Meeting the Dirty Sanchez Boyos!

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT.

10/10/10. Tokyo Project, Oldham's smartest club. The two rooms of the club, plus the terrace, give a capacity of 1000. Tonight, however, only one room is busy- and it's very busy. Channel 4's Dirty Sanchez has come to Oldham.

Tonight's event, “Dainton Vs Pritchard”, welcomes two Welsh lads from the post-watershed TV show Dirty Sanchez. In theme with the show, they will soon be inflicting pain on each other for our amusement. Think Jackass on crack. The moment they appear on stage, to heavy rock music, they smash bottles over each other's heads. Pritchard's body is covered in tattoos- we know this as he's wearing what appears to be a pair of Speedos and a bandanna. Dainton is carrying the event's sponsorship on his t-shirt- Dirty Sanchez are proud users of Etnies skateboarding footwear. The boyos find a fluorescent light bulb, appropriately placed in the corner of the stage. Dainton thrusts it between Pritchard's thighs in a masturbatory fashion. Eventually, he smashes it over his partner's back.

Between random bouts of karaoke, the boyos from the valleys physically abuse each other in an array of manners.

“Bungee thong” sees Pritchard wearing highly elasticated underpants. He grips onto a podium rail at the far side of the stage, as Dainton stretches the underwear right to the far door. When he releases, you can hear Pritchard scream for a second before the rock music kicks in again.

“Mousetrap cock” presumably requires no definition. The definition of Pritchard's member, however, may now be altered.

Unless you're abnormally tall, you won't see much happening on stage. Behind the clustered fans, you'll only see the performers from the torso up, which is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your interest as a lot of the action happens below that area. People are balancing on the steps at the edge of the dance floor, crowding into raised areas. The room falls silent before the stunt, so after a prolonged wait, the snap of the device going off is clearly audible before the crowd's reaction booms off the walls.

A Mallett's Mallet-style word association game follows this. Prior to the show, we are told, Dainton and Pritchard both ejaculated into the same condom. Said condom is presented on stage- it could be anything in there- diluted toothpaste, milk, liqueurs. But yeah, it could be come. When Pritchard's silent pause marks him as the sore loser, the look of disappointment on his face is convincing. He really doesn't want to do this. He looks at the condom in disgust. Then he necks it like it's a Frube.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmmorrison/1427616568/

The stage show climaxes with Dainton jamming a wooden stick into Pritchard's anus, snapping it off, removing the obstructing piece with his fingers and wiping it under Pritchard's nose.

What do you mean, you didn't know that giving someone a poo-'tache was the definition of “Dirty Sanchez?” You do now!

After the show there's a giant queue to meet the boyos. When I get to the front I refrain from dishing out my blog card to the showmen, as the club manager is standing right next to me. A few weeks ago I got a phone call from someone who sounded like a bar manager (I've worked with enough to know their distinct tone.) He'd found my card, so he must work at a club somewhere. I've been discreetly dropping them around town, including at Tokyo Project. The caller wanted to know “what I was about”- presumably to check I wasn't a businessman advertising on his turf. It could very easily be this man standing next to me. I should take the risk, but I don't. Instead I pick up a free signed Dirty Sanchez / Etnies poster. As the club photographer takes our picture, Dainton and Pritchard sign my torso with a permanent marker.

Dirty Sanchez
http://www.mtv.co.uk/shows/dirty-sanchez

Tokyo Project
http://www.tokyooldham.com/

Event Photographs
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1450150583&ref=ts#!/album.php?aid=86566&id=1450150583

Duotrope.com- Get Your Writing Published Here. List Your Fiction / Poetry Magazine Here.

Publishing your work is important. Even if you are giving a piece to some smaller publication for free, you will learn something about your writing. The editor will say something, friends will mention it. You will learn.
-Tim Cahill

A surprisingly accurate quote, considering he's not a writer but an Australian footballer.

For the last year I've been hammering as many writing groups, poetry nights, book launches, signings and social media events as I can. There are a lot of determined and talented people in Manchester who could go far with their grasp of the written word. Yet I've been amazed by how few of these people have heard of this vital writing resource...

http://duotrope.com/

Duotrope could be described as the Yellow Pages of fiction and poetry magazines. The site itself says it's a “free writers' resource listing over 3150 current Fiction and Poetry publications.”

Using this site is possibly the easiest way of getting your work into print.

