Another Blast from the Past

In two hours I'm out of here and headed south. I you all have a great week next week and don't forget me while I'm gone!

While I'm away, here’s another of my short stories that my Mum saved for all those years and recently returned to me. Sadly this one isn’t dated but, judging by the writing style, I would guess at being around 12 or 13 years old when I penned it. I know I based the character of Matt Gordon on a man I still detest to this day. I think I did a pretty good job of characterizing an arsehole!

Funny how the height of sophistication to my mind back then was a flat in Kensington and a Burt Reynolds style Pontiac Firebird (an automatic, no less!) and listening to Chopin! Also interesting is my abject failure to grasp the actual cost and time involved in car repair!

Again, grammar, punctuation and spelling are included here exactly as they appear in the original. I hope you enjoy!

"A Strange Meeting Indeed"

Matt Gordon sat on the bus. He was on his way to his flat in Kensington. His girlfriend, Janet had his car to impress her new boss. It was an automatic black turbo charged Pontiac Firebird with all gold trimmings. I really was a fantastic car and it had set him back a few thousand pounds.

Matt was 26, tall with blonde, short hair. He was high up in a Building Society, (a job given to him by his Uncle, the director!)

The bus stopped and he walked to his luxury flat. The doorman stood up and said “Afternoon Mr Gordon.”
“Hello. Janet back yet with my car?” Said Matt.
“Eh, well she is back but, I, um…”
“What has she done to it?” he said and ran to the lift.

The lift reached the top floor and Matt ran to his flat, key in hand.
“Hello Matt” Janet said, gingerly.
“Where is it? What’s happened to the bloody car?” Matt screamed.
“Well it’s not that bad, I was at the traffic lights you see. I wasn’t showing off or anything. I was giving the car some revs, the lights changed and I slowly let off the brake but it sprung up and, well the car just flew out of the lights. It must have wheelied or something because I couldn’t steer it. It went straight along the road then hit a lamp post.”
“Oh no! How can anyone be so stupid. A Firebird is a miracle of engineering and you smash it into a lamp post. Give me the keys, now! Where is it?”
“Around the corner at Jims.”

Matt walked out and slammed the door.

“Mr Gordon” the doorman said as he walked past but Matt just walked out. Matt kept walking to Jims garage.

“Ah Mr Gordon, the Pontiac was a bit of a mess.”
“Cut the chit chat, where is it?”
“Well, it were a right ‘ard job. All the left wing ‘ad to be changed. And the lights.”
“Look, where is it!”
“Out here.”
Matt was lead to the workshop. His car was there.

“As you see Mr Gordon, we had to put a whole new…”
“Look, how much, that’s all I want to know.”
“Three hundred quid.”
“Three hundred! Oh she’s going to be sorry she ever sat in this car!” Matt too out his cheque book.

He got in his car and decided he couldn’t face Janet tonight. He would drive around for a while. As he drove around Kensington he saw a face he recognized. It was a lady he had often seen before. That was it! She was Mr Higgs’ secretary. He pulled up next to her as she walked along the pavement.

“Hello, fancy a lift?” he said.
“Oh Mr Gordon, you’re a real darling, this shopping has put six inches on my arms.”
“Call me Matt” he suggested. “Where to/” he said again.
“Gleneagle Mews please” she said.
“Oh? So old Higgs pays well then, eh?” Matt said, surprised.
“No, not that well. This was me and my husbands house, but he died and now I live here alone. You can drop me off here if you want. I don’t want to keep you from wherever you were going.”
“Don’t worry about that, I wasn’t going anywhere in particular.”
“Well perhaps you would care for a cup of tea or coffee?”
“Yes that would be nice, thank you.” Matt said.

They both got out of the car and entered the house.
“This is a lovely house” Matt complimented.
“Thank you. I love it here. Tea or coffee?” she asked.
“Tea please, two sugars. What is your name by the way?”
“Janice” came the reply from the kitchen.

They sat and drank tea, talking and listening to ‘Chopin’.
“Shall I go and get some wine?” Matt suggested a few hours later.
“yes, that sounds wonderful.”
“Matt was soon back with two bottles of wine. They continued to drink and talk about Matts car. He explained what had happened between him and his girlfriend and how he planned to finish with her. After a while the pair of them were a bit merry!

