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Ascriber / Writers Eyes Workshop - 16.
Sounds and Smells
Skip the Workshop take me straight to the submissions
Because sighted people rely on their ability to see, we tend not to notice so much our other senses and unfortunately these are often left out of our writing. So this months workshop will hopefully attempt to help rectify that.
Think of sounds:
A door creaking open or slamming shut is obvious but how about the soft squeak
of the hinge as a door is pushed open.
The swish of car tyres or the sound of birds tree while we are too busy to
notice.
The gentle plop of a fish jumping in a pool, or waves lapping a beach or
crashing against sea defences.
The siren of an emergency vehicle is jarring and noticeable but what about the
sound of its engine when it isn't attending an emergency?
The hum of your computer as you read this, perhaps your printer is switched on,
does that make a noise?
Think of smells:
The smell of cooking as you walk along a terrace of houses.
The mixed variety of perfumes as you walk through a garden or in a florist shop.
New paint, wallpaper paste and the smell of a new car.
The acrid smell of a spent firework or the sweet scent of pine logs burning in
a grate.
Now think of some of your own, try to think of sounds and smells that you could so easily miss and convert at least two of each (you can use any of the above if you wish) into the body of a short story, article or poem.
Poetry up to 40 lines So there you are e-mail your submissions to our writing group submissions address and we don't mind if you attempt both prose or poetry.
Limitation:-
Short story writers up to 2300 words
Articles up to 1500 words
Poetry up to 40 lines
Submissions are from:
I Remember by Stuart McDonald
(Article)
A Fleeting Comet by John Williams
(Article)
Chicken's Bakery by Wilson Irving
(Article)
The Burning by Nicola King
(Short story)
The Room At Cample by Wilson Irving
(Poem)
Prose Submissions
Why do the senses betray you? Evocative, some people call it. The smell of
frying bacon, or coffee, or toast burning. The crackle of a Spitfire's Merlin
engine at the local air show. Memories return – not always happy, or even
pleasant – and often not in themselves related to the smell or the sound. Take
music. You hear a tune, often only a snatch of it, and you are back in another
time, in another place. Mike playing old fifties hits as if they had just been
released proved my point. On and on it went, just as it had on Radio Luxemburg
all these years ago, and immediately I was there.
Homesick, or what? Eighteen years and forty one days and never been away from
home before. “Love and marriage. Love and marriage” There I was, not quite
sure which way was up, sitting in a wooden hut round a single coke-burning
stove at the end of a day of confusion and shouting. Twenty others, mostly as
naive as me, jostling for a share of the warmth and polishing boots, and
brasses, blancoing webbing belts, as if our lives depended on it. And at the
time we felt it did. “Love and marriage. Love and marriage. Go together like
a horse and carriage.”
“Ah! National Service. Made a man of you.” This last usually said by guys
who had never had to experience it. “You can't have one without the other.”
The other day I had to have an x-ray. Nothing serious the doctor said, just a
precaution.
I eventually found the right door and pushed it open. As well as the
strip-lights, the uncomfortable shabby furniture, the unimaginative colour
scheme and the bored patients, there was that odour. It caught at the back of
my throat.
How do hospitals all manage to have the same smell? It isn't disinfectant or a
whiff of the cabbage for lunch. It certainly isn't polish but it is medicinal,
a bit like the inside of a first-aid box that has been shut for too long It
must be some special standard NHS issue “fragrance”. Delivered by road-tankers
no doubt. One hundred gallons is it today Mr Smith. Unmistakeable. And
again, as I stepped inside, my memory, like a time machine, played tricks with
me. Only about five years back this time.
“Wake up, Mr Thompson. You have a visitor.” I didn't think I had been sleeping but maybe the nurse was right. They usually are. But what are Sunday afternoons for anyway if not having a quiet kip? Why break the habit of a lifetime.
“David. How are you?”
I looked up, trying to think who the tall grey-haired man in the green anorak
was. He came towards the bed and put a lumpy brown-paper bag on the side table.
