Two views of a castle

The purpose of the exercise is broadly to describe a place or setting and alter that description according to the mood/circumstances of characters.
The suggestion is to describe a visit to a place where the protagonists feel unwell . The second attempt suggests it as a new home.
I'm not a big one for long descriptions so wrapped it up in a broadly parallel narrative.






The Castle - Version 1
At the end of a torturous journey through bleak grey hills lies an old castle. It stands in the cleft of two spurs of land, looming over the sea loch it commands. The dim light of the afternoon sun casts an insipid pink pall over the grubby white washed walls.
The kids tumble out of the car. Tim drags his toy sword out and tries to whack Samantha .The air is thick and heavy with the scent of flowers from the garden. Tim’s sword-strokes waft the overpowering smells into my face. My stomach lurches.
‘Let’s get inside’, I mutter through my hankie.
My husband stands gawping for a moment and the kids start to squabble.
‘Come on’ I say.
The great hall is full of dust and old junk. The famous ‘fairy flag’ is a tattered rag pressed behind yellowing glass.
My husband tugs my sleeve and drags me to the sick heart of this awful place. A guide is telling the ghastly history of the bottle dungeon. My son listens, rapt, and my daughter clutches my husband’s thigh. The walls of the room above it lurch and wriggle in the corners of my eyes. My already churning bowels threaten to expel. I trot and clench my way over worn carpets, past threadbare tapestries, until I find what I am looking for.
‘All these rooms’ I mutter, ‘but there’s never a toilet when you need one’.





The Castle - Version 2
At the North end of the beautiful, misty, island of Skye, nestled in a sheltered bay, lies the fairytale castle of Dunvegan.
Its white walls have turned a pretty pink in the fading light of the afternoon sun.
Tim steps out of the car carrying his new toy claymore while his sister Samantha dances beside him. As he swishes his sword through the air, it sends me the scent of spring flowers from the fabulous gardens.
'Let’s get inside’, I say.
My husband stands, entranced, for a moment and the children chatter excitedly.
‘Come on’, I say.
The great hall is worthy of its name. Half filled with the bric-a-brac from eight centuries of occupation, it seems homey and lived in. My husband touches my arm and beckons me into the private drawing room.
‘The seat of my ancestors’ he says, leaning on a large leather chair.
He smiles at me, willing me to laugh at his daft joke, but all I can feel is pride. From the other room I hear our children laughing together. They’ve found the fairy flag, framed on the wall to preserve its delicate silks. Its blend of mystery, romance and adventure draws them together in their play.
I think I’m going to like this place.

Clifftop - a childhood memory

I’m sitting on a gravely patch of scratched earth between two mounds of soft long grass. The seed heads sway in the wind, tickling my arms. Below me, the sea crashes noisily onto sharp grey rocks, sending up the smell of seaweed. I imagine the slick brown ribbons of weed with their ugly bubbles popping as I step on them. Not with bare feet though. Yuk ! The thought brings me back to reality and I can hear my mother calling my name. She sounds strange, her voice is higher than normal and I turn my head and shoulders round to look for her. I see her hair first as she crests the hillock betweens us. Her glasses have small sharp wings on the top corners of the lenses that make her look like an owl in my Puffin Book of British Birds.
She is walking down from the lighthouse that we were visiting before I got bored.
“Don’t move”, she shouts, then contradicts herself, “ Just come back from the edge, slowly”.
Her voice is strangled by the wind and I can feel the damp air tickle my cheeks as it rushes down the open collar of my thick red woollen jacket.
A gull squawks as it flies along the cliff face beneath my dangling feet .
I shuffle backwards over small sharp stones and soft rabbit droppings until I get my feet under me. I roll over onto my knees and stand.
As my mother shouts, “Bill, Bill, I’ve found him”, I walk towards her and into the worst row of my life.

Exercise 6.1 - Setting

The bags of shopping are stacked in neat rows on the kitchen floor. Inside the walk-in cupboard by the door, a pristine mop stands to attention as if waiting for the intruders to be cleared away.

The kitchen is vast and without clutter. A person could get lost in the arctic desert of white appliances.

On the worktop, every object is precisely where it should be. The disposable gloves sit between the liquid soap and the bleach. Above them, on a simple hook, hangs a white bristled dish washing brush.

