New Stuff

David's short book "Tales from the Plots" has now gone to the printers - it will be available in conjunction with the Slug Society's exhibition at the Brewer Arts Centre in Kendal in July and August.

It will also be available through this blogsite once Robert puts the PayPal button on!

We are also working on a new volume based on our experiences of lecturing in Further and Higher Education - this should be available later this year

IN THE MEANTIME HER IS THE LATEST ROBERT ELDON -

ONE ARCHBISHOP, FOURTEEN NUNS AND A MINIBUS

An Anglican Canon died and found himself standing at the Pearly Gates. Having given his name to St Peter, he was warmly welcomed in and a passing angel was delegated to show him round. They had been walking for perhaps half-an-hour when they came to a large high wall, which encircled a small enclosure. A large sign on the wall said “Tost na h-oidhc!”

‘What’s the wall for, and what does that writing mean?’ asked the Canon.

‘The writing means ‘Be Silent!’ It’s Gaelic, and inside the enclosure are the ministers of the Wee Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, Presbytery of Lewis.’

‘But why do you keep them walled in like that?’ asked the Canon, ‘Surely they’re not dangerous in any way.’

‘No, it’s for their own peace of mind,’ said the angel. ‘In life they believed they were the only ones who would ever get here and it so upsets them if they see other souls!’

I speak as one who was once condemned from the pulpit of the Wee Free in Benbecula for attending morning service in an anorak. It didn’t seem odd. After all, my own dear grandmother had her own very firm ideas about appropriate dress in church, particularly when applied to the clergy, but more of that later.

This piece is largely about my lifetime’s experience with the clergy or at least with the ‘religious’ as Sister Ursula, a nun with whom I once taught at a provincial university, called them.

Once when introducing her colleagues at an induction session for a group of Catholic students Sister Ursula had pointed to herself and a young nun beside her, and said ‘I’m afraid I must tell you that we’re what you call ‘religious’!’ Then she paused ‘But we’re not sure about Sister Mary.’

Sister Mary was a Manx woman of indeterminate age, who ruled the Administration section in my department. She decided to take me under her wing when I joined and to protect me against what she saw as the malign influence of the evil sisterhood of feminists who she believed were taking over the institution.

Sister Mary was very free with her advice. On being told of the appointment of a new parish priest she asked if he drank.  ‘It’s best to have a parish priest who drinks, that or the gambling. They’re the only things keep their hands off the little boys!’

‘Really Sister!’ said the departmental secretary, ‘what an evil thing to say!’

‘So report me to the old bitch,’ said Sister Mary, the “old bitch” being her customary name for the Mother Superior at the Convent where the nuns lodged.

Ah, Sister Mary, in the words of the Jake Thackery song ‘a bloody funny nun you were!”

Anyway, to move on, for Sister Mary is a diversion, albeit as Michelin guides are wont to say “one worth a detour”.  She isn’t even one of the 14 nuns referred to in the title and besides this piece is mainly about priests. I tried to find a suitable collective noun for priests – there’s a superfluity of nuns, even a dignity of canons, but apart from convocation and college nothing for priests.  So I’ve chosen the title you’ve got.

I’ll start at the top. I once had an encounter with an Archbishop in a gents’ lavatory. Before anyone becomes worried this is not a confession story which might lead to evidence being placed before Operation Yewtree or its ilk or even the making of a film starring Judi Dench. Sorry to disappoint you all.

No, it was back in the University mentioned earlier.

At the time we were very short of lecture room space and the rooms were in use for about 14 hours a day, so much of my teaching was done to mature part-time students in the evenings. As I passed through the foyer on my way to my lecture theatre one evening I noticed a largish group had gathered and on enquiring found that there was a meeting of the University Senate that evening.

Needing a pee, I headed into the gent’s toilets. The toilets off the foyer had an odd layout. Although the end room itself with the sinks, urinals and cubicles, was brightly lit, there was a long, narrow unlit corridor leading to the room. As I started along the corridor I found myself faced with an apparition silhouetted in the far doorway. His vestments trailed to the floor making it look like he was floating just above the ground. With his mitre on his head and his crozier in his hand the Archbishop looked like a gold-plated Dalek about to invade earth. He should have shouted ‘exterminate’ but he just smiled and I stepped back into the foyer and let him out. He went off to the Senate and I went to teach Basic Business Finance, each to his own.

