My writing group's End of Term Competition in July 2013 - the theme was 'What's Up With Nancy - up to 1000 words:

What’s up Nancy?

Nancy watched the traffic lights turn to red and slumped back into the deep seat of the cab. She re-folded her headscarf for the twentieth time that afternoon and flinched as she caught sight of herself in the wing mirror. She had been told what to expect but somehow she never thought it would come to this.

It was the evening rush hour.  Londoners rushed past the window, hurrying towards the bus stop or the Tube station, or perhaps to a theatre or dinner date. A twenty-something hurtled towards the taxi and touched the door handle before realising it was not empty, turning away in frustration. She was in such a hurry. Everyone was in such a hurry.

The girl reminded Nancy of herself at that age – full of nervous energy, with long blonde hair down to her waist. She could remember the days when there weren’t enough hours in the day. She had been ambitious, hungry for success, certain all her dreams would be fulfilled.

When she wasn’t working she was partying. She was known for her dancing and for her resemblance to Barbara Streisand in the movie ‘What’s Up Doc’.  She would stand alone in the centre of the room, swaying in time to the music, staring at the floor, her head moving in ever-expanding circles so her hair spread out two feet in front, then behind. When the music stopped everyone would clap and shout ‘What’s up Nancy?’ and she would laugh and get another drink.

Later on, much later on, she found out that it was her hair that had first attracted Mike. Although it took dozens of parties where he loitered at the edge of the dance floor, and threw long lingering looks from the shadows, he eventually plucked up the courage to ask her out. A year later they were married and a month after that her beautiful twin boys were born.

As the cab pulled away Nancy tried to remember the plans she had made before meeting Mike, and couldn’t remember what they were. The fact that she could so easily forget the internal dialogue that had occupied her every waking thought (and many sleepy ones too) for so many years - that shocked her.

She watched an argument develop outside a pub just as the verbal insults morphed into mild physical violence and she flinched, remembering last year’s mugging. She was suddenly there, smiling indulgently at two girls mock-fighting as she tried to enter the cinema. She saw, too late, that her maternal indulgence had been misinterpreted as a mocking gesture, which was rewarded by both girls turning on her. They knocked her to the ground then kicked her till she was comatose. Witnesses said the girls had pulled her to her feet by her hair and smashed her head against the wall before being pulled away by friends. She didn’t remember the police arriving, or the ambulance journey, but she remembered coming round from the first operation and seeing Mike’s concerned face before he remembered to hide his anxiety with fake cheeriness.

He said “What’s up Nancy?” and she laughed, not knowing what she was doing there.

She hadn’t laughed a lot since then. There wasn’t much to laugh about. Although her body healed, her mind was like a wayward child, unable to concentrate on anything for very long. She tired easily and the endless visits to the doctors, then the hair specialists, wore her down.

The medical experts all agreed that the attack had caused her hair to start falling out. Twisting and pulling hair was a common cause of alopecia, apparently, and given the initial severity of her head injury, they said it should come as no surprise that she was losing a bit of hair. Although they never actually accused her, the sideways looks and the understanding smiles seemed to be telling her to stop being so ungrateful.  After all the hours of surgery and devoted nursing care that her saved her from losing her marbles, they seemed to say, why worry about losing a bit of hair?

Nancy watched her road come into view and tapped the window to indicate where she wanted the cab to stop. For some reason she didn’t want to step straight from the taxi to her front door, facing an expectant family.

Mike and the boys would be waiting to offer love and support because they knew, as they had all known for the last month, that today she would return from the clinic totally bald. They knew how nervous she would feel as she took off her headscarf to reveal the shiny bald skull which felt so wrong, so not-her.

She paid the driver, walked the final 200 yards to the house, unlocked the door and stepped over the threshold. She hung up her coat, took a deep breath and strolled, almost but not quite casually, into the lounge.

She was touched beyond words. She had expected kind words and sympathy, spoken from love and not pity. She had expected some initial reticence from the boys, and then maybe a cuddle or two as they became accustomed to their mother’s new alien-like features. She had not expected this, and she choked back the tears.

She was greeted by three round faces, one big one and two smaller ones, sat in a row on the sofa. Each face was wearing a large grin and appeared underneath a bald head. They pointed at their ears, pointed at her head, laughed out loud, and as one they shouted “What’s up Nancy?”

