16 - Leaving

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"Nurse! Oh my God, nurse!"

15 - Dietrich

Another city, another anonymous hotel suite adorned in every corner with too many flowers. And there sits maestro, bended over a bowl of his beloved semolina pudding. His entourage want him downstairs, or entertaining select patrons in his rooms, but his comfort and solace is here, alone, waiting.

It will come to him again tonight, that haunting story of wandering in a chill bleak landscape; but how, this time: some new nuance, some telling twist or accidental upon which the emotions will balance or fall? He seldom knows, even as it happens. Even the trembling excitement of his heart will affect the pace with which the story unfolds itself.

It is at once both his own story and anonymous, as are the best of songs which inhabit only the singer who can empathize. Maestro will stand in the salon and the weary traveller’s story of Winterreise will out; the audience will hear but not see the icy landscape or feel the chill on their weary limbs in the way he does. They will know nothing of the desolate heart.

14 - Human Interest Story

Eddie and Bob were regulars, down at The Boatman. At the same time every year, the influx of new-agers looking for crop-circles would drive them to get tanked up and then walk along the canal to fetch the plank and string off Bob's boat, before heading up the Grimsdyke to do their thing. Their 'thing' was nothing too creative - Alan at The White Horse made up for that with his great line in flower buds. No, Bob and Eddie stuck to fractals in the corn; hence the string.

Often as not, their mathematical efforts might make the February or March images in some crop-circle photo calendar. More often, they'd be the talk of The Boatman for a week or two after their sojourn, and none more so than 'the night of the ball-lightning'.

Eddie was just finishing the 'seed' circle from which they'd planned to spiral outwards with other successively larger ones, and he felt like having a quick cigarette while Bob moved the peg. His roll-ups were none too tidy at the best of times, but after dark and with their maker the worse for beer they were very hit-and-miss affairs, with wads of tobacco sticking out at all angles. This night, lighting up, the loose tobacco flared and set light to his mop of wild red hair. Since he'd had seven or eight pints of 6X, his thinking was like his roll-ups - none too straight - and so he ran amok in panic.

High up on the Grimsdyke of course was one of the new-age protagonists to whom Eddie and Bob had dedicated their work, a Dutch holidaymaker hoping for a sign of some alien activity. What he saw instead was a ball of fire moving at speed across the floor of the valley below.

Next day, as you might imagine, the Dutchman ruled at the bar as he regaled everyone with the strange tale of his previous night's experiences. The ball of flame grew larger in the telling and its speed across the crops, which now miraculously sported a large circle looking like a kitten's unwinding ball of string, increased in similar proportions. What the Dutchman did not notice was that grasping a pint in a dark corner of the pub was a regular, sporting a 'threadbare' look with the clumped remaining tufts of his auburn thatch edged with charcoal.

What neither the Dutchman, Bob, or Eddie noticed was that all their efforts of the night before had been watched avidly by a dark silhouette hovering just above the horizon between Polaris and the dark escarpment of the Grimsdyke.

13 - Cooking for Men

“Alan, put that bloody pen down and listen; you’re here to learn, not write your memoirs.

“No you don’t need to note quantities, but you do need to absorb what I tell you about texture and consistency, right?

“So, while the sausages are cooking nicely, put a handful of flour in a bowl. Any flour, Peter – white, wholemeal, or buckwheat; we ran through ingredients at the end of the last session. Either, Alan: self-raising or plain, it doesn’t matter. Look the sausages are going to burn if we don’t get a move on, so concentrate guys.

“Now remember what I said about making batter last week, which is that any liquid will do? Well I brought some Old Peculiar for mine, since I chose beef sausages, but I’m also going to add a pinch of mustard powder to the flour before adding the beer. Alan asked if we needed self-raising flour, but if you want your Yorkshires to rise then it’s more important to avoid putting too much salt in in the batter. As I’ve added mustard, then I’m not going to use any salt, but you can add a pinch.

“Next crack an egg into the bowl. It doesn’t matter, Johnny, so long as it came out of a chicken’s arse. I did go through all this, didn’t I? Not the eggs? Okay, but you’ve all got eggs haven’t you? Peter, can Alan have one of yours? Thank you. Now … where … oh yes, put your organic free-range egg if you must in the flour and mix it in with your whisk. In the bowl, Alan. The cloth’s under the worktop; clean as you go. So then you pour your liquid slowly in, a glug at a time, mixing all the while. You’re looking for the consistency of single cream or runny custard, like Alan’s last week only without the lumps. This is the second way of ensuring your Yorkshires rise: whisk well and incorporate air into the mix. Good going, Peter: is that cider? Nice combination with pork and apple sausage, only if you’ve put some of that chili powder in too then it may be a bit overpowered with so many tastes going on.

“Alan, leave my beer alone; you can buy your own in The Nag’s after class.

“Well use milk, then.

“Nearly there? Okay, so the third bit of magic for making sure your Yorkshires aren’t limp and soggy is to have a very hot oven. ‘Very hot’ is a temperature, Jim: we covered it in week 1, remember?

“Now speed here is of the essence; clear your worktops to give yourself some room. Ready? Now watch me: open the oven – tray out – turn the sausages – pour the batter – and … Alan, get out of the bloody way you muppet! – back in, and close the door. Safety first, people; safety first: bloody hell, don’t creep up on me like that!

“What? Rest! Oh, interesting point, Peter, but even Saint Delia doesn’t go for that crap about resting batter for half-an-hour: life’s too short. Mix it, use it. Off you go, now, everyone: your turn.

