Activity 8.6

You should try to put him out of your mind. The only trouble is, every time your mind's not busy with something else it takes itself off and thinks about him before you get a chance to stop it. Sometimes when your mind should be concentrating on what your maths teacher is explaining, it up sticks and wanders off into that part of itself where Adrian lives. And then you find your eyes following suit, wandering off Mrs Hall's blackboard and finding the back of his head. Staring at him, willing him to turn around. But he never does.

Not like that afternoon all those weeks ago. Why was he being so friendly to you then? Was it because there was no one else around? Might he harbour secret feelings for you too? Setting off home over the fields after the bus broke down, you'd never have thought Adrian'd want to walk with you, or talk with you. But it was as though a magic wand had sprinkled you with fairy dust and all of a sudden you were the only two people in the world. You chatted about this and that laughed and took the mickey out of teachers and the other kids at school. It was as though the two of you did this every day of your lives. And he looked at you with such sparkle in those wonderful grey eyes of his. Adrian was one of the cooler kids at school. You knew his family were less well-off than yours – he lived in one of the few council owned houses in the village. But this gave him a certain caché and along with his rebellious long hair and scruffy school uniform, were part of the attraction. You were always smart in your school uniform. Your mother made sure of that. She would never let you go out with a frayed cuff or an un-ironed shirt. Being smart was never cool. Neither was being clever. Your attention wandered back to Mrs Hall. She is writing an equation on the blackboard. She turns to the class and asks who would like to try to solve it? Your hand goes up, as usual.

Activity 7.5

I thought I would always remember this, but over time it must have become blurred. I was seventeen and he was just twenty. We had been seeing each other for a couple of months and I think we were pretty much in love. I had just passed my driving test and was determined to get some practice. It was the most beautiful, sunny, autumnal day, so we decided to drive to the top of box Hill for a picnic. I think we planned some great spread with ginger beer, sandwiches, scotch eggs and cream cakes. But we spent too long in bed in the morning and by the time we got our act together all we could find in my dad's fridge were a few cold sausages and some nearly stale bread. I can't remember now if there were many other people there. It's a hugely popular beauty spot, so there were probably hundreds. We must have walked away from the crowds because I don't remember anyone disturbing us. Maybe we were so wrapped up in each other that a herd of elephants could have stampeded by and we wouldn't have noticed. We lay our picnic blanket under a tree and at some point we must have chewed our way through the nearly stale sandwiches. I don't remember what we talked about or even how long we stayed there for. The image I remember, almost like a photograph that glows in my memory like yesterday, had nothing to do with where we were, the panoramic view or even the lovely young man. It was the view straight up through the golden-hued canopy of leaves. Transcendently beautiful autumn colours with sunlight pouring through them, all set against a watery blue sky.

I have often, in subsequent years, looked up through the leaves of trees in the autumn, searching out the same perfect combination of light, leaves and sky. I have never seen it again.

And the young man? Reader, I married him!

5.1

She absent-mindedly flipped the dog-eared business card between her fingers. In front of her were a blank sheet of paper and a jar of sharpened pencils. What was she to write? Inspiration came slowly in this dark and dusty room. She tried to write everyday but always allowed herself to become distracted. The new laptop – her link to the outside world – was tucked away under some books. But it was calling to her. The chat rooms and virtual worlds where she lived her life were beckoning to her from within the closed fold of the computer. But she resisted, for now. She looked again at the business card between her fingers. 'Derek Stone – Sales Manager'. He had tried to get her to buy his carpet cleaning service. He was nice looking – that's why she'd let him in. She enjoyed chatting to him, playing along with his patter. After he'd left she'd thought often about ringing him up, inviting him for coffee. But he might have wanted to go out. And she couldn't do that. In her imaginings she'd got as far as asking Janine to bring her in some auburn hair dye. But there it sat still, gathering dust. She put the card away and addressed herself anew to the blank sheet of paper. What is it they say? Write about what you know? All she knew was within the walls of her tiny flat between the withered poinsettia on the window sill and the dusty radio in the kitchen. That, and the world inside her laptop, where she could be anything and anyone. She shifted the books to one side, slid the laptop in front of her and opened the lid.

Smooth Pencil

 

The more I write, the more I realise that I like to write in pencil, on paper. Rather than typing on my laptop or using a pen. The computer has too many distractions and my attention is soon away from the job in hand onto something less important and more inane. And pens never seem quite right. The choice of the right pencil is becoming more and more of an obsession. I used to use those plastic things where the lead pops out of the end when you press the rubber-tipped end. But the plastic doesn't feel right in my hands. So I mostly use HB pencils from WH Smith. They are painted a lovely, soothing blue-grey colour and they feel silky to the touch. They have rubbers on the ends and are just about the perfect pencil. However, I do like them sharp, so my small stock is rapidly diminishing in size as they get sharpened away.

The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry

I bought this the other day & have been slowly working my way through it. Its a bit like an OU work book, but with jokes. I was already a fan of Stephen Fry's but now I think I will be worshipping at his feet & erecting a statue in hs honour. I have already managed to write two or three couplets that may develop into something useable for A215 and I have only got to about page 40. I keep the scribblings from the exercises in my notebook, so the whole thing dovetails nicely with a bit of daily writing. Well worth the effort & the doing it properly. Cannot recommend this highly enough.

Some Haikus.

Cows chewing grass
Shaded beneath apple tree.
Crumble and cream, yum.