Two types of people are going to benefit from this.

1) The Writer.
You've got a piece of writing. You love it. It's been workshopped, tweaked, formatted, slept on and polished. It's ready for print. Now you need Duotrope.

2) The Editor.
You're starting your own publication with the intention of getting as many fantastic stories as possible headed straight into your inbox. All you require, to get your mag known, is publicity. Now you need Duotrope.

The site is fairly straightforward and easy-to-use- or will be after a rummage. Among the three thousand-plus magazines you'll find nearly every genre of writing from Action Adventure to Zombie Horror. Listed are online publications, printed magazines, poetry anthologies, markets that pay, markets that don't, and a range- nay, a smorgasbord of styles and tastes. Like Gothic Fantasy of the absurdist style? There's a market for that. Got a Literary Historical Mystery piece? There are magazines looking for exactly what you have.

You can also choose how you submit your work. Email is quicker for all of us, but if you prefer to print and post your work, you can specify that in your search terms.

Duotrope is more than a search engine- it's almost a form of social media. The site offers a chance for writers to publicise their accepted work. Creating a profile will allow you to report acceptances to the site, which will in turn tell users how often the magazines accept submissions.

Along with that, Duotrope deliver a weekly email featuring changes in the marketplace- new magazines opening or ageing magazines closing to submissions, changes in pay scale or format, magazines looking for specifically-themed stories. This email also gives shout-outs to those who reported acceptances on the site. The more acceptances you get, the more you can report and the more the English-speaking lit-crowd see your name.

If you're a good writer, you'll find a home for your work here. If you're a good editor, contributors will be beating your door down.

Go!

You’re shopping in Manchester’s Arndale Centre. You’re starving. The array of eateries at the Food Court is around the other side of the building. Most of them aren’t that healthy anyway… your head is pounding and the people are all in your way… and then you see the glowing, orange circular sign.

Go!

A new restaurant. A takeaway. A pizzeria. You approach. It’s like an Italian buffet, a circular-based version of Subway. Behind the counter: plain pizza bases and an array of toppings. Choose your own! I went for pineapple and meatballs. As one character says in Goodnight Mr Tom, it was “delumpcoius”.

At £5.95 for a large pizza deal, it’s a little more than Subway and some other outlets, but there are a lot of places in the city asking this much for lunch. They don’t all taste as good as this though. Everything at Go! looks pretty healthy, too. Shame about the screaming infants. That comes with the location, though.

I liked the monochrome-photograph-design walls. The staff are also easy on the eye. Couldn’t help but notice.

You can also Go! At Liverpool John Lennon Airport, with other outlets opening across the UK soon.

Keep your eyes peeled for a pizza box design competition. Your image could be right in front of every customer as they chow down. Here’s a website to chew over:

www.gopizza.co.uk

October's Letter to a Lyrical Legend

“I dunno how else to puddit- this is the only thing that I’m good’at.”
-Marshall Mathers, AKA Eminem, in his song Rain Man.

Ah, Mr. Mathers. Let me tell you a story.

A few years ago- 2005 in fact- a friend of mine and I were trudging through Manchester after a heavy night out. I think I’d pulled Tom out of a bush in nearby Fallowfield after he’d just puked on the pavement outside Revolution.

“I’ve just spent all that money,” he had slurred, “and… y’know, what benefit has it given me?”

Then, the next afternoon, at Piccadilly Gardens in the city centre, we were talking about how we both worked shit-paid jobs- admin for agencies- and we weren’t getting anywhere in life. Tom then referenced one of your lyrics. I’ve no idea what it was, but the likelihood is that the line was “I’m tired of faking noughts with a stack of ones”, or something else from your first album. After all, when you wrote The Slim Shady LP, you were- as you put it- “broke as fuck.” Just like us.

It was then we realised that, no matter the situation we were in, there was always an Eminem lyric to sum up a situation. Since then you’ve done another two albums and a number of collaborations- so with more to choose from it’s even truer today.

The quote I’ve used relates to this blog. All I know how to do is to write, and I’ve no real qualifications in that area. That’s why- five years after that drunken day- I’m still broke. There’s another reason why: my own short-term memory disability. Try holding down an admin job- or learning how to use a new computer system- when you can’t remember what you’ve seen. But people are helping me with that, to a certain degree. And I’m not going to bitch.
 