More bloody grapes,” I thought, a bit ungratefully. But why do people always
bring grapes to hospital? There must be a massive industry just growing grapes
for hospitals all over the world. Part of the Common Agricultural Policy I
suppose. Paid for with my taxes. In any case, didn't these people know that
grapes play hell with the bladder? Well – my bladder anyway.
I'll leave them till the new curate comes in. He'll eat them. Poor sod, he
always had that half-starved pimply look to him. He'll eat anything. He
polished off half a box of Milk Tray and a banana when he was here yesterday.
Now, preaching to the converted is one thing. He has certainly enjoyed
preaching to the confined – me. Definitely a first class example of a captive
audience. These thoughts were interrupted.
“I'm sorry I wasn't here earlier,” went on my visitor, “but I've only just
heard.”
I looked at the clock at the end of the ward. This was almost as bad as the
curate. It was nearly three o'clock. Did he mean sorry that he hadn't been
here at half past one or sorry that he had not realised sooner that I had been
lying in this damned bed for the best part of the week?
“I must say you don't look too bad,” he continued, apparently unconcerned at my
lack of response. “You are in the best place anyway.”
What did he mean, the best place? I could think of any number of better
places. If he though that a foam-rubber mattress with lumps in it reminiscent
of the Himalayan foothills and stuck in the middle of a barrack room full of
loony old men was the best place to be, his must be a dreary existence.
“It was good of you to come,” I said. Who was he anyway? I looked more
closely. Just over six feet and slightly stooped, probably in his late
seventies. Older than me by a good bit anyway. His long thin face with the
slightly protruding ears and a large bulbous nose gave him an oddly comic look
as he towered over me. Dark eyes partially hidden by fiercely bushy eyebrows
and underscored by pouches of loose skin hardly suggested a lively mind,
however, or much of a sense of humour either.
His bland appearance perhaps explained why he was being so conventional. He
sank slowly onto one of the Health Services' less inspired purchases, a moulded
plastic chair in a rather distasteful shade of lentil soup that he had dragged
from a corner of the room. Did that mean he was intending to stay? I didn't
bother to tell him that the chair was one the nurses put into the lavatory for
the more feeble and incontinent inmates of this paradise. I noticed the broad
soft hands and the brown spots on their backs that confirmed my earlier
thoughts about his age.
He leant towards me, almost conspiratorially. “When are you going to have it?”
he whispered.
My God. Was he off his trolley or was I? Surely he didn't think he was in
Maternity?
“Have what?” I asked, knowing as I said it that I would probably regret the
question.
Well,” he told me, “you've come in for a little operation. On you arm.”
“I had wondered about that,” I replied as I adjusted my sling.
“The Vicar mentioned it to me,” he went on, ignoring my sarcasm. “He mentioned
that you had had a slight fall.”
Slight fall. Little did he, or the Vicar for that matter, know. When you try
to take the top out of an overgrown hedge, overgrown by about ten feet, you
have to be very careful where you lean the ladder. Very careful indeed. I
wasn't. When the ladder toppled it emptied me over into the river by way of a
low bounce of the top of the brick wall that marked my garden boundary. Result
– a broken fib and tib (amazing how quickly one picks up the lingo), two
cracked ribs and a collection of cuts and bruises that even impressed the
nurses. And I still have to have the ligaments in my right arm seen to. Tied
or grafted or something. Slight fall. Huh!
“Oh yes,” I replied. “An operation on my arm. Yes. But not until the
swelling goes down.”
“That's good,” he said.
I began to wonder if I had a high temperature, was delirious even. Or maybe he
was.
“The Vicar asked us all to pray for you,” he went on. “Mentioned you specially
this morning. Asked for your speedy recovery.”
