MATERIAL Collection No.
Thanks to our writers: A selection of the new talent in Newcastle Special thanks to Nick Christie for his Illustrations.
A little hello from us: Dear all, We just want to give a big thank you to everyone who has taken part in our second issue. We got so much good feedback for our debut and it is lovely seeing the submissions keep rolling in. A big thanks to Nick Christie for taking the time to do some fantastic illustrations to go with some of the pieces in this issue. We think they work really well, if you fancy giving it a go for one of the collections please get in touch. Enough from us, give this collection of local and contemporary literature a read, you’re bound to find something you like and then afterwards pass it on to someone else. We have limited copies and would really appreciate you helping us to get these little things read. Thanks again, Material.
(4-5)
Ass J. Maddison The Long Count
(6-9)
Philip Swann The Coop
(10-11)
Oliver Jeggo Keep Dumb and Carry On
(13)
James Lindsay Religion Roulette
(!4-16)
A Drive and a Stop
(17-19)
George Royle Untitled
(20-21)
Craig Tucker Too Much to Ask
(22-27)
Neil Campbell Hadrian’s Wall
Asa J. Maddison The long count.
1.
crash.
2.
Eyes open
3.
but not awake.
4.
Silhouettes of shapeless shadows
5.
menacingly hover over me.
6.
countdown in echoes, with your finger
7.
conducting the audience as the shadows sway.
8.
Eyes long to close, as the light fades.
9.
The roar of the crowd muffled behind cauliflower
Numbers
lugs. 10. The counting finger stops and mimes the words, ‘You’re out.’
Philip Swann The Coop I remember Mrs Collison. Nobody else in the store could recall serving her though. One day, she came to the check-out with a newspaper rolled under her arm and a chicken held to her chest. Mrs Collison was not the kind of lady to push a trolley around the floor, nor was she the kind of lady to sling a basket over her forearm. No. Mrs Collison managed just with her two hands and the angles her body. She lay the chicken on the counter and handed me the paper. She knew the man on the front, she eyed the picture but she didn’t say anything. It was all too horrible to speak of. ‘You know,’ she said fingering her handbag, ‘chickens like that one, they’re dead within
forty-eight days. Just imagine.’ ‘Forty-eight, really?’ ‘Oh, I’m quite sure yes.’ I looked at the shrink-wrap packaging of the chicken. Its flesh gave way to my fingertips and I couldn’t help but think I had become a part of its inevitable demise. I flipped the chicken in my hands but I couldn’t see anything about how it had been reared, how it had lived or how it had died. I passed the chicken beneath the scanner and slid it into a bag for Mrs Collison. ‘They go from this size,’ she said, holding her cupped hands before her, as though she was collecting water from a tap, ‘to that in seven weeks. Just imagine.’ I added the price of the newspaper to the chicken and asked Mrs Collison how she wanted to pay. She handed over a note and told me not to bother with the change.
‘And just think of the life they’ll have had in those seven weeks.’ She gripped the handles of the bag as I pushed it across the counter. ‘They won’t have seen any sunlight and they won’t have had room enough to spread their wings. They will have danced in their own excrement and sucked water from a rusting pipe. They will have grown steadily until they were entirely choked, until the shed was fit to burst and then,’ she said, leaning and lowering her voice to a stark whisper, ‘then, when there is no more growth to be ringed from their bodies, they’re zapped and cut and bled-white and plucked while still-twitching and half-warm.’ With that, Mrs Collison said good day and turned on her high heels. She clicked from
the store and slid through the slow automatic doors. She was only slight, a slender lady; perhaps the doors could not detect her movement. Anyway, it came as no great surprise the next morning when I arranged the newspapers. I saw the headline and the picture and I wasn’t so shocked to see that Mrs Collison had killed herself, bled -white in the bathtub and found by her child, sodden and half-warm.
Ollie Jeggo Keep Dumb and Carry On “OLIVER P. JEGGO studies English Literature and Creative Writing at Northumbria, and spends most of his time hunched over his notepad, chain-smoking and muttering to himself about the general state of society. He enjoys drinking, and does not enjoy talking in the third person.”
The T.V. crackles with the voice of some new speaker. Words, desperate, tell All will be fine. And across from here, in a distant place, another dies.
The woman with the bags hurries by, and His voice is left on the wind. The headlines talk of something but she’s got enough already, and she doesn’t want to know.
I look at this, and calculate. Some dark spots to this place. Erase the generations, and lead them to their fates. Next year it’ll be better. But still you have to wonder: How can we go on?
