Collection #004 With special thanks to Writers' Cafe Newcastle and all of our writers
Hello! … And a belated happy new year to all! Since it’ s the first issue of the year we’ ve had a small make over and tried to pack as many quality pieces in it as possible; nothing better to remedy the cold than a hot drink and some local creative writing! A big THANK YOU from us this issue goes out to the Writers’ Cafe who are kindly putting on our launch in the form of a delightful evening of spoken word and music. Writers’ Cafe Newcastle is a fantastic institution that provides writers a space to meet creatively and write in various locations in the area. If you are interested in attending a session or event run by Writers Cafe Newcastle s fear not – there’ s a list of their upcoming dates later on in this collection. We are excited to be launching the blog in the next few weeks, so if there’ s anything you want to discuss, any creative writing news you fancy sharing with us or any creative writing you’ d like to get published on the site for that matter please send an email with a subj ect title “BLOG” over to :
material. newcastle@gmail. com, and we’ ll see what we can do! So to round we hope you are enj oying the new year and that you enj oy reading through this issue and a big thanks to all of those that are a part of making this happen.
Happy reading!
- Material
Sir Francis Drake on Desert Island Discs I suppose you hated the Spaniards? Less than I hated the English journalists, Who made me into a national hero For finishing a game of bowls. Had the Armada won the day, They would have hung me out to dry For precisely the same scenario. I can see the headlines now: Drake bowled over! Her Majesty Carpets Drake! Plymouth H! Ho1Ho! What a load of Bowls! Why did you finish the game? My preparations were complete. The Spaniards, on their way, were not there yet. To rush and fret would just have wasted strength. It was a space with just a game to play, A time with only this to say: Be still. Focus. Gather force.
Did you learn anything from the bowls? My last shot took me from 2 down To 3 up and won the match. I knew with lightening clarity Everything changes in an instant. Your last piece of music? I’d like Sailing by Rod Stewart
- Aidan Clarke
Miss Bone I was 17 and studying at Bath Lane College of Art when I noticed a poster on the notice board “Volunteers needed. Can you help the elderly, gardening, decorating, shopping?” I didn`t want to do any of those so I opted for visiting and chatting. I was living in Benwell at the time, so when they chose my first assignment to be in Gosforth, it meant jumping the number 1 bus into town, then the number 2 out. I knocked on the door of a house near Matthew Bank; Miss Hilda Bone answered then shuffled back into her sitting room leaving the door open for me to follow. Standard lamp, lace curtains, two comfy chairs with a tiny wooden table between and a large dining table beneath the window with a budgie and cage set square in the middle on a lacy tablecloth. What did old people talk about I wondered? None of my grandparents had survived from when I was eight years old, so I had no reference points. I would take some commemorative royal family stamps. Old people like the royal family don`t they? After polite introductory conversation, I produced the stamps to which Miss Bone snorted “I wouldn`t wipe my arse on them!” From that point I knew we would get on. She told me about her niece who was “A right snob.” “Telling aal and sundry that our name is pronounced Bonee, I mean, where is the apostrophe? It`s Bone, plain Bone!” We laughed when I told her about a lass in my class who`s surname was Tickle and who insisted on being known as Tickell. Every Sunday I took the newspapers, she made cheese sandwiches with military pickle and we drank tea. The budgie, Billy Bone, was left to roam free, hanging from her hearing aid wire, she`d swat him like a fly, then you`d hear a wheeee, wheee noise from the aid. She didn`t
