Harvey - Original Writing

Trying out a new voice...
Harvey

He liked working with his hands – honestly he did. He'd done it all his life and there were no nasty surprises. Wood couldn't turn around with a questioning glare and ask 'why exactly are you doing this anyway?' or change its mind last minute so you had to start all over again. It didn't require lots of fiddly words and phrases, public speaking or a smart uniform. No...all in all, wood was safe - safe as houses, like they say. Like Carry On films on Christmas Eve and slippers laid out by the side of the bed – safe like that.

Harvey had tried hard at school – he really had: went to all the afternoon sessions when he'd been ill, did most of his homework and didn't ever chat back. His mother had once even called him her 'little angel' between swigs of brandy – the boy with the porcelain face and manners like from public school. He could have put in a bit more enthusiasm - he supposed - but Shakespeare sounded like of one them foreign languages to him: pretty sounding once you got over the unusualness of it all, but having no meaning without painful – almost surgical – extraction. He didn't have it in him to kill a book like that...or a play...he couldn't remember which one. Heard later that Shakespeare had been a poofter like all those men on telly ...explained a lot, really. He didn't have a mind for dates or sums, either. The History teacher had once told Harvey that he'd been dropped one too many times on his head as a baby – 'all yer brain cells got exploded and yer sense leaked out yer ears, boy'. With a mother like his, it was perfectly possible.

All in all, considering the bad luck he'd been served with, he thought he ought to be congratulated on his choice of profession: he was good at it, and for someone who wasn't good at much, that was all the encouragement he needed.

He tightened up the D-clamp with one hand, holding the dowel steady with the other – like making a sandwich. 'Harvey Samson, ' he said to himself, 'you are a lucky man.' Some people might have laughed at him for that – one of those giggles that rang like bells or coins in your pocket: a rich laugh. But that's one of the up-sides of working with your hands: with a bit of hard work, you could do it alone. Course you'd get visited a couple of times a month by fancy-schmancy set designers, going on about 'symbolic representation, 'lighting choices' , 'conceptual storytelling, daaarling' and other stuff that didn't actually mean anything. But Harvey didn't mind that so much. He'd just flash a few pearly whites and keep checking that all the nuts and bolts were screwed up alright: the trick was to look busy and happy about it.

Today was a visiting day, so he's brushed up a little round the place and even combed his hair back. He was beginning to think he should've used gel as it had gone all fuzzy, like next-door's privet hedge but sandy-blonde. 'Jesus.', he breathed, turning his head from side-to-side in the mirror. He ran his hand through the fluffy cat that had made a home on his scalp. 'What do you think you're doing to me, eh?' His reflection stared back at him blankly and he amused himself by pretending his hair did – at least – look a but less puffed up. He looked himself sternly in the eyes. 'That's better.'

Swordfighting (Original Writing)

Swordfighting

She snaps my sword
(practically in two)
with a parry and a mighty splintering of wood
I go to fetch some masking tape
as she dances in confetti of shrapnel
The camera clicks
and we draw on symbols with eyeliner

We'll do the ears later
- sharpen them to points with a trusty Photoshop brush
that changes us into liquid

I lay my sword to rest
the injuries sustained
no amount of tape can mend
We look solemn for a moment
us liquidised warriors
with drawn on eyebrows and braided hair
Until I brandish a new sword:
freshly picked
and, again, our battle is punctuated
with the sound of parries and photography

The Circle (Original Writing)

The Circle

Stitch the seams
Prick your finger with a needle
(twice)
Wisecrack over a morphy iron
with fingernails of six different colours:
a spectacular array of watery Superdrug testers
The spectrum of
three woman
two generations
and one Primark

The iron leaves a burn
on the circular skirt
We hide it on the inside:
a fingerprint of carefree creation
Flip the inside-out outsides in, and
viola!
Lordy Lumlocks
and giddy Auntie Jane with a million Jack Russells
We've done it!

A circle of friendship
with a waistband made of sisterhood
A handmade symbol that means
shaved legs
high heels
and a lick of paint

Breathe it in...
the sweet taste of success
mixed with lipgloss that tingles
and tastes like Barbie

We giggle and cluck like hens
dancing Flamenco on a rickety attic floor...

Draw 30 Update

Here are my new Draw 30 images:

Flood!

In Bournemouth (where I live) disaster has struck and - in a freakish rain-storm (even by our English standards) - there has been the outbreak of a flood. Thinking about it, I'm not entirely sure if that is the correct term; perhaps floods do not 'outbreak' like diseases but, rather, 'slosh' or 'woooosh' on to unsuspecting towns. Anyway, I'm getting off of the subject...