“Well done; so now there’s just time to get them spuds up to boiling point and to julienne some carrots. It’s a fag break for me while I calm my nerves, but no-one – I mean NO-ONE open their ovens to sneak a look!”

12 - Changes

I s’pose if she’d bin as ugly as sin, things might a worked out different, like, but she was a crackin’ young looker so that set wives ’n’ girlfriends agin her day one. From ’Ampshire I believe, a ‘creative’ like, workin’ o’er Plymouth way. TV, I think.

Any road, like to blend in wi’ the locals she up an’ joined the Enedoc ringers and like most towers these days they ’ad a job to get a full complement o’ bells, so they was most accommodatin’ of ’er.

Old ’Arry were the cap’n on’m though well past ’is sell-by date as you might say, and weren’t long before she stood agin ’im in the AGM and won ’ands down. Course, if’n you’d asked who ev’ryone ’ad voted for, they’d all a said ’Arry and so there wuz a few red faces down The Stanner’s that night, especially ’Arry’s ; ’n’ ’e ain’t bin back since.

Well afore long, she started to make changes, if you see what I mean. If’n you don’ know much about ringin’, there’s summat called the ’andstroke and summat called the backstroke, an’ round ’ere we gen’rally don’ leave a gap between ’m so they’d go one-two-three-four-five-six-one-two-three-four-five-six-one-two- an’ so on like clockwork, which is called “closed ’andstroke”. Mos’n elsewhere they d’ring wi’ a gap after the backstroke like one-two-three-four-five-six-one-two-three-four-five-six – gap – one-two an’ zo on, which is call’d “open ’andstroke”.

Well now Enedoc’s a bin winnin’ striking competitions ’ereabouts for years, but soon as she ’ad ’em ringin’ vurren-like, they adjudicators took agin um ’n’ docked points ’til Enedoc’s started comin’ last all uz time. But that were just a start ’n it.

She got to learnin’ ’em “Doubles” which is a fancy way o’ swapping bells around following patterns that look like some o’ they financial graphs in posh papers, whereas ’Arry ’ad alluz called the changes out loud, see, like “four-to-one-two-lead” and so on.

There was rumours; course there was. People ’ad ’er shacking’ up with Pete Willins, a gangly lad who’d seemingly a run a mile if’n she’d a started up’n ’im. Then with Gaz Trelown, who probably started that rumour ’isself but ain’t as well liked o’ the ladies as ’e dreams o’ bein’. ’E probably started the other rumour, too, which wuz that she’da like the new lady vicar but that was just sourness. Whatever ’er ways ’an’ whatever ’er fancies, at least she warn’t a weekender like some’n’em volk.

Last I ’eard she was out o’ work when ’er comp’ny went tits up in that there recession, ’n’ she ’ad ter look elsewhere for a job. Course there’s nothin’ ’ere for smart young folk like ’er, an’ I see as ’er cottage is out to let again. But she done gone ’n’ left ’er mark, fer I ’ear that the Enedoc ringers a got up a minibus ter go ’n’ try some o’ they church bells up country and ter ’ave a pop at competitions where they ain’t such sticklers fer th’old ways like ’round ’ere. That were young Pete Willins idea, ’im bein’ the new cap’n ’n’ all, and ’e’s like a new feller, confident in ’is ways: why, ’e’s a changed man.

11 - Control

Not for the first time, Jack has lost control of the family. Back then, three headstrong girls and an errant boy born over a 10-year period made puberty and teenage rebellion a long-drawn-out affair in the household. Back then he withdrew into work, and the 70-mile commute helped keep them at bay until each night he put the key into the front door and wondered what new calamity he would have to face; which of them he’d have to show the strap to as his own father had to him.

Now too he withdraws into work, shutting out the bickering and the sharp-tongued exchanges as he mulls over contracts and development deals that only he has a full grasp of. Now when he tries to intervene with his wife, his offspring, their partners and offspring, it falls on deaf ears. They talk about him as if he too has deaf ears, then place their alcohol-fuelled faces before his and ask “Are you okay dad?”

He isn’t, and amid the strangers of his household there is another who when she isn’t eating his food says “C’mon Jack, let’s check that catheter and see if that’s why you’re ‘Mr Grumpy’ today, shall we? I’m just going to move your chair.”

Not for the first time, Jack has lost control of the family.

10 - The Trouble with Peyote

The fedora is lifted, admitting the merest hint of the Pyrenean sun. The baby’s crying having been smothered by a breast, the fedora is replaced. It is at that precise moment that a distant rumbling makes its presence felt rather than heard, at which the body beneath the hat emits a low groan matching its increasing intensity.

The progenitor of the approaching rumble is of course our anti-hero, Monsieur Peyote, and with the finesse of a Covent Garden porter he steadies the rolling barrel on its cobbled course with deft kicks from his clog-shod feet. His skilful footwork is lost on Frederick, entombed beneath the hat and who scarce two hours earlier had slipped from the café to make a granite pillow of the threshold of l’Église Ste Marie de Corrignon.

“Can’t you do something to stop that infernal chap following me, James?”

“How did you know I was here?”

“You’re always there. You’re like Ghandi, ever present to remind me of my shortcomings.”

“Only until Muriel makes an honest fellow of you, Freddy, at which point my best man duties are relinquished.”

“Muriel!” exclaims the fedora before being jettisoned as he sits bolt upright, the colour of alabaster. “What day is it?”

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An exercise in continuing a story, taken from pp2-4 of Neale, Derek (ed, 2009), A Creative Writing Handbook, London: A&C Black.