Writing Exercise: Meta

I walked in through the front door and felt the reassuring slam ripple through me as it closed behind me. The argument between Mr and Mrs Morris from flat five was silenced by the sealing of the portal.

I was home.

Realising my eyes were closed, I open them to the misty air inside my living room. First thought was that I’d left the cooker on from earlier in the day or, heaven forbid and thank God I still had a home, the previous night. However the cloying smell of tobacco assaulted my sense of smell and my eyes sought the source.

In the corner was a middle aged man, or rather, a middle aged man for his race. His blue spikey hair was resting against the headrest of my armchair as he billowed smoke towards the ceiling. He was wearing his usual green t-shirt and blue jeans. His maroon leather coat was flung across the arm of the nearby sofa.

My cat Asuka was rubbing herself up against his hand as he idly scratched the top of her head and his one red eye watched my every move with casual amusement. The other eye was white and pupil-less. The vertical scar going through it the testament to how he lost it.

“Hard day?” he asked as he raised a pipe to his mouth and took a toke. Red embers flared up in its bowl and a tendril of smoke snuck out of a nostril.

My mind finally registers the impossibility before me. “Seems like,” I mutter as I reach into my pocket for my phone. It seems oddly allusive but then my fingers clasp around the cold metal backing of it and lift it out by the corner with the cracked screen. In one fluid motion I scroll onto the camera, point it at the person in my armchair and take the picture, instantly sending it to Alex with the caption of “Can you see this too?”

Reassured by the creation of the photographic evidence that my mind was still sound, I sat in my office chair across from him. The computer on the nearby desk seemed to sense my arrival, or rather I must have inadvertently knocked it, and whirred to life.

“You don’t smoke,” I stated as he billowed more pipe-smoke into my living room.

“I thought I’d give it a try,” he replied, “besides, you have yet to write the chronicles of Gabriel, so I can do what I like…”

“Chronicles of Gabriel?”

Gabriel grinned at me, accentuating the chunk that was missing from his nose. “Yes,” he said, “Riddick got his own and so did that ridiculous place Narnia. Least you could do is give me my own.”

Learning Café

Being back at university is oddly soothing after the last four months of inertia. I would like to put that down as the reason why my writing has been so erratic, however laziness and the need of a break from being creative were needed. For those who have been following the series… Yes it would seem that the institution had knocked me down for a while. For those who didn’t know that was the underlying theme with it, apologies for the spoiler.

Sitting here with such peace, however, is bizarre to me. I should be bricking myself shouldn’t I? Dissertation year. Conclusion to this massive gamble I took a couple of years ago in order to shove the boulder into the river and divert the course of my life. So I should be panicking, wondering whether I’m up to the challenge. I mean, the penalisations are seriously heavy this year. Ten mark loss if I don’t use enough sources in the critical peace on one of the modules as well as a further 10 if I don’t accompany it with an analysis of each of the primary texts.

But I’m not. Instead, I’m trying to do the reading for the lecture in a couple of hours and the soft fabric-covered sofas are being abused by Ranger hurling a slime covered demon through its back and shattering the glass of the vending machine behind it. It slumps down the shelving showering itself in Fairtrade crisps that were used as a makeshift airbag. Gabriel is standing above a large beast that he had just countered and driven through a table.

The silver wolf darts around the outskirts of the room, looking for the right angle into the fray while Paul tries to avoid the conflict, bearing the wounds of Waya’s most recent scrapes. The waitress blindly pours a coffee for another student that has just arrived to the battlefield and unbeknownst to them another monster of darkness lunges through the pair of them to be parried away by the Elf King Juan (need to think of a better name for the poor guy, eighteen year old me did not do him justice) and had its head severed by the mighty swing of his two handed sword, a great feat in such a cramped area as he managed to miss the waitress completely.

So it’s fairly safe to say that any hold the institution of life may have had over my writing has now been loosed by the freeing sensation of sitting on Uni campus and I am ready to take on the task of becoming a graduate.