Reflective, hard watch.
Dismissing time with cold hands.
Patience; waiting; done.


Small, hard, black flies
Whizzing, buzzing round my head.
Wish you were all dead.


Two Haikus on spider's webs.

Spider's webs, inside dust
Accumulates. Slatternly.
Hoover all up quick!

Outside, jewels, diamonds
Glistening on morning webs.
Nature's perfect dew.

Cycles

Today my daughter learnt to ride her bike without stabilisers. She is enormously proud of her achievement and has spent much of the afternoon calling her grandparents to tell them about it. I have only vague memories of the day I learnt to ride a bike. I do remember that it was red and new – not my brother's hand-me-down. I think I was pedalling down the lane outside our house and my Dad was holding on to the back. Then all of a sudden he wasn't holding on and I was doing it myself. My daughter's memories are unlikely to be so vague. I had my camera at the ready and shot several short videos of her wobbling towards me. What she might not remember is the ride along the road by the river, where she fell into the hedge a couple of times – with the scratches to prove it. But – and this I am most proud of – each time she fell, she got up, got back on and had another go. I could hear her next to me, muttering under her breath, 'I can do it, I will do it...' I'm sure this part of her memory will fade as the scratches on her arm heal. But I won't ever forget that.

A215 is underway!

Activity 1.1!

(response to a piece by Raymond Carver about real life getting in the way of writing and priorities)

Like Carver, I can blame domestic chores for getting in the way of just getting on with it. I also allow myself to think that it matters whether or not I have the right pens, pencils, notebooks or even computer screen in front of me. In the past I have spent pointless time and money on those things rather than just grabbing the nearest piece of paper and whatever writing implement is closest to hand. My latest (and grandest) fantasy is to build a beautiful, glass-walled pavilion in the garden, where I will sit, in splendid isolation, writing my Pride and Prejudice for the 21^st century. Happily, I read this extract from Carver's 'Fires' before the foundations had been dug!

On neither youth nor middle age.

In the hinterland between youth and middle age,

Spreading, greying, neither spread or greyed,

Some idealistic saplings still growing

Reality not yet cut through the thicket.

Gazing down at the generation coming,

To them impossibly old, impossibly powerful

Yet so weak in the face of life’s disasters.

The solution, maybe to plant the same ideals?

And on much the same theme...

Late afternoon in Epping Forest


A log, solid and ancient lies still in the wood,
My memories of love lay in a drawer, undisturbed.
Was it love? Turning again to this spot in time
Dark hair, dark eyes in the gathering dusk.


We sat on the log, not touching, speaking,
The words between us floating in the air,
Our breath mingling, evaporating and waiting,
Words never spoken, out of reach, like leaves.


My mind's eye wanders now and again
To the wood. Courage failed us both, not
Wanting truly to know. An accidental kiss
Then going home, separately, each to our others.

Epping Forest

We parked the car among the dribble of others going for a walk on a damp January afternoon. The city hum continued in the background as we made our way, like pilgrims, into the wood. Really it was a left over scrap of ancient forest; the suburbs have encroached so far now that little remains. We were there out of some misplaced romantic notion that a walk in the countryside was a good idea. It was so barely countryside as to be laughable. The M25 continued its murmuring in the distance.

We were both younger then. He was dark and to my eyes, certainly handsome. I was, well, young enough to still consider myself young, but only just. And I was married; to someone else. We had known each other for years and there had always been a something between us. A slight spark. My heart always did something funny when I saw him. His kiss on my cheek at meeting always seemed to linger. Anyway, having not seen each other for a few years, about six months earlier, out of the blue, we had started to exchange brief, infrequent emails. The internet and email were still new then. Before meeting up with old flames through friends reunited had become a cliché. You could say we were early adopters – cliché-wise. And we weren't old flames either. We had never got beyond the sparks from the tinder box. Maybe that was why neither of us seemed able to let the other go. I can't remember now who sought out whom – but whether him or me – we must have made ourselves pretty easy to find.

We walked side by side down into the woods. Great, ancient beech trees lined the paths and last autumn's leaves were soggy under foot. I don't remember what we talked about, only that there was this atmosphere between us. An elephant in the woods – the size of one of the beech trees surrounding us. Neither of us was brave enough to make the first move. To find out whether the other was thinking or feeling the same thing. At one point he asked about my marriage and how it had come about. But we shirred off down another path before we got onto difficult terrain. Eventually we sat down on a log at the top of the hill. We could see the tall buildings of the city in the distance and the sun starting to go down behind them. He told me he had only ever been in love once in his life. I lacked the courage to ask when, or with whom. He must have wanted me to, surely?

We sat on a damp, cold log. Our hands so close together I could feel the warmth from him. It would have taken only the slightest movement to have brought about a great change in our relationship to each other. I have no doubt now, looking back, that we were both thinking the same thing. That slight movement would have lead on to many more. That we wanted to find out what it was between us that we had always sensed. What was it that made us hang back? For his part I can only guess. Maybe the one time he had been in love had ended so painfully that he didn't want to take that walk again? Maybe he just wasn't sure enough of me. For my own part, I guess, deep down I really did know that I loved my husband and that for me that this was some kind of romantic adventure. An attempt to sure up my ego perhaps, or maybe just to add some excitement to my life. Eventually we got up and walked back to the car. The good bye hug was slightly prolonged but went no further than being a good bye.

First steps

These are my first attempts at creative writing in preparation for the Open University course A215 that I'm starting soon. Please leave comments but be forgiving.