Adventures in writing

Cooped up in the house for yet another session of Monday morning I'm so crap blues I thought I'd try a new tack. It started with a Cornetto for lunch (mint and choc chip) and ended with the realisation that armed with a laptop and pocketfuls of my change jar any chic coffee shop could be my office.

Fortunately this being Newport it's not hard to find a coffee house that bustles with the industry of a dozen artistic types tapping away on their laptops. I hit the mother lode in fact - not just a coffee shop, but a coffee AND card shop. Nothing else screams out intellectual thinkers than hand made greetings cards priced at three pounds and above with droll quotations from Oscar Wilde and Woody Allen.

In fact it wasn't just a card and coffee shop, it was a card, coffee AND women's hairdressers. Had I realised then I might just have kept on walking to my local and entered the daily arm wrestling contest (one prize: honour). But I was comitted and I wasn't going to be fazed by the ranks of Bella and Chat magazines beneath those big perm machines. I marched right on past them and up the stairs to the coffee section, the wittily name "The Loft".

That's where I met Henry, my Barrista for the day. Poor Henry. Poor, poor Henry.

With his love of bicep curls and very tight T-shirts, with a glass stud in each ear he treated me to a broad smile and fluttered what I hoped were genetically predetirmined long lashes.

"And what would you like?" he said.

He poured me my coffee, and then added, "With room for some...milk?"

I guess his face was shot so full of Botox that's why his pencil thin eyebrows weren't oscillating suggestively.

"Care to try one of my muffins?"

I thanked him kindly, and said no, going over to a seat by the window and took out my laptop.

He flounced around, clattering cups with wild abandon, counting the change in the tip jar. From time to time he'd join in with songs on the radio. At one point a song by the Scissor Sisters came on and he falsettoed his way over to the radio and spent an inordinate amount of time bending over to tune it in.

I sighed to myself. He must have sensed that I was a writer. Was it the uncombed hair? The baggy, faded and crumpled polo shirt?

Or the tortured look of a soul trying to create?

Somebody (I forget who) once wrote that "with great power comes great responsibilty."

I would do well to remember that, especially around male hair dressers. Poor Henry. His only crime was to be smitten.

That's when the old lady came in. Wearing a raincoat and pitched over almost double, with thick glasses like safety glass on her face.

"And what would you like?" Henry asked her. "Room for some...milk? See anything that catches your eye?"

If anything he was speaking with super italics.

I took my laptop and I slunk away.

Trod in some dog shit on my way home.

Growing as a writer

I wrote this here line today

Richard was chowin down on waffles, with bacon too, and the pair of them were waving it at him, linking their arms and nibbling on the crispy rashers like two lovers.

I think I must be getting better because it only took me about thirty seconds to delete it. 

Short fiction - Nightwalker

I once knew this fella, regular as clockwork once a week he'd go round to his grandparents for tea. He would buy some cream cakes on his way there, a packet of four. After they'd eaten they'd argue over whose turn it was for the spare and always they ended up splitting it three ways no matter that the knives were all blunt, and no matter that meant destruction, sad little curls of cream lining the plate.

After the washing up they would sit around in front of the television, or perhaps with a board game or two, though that was rare with the rise of energy saving lightbulbs that produced a light too weak for older eyes.

Always at nine the guy would walk home. His grandmother telling him to catch the bus or better yet, why not a taxi? Who has money for taxis? he'd say, and the grandfather would nod and take his wife by the arm and tell her it was only a half hour walk. The guy would close the gate and wave, and always the two old folk would wait till he was out of sight, no matter the cold.

They would go inside and she'd talk over the journey; the dark streets out of their estate, the bridge over the river, that big junction where the boy was killed and don't you try and tell me being plugged into his music player had nothing to do with it. The old man never saying what he'd heard later, how the boy had been on the pavement waiting for the green man. How they still hadn't replaced the safety barriers.

It was a half hour of worry each week, ended only by the call that said he was home safe.

Then one week, the call never came.

He'd just stopped to look at the high tide, see the lights of the city mirrored in the water. Or stopped for a pint of milk.

But by ten, still no call, so with shaking hands she dialled his number and waited ten rings, and then fifteen, giving up on twenty.

So now what? What could they do? Ring someone up and be called worrying old fools?

Then the relief as the phone starts to ring, and it's him, the joy tempered only by a gentle scolding - you know how I worry. You should take care, there's crazy people come out at night.

And the guy, stood in his bath room, with his hand on the mirror looking at the blood that's splashed up on his face tells her not to worry, he's not scared of the crazies of the night. When he hangs up and says goodnight he's wondering - should he really have slung the fencepost, or perhaps instead brought it home and burnt it on the fire.

It still counts

It's the end of full time writer, week 2. Check the time - twenty five minutes past eight.
On a Friday night.
I've decided this is in no way sad or lonely. It's dedication. Plus, by researching* for the last half hour I'm up to an average of five hours per day for the past week!
That's worth celebrating. So I will.
Though I've got to have tea first. Then wash up. Need to clean the house too, friends visiting tomorrow. No clothes to wear that don't need ironing either.

Ah, the heady, bohemian life of the writer.

Hey, this blog post counts! So that's an average of 5.01 hours per day.

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* Researching = surfing the interwebs for the last half hour till my average daily work time reached the magic five hour mark. Only a very small amount of facebook surfing was involved. It still counts though. So neh.

Solution to my slow starts in the morning?

I sure hope this works

Full time writer, week 2

It's only the start of the week, but here are some stats for the week:

Days since left the house: 2

Words written *: 7

Pink Floyd songs listened to: 45

Hours spent on Wikipedia reading about Pink Floyd: 3

Cups of tea consumed: 5

Window frames painted: 1

Hours spent in the loft looking for Pink Floyd CD collection: 5

Hours spent staring at the manuscript, tension slowly building throughout my entire body as the crushing weight of the enormity of how much work left slowly dawns: 5.5

Still...already topped last week!

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* Not including Twitter, this blog, letters to Santa