Here are a few images I have collected:

 

 

Gormenghast Trilogy Tribute (Original Writing)

Without a doubt I would recommend the masterpieces of Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan, Gormenghast and Titus Alone. Peake is a true word-smith and poet that - without fail- manages to perfectly combine whimsy, fantasy and a sense of reality. Here is my tribute to him and his characters:

Gormenghast Trilogy Tribute (Original Writing)

He is the high-shouldered youth
With a kaleidoscope of egos
A veneer of false perfection
that is, to the observer, a figure from a dream
A mask,
A facade,
A guise...

He is calculated, caustic and callous
Dark, decisive and deadly
Sharp, seductive...Steerpike

She is the lusty sister
The flat chested lady of Gormenghast
A virginal skeleton
In dresses that hug her figure like an extra skin
A stick,
A bone,
A cadaver...

She is carnal, crude but chaste
Decorous, deranged and desperate
Pitiful, prudish... Prunesqualler

It is the kingdom of Selpulchrave
The eternal province of spires
And the majesty of tradition
It watches as Steerpike brings the Monarch to his knees
A citadel,
A fortress,
A tomb...

It is eerie, endless and enduring
Crumbling, cobwebbed and corrupt
Glorious, Gothic...Gormenghast.

Illustrations of Fushia and Steerpike

Insanity, Draw 30 and A Smug Teenager...

So, in a fit of simultaneous insanity and geniosity, I have decided to join a group of creatives for the Draw30 challenge. For someone that considers themselves more of a writer, I must admit that the prospect of producing 30 pieces of art (that will be subsequently posted on the internet amidst the brain-children of actual artists) was more than a little daunting, especially when one considers that most of them have been drawing since before I was born. But ho hum, pig's bum...what's life without a little bit of risk of pubic humiliation, eh?

On a happier note, I am pleased to announce that my efforts thus far have been deemed acceptable and I must admit that there is some part of myself (a rather smug part, to be honest) that is quite pleased. There you have it. I've gone and said it : I - the teenage so-called 'writer' with the oversized arse - am pleased with my own drawings.

I'll never hear the end of it...

 

The Creature (Original Writing)

The Creature

The creature - whatever it was - lacked definition; all its edges were blurred and seemed to bleed together. Where it ended and the darkness began it was unclear. The eyes - however - were in sharp focus: all points and edges: like a harsh line of charcoal against a watercolour: a  comic artist that had doodled on Millet. 'The eyes should be red', she muttered. But as soon as she had, she realised she was wrong. Red eyes were the stuff of nightmares and hammerhead horror. These eyes - blue and cold like a fire that burns itself icy - were the colour of reality : terror in its most concentrated form.

It turned suddenly and , where the creature had seemed curious and enigmatic, it now gave a strong sense of deformity. From blackness there came a sharp whine that grated on the ears - a pitiful and weak sound that would have inspired sympathy if it had not caused every bone to twist against sinew and the skin - not to crawl - but rather drag its body in the opposite direction. A second whine - on the edge of human perception...louder and more desperate than the first. It was moving closer.

A cloud that continually changed shape; a giant that became a child that folded out into a shadow. A voice came from the heart of the creature, speaking without mouth or lips or tongue. To be shapeless is to be free.

She took a step back.

Don't you want to be free? It crooned, screaming a whisper across the few steps between it and the small red-headed girl.

She blinked (at least three times) before her brain could twist the sounds into words. 'Free?' she replied in a small voice. 'How dare you tell me...?' But what the creature dared tell her she never did say for - at that moment - the girl stopped in the middle of her sentence. Suddenly, she couldn't remember why children were afraid of the dark, why midnight was the witching hour or why monsters lived in the cupboard under the stairs and the space under the bed. She couldn't remember how the creature in front of her could be ugly. On the contrary, it was perfect. Imposing? Yes. Misunderstood? Maybe. But ugly? Never.

And - indeed - the creature seemed to agree, growing ever larger and more terribly beautiful with every step. Splendours shadow within shadow. The girl could smell its breath in front of her : a heavenly scent on the air. She grasped for a word to describe it but - no matter how hard she tried - her mind kept producing images of rotting flesh. 'Blood' she heard herself say. She frowned. 'No...no. That's not it.' This smell was wonderful; fresh and light, like burying your head in silk.

Come closer. The creature said. The girl immediately obliged. How could she disobey such a lovely, harmonious voice?

'Nails on a chalk board...' she heard herself say.

Very slowly, the creature seemed to bend into a low bow until its eyes were level with the soft brown irises of the red-headed girl. Up-close, the thin cat-like slits of pupils were far less horrible. More elegant, really. But - once again- she found her mouth acting of its own accord. 'No..' it mouthed. 'Please no.' She put her hand over her lips, silencing herself. How awful it was to be so cruel to this unique and irresistible animal.