Anyway. The monstrous task of moving into my new flat has swallowed up the majority of October. It's been mind-bendingly difficult, Marshall. Decorating will take MONTHS. I’ve been working on it for nearly 6 weeks now, and I’ve sorted the bedroom. The rest looks like the set of the movie Trainspotting (minus the heroin needles and dead baby). Again, I’m getting help with this to a certain degree, but many people fail to grasp how little one is capable of in my situation, when you’ve never decorated before.

I’ve been juggling decorating with a few other activities. Seriously, Marshall, my schedule has been fuller than a 1980’s Manhattan yuppie’s Filofax. The Manchester Literature Festival was fantastic. Highlights included meeting Martin Amis and Iain M Banks, and covering Saci Lloyd’s Carbon Diaries event. Here are the Lit Festival events that I wrote up for my own blog:

Manchester Reads the Sixties

A discussion of 1960s literature, featuring some writer guests who were well-known at the time:

http://powerisastateofmind.blogspot.com/2010/10/manchester-reads-sixties.html

Poetry Drop-in With John Siddique

A seminar on how to develop a poem from idea to the finished product- something you'd probably excel in:

http://powerisastateofmind.blogspot.com/2010/10/poetry-drop-in-with-john-siddique.html

In Conversation: Jonathan Franzen and Dave Haslam

Author of The Corrections discusses his new novel, Freedom, with Manchester writer and author of Not ABBA: The Real Story of the 1970s, Dave Haslam.

http://powerisastateofmind.blogspot.com/2010/10/meeting-jonathan-franzen.html

New Jersey Poet CK Williams

The man reads his work, and a signs book copies.

http://powerisastateofmind.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-jersey-poet-ck-williams.html

In Conversation: Martin Amis and Andrew Davies

The two novelist / screen adapters divulge movie secrets.

http://powerisastateofmind.blogspot.com/2010/10/in-conversation-martin-amis-and-andrew.html

Bugged

The launch of an anthology of stories and poems, inspired by eavesdropping.

http://powerisastateofmind.blogspot.com/2010/10/bugged-launch.html

Miguelanxo Prado

A Spanish Comic book artist whose work ain't for kids.

http://powerisastateofmind.blogspot.com/2010/10/miguelanxo-prados-adult-spanish-comic.html

The Manchester Blog Awards

Bringing together amateur writers from across the city. The public vote, and organisers crown a select few as winners- find links to their blogs here.

http://powerisastateofmind.blogspot.com/2010/11/manchester-blog-awards.html

Women and Crime Fiction

A discussion into how women succeed in a predominantly male-driven sector of the literature market.

http://powerisastateofmind.blogspot.com/2010/11/women-and-crime-fiction.html

And here’s The Future: Carbon Diaries, which I covered for the official MLF blog. One link leads to another.

http://powerisastateofmind.blogspot.com/2010/11/future-carbon-diaries.html

I think you’d have gone down a treat at The Comedy Poetry Slam, personally. A cross between stand-up comedy and a poetry reading. Funny stuff.

http://powerisastateofmind.blogspot.com/2010/11/comedy-poetry-slam.html

Coincidentally, Tom and I now just use the net to keep in touch as he’s in the Royal Navy and I’m doing marketing back home. He told me that the RN Information Technology team have banned my blog on their internet system. By all means, have a rummage to see why. It’s not particularly surprising that they’d filter me out. But having said that, what would you say my blog is about?

I’ve recently read loads of social media info advising people how to tailor their blogs to meet an audience. Most of them say you should focus your writing to one or two subjects, and become a master in that field. I, on the other hand, am getting more eclectic. It started off being solely about the dumb situations I’d get myself into with women and employers and at strange parties and- as one reader described them- “chav bars”. Now, I’m leaning toward political commentary, literature events and writing exercises. Some say it’s good that I’m broadening out, but I feel like it’s getting too everyday and “bloggish”. I might need to go on an adventure. A very weird, hard-core adventure that makes biting, shocking blogging. Can you think of a shoestring-budget idea that fits this bill? Comment below. Go on. I’d be honoured.

