Tag: When I Am Not Writing Poetry

The next story, the twelfth, in my collection, When I Am Not Writing Poetry is ‘The Book Binder’s Daughter’ – the second story in the collection to revisit three friends who received brief mentions in The Dark Trilogy. This time the focus is on the second of the two boys and the girl, and once again on the connection – supposed connection, perhaps – between them.

Simon could not quite believe it. He spent the first few minutes after recovering from the shock of that sudden and immediate recognition calculating. How many years had it been since they had last met? It shocked and surprised him to discover that the answer was sixty! But in all those years, she had not changed at all, he thought; older, certainly, but still lovely—instantly recognisable. He wondered if she had seen him, recognised him? But perhaps he had not made the same impression on her all those years ago that her petite features with the slightly upturned nose, the blond hair, the lively eyes and ready smile had made on him. And on one or two of his friends, he thought! His eyes sought her out again across the room and there she was near the windows overlooking the bay talking to, and laughing with, someone in a gown. Simon felt a sudden pang of jealousy.

Sixty years? Could it really be that long… sixty years since he had first fallen in love!

‘The Book Binder’s Daughter’ can be found in When I Am Not Writing Poetry – available here or on Amazon.

Moving on through my collection, When I Am Not Writing Poetry and we come to the eleventh story, ‘The Call’. One of several very brief stories drawn from life: a snapshot of an evening. A snapshot of a generation gap… and because the story is so brief – less than a page – it is difficult to describe it without telling the story! There is a dance and a telephone call…

It was two minutes past one in the morning when the telephone rang.

Of course none of them had heard it above the Rolling Stones LP which was playing and the general noise of dance and conversations shouted over the music. As his friend’s mother appeared in the doorway in her dressing gown…

‘The Call’ can be found in When I Am Not Writing Poetry – available here or on Amazon.

Working further down to the next story in my collection, When I Am Not Writing Poetry, we come to the ninth, ‘The Friends’. Several of the stories in the collection revisit three friends who received brief mentions in The Dark Trilogy. The two boys and the girl were in fact friends from my primary-school childhood (although they are renamed in my writing) and in these stories I have created fictional back stories for them. ‘The Friends’ introduces two of them.

We find them at a post-graduation reception at a university which could almost be that of my home town. The girl is with her father and as they are joined by one of the boys, her father invited him to accompany them to a celebration dinner. Meanwhile, his daughter is having strange presentiments.

After the graduation ceremony following her Art History doctorate, she stood with her father looking out of the long windows of the reception area, across the campus, across the bay to the distant lighthouse lit by the slowly setting summer sun and wondered what she would do now. Well, not now. Now, with her life. She had been hoping that the university… but nobody has offered her anything yet. Maybe she should ask. Then there is her Dad. She thinks his business—the book binding—is failing; she hadn’t seen much new work come in and she knows that the university has started recommending another bindery to its PhD students. She has no idea why. But she thinks that her father is depressed. Not tonight! Tonight he is the proud father, delighted in her success…

‘The Friends’ can be found in When I Am Not Writing Poetry – available here or on Amazon.

Working further down the contents page of my collection, When I Am Not Writing Poetry, we come to the eighth story in the collection, ‘The Sailing Board’. One of the ships that I sailed on was the New Zealand Shipping Company cargo vessel, the Haparangi and chance sent me a photo of the wooden sailing board that was positioned at the top of the gangway with information about sailing time and destination. The story that came to mind is pure fiction but the characters were certainly based on men that I sailed with!

Leaving the love of your life behind to travel the world for three or four months is difficult at the best of times, even for experienced mariners, but for a young deck hand on his first or second trip to sea and a new girl friend…

The young deck hand was in a terrible mood. Firstly, his leave had been cut short as the damn ship was sailing two days earlier than expected and for some reason best known to the damn company that meant he had to be on board three days before she left the Royal Albert Docks. Despite the fact that he lived just down the road! His last weekend with Jennie had been ruined. She was something special, better than other, earlier girlfriends; she had said that she loved him, and she was pretty with her curly blond hair, and that figure! To die for! She admired him too, thought it was so romantic sailing the seas, and she was much more loving than Patsy had been. The thought stopped there. The black mood took over again.

‘The Sailing Board’ can be found in When I Am Not Writing Poetry – available here or on Amazon.

Working on down the contents page of my collection, When I Am Not Writing Poetry, we come to the seventh story in the collection, ‘The Beginning’. A story about a young and rather naïve boy about to leave home for the first time.

Decisions – big decisions – were not something he had needed to worry about until recently and this one had been very big: very big indeed, for it was about his future. His life. Now he was wondering how this decision had ever been reached!

