Gurgle

One of the techniques we have started with on the Creative Writing module is freewriting. You get a pen and paper or sit at the keyboard then you go 'bleurgh' and spill the contents of your mind in a random manner. I quite like this technique. It is familiar. It is like a normal evening after a couple of glasses of wine. I shared this freewrite on the OU forum today so I thought it only right to share it with you. Enjoy!

'Gurgle'

Gurgles of laughter from a small baby, lying naked in a warm room. Just after a bath, getting ready for bed. Laugh with their whole body, arms and legs waving, head moving, eyes on you, shining, mouth wide and open, dribble, gums, tongue. The smell of clean, warm baby. The soft squidginess of the tummy when you bury your face in there for a kiss or to blow a raspberry. Holding the baby in the air over your head with a slight startle reflex, looking down on you with that string of dribble stretching down to fall in your mouth. Total horror, moving to miss it and getting it on your cheek. Eye contact. Laughter. Snuggling in close and breast feeding. So much closer and more intimate than a bottle could ever be. The physical tug from your nipple down to the depths of you, physically and emotionally. The feeling of concentration as the milk lets down and you pour yourself and your nurture into that little being. Later, much later, the distance between you that you don't know how to bridge by words or deeds. The gurgle of water down the drain with that feeling of finality, of something over. The bath, the shower, the washing machine cycle, the rain storm. In the middle of the road the swirl of flood water as it drains away. All passion drains, it floods, it drains.

View From the Top of a Bus.

http://www.storiesfromthetop.com/writing-competition-1/

This website involves two people; one takes photos from the top of a London bus and the other writes stories to go with the pictures. They have decided to open it up to other writers and this is a double first - the first competition they have run and the first one I have entered. Wish us all luck!

The Boy.

The first time that Lynn noticed him was the day after her exam. It felt like a little piece of luxury to look out of the bus window rather than down at her revision papers. The fact that it was damp and drizzly and the colour spectrum was selected from grays did not detract from the pleasurable sense of time on her hands. It was the splash of blue against the brickwork that caught her eye and the slight movement as he glanced furtively over his shoulder. He looked for all the world as if he was having a surreptitious wee in the corner – he'd probably describe it as 'having a slash'. She smiled to herself. By the look of him, undernourished, with more than a little of the rat about him, in an oversized anorak, it was unlikely that his street cred was that high. She saw him again the next day. Same time, as the bus slowed down to join the main road, same place, same anorak and same posture. She frowned slightly. Being caught out once was a bit embarrassing, if he did that in the same place every day surely someone would be on his case. Perhaps he was hiding from someone. Perhaps the furtive glance over his shoulder was a self-protective gesture. She looked around as the bus edged towards the junction but couldn't see any other signs of life in the traffic-grimed hedging or at the blank faces of the windows above him. By the end of the week Lynn was almost looking forward to seeing him. Although she'd forget him by the time she got to work, the mystery of why he was there and what he might be doing occupied the last ten minutes of what could be a long, slow and rather tedious journey. She wondered if perhaps he was waiting for a lift to school, or for his mum to come out of the block of flats with a pushchair and possibly a couple of toddlers in tow. Perhaps he was a runner for a local drugs gang, waiting for someone to show up so he could pass on the goods. Maybe his dog was buried in the corner and he still shared a bit of his day with his former friend. As the days went by and the possibilities for new stories waned, the boy became just another part of the landscape. Occasionally she'd still notice him, on the few bright sunny days there were, standing there waiting, still in his anorak, hood round his face until just before Christmas he wasn't there. It was the space he'd occupied that caught her attention just briefly and she assumed that it was end of term and he'd be back in January. But by then she'd forgotten he was ever there. Her new Kindle fulfilled her need for stories and she rarely lifted her head until she reached her stop.

She turned and there he was...

Alerted by the thunder of four feet hitting the ground at speed, she turned and there he was, coming towards her. He loomed larger by the micro-second; head thrust forward, ears flat against his skull, mouth agape, teeth glistenening, throwing off speckles of foamy saliva. She froze, half crouched, her own mouth open in a shout that didn't have time to reach his ears. Forty kilos of perfect, black and tan, canine athleticity swerved at the final moment, swinging his back end round to take her legs out from under her. Flat on her back in the middle of the park, she looked up at the grinning jowls. He looked back at her apologetically and licked her face. 'Ooops! Soz, Mum. I need to practise that'.

This is a memory! Stimulated by a prompt from the Creative Writing module which starts tomorrow. We seem to have been waiting forever for it to start. I'm a bit conflicted with that and this right now. We can't submit anything for assessment which has been pre-published, so putting something on here automatically means I can't use it on the module. At least not in the same form. Once we know what the assessments are, I'll have a clearer idea of where we are going, so keep watching just in case! It may save you having to buy my first novel. Hahahahahahahaha!