Grandmother would never have gone for golden vestments, she believed in austerity in religion (she’d have got on well in the Presbytery of Lewis, except they don’t allow women, which might have been an obstacle.) Plain black was in her view the only correct attire for the clergy. I remember a young vicar arriving at our church and taking the service wearing a white surplice over his black cassock. ‘Popery!’ cried Gran.  Summoning a convenient daughter to push her wheelchair to the front of the church, she faced the clergyman. ‘My grandfather didn’t build this church for you to swan about like a prancing Jessie,’ she informed him.

Forty years later I went to that priest's retirement service. In his speech he remarked how in his early years in the parish he’d been terrorised by an elderly woman parishioner. ‘Every home visit was an ordeal,’ he said, ‘she’d quiz me on scripture and on interpretation. She’d heard every bit of malicious gossip about my shortcomings and behaviour and she’d demand that I account for them. I still break out in a cold sweat to this day to think of it!’

Gran would have been so pleased to hear that.  I imagined the vicar going up to heaven when his time came.  He’d be stood before St Peter waiting to know his fate, when they’d be approached by a woman all in black, six feet tall, with iron grey hair pulled back in a bun. ‘Well I’m satisfied,’ says the saint, ‘but I’ll just have to check with Mrs White before you can come in. She has a few points she wishes to clarify!’

Gran had little time for the workings of the Catholic Church. When young I assumed that this was for reasons of doctrine, but I later learned it was more a reaction to the doings of my Catholic Grandfather, Jimmy. I never met Jimmy, I always assumed he’d died before I was born, but in actual fact he was living with a new woman and family in a nearby town. I must have driven past his house a dozen times.

Gran herself had passed on before the events I’m about to recount. It was perhaps for the best. What she’d have thought of me working with a Catholic Diocese in the North of England I don’t know. 

We were engaged in the forward planning of primary and secondary schools provision in a newly created borough. Part of this work involved forecasting the numbers of pupils who would opt for a Catholic-based education rather than a go to a ‘state’ school. To do this accurately required a major data collection exercise from baptismal records and school rolls across the parishes within the Borough. To gain access to those records we had to visit every parish priest individually and arrange the data collection exercise with him. This meant that over a fairly short period I met a large number of priests. I must admit that during this time I came to agree with the late Pete McCarthy’s remark about the Catholic Church of his childhood. ‘I could understand the Catholic bit, it was where Rome came in I couldn’t get. Everyone seemed to be Irish!’

Generally the priests could be divided into three groups, young priests who were mainly based out on the large Council estates to the south of the Borough, older priests in the traditional areas along the river, and a small group of “unclassifiables”.

The young priests were a pretty uniform bunch, you’d turn up at their house, sit in a dimly lit front room on shabby second-hand furniture, probably donated by a parishioner, and drink bad instant coffee while listening to a catechism of statements about Catholic education policies which you were sure had been sent them by the Diocese. There was always a side table in the room on which a large photograph of the priest standing with a proud mother on the day of his ordination took centre stage. These pictures had usually been taken by the local photographer in some small town in Ireland.

They were often morose, earnest young men, rather like Father Stone in the “Father Ted” programme, I felt a bit sad for them. I never met a Father Dougal or a Father Ted on those visits or maybe I’d have been the one to write those stories, I can dream can’t I?

But I did come close to a few Father Jacks, and this is where we come to the old fellers in the heartlands. Memory is an unreliable thing but I seem to see an endless stream of elderly men, all of whom could have been played by Barry Fitzgerald in a 1930s movie, sitting in comfy presbyteries, being brought endless tea and cakes by middle aged ladies.

Their opening remark was invariably, ‘And are you a Catholic yourself?’ This was usually followed, unless the meeting was very early in the morning, by ‘Will you take a glass with me?’  

