December 2014

December 2014

Writings by the Say It Right Writers Circle themed around POVERTY FICTION: Josephine – Ali H FICTION: The People in the Biscuit Tin – Alan Marshall NON-FICTION: Northam Soul – Orzak Bule FICTION: Over and Over – Phil Chokeword FICTION: My Kids Will Grow Up in the Street and Fucking Rob You – Ben Smith BONUS FICTION: Cockelty Bread – Alan Marshall

Find out more about the Say It Right Writers Circle: sayitrightwriterscircle.blogspot.com Get in contact: tensongspodcast@googlemail.com All work licensed under Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND

Josephine

By Ali H I first met Josephine when I was eleven years old. She was my first and only imaginary friend.

I lived on an estate that bordered a larger one, with a broad muddy path that ran between the two. The path was no longer accessible from the road and had for several years been abandoned to the brambles and weeds, as well as anyone so disposed to secrecy that they might go to the trouble of climbing under the rotting wooden fence at the back of D Block. In the evenings it was populated by groups of kids a couple of years older than me - they smoked and shouted and left behind bottles and the strange smell of sex and Lynx. A couple of times mum’s boyfriend claimed he had to sleep there when she got angry about his drinking and locked him out.

But in the daytime it was mine. Contained but free, I’d roam the half-mile stretch picking out treasures left by older girls who had been lain down in the browning grass the night before - glittering hair clips and earrings and once a little bottle of nail polish – and add them to a collection I kept in the hollow of a tree stump covered over with twigs. I never went to school, and no one ever seemed to notice. Every day I hid my school blazer in an old Tescos bag at the back of the cardboard, blanket and milk-crate shelter I’d built last autumn for the days when it rained. On those days I would feel a kind of warm ecstasy at the smell of wet earth and the freedom and the feeling of rain running down my legs, which had suddenly become too long to keep sheltered.

It was the third Monday in September when I arrived at my spot to find her already sitting there, like a cuckoo in my nest, sifting through the tree stump treasures and trying out the best hairclips.

‘That stuff’s mine!’ I growled.

‘I’m just playing.’ She didn’t even look up.

‘They’re not yours, get out,’ ‘They smell like Lynx,’ she wrinkled her nose and pulled a few out of her slightly grubby red hair.

‘You need to get out. This is my place.’

She shrugged. ‘Ok, I was on my way to the roof anyway.’

I wanted to ignore her and just let her leave so I could forget the invasion, but part of me couldn’t help myself. ‘Which roof?’

She looked at me with faint disapproval and then motioned towards the end of the path, where a series of crumbling bricks provided ascending foot and hand holds up a high wall.

The roof was like a second, contrasting sanctuary; not hidden but daringly exposed and high enough to provide a panoramic view of both estates. I was pleased to spot several diamante hair grips hidden amongst the cans and faded garden furniture.

‘So is this where you come?’ I asked, taking in her slightly-too-short jeans and oversized sweatshirt. She looked younger than me, perhaps nine or ten, but wild and hard.

She nodded. ‘It’s great for spying, plus no one ever looks up so they don’t see you. It’s at least as good as yours. We’ll share spots.’

And so we spent the whole autumn either on the roof or in the lane, sometimes exploiting the local shops or venturing home when unsuccessful or tired. Josephine urged me to get better things too, and soon the tree stump was full to the top with nail varnish and necklaces and tester bottles of perfume, all carefully hidden under layers of moss and twigs. We played games and wrote stories and sometimes sat hidden in the cardboard den in the evenings and listened, giggling and intrigued, to the older children’s fun.

She was a fierce friend: screaming at me to go to hell one minute, peppering my face with kisses the next. I was never lonely when I was with her, and it was hard to be apart. Once or twice I tried going in to school and she spent the whole day standing defiantly in the playground, scuffing her shoes against the tarmac and swearing loudly.

I had to move to my nan’s house in December, when someone found out about me not going to school and my mum got in trouble. I never had the chance to say goodbye. I saw her slight outline sitting up on the side of the roof, watching as our car pulled away; a smudge of red hair with clips that sparkled as they caught the light. Inside the car my nan hugged me into her itchy blue coat and talked about all the things that would be different. I leant to wave out the window as the car turned a bend, but she had already gone.

