The truth behind the legend of the Minotaur

The Creative Writing Course couldn’t have ended any other way. Put a bunch of Scribblers in the same room, and guess what! It didn’t matter how big the room was. The egos had landed.

But the back room of The Pig & Whistle was just about the smallest venue Jim could have chosen for their end of course closing party.

Earlier in the day there’d been the review of their dramatic offerings by the Literary Agent drafted in for the purpose.

It’s not a competition, the course tutor had said.

It’s not about the winning.

It’s the taking part.

It’s not that the Agent didn’t like them.

And on and on.

Easy for a published author to say. Harder on the Creatives.

But there could only be one winner, and the Agent’s decision had been final. Everyone shaking their heads in astonishment.

The tensions had been building all week. The pleasantries spoken between the students masking bitter jealousies, unspoken sarcasms. Jim’s assumption that all writers spent their lives in attics, brooding over yellowing parchments, quill pens scratching away to the light of a guttering candle, their eyesight gradually failing, was somewhat far from the truth.

Some of them were quite handy with their fists, as well.

He wished he’d taken Pauline (whose idea this had all been) to one side, pointed out the risks involved, the inevitability of personalities poised to clash.

But in the end, a general vote had carried the idea.

Fancy dress and an open mike session at The Pig & Whistle for the last night!

Jim had gone along with it, despite his deep misgivings.

Most of the students agreed that his and Pauline’s beef-and-horse themed costumes were spot on. In fact, they’d been the only outfits left in the party shop.

Jim should have predicted how Bob the Butcher (who’d called his entry for the competition “The Steakhouse Incident”) would have reacted.

The open mike session had soon deteriorated, Trevor’s sarcastic remarks directed at the competition winner finally bringing the week’s barely concealed tensions to boiling point.

And now, as Jim dragged the drunken Pauline out of the pub, he wished he’d been firmer.

His lasting image was of the pub landlord’s hands as he’d ejected them from the premises, the intended message clearly conveyed;

Don’t any of you ever come back again!

The Nurse and The Patient

Nurse Anna stood by the open window of The West London Hotel’s penthouse suite, smoking a cigarette. Seven floors below, the rush hour traffic was at a standstill. It was early evening, and the hotel was busy that night, as it always was. But not on the seventh floor, which had been cleared of all other guests. Security guards outside the penthouse slouched on sofas in the foyer, reading magazines, one eye on the movements of the pretty nurse assigned to the room’s sole occupant.

The wail of a distant police siren cut through Anna’s thoughts. She inhaled deeply, and considered the very special patient committed to her care that evening.

The patient, an old woman, had once been a significant figure in the politics of the country. She’d been taken ill a few weeks ago, but rather than attend a nursing home or private hospital, the old woman had decided to convalesce in the wealth and luxury of one of the best hotels in London, an option not available to the majority of Britons approaching the end of their lives.

Anna wished her own parents could have enjoyed the rude good health and long life that God had granted the old woman.

Thirty years ago, Anna’s mother had been a singer, a beautiful and popular entertainer well known in the clubs around Yorkshire. Her father had been a miner at the local Orgreave colliery. Anna’s parents loved each other, and their daughter, very much.

Anna had been three years old at the time, but the images of those shell shocked days of strikes and protest were burnt forever into her thoughts. She remembered the baton charges of the police against the protestors. She’d watched as her father had been singled out from the other demonstrators and beaten so badly he’d been hospitalised for months. It changed him.

Soon afterwards, the pits closed, and her father lost his job, along with thousands of others. Anna’s once happy household disintegrated. She remembered the arguments and recriminations, the long silences, the tears. Her father had walked out a few months later, breaking all contact with his family.

Anna’s mother never sang again.

Years later, Anna heard of her father’s death. His body had been discovered in a derelict house in Leeds, empty bottles of cheap spirits surrounding the corpse. They said he’d probably been there a few weeks, months, maybe.

The image of his decaying body dissolved into the view of the stalled traffic below the window. Anna flicked the cigarette into the night, watched it drift slowly down until it disappeared from sight, then turned and made her way to the bedroom where the old woman was sleeping.

She checked the old woman's pulse, and found none.

Reflection

This was the spot. Brian was sure of it. The bulldozers had already taken most of the old familiar reference points; the Palace Cinema, first victim of the wrecking ball; the Railway Tavern, on the corner of Station Road and Manchester Road; the UCP Tripe shop next door. All gone. It would have been impossible for Brian to find the spot but for the partly demolished Co-Op Laundry building, still standing at the centre of the demolition site.

 

For the next few days, at least.

 

The ground was soaked and muddy, grey sky puddles reflecting the twisted lattice girders of the shattered old laundry. Brian loosened his collar. That morning’s flash thunderstorm had left the air hot, still and oppressive. The storm had moved south, probably halfway through Cheshire by now, soaking the stuck up residents of Wilmslow and Alderley Edge.

 

‘The rain it raineth every day,’ hummed Brian, ‘Upon the Just and Unjust fellow. But more upon the Just because, the Unjust hath the Just’s umbrella.’ He’d always liked that little poem; the vindication of crime with a little humour. He turned and paced out fifty yards from the front entrance of the shattered laundry to where he thought the small cobbled yard at the back of his first home would have been.