SEE THIS BOX? (Look for a thicker line close to the edge of the page. Got it? Good.)
We have one identical to this on our front cover (well done to those who figured that out) and we want to fill that one with an illustration for each upcoming issue. If you fancy it send us in a black and white illustration in the theme of the word “MATERIAL” or in the overall theme of our magazine.
THINK INSIDE THE BOX Can’t draw? Send us in some stories for us to read, you can type can’t you? GET TO IT!! SUBMISSIONS of any kind to: material.newcastle@gmail.com
DEADLINE FOR ISSUE 3: AUGUST 31ST
James Lindsay Religion Roulette
A smell of Faith is unique. Bookies and Churches, it’s the same. The suddenly aged congregation, gripping their creeds with gnarled crumpled fists, eyes never leaving those pearly gates at the three forty-five at Lucksin Downs. The horsemen of this apocalypse clear the first furlong with Last Hope starting strong; my whispered prayer begins, an urgent mantra“First. First. First.” In a flash, Judgement. Most slips fall whilst a bless’d few shuffle towards the altar to collect. Last Hope lost.
The Drive and The Stop
His door clicks shut first, hers following loud soon after. “This is mental.” He says as he messes around with the radio. He finds nothing, so opts to play the CD that had been jammed in there now for months. The CD makes three seconds without jumping. “Why should I make effort when people don’t bother doing the same for me?” she says. She straps her seatbelt around her and the suitcase she has pressed to her chest.
“I don’t have to take you to the station, I can just drive you.” He says. The girl considers this five-minute journey stretching instead into an hour. “Just take me to the station.” He drives on. The girl’s eyes are fixed on the road blurring past her outside. She should have been seeing the estate with the women standing around, wearing clothes too small to suit the winter months, followed by the road that winds down through the town to the station. Instead, they were on the motorway. “I don’t want you to take me the whole way, seriously.” “Ok,” he says. He doesn’t pull off to turn back. Soon the motorway delves into smaller roads and then those trail off and all the girl can see is sand fading out to muddy skies. She checks her phone for the time. Ten minutes until the next train. He pulls up and parks outside the ice cream parlor he used to take her to when she was young. The shutters are pulled halfway down and there’s one light on, but it was muted by the smudged windows and closed doors. He parks the car on the double yellow lines and gets out. The girl doesn’t move. Ten minutes tick away and the girl sits, looking anywhere but left at what the man was
doing. The girl checks her watch again and she pictures the train conductor deciding to skip checking peoples tickets on the one train she misses. The man taps on her window with his elbow, two 99s in his hand. She exhales hard but opens her door anyway and follows the man over the road to the empty beach. The girl’s hands shake against the wool of her gloves and she clings on to her ice cream. She waits for him to speak. He never was good with words. “Seems like the right time to get here, it’s like our private beach” She says. He smiles but says nothing. They stand there for a time, the girl forgets to check her constantly buzzing phone and has lost track of how many trains that have been and gone. “I got extra raspberry sauce on yours.” “I know.” Ice creams gone, the man takes the girl in his arms and hugs her until she feels her arms thawing. They go back to the car, huddling close. He drives her to the station. The girl stands outside the station and waits until the car pulls away to light the cigarette that had been tucked away in her pocket. Looking through the window to check she wasn’t too late, the girl catches the sight of her reflection and sees the left overs of vanilla ice cream that have dried on her nose. A smile pulls on her lips. She wipes at her nose with the hand she holds her tab in and with the other she takes out her phone, dials a number she knows off by heart and presses the green button to call.
George Royle “- sponsored by capitalism. if you don't like joy division I don't like you. definitely not in anyway possible whatsoever self-indulgent.”
I am in a bath full of cold water. My eyes are sore and the tiles of the bathroom shimmer out of focus. Looking around; everything is simply what it seems to be, no more no less. I’m wearing a tuxedo which feels heavy from the weight of the water. It doesn’t fit me right and nothing is happening. That’s something of a lie, something is happening, I’m just not there to see it. I can only assume that everything on the other side of that door is going to plan. From what I can hear, the people outside are enjoying themselves. There is music, talk, merriment and other whathaveyous. Many sounds are blurring into one. I reach for the pack of cigarettes inside my inner pocket, and inside there is one left. One cigarette is sadder than no cigarettes. Not that it matters, as it is soaking wet. Where did I put that beer down? Maybe I finished it, maybe there’s more somewhere else. I’ll go grab one later. I’m in no rush and I’m not going to lie to you; I have no intention of moving. I loosen my tie and
the sides of the bath. I hear a knock on the door, and I grumble back in response. I meant for them not to enter, but the door opens and a girl walks in. She is maybe my age but I find ages hard to tell these days. She is wearing a white dress which I am staring at as she closes the door behind her. “What are you doing?” “The fuck’s it look like? bath.”