The People in the Biscuit Tin

By Alan Marshall My name is Jorge, but the Policia call me pouca pulga, which means little flea.

I am ten years old - and have been forever.

I know the shifting mountains and smouldering plastic of the dump as well as I know my own skin – rat bitten and chemical burned, infected by broken glass and scarred by close encounters with reversing truck wheels. Children die here, forgotten by the rest of the world to sink back into the soft layers of garbage like they never existed. We are part of this place.

But to me, the mounds of stinking cardboard become sea-bound pirate galleons and the oil-slicked puddles are their rainbow seas. Because I have a secret.

I rule the world. * From the loose detritus inside a black refuse sack, a white gull scrambles into the air and I pull out a limp magazine with crinkled edges. I am always looking for new additions to my collection, and flicking through the pages I smile as I carefully tear around a photo of a fleeting celebrity – with white teeth and startled eyes as they are plucked from their factory life to be moulded in the superstar machine. They rose to become a household name and now they are here, with me, on the dump. Everyone winds up here in the end.

I tuck the picture in my pocket and head for the margins of the site before the daylight bruises too deeply for me to find my way.

Squeezed between two landlocked shipping containers is my home. Battered pallets and swaddling bands of polythene keep the rain away from the dirty foam mattress, but it is the treasure underneath it which I always go to first. With filthy hands I pull out a rust-pocked biscuit tin. Opening it, I lay the upturned lid on the dirt and trace the crudely scratched chequer-board inside with my finger nail. Squares of a game only I know how to play.

One by one I pull out and position the pieces, a makeshift battalion of players – photos like the one from the magazine, cardboard box lids and broken toys – glued, taped and melded to cotton reels, bottles and wire frames to create simple marionettes. Every one is different, and each one has earned their place here, a distinct facet of the world which has forgotten the dump, forgotten me, and has no idea of the influence I have.

The stiff backed CEO is first out of the tin – the prison bars of his pinstripe suit reflected only in the uneasy pupils of his eyes. How many necks did he tread on in the climb, and how many of those dutifully holding him aloft wait only for the time they can let go and watch him tumble? But he is only a pawn.

Next is the monarch, as ancient and lacquered as her office. Regal in a pointless history of fresh paint and children’s posies - grand only by a fluke of birth - whilst the empty paint pots and mouldering flower clippings rot beneath my feet. And then another, a newcomer. A plastic creation who resembles no real woman – cantaloupe breasted, her hairless genitals displayed like a pinned butterfly under glass, devoid of any beauty by the very act of its capture. New royalty for a devalued consumer culture.

Piece by Piece they join the game – lawman, cosmetic surgeon, game show host, high court judge – men and women who keep me captive by their privilege alone. Every single one unaware I even exist, let alone that I control their climb to power and slide to obscurity.

And when the board is full, I play. Late into the night I manoeuvre the pieces, lit by halogen security lamps and methane flares from the tall tripods of the dump. They jostle and wheel under these perpetual ten-year-old fingers, chasing money and power, rising and falling at a touch of my hand – and until I say otherwise their privilege remains. But when a piece is taken I wait, sometimes for weeks, until the tattered newspaper headlines of the dump bring news of their fate – death, scandal, misdeed or disgrace, even apathy are the trophies which reward my work.

One day I may tire, and upset the whole board, but until then I remain pouca pulga, unseen and unnoticed. It is this secret that buoys the days I spend shifting the heap, risking death for a handful of Reals, scavenging tin cans and stepping over rainbow puddles.

Northam Soul

By Ozark Bule It sounds like a cliché at first: ‘the people in Northam were poor…so much so that few doors were locked at night…for there was nothing worth stealing’. The well-worn formula continues with neighbours popping round unannounced for a day’s gossip, of the front step being ‘so clean you could eat your dinner off it’, of quack treatments for unwanted pregnancies, of fathers walking from firm to firm to look for work and children playing games in the street until dark. If the story was meant as a rose tinted nostalgia trip to 1930s Southampton, then the children would be playing marbles and hoops in the road, maybe play fighting against imaginary gangs from nearby neighbourhoods or versus the kids from the other side of the street. Instead, they played rats.