Close your eyes, the creature murmured with a  voice like wind chimes. Suddenly, the little red-head felt strangely sleepy - hot, sticky and so very heavy. She felt her eyelids sweep shut and - like a sudden eclipse - everything disappeared.

She took a step forwards - her final step - and embraced the shadow. It embraced her...and the little red-headed girl was gone forever.

Camping (Original Writing)

Camping:

No-one's got lumbago, I'm not spending my time brooding over the locations of hidden horcruxes, and there is a severe lack of spellbooks in my not-so-small and unfortunately entirely bead-less bag. And yet - for some reason that I would guess has rather a lot to do with my own over-active imagination - I am sitting under this spider-encrusted canvas contemplating my role in an immanent if non-existent wizard war. Music from outside permeates the country sounds like my very own silver doe. A patronus against the busy timetabling dementors of my brain. A shield against my inner Dolores Umbridge that "will have order"!

Victoria Milton (Original Writing)

Another bit of fun!

Victoria Milton:

Victoria Milton was not a woman to be trifled with. In fact, it was best not to exercise any action involving sweet pastries whatsoever when Victoria was around. Not that she didn't consider herself sweet; on the contrary, the woman could sing with all the vibrato of Doris Day on Richter scale 7.5 and took pleasure in collecting stuffed animals of varying degrees of fluffiness. No, that wasn't it. The simple fact was that,  despite her efforts, Victoria was not an amicable lady and -whether she could embroider pinkish pillows or not - she had a heart of ice and a tongue sharper that her own darning needles. Some remarked that she spoke with such alarming, almost spiteful, accuracy that any elocution teacher would be stunned upon hearing her. The more observant would note that her forget-me-not-blue eyes never appeared to blink. There was one thing - however- which people would always fail to notice: that Victoria Milton and her husband had not spoken directly to one another for over five years.
--------------
Victoria lies in her four-poster bed and stares at the silken fabric above her head. From this angle, it seems as if the whole ceiling is a deep plumbish red instead of its current sickly puce. Victoria thinks it would be better this way. The maid pushes the door open with one shoulder, a tray of breakfast (bacon and eggs if you must know) in one hand and a pot of Lapshang Souchon in the other. The maid lies the tray across the bed and carefully reaches over her employer to place the china teapot on the bedside table. Victoria stays motionless.

"Emily?" she says with a downward inflection, as if the name was a statement instead of a question.

"Sarah, Ma'am." The maid replies with a soft northern accent.

Victoria continues to stare at the bed's canopy. "Repaint the ceiling."

Sarah takes two steps towards the bed and her employer's eyes slide to the side of her face to stare without moving her head. The maid finds the effect somewhat disturbing and retreats with a bow-legged shuffle. "Right away, Ma'am. Your painters are still downstairs in the ballroom as you asked. Shall I call in some more?"

Victoria stays motionless.
The maid leaves.

Shopping Wraiths, Rohan and Clicky Noises...

Today, as if by a miracle, I've managed to cure my irrational fear of buying things in shops! Normally, I have to stress out about whether I should put the money on the counter or in the shop assistant's hands (the same goes for the items that I'm trying to buy) and, as Wobbles once wrote, I can't help but fear the ubiquitous bleepy-thingys that go off at apparently random intervals for their own entertainment. It could be said that they are like dementors that feed off of embarrassment as opposed to happiness, or ring wraiths that are drawn to the power of my fear (the ones on fell-beasts as opposed to the horsed kind...much scarier).

Only a matter of minutes ago, however, I bought two milk cartons and a single can of baked beans without breaking a sweat: one point to the fourteen year old...nil to 'Best One'. Mum's proud and my twin is glad that she no longer has to buy everything for me; Mum's so pleased, in fact, she's tied up my short hair into a Rohan-style ponytail. For those of you that haven't had the pleasure of watching the extended edition of 'Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers', the Rohirrim sport massive ponytails out of the tops of their heads, and through their helmets ; for a good example see Eomer.

Speaking of Mother-mine, she's now excitedly taking close-ups of everything we own with the new camera lens and exclaiming at the 'sharpness', though she does admit that she can't actually work out if anything is different from the old lense apart from a loud clicky noise when she takes a photo.

I'm hoping to drag out writing this blog as long as I possibly can in a vain attempt to procrastinate doing the washing up...I doubt that its going to work though; not only do I feel far too guilty to keep this up, but Olympia will definitely notice. Oh well...there are worse things I could be made to do (picking up the dog turd carpet outside being one of them)...

Nicolas Cage, House MD and Miss Cream Tease...

In a vain attempt to make me fancy Nicolas Cage my Mum is making me flick through at least 3 Google-Images pages on 'Wild at Heart'; even in Moonstruck I didn't think he was particularly swoon-worthy.