930 words

Learning About The Animals

A story about animals, that's what they asked for, in about 500 words. This is what I gave them:

Learning About The Animals

Honest. That’s what she said. "Have I ever told you that my parrot is the reincarnation of my dead grandmother?"

You wouldn’t believe the things I hear people say unless you knew they came from an impeccable source. Take it from me, I don’t lie. I’m a chimpanzee.

Surprised eh? I take it this is your first visit to a zoo since you discovered your new 22nd century telepathic powers. That’s what happens when one race develops an ability the rest of the animal kingdom takes for granted.

I know you are.

Yes, we can.

And we can do that too.

Sorry, no, we can’t talk. Our tongues don’t work that way.

There’s no need to be quite so flabbergasted. Haven’t you read the sign on the cage yet? The bit about chimpanzees sharing 98.6% of the human DNA sequence?

Betcha didn’t know the missing 1.4% resides in the body part we lick our bottoms with.

Really? Well don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.

No, you’ve not seen me here before. I’m a visitor. Actually, I’m not supposed to tell you this but I’m on a course. It’s called Apeing the Animals which is quite witty really.

No, listen, you’ll like this. You’re the animals and we’re the apes, and we’ve come here today to, in the words of the brochure, "observe how their primitive behaviour can teach us the path to success".

Apparently, wherever you animals go you display what’s called ‘office behaviour patterns’ which closely resemble our own social structures in the ape world.

You don’t think so?

And your job is what exactly?

Impressive. So you call yourself a leader? So you’re a dominant A-type personality who stamps your feet to get what you want, you walk the walk with a puffed out chest to impress the girls, and you occasionally engage in a bit of mutual back slapping with the other alpha males?

No? That’s not what it looks like from here, I can tell you.

Well, according to our course leader, that’s the gorilla standing just over there, unless you smarten your act up and start beating your chest a bit more often you’ll never get the top job. More to the point you won’t stand a chance with the better looking mates on offer (although between you, me and these 4 chicken wire fences they don’t look much cop to me – not enough hair for my liking).

Old fashioned? Moi? Give over. You’re the one who has only just learned how to communicate. Me? I’m the higher species mate, that’s who I am.

Anyway, I’ve got to go now. Having observed you I’ve got to give a presentation in the workshop area over there by the rubber tyres. They are going to be thrilled when they find out I’ve actually found one who could hold a basic conversation. But I’d better not mention the parrot though. They’ll think I’m bonkers.

So you want to know about my worst relative?

The title was the exercise - in 500 words - so I used it to create some characters who might come in useful one day - thoughts?

So you want to know about my worst relative?

It depends what you mean by ‘worst’.

You probably don’t mean my worst-dressed relative, but for the record, that would be my godmother Alice, if non-blood relatives are allowed.  I used to blame her awful dress sense on the privations of growing up in the 1940s but I recently discovered that I was being very unfair on that decade. She lived in a generation that emulated its forebears, so she has spent the last 70 years attempting to model the very best the fashion world had to offer in about 1915, which has not been easy but I think it’s a battle that, on balance, she has won.

If you want to know about my worst-paid relative that would be my grandson, Christopher, who works in a call centre. He received extensive training in the 3 steps required to deflect an insurance claim – denial, followed by demanding copious amounts of meaningless paperwork, then agreeing the claim but delaying payment until the money sent is actually worthless. His hourly remuneration wouldn’t buy a decent book to read, despite the so-called minimum wage.

Then there’s my worst memory of a relative, which is a tough one. Would it be my father’s speech at my sister’s wedding, when he was so relieved that the cosmos could find a man for any woman, that he drank himself into oblivion before, during, and after his speech?

Or perhaps it would be taking Uncle Frank shopping last year. It was our own fault, we hadn’t seen him for a while and our guilt led us into taking him shopping, despite Aunty Alice’s warnings. We wanted to browse the chinaware in John Lewis so we left him watching TV in the electrical department. He insisted that he hadn’t seen the episode of Poirot being relayed simultaneously across 35 television sets  - that’s dementia for you – and said he always watched this programme on a Saturday afternoon, sat in the lounge with a coffee and a biscuit. So we bought him a coffee and a biscuit at the café and sat him down, and went off together. How were we to know that his ritual also included celebrating the finish of the coffee and biscuit by stripping down to his underwear and shouting out the clues?

