Fuck! As she inched along, the smell of diesel from the van in front usurping that of her 'country flowers' car freshener, she tried to crane her neck to see what the problem was, saw nothing but an endless stream of near stationary vehicles. The van driver honked his horn as a car tried to edge out of a side street in front of him. Gemma drew up closer behind. Stop, start, stop, start, Gemma stared ahead as she passed the car still stuck in the side street. If the driver had any sense he'd turn around and find another route. After about twenty minutes or so, she'd rather lost track, the van driver started honking again and so she strained once more to see what the problem was. It seemed there was a group of people standing in the middle of the road. One of them, an old woman, was clutching the corpse of a blood soaked terrier to her chest and wailing. Someone must have run it over, a hit and run, probably didn't even know he'd done it, it wasn't exactly a large dog and what was it doing in the road anyway? This is a very busy road with huge trucks as well as cars and vans flying up it all day long, anyone with a dog would surely keep it on a tight leash; a lorry driver would definitely not know he'd hit a small dog, or a small child come to think of it. People really ought to be more careful.

As she got nearer to the crowd the police came along and it was then that Gemma saw her: Aggie. God she would get involved wouldn't she? As if she hadn't enough to worry about she had to involve herself with hysterical old women and dead dogs. Gemma watched as Aggie spoke to one of the police officers as the other dispersed the rest of the crowd. Then as Aggie took the old woman's hand and led her to the pavement she remembered how once, over twenty years ago, in their first year at university Aggie had done something similar for her; that this tall, elegant woman, who she'd considered out of her league due to her stylish clothes and obvious popularity with men and women alike, was also kind and generous and had been there to support her at every stage of her adult life: her first serious romantic break-up, her academic angst, her first job, the whole palaver over her wedding when she thought her mother was going to hijack the whole day; the birth of both her children, she had been right there to call on whenever she was needed. She watched as Ag took the dog from the old woman and put it in a carrier bag, bright pink with the word Whistles emblazoned on it, then as she thanked the policemen and went off with the old woman holding onto her arm. Beep, beep! Shit she'd better get going.

By the time she got home the kids were starving and even if she had some sort of 'ready-meal' in the house she wouldn't have had time to feed them and go to her keep-fit class, so she started chopping vegetables and steamed some halibut fillets and they all sat down to eat together. They had wanted to know why she had been so late home so she told them about the old woman, the dog and how she'd seen Aggie dealing with it.
'Aggie's cool' said Milly
'Really! What makes her cool?'
'Well she's really kind and she is your best friend.'
'Why does her being my best friend make her cool?'
'You really like her, when she's here, which she hasn't been for ages I might say, you're always really nice and happy. She makes you laugh.'
'Not lately, with the divorce and everything, she's become really hard work.'
'No she hasn't, she hardly talks about it, it's you who always brings it up wanting to know what Jed's done now!'
'Don't be ridiculous.'

After supper she set about tidying the place, ensuring the kids had done their homework and finally got them to bed. Now, she jumped up to answer the phone: 'Hello.'

Beginnings

I recently started an MLitt in creative writing and as part of the course I have had to set up a diary blog. I already have a non-diary blog and considered just changing that one a bit but then thought better of it. This gives me a chance to do things differently, to be a different blogger, take on, perhaps, a different persona...

At the moment the whole Mlitt experience is rather overwhelming, my current work load consists of: writing a review of William Faulkner's short story 'The Old People' in fifteen hundred words; writing a short piece (about 1,500 words) inspired by our last workshop which was on beginnings and endings; writing something 'playful' inspired by the mass of texts that invade every aspect of modern life; writing a fresh, new piece for work-shopping; choosing (which means leaving the house), reading and picking out a fifteen page passage from a book of 'genre' fiction – later I'll have to write a parody of it – for a work-shop; watching two episodes of a 'soap'; listening to a radio play or two episodes of the Archers; setting up this blog and reading other blogs; and evaluating – using the Lerman – four pieces of my peers' writing.

Of course, most of this hasn't been sprung on me, I've had the review boiling away for about four weeks and the rest I've had about a week to do so far and it's not all due at once, I've got til Monday for some of it. What I'm finding difficult is the juggling of styles, techniques and forms. I have a novel on the go too which is definitely faltering, I think it will have to go on the back burner for a while along with my friends and family. And I can't say I'm not loving it, I am, it's just a bit like being madly in love with a total bastard.