(Now who honestly saw that coming? I sure as hell didnt…)

Julia’s Adventures: Lock Out

Of all the people I enjoy to write about, whether in fiction or creative non-fiction, one of my favourite subjects has got to be my sister Julia. I’ve not really written anything about her on here, however she never ceases to be a source of amusement and inspiration writing wise. For instance this evening she came round – I had offered to have George (mum’s boyfriend’s dog) for the day, which later became an overnight stay – to drop off some food for him.

She came into the living room for general chat – and I think to make sure that he got on with the other three dogs we have here perfectly well – at around half nine at night dressed in her pajamas, thick white with spots fleece socks, her boyfriend’s slippers and a thick black wool dressing gown.

As the discussion progressed, she suddenly said to me; “I told you that I locked myself out today didn’t I?”

I shook my head, “No, I heard nothing of that.”

She held up a hand, “I just wanted to cry, you know, it was just one of those instances. First off, I’d managed to get myself and Elloise sorted and out the door today by nine o’clock. Which, I might add, is a miracle for me to get anything done by nine. I mean, we’re talking full make up and everything. Got downstairs and realised that I’d left my keys inside. I kid you not, I could have cried.

“I then knocked on downstairs glass door to see if they had a ladder to get in my balcony, she screamed at me!”

“A bit excessive,” I murmured.

“Yeah, she screamed at me, then I realised it as because she saw George, he was with me because we were taking him for a walk. I had Elloise in my arms, and I was like, “He’s OK,” she said she’d call her friend and he’ll bring one down soon. I asked how soon and she said an hour and I was like… Fuck… that, no way was I going to wait around for an hour. So I walked down the road to the house on the corner, because they’re renovating and getting an extension or something. Anyway, they had like four ladders in the garden!

“So I went and knocked on their door, they didn’t answer, so I went back up the road and knocked on the door across the road from me. She didn’t have one, so I handed her Elloise-”

“Wait, wait, wait,” I said, holding up a hand. “You handed Elloise to a random person?”

“No, I knew her… sorta… She was one of those who you pass and say hi, how you doing and stuff, you know…”

Actually, I didn’t know as I am an anti-social sort who doesn’t really talk to anyone in passing. In fact, majority of the people I see out on the street recognise me far sooner than I then. But I dutifully nodded and let her continue her story…

Things Just Aren’t The Same

“I swear that disappeared when I was a kid,” Justin said over a glass of the cold amber nectar. “And you’re how old?”

I take a sip from my own glass, its shape and logo branded by San Miguel. “Twenty-nine.”

“No way, mate.” Justin shook his head. “That stopped when I was about eight.”

This time was my time to shake my head. “I distinctly remember sitting there in the morning looking at it and waiting for it to go away so that I could watch the early morning TV. Like Playdays and the stuff.”

“Nah, nah, nah. That disappeared when I was a kid.”

I dug my heels in and adamantly glared back. “No way, I remember it.”

“No, you remember seeing a program about it. I remember putting 50p’s in the TV and seeing it.”

Di looked at her phone, “Ok Google,” she said. “When did the girl and with the clown disappear from the TV?” her phone bleeped at her. “It says here that it disappeared in 1997.”

“So I’m right,” I said exultantly.

Although, this memory caused a semi-heated debate that spread to other people, and several google searches later, I was still found to be right by the many wikipedia sources that all said that BBC went 24 hour in 1997. The Test Card disappeared in 1997. The main point of it all was that it gave me a lot to think about.

Although I am twenty-nine there is so much that has changed and going to University a decade later than I should have, has made it all the more apparent. Microsoft have even leaped on this with their advertisement for Windows 10, going on about the different things that the children of today will never have to do. Listening to that, I felt like I had to add a few more things.

Children of today will never have to listen to the dial up tone that I remember my Dad having to bear whilst waiting for the basic C++ software to handle the very first edition of Windows Explorer. They will never see 20 Benson and Hedges Gold selling at the paltry price of £1.80. Mobile phones that you could barely fit in your pocket. Not because it is the size of the Iphone 6. But because it was so thick and could barely handle calls or text and the most powerful game it could handle wasn’t The Simpsons Tapped Out but Snake.

The funny thing is, people complain about the size of phones today, however E-cigarettes are the same size as the phones of old (to no complaint by the user.) In addition, phones of today are rapidly getting bigger and bigger. Maybe we’ll see a retro revamp of the first mobile phone equipped with HD TV???