I’m having a
She is holding a cocktail glass in one hand, out of which there is a red glow. She shifts her body weight onto one side, tilting her head at me. “Well I need to piss, do you mind moving on?” “Just go.” “Why should I be the one to go away?” “No, you don’t understand. You don’t have to leave the room, just piss in the toilet.” “You’re fucking joking.” She looked annoyed and I shrugged my shoulders. She went on; making noises about me having to leave but I tuned out. My tinnitus acted up and I could only hear a high pitched tone screeching from all sides. The noise numbs my
head. She just keeps talking. Interrupting her I say, “I ain’t leaving.” She crosses her arms and looks annoyed. While talking on and on she had started to jitter from one side to the other, getting more desperate. There is a long silence and then she walks over to the toilet. She puts her cocktail glass on the floor. I turn my head away as she raises her dress and pulls down her underwear. When she started to piss I leant over the side of the bath and grabbed the glass. “Hey!” “Sorry.” I speak to her in-between drinking. “Toilet-tax.” She sighs and rubs her face with her hands, smudging her make-up here and there. My tinnitus fades away and I can now hear her pissing next to me. It is the only clear sound that can be heard. She finishes, wipes herself, stands up, and looks at me. She does not know what to do with herself and I pass her drink back. “Thanks.” She does not respond and we look at each other for an achingly long amount of time.
Craig Tucker “I am an English Literature and creative writing student and I've just completed my first year of study. My main hobbies and interests are football, music, reading and writing. Poetry is something I have always had trouble getting my head around but I've realised this year that just because I have difficulties understanding poetry it doesn't mean I can't try to write it”
Nick illustrates the Northern skyline for Craig’s poem.
Too Much to Ask
We can hear the chime of the town’s clock and see the smoke rings fill the air, I breathe in your stale perfume as I run my fingers through your hair.
You say thank God for Strawberry Jam, the Full English and Yorkshire tea, that Northern sky you hold so dear and the things we see, that they’ll never see.
So tell me, would a kiss be too much to ask? When you fit me, like a cold November morning fits the thermos flask.
Neil Campbell Hadrian’s Wall They live in a rented house with single glazed windows and solid fuel heating. It is on a farm estate, with a view at the back of pine plantations and fields of sheep and highland cattle, and a view at the front of fields of sheep leading up to the Carlisle to Newcastle road. The military road runs beyond the next ridge of hills and above that is Hadrian’s Wall. Plenmeller is bisected by a road that runs from Whitfield, on the other side of Plenmeller Common and down to the A69. John and Ian are watched by their mother Sarah as they skip and run down the very edge of the road past the farm and more rented houses, beyond RC Containers that covers over the colliery closed in the 1960’s. They run out of her sight and down the hill to the A69 and wait patiently to cross the road. A lorry passes with POLLOCK SCOTRANS on the side, followed by a logging truck. Crossing the road they follow the path of the old Alston to Haltwhistle branch line and then go over the fast flowing South Tyne via the Alston Arches viaduct, criss-crossed by blackbirds as they run down the gravel path where trains once headed for Slaggyford and Alston.
In twenty two years of living there Sarah has never really walked anywhere other than to Haltwhistle and back. There she does her shopping, or care work when the boys are at school, delivering food to pensioners or going out with them through the town. Often she sits in a cafe called La Toot to talk with friends over a coffee, or better still, sit by herself for some peace and quiet. More often than not she avoids any kind of introspection. Having devoted herself for so long to others, she can no longer find a way back to herself. She spends a lot of the day in winter keeping the house warm by attending to the fire, heaping coal on coal so that the chimney pot sends out thick smoke all day and the house is warm enough for her and the boys. Even so, some mornings they all wake from under their multiple blankets to see solid sheets of ice covering the inside of the windows. It is John, the eldest, who first starts exploring the farmland and hills by walking through them much as his father would have done during his time as a shepherd on the Unthank Estate. Moles hang on barbed wire fences, put there by the gamekeeper to mark his tally. Different lines show different stages of decomposition, some moles plump with thick fur, others decayed into muddy string. As he walks the footpath towards Broomhouse
Common he looks through forests of pine. As the path takes him higher he can see over towards Greenhead, turn and see great stretches of Hadrian’s Wall in the distance, mile castles at Walltown Crags and Cawfields, Hotbank Farm, and on towards the fort at Housesteads. When he gets home he asks his mother to get him a map and when she does he traces the route with his finger. At school in Haydon Bridge he gets books from the library about the Romans. The family get a Border collie pup from a farm in Shap and when it is old enough John begins to take it on walks across Broomhouse Common. Sarah looks up the hillside from the kitchen window and watches as Sooty drags John along in spurts and jerks towards running away sheep and slightly puzzled highland cattle, some with horns pointing up, some pointing down, and all looking slightly comical with their fringes covering their eyes. John diverts off the path and out of her sight to stand and gaze across the lake, sitting with Sooty on a large rock near the tiny wooden jetty that reaches out into the water. Blackbirds like those on the branch line criss-cross them. He hears the calls of buzzards echoing around the amphitheatre and watches ducks flying in formation before landing in a splash that excites Sooty, who jumps and pisses and barks. A grey heron sits on a rock in the middle of the lake.
