Saturday’s Scribblings and Other Observations

It has been a while since I have led the creative writing workshop at the Bike Shed what with the major teeth work of the mouth and weekends away to celebrate a birthday. It was good to be back in the driving seat.

Had there been bread on the table, a glass of wine, a bowl of water and a towel, there were enough of us to re-enact the last supper. I’d printed materials for nine people, expecting six, but finding there were twelve of us. Wow. Impressive. Pens and paper at the ready, we began.

I was talking to someone the other day sharing that I must walk around with my head down or something. It’s likely because my shoelaces seem to unlace themselves and threaten to trip me up. Anyway, heading back from the shop with the usual paper and lunchtime pie, I lifted my head to see the red and gold of a tree next to a bus stop. Autumn in all of its loveliness. The colours are something, aren’t they? I remember driving over to Skye for a writing retreat at a friend’s house. The scenery was awesome, and I had to stop at laybys so I could shed happy tears. So, yes, what better topic to focus on than autumn.

Task I - I slid into teacher mode and made use of a whiteboard and a marker. We listed all the words and phrases we could think of where autumn spoke to the senses. The hot chocolate, the open fire, the hats and scarves and the smell of a wet dog after a misty morning walk.

Armed with a whiteboard of words we began to write.

Autumn

I wake to a misty morning. The air, moist and damp, smells of death and decay. I want to be inside, cupping hot chocolate around my fingers and soaking up heat from an open fire but instead I peel back layers of wet cardboard and muster the courage to face a new day. The cold has soaked into the bones. This is no way to live.

Geese, in formation reminiscent of fighter planes in a war, fly overhead, honking loudly. Not for the first time I wish I could fly with them to a warmer climate, anywhere but here. Feet on frosty ground, I am where I am.

Task 2 - For the second prompt, after listening to Nat King Cole singing ‘Autumn Leaves’, the task was to write a goodbye letter to the tree. Nat had said his goodbyes to a lost love. It was a sombre song, though some of the letters produced were not so solemn.

From a Leaf to a Tree

That goodbye time comes round again

That sad farewell to tree refrain

How cruel it is that I must go

As gold and rusted colours show

If I could see the seasons through

On solid branches next to you

But you will never hold me fast

As to the wind this leaf you cast

I drift, I waltz, and downward fall

To ground, to soil, surrender all

My nutrients I choose to spill

I'll nourish you next year, I will

Task 3 – I suppose it’s a writer’s gift to write something at the drop of a hat, but I struggled with this one. It was about kicking through piles of leaves and the foot coming into contact with something unexpected. There were a lot of hedgehogs sadly being kicked about.

Kicking Through Leaves

Early morning, n

ot quite beating the sun or the chorus of birds, I slip beneath a barrier of yellow and red plastic tape, ignoring the notice at the start of the footpath warning me of fallen trees and small soil and rock landslides. I promise myself, and the silent notice, that I will be careful.

I need to be here, long before the forestry workers arrive. In last night’s revels, the singing, the dancing and the joyful harvest celebration, I dropped something, you see. Likely, if one of the forest workers found it, it would be mistaken as a child’s weaving of ivy and red berries. They wouldn’t recognise the fairy silver leaves or the deep red rubies. They wouldn’t see the fairy crown that it was. To sit on my throne without my crown would be to invite mockery from sprites and pixies.

Ah...there it is.

The sound of heavy boots on the gravel path startles me. The forest worker has seen me. He smiles as he watches a colourful butterfly lift wings and take to the sky.

Forest workers, for all that they know about woods and glades, walk with eyes shut to the magic that is all around them. How sad.

Task 4 – Most of these prompts have come by way of trawling through websites. The last one was to write a conversation that takes place on a park bench. I had thought about rousing the teacher in me to clarify things like speech marks and commas and such. Schools stopped doing that for a while thinking it stifled creativity. Anyway, I didn’t wield the whiteboard marker. I let them get on with it. This is the one piece I would like to really work on. There are too many inconsistencies in the narrative which plead with me to be fixed. It also occurs to me on reading it back how I tend towards writing in the present tense.

Bench

‘I’m running away,’ says the boy as he points towards a rucksack in Spiderman blue and red.

You haven’t got very far,’ I say, presuming this is his garden bench, under the bay window of his house.

No,’ he agrees. ‘I am waiting to see if anyone has missed me yet. Do they love me enough to come looking for me?’

I think about this. I have also run away. I have no rucksack and it occurs to me that my dressing gown and slippers are not really running away clothes. I am not sure where I have run from, or where I am running to. My house has a red roof, just like this one, and a bench, just like this one, beneath a window. But is this my house? I think not. Mairi would be putting out the washing if it was and I can’t see her.

The boy and I watch the police car pull up beside the gate. There’s no siren or flashing lights. Just a policeman calmly walking up the path towards us, neither of us sure who, him or me, he is looking for.