I realised that I was a patient and that I was in hospital and that hospital
patients are usually ill but I did feel that the Vicar had gone a little bit
over the top. There had to be something deeply meaningful about the word
patient. If it had to do with patience that was one quality I was a touch
short on. And prayers indeed. Bother the prayers – and this visit. Anyway,
why couldn't the prayers be reserved for those who really need them; poor
misbegotten souls like football supporters, or politicians, or whoever dreamed
up The Big Brother House. I shut my eyes, hoping my visitor would take the
hint that I wanted to sleep, and then he might leave. I offered up up a little
prayer of my own.
“I can see you're a bit tired,” he said.
I wasn't used to such a swift response. Direct line on a Sunday I expect.
“I'll just toddle off now, but I'll come back to see you tomorrow, and I think
some of the others will come in this evening.
Just the news to cheer me up. He got up, carefully replaced the chair and
walked to the door, waved, and was gone. Peace. I eased myself down in the
bed. I didn't want to contemplate evening visiting. I had to shut the horror
of it out of my mind. After all, I had more important things to think about,
like how to ensure that the curate ate all the grapes.
Comments
Stuart, your piece of prose fulfilled all the requirements of Workshop 16 very
well. The pungent smells and then the sound of a Spitfire (which put the age of
the speaker somewhat in focus) and then smells again and an afternoon nap "as a
habit of a lifetime" (not in the army though!). Then the feel of the mattress,
lumpy and uncomfortable. The description of the unidentified hospital visitor
was vivid, he may have been one of those people who go round visiting in case a
patient has no friends or family. But he brought grapes and that set the
speaker off again (now we know he is called David) into his usual mood. Like a
drink of beer, the glass is mostly half empty and not usually half full!
A very interesting piece. Let`s read some more please.
Dorothy
by
John Williams
A Fleeting Comet
At vespers one late Autumn day, as the sun drooled and wrapped its soft glow over rocks and crags, cascading into clumps of heather loosely anchored on the mountain's southern shoulder, I sat gazing at the splendour of the view below me. The distant church bells faintly pleaded my attention extolling virtues that could not compete with my Trappist heaven high above the house-speckled valley from which I had escaped. I sat spellbound by the magic moment that only chance unfolds upon the unsuspecting traveller.
A fox appeared near to the brow unheeded by my presence as he nosed his way from stone to stone, sniffing familiar landmarks as he foraged for his evening meal.
With measured cunning he wafted over perfumed purple stretches of heather as
he sought his prey. His ears stood upright as he sensed the presence of a lark,
- momentarily the setting sun was reflected in his eyes. His quarry gone he
turned and traversed rock and shale, which brought him within a short distance
from where I sat. I held my breath and prayed he would not depart. He lifted
his head and looked towards the distant hills. He held his nose up high as he
smelled the breeze, gauging its direction as atavistic throes dominated his
every move in the surge for survival. He turned and faced me, momentarily
paralysed as much from surprise as fear. He stood and stared. For what seemed
an age our eyes met, and as if with understanding of my longing for the silence
of the hills, he stood, his paw poised, uncertain of his next move. Then
without neither speed nor fright his titian image disappeared over the hill. It
happened; it was over like a fleeting comet in the sky.
Comments
John,
I felt as if I was there, watching the scene unfold by your side. The moment of wonder was well caught; I was holding my breath as I read, as if I too could have disturbed the fox!
Janis R
John
As always you have caught the moment almost as the photographer with sharp focus. Richer and fuller than any photo with the highlight of the senses.
Hazel Graham (Col. Bay)
John, your poetic prose pleases me, use of repeated first letters, eg surge survival is something I like to use. You have painted a word picture a reader can enjoy and I suspect you enjoyed it too, writing it and perhaps even experiencing it and not completely in your imagination.
One thing I would like to point out. You have used "as he" four times and "as if" and "as atavistic throes" too. May I suggest a revision here? One more small grammar point: without neither is a double negative. OK? Love the piece.
Dorothy
by
Wilson Irving
Chicken's Bakery.