OK, you’ve had enough prevarication, I admit it, I know what you mean. You want to know about my worst behaved relative, and that’s an easy one to answer. That would be the one who never cooks a meal or does the washing up, or cleans a toilet. He stuffs himself with sprouts on Xmas Day then blames the dog for the fallout. He complains about the quality of TV these days but is too mean to go to the cinema. I could go on but I won’t, because he is obviously the worst relative in my family, and this man is me.

(P.S. This is a work of fiction . . . . .)

Why do some writers insist on making their work difficult to read?

There seems to be a modern trend towards breaking the rules of grammar and asking the reader to work out what the new rules are. Sometimes I spend so long being a grammar detective, working out who is saying what to whom, that I just give up because I have stopped reading the actual story altogether.

For example, if I had the imagination of Patrick McCabe, and I had worked so hard to craft a book such as ‘The Stray Sod Country’, which I recently tried to read, I would want everyone who had the ability to read and the motivation to want to read, to have full access to it without putting barriers in the way.

The fourth line of Page 1 gives me a clue that he has caught the bug that prevents him using speechmarks:

- O isn’t he the lucky beggar gasped Happy Carroll.

But this is even more difficult than others who adopt this style because the ‘-‘ doesn’t simply replace opening and closing speechmarks - the text after the hypen includes both direct speech and non-speech.

I lasted until page 3 where the following fragment posing as a complete sentence made me realise I was never going to get to a point where I could get past the style to the story:

‘Tentatively extending his large red hand – for the purpose of inspecting some raindrops.’

If this was self-published I could have more sympathy, but this is from Bloomsbury! I’m pretty sure (actually I’m 100% positive) that if I submitted something with the first page from this novel it would have been binned immediately, so how has this happened?

Rant over – what do you think?

Celia - in 500 words

The brief was to write a short piece which included a secretive wife, a stuffy bungalow and a sports car - comments welcome!

Celia

Celia finished her cappuccino, dabbed her mouth with a serviette, and stood to leave, pausing for a moment to check that the private investigator had finished his panini. He had been trailing her around town all morning and she felt responsible for the boredom emanating from his every pore. After all, she had led him a merry little dance for three days now and hadn’t given him anything to report. The poor dear.

It took Celia back to the days when she had to drag her Simon to the shops in the hour between leaving work, picking him up from school, and Frank coming home from work. Just like then, she felt guilty for imposing her needs on someone who clearly wanted to be elsewhere, and like then she couldn’t fully concentrate on the task in hand because she felt responsible for someone else’s safety and wellbeing. Is he watching out for traffic? Is he avoiding that dog mess? Has he finished that bloody panini yet?

She sat on the bus and wondered what she was suspected of this time. Thirty years ago her first private eye arrived the week after she had drunkenly joked about fancying a younger man in the office. That one had looked like a retired policeman in his dirty mac and bow tie.

The next one appeared eighteen years ago, when she had taken advantage of local adult education facilities to learn conversational French, a surprise for Frank, who was already fluent. On that occasion she asked her professional stalker, a nice young man with tight jeans and bulging triceps, if he would like to join her in a cup of tea. When she found out how much Frank was paying to feed his self-indulgent insecurity she hit the roof, and she didn’t calm down until her second cup of tea, which was drunk an hour later, at 3 p.m., in the Premier Inn whilst the trainee detective pulled his trousers on. A whole hour! No wonder she was ready for a second cup.

Of course she felt guilty for a few days but all this was Frank’s fault. If he ever left the bungalow, or looked up from his cameras and his dark room to open the curtains and windows once in a while, he might notice she was there for him. If he had even met her halfway she would never have needed distractions, a career, or dreamed of a better life, one full of light, and air, and sunshine.

As it was, three jobs and two promotions later, she had once again started sneaking out to evening classes, this time on car maintenance, in case the second-hand sports car she had bought with her last bonus let her down on her planned escape from suburbia.

She passed the detective on her way off the bus and gave him a brief once-over. He was about forty, fit, well dressed and he had a nice smile. Maybe, she thought, maybe she could offer him a little bonus for all his trouble.

Hunter's Moon, a short story in 1000 words

I wrote this to the theme 'Reaching the Moon - comments welcome!

Hunter’s Moon

On a clear night, if I close the curtains and the moon is full, I will place a small glass of water on the windowsill and wait for the reflection. I have yet to experience the moment when the white maternal orb magically appears, but I know it will be worth waiting for.