half get in a strop when she had to adjust them. Billy would fly off to the net curtains leaving little claw holes all over. I noticed her feeding him one day pouring a tiny amount of seed into his dish. “There you are” she said “Your dinner” I mentioned that you`re just supposed to fill up the dish so they can help themselves. “Ah naa, he`ll get too fat, he needs a little for his breakfast, dinner and tea, or he`ll get too fat man.” I wondered how, after visiting Miss Hilda Bone for three months, how Billy had survived, until I watched him fly behind the curtain at the front window. When I took a peek, there he was, up to his thighs in seed, standing inside a huge Kilner jar with no lid. I didn`t mention this to Hilda. She said “Look, he doesn`t eat much anyway, there`s still lots of seed still in his dish.” I took her outside and blew over the top, all the husks flew off, she still didn`t understand. But Billy would be ok, so long as she didn`t find the lid. “I`ve got a lovely cream cake for you today” she said as she opened the door. As the table was so small, she set down the cheese and pickle sandwiches, then did a couple of revolutions with the cake as if deciding where it should go. We ate the sandwiches and drank tea, but I didn`t see any more of the cake, until she stood up to take the plates away. The cake was stuck to her arse and as she moved it fell to the floor, squashed into a huge disc. I was helpless with laughter, but laughing so much that I couldn`t explain. She began laughing with me although she didn`t know why. She coughed her false teeth out into my bag. “I divn`t like ganin into anybodies bag, will you get them oot?” I said “I`m not getting them.” And shoved the beg in her direction. We used to spend a little time scanning through the newspapers. I took the Sunday Post, Mail and the Sun. As I was reading, I noticed that she was reading the back page of mine. “Oh, that must have been painful.” She said
“What?” I replied turning to the page in question. “Malcolm MacDonald rips back.” It wasn`t worth the bother to explain football speak. A neighbour across the hall started to bring Hilda a hot dinner every Sunday. She waited till the door closed behind her, then she shuffled into her kitchen plate up for two. Turkey, beef, lamb with always a lovely selection of vegetables and mash with butter. We enjoyed this treat for some time and it was all I could do not to compliment her on the tasty food! The neighbour started to admire a sewing cabinet of Hilda`s, always commenting how lovely it was each time she set the food down. Hilda asked me to take it home with me, and the dinners stopped soon after. I arrived one day, she was very distressed, Billy Bone had gone missing, she suspected that he had flown out when she`d took out rubbish to the bin. She decided to place the cage on the path outside to see if he would recognise it and fly back. When he didn`t appear, she brought the cage back in and set it down on the table. Next day, she picked the cage up to try once more, and there on the table lay Billy, as dead as a doornail. Probably standing there, wondering where his house had gone when it was planted on top of him. She swore that she would never keep another bird. We enjoyed many a Sunday chatting and sharing cheese and pickle sandwiches and the newspapers. She continued to delight an impressionable teenager with her tales about the luncheon club. “I don`t know how they can be bothered” she spoke of the other diners. “Counting out how many sprouts this one has, or who`s got a thicker piece of meat than the other!” or the time when I called to be told that a plug on her electric fire was sparking, a neighbour had fitted a new plug for her. “I could have been gassed to death!” I sent this story to a friend recently and they asked “What`s Military
Pickle?” I said I couldn`t tell you, I just ate it at Hilda`s, so I Google`d it. It was made by Haywards, who have now been taken over by Premier Foods of Bury St Edmunds, who make mixed pickle, piccalilli, gherkins in vinegar, pickled beetroot, strong pickled onions, silverskin onions and red cabbage, but apparently, you can only get Military Pickle in China.on www.expatsinchina.com. I can just hear Hilda if she`s listening “Aa can ownly ger it in China noo, what`s gannin on? Yi`ll be tellin me that they`re bringin coals to Newcastle next” That as well Hilda, that as well.
- Yvonne Young
Monteleone, Sabini There’s a photo of you smiling under the ever-present sun, thick pines, red berries, darkening olive trees. You brighten this tranquil place like an autumn breeze; browning leaves blown on their backs, honey, golden, copper silhouettes. You’ve taken a deep breath and relaxed into the scene. Everyone’s grinning standing alongside the mountain wrapped in a scarlet blanket Why are you so happy?
Caught between a stroll through a chain of lilac lakes, and the pen hovering over your page this journey makes it all worthwhile. Let the turn of the landscape ring out in orange laughter. Let the delighted magpies sing out your stay.