The overwhelming smell of new baked bread, every morning, early, woke us up, filled our noses, our minds, our somnambulant streets. That ever-enticing aroma ate into our hunger with its pleasantness. Firing our expectations with tummy rumbling pleasure. We were happy in the knowledge that, for tuppence, a cob loaf, new baked, burnt crusty, flaky, piping hot, still steaming from its wrenching birth from a baking oven on a cold morning, could be ours: filling the hole of hunger in our stomachs; if not our souls.
Was it such a great sin? That mouth watering, desire we had, as school children, that pre-sexual enjoyment of the pungent, piping hot, cob loaf.
Taste and texture tantalising; salt butter, melting, running down chins, to be scooped up with grubby fingers which would then be eagerly, greedily, licked clean of both butter and whatever else happened to be on them?
We stood, childfree, at the baker's door. Strangers, looking onto hallowed ground, watching wide eyed, as silent, ghost white, men carried tray after tray of piping hot bread and rolls and pies and sausage rolls and every lip licking fancy we could name through that hot, noisy, flour splashed, aroma thick, bakery, to the front shop. There we rushed, raucous, into a jabbering, drooling, schoolboy, line overwhelmingly anxious to spend our, grubby, hard won, tuppence on a dab of butter and a hot, crusty, mouth-watering, cob loaf.
We would devour the cob ravenously on our way to school, silenced, at last, by the sheer sensual pleasure of what we were putting into our mouths and stomachs. We ate the cob, all of us, curiously, in a similar manner. We would rip part of the side of the steaming loaf away, like preparing a Caesarean birth, to leave a flap. A, smutty, hand would be pushed into the very hot, soft, centre of the freshly baked cob and, as if we were miniature gynaecologists, we would wrench a handful, cruelly out into the world. It would then be spread with butter from the pat, with our pen knife, or one borrowed from a friend, like we were christening this new child, just born to the world; and the golden dripping feast would be jammed into a waiting mouth. As though, we were crazy young cannibals.
It was enjoyment, religious, glorious, taken fulsome from the staff of life. A
feeding frenzy by a school of well fed children.
Comments
Wilson,
You make me so HUNGRY! I find myself reaching for a napkin. I don't even know what a "cob loaf" is, but I want one. Reading this I am completely immersed in the smells and tastes of the bakery - Wonderful!
Karen Deaton
Mouth-watering piece, Wilson, but choose your comma placement more wisely. They detract from the smooth flow of your writing.
C. Mill
I love new-baked bread, Wilson. Your piece takes me back to the village bakery where the smell of the bread was real. Some supermarkets put on a smell that seems synthetic to me.
May I suggest you do not use too many commas. Try: "Early every morning we were awakened by the smell of ..." The streets would be somnolant (sleepy).
I recall a crusty cottage loaf that had two round slabs with the smaller on top. I wonder if a cob loaf is the same thing?
Keep writing
Dorothy
Note from Wilson,
Thanks for the comments. I'll certainly take note of them.
A cob is the
same shape as a bap. It is very much bigger and at that time it was
available in two sizes. The better off boys bought a large one the rest of
us bought the small one or we shared one between two.
It is time. Although the meagre pre-dawn light cannot penetrate the subterranean pit where I am imprisoned, someone somewhere is tolling a bell, calling the faithful to witness the witchfinder's justice.
I am impatient to be out of this slimy pit. Lord! If I had but a mickle of the powers the townspeople credit me with I would not have allowed them to shut me in this fetid Hell. The smell of my own filth chokes me.
The toll of the bell measures the moments until they come for me. I have heard carts bringing kindling, building the massive pyre under the terse direction of Jack Douglas the Blacksmith. The men's cheerful banter betrays their keen anticipation for the dawn spectacle. Jack Douglas is a meticulous man who takes his work seriously. The fire will be built well to his order.
