More Saturday Scribblings

I shouldn’t have been there on Saturday. A cancelled flight meant that a trip down south for a birthday party did not happen. I thought I had left the class in the capable hands of my partner-in-writing, Tim, but no one had seen him for a while. It was so encouraging, though, that so many had come with prompts to fill the gaps. It gives me confidence that I am in the training business! My friend, Cliff, stepped up to take the class (and I took on the role of the delightful Debbie McGee in writing stuff on the whiteboard).

Our first task was a Tim favourite of collecting words through the alphabet. I knew how to spell most of them and guessed the rest.

Post Office Queue

There was nothing I needed to buy as I joined what I thought to be the longest, slowest moving queue. I just wanted, needed perhaps, to be around people and here I could stand in a queue just like anyone else and no one would think it odd.

A woman, six people ahead of me, carried a yellow umbrella. It had been raining earlier and she left a trail of wet spots on the blue carpet as she edged closer to the counter.

A man in front of her carried a large cardboard box wrapped in brown paper, edged with strong packing tape. I spent a delightful moment imagining what might be inside. He looked around. I could see his lips moving as he counted the people in the queue. Mathematics perhaps. A multiplication sum. The number of people in the queue multiplied by the length of time they were taking at the counter. I imagined he was wondering whether he could make it back to the carpark before his time was up.

He wasn’t going to make it anywhere. None of us were.

The man who slid behind me in the queue carried a rucksack. It was a green rucksack, pattered with trails of a deeper green ivy. He opened it and I caught a glimpse of a red flashing light. The explosion might have been a mighty one – but I was no longer there, just atoms scattered.

It went down well. Someone told me long ago that it is the details that make a story real – the yellow umbrella, that wet patches on the carpet, the cardboard box in brown paper and the packing tape. They help the reader to see what is going on. ‘Tango’ was one of the words I had picked but it didn’t want to play.

If I rewrote this I might try and make my man in the queue who ‘needed perhaps, to be around people’ to be the man with the rucksack – but I didn’t have time. I did not have time to give him any backstory of why he was in the queue and why he needed to be around people. Being the suicide bomber would have solved that issue. I think there may come a time when loneliness compels me to join a queue just to inhale the fragrance of others. I also thought briefly of the man with the cardboard box being the bomber. That might have been why he was counting people. Given enough time I might have been able to make the lady with the yellow umbrella the bomber.

The second task was to write something either in support of Christmas and the traditional things we do at Christmas, chocolate covered sprouts perhaps, or something not in support of it. I chose the poetic route although I have written a better poem on the subject in the past.

Santa Scathe

Santa let me make it quite clear,

I’m nobody’s good girl, nobody’s dear.

Don’t search for my name on the good children list,

I’ll tell you, dear Santa, my name won’t appear.

My issue with you, Mr Santa in red,

The bee in my bonnet, the fire in my head.

I know you are not as good as they say.

I asked for a bike and got bath cubes instead.

There might be a list and boxes to tick,

I don’t know what’s on it and that makes me sick.

Bobby, my neighbour, not labelled as bad,

Broke in and entered – he’s now in the nick

Come on, be honest, it’s just a cruel ploy,

Coercing the children by dangling a toy.

The shops and the markets that rake in the cash,

Santa in red, you’re in their employ.

OK before you start picking at the rhyme scheme, these are quatrains. They are specifically written with an AABA rhyme scheme. Omar Khyyam was the expert. Read his Rubaiyat if you don’t believe me. There might also be an iambic pentameter thing I am missing too. But the sentiments are genuine. The good list/bad list seems very arbitrary. Who defines what is good or bad?

For the third task, we did not exactly brainstorm Christmas, but there was an exchange of ideas.

Football Match

They put me in goal. I might be the best sniper in the business but I’m a rotten goalie. I didn’t see the ball as it whizzed past me. The vision in my left eye is not what it used to be since the explosion in the trench last summer.

Their team seems to have weathered the war better than ours. I think they are better fed than we are. Today, after the game, the officers have promised us some kind of Christmas meal, but they make these promises and rarely keep them.

Fritz there has a nifty right foot. It’s another goal. He looks at me almost apologetically – not really for the goal but for the whole war thing. A goal might raise a cheer but as for the rest of life – well… let’s agree there’s little to cheer about in war. And it’s another goal! Why don’t they put someone else in goal? Just because I‘m tall doesn’t mean I’m a good goalie.

At last, we have the ball and the men are tumbling up the pitch. Fritz is not chasing it. He saunters up close, takes a flask from inside his coat and offers it to me. The liquid, colourless but strong, burns my throat.

‘Fritz,’ I declare, waving my arms, ‘My goal is always open for you.’

He doesn’t understand a word but beams a wide smile at me.

I think I need a less predictable name than Fritz. I couldn’t work out what might be in the flask. Vodka seemed too Russian and whisky too Scottish.

I confess I edited the poem a little. Metre and getting it right, and even with editing, it is rough. I have also added punctuation which I don’t normally fuss over, but in a recent university assessment I lost marks for my un-puntuated poem. I’m not that settled on the rhyming scheme. It might work for Omar. But my head yearns for AABB.

It was, as ever, a great morning. Such creativity among us. Borrowed pens, teas and coffee, lots of silence and a sprinkling of laughter, it is always a good way to spend a Saturday morning.

Join us next time!