- Sheree Mack
Not Good Enough
You scream like a terrible fox. Daddy! Daddy! We are lost. I am not a magician – not your Jesus. But you seem to like strawberries, still. I bring pre-prepared punnets. Topped and tailed, you fumble with their seedy flesh, lowering chapped lips (tell nurse)to mitten paws. Sometimes, fingers meet mouth, releasing red through greying incisors to budded white tongue. You feel it, I think,the wet on your whiskers, the pulp on your gums. I see a look (grateful, now, for any look) I place it: my downy newborns on your generous chest; the up and down of your breath; the relief, the envy, the relief, the envy lapping at our island of grudging entente: they’re just like their daddyworshipped like your son. Safe ground amidst near-miss connections, shelter from snide side-swipes, from accusing tones (grateful, now, for any tone). From simmering debates on disposables versus terries, tofu versus steak, yoghurt versus cream, plain versus sugar on their strawberries.
I catch that look. I see you see me through the dark eyes of my young. Home! I am not a magician – not your Jesus. I offer more fruit.
- Helen Anderson
Dark Sand
Underneath the dark sand, Where the dead Seagulls lie, The beam of the Lighthouse shines through each grain, Creating strands of colour That melt into the beach.
-
David Huntley
Musical City
There across the river, the glass shell of the concert hall, scripted music. Here the urban orchestra strikes up. Arpeggios of motor engines before and after the traffic lights. A distant train blares a short horn solo and gulls shriek a mournful chorus. Voices accompany footfall as a girl sings an atonal, loud, aria, into a mobile phone. An ambulance siren marches on, while in a shop a refrigerator hums gently in welsh. The bus hisses a collapsed chord as its movement ends and it squats beside me. Then, as I step on board, its band of regimental drummers rattle the windows in greeting. The epiphenomenal music of the city.
- Keith Parker
A Cry Potatoes were the staple. That’s no old wives’ tale. You ate potatoes. Champ or parsley buns, boiled in their red skins, or peeled for stovies. “Quet jibblin’” she’d say “and get them peeled or else there’ll be no dinner.” She was aye ‘deaved’ or ‘doyled’ ‘scunnered wi’ gowlin’ we’ens’; her life one long mealtime. But I remember despite her onion eyes, love in a pot of hot stovies; bacon, onion, boiled potato cubes, seasoned, simmering. Then bluebirds on the willow-pattern plate.
- Oonah V Joslin
il museo dell’oumo
the walker’s shortbread tin of carefully pinned moths, a work in progress, the texaco ‘74 world cup coin set, missing number 11, the beer-mats & the stamps, neither sustainable, the 1:72 scale luftwaffe fighters minus the prototype jets. the tsb gonks which had aggravated his asthma. the fragmented clay pipes, the ticket stubs & the comics, the almost entire back-catalogue of early clash singles on 7 inch coloured vinyl, the fading polaroids of nameless girls at soulless parties, his father’s 1936 first edition of lenin’s collected works in twelve pristine volumes but missing number 11. two grown-up sons & an arthritic labrador, his wife estranged & recently remarried. a whole slow life plagued by the almost, a whole slow life to learn of absence; the archivist’s curse of incomplete collections.
- Paul Summers
Overcome
And suddenly, a sleek white forest of turbines, indifferent to the sky, white on grey. I stand gawping in a blustery lay-by, mesmerised by tapered steel limbs smoothly whipping the ragged air. They are powerful in their obedience, sensual in their constant movement, strangely erotic. I’m in the middle of unsettling angles, examining identical bodies, an artist in a clones’ still life class. But these are no ordinary models. Gargantuan and erect, an industrial third sex, disconcertingly Other. And I touch my chest, I run my hand over the fine stubble on my head; I look up and laugh and feel accepted.
