Grandad

I finally had to read out my story in the Creative Writing class.  What a terrifying experience!  I don't mind reading aloud, but reading your own short story aloud is something I haven't done in front of others, pretty much since I was at school.  My story was quite long, at two and a half pages, and by the middle of the second page I was desperate for it to end, I could feel that the rest of the room pretty much felt the same!

Nevertheless, they were very kind and made some nice comments and, as it was my first time reading aloud, nobody said anything too harsh.  The worst I got was from the teacher, who said my sentences were too long, something you readers of this blog will probably agree with!  To be honest I have been being told this since I was at school, so it is obviously a hard habit to break.  I have to admit though, that a part of me also feels that many award winning authors write in very long sentences, so why can't I?  Indeed whole books have been published which are just one sentence, to much critical acclaim, (Mathias Ernard's Zone being one example).  But in the spirit of taking feedback on-board, I will have a go at chopping my sentences down and see how it feels.

This weeks task was to write about an actual person from your past in 500 words and then to write 500 words from THEIR perspective.

So here it is:

Grandad

As I write this, I am sitting at my Grandad’s desk.  It is a grand old piece of sturdy furniture; a chunky solid oak roll-top desk.  It reminds me of my Grandad every time I sit down to write.  But, not because my Grandad was a writer, oh no, no, he was a worker and this desk is covered in dents and gnarls and gouged notches where he chiseled and hammered and fixed things.  He didn’t care much for aesthetics or art, he was just concerned with the practical, with mechanics and making things work.  He built his own cement mixer, he made his own water pump, he fixed a hundred clocks (what a racket being in the kitchen when the hour struck!) He built his own family home, which was part of the thriving country garage, petrol station and shop which he created from nothing, all physically built by him.  Nothing was beautiful, but boy, it worked.

He was a native Doric speaker and he spoke fast.  So broad and so fast in fact, that I often struggled to understand him myself.  He was a wealth of comical catchphrases, but he wasn’t a talker.  He would appear in the kitchen when you went to visit, in his boiler suit and navy blue flat cap, covered from head to foot in grease. After washing his hands with the pungent pot of Swarfega at the kitchen sink, he would stop briefly for a (very) quick cup of tea, filling the room with the smell of oil as he lent on the old Rayburn.  He always drank from a grey plastic mug, he wasn’t allowed a proper one, as his favourite party trick of spinning them on the table like a top, performed daily, had resulted in a lot of broken crockery, (he wasn’t allowed proper plates or bowls either for the same reason!)

When he eventually retired, he built an extension to the house and the resulting new part of the upstairs attic became his domain.  Up in the attic all the stores for the shop were kept.  It was a fantastic adventure as a child to creep up there, to the bare wooden floor boards, and the aisle of shelving, double your height, stacked to the brim with sherbert dips, golden wonder crisps, milky ways, tins of ambrosia custard and baked beans, along with tins of beer and lager, the lovely ladies from the Sweetheart Stouts smiling down at you.  What a place!  

As much as I loved going up to the attic, even as a teenager I never once dared step into Grandad’s domain, which was entered by a large opening off of the store.  From the safety of the shelves, you could see the cluttered roll-top desk in the distance, lit up by a stream of dusty light from a small dormer window in the roof.  The space was huge, but just like a real life Uncle Bulgaria, my Grandad had filled it to bursting point with all sorts of broken bits and pieces of machinery, that other people had deemed to be rubbish, and he steadily turned them into amalgamations of things that worked; his favourite being cuckoo clocks to deafen everyone with!

From Grandad

Tie, tie, it’s been a braw life.  Some folks might say that I’ve work-ed hard a’ my days; but I say that holidays an’ rest is jist for the idle rich.  Fitten on earth wid you want to go on holiday for, when you hae a’thing you would eiver want or need at hame?  And fa is suppose to dee your work while you are aff wi your feet up, suppin at a cuppie o’ tea?  

I dinna believe in this new fangled wye o’ living.  I see folks comin’ in tae the garage and they are in sik a panic and flurie, that I says to them that they better just “sit doon, and tak a seat until their hurry gangs by”.  Fit is the pint in a’ this rushing and rinning from een end of the country to the ither?  If a things meant tae happen, it’ll happen without a great big fan-dang-do aboot it.

Work and makin sure your family is a’ richt is fit matters maste.  Workin ilky years has meant that my loons hae a guid business to support ‘em.  And my quine and my Anna hae deen fits expected o’ them and putten het meals on-o the table three times a day, for us workin men to ate.  But naebudy should get onything for free, even your ain family, work is the only way to mak a budy guid.  Aye, aye, the idle rich hae a sorry life a’ richt.

And lets nae spik aboot the banks.  A’ my spare pennies are stashed under the mattress, like ony ither sensible budy would dee.  I hae niver trusted a bank in a’ ma life, an’ it looks to me that I hae been proven deed richt.

I hiv niver been een to blether muckle, fits the point o’ a’ that tongue wagging, we can a’ jist as weel leave that tae the fishwives.  But a wee joke or a pullin o’ a budy’s leg, weel that maks me lauch.  There’s nithin better than furlin your plate aroon on the table, an’ then heeding up the stairs to fix a puckle o’ clocks.