Moving on. The Shining. The novel. Stephen King. Oh. My. God. This has to go down as the dullest, slowest novel I have ever subjected myself to. I was actually forewarned about King’s overratedness over at Mark Nicholl’s blog:
http://quiddityofdelusion.blogspot.com/2010/05/why-stephen-king-in-mcsweeneys-is.html

But I thought I’d still give it a shot. The task of finishing it was actually excruciating. You’ve probably seen Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 screen adaptation- it was this film that made me choose The Shining out of all of King’s work, and the film is a horror masterpiece. Now I’ve read the original I can assure you of this: it’s a testament to Kubrick’s ability as a director that he could take such an un-scary, boring book and turn it into a memorable, effective horror film.

A reminder of the plot: Danny Torrance is a young boy who has dangerous premonitions, and can see ghosts- more so when he and his mum and dad move to an abandoned hotel on a mountain.

I don’t know whether you’ve ever tried writing non-rhyming stories, Em. But if you research what is the best way to write fiction, you’ll find the same advice offered by many people in many different books and websites. They will warn you not to do certain things. One thing is not to include scenes that don’t move the story forward. King is guilty of this. Before the family move to the hotel, his parents take Danny to a psychologist to test his “scarily” predictive abilities. This scene rationalises the situation and explains it away, meaning that what once may have been mildly frightening now isn’t at all. This is one of many scenes that drag the story to a halt. The psychologist was an unnecessary character, much like the black chef, Halloran. As much of a nice character he is, he’s still a plot block, although his presence does explain the book’s title. (Halloran isn't in the movie, and the title isn't mentioned after the opening credits.) King is also guilty of jamming in as much description as possible, in a desperate- and failed- attempt to induce fear in the reader. Oh, and the moving hedge sculptures were laughable.

A painful read. How is King such a big name in horror?!

After finishing this, I dived into Bugged, an anthology by a team of amateur Manchester-based writers. Their task was to venture out on one summer's day and eavesdrop on the public. They would then take snippets of real dialogue they hear, and turn those lines into short fiction and poetry. A great idea for a project. Good, strong writing but lacked that one story that stood out from the rest, if you know what I mean.

I expect that, with phones now being mobile web browsers, short story anthologies like Bugged won’t be published in print for much longer. Who would buy these books when we can read shorts for free online? And why distribute locally when you can make an online magazine and accept submissions from all over the world? Your work, also, would be seen that far and wide. (Rhetorically. Literally, your work already is. 12.5 million records? Good work, sunshine. Can't fault you.) Printed short story anthologies have a very short, erm… shelf life. Fair enough, they were charging for the book. But which would they prefer? Recognition, or a bit of cash? Once they’ve covered the cost of publishing…

That was books. This is films.

The Hangover.

My mates have been banging on about this film for months, so I figured it was time I checked it out. After a heavy stag party, a group of mates wake up with no memory of the night before, a destroyed hotel room and a tiger in the bathroom. And no groom. Mildly amusing. Tries too hard to be cool. It’s also similar in theme to a film from about ten years ago, called Dude Where’s My Car, which was awful. Hangover director Todd Phillips clearly has no concept of the dimensions of the average tiger, and seems to think you’d be able to jam one into a hotel luggage trolley. Sorry, but it wouldn’t even fit in the boot of your estate car (a scenario that is also exhibited).

Bruno.

Did not disappoint. As with Borat, Sascha Baren Cohen once again weaves his own hilarious story around a series of pranks. This time, gay fashion guru Bruno (Cohen) wants fame, and hits the U.S. in search of it. Cue the duping of an array of very uncomfortable Americans- including talk show participants disgusted that someone would “actually” adopt a black baby as a fashion accessory. When Cohen gives a lap dance to former presidential candidate Ron Paul, you’ll shit your lips. The film did have a very familiar Borat-style story structure, though.

Family Guy: Something, Something Dark Side

Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane follows up Blue Harvest with another hilarious space-saga parody. This time The Empire Strikes Back gets the Family Guy treatment. I loved the original. I loved the remake. I’m looking forward to seeing how McFarlane handles Return of the Jedi.

Finally, Marshall, I'm in need of a second job. Outgoings are more than incomings at the moment- a scenario I'm sure you'll remember from before your first record deal. However, it remains to be seen whether I'll “burst this tec at somebody to reverse this debt”.

Stranger Will Can Blog For You. Well. Caleb J Ross Can.

After advertising for guest writers on my blog, and doing my own asking around, I found a very talented man named Caleb J Ross. His novels Stranger Will and I Didn’t Mean To Be Kevin will be hitting