Harry was electric, at least, that’s how he liked to think about himself. Sometimes he felt himself sizzle up to the sky, like the devil had stuck a fork in his roots. Other times he fizzled and popped with energy like a disco ball in the centre of a room. He was the centre too, even though most of the humans walking in Hackhurst Downs didn’t notice. Somewhere a snigger: ‘it’s not only the humans, you know.’ A side-eye of lichen; Harry concentrated on his ray beam curled boughs thrusting upwards to the sky. There was no-one pointing as hard as he was to the heavens. He’d got the power! Julius the tree spirit sighed. It was just like Harry to forget about him, forget about the bargain they had made long ago. It was his own fault: he’d known Harry was an egomaniac when he made the pact. He’d just
[This was written for the Curtis Brown Creative Writing Bootcamp from the prompt “It was hard to believe it would ever rain again”. I had 45 mins in which to write it, and it has only been mildly cleaned up.] It was hard to believe it would ever rain again. How could the earth ever find more of it, for starters? It had been non-stop for the last 467 days and now… nothing. It was eerie, almost. Disturbing. Destabilising. People were coming out of their homes, tentatively raising their arms before them. Cars had stopped in the street, drivers’ heads craned out of windows. People looked up at the sky and then at each other, baffled, bewildered, and yes, perhaps a tiny tinge of fear. What might come next? No one believed the deluge was truly over, and they turned their gaze to the sky, fearful of what might come down
Martha was from Panama, but she had been living in Kent for 34 years. She had moved there after meeting Peter who had been working on the canal. She followed him back to the country of his birth, far away from her own. It had been hard for her at times, away from her sun and food, but she had never wavered in her decision to come. Peter was quietly solid and full of his own kind of light. He was a reassurance that her gaze rested on over the decades. Peter died last year. Martha had felt herself winding inwards in the days which had passed since. Everything becoming a little bit smaller and more compact. Peter had died and now she was free, and she was trying to understand if that meant she had formerly felt trapped. Working her way to the answer was an exercise in dodging guilt,
Yeah so, walking: I love it. It’s like having a mini-holiday every Saturday. I spend all week thinking about and planning the next walks. I don’t care if it is rain or shine, I get off that train somewhere near trees and don’t stop grinning until I approach the train home. At which point I start sobbing uncontrollably… 🫠 I want to walk for a job but I am not sure who would pay me to wander around the countryside overflowing with joy and muttering about how much I love this or that tree or view. If you know of this job, please let me know. I’m eminently qualified. In the meantime, it occurred to me that I could bring my walks into my week by writing about them. I am an habitual photo-taker, which is like a photographer but with only occasional talent. So my new writing project is to
I started the novel I am currently writing, Tools Down, in 2019 when I was bored out of my mind at my job. I would wake up at 6am and write an hour before work; however, I was derailed by a sexual assault which my wanker boss found hilarious. So I downed tools in real life, walked out, and then the pandemic struck. During the pandemic, I wrote a memoir which I finished on New Years Eve, 2022. I then attempted to come back to Tools Down this year, in between the second and third edits of the memoir and the agent submission package creation. Unfortunately, this proved a very unproductive toing and froing of my attention. As such, I have struggled to get into Tools Down at all. This struggle turned into full-blown procrastination after I submitted my memoir to agents. I could tell that the anxiety from that—one rejection