- Catherine Aryes
Write for Material Collection number 5 Email your creative writing submissions to:
material. newcastle@gmail. com
Perfect. Her legs are surgically lengthened, tottering by on leather contraptions, half-stilts, half-binders, that giver her that sought-after shape. She can worry about the pain later, alone. Her dress, the designated female uniform, specifically designed for specific sexuality – as well as conveniently highlighting the imperfections that would need to be fixed at her next appointment. Underneath the silk and cotton lie a myriad of scars. Any part of her body that could stand it has been dyed – arms, eyes, hair, teeth, gold, green, blue, white. Her eyes are widened, her eyelashes extended – “Maybelline; anything under 2 inches just won’t do!” – her mouth is a red, plump smear of chemicals that destroys her ability to laugh, touch, kiss…drink correctly. Fixed in a permanent, vapid smile. Her meals have been noted down, scrutinised, rationed since she was 12 years old. She counts her blessings – some start younger. Her body started out as a small, pink ball of soft flesh. Her mind was always growing, learning, ready to embrace any passion, overcome any task. A beautiful little human. But, in these enlightened, modern days, humanity is unfashionable.
Now, she is a broken, sharp, hardened mess, her bones snapped into a hundred unnatural positions, her head whirling with nothing but panic and sorrow and distorted, fun-house mirror versions of herself – imported directly from other people’s eyes into her own head. As this defeated creature passes by, those who did this to her watch her go, lounging in their smug, self-styled innocence – those otherworldly ones who put the dye in her hand, the scalpel to her flesh, they tut at each other, their own perfect red lips curved in a pout of pity, and their crystal tears fall down their porcelain skin, as they ask each other; “Why can’t she just love herself as she is?"
- Emma Whitehall
JUST A WITCH --
John Conway
The young boy limped through the snow, blood lay in his tracks. Around him windows glared defiantly at the night, but in the sea fog the lights of the street felt like they were blanketed, pale and orange they failed in their task. As the fatigue and pain and grief pounded against the boy's skull, he understood that the meeker the lights shrank the closer the glaive was in return, he had to keep running. The crossroad waited ahead, just a few minutes past that until the guest-house was in sight. Please. Please. She was just a witch. The voice was in his ear, he had to repress the urge to turn, because he knew that the glaive wasn't actually right behind him, couldn't be... still... She was just a witch. The voice repeated. The sight ran through his mind again, the corpses in the temple. Headless, even the si-lent and stern Mistress Wu who had seemed... seemed so... he had screamed then. How had that man got to them first? The boy had been promised, many things, by those now slaughtered, and by the prophecy that had said... A car almost did the glaive's work for him, as it was the boy fell as it blared past; his bro-ken arm took the worst of it but no time to acknowledge that now. Ignoring the pain, and the car that did not stop, he dragged himself up to run again. Footsteps in the snow, the boy risked one quick glance and saw the glaive's ragged cloak whip around a
lithe and grim figure; the man walked, never ran, and still he was catching the boy. Above, the air was filled with the sound, it echoed in circles, from the voice of the serv-ants. Witch. A taunt rising, again and again, it had been written repeatedly in her blood, the stump of her severed arm the brush, the church walls the canvas. Witch. And the glaive had been standing there, waiting, that creepy man who had always seemed one step behind, had always shrieked in pantomime rage as the boy had seemed to gain victory after victory. And then he was smiling, happily, like a teenager with his first love, and the boy realised he was a mouse being toyed with by a cat. Well. The glaive had spoken in a soft, slightly camp voice, so different to the sneering drawl he had addressed the boy with in their earlier encounters. That's what you get when you stand in the way of the dark. And then he’d come for the boy, the boy who'd raised the trinkets he’d collected, marvels and treasures that a prophecy had said would consume this representative of one of the world’s more sinister faces. And as their subtle trails of delicate magic had begun to fill the air he’d panicked, and almost dropped one. But that hadn’t mattered, because the glaive's hand had twitched as though a dramatic gesture was too much effort, and they had crum-bled from his grip and into ash. The ragged cloaked man had smiled again, consolingly. I can read ancient prophecies too, you know. So very nice of them to tell me what was going to happen in advance. I do so hate to spoil it for you all, but regrettably it must be so. I'd offer you the chance of surrender - flee with your life, join my hellish crusade perhaps - but that would be rather silly of me, yes? Then he'd come for the boy, and the boy had ran. Through snow drowned streets that smelt of the sea, pounding through the tiny village, he had run to the house of Roe, and found the door shattered, and the man dead inside, his naked body quartered. The others had all been in the