Maybe Yesteryear

I want to say a few years ago, but it really isn’t. It was eleven years ago that we went as a family to France, one of our visits to the Dordoigne area. It’s beautiful, for any pondering a visit. Lush green scenery, a beautiful river that meandered between towering cliffs. It’s a place that I would happily visit again, unfortunately the year that we went, I was an 18 year old lout with little appreciation for the subtleties that the region had to offer me…

Namely, I was a lout, a teenager of sixteen / seventeen and the last place I really wanted to be was on a family holiday in the middle of a caravan site in France. It was run by the Keycamp people, and the ones who helped the customers and looked after the houses were close to my age so I began talking to them. They were cordial at first, however after the first few days of me hanging around the site being bored off my tits as I refused to go anywhere with my family, they dropped the supplier / consumer proprieties and invited me along to their nights out and campsite gigs.

The one I can really remember was one evening a short while before we left for home. They asked if I wanted to join them offsite and a short car ride later found ourselves in a local pub. It was a low beamed hut which had a bar and a stage facing each other across three rows of tables and booths. The tables themselves were bare, save for the coasters to set beer glasses on. A tribute band had been setting up when we arrived and we were well into our beers by the time they came to play their set.

This was my first experience of pub culture with my peers, OK, I’d been with family and also with work colleagues, but this was the first time that I’d allowed myself to go out with people my own age. (My track record with that age group had not been to great to date.)

However, they didn’t disappoint. It was a lovely evening and the memory that sticks with me most was when they finally played something that I liked, Maybe Tomorrow and I was so pissed by that point that I went jumping up and down the aisles of tables demanding that people clap along whilst shouting out the words to the song and one scared looking blonde woman meekly complying…

The next morning, we left for home.

Role Reversal

The ding of the doorbell roused Laura from her doze with a start. The end credits of X Factor were rolling with the numbers people had to phone to support their favourite singers.

Dammit, she thought with a frown as she stretched out from her awkward position. Slept through it again!

The doorbell dinged again and she irritatedly looked around herself. “Where is that useless man,” she muttered under her breath before hollering, “Gary! Gary, get the fucking door, will you?”

Over the other side of the house, Gary sighed. Why do I have to answer it? The living room is nearer! Still, he dropped the towel that was in his hand and walked out of the bedroom and downstairs to the door. He poked his head through the living room door briefly, with a “Too much for you to move for it, huh?” and reached for the latch.

Laura grunted in response and resettled herself into her chair, while rewinding the show back to the point that she last remembered seeing while Gary opened the door. “Bob!” he said, inwardly wincing at the almost bedraggled state of his best friend’s face. “And Claire, you’re early, we’ve barely begun to get ready!” He pointed to his bare chest and suit-trousered legs.

“It’s alright mate,” Bob replied, toying with the lapel of his jacket. “You know how Claire hates to be late, so we left a bit earlier.” He ruefully ran a hand over his face as the couple stepped through the threshold. “In fact, a little too early for me, I don’t suppose you have a razor I could borrow.”

“Of course, of course.” Gary said nodding emphatically, “let me take your coat Claire, Laura’s just in the living room, should still be awake, you know how she can be at times, such a dear.” Claire nodded and pushed the door open to the living room open just as Laura stopped rewinding and played it from the new position. “They’re just up here mate,” Gary finished, nodding up the stairs, “I’ll show you.”

“Thanks. Hey,” Bob said, running a hand against the wall, “hallway’s different, redone the walls have we?”

“Yeah,” Gary replied, “did some over the summer. Claire loves her projects, but you know who ends up doing it.”

Bob nodded in agreement.

“Just through here mate,” Gary said when they reached the top of the stairs, and opening the bathroom door. “Top shelf of the cupboard there.”

Tips for Avoiding Procrastination PT2

Now, you have managed to get to work in time for the first time in a long while due to the first awesome step! Your managers are happy with you (for the first time ever it feels like) and you’ve had the best shift ever! So with this elation in mind, we must turn our attention to going to the gym. But we all do it don’t we? We all go home to change our clothing and have a drink before we head out to the gym. We all sit in that snug sofa and all the work euphoria goes out the window. Why bother? We think, There’s always tomorrow. We can go then!