They didn’t spout the Diocesan line, having more than enough lines of their own. I remember one old priest  saying ‘All them buggers is on the pill, they think I don’t know….. but I do, and I’ll catch them!’ Another popular joke was ‘have you heard that the Vatican’s approved a birth control pill for Catholic women at last? It’s six foot round and weighs ten stone and they roll it against the bedroom door so their husband can’t get in.’ None of them, though, ever told me the tale of the fourteen nuns in the minibus.

Anyway the exercise went along nicely, and a team assembled at the Town Hall to analyse the findings and present them to Council and Archbishop. I was working with Father Simon, a tall gaunt man, who had all the warmth, charisma and passion of the born tax accountant. He was of course a Jesuit.

The results were clear, but some of the findings a little uncomfortable. Part of the exercise had been a major opinion poll amongst parents in the Borough and it turned out that only 70% of Catholic parents were likely to opt for a Catholic secondary school and the percentage was even less for primaries. Many held that factors such as proximity to home and not having to cross major roads were more important, and that’s before we got to ‘subjective’ opinions about the quality of the education provided, these being the days before Ofsted. I remember Diane Morgan talking of the occasion when her parents had to choose her secondary school. There were two options, the first had a terrible reputation for teenage pregnancies, the second was across a dangerous road and there’d been many casualties. Diane was sent to the former, ‘Better knocked up than knocked down!’ being her parents’ stance.

‘The Archbishop won’t accept this!’ said Father Simon as we surveyed the results. And so we wrestled with conscience and professional integrity as to whether to tell the unvarnished truth or find some way to spin the data.

One day, whether seeking divine guidance and simply to get out of the office, the two of us went on a trip to Durham Cathedral. As we stood in the nave under those vast vaulted ceilings, Father Simon turned to me. ‘Whenever I stand here,’ he said, ‘I give thanks to God.’

‘That’s good,’ I replied, ‘for anything in particular?’

‘Yes, that we don’t have to pay for the maintenance anymore!’

I said he was a born accountant.

In the end we, as my Gran would have put it, “told the truth and shamed the devil”. The result was predictable, my contract was terminated and Father Simon was transferred to be an Assistant Priest in a small rural parish on the north-east coast of Scotland.

I remember telling this tale to Martin, an ex-priest I got to know some years later, who’d left the priesthood, married and re-trained as a Social Worker. Judith, his wife, was a local woman with a keen interest in local church history and a number of stories that she was very willing to share. She’d carefully compiled the records of young women who’d been brought over from Ireland to be housekeepers, you could hear the inverted commas in her voice, to the local parish priests during the 19th century. The vast majority of these women had left some months later, under what might be called a cloud and did not seem to have been able to return to their families in Ireland. Judith had no doubt as to the reasons for these departures nor about who was responsible.

Anyway, Martin and I were sat having a pint (Guinness inevitably) in a pub one lunchtime and he remarked on the fact that I was, unusually for me, wearing a suit and tie. I explained that I had in fact had to spend all morning in meetings with local councillors and that I’d had to buy suit, tie and white shirt especially for the occasion on my last trip to Dublin, the suit and shirt from Penny’s and the tie from Cleary’s on O’Connell Street. This lead to joint reminiscences about days and nights out in Dublin City, and it was then that I first heard the story of the fourteen nuns and the minibus.

Unfortunately it’s far too rude to repeat here, so I’ll just have to leave it.

 

Dark Nursery Rhymes - an extract

Yesterday upon the stair

I met a man who wasn’t there

He wasn’t there again today

Oh, how I wish he’d go away

I lie in bed but sleep won’t come

I stare out into the darkness of the bedroom

Turning onto my side, I face the windows

In the moonlight, the shadows of the forest trees that surround the house

Wander across the blinds

It’s going to be a stormy night

But then I sense him standing behind me

Beside my bed, leaning forward slightly as if trying to see my face

I turn towards him,

He seems to be there, but now no more than a shadow

I stretch out my arm, but my fingers go right through him

My arm thrashes, I seem to stir his being.

Like washing up liquid in a bowl of hot water.