church, there was no-one now. I got to them all. The glaive had gloated in whispers across the clamour of the road. All of the people, all of the artefacts. They were easy enough to find, well, they had to be, or how would a child manage? They’re all gone boy, just the bloodline left to purge. And the prophecy already did most of that before me, the last male of the line... Why, that's you! And three females, as I recall. And then true despair had gripped the boy, he had run for home, because he knew who else the glaive was after that night. And now he was running on from that crossroad, to the distant cottage, a rental home for the winter. His mother had so wanted to spend this Christmas alone, with her two children and their unborn sister, a rest after hard times, a new start. He ran, not daring to look back again, trying not to think of the pain. He saw the lights through the window ahead, reached the cottage and... and... and the door was open... Pushing through he found the glaive, waiting. His sister's body was already slumped against one wall, the man had added her head to his collection, the boy saw some of her hair hanging from the wicker basket carried by one of the servants. But even that couldn't hold the gaze of the boy, whose raw eyes looked in horror towards the man's outstretched arm, and the sword he held. Then the glaive, who seemed to have been calmly waiting, made a final downward push. The blade ran through the stomach of the boy's mother, finishing her, and the baby within, with an agonised and pathetic gurgle. Just a witch. The man spoke softly And I think that really is the end of it, with one final life. He jerked the sword up, and as the boy tried to move back he felt the arms of the servants twine round his own limbs and hold him in place. The glaive pulled the blade from his mother’s stomach, and with a single swipe removed her head and held it up by the hair.
Just think, five hundred years ago they saw. They saw the other thing happen, saw the future. Oh those venerable, stupid men. Can you imagine the delicious irony? They were so sure it was solid, but they decided to interfere anyway, and they wrote... He broke off with a curt snigger. They wrote a prophecy, a prophecy to show you the right path. And that's what made you lose, because it was so simple, they may as well have drawn a map. Because the fu-ture's never solid, you know? They thought they could contain this, make me fight on their pre-destined lines. Don't walk those holy roads, don’t kill in the sacred places, leave their weapons intact for you to find. These laws are a fat old man who works in a city park, boy, he tells you to keep off the grass, but that's it. He can't do anything when the bad children disobey, because he’s ter-rified of them. He raised the tip of the blade lightly to the boy's neck. You should never fuck with the dark. The man spoke, and with a gentle flick he decapitated the chosen one. His servants shrunk back as he picked up the last head. It even told me about the third child. The glaive stared into the lifeless eyes and open mouth. Even led me to the unborn baby. Tsk. No-one left to avenge you, even. What a miser-able way to go. He placed the head into the bag. The house now burning around him, he looked out across the village and into the dark sea beyond. And that was just the beginning. The glaive said these last words to no one in particular, as the dark crept on.
TEACHING GULLS TO SING
I can hear growling, the sea growling in the dark morning as it scrapes up the beach, waking up the shells, stones and broken bottles. It is drowning out pre-dawn the chorus of the birds. It is dark; we should be in bed, hiding from the cold, and the wind and the burglars. The sky says nothing; it is still asleep or trying to sleep if only the ocean would be quiet. In that black Northern sky white luminous gulls escort us to the sleepy, slowly waking station,singing their " going away" tune. While you're gone I'll teach them a happier "coming back' song. They will sing in a pale blue wide awake sky; unless you come back at night, if so the gulls will whisper it to themselves quietly but we will here it, we always do.
- Hugh Mooney
Writers' Cafe Dates February 12/02 - Robin Hood Book Launch at Bar Loco (7pm) 26/02 - Fiction Burn: Love? at Bar Loco (7. 30pm) 27/02 - Rachel Cochrane' s Writers Cafe session as a part of Listen Up North' s competition celebrating the anniversary of the suffragette Emily Davidson, at Settle Down (5-7pm) March 06/03 - Rachel Cochrane' s Writers Cafe Session: Monologues at Settle Down (5-7pm) followed by. . . . 06/03 - Writers Cafe First Birthday Party: With speedy mic (all performers have 5 minutes. ) - Enj oy!