Biscuit - Flash Fiction

Mike just wanted to have his cake and eat it and I wasn’t the cake. I was just a biscuit that he liked to nibble on sometimes. I didn’t even know if I was the only biscuit he liked and was I a Bourbon cream? Or a Lincoln biscuit, the one you nibble the dots around the edges? Hope I wasn’t a Garibaldi, all those squashed flies!

I first met Mike down the Bull Hotel. Not at the bar, girls didn’t go in bars then, it was in the back room where there was a folk night every Friday.  The Folkies weren’t welcome in the bar either, not really but the landlord wanted their money so he sent a boy in to take orders, then carry them back on a mucky tray. If you didn’t have the right change for your drink it would cost you. Pints of mild or bitter was all they’d sell. I drank a half of mild, it was ten-pence and I could make it last all night. I used to go with Billy, he’s my brother and he’d buy me the half and tell me to make it last. I didn’t really mind, I was only sixteen and I wasn't that keen on the beer anyway.

I did like the music though. There was a girl singer, she had long, dark hair. I so wanted hair like hers, mine’s ginger and fluffy and I can’t hardly tie it in a ponytail, like the other girls there. Anyway this girl, she sang like Joan Baez and she was good but I preferred the guys singing. Then that night Mike appeared, with his guitar, he wasn’t a boy he was older and he had a man’s voice and he sang like Johnny Cash.

I got off with Mike, even though Billy said he was married and I should stay away from him. So when he came back, after I hadn’t seen him for weeks,  I just told him we was finished. So that was that.

Come to think of it Mike probably had thought I was a biscuit,  I was his ginger nut.

Why Write?

I  write because I very much need it, to escape the mundane. I could instead have taken up pottery or channel  swimming, I used to be a good swimmer! But there used to be characters in my head wanting their voices and conversations to be heard, their stories to be out here, somewhere. It seemed to be my responsibility to let them out. There were days when I felt detached from reality, going through the motions during the day, impatient to get to the evening when I could just sit down and write down what I needed to write.

Some nights, I’d write till 2 or 3 at night, even though I had to get up at seven to get the day started, kids off to school, watch husband drive off to his job, get some laundry on etc. before going to work myself.

Those days I’d walk along the road talking to myself like a loony, the dialogue for the scenes in my head tumbled out. Writing was at times obsessional. But when I could just sit and the words ran away with me, the feeling was almost miraculous, it filled me with delight.

Later I began writing plays, taking my ability to write dialogue to its logical conclusion. That was a different kind of joy, it required far more concentration on the technical aspects because with playwrighting you don’t need too many long speeches, exposition is the theatrical equivalent of the info-dump. However unless you’re Samuel Becket some information is needed for plot development, has to be incorporated into the dialogue.

Now I write because I want to but very seldom because I have to. I can’t write in that first intense way and recapture that joy I used to have, because storytelling doesn’t work in the same way for me.  When I first realised I could no longer do that I was very upset, became convinced that I’d lost my imagination. It took me a long while to try again and joining a small, local writers' group has been immensely helpful in encouraging me. I can still get engrossed and write for fun, for personal record keeping which I do quite a lot, and I write for my blog, which has a small audience and that’s gratifying.

So my fiction writing is for pleasure and with the hope of publication. My poetry when I do occasionally write a poem is to catch the intensity of a moment, epic poetry is beyond me.

And I want to write more plays, I think for the technical challenge as well as for the magic of seeing my work onstage again, with clever actors bringing my words to life. That’s where I think the joy could be for me now.

The Girl on the Landing by Paul Torday - book review

Sue's Reviews > 

The Girl on the Landing
by 

Paul Torday

Sue's review on Goodreads

did not like it

bookshelves: novels, tried-to-read

I did manage to finish this, it took a bit of doing. I just found it impossible to empathise with either of the main characters. We get both their first person viewpoints, in alternate chapters, but it just didn't work for me.

Sorry Paul Torday, you can write but this one's not for me. I do like the cover though!

Surfacing by Margaret Attwood -review

 

Sue's Reviews > Surfacing

Surfacing
by 

Margaret Atwood (Goodreads Author)

Sue's review

May 14, 2022  ·  edit

liked it

bookshelves: might-read-again, mystery, novels

Read 2 times. Last read May 10, 2022 to May 14, 2022.

An extraordinary book, very unsettling. I may have to read it again to get my head around the meanings in the story and imagery. Her descriptive powers are brilliant.

No Fireworks by Rodge Glass

 

Sue's Reviews > No Fireworks

No Fireworks
by 

Rodge Glass

Sue's review

Jun 12, 2022  ·  edit

really liked it

bookshelves: might-read-again, novels

Read 2 times. Last read June 11, 2022 to June 12, 2022.

Read this in less than 24 hours. Surprising, very funny, confusing, moving and quite sad. Abe Stone alternates between endearing and repulsive, his story is always engaging. Great characters, all feel very real, there are no bit parts.

Absent Blogger

Day lilies in my garden

Have been un-blogging for a while, apologies. Health problems with which I will not bore anyone. But I have been reading, so I intend post some book reviews, starting at once.