As many rodents as possible would be caught by the local kids in the days leading up to a game of rats, and as they were never in short supply around the houses and back alleys games could take place on a weekly basis. On Friday night the assembled rats were caged and placed in the middle of a circle. Forming a ring around the rats was a band of hungry dogs ready to pounce when the cage was opened. Beyond the dogs – and here was where the real fun lay – was a circle of excited children armed with sticks and ready to beat any rats who had escaped alive from the orbit of dogs. In November 1934 Southampton council took matters into their own hands, holding ‘Rat Week’ in which almost 200 animals were killed in an attempt to improve health conditions and stop the game.

‘Same old Tories’ sounds like another cliché. Southampton had no Conservative councillors during the 1930s, instead local Tories stood for election as the Independents and then as the Ratepayers. One local Tory justified this skulduggery on the grounds that ‘the Socialists had never promised to look after the interests of all classes, and had always said they were looking after the Socialist class…the Independents looked after everyone’. Sadly the promise to look after everyone did not include the people of Northam – who were evidently members of the socialist class. In fact, the Ratepayers’ (and the Liberals, who felt unable to resist the temptation to form an ‘anti-socialist municipal alliance’) stated that their principle concern was avoiding any unnecessary expense. And so it was that the Conservatives felt able to reject the protest by Labour, the Trades Council and Northam residents calling for ‘boarded partitions’ to secure privacy ‘with regard to the situation of the outdoor lavatories’. This was an unnecessary expense. * Every morning the men hoping for work in the docks would pile into the Cattle Shed in Canute Road. In the shed the foreman would offer certain people a brass tally that signalled a day’s labour. The foreman seemed to be selected for their malevolent spirit, which always included hostility to trade unions. One foreman had a favourite pastime that made rats look like pass the parcel; he would throw the brass tallies to the ground and watch men literally scramble for work, laughing whilst ‘people were fighting and treading on one another’s toes to gain the tally that signalled a day’s employment’.

It was under these circumstances that the labour movement endeavoured to improve conditions for dockworkers and local communities. To some people the union’s work must have seemed excruciatingly slow, but throughout the decade the TGWU did make modest but beneficial improvements. Men gained extra pay for unloading cattle, cleaning tubes and working in tanks. But by 1939 dockers hours of duty were still arranged from day to day in the Cattle Shed.

Despite the conditions at home and the Cattle Shed scuffles, Northam residence – or so the cliché goes - did seem to have ‘a comradeship of their own and nobody would break it’. Perhaps it is a romantic memory but ‘it didn’t matter if they went on strike and were starving, they’d stand by one another… it was unthinkable to cross a picket line, it just didn’t happen’.