At this time of year I think about my friend from Transylvania. We were very close, once, for one whole, blissful evening, although I am ashamed to admit that I forget her name, and have great difficulty recalling exactly what she looked like. But I know we were close because my wife tells me so, every Hunter’s Moon.

Her commentary starts at the end of September, with a light hearted reference to my ‘Transylvanian tart’. The comments become more barbed and resentful as the month progresses so, as we approach the full moon, I sometimes hope for wet weather, in the forlorn hope that clouds will obscure my past misdeeds.

I am told that fifteen years ago I attended a conference at Transylvania University, somewhere in Kentucky. I was, apparently, fluent in a dialect favoured by the majority of the Roma people.

The hosts had organised a full programme of evening entertainments. It is said that I particularly enjoyed the Romani dancing, which closely resembles flamenco. I can vaguely remember the rhythm of the castanets and the clicking heels, but one moment is especially clear. I picked out a single sound, letting it reverberate inside my head. All on its own it was a perfect tune, with an echo that took an age to fade away, yet returning to the dance
I had not missed a moment so it must have happened in a heartbeat.

After the show I was standing at the bar when a young woman spilled her drink over my sleeve. As she turned to face me I found myself staring into a perfect face. I lost myself in her ruby red lips, her green eyes, and her long black hair. It was the dancer!

"You’ve changed" I mumbled.

She gave me a quizzical look.

"You’ve changed out of your costume."

She threw her head back and laughed.

"No, I haven’t changed at all! I am still me, the anonymous sister of the famous dancer. If you like, I can be my sister so you can buy me another drink?"

"I’d love to."

If she was a sister, she must be a twin, an identical twin. With a gesture of my thumb and wide staring eyes I asked the barman whether her story was true. He glanced at her, then at me, and replied, using his shoulders to say
"Don’t ask me. Who knows?"

As we danced the night away in the students’ disco, I stopped caring whether she was ‘the’ dancer because she was ‘my’ dancer. I was besotted.

Then, at last, she asked me to her room, so she could show me "the wonderful balcony with a magnificent view."

She did not lie. As she described the trees in the valley- the leaves that were red, brown, and gold – I stood in the darkness and believed every word.

She pointed to the full moon and grabbed my arm with a sudden urgency.

"Do you know the legend of the Hunters Moon?"

I shook my head.

"At this time of year the full moon is called the Hunter’s Moon, because it shines so bright it helps hunters find their prey. If you can capture this moon you will be guaranteed success in everything you wish for. Whatever you hunt will be yours!"

"But how do you ‘capture’ the moon? It’s not possible."

"The women do it like this" she said, brandishing her empty glass. "When the moon is reflected in the water in the glass, your wish will come true."
She filled it with water from the bathroom, and tried to place it on the rail that went round the balcony but there wasn’t a glimpse of the moon in the water.

"Maybe it needs to be higher" she said, handing me the glass. I held it high and realised the futility of this action. If by some miracle the moon was reflected in the glass, neither of us could see it up there, so what was the point?

This was my big chance to impress her so I stepped onto the little table on the balcony and stretched my arm out in front of me, over the edge. The table wobbled, I lurched forward, and then I was flying towards the cold hard ground.

In the hospital everyone wanted to know how I came to be there, but I was too ashamed to admit the truth. By then it was obvious my dancer had disappeared, leaving me to my middle age fantasies, so it seemed easier to feign more memory loss than had actually occurred, which was a perfectly feasible explanation in the circumstances. Who was going to question the honesty of a man with two broken legs, several cracked ribs, and a spinal injury that was to confine him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life?

My wife was given some details by people who had seen me entering the dancer’s room and assumed the worst. I don’t know why I didn’t put her straight. Perhaps it was my ego wanting her to believe that I was capable of such deception. Maybe I knew she wouldn’t believe me anyway. I think I just wanted a quiet life.

But every year, when the Hunter’s Moon comes round, I sit in my wheelchair and dance around the room.

Taking Your Chances - 1000 words

Inspired by something that happened on holiday in Morocco a couple of weeks ago:

Taking Your Chances

My elder brother, Mustafa, always told me you have to take your chances when they come along.

"But what if I never get any chances?" I wailed as I sat beside him, begging for dirhams on one of the alleys approved as a tourist route on the edge of the souk.

