Saturday Scribbles

The second Saturday of the month sees us down at the Bike Shed with the creative writing workshop. I had given over the leading to two of our regulars, Annie and Paul. It is wonderful to be able to step aside and let others step up to the challenge and they did not disappoint. Time and effort had gone into the planning of the prompts.

The first task was based on playing with Scrabble letters. Six consonants, five vowels and the chance to pinch other people’s letters, we were left to make words which were later listed on the whiteboard.

Ten minutes to write something using all, or some, of the words was the next task.

A Dog That Never Barked

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I tapped on the door of the trailer. Barking erupted from inside and a dog pressed a nose against the window, drool like tow laces dangled from each side of its mouth,

There had been a phone call, a complaint about the barking and the owner apparently not around to silence the dog.

The trailer had seen better days, backed up as it was to the lip of a ditch. It hadn’t been moved in a long time and overgrown roots grew and gripped the wheels and low hanging branches rested on the roof.

I knocked again but there was still no answer, no sound other than the barking dog.

I circled the trailer, trying to glimpse the inside through dirty windows and limp net curtains stained yellow with tobacco smoke.

‘Hello! Is there anyone in?’ A tiny window was open. A bathroom window perhaps.

A flurry of barking, this time from outside the trailer. I turned around to see a man with two dogs. He was tall, lanky and dressed in faded cotton trousers and a cable-knit jumper. The dogs were a mixture of breeds, brown with heads that seemed too big for their bodies.

‘Looking for McEwen, are you?’ There was no challenge in his voice. ‘Not seen him for a while. He’s usually out there on the step drinking some concoction of his and smoking a evil smelling roll-up. But, as I said, I’ve not seen him for days. The dog, big as a horse, is a real sweet soul. Calls him Odin. He’s not much of a barker is Odin so all that barking is out of character. Really odd that.’

I wasn’t sure where the story was going. I had an idea that McEwen was lying dead on the floor inside the trailer. I had thought bits of him might be missing as Odin ran out of dog food. Having a bit of an eye infection and the words blurring on the page. I read slowly with long pauses as the eyes focused, and I admit I creeped myself out along with everyone else. You could tell the listeners were not happy to leave it there. Why was the dog that rarely barked barking? Where was McEwen?

For the next task, Anne and Paul emptied bags of stuff on the table. Antiques Roadshow or Bargain Hunt had come to town. There was so much nostalgia spread out. Photographs, football annuals, plastic toys, a Roses Chocolate tin of buttons, a pair of binoculars, toy cars, a memorial piece of stone from a railway bridge that had come down way back when, the minutes of a political gathering in the town house from fifty years ago. Joe picked up the football annual. He pointed out the games he had been at as a wee boy and the player he knew that owned the pub next to the betting shop Joe used to manage. Getting us to focus and find something to write was not easy. I picked an Enid Blyton book of Bible stories for children.

The Car Boot Sale

It was a first edition. I recognized it straight away, there in a cardboard box on the table in the car boot sale. The book, with its bright yellow cover, Enid Blyton’s ‘The Little Girl at Caperaum’ with its inscription on the flyleaf was worth thousands of pounds.

I picked it up carefully trying to damp down the excitement inside.

‘How much for the book?’ There was no sticker on the book displaying the price. For that I was immensely thankful. There was nothing more damaging to book covers than stickers.

‘A pound?’ It was a question rather than a statement.

I hesitated.

‘Oh, go on then, fifty pence,’ mistaking the pause for a reluctance to buy.

I fingered the change in my jacket pocket and pulled out a pound. I wanted desperately to say, ‘Keep the change,’ and walk away with the book in my hand.

The words hung on the tip of my tongue.

‘Actually,’ I said, reaching for her hand and placing the book carefully in it, ‘this really ought not to be in this sale.’ I went on to tell her how the book was a collector’s item and what I knew of its history and worth.

‘It is a rare book.’ I concluded.

‘And you are a rare gentleman to tell me,’ she said, looking at me with a puzzled smile.

‘An idiot, more like,’ the inner voice chided me as I walked home. The words did nothing to diffuse the warm feeling that walked with me along the path.

My husband asked afterwards if the story was real. Had I held a rare book in my hand? Treasure from a car boot sale? I wish. But you know what? To tell a story and have someone ask if it was real – that is as good as it gets. The book on the table, among all the other things, wasn’t a first edition, and Anne let me take it home to read.

It was another successful time of writing. So much creativity. So much variety. It really was a delight to be there, dodgy eye or not.