‘What happened that day will stay with me all my life.’
Sounds like a good opening line for a story? It popped into my head first thing, in that limbo space between waking and sleeping, and I lay in bed for a while, thinking I was onto something. Maybe this was the trigger that would break my four year drought and get me writing creatively again?
I thought about my childhood home, and then I imagined a bright red car pulling up outside our house, and a lady getting out and coming to the door. Mid to late 1960s, so how would she be dressed? Not like my Mum, that’s for sure. Elegant or hippyish? Mum would be astonished to see her – would she hug her? I don’t remember her ever going in for that sort of thing, but maybe the other lady would do it to her before she could avoid it? The name ‘Hetty’ popped into my head.
‘This is your Aunty Hetty.’ (My real Mum didn’t have any long lost relations called Hetty – as far as I know. And isn’t ‘Hetty’ a bit American? Maybe ‘Betty’? Anyway, Mum’s old friends were often ‘Aunties’ without any blood connection.)
Then she’d probably do something awful like bending to kiss me, smelling of scent and face powder and leaving lipstick marks that I’d have to rub off quick. And she’d say something cringe-making like: ‘This can’t be your little Linda? She was a baby last time I saw her!’
Or maybe she wouldn’t, maybe she would talk to me as though I was a real person, not infantilising me in the third person. That would have made it more memorable.
She would talk ‘posh’, or relatively so, like my real aunties (Dad’s sisters) who moved to Buckinghamshire before the war and married southerners, or like people off the telly.
Lying in bed thinking, I wanted it to become magical realist, maybe a timeslip, maybe the lady was my future self? No, couldn’t be that, because I wanted her to be glamorous, not like me. And there was something in her driving a red car, because I feel that it would stand out in our street, that it was fairly unusual for a woman to be driving a car, though maybe that’s just because my Mum never did.
But where is this story going? I try to remember the stories I wrote as a child, and they were full of talking animals, toys and everyday objects coming to life, and magical worlds that could be reached through rabbit holes and wardrobes, like the ones I enjoyed reading.
So what would Aunty Hetty say to my pre-pubescent self, what adventure would she take me on that would bring a different meaning and purpose to the subsequent fifty to sixty years? Or would I just be an observer, of the interaction between these two adult women, that would help me see the different possibilities life can hold?
Who knows? I don’t do fiction.
I could ramble on a bit.
I don’t ‘do’ fiction either, often, but what about Christ’s parables? do they mean anything to anyone? are they true? and would they be less meaningful if they weren’t?
Most of us laugh at jokes which are almost all made up short, short stories, and why would you laugh if the joke didn’t portray a believable scenario? and if you laughed it was worth the telling.
I often think that I’ll never bother to read anything fictional again, ever. Then I think of David Copperfield and Crime and Punishment. Their settings were real I’m sure, so they do have value if only in telling us how life was where and when they were written. I would think that their characters were authentic too, so do they have historical value?
Many societies have affectionate terms for friends and teachers which translate as ‘aunty’ or ‘uncle’ or ‘brother/sister’, In Nepal, for example, it is an honour to be called uncle or aunty or teacher or even, if great respect for someone older is intended, father or mother. I think our own ‘aunty’ and ‘uncle’ – although perhaps less formal than in other societies, and sometimes excuses for more appropriate titles – are usually respectful familiarities, they wouldn’t endure otherwise.
So go on dreaming or mind-wandering or mentally meandering, it happens anyway so we might as well enjoy it!
I love reading fiction, and I’d love to be able to write it – from the time when I learnt to read, it was the one thing I really wanted to do with my life.
But… some of us have talent, ideas, inspiration, imagination, and some of us… don’t.
Not to mention hard work, perseverance and self belief – which are all even more important and almost harder to find.
So, I write spontaneously, whatever comes into my head, and I’ve resigned myself that that’s just the way it goes. If I try to do anything else my brain goes into paralysis and I can’t write a word.
But if I ever manage to spontaneously produce a story with a satisfactory ending, I’ll let you know.
Until then, I’ll just keep on writing this daily drivel.