“It’s getting very late, I’d better go” Matt said.
“Don’t be silly, in your state you’ll crash your car. That won’t do, twice in one day. You can stay here on the settee!” she ordered him.
“O.K. O.K. who could resist such an invitation?” Matt leaned over and kissed Janice. He picked her up and began to walk to her bedroom.
“The settee is not in here darling!” whispered Janice.
“Who cares?” Matt said.
He kicked the door shut.

The pair of them were woken by the alarm. Matt got up and washed.
“I’m going to have a shower darling. Could you do some breakfast?” Janice asked.
“Yes love, I’ll do eggs. I’m fantastic at eggs.”
“O.K.then. My husband was good at eggs, too.” Janice shouted from the shower.

Matt began to fry the eggs. As they cooked he saw a very large egg timer. It was silver framed with a grey kind of sand inside the glass body.
“Strange. But nice.” Matt said to himself.
Suddenly a piece of oil spat from the pan and burnt his hand. Matt dropped the egg timer and it fell, breaking the glass. Some of the grey sand fell onto the frying eggs. He managed to scrape it off one but it wouldn’t come off the other so he splashed more oil on it. Still the sand from the broken egg timer showed, a speckled grey-brown. He dished the eggs on to plates then sprinkled pepper on the one with the sand, to disguise his mistake.

“Breakfast!” he called.
“Crikey! You like a lot of pepper on your eggs, don’t you?” Janice commented.
They ate their eggs and Matt crunched bravely through the grit, trying not to make a face and glad he scraped it off hers.

“Umm, that was delicious. As good as my husbands, if not better.” Janice complimented.
“Thank you. What was it you were saying about your husband?” matt asked.

“Oh yes, he was a chef at the Hilton, his speciality was eggs. He loved them fried, poached, scrambled, eggs benedict, you name it, he did it. And his soufflés were perfect!”
“Oh. So, was that his professional egg timer that he used in the kitchen?”

“Oh no!” Said Janice. “He was so fanatical about eggs that when he died I had that made and put his ashes in it.”

THE END

Hey Ho,Let's Go

After using the chorus of the Ramones "Blitzkrieg Bop" as my post title, I realised that the way they sang it made it sound a lot more punk than the way it's written.

"Hey Ho, let's go" sounds more like something Enid Blyton might have written.

Anyway, I've spoken with people on the ground in Cancun and it seems to be business as usual after what fortunately - for human life and property sake, rather than my vacation plans -turned out to be a night of strong wind and heavy rain.

Come tomorrow evening, all systems are go and we'll be on our way to Mexico.

Rather than leave with concerns as to what the churning seas may have done to the golden sandy beaches and crystalline Caribbean waters, my daughter is convinced that some previously undiscovered pirate treasures will have been unearthed and are lying there just waiting for her to snorkel past.

Sticking with the theme of previously undiscovered treasures, I received a form rejection letter from a literary agent yesterday - in relation to a three chapter submission they'd requested over eighteen months ago!

Eighteen Months to respond to three chapters they asked me to send them!

In a way I was pleased it was a rejection. If they'd asked me to send in the rest of the manuscript I can imagine I would have needed to change the genre of the novel to historical fiction by the time they'd finished with it.

The next thing you know, Demi Moore will respond to the love letter I sent her when 'About Last Night' came out!

No? Ah well. With scarcely a day to go, I have some preparations to make. I hope to write up another of my childhood stories that my Mum found, one I was particularly impressed with when I read it last night. I'll try to post that before we leave.

Hey ho, let's go.

Monday Morning Miracle

I'm struggling with the concept of the Monday Morning Miracle today. I have meetings scheduled for the next 72 hours of my life.

In addition to that, what should have been one of those exciting weeks where you are only 5 days away from a vacation is now starting to look distinctly wobbly as my vacation destination is a certain area of Mexico currently being evacuated in anticipation of a windbag named Dean.

Anyway, I still managed to find something that brought a faint smile to my face this morning.

I don't know what further posts my schedule will allow this week, but with my head full of writing ideas, my calendar full of pointless guff and the news full of wet and windy pictures of my hotel, I'm sure there'll be some venting to come!

Have a great week!

Where Were You?

My parents and their generation all seem to know exactly where they were and what they were doing when JFK died.

For me, it's Elvis.