The polished marble top of the kitchen table sparkles in the sunlight that streams through the crystal clear windows. On the table, in a crumpled plastic pouch, lie the delivery receipt and a handwritten note on TESCO headed paper.

‘I’ve left the bags here as per instructions and trust the goods are to your satisfaction. If not, please contact me asap. Regards, Bill’

Perfect Recall - character monologue

Perfect recall is as much a burden as a blessing. Especially if your parents have spotted your talent.

When my Dad used to ask me, ‘So what did you get up to last night’, it wasn’t like I could say ‘I don’t remember’. If I tried, he’d reply,

‘I find that a bit strange considering you still talk about that time Anna Flynn bit your arm when you were 2 years old. Don’t you? That’s why I’m pretty certain you’d remember if you kissed that boy last night or not’.
It’s amazing how often you die when you are a teenager. At least once a day, someone puts a dagger through your heart.

I imagine that you’ve forgotten just how that feels, but I haven’t . All those black board screeching memories you hate. The ones that haunt you. The ones that flood into your brain when you are walking down the street or waiting for a bus. I carry them and all the otehr smaller one stha you've forgotten. They're with me all the time. They sit in my head like squabbling siblings in the back seat of the car. I feel like that poor kid in the 6^th sense. Except I don’t just see dead people. Most of them are still alive. Most of them have forgotten what I said when I was drunk and they were too. But I haven’t. Some of them know it. Some of them don’t look me in the eye anymore. Some of them don’t seem to care, but I wonder if they do. Sometimes I wish I could forget about it. But I can’t, can I?

A215 Exercise 5.2

Jeremy was born to audit. His birthday was auspicious, 28^th of August 1961. A Virgo and an Ox. Detail loving and meticulous.

He started off in accounts, and that was fine for a while, but he needed to branch out. The numbers were too fleeting and the breadth of tasks was too constricting. So he made a list. He made a list and discovered that he loved it. A checklist freshly ticked. A procedure walked through. Checking it was done. Checking it was done right. Checking it was done right and the evidence to prove that was safely filed .

He loved his new job. He sat at his desk, smiling. He went to meetings, whistling. In his head he danced like Gene Kelly in the rain. His heart glowed with pride at the end of a project.

He enjoyed his work to an infectious degree. He audited without prejudice or malice. People liked him. He inspired them. He took such obvious joy in checking that they’d done it right that they did do it right just to see him smile. Sometimes they asked him what he was on. Sometimes they asked him if they could get some from their Doctors too. He’d just smile indulgently and ask them if they enjoyed their jobs. Not normally replied some, not ever replied others.

“Well I do”, replied Jeremy “and that’s the heart of it. Find something you enjoy doing and you’ll do it well”

But not everyone is as lucky as Jeremy, not everyone has the same auspicious start. Some of us just have to muddle through and make the best of what fate brings.

The Black Depressions

Amended after some helpful comments from my fellows on A215.

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The Black Depressions

Self consciousness
Turns To self doubt
Spirals down
Through fear to self loathing

People don’t like you
They look strangely at you
They talk about you
Behind your back
From the corner of your eye
You see them leering
And sneering
And worst of all laughing

It’s all about you
It’s all inside you
It spills out of you
In snaps and snarls it weakens you

Makes you brittle
Makes you crumble
Makes you fail

There’s no reason for it
No good comes of it
You must be mad to think it
But that’s just the point isn’t it
You feel you don't own it
But in some way you want it
Must get something out of it
Or why would you do it ?

You think you can’t help it
But you can control it
Just think your way through it
Calm down and get over it
You know you can do it

But you can’t
Because you’re down there
At the bottom of the well
In a big stinking hole
With no-one to hold
You’ve pushed them away
They’re no help anyway
But you want them to stay

A215 - Exercise 5.1

As part of my OU CreativeWriting course there are some set exercises. This one asked for a character study based on a list of random artefacts owned by a single person.

The story is somewhat longer than 250 word limits suggested, but I was quite pleased with it.

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Geoff walked gingerly down the stairs. Old socks and half opened mail were strewn on the lower steps. He really needed to tidy the place up. It was probably starting to smell.

He checked his shirt as he buttoned it. It seemed ok.

“Ouch” he cursed as he tripped over the withered poinsettia on the lowest step.