John follows the path up to the common where pheasant cocks pursue hens and the sunlight glints on rivulets and burns through the orange brown of the moorland. The calls of curlews and lapwings fill the air. Below them the South Tyne Valley is covered in mist so that only the ridge of Hadrian’s Wall can be seen above it. A strip of rainbow light that doesn’t seem part of a rainbow hangs among the mist as the morning sun warms a rowan tree on the moorland. John explores inside a derelict building called Warren House with Sooty sniffing madly. There are great gaping holes of sky lit roofing, skirting boards still there, old stone fireplaces and a smashed Belfast sink. John sits in the stone settlement beside the house, looking at the shapes of stones and thinking he’ll ask Mrs Moss about them when he gets back in school. Rabbits run all around them, in and out of the warrens that give the house its name. John looks across past Park View and over towards the hills above Featherstone Rowfoot. Ian sits on his knees before the TV and plays a computer game, and looks through the window as a boy racer from Haltwhistle comes flying through the hamlet of Plenmeller. They speed along the road from Whitfield where they know there are no police cars or speed cameras, and their tyres can hug the tarmac on tight bends that if missed will only plunge them into
soft moorland bog. Ian passes his driving test first time. The desire for a car leads him to go straight into work from school. He gets a job as a fork lift truck driver at RC Containers in Plenmeller. He saves up his money and later on parks the Golf in the car park, in sight of reception. He takes Helen from reception out for a long drive through Northumberland, up the A68 towards Otterburn and then back down the B road through Bellingham. Another time he parks on the crest of the moorland above Plenmeller, sunsets in the big skies flooding the car with pink as he takes her in his arms for a kiss. It is the summer holidays when John sets off through Plenmeller, past the container plant and across the Carlisle to Newcastle road, then up and over the South Tyne via the Alston Arches viaduct. He walks along Main Street in Haltwhistle, through the Sainsbury’s car park and then through a housing estate before passing an old mill tower and joining up with the path beside Haltwhistle Burn. He follows the path up to the military road which he crosses before bearing right and joining up with the path again near Cawfields Quarry. At Milecastle 42 he begins the first of his climbs up the escarpments of the wall, a wall that he has read about as being ten feet tall in
in Roman times, but that now had been reduced to about three or four feet, thanks to many years of locals taking the stones for house building, road building, all kinds of building nearby. John looks over the wall at the broad expanses of cow dotted moorland on Melkridge Common. He passes Winshields and Steel Rigg and walks above Crag Lough and looks over the cliff edge of the Whin Sill, way down to the white dots of swans on the water. Two men fish from a rowboat by the shore. He sees the wind rippling across the lough, sending shivers through it, in his sweating wonders about swimming. He carries on walking beyond Sycamore Gap, up steep stone steps and back up onto the wall, up, along, down, past Hotbank Farm and Cuddy’s Crags and on to Housesteads Fort. From Sewingshields he sees Broomlee Lough, the long stretch of grassland leading to it dotted with black cattle, white cattle, highland cattle, tiny china figures with specks of sun on their backs. The lough itself shimmers and ripples like Crag Lough but looks different from this distance, bluer, bigger, more isolated, wild, dating way before even the wall alongside of which he walks. The Pennine Way path leads over the wall from Cuddy’s Crags and off to the left, beyond that Wark Forest and Kielder Water and the Cheviots. He walks back along the wall to Cuddy’s Crags and takes the Pennine Way footpath and carries on walking until he gets to Bellingham.
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