A Present... from his Mother

This week's session with my client (Mick - not his real name) who has brain injuries and his mother comes along - she wants to fill in the facts of her son's recovery after the accident. It's difficult hearing how, in those first days and weeks following the crash, health professionals thought he would remain 'a cabbage' (the consultant's words, apparently - not mine). Yet here he is, sitting with me each week and telling his story. Some miracles are possible, then.

The talk moves to Mick's father. I already know that Mick felt unable to be with his father as he died, at home, from asbestosis and cancer, approximately  2 years ago. His mother begins the telling of her husband's death; Mick is transfixed, and I realise that this is a story he doesn't know; he hasn't heard this before.

Mick can remember nothing of those early weeks after the accident and he has struggled with feelings of guilt following his father's death. Working with the material later, I make the decision to put these sections into second person - both stories told in this week's session are gifts to Mick from his mother.

They help fill in at least a few of the blanks that Mick's injured brain has written into his life.

Night Garden Part 2

Working with year 7 Charlotte on descriptive writing and, following her excellent evocation of a dream-like garden, next session we focused on controlling description and turning the mood from positive to negative. We attempted an Angela Carteresque switch from the present moment to flashback before returning to the action. I've added the final few sentences of Charlotte's Night Garden Part 1 for continuity:

Snow drops swayed in the humid breeze, catching moonbeams in their wake. Early honeysuckle climbed the aged brick wall, filling the air with its sweet nectar scent. I drifted, moon-dazed.

When I was in primary school, I learnt the moon controls the gravitational pull of the waves; their dip, dive and reverse. I realised how small I must seem to it. Visions of it enveloping me into its vast white circumference haunted me, swallowing my tiny, insignificant body.

                Which the garden seemed to now. The darkness was engulfing me, trapping me in its murky depths. Trees closed in. A vengeful moon slipped beneath the clouds. A single moonbeam shone down, illuminating my pathway. Instead of being magical, it was the complete opposite. A strangulated cry escaped my lips and I started to run. My heart was pounding in my chest as the once delicate grass turned and snagged my feet. Leaves plummeted, creating a trap for my sore feet. If that didn’t work, holly leaves littered the path I had once carelessly skipped on, the prickle that usually irritated now a white hot, stabbing pain in my feet. Crying now I encountered the next horror of the night.

Charlotte, May 2017

1) Sadly my horticultural knowledge isn't sufficient to be able to comment on the legitimacy of snowdrops and early honeysuckle being in bloom at the same time, but who cares? Great writing, Charlotte!

Pocklington Arts Centre - Great Venue!

The first Carrotsmash @carrotSMASH2 Writing Workshop took place on Saturday at Pocklington Arts Centre @PocklingtonArts - great venue and great group to work with. Look out for more Carrotsmash workshops this autumn - full details will be in Pocklington Arts Centre brochure, or visit www.carrotsmash.co.uk. In the meantime, what did workshoppers think of Saturday's session?

'Good venue. Good group. Enthusiastic and supportive.'
'A thoroughly enjoyable morning. I have learned a huge amount in 3 hours and feel confident that I could continue on my own. I will definitely be attending future workshops.'
'The venue used was 'cosy' and clean and quiet. Ali was a great presenter who was very supportive and knows what she is doing.'
'I feel inspired to write!'

Night Garden, by Charlotte

Currently working with Charlotte year 7, and she has produced some stunning descriptive writing. This, her latest, was inspired after sharing that moment from Angela Carter's The Magic Toyshop where Melanie, wearing her mother's wedding dress, goes out into the garden, at night, alone. Charlotte shows great control when working with atmosphere - well done, Charlotte!

Night Garden

A harvest moon glowed, silvering in the midnight spread. Stars dotted the endless sky with not a cloud in sight. The railings felt fragile against the bold surroundings and looked like the tiniest breath would knock them over. By the garden path I stood, grey stones jabbing my bare feet as I walked – until the garden stalled me. Trees loomed like fey spirits, willowy and elegant. Beneath their clustered livery, shoots reached for dew drops falling from their glittered canopy. Flowers: once the pride of summer, they now had retreated to rule the earth in the beginning of winter. Snowdrops swayed in the humid breeze, catching moonbeams in their wake. Early honey suckle climbed the aged brick wall, filling the air with its sweet nectar scent. I drifted, moon-dazed.

Writing: the Power of Childhood Memory

Working with writers to recover childhood memories can lead to some small yet powerful moments of recall. One of my own that popped up in session recently was a memory of school cross country running: being one of the last; legs mottled blue from the cold; ghastly!

Now, all these years later I’m running and the knees cope better if I head off hard roads and into the hills. The air is super-charged with the scent of sun-yellow rape. There is birdsong – a chiff-chaff and the song of a skylark, somewhere high and out sight - and I have a moment of epiphany (GCSE poetry students, remember? A moment of realisation, like stanza three in Bayonet Charge – except I might change Ted Hughes’ harsh consonants of ‘cold clockwork’ for a softer sibilance!) So: by what sweet serendipity of the stars is it that I am here, in the East Yorkshire Wolds, cross country running and loving it?

1     Memories from school days are still as powerful as ever; the door to our childhood never closes.

2)     I’m so glad I don’t suffer from hay fever.

3)     PE teachers in the 1970s have a lot to answer for!

Week 2 Ghost Writing

Another ghost writing session with my client who has sustained brain injuries in a car crash. This time we attempt to return to memories from his young school days - or what fragments remain from this time. A surprising amount of detail surfaces: he recalls that he was naughty in primary school (weren't we all!) and that as a young adult he liked Depeche Mode.

My issue is how to write this. How much detail do I add, to shape his fragmented material into acceptable memoir which the reader can picture? Or should I leave his hesitant, sometimes repetitive/disrupted narrative voice to speak for itself? As our session comes to a close, he says:

        'It's hard to explain. The car crash has made me... Deep down I wish
         I was a different person; I wish it had happened to somebody else. But it was ME
         and that makes me want to scream out loud but I don't; I don't want to do that
         This cake is nice this cake I've just eaten it was beautiful a beautiful cake. It was nice.
         I want someone to see me for who I am. I'm not a bad person. It's just hard.'

His words bring my heart into my throat; seems to me they are fantastic at just speaking for themselves.

The new rise in fascism

Just read two WW2 novels: Marge Piercy’s Gone to Soldiers (1987) and Tatiana de Rosnay’s Sarah’s Key, written some 20 years later, in 2007. Huge contrast: Piercy’s literary tale of the interwoven fates of her characters weighs beautifully heavy. De Rosnay’s story probably originated in a good idea but is written into clunky dialogue and clumsy plot-swings.

Both focus on the horror of the treatment of Jews during the war years. We read it as fiction, but cannot forget that it was real – therein lies the power of such material to appall yet fascinate.

Fast forward then to Britain, 2017: a young Kurdish-Iranian asylum seeker, 17, is attacked in the street; brutally beaten. He came here for sanctuary; there is none. How many tried to stop it? It is an awful parallel to draw.

Over and over, the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe and its abhorrent outcome is charted in fiction, but we cannot forget that its origins lie in reality. Some 60 years later, we are in a new and dreadful reality of our own.