The boy sat at the table in the dining room and wondered how it had all come about. He looked at his mother whose downcast eyes seemed to express a similar but, he thought, unacknowledged concern; at his father who, at the head of the table, seemed unconcerned, unaware even of any issue. He was reading the paper and seemed to be waiting. The boy sat at the table and did not know what to say.

Less than a year ago the boy’s only worries had been about homework and wondering whether he would be able to go fishing at the weekend; he had been working in the local plant nurseries every Saturday, and he had had no other concerns; no worries… and, he realised looking back on that time, he had scarcely ever made a decision in his life. For him, decisions were things made by his parents…

‘The Beginning’ can be found in When I Am Not Writing Poetry – available here or on Amazon.

Working on down the contents page of my collection, When I Am Not Writing Poetry, we come to the sixth story in the collection, a collection of images or anecdotes,  ‘Totality’. This is a necessarily short introduction to a short exercise in writing. There are still 24 more stories to introduce, but we are moving along quite nicely in this month of short stories!

I saw this little collection within a collection as a series of ‘postcards’ – brief, almost pictorial, images of everyday happening. Not very exciting; not alarming; not perhaps even very interesting, but snapshots of life. Here is the first!

One day when I was young I was walking with my grandfather along a wide pavement on the hill leading to his house. We passed a young man who happened to have a blond beard.

If you ever grow one of those, I’ll disinherit you, my grandfather said to me.

I didn’t pay much attention at the time—for several reasons, mostly to do with age, it didn’t seem very important.

Twenty years later I had a beard. Ten years after that my grandfather died. And I remembered his words.

‘Totality’ can be found in When I Am Not Writing Poetry – available here or on Amazon.

Working through the contents page of my collection, When I Am Not Writing Poetry, comes a taster from the third story in the collection, ‘A Time of Plague; A Time of Love’. There are 26 further stories to introduce, so we are still just beginning this marathon: a month of short stories! I began writing short stories during the Covid lockdown as a break from poems… to make a change… and found that I liked the genre.

A time of plague – what was I thinking! And now a man and a girl; a poet and his muse; a lecturer and his student take the stage.

 A tale of two halves!

It was strange to think of the poet sitting in his usual chair, drinking his usual espresso coffee and watching the world go by. As usual. She liked to think of him like that—his old scarf still around his neck despite the warmth of the place, his jacket open on the usual black T-shirt and his bag on the floor under the table—although she knew that now—now in this strange time—he would have to be at home. Because he was old—well, old by her standards—and he wasn’t allowed to leave his house—he had told her that—in case he came into contact with a plague victim and caught the disease—at his age, it would be very difficult to shake it off and recover, she could barely bring herself to think that it might mean he would die. That couldn’t be allowed to happen, she would never forgive herself if meeting her for a coffee killed him! And she couldn’t visit him as she usually did every Wednesday…

The first half of the story certainly shows a girl in love, infatuated, perhaps, by an older man. But the second half is written in a male voice and the poet may have a different view!

‘A Time of Plague; A Time of Love’ can be found in When I Am Not Writing Poetry – available here or on Amazon.

Following on from yesterday’s introduce to ‘The Den’ in my collection, When I Am Not Writing Poetry, comes a taster from the second story in the collection, ‘Age’. There are 30 stories in all, so we are still just beginning this marathon: a month of short stories! I began writing short stories during the Covid lockdown as a break from poems… to make a change… and found that I liked the genre.

I suppose it is one of the inevitable consequences of growing old that you dwell, to some extent at least, on age – indeed I have just written a long poem (not yet published anywhere), ‘Reflexions on the Isolation of Age’. So I suppose that it was not really surprising that during the isolation of Covid I wrote a piece about living alone in old age!

The story is about a man who is advancing more or less happily through his later years, with few cares or worries, unconcerned about his life… until one morning when he wakes up with no idea why he isn’t in bed! He struggles to remember, becomes concerned…

 John was worried that he was getting old. And in that thought he knew there was a second, hidden, almost subliminal buried concern. Getting old—yes, he knew: in his early seventies he didn’t feel old, didn’t in fact feel any different to the way he had felt thirty or forty years ago but his hair was white and thinning, he was, he to admit less agile, he took more care up ladders… that sort of thing. But the worry he wouldn’t voice was that he was losing his memory. Or his mind, an unseen evil voice whispered.

This was just a vague, a background notion that surfaced when he couldn’t remember a name or a place. His memory for the past—the more distant past—was invincible… as evidenced he thought with a grin when his sister has emailed yesterday that she had found his school log tables amongst her books and in an instant he recalled the slim grey covered booklet with its black capitalised title, covered in the sticky-backed film he had used on all his school books. He wasn’t really concerned he told himself.

But then dawn had found him sitting naked in his lounge…

‘Age’ can be found in When I Am Not Writing Poetry – available here or on Amazon.