I'd much rather do some 'important research' on the many faces of David Bowie or watch a couple of episodes of House MD (most notably the one where Jesse Spencer gets his top off). Hugh Laurie has to be one of the nicest men on the earth, with the most beautiful eyes! Lots of girls at my school seem to think that the head of music deserves similar praise, so it's no surprise that there's a fight to turn the pages of piano music when he's playing (I wonder if there's something sensual about that)! Fortunately, I'm not in his fan club...so no broken fingers there!

I'm really proud of my sister Scooby after her very first Burlesque performance at the Kitty Kat Club as Miss Cream Tease (http://www.creamtease.co.uk/), being her little sister is a pleasure but I can't help but be jealous of her long legs. Even when she looks like a pile of shit (her eyelids swell up in the mornings if she's stayed up too late) men drool all over her; if she's not the next Dita Von Tease I'll let the flea-ridden dogs sleep in my bed for a month!!!

Builders, Elbows and Kick-Ass...

The builder on the scaffolding just asked me if the 'kettle's on, or isn't it?"; I thought about mentioning that I've only just woken up and we're not paying him to refer to me as 'woohoo, luvie!'but decided against it. I'd rather that we don't end up with a hole in our roof...or spit in the gutters. I'm sure that his humour was just lost on me so I suppose I should give him a break -it's not his fault he's not a 20 year old male-model with sexy shoes (like the other builders).


Just found some kind of flea bite on my hand: not nice. I'm not letting the dogs on my bed anymore! Put together with my ominously itchy elbow, I'm a bit worried about an infestation!

Saw Kick-Ass yesterday: it has got to be one of the best films I've seen in the cinema for a long time. Not only is it stupidly funny and original but also quite emotionally affecting; who knew that a character called Big Daddy could be so tragic?

Hit-Girl has to be my new idol, minus the perverse language. Although, the fat arse situation could hinder backflips considerably!

Chav-Goths, King Kong and One Fat Arse...

Mum's just told Bird that some drunk guy (a chav/goth from the house opposite ours) has just pissed all over the road and is now attempting to park a car while blasting R+B. I think Mum is quite ready to punch him, her excuse is 'the kids could have been out there', though I do agree 'he is going to crash into something in a minute'. His car looks a bit like the really loud one that we see on the way to school with tinted windows (drug dealer much?).

Bird's wearing a Swedish army top and I think I've decided to go for a 'tough girl' look- I'm in a copying mood today. Speaking of new looks, I have just learned how to use bobby-pins properly and am planning to have an up-do-athon over the holidays so I'm ready to go back to school with cool hair.

Olympia (my twin) has just promised to write a formal apology to Bird if it turns out that Jack Black is in Peter Jackson's King Kong- although, if he's anything like Mum, he may mean Jack White or various other actors. Now that I come to think about it, though, I think Jack Black does give a chocolate to a scary-looking naked kid in King Kong. Why she refuses chocolate I've no idea. Come on, Peter, she's a girl!


Note to self: If I'm going to be a 'tough army girl' I'm going to need new combats because the old ones don't fit my fat arse!!!

I'm still wondering whether having a fat arse makes me pear-shaped or just adds to my hour-glass figure; my bum is bigger than my tits but not by much! I really annoyed now...I look short enough as it is.

Google has just informed us that Jack Black was in King Kong so Olympia is going to have to sign her apology! I'm going to have to remind her of this later;if she ever gets pissy this might break the mood/enrage the killer with...not really sure which.

I beginning to wonder where drunken-chav-goth is, and if he's crashed yet. Either way, I hope his music cuts out. Turns out that he and his mates are back in their house now, thank God - they can pee in there all they like.

I'm going to have to remember to avoid the wet patch in the road until I can forget about the wee as I might get a bit neurotic and begin to sniff my shoes and trouser legs for any faint whiffs of chav urine (surpassed only by the smell of my Dad's dog -Murphy-'s blocked bum glands in stinky-ness).

I must try to use 'repugnant' more often - great word:
"A Chav-Goth pissing on the road is simply repugnant!!" <----Brilliant!

Another note to self: Mars Attacks = Scary! There must be something wrong with me if a comedy freaks me out, I'm sure Scooby (my other sister doing an A-level in Physcology) could tell me why.

I really like this whole diary thing...
It makes me sound like Liz Parker from Roswell, minus the whole 'lovey-dovey-alien' stuff; I don't think 'd be adverse to a romance with alien Max Evans though...maybe Antarians like big arses!


I'm starting to feel a bit bad about eating a chocolate spread sandwich as it certainly isn't helping the fat arse situation and now everyone's going to know that it was me that finished the 'Nut-City' (available at any good Lidl)

Tastes good though!