The first gift I ever bought for somebody else with the sole intention of using it myself was the "G.I. Blues" L.P. I got my Mum for her birthday and then proceeded to wear it out on my record player.

I adored his movies, I liked most of his songs and I thought he was the epitome of handsome-cool in his pre-jumpsuit days.

And the day he died? I was playing stingball in my cousin's front garden in Ilfracombe, North Devon.

My Mum and Auntie came outside in tears, distracting me long enough to take a wet tennis ball at full speed on my bare thigh. I joined in their tears, but only as a result of the red welt my cousin inflicted on my leg - boys didn't cry over dead celebrities back then, no matter how cool they'd once been.

Anyway, I saw this somewhat cheesy, somewhat emotional duet with Elvis and Lisa-Marie and felt like sharing my favorite ballad by the King, during this anniversary period.

The movies may not hold up to much scrutiny any more but the songs will live on forever.

Personal Treasure Chest

A visit from my Mum has brought with it a wonderful, nostalgia-filled manilla envelope.

As a kid I loved to write short stories and she loved to read them. What I didn't know, what I hadn't even contemplated in the three decades since I wrote them, is that she kept them all!

There are literally hundreds of the little buggers, ranging from about two to seven pages in length, all hand written in an ever-evolving script.

For my benefit more than anybody elses, I thought I'd read through them and post any that I think deserve the light of day.

I'm going to open with a little number that gives a ten years old's view of preconceptions. I've re-written it here in it's exact form - grammar and spelling mistakes included.

"It's All Over Now!"

The van hurtled down the old country road towards Devon. It was late, dark and getting cold.

"Slow down Pete, we don't want to have an accident." Said Jo.

"O.K. love" pete answered and he eased his foot off the accelerator. After a while they were back up to 50 miles / hour.

Suddenly Pete's headlights shone onto a deer. The deers eyes glowed back at him. Jo grabbed the steering wheel to avoid hitting the deer, the car careened off the road and hit astone wall. Jo hit her head on the dashboard.

Pete opened his eyes and shoock his head as if to regain sense. He looked at Jo, she was unconscious.

"I'll have to go for help."

Pete wrenched himself from the drivers seat and began to walk towards the nearest village.

Jo woke to see an empty seat beside her. She panicked and tried to get out of her seat but,

"Ow! Ooh!" She couldn't move.

She lay back in her seat. "I'llput the radio on," she said to herself and turned the key in the ignition. She tuned in to radio Devon. She listened to the local news which said there were crowds of skin heads going to Devon for a big concert.

Suddenly a car stopped beside the van. Jo looked in and saw it was full of skin heads. She quickly locked all the doors.

"Look lads, someone has left us a van." They all looked in.

"Blimey, there's some woman in it!"

They tried to force the door open.

"Need any help, lady?" one asked. "Cor, she's bleeding!"

"Go away, leave me alone!" she screamed hysterically.

"Come on, we only want to help you, we'll give you a lift to the 'ospital."

Jo began to scream as if her life was threatened. One of the boys got a stone and smashed the side window. As he did this a police car and ambulance with Pete in came around the corner. Hearing the screams they presumed the boys were attacking Jo. The boys were grabbed by the police.

"But I was only trying to help her!" said the boy who broke the window.

"A likely story! You skin heads are all the same" said an officer.

"I was going to open the door and try to get her to 'ospital" argued the boy again.

Pete sat with Jo and hugged her. "It's o.k. love. The Police have got those skin heads now."

Jo began to cry on Pete's shoulder.

"Don't worry love. It's all over now."

Monday Morning Miracle

Who says there are no more heroes?




I've got the day off, it's hotter than Satan's Y fronts and I'm taking the kids to Schlitterbahn for some water park fun.

See y'all tomorrow.

Write what you know

I find myself in the unusual position of having both the time and the inspiration to develop 'Mirror Man' by several chapters. It has been rare lately for these two cruial ingredients to coincide.

But coincide they have and yesterday I sat down at the computer with a coffee and a seed of an idea for a sub-plot and before I knew it, I had 2,000 words drafted and a cold cup of coffee.

The thing that got my juices flowing is that this sub plot has been derived directly from actual events in my own life, several years ago. Taking those events and molding them into a fictional scene has been both an easy and a very satisfying task. I had great fun recalling the little hideaway bar in Paris where the events took place and recreating it on paper, together with its occupants. I then found equal joy in putting my characters into that setting and employing bucket-loads of creative lisence in retelling a very personal story.