“It’ll cheer the place up, dear” his Mother had said when she’d brought it round after Christmas. It just made the place look more depressing now.

It was nice, in a way, to know that she cared, but at 32 he thought it was a bad sign that she needed to cheer him up.

She wasn’t the only one who’d offered to help him get over Cindy, but he’d been hoping for rather more than the little bottle of herbal sleeping pills that Dolores had given to him. They’d spent a lovely afternoon drinking coffee together at the little café off the Edgeware Road. She’d talked about astrology and he’d offered to do a tarot reading for her. He liked his Tarot deck. It was in the old Swiss woodcut style. Classic rather than any of that new age rubbish. They helped him to organise his thoughts. Sometime he did readings for himself, but the outcomes followed his moods. He knew better than to take them seriously, but it was hardest when he allowed himself to hope.

Twenty minutes ago his clock radio alarm had gone off and in his morning stupor he’d knocked it off the bedside cabinet. It had fallen between the wooden backboard and the pale violet wall. If the sound had gone off he might have left it there, but the buzzer kept buzzing, louder and louder. He leaned over and reached down into the narrow space. His forearm scraped against the rough wooden edge of the cabinet as he yanked the clock up by its power cable. As he raised it up, the flickering red light of the clock picked out a shape among the dust that lined the skirting board. He switched off the noise and put his hand back into the gap. After a moment or two of fumbling he pulled up a length of silver chain and small heart-shaped locket. He held it in his hand for a moment, caught by surprise as the tears welled up and his body heaved in breath-wracking sobs.

The wave of feeling passed as quickly as it came. He washed and dressed and picked his way downstairs.

After breakfast, he chose a fresh pencil from the jar on his bureau, checked the battery on his new laptop was charged, picked up a fresh batch of business cards and packed them into his briefcase then left to catch the morning train.

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More Haiku

Little girl watching
Cinderella on Tv
Tired but beautiful


chest heavy, breath tight
air goes in without effect
walking exhausting

Crinkled Black ink veins
Bark flecked with fungial moss
Dead tree standing still.

Reading Pile

I guess most avid book readers have the same problem.. too many nice looking books and too few hours in the day .

My current 'to read' pile contains a few possible gems but a fair amount of so-so material (hence it's status as read later rather than read NOW)

Next up is
The Iron Council by China Mieville - a modern fantasy writer with a unique style.

Below that we have
Alistair Reynolds - Absolution Gap
John Courtney Grimwood - Effendi ; Stamping Butterflies ; Red Robe ; Remix
Richard Morgan - Broken Furies
Robin Hobb - MAd Ships Trilogy ; Fools Errand Trilogy
Iain M Banks - The Algebraist
Ken MacLeod - The Sky Road
Simon Scarrow - The Eagle and whatever (I don't think this is high on my list do you ?)
Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe's Havoc ; Sharpe's Escape
George Macdonald Fraser - Flahsman and the Tiger.
Michael Scott Rohan - Winter of the World (6 books ooops)
Dan Simmons - Illium ; Hard Freeze
Walter Jon Williams - Praxis
Neal Stephenson - Quicksilver
Robert Harris - Pompei
Robert Jordan - Crossroads of Twilight (I've all but given up on this series - will it never end ?)

Swamp Thing - The End (Fan fiction)

For those unfamilair with DC's Swamp Thing...it would take too long to explain properly. Suffice to say he is part man, part earth elemental and the last time I read the comic, he had effectivley become the world -spirit.

This story imagines the last ever Swamp Thing tale and is presented for amusement only (ST is of course copyrighted by DC and was created by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson).............

4 billion years have passed and the traveller returns. He spent long-short years travelling the narrow confines of the Milky Way , has seen the best and worst that the Andromedans could offer and visited the galaxy clusters in the constellation Virgo.

As he re-enters the solar system at near light speeds he carves a wake through space/time that shakes new Comets from the Oort cloud and judders the outer planets in their orbits.

He feels the pressure of the solar wind. It pummels his face and shoulders until he slows down sharply in a cascade of tachyons and bremsstrahlung radiation.

Within hours he passes the asteroid belt and reaches the inner circle of planets.

The sun is bloated.

Its face is fat and red. It’s middle has expanded to fill the orbit of venus.