In spirals of red, blue, green and yellow, he is gone

In the morning as I wander, half asleep

Along the corridor to the bathroom

I see him again,

Out of the corner of my eye,

Though now he seems to be like my reflection in the mirror

And yet I sense him,

Watching me, always watching me

What does he want? Why is he here, why now?

Whatever his message, whatever he wants to tell me,

I don’t want to know

I just want him to leave me alone.

UPDATE

We've been out of circulation a bit lately, BUT David now has a short piece of work in an exhibition called "Re-allotted" at the St George's House Gallery in Bolton, called "Gates of Eden"

He's creating a much longer work - working title "A Life in the Year" which chronicles the triumphs, trials and tribulations of an allotment site secretary through a calendar year. This work will be part of the next Slug Society exhibition which takes place at Brewery Arts Kendal, dates to be confirmed.

Both "Gates of Eden" and "A Life in the Year" are being illustrated by Rob Jackson.

Robert Eldon is hoping to have some poetry and prose to go into that exhibition. He has been trying to get on with Groken and with his SF piece.

Word Square Exercise

WORDSQUARE

Dave's writing group was set a wordsquare exercise, these are the words he got.

Purple  bitter    sulphur   anger

So he wrote the piece below which he called 'UNBLOCKING THE SINK' because he was trying do undo a bad bout of writer's block, here goes ....

Bitter and anger go together ….

In ‘Chance Encounter’, the first (and so far only) lengthy piece of fiction I’ve had published in a national magazine (Writing Magazine), the ‘hero’ (for want of a better word) is both bitter and angry following his perceived desertion / betrayal by his former partner (Amy) and the collapse of the company he’s worked for all his working life, leaving him alone and unemployed. He’s bitter about what’s happened and he feels anger towards Amy and just about everyone else. He finds a kind of redemption in the end though. The ending gives hope even if it’s unresolved.

The opening passage of ‘Chance Encounter’ also has another kind of bitter in it, the hero’s sitting in the Buerre Louise pub sinking his ‘second pint of bitter from some obscure Cornish Brewery’ before setting out to find ‘a fish supper at the Judd St Chippy’.

And I’ve just finished reading the latest ‘Rebus’ – ‘Better be the Devil’ – Rankin back to form. And bitter features a lot in Rebus stories, though for most of this latest one he’s on the wagon, fearing the results of hospital tests, the threatened diagnosis from which hangs like the Sword of Damocles over the novel. 

But what of sulphur? The smell of sulphur is the smell of farts, the smell of Trump but that’s been overworked just now.

Then I remember the springs at Saturnia in Tuscany with their warm, bubbling sulphurous waters and the overflow running down the hill into pools where trippers bathed for free. But I’m not sure whether the smell came from underground minerals or from the used disposable nappies floating in the stream.

So my mind turns to the Devil, the smell of sulphur is the smell of the pits of Hell.

And what of purple – well there’s UKIP – the purple rosettes, the purple lettering on a yellow background.

Maybe I should be thinking about writing a detective story. And now I think of it, the opening passage of ‘Chance Encounter’ has its homage to Chandler’s great detective, when the hero mutters as he leaves the pub ‘down these mean streets a man must walk’,

My detective could be a bitter, angry man who’s drawn to Tuscany for some reason. But I worry, aren’t all detectives in fiction, bitter, angry men with relationship and drink problems? And didn’t Val McDermid have a story in which her detective goes to Tuscany. Is this getting derivative?

In my story my bitter angry detective with relationship issues and a drink problem will find himself (or even herself) travelling to this small castle in Tuscany (Val d’Orcia?) pursuing a trail of deceit and treachery surrounding a nationally recognised sort of UKIP figure (with possibly satanic overtones – clouds of sulphurous odours surrounding him – shades of Dennis Wheatley or even the Da Vinci code) With a pivotal scene in the gardens at Saturnia around the sulphur springs.

Yes that’s what to write, with a bit of purple prose, but will I write it?

Watch this space!

APOLOGIES

Apologies that we haven't been posting anything for a month or so.

One of us hasn't been writing much and the other has concentrated on entries to a couple of competitions.

We hope (since next week is half-term and writing group and Italian lessons are taking a break) to post something next week.