The old addage of 'write what you know' certainly rings true in terms of ease of creativity. It remains to be seen, of course, if writing what I know interests anybody but me! The test will be when I polish the chapter today and send it out for critiquing.

Monday Morning Miracle

It's particularly difficult to come up with something that made me smile on this dismal Monday morning, particularly considering Edwin Van Der Sar saved three fricken penalties on Sunday.



Three.



And Man Utd. start to reduce their win deficit against Chelsea. I hope this isn't an indicator of the season to come.



Anyway, despite all that i still located a nice little picture in my inbox that managed to curl my lips upward:







Another thing to make me smile this morning is the knowledge that I have Friday and next Monday off!

See y'all later!

Earworms Guest Editor

I'm knee-wobblingly honoured to be selected for a second time as guest editor over at Swiss Tony's place.

Go check out ST's blog and see what sad tunes fill my head this week here

Take your time and explore the whole site - it's well worth your time.

ST pointed out, rather tellingly, I feel, that my last stint as guest editor also included "John Wayne is Big Leggy". I'm beginning to worry now; It can't just be the Night Nurse!

Have a great weekend y'all

Vignettes

My first draft chapters usually run at about 1,800 - 2,000 words. Once I've completed the entire first draft I'll go back and edit, usually bringing them up to around 2,500 words with added detail and missed logic from the first draft.

This chapter length isn't something I deliberately set out to achieve, it's just a natural break point in my story telling methods. When I'm reading I tend to prefer shorter rather than longer chapters and so I think my writing naturally follows a similar path.

So last night I came upon a minor problem: while drafting a bar scene in which the protagonist and a some support characters do a bit of bonding and foreshadowing, I'd reached my natural cut-off point but still had a large chunk of work to do. Valentine, the hero of 'Mirror Man' is about to reminisce with a little vignette which is intended to both solidify his love for his lost Father and raise questions about his real age.

Now, if I was writing a screenplay this would be easy; we'd either fade to a black and white sequence or have a 'Scooby Doo' moment where the screen goes all wobbly. But, in a novel, I'm not sure if a separate chapter for the flashback scene would be too clumsy?

Without a separate chapter however, I'm going to have one chapter in the book that's almost twice as long as the others and I don't know if that's equally jarring for the reader?

I think I will initially separate the flashback into its own chapter and see how it flows when complete. Any ideas? Have you ever been disturbed by a chapter that significantly differed in length from the main body of the story? Let me know...

Write On!

I tried to go to work yesterday, I really did. I got up and excused the dizziness as a function of the hour - 5.00 a.m.

My coffee tasted like mud, but it had been in the pot overnight and who knows, perhaps longer. My wife doesn't always drink it, so it could have been older.

The good news was, I could eat my cereal without the accompanying sensation of swallowing shards of ground glass. So that was nice. The antibiotics seem to have done their job.

I drove to the office at a dawdle; that should have been another clue for me that my world wasn't quite right. When the roads are relatively empty, as they are at 5.30 in the morning, I tend to flick the 'sport' button and drive my car as it was built to be driven, using the gears to slow it down, rather than the brakes.

It was only after I'd reached the office, sat down with a fresh coffee that tasted as much like mud as the first, and switched on the computer, that I realized the hazy, dull sensation was not going away.

By 9.30 the normal thrum of the office fluorescent lights felt like a banshee's scream and my computer monitor was a 13 inch square cut directly from the sun; blinding and cooking me at the same time.

By 9.45 I was called all sorts of names, accused of being a direct descendant of the gits who spread the black death, told to go home and not return until I'd stopped melting.

I went back home to bed, feeling just a little bit sorry for myself.

So this morning finds me feeling mentally much better - my eyes can focus on the screen and my mind can almost form literate sentences. The problem is, I'm still hacking and coughing and generally expelling all kinds of unwanted germ-clouds. So I plan to stay put, at the desk in my writing room, finish a couple of rough draft chapters of 'Mirror Man' and write a few critiques on 'The Next Big writer'.

The only thing I still can't cope with is the banal rantings of the radio 'personalities' but don't know what CD to put on. Any ideas on a 'soundtrack for the slightly sick'?