 

Wilmslow was where Joyce’s mum and dad had lived. Naturally, when Brian and Joyce were courting, he’d never dreamt of taking her to the Railway Tavern, or the Bricklayer’s Arms down the road, or even the Midland Hotel on Burnage Lane. Beer might have been one shilling and eleven pence a pint in those pubs back then, but those pubs weren’t for the likes of Joyce.

 

No; for Joyce, it was chicken in the basket at the Berni Inn, Didsbury. Or scampi and chips in the Dog and Partridge next door. Beer was three times the price in those places, “Establishments,” as Joyce’s dad used to call them. But needs must, his own dad used to say.

 

When The Devil Drives, thought Brian.

 

It hadn’t taken long after their marriage for Brian to realise his mistake. You can’t marry outside your class, his dad said. If only he’d dispensed his sage, nodding, pipe smoking, after the fact, stable-door-locked-too-late-the-horse-has-bloody-well-bolted advice a bit sooner!

 

The arguments. The neediness of material possession. The cramped little terraced house behind the laundry that they’d rented for twenty years, waiting, scrimping, saving for the deposit on a semi-detached house fit for Joyce, from Wilmslow, Cheshire.

 

Brian still recalled their arguments, sometimes violent, the hatred always simmering just below the surface; a cruel retort, a door slammed, the silent replay of how he could have won the day with a smart response always delivered too late, always delivered to an empty kitchen or parlour.

 

And then she was gone.

 

Brian put his hands in his pockets and looked down at the puddle. Just another old fool reminiscing over lost times and happy days. The pool of water obscured most of the ground, but he thought he could make out the foundations of the walls surrounding the yard.

 

He should have done this months ago, when he’d first heard the area was being redeveloped.

 

Never mind, he thought, this particular stable door’s still open at least. He’d come back after dark with a pick and shovel and get Joyce. He placed a brick, upright in the centre of the puddle to mark the spot, and walked away.

Two years!!

It's been two years. More than that actually - two years, four months and two days since I last posted a blog. Even by my standard that's considerable procrastination.

Excuses have always been in plentiful supply though. Let's have a closer look at some of them.

"I'm working all the time, and too tired when I get home to do anything other than watch Midsomer Murders, or fall asleep, or most likely, both."

To be fair to Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby, I've made it through the entire two hours more often than not. On the occasions when I have drifted off, I usually wake up in time for the denouement, to realise that missing around two thirds of the programme hasn't made the slightest difference to my understanding of the plotline.

The program which works its soporific magic on me better than a bottle of Tamazapam is, without question, "Who Do You Think You Are?" I'm usually out cold well before the minor celebrity in search of his or her past has finished that first conversation with Auntie Betty about the mysterious second great uncle twice removed who left Stevenage for a better life running a cotton plantation in St Lucia, thus providing said lucky minor celeb cum amateur genealogist with an all expenses paid holiday in the Carribean.

But I digress. I'm not working any more. In fact, I might even be retired! It's hard to tell when your a freelance worker. Am I having an extended "rest" between contracts? Or is this it? It's a bit like giving up smoking. I last had a cigarette in 1996 (September 14th, 2pm to be precise, at the A14 Service Area). But have I really given up? Once a smoker, always a smoker? Only on my death bed (if I make it that far) will I truly be able to say 'I gave up smoking!!'

So not working has given me plenty of time to write. Sadly no. You see, all the inspiration comes from the characters and situations I meet on a daily basis at the workplace, so that's it - no more inspiration.

"There are so many chores which I have set aside to complete during these resting periods between contracts."

How attractive these chores suddenly seem compared to sitting at the PC, staring at a blank Word document. I've been off for four months now. New kitchen cupboards have been put up; the spare bedroom has been repainted; every item in the house has been cleaned, fixed, patched, polished, painted, re-arranged, dug, planted, weeded, tidied, taken to the tip or handed in to the Charity Shop.

That just leaves the cars to be washed, but really! I do have some principles left.

"Writing is antisocial." Lia works from home and it's extremely rude of me to lock myself away for hours on end, when instead I could be distracting her from running her own business and making money for me to spend. Those cups of tea don't make themselves you know!

Lia's suggestion is to pack me and the laptop off to the pub to do my creative writing over a pint. So far I haven't taken up this golden opportunity (I still have a few other excuses outstanding). I've a feeling she wants me out of the house for a bit, and anyway, it sounds like a bit of a slippery slope to me. I expect that's how Dylan Thomas became an alcoholic.

'Look you Dylan,' (for that is how I imagine Caitlin Macnamara would have addressed her husband), 'why don't you just pop down to the Sailors Arms and finish off that "Under Milk Wood" thing you've been fretting about for months! Just one pint now!'

But Lia's been away in Italy since last Tuesday, visiting family. It was 10:30 when we arrived at Heathrow Terminal 5 departures bay; I remember because Ken Bruce's Pop Master had just started on Radio 2.

'I'm really going to miss you this week,' said Lia tenderly, as we pulled into a free space.

'DIDO!!' I shouted, for this was indeed the correct answer to question one of Pop Master.

'And don't forget to blog!' she added. 

Well I've tried. Every morning, sitting at the PC with a nice, clean, fresh, blank Microsoft Word document displayed on the screen, but inspiration? None.

Now a week has gone by, Lia flies back tonight, and not a single sentence written. I'm so sorry to have let her down. It would seem that I'm just not the writing type, after all.