My take on a Royal Proclamation which has been circulated...

Proclamation to the citizens of the United States of America from Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdoms of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
 
 In light of the following three factors:

1                  your insistence on winning the majority of the Olympic medals even though the recent games took place in Great Britain and not in some backwater American State,

2                your failure to control your urges to acquire all the oil resources on the planet and

3                 your proclivity (despite having two elected governing houses when it should be obvious that one is too many) for usually electing incompetent politicians who are only in it for the money and are in all cases incapable of believing that there is a world beyond the US borders (i.e. the Olympics have not just been superbly produced in London, England, but in London. Full Stop.);

The Tower of London.

you have proved incapable of governing yourselves; we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, this revocation to take immediate effect (You should look up 'revocation' in the Oxford English Dictionary, all other dictionaries are inaccurate and will be abolished).
 
Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and territories within the borders of the former United States (except for Alaska, which she does not want and will be returned to the natives).
 
 Your new Prime Minister, David Cameron, will consult Her Majesty the Queen on the appointment of a Governor for Northern America (excluding Alaska [see above]) without the need for further elections. The current U.S. president may apply for the position provided he drops the idea of being a ‘democrat’. No ‘republican’ may apply, Great Britain is a Monarchy not a ‘republic’.
 
Congress and the Senate will be dis-established. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you have noticed. Each former state will become a County and may elect a County Council. Former ‘counties’ will, depending on their size, become either Parishes or Rural Districts, with the sole exception of Hazzard County, which is amusing.

Do you enter Writing Competitions? Don't dismiss the small ones!

I do enter writing competitions, I've had a go at dozens over past years. Mostly I never even know if my manuscript or email has reached the correct location and not exceeded the deadline. Those who run competitions obviously can't notify all who enter and don't win, but it is frustrating never knowing.

However I'm not saying there's no point in entering competitions. I have been told I was on a long list years ago and once I was even on a shortlist and very close, but my short story didn't quite fit with the others which were all to be published together in a magazine. So that was that.

And once I was joint winner! It was a local playwriting competition for scripts of up to one hour, and there were not hundreds of entries. However there were two winners and the prize wasn't cash, but much more valuable than a couple of hundred quid. My play was joint winner with Andrew Crowther's Funny Men. We both got to see and participate in full productions of our plays as part of the Snowgoose New Writing Festival in Bradford in 2008.

The Single Utamaro at the Carriageworks Theatre,
Leeds & Bradford Playhouse in June 2011
cast: l-r Richard Houghton-Evans as Chas,
Steph Lodge as Martha and Harry Venet as Benedict

My play was called 'The Single Utamaro'. The whole process was extremely rewarding. I helped with the set and props but the directing was done by an expert, Audrey Caldron. I learnt a huge amount and after two re-writes the play was revived three years later with a largely new cast and I directed. I've written other plays since but the Utamaro* is still a piece of writing which I'm very close to.

So forget the Mann Booker prize, entries for that have to be submitted by a publisher anyhow! Get involved with smaller competitions run by groups and organisations nearby. The fact that there will be less competition for the prizes doesn't imply that it's not worth entering. There's more chance that you will get valuable experience and recognition. This doesn't mean you don't have to be a really good, conscientious writer. It does mean there's more chance of your good writing being noticed.



*Utamaro was an eighteenth century Japanese painter and printmaker who was famous for creating exquisite images of beautiful women.

Articles for magazines.

I've been asked to write another article for QS Eye magazine.

This magazine is aimed at quantity surveyors, a branch of professionals in the building industry whose work is concerned with figures. The content of their magazine is quite dry and my job is to liven it up slightly, although the subject must be broadly related to the construction indistry.

I've had articles published there about, amongst other things, seaside piers, pylons and most recently about the listed structures at London Zoo (which I've previously published a version of on my other blog - to read it go to my blogger profile and click on Expertslife blog).

Now I have to decide a subject for the next article, and I've only got five days to submit - so I'd better get on with it!

Shell Beach - (part of the Aden Collection)

In Aden we had a good car.
Opel Olympia Estate
which took a family of 5,
friends, fishing tackle,
beach gear and picnic to
the place we called shell beach. 

Near naked under the sun
we gathered the shells,
limpets cowries,winkles,
fished from the reef,
bathed in the clear shallows,
shrieked at reef sharks.

We returned with shorts full
of white sand, pockets full
of light shells, buckets full
of bright fish and once, a box
of big, khaki crabs still alive,
claws tied together with raffia.
 
Amazing what we could fit
in a car without restraint,
without shoes and no one
cared for the upholstery.

These are the 31 Women. How many have you heard of?

When I first began looking at the Exhibition by 31 Women, which was the first art exhibition dedicated to the women artists of the avant-garde, I found I'd only heard of three. I'll list those three at the bottom of the list. Who have you heard of ? At least two of them are better known for having a different career!