Over & Over

By Phil Chokeword My silver spoon is tarnished at best, so I don’t have the luxury of not having to work and my Saturday is spent [low paid menial form of work] to earn the money to buy records, which is really what this is all about isn’t it when you get down to it, records, the kind that punch you out of the day to day shit and transport you elsewhere, records, not drugs or clothes or beer, that’s what keeps me going and defines what I am – after all, how can you be a fucking [subculture] if you don’t own any fucking [subculture] records? - so when my shift ends, I head down to [record shop] and flick through the new arrivals, my pay cheque metaphorically burning a hole in my pocket, I’ve got enough to pay to get into [night club], give a little bit to my mum for housekeeping and still pick something good up, but if I’m honest, and I could only afford one of those things, I’d cry off poor on the rent and spend the evening in my room playing new records, I never hear anything I’d play at [night club] anyhow, I see my mates all week at [educational establishment/dole office/community service activity], I only go for something to do, and on the off chance I get lucky, I catch the bus to my mate’s, say hello to his mum, she says [boy’s name] is upstairs, asks if I want a cuppa which I do and take one for him as well, catch him strutting in the mirror to [awesome record] which he’s picked up today, he’s embarrassed but gets over himself and we sit quietly and listen, when it’s done I pass him the [awesome record] I bought, I’m itching to hear it and it doesn’t disappoint, drowning out the [cringe-worthy pop artist] record his older sister [girl’s name] is playing next door, once it’s done I flip it over and start again, listening to the lyrics whilst [boy’s name] has a shower, then we swap, I smell of [unpleasant by-product] from work, reek of it, the bathroom door doesn’t lock and I wonder if [girl’s name] might “accidentally” walk in on me this time, but she doesn’t, she never does, no matter how hard I will it to happen, then we’re off out, I’m wearing my dad’s [brand name] aftershave and a new [item of clothing], yeah, it’s all about music but it doesn’t hurt to look the part as well, this was a birthday gift, it’d take me weeks to save up for it myself, we walk past the [common street landmark] where a couple of [rival subculture] eyeball us funny but don’t say anything, we eyeball them back and that’s that, give the bus driver a note and he eyeballs us too, but we don’t fucking care, fuck ‘em, get off in town and there’s [cafe or fast food restaurant], half dozen of our lot sat staring at their teas, none of us old enough to drink although we’re old enough to get shot for queen and country, none of us willing to risk the embarrassment of not being served this early in the evening, we shake hands, talk shit, argue about who is better, [awesome band] or [awesome band], [awesome record] or [awesome record] then we’re off, none of us with two pennies to rub together, [boy’s name] doesn’t have anything more than the money to get in and his bus fare home in fact, chips on our shoulders a mile wide about it, we aren’t like those fuckers we run into all the time who are clueless about music but have a perfect wardrobe paid for by mum and dad, the pricks who look too right, who are all style and no substance, kids who don’t know anything about trying to make ends meet or having to live a few doors down from blokes who want to kick your head in because they’re as skint and bored as you are and you look a bit different, and then we’re in, the doorman at [night club] not even asking our dates of birth, which we’ve rehearsed to say were 19 since pretending to be 18 seems a bit too obvious, but in the end we dodge that bullet, and then we’re in, our [foot wear] sticking to the carpets, and I immediately spot her, my ex head teacher’s daughter [girl’s name] looking perfect on the dance floor - and all those thoughts about rich kid poseurs suddenly don’t apply to cute middle class [subculture] girls...

My Kids Will Grow up in the Streets and Fucking Rob You.*

By Ben Smith The sun sits low in the sky obscured by a haze of thin cloud. The temperature is still high though, the air shimmering above the tarmac. Cars roll quietly along the street their windows black and opaque. A bus pulls to the curb rocking slightly as it bounces over litter strewn in the gutter. The doors open and a couple step down onto the pavement thanking the driver.

Frank and Linda turn the corner and make for the door of the clinic. This is their third time here and they are both hoping for more positive results. Sitting in the waiting room, a television set recessed into the wall projects adverts onto the floor in front of them. Both of their eyes ignored the flashing shapes fighting for their attention as they read messages on the small screens that are wrapped onto the inside of their wrists.

The couple are clearly nervous and sweat forms on the nape of both their necks. It is hot within the clinic and the air seems dense and stale. An anachronistic clock on the wall behind the reception desk ticks loudly.

Finally their names are called and they enter the office of the bureaucrat dealing with their case. He looks over the paper file in front of him and clears his throat.

“So as is procedure we have checked the eggs which were harvested in your teenage years Linda and also your sperm that was taken at the same time Frank. Everything is fine there, but we did not expect much to change in the last 3 years since your last application.”

The official looks nervously towards the window and back at the couple sat in front of him. It is also hot in the small office. A bead of sweat slowly trickles down from his brow into his eye causing him to remove his glasses and wipe it away. Sighing he continues.

“However, sadly there appears to be some irregularities in the financial records you have provided to us for this transaction. It would appear that although you have increased your income from that stated on the last application this is still not above the required threshold to be furnished with a child.”

Linda tries to speak and object but the official holds up his hand to silence her.

“I can understand your disappointment.”

His voice is low and monotone, and betrays the fact that he has no personal empathy with their case. To him they are just another piece of paper, a chore to be administered.

“I am afraid that in order to assure the well being of children raised in this country, the income you are required to prove you earn by law in order that you may be provided with offspring is increased each year in line with inflation. As you must be well aware this means that although you have had meagre increases in income over the past few years, the increase in the price of goods has outstripped that tenfold. I am sorry but it would simply be immoral for me to agree to provide you with the relevant paperwork to proceed with this application at this point.”

3 months pass.

The couple are sat on the sofa, a TV projects images onto the floor in front of them.