"You’ll get chances, don’t worry about that. But they won’t be signposted. You’ll have to spot opportunities when they come, then decide whether to go for it. And do it quickly. Chances don’t hang around waiting to be taken you know."

I wish Mustafa was with me now, but he disappeared a year ago. He had just taken a chance, becoming a runner for one of Ibrahim’s men.

Ibrahim ran the western quarter of the souk, where the tourists rarely go. He controlled who went in, who came out, and what they were allowed to do when they were there. All his men had started as runners – it was the way he tested you, assessing your strengths and weaknesses, judging what use you could be to him, in particular, deciding how loyal you were.

I only learned this after I became a runner myself. Orphans like me don’t get many chances to escape the souk and getting into Ibrahim’s team was the first step. He hinted that he knew where Mustafa was, which made him believe he had power over me, but he didn’t.

So, there I was, sitting in the square, waiting to be sent to collect or deliver one of Ibrahim’s parcels, when a tourist steps out of a taxi right in front of me. He pays the driver, then stands there, staring at a piece of paper, gazing around like he’s looking for someone. He’s lost. If he’s here, on Ibrahim’s patch, then he must be lost.

Ibrahim looks across, then smiles, stares hard in my direction and sends me a message using his eyebrows and the creases in his forehead.

"Go on then. See what he wants. Remember, you don’t do anything for less than 10 dirhams. And be quick." Ibrahim has very expressive eyebrows.

There is little point in speaking Arabic to a tourist so I tried French but he didn’t understand. I prised the paper from his hands and read the name of the place he was looking for, out loud.

"Restaurant Alfassiar."

"Yes" said the tourist. "Do you know it?"

English was not my favourite language but I knew a few phrases so I tried my luck. "Yes. Follow me. Five minutes, no more."

I tugged his hand, put on my honest face, and started marching towards the gate into the souk, lowering my eyes so he would not see Ibrahim nodding, giving his permission to take a stranger in.

Taking a route that was longer than necessary, I turned this way and that, looking over my shoulder to make sure he stayed close. I tested my English by pointing out products where I knew I could get a small commission - "look almonds" "here, oranges" "see, figs." "very good yes?". I pulled him away from donkeys that threatened to tread on his lilywhite toes. A couple of times I even stopped him from stepping in waste matter. I was really earning this tip.

Ten minutes later I delivered him to the Restaurant Alfassiar, where the officious Head Waiter sneered at me as I grabbed the tourist’s hand.

"I bring you here, yes? I do a good job, yes?"

The tourist gave me a coin, one lousy coin, one miserable five dirham coin. I had no idea how much this was worth in England but I reckoned it was loose change, so I stood my ground. I didn’t know how to say numbers in English yet so I held out my hand with a begging look. He was impassive, and turned away into the restaurant. This was a disaster. If I went back to Ibrahim with this coin I would be beaten, and worse than that, I would be put back in the pecking order. I would have to wait weeks, maybe months, for another delivery and how would I eat? One brief encounter with a miserly Englishman meant a rough time for me. I wish I had never seen him.

I poured out my troubles to the Head Waiter who reacted as if Arabic was an alien language rather than his native tongue, so when I threw insults at him, and his mother and father, and other family members, he picked me up by my hair and threw me against a wall. I ran at him, arms flailing, and got close enough to bite his wrist before someone else joined in. I wiped the blood from my eyes and looked up, right into the midriff of a policeman.

I tried to escape three times on the way to the station but I wasn’t quick enough. The bad news was that Ibrahim would not be pleased with me, but the good news was that I could tell him the police had taken my tip, so I could take my chance and be five dirhams up.

So here I sit in my cell, waiting to be thrown out in the morning, listening to the idle chatter of the night shift. I learn that the Inspector’s daughter is getting married, that the Sergeant has tickets to tomorrow’s football match, and that the people paid to clean the station were doing a dreadful job and they would happily pay 20 dirhams a day for it to be done properly.

I could hear Mustafa in my head. "Princes and paupers are all the same little brother. The successful ones turn disaster into opportunity, then they take their chance."

I banged on the door. "Help! Help! I’m trapped in this filthy cell and I’m going mad looking at all this dirt. Fetch me a broom or I’ll kill myself. And if you like my work we can start the discussion at only 50 dirhams! Inshallah!"