The earth remains. Its atmosphere tattered. Its magnetosphere engulfed by the savage embrace of the sun.

And yet life clings.

In deep valleys between the feet and toes of glaciers.

In deep caverns below the desert at the waist of the world.

The travellers lands in the far north.

His old fortress is long gone.

He sculpts a new home from the ice. It is as elegant and intricate.

A snowflake born of the fire from his eyes.

Something quickens within the earth itself.

A consciousness re-awakened by the presence of sentience.

Glaciers rumble, their long road to the equator paused for a moment while the parliament of ice convenes.

Between them fungi, molds and mosses grow and spread.

The traveller hears his name whispered on the wind and on the wall of his lonely fortress a fairy ring of strange mushrooms grows. Spurting and puffing with ancient forms, it takes the shape of a man.

For the traveller , this interruption is at once welcome and a bore. The creature forms and moves with glacial slowness. Years seem to pass (though they are only minutes) before it opens its mouth and starts to speak.

“You missed them” “they’ve all gone” “ all of them” “Long ago” “Gone” “Gone” “Gone”.

“I got distracted” says the traveller sadly. “I came to say goodbye to the only place that ever felt like home. And it’s changed beyond reckoning”

The EarthThing shrugs “You were always more human than Kryptonian.”

There is a long pause before it goes on

“ No-one who leaves can ever really go home. Those of us who stay are changed or worse , we stay the same. Trapped forever in the ice of our own choices”

“It’s good that you came back Clark. Otherwise I would have slept and missed the ending”

“It could be months or even years away” says Superman.

“No” says the earththing.

“Look up”

Above them there is no real sky. The swollen sun fills the void with red.

At it’s heart a huge hole has appeared. A black pit in a fiery hell.

“The sun is drawing breath” says the EarthThing “When it exhales, the Earth will die and so will I”

“Come with me” says Superman “You’ve left before. The universe has many wonders”

“No” replies the EarthThing “I was too much Alec Holland then and did not know my place. I’ve slept for a long, long time, but still I’ve lived too long and seen too many triumphs and too many tragedies. I am beyond tired.”

“But what of you, no other creature has lived so long”.

“I have travelled far and fast. So fast, the years slipped by between the blinking of my eyes. I’ve seen much. But not everything. I wanted, once more at least, to see the Sun that first gave me my strength.”

“ It’s been good to meet a friend when all that I expected to see were ghosts and memories buried beneath the ice.”

They talk and reminisce of heroes and villains from the past. The EarthThing tells the tale of man and his successors. But it cannot last for long.

Doom hangs over them and far too soon the EarthThing senses a change in the Suns magnetosphere. It resonates with his remaining aura and causes pain or the closest feeling he can ascribe to it.

“It’s time” says the EarthThing. “Goodbye” and dissipates in a flurry of broken fungi. The moss and lichen fall into the snow.

“Goodbye”

As Superman leaves the earth he turns and looks below. Eyes the size of continents seem to look back at him. They twinkle in the red light of reflecting ice.

By the time he reaches the Asteroid belt, the hole in the sun has begun to invert. The magnetic pool, filled with burning hydrogen becomes a slingshot and flings it’s contents into the path of the Earth.

For an instant, the Earth is gone. Then it returns.

Its surface licked clean of features

All life extinguished.

All vestiges of humanity erased.

No earthly thing remains.

Currently Reading

I'm nearing the end of Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything". It has a load of interesting info and is reasonably easy to read, but I am glad it is nearly finished. The subject matter is on the one hand very very interesting but also somewhat academic and dry; particulalrly in the latter half of the book where he examines the life sciences (physics, cosmology and geophysics were more my thing and it would seem remain so).

The Princess

I recently read a poem about Princess Diana...sadly it didn't evoke the same memories in me as it did the author. All I could think of was the over-emotional response from a hysterical public fuelled by the cult of personality and the popular press/media.

Still it did prompt me to write a (admittedly not very good) poem in response.

The day Diana died
I though my luck was fried
No animosity
She meant nothing to me

My plans worked out alright
To Paris. Caught my flight
Without a further thought
For all the grief she'd wrought

Returned. I was ashamed
Marilyn had been renamed
We had a Queen of Hearts
It all had gone to far.

In all this false alarm
The British lost their calm.