Hang on in there, please!

Dave J / Robert E

REUNION - by Robert Eldon

4th March at  8.00 a.m.

Ben finishes his breakfast, washes up and then sits in his chair by the window with a second cup of coffee and finishes the ‘Guardian’ crossword. 

That completed, he limps out into the back garden, shivering in the cold morning air. The limp, like the scars on his chest, is a souvenir of his last heart operation. He refills the bird feeders, remembering to scatter a little seed near the bushes for the dunnocks, before slipping back into the warmth of the house, locking the door behind him. Back in his chair, he watches through the window as a wren creeps out from its bolt-hole in the climbing hydrangea to grab a few seeds. A robin soon chases it back into hiding.

There’s a rattle as the mail comes through the letterbox and lands with a thud on the mat in the hallway.

‘It’ll just be adverts,’ Ben grumbles.

There’s a white A5 envelope amongst the usual pile of catalogues and circulars. 

‘University of Oldbury, another plea for donations.’

But it isn’t, it’s a letter from Morris Hirschfeld. He’s writing to all their old university course. It’s the 40th anniversary of their graduation, and he’s organising a reunion at Oldbury.  There’s a website and an email address.

Ben takes the letter into his study and sits wondering whether he should join them. He’s thinking about someone who he really wishes he could see again.  

‘Hilary and I just drifted together. Nothing intense, sort of friends. We were both still living at home and travelling in every day, so we missed out on a lot of the groups that formed in halls and student flats. We became “study buddies” as they call them in the States. I guess she found the notes I wrote up each night – three colours of ink in hard-backed notebooks – pretty useful. Well most of the time that’s how it was, on her side at least.

After graduation I got funding to do my PhD at Leamwick, and Hilary joined the marketing department of a multi-national down in London, a high-flying career beckoned for her. But we kept in touch.

Then one Tuesday morning, I got a call from her. She said she was supervising some market research exercise near me - suggested we met up. I invited her to stay at my flat. I gave her the bed, slept on the sofa.

She stayed on for the weekend. On the Sunday morning, I walked into the bathroom, and there she stood, just a pair of knickers on - still remember those knickers very well, sort of white with little perforations all over them – like Tetley teabags – I think they called them Artex knickers. No - that can’t be right - Artex is what some idiot had used on the ceiling of the cottage I bought when I retired, bugger to get off. 

I got flustered, stammered out ‘I’m sorry’, closed the door and dived back into the hallway. She came out after me, stood there facing me with her hands on her hips, just stood there smiling.

“Do you know how long I’ve been stood there, quietly waiting for you to barge in and surprise me?” she said. “You really are hopeless.”

You’d think I’d remember her breasts, how she looked, wouldn’t you, but it’s the knickers - that’s what I remember.

That evening I drove her to the railway station, we kissed in the car park, then she took the train back to London.

Back at the flat, the scent of her perfume still lingered on my pillow.

And that was the last time I saw Hilary Blake.’

Ben logs in on his laptop and emails Morris.

7th September 4.00 p.m.

Ben’s in his kitchen when the pain hits him. The iron bands round his chest, the sweating, the feeling of nausea, Ben knows the symptoms only too well. He presses the pre-set number on his phone to summon help.

‘Can’t be ill now,’ he thinks, ‘it’s the reunion next week.’

Half-an-hour later the paramedics arrive, at the same time as his brother, Jim.

‘They’re going to take you in for the night, just to be on the safe side,’ says Jim.

8th September 8.00 p.m.

It’s visiting time in the cardio ward. Jim’s sat at Ben’s bedside. He looks concerned.

‘Well, looks like I’ll still be going to that reunion,’ says Ben, ‘looking forward to that.’

Jim says nothing.

13th September 8.00 a.m.

Ben’s standing on Platform 1 at Blackedge station. It’s the end of the line. It’s a ten minute walk from Ben’s house, but he can’t remember exactly how he got here. The platform’s thronged with people. To Ben’s eyes they seem grey and faded. They ignore Ben. A girl standing near him, shivers and pulls her coat tighter around her, even though the morning sun is already warming the day.