At last they slide the stone slab aside and sweet air rushes in. Piemen are strolling among the gathering crowd. The scent rips a growl from my empty belly which amuses the men who drag me from the dungeon. My arms are tied at the elbow behind my back with thin rope causing my breasts to strain the thin bodice of my tattered dress.
They shove me before them along the rough road. My bare feet stumble and splash through frost-rimmed puddles. The first flakes of a late snow fall sting my eyes bringing tears I I don't want them to see. The salt smell of the ocean is carried on the breeze from beyond the town. How I wish I could see it; the rolling waves have helped me through other hard times.
The townspeople part before us and regard me with fascinated revulsion. They think I have grown above myself. My mother cleaned the "Big Hoose" and the laird's wife having no children of her own took pleasure in my schooling. I had tried always to use what she taught me to help. Yet I am disconnected, neither fish nor fowl. Meg Moon is here with her youngest bairn at the breast. She will not meet my eye although they both owe their presence here to my skills in the birthing room. I have aided many here in the physick of bairns and beasts yet I am strange to them and thus alone.
The noise increases as we reach the edge of the town, foul obscenities the like of which I never heard from Christian folk, no mercy in their hearts. A warm, wet gob of spit hits my cheek and I stumble forward on to my knees. I am sobbing now, I cannot go on.
A surprisingly gentle hand helps me to my feet. I look into the expressionless eyes of Jack Douglas, my executioner. He leads me forward past the contemptuous gaze of Donal Mackenzie; my accuser, my husband.
Donal took me as his wife only two years ago. He is an ambitious man and I do not doubt my father's fishing boat seemed a good dowry, albeit deferred as he thought until my father, who had no sons, should retire. The loss of The Fey Maid in last year's storm was as much a blow to Donal as it was to me. He began to drink then, returning to me in a fearful stooshie. I suppose I must take comfort that I shall never face his fists again. He no longer bothers to apologise in the morning. He will be free to pursue the widow MacFee whose late husband's business is doubtless in need of a guiding male hand. She would not look twice at a married man, of course, but a man whose wife has been revealed as a spaewife could hope to meet considerable sympathy.
The witchfinder waits at the cliff head. The wind whips his hair into a mad halo. His eyes are black and shiny as coal. He is never wrong. The witch is always pricked with his special pricking pin and shown to be full of sin. Up here the sound of the crowd is all but stifled by the greiting of gulls and the rushing wind. I remember playing here as a child in the caves and tunnels formed naturally among the rocks. Only the smugglers kent the labyrinth better.
As I am fastened to the very centre of the structure the tolling bell ceases, its last note hanging in the air. The sea air is damp and I am trembling. A priest begins an incomprehensible drone and there is a metallic taste on my tongue, my heart in my throat - I can barely breathe.
I want to scream as torches are touched to the straw bales at the base of the pyre and the hungry flames lick easily up to the waiting wood. The dampness makes the wood pop and crackle and thick black smoke rises in to the air. "Oh God! Help me! Our Father which art in Heaven …"
I can no longer see the crowd; sweat flows down my face and into my eyes. "Hallowed be Thy name …" Smoke billows, black and swirling all around, I cannot see, I cannot breathe, I am choking, choking. "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done!" Suddenly I feel movement. The post behind me tilts. Is the fire collapsing? I still cannot see. I feel disoriented, the post twists and seems to drag me down into the heart of the fire and further into the very earth. Am I dead? Is this my banishment to the eternal fires of Hell? A metal sound, scrapes and clicks.
It is cooler down here. I feel hands untie me and I rub my eyes. I hear a gentle voice and finally I can see. Praise be! Jack Douglas! In a cave below the fire. How clever of him to fashion this mechanism for my salvation! And how clever of me to have taken the blacksmith for my lover.
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Poetry Submissions
The Room At Cample
The room at Cample, small for a living room, yet cosy,
The room laughed all day and into the evening time, when children
The smoke from countless cigarettes and oil lamps,
As new split logs, green, sparked in blackened range, scented
All came together to make up the special aroma that was
Wilson Irving |
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