DON’T!

In fact, don’t even go home after work, head straight to the gym! Ride the waves of accomplishment and strut your way into the gym giving off that aura of dominance and if anyone is going to be using that piece of equipment it is going to be you! and pound out those sets like the man (or woman) beast that you are!

“But,” I hear you say, “I can’t do that, I don’t have my gym stuff with me when I go to work! I can’t work out in my suit, it’ll get ruined!”

Worry not my dear friends, I have the answer. Allow your other procrastinations to aid you overcome this one! You know those times where you’ve taken a bit of clothing out with you, that just in case I need it piece? Then you look at it on the back seat of the car or in the bottom of the bag and think, I should really take it out… Leave it! So it may get a bit mildew eaten, or a packet of biscuits may break open and spill all over it, who cares? You’re going to sweat into it anyway! Then when you head into the gym after your euphoric day at work, then you have the clothes already in the car or bag ready to rock and roll and rejoice in the awesome change that has come into your life thanks to these tips and your rigorous effort!

The third tip… Well, I’ll get to that later…

Note: No animals, size zero clothing wearers or packets of biscuits were harmed in the development of these tips. For more information go to http://www.illgettothislater.com or contact your local Procrastination Avoidance Sponsor.

Tips for Avoiding Procrastination PT1

Okay, so here are my top three tips for avoiding the dreaded procrastination and because it can affect every aspect of our lives, I’m going to focus mainly in on getting up for work and going to the gym because none of us want to get fired and as people keep telling me “it’s only 111 days to Christmas!” (sadly, there is also a website for a to the second countdown as well…http://www.xmasclock.com/ ….) and six days after that we all begin the New Year’s Resolution to lose the Christmas fat… which has built upon last year’s and the year before that…

You get the point.

So you’re suffering with the Monday morning blues when your alarm starts blaring at you from your bedside table? Or if you’re really mean, or the man of the household has to have the clock his side of the bed (just saying) and you have to nudge your other half to get him to hit the snooze the alarm for that extra five minutes. DON’T! I’m not saying just let it bleat, because you have neighbours and the council are looking to fine anyone for anything nowadays and you can rest assured that there is an “Alarm Disturbance” bill in the pipeline somewhere in one Council’s filing tray.

My tip is to move the alarm across to the other side of the room. Or casually manoeuvre your man into thinking that it was his idea to put the clock there so that he can claim it as his big idea for the week. Now you have to get up to turn off the alarm, or suffer the consequences of that proposed bill!

“But,” I hear you say, “I’ve tried that before and just flumped myself back into bed after. It doesn’t work!”

Fear not dear reader, the answer is at hand. Make sure that your bed is on a spring pulley system, so that when you get up to turn off the alarm, it springs into action by propelling itself up against the wall so that once you turn off the alarm, the temptation to dive back into those seductive covers dissipates and you can get on with your day! Although, I should warn you that small pets such as cats and partners who wear size zero clothing could find themselves catapulted into the wall, so care should be taken if you own such things.

The Diner

Two men sat in the local diner, leaning over steaming cups of tea, seemingly discussing life’s trials. Sandra saw it all the time, but these two were suspicious to say the least. One had graying hair, thick rimmed glasses and was smartly dressed in a cardigan like jacket and tight fitting jeans. Nestled snugly into the bracelet groove on his wrist was a loom band bracelet that someone had given him and the brooding part of her stirred with a desire that her current boyfriend refused to satiate.

The other man was almost the complete opposite. His trousers were dust coated and holes were appearing where it was becoming more threadbare. His shirt was a vile green under a black hoodie jacket and although he looked younger than the other man, he was already bald on the top of his head with only the sides and back of his head covered by thinning brown hair. He too wore thick rimmed glasses.

Sandra nudged Mark, her boss. “What do you think they’re talking about?” she said.

Mark looked up from the bacon he was flipping over to look in the direction of her jutting chin at the two men, the smarter of the two now gesticulating wildly while the other smiled and nodded.