The 31 Women

1          Djuna Barnes

2          Xenia Cage
3          Leonora Carrington
4          Maria Elena Vieira da Silva
5          Elisabeth Eyre de Lanux
6          Leonor Fini

7          Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven 

8          Suzy Frelinghysen
9          Meraud Guevara
10        Annie Harvey
11        Valentine Hugo
12        Buffie Johnson           
13        Frida Kahlo
14        Jacqueline Lamba
15        Gypsy Rose Lee
16        Aline Meyer Liebman
17        Hazel McKinley
18        Milena Barilli
19        Louise Nevelson
20        Meret Oppenheim
21        Barbara Reis
22        Irene Rice Pereira
23        Kay Sage
24        Sonja Sekula
25        Gretchen Schoeninger
26        Esphyr Slobodkina
27        Hedda Sterne
28        Dorothea Tanning
29        Sophie Taeuber
30        Julia Thecla
31        Pegeen Vail

 

The only three I'd heard of at the start were Louise Nevelson, Frida Kahlo and Gipsy Rose Lee - And yet I thought of myself as an art scholar and a feminist! Pretty feeble I'd say. I now know a fair amount about the careers and lives of almost all of them.
Those better known for a different career are Gypsy Rose Lee and Djuna Barnes.

Flash Fiction - Just Fish

           Westway is never deserted, even at three-fifteen in the morning. I’ve driven up from the coast, two hours on empty motorways, but London roads are never empty. The squad cars are bored, one has decided to tail me.

           The ice is melting.

            I’m travelling at a steady thirty-eight, the limit is forty. My lights work, other things don’t, including the refrigeration. That shouldn’t interest the police. But the blue light flashes in my wing mirrors.

Weeeooooooow, weeeeoooow.

The ice is melting.

The Atlantic Ocean surrendered their lithe, goggle eyed grace to the net, the gaff, the ice packed hold. Trawlers gathered around the jetty like remora around a welcoming shark, unloaded their cargo. Trays of dead and dying fish surged along the rollers, a mechanical death rattle to agonised gills fighting for water in the cold, arid air.

Weeeooooooow, weeeeoooow.

They are so beautiful, these fish. Mackerel glisten, shimmer in a hundred shades of green and gold between gloss black stripes. Herring pour from tray to tray, a priceless cascade of silver, tainted gut red, some crushed by the weight of tons of their companions in the bowels of the ship. The majestic cod flicks its huge head feebly, in death its silvery sheen and snow white belly will bland to grey.

‘Is this your van, sir?’ Menacing tone, a torch deliberately shone in my eyes.

            ‘Yes, officer.’

The ice is melting.

            ‘Going somewhere nice are we, sir, at three o’clock in the morning?’

            ‘Billingsgate.’

            If the ice melts too fast, these exquisitely streamlined creatures will not be fresh. They’ll be rejected by fishmongers, restaurateurs and go for cat food; all that beauty and death for the delectation of the city’s pampered moggies.

            ‘So your van is full of fish fingers, is it?’

            ‘Just fresh fish.’

            ‘Yeah right! Have you got sole, or are you floundering?’ He’s a joker, this cop.

            The ice is melting.

            ‘Would you like to take a look, officer?’

            I open the back of the van. Semi-frozen water slops onto the policeman’s feet as he stands too close to the rubber seal when it sucks free of the door. He steps back, swears. The second policeman shines a torch in. A thousand golden, alien eyes glint, a million perfect scales glimmer.

            Striped Mackerel, they have clouds named after them, the mackerel sky you see at the end of a long, clear day. The humble herring, destined for kippers, rollmops and fertiliser, swirl in the water like smoke, the seals and whales make no impression on their numbers. Codfish were the kings of the northern oceans, once.

            ‘Just fucking fish,’ says the cop with cold, wet feet.

‘Yes, officer. Just fish.’

            The other cop likes fish. He gets three glossy mackerel, wrapped in yesterday’s Express.  I get on to Billingsgate. The cats will go hungry tonight.

                                                                               *

What is Flash Fiction?

This is a question which writers seem not to have agreed to agree on. The name Flash Fiction first emerged in the early 1990's, according to Wikipedia, so who knows when it actually emerged. As for what flash fiction is, short certainly. How short is up for grabs. I've seen competitions which ask for one sentence and other places which say 750 or even up to 1,000 words, so anywhere in between could work, depending on context. However for me, over 500 words seems too long, flash fiction should certainly fit on one page.

I suppose the generally accepted idea of Flash Fiction is that it should be sparing with words. A flash fiction story should be pared down until it says exactly what it must to form a perfect story and nothing more. Flash fiction is not a prose poem, there's little room for lyricism and it's more than anecdote, because anecdote lacks a sense of journey and completeness. Flash fiction's different to the traditional short story, because by definition flash lacks the rounding out of place and the minutiae of personality which can be so pleasing in a good short story.

I've tried consciously writing flash fiction, but more often than not I've been displeased with my results. I do better if I just write and let the short story find its own length. However writer David Gaffney has suggested taking existing stories and paring them down to the bare essentials, he should know, he's had a book of flash fiction stories published. So I will give that a go. I'll post some efforts here later.

Flash fiction can be sharp and devastating. I've read some very short ones - micro fiction - tweet length or less, which can make me draw a short breath. But I don't remember them. The memorable ones are a bit longer, with a bit more substance, a character I can empathise with. 

Some interesting pages/sites about flash fiction :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/may/14/how-to-write-flash-fiction - article by David Gaffney

http://365tomorrows.com/about/ - good site with lots of flash science fiction. The genre seems to appeal to a lot of sci-fi writers. This page has a great comment by Kathy Kachelries about how to create good flash fiction.

 http://www.chester.ac.uk/flash.magazine - a university based magazine which publishes flash fiction, essays and articles all up to 350 words.