“Frank I think I'm not well.”

Linda's voice waivers slightly. Frank turns to Linda, concern showing on his face, he

mutes the TV. “I haven't had a period for 2 months, I'm not sure what is wrong.”

Frank still silent stares in disbelief at Linda. The obvious statement hangs unsaid between them. Since the act was passed in the late twenties all children have their gametes harvested in their teenage years and are then sterilised. Neither Frank nor Linda want to put words or form to the thought that should be impossible. Finally Frank speaks.

“Tell no one.” * Rick Kids on LSD – 'Unborn Child'

Cocklety Bread

By Alan Marshall At one end of the village sat the Burgher-master’s house and the mill they owned. At the other -beyond the cobbles - stood a ramshackle bakers, and it was here that eighteen year old Libbet and her father lived, eking a living from their tiny oven. Since Libbet’s mother was taken by a winter fever two years earlier, it seemed her father was ever present, watching her work and giving disparaging looks, not least when Guy, the miller’s son, paid his regular – increasingly regular – visits to deliver their flour.

She reddened and fumbled in his presence one day when old Mrs Glading, collecting her bread, grinned a rotten toothed smile at her. “You crave that lad, don’t you girl?” she whispered when her father and Guy were in the storeroom, “I know the look, well as most.”

“He is rich and I am poor,” Libbet answered coyly. “He would never look at me.”

“Happen I might know something to reset that balance,” the old woman smiled, and went on to explain in hushed tones one of her hedge-law charms to an enraptured Libbet, shocked and entranced in equal measure.

It seemed forever before she was able to put the plan into action, but one day, when Libbet returned from the woods with her bushel of branches for the oven, her father appeared in the doorway with a parcel of bread, and avoiding her eye, said: “I am going out at dusk Libbet, you must tend the bread,” and that was that.

As the latch clicked into place, Libbet was finally alone. She turned to the cider-apple glow of the oven and quickly made sure the shutters blanked out the twilight. Her heart thumped in her breast with a nervous rhythm. Libbet set to work, and in the heavy earthenware bowl mixed silk-textured flour and water with a shaving of precious yeast from the jar. As she folded with her bare hands, she thought of the miller’s son and blushed.

When the dough was proved into a soft ball, Libbet patted it into the centre of the floured table and checked the shutters again. Her heart felt gigantic and wicked as she gathered her skirts around her hips and climbed from the stool to the table. Slowly she lowered herself onto the dough, just as Mrs Glading had told her. It felt cold and clammy as it touched her naked buttocks, and she squeezed experimentally with her thighs. On her knees, with her petticoats bundled at her waist and her hands on the dusted planks in front of her she rocked to and fro, kneading the bread as she was told, and begun to mutter the rhyme, getting faster yet softer with each round.

“Mother was sick and now she is dead, And I must tempt me a lover to bed, Up with the skirts, down with the head, That’s the way to make cocklety bread.”

Thirty minutes later Libbet pulled a small loaf from the oven – oval and browned, with a slight crest along its top mirroring the intimate curves of her body. She swung her threadbare cloak around her shoulders and set off for the mill.

Evening surrounded her as she picked her way across the cobbles towards the looming house on the hill, and mere chinks of candlelight from boarded windows lit her path.

The mill was also shuttered, but amber light spilled out of the doorway telling her Guy was still inside.

She lifted the iron latch without a word and stepped inside, holding the charmed bread to her chest. She suddenly felt foolish and small, why would the Burgher-master’s son be interested in her, a lowly baker’s girl?

Just when she was about to run, a deep laugh stopped her - her heart pounded as voices filtered from the bedroom. “Hello?” she tried meekly, “Guy, is that you?”

She moved toward the closed door and pushed it with a trembling hand.

“Guy, I have a gift for…” she stopped dead.

The room was lit with a single candle revealing trails of clothes scattered across the floor. At its base on the table sat an oval loaf of bread with a deep hollow in its top, and on the bed lay two naked men – one was Guy; the other was her own father. He grabbed for the blanket to cover himself but it was too late.

Libbet’s bread fell to the floor as she fled into the night. * And the moral of this ribald tale?

Love, like magic, only works where it is best kneaded – if you will excuse the pun.