He shrugged and went back to turning meat so it cooked evenly. He looked at the smarter man who now held his hands about shoulder width apart. “Maybe he’s bragging about how big he is?” he sniggered.

Sandra nudged him in the side with a frown. “Don’t be gross, he looks way too classy to be like that.”

Mark laughed and began plating up. “The classy ones are the worst.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she replied, putting her hands on her slender aproned hips. “He looks like a gentleman.”

“Women don’t want that anymore,” he said scooping a portion of beans from the pot then arranged a couple slices of toast and then placed the plate on the counter to serve up the other plate. “They say they want it but then are always swayed by the bad boy with the motorbike.”

“We do not!”

“Yes they do, so men gave up with it. Why be the perfect gentleman when all you end up doing is watching the one you feel fanatically in love with walk away with another man who uses and discards her? Watch that enough times…” he shrugged. “Anyway, their food’s ready.”

Sandra thought over Mark’s words as she carried the plates over, weaving between the chairs of the other patrons. As the distance closed, she thought of the man again and allowed herself a mini daydream of what it would be like. They’d have two kids, no three. Two girls and a boy so that he would always be outnumbered. He probably had a good paying job so that her pay could be for her to enjoy and spoil the kids with. They’d have a large house, car each. They’d go on holidays, see the world..

“…And then she said that I wouldn’t dare,” the man said as she came into earshot. She could see his smug expression now as his back had been more or less to her the whole time. “so I put it up there.”

“No way,” the other said wincing.

“Yup, her face was a picture. She’ll get me back soon for it I’m sure.” The man laughed and the conversation dropped as Sandra was noticed.

She laid the plates down and forced a smile while asked if they wanted anything else. She then retreated, her daydream crumbling with each step back to the counter.

Return of the RP

Today, I was brought back to my roots. The place where one of my greatest creations was born. About eleven years ago, I went onto a forum for those who loved Square Enix games, or more to the point, it was a fan base for Final Fantasy. There, in the boredom of a Computing class that was really not for me, I started a story in Square Enix Forums’ Creative section.

It was an experiment using the second person where I made the reader the evil character and any sections that involved the antagonist became about what you were doing. Safe to say, it failed miserably. Mainly because second person is so difficult to write believably. In addition, you are telling people what they are doing and no one likes to be told that. However, this is beside the point, I had from this experiment a character that I then carried into the Roleplaying section of the site.

The people I met there helped me craft not only that character, but my skills as a writer. The thing people don’t necessarily get with Roleplay writing, is that although you may come up with the original idea for the narrative, you have no control over the general flow of the story. It is in the hands of all those that wish to participate to help craft and guide the story, not losing sight of possible plot points but everyone writing the story from the perspective of their character. So you would have different avenues, different perspectives, different methods to achieving the story’s aims and many of them were ways that you as the original creator could not have thought up to begin with. It also created intense character dynamics as not only were you learning your own character, but how to write with other people’s as well.

It was with a heavy heart, all those years ago, that I saw that hobby pass away. Firstly I focused on my own writing, and then before I knew it life had taken over. In addition, many of my writing friends fell to the wayside, their own lives taking them away from the realms of writing and creativity, the dreams of the characters they created falling into the abyss of ‘childhood play’. Before I knew it, I was very close to the only Roleplayer from that period of my life, still writing.

However, recently, there has been a resurrection. With a couple, it has been my writing of these 400 words and the story of Creativity where I revived some characters long thought dead to their creators. Others, had been focusing on their own works, believing the same as I that the passion for writing had perished in the hearts of the others.

So, tonight, on a site I thought had long since died, but kept alive by a good friend of mine in the hopes that we would all one day return, I gave my character, Ranger, back to the lands of nostalgia and threw him into the vortex for a new portal entrance into a brand new roleplay.

And to be honest with you all, it felt good to write with him in a manner that didn’t need to have a devised plot or direction. It felt good, to play once more.

 

(PS – Yes, I know this reeks of a filler, however, I felt that it needed to be said. For any interested in reading or even joining in with the fun. Go to http://z11.invisionfree.com/Mao/index.php?act=idx