fiction | Inappropriate Footwear

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Time for an excerpt from one of this week’s works. While Nick Cave’s been helping out with my ghost story, this other tale I’ve been writing might better be accompanied by Pulp.

I’ve got a love-hate relationship with quiz nights. I think there’s a certain irresponsibility in summoning armchair-experts into a nice warm boozer, and then plying them with alcohol. The atmosphere can border on grisly by the end of round seven, so what better place to set a simple story of inspiration and hope?

This is just the first few paragraphs from “The Pub Quiz”, a work in progress. It introduces our protagonist, Gavin, as he waits for his night to begin. It stops before we’re introduced to the woman who will force him to challenge his ideas of himself.

The Pub Quiz (extract from first draft)

The usual suspects mill the crowded floor-space between bar and tables, sending last minute texts. Celia and George Heffer, secondary school teachers, specialist subject: The price that terrible home at number 53 sold for. The noisy crew from the engineering firm down Crow’s End, specialist subject: Answers for laughs, not for points. Charles “Fisty” Cuffs, who works as a barrister in London, but unfathomably makes the journey back each Wednesday to take part in the Red Lion’s Quiz Night, specialist subjects (equally unfathomably): Daytime soaps and 80s hair metal.

Gavin shakes his head, sips ineffectually at his pint, and glances at his own phone. None of his team’s arrived yet. If he ducks out for a piss or pint now, it’s gone, draped jacket or no draped jacket. Besides, there’s a quantifiable time period for which one can hold an entire table when a pub’s this fucking busy. A time period which is very nearly up. He taps his mobile rhythmically against the table, avoiding looking any of the wandering pairs and threes in the eye.

Finally he spots a familiar couple up at the bar, craning their necks. The Moncrieffs. Mary the librarian, Mark the one-time BBC Sports Commentator. quiz team from heaven, marriage from hell. He waves them over, trying to engineer things so that Mary takes the seat nearest. But she’s passing the big man her glass, shuffling off in the direction of the toilets. Cunt-stubble. Mark takes the stool beside him, the scrape of wooden legs on slate tiles smothering Gavin’s poorly suppressed sigh.

“Alan texted, he’ll be late, something about the Ring Road” Mark announces, setting glasses to table with loud clunks. Gavin dips his head in greeting, which Mark appears to take as concurrence.

“Poor planning. No excuse for it” Mark continues. He raises his pint, gulps back a mouthful of bitter, eyebrows raised, waiting for a verbal response.

Gavin wants to shrug, but Mark doesn’t like fence-sitting, or neutrality. Or the Swiss. Or Pakistanis. Or pillow biters, The Irish, welterweight boxers. So Gavin grunts out something that might be agreeance, and then floats a diversionary tactic.

“New grandstand’s coming along” he says, tilting his head toward the South end of town. The terraced end. The money end.

Mark draws a low, slow breath, the sound of a lit fuse in a gassy shitter. Gavin cringes inwardly, remembering the construction has meant a single lane down the Moncrieff’s street for the past week. And dust. And unobjectionable loitering by shovel-wielding clusters of working class. Fuckfuckfuck…

There’s a loud, muffled tapping sound above the hum of the crowd, and Gavin hears Mark’s breath being released over the head of his pint. Saved by the quizmaster.

[To be continued]

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What do you think? Any feedback gratefully received.

Later this week I’ll catch you up on how the first 14 days have gone.

x Regan

Twain and I

It’s been a while since I posted on this site, because I find it difficult to write fiction and fact at the same time. But I realise that it is important to move forward, to become more capable, not to simply label myself as incapable and find acceptance in that. So time to try juggling fact and fiction. And US politics* seems a good place to practice that particular dexterity.

I recently watched Michael Moore’s ‘Where to Invade Next’, an exploration of governance done better. And it reflected what I’d experienced in my time in the States. I could see so many beautiful ideas that had found expression through the formation of that country. But many people I talked to expressed dismay at the changes in the way the country was going. It’s so hard talking with people whose hope is failing, when you’re bubbling inside with all the possibilities you’ve found.

I think something Michael Moore and I would agree on (and I’m sure there are many others, attitudes to diet and trucker-caps notwithstanding), is that it was the ability to start anew was at the heart of what made America attractive. You were less fettered by convention, your ancestry didn’t determine your path through life. But one of the most damaging aspects of ‘progress’ is the ability to communicate ideas to populations instantaneously. Once the barriers of landscape and environment are eliminated, you become subject once again to other people’s spheres of influence. Fears, prejudices, lies, airport security measures, Indian Jones 5.

I watched another film (hey, it’s almost winter and I’m saving money for the next adventures…) last week, ‘Hunt for the Wilderpeople’. It reminded me of how individual my country had been when I was young, when it was truly an island adrift from the rest of the world. For a brief period there, there was a chance to build something special, to export something positive, to live up to our image as somewhere pure and clean, yet rugged and enterprising. But alas, we sold out, and now our Prime Minister is someone who thinks we should make decisions because ‘that’s how we’ll get rich’.

Obviously I don’t have the answers to all of this. But I’ve learnt to try to do better. I’ve learnt to live thoughtfully, to understand and counteract my prejudices, to spend more time with those people I admire. And I have to find a way to write about the things I care about through this blog, as well as through a novel. Because you have to make the world a better place, not just wish it was one.

Of course all this earnest positivity will always be mixed with beer drinking, outdoor adventures and Mexican food. And hopefully alongside an ever-changing cast of inspiring people. I need to brave enough to confront my mistakes, but also to have the courage to risk making new ones. And I love all the people who ever encourage me along that treacherous but rewarding path.

I’d like to dedicate this post to Linda and Kylie, two people who remind me of the rewards of being open to try something new. I’m looking forward to the next Port tasting…

*Ok I didn’t really get ’round to talking about US politics, but it’s a little hard to steer away from cynicism when discussing that particular race towards devolution. See?