Ben sings to himself, ‘I’m standing on the railway station, got a ticket for my destination.... Paul Simon composed that on Warrington Bank Quay, or was it Widnes?’

He boards the train for Oldbury, he’s heading for the reunion at the University.

13th September 9.15 a.m.

Ben stares out of the window as the aged multiple-unit emerges from the mist that seems to have enveloped it since they left Blackedge an hour or so before. Now it’s ambling through a townscape of scrap-yards and derelict factories, clattering its way towards his destination. He’s still thinking about the girl he hadn’t seen for nearly forty years.

Ben looks round the carriage. The seats around him are empty. ‘So much for all those stories in the ‘Evening Post’ about overcrowding and cattle truck conditions,’ he thinks.

13th September at 9.30 a.m.

Ben disembarks onto an empty platform at the new re-designed University station. He doesn’t know which way to go. Everything’s changed.

Suddenly another train comes in. It’s absolutely jam-packed. Students and office workers in bright, modern clothing pile off the train and start up the platform. Somehow the tide seems to swirl round Ben and he finds himself being swept along towards the exit.

There’s a sign pointing to “University Campus”, so Ben heads in that direction. He crosses a road and finds himself in a car park. All his memories tell him that there should be an old brick building in front of him, but there’s nothing there, just an empty grassed space and a signpost pointing to ‘Library / Cafe’.

‘I’m still too early, maybe I’d better get a coffee.’

So he wanders off across the grass.

As he reaches the Library a woman, a girl really, steps out towards him.

She looks so familiar, he thinks for a moment that…. But she can’t be.

‘Hello, Ben,’ she says.

Hilary?’ he says, ‘Is that really you?’

And they link arms and walk together across the campus. The young woman in her leather jacket and tight jeans and the old man dressed in his best formal suit.

‘You don’t look a day older than when I waved you off on that train at Leamwick station,’ says Ben.

Hilary smiles. ‘You look a bit more worn, I fear. Have the years been hard?’

‘Not really,’ says Ben, ‘there’s just been a lot of them. I used to have hair, and why am I dressed like this? It’s a reunion, not a funeral.’

‘So you’re here for the reunion, then?’ asks Hilary.

‘Yes, you too?’

 ‘In a way.’

Ten minutes later they’re standing in the shadows of the Senate House, looking across the grassy square, watching a group of middle-aged men – their former classmates – who’ve gathered around Morris Hirschfeld on the steps of the sixties glass and concrete block that is now the Maths building. 

‘Shall we join them?’ asks Ben.

‘I don’t think we can,’ says Hilary.

‘So what do we do?’

‘Maybe we should just go back to Leamwick, take up where we left off.’

‘Could we do that?’

Meanwhile the group are chatting amongst themselves.

Morris Hirschfeld is holding a clipboard with a list of names.

‘I think that’s all of us,’ he says.

‘What about Ben and Hilary,’ asks another, ‘Do you know anything about them, are they coming?’

Morris puts his clipboard under his arm and sighs.

‘No they won’t be coming. I suppose we had to expect in forty years we’d lose someone. It’s amazing in a way the rest of us are all here.’

‘Ben was due to be here today. But he died last week, heart attack. Today’s the day of his funeral. His brother emailed me. He said Ben’s last words were that he was really looking forward to seeing Hilary again. He must have been out of it by then. He knew about her, he was the one who told me.’

The group falls silent. Then, ‘why what happened to Hilary?’

‘She was killed in a rail accident, not long after graduation,’ says Morris, ‘apparently she’d spent the weekend with Ben in Leamwick and was heading back to London. I only found out myself a few months ago when Ben emailed to say he’d come to the reunion. First time I’d heard from him in 40 years.’

Morris pulls himself together, ‘Come on,’ he says, ‘we’ve got to get on. Let’s get started on this tour of the new campus.’ He waves to a young woman standing by the Maths Building doors, ‘here’s our guide.’

Meanwhile, in another time and place, in a flat in Leamwick, a long-haired young man is stepping out of the mist and sleepily beginning to turn the handle of the bathroom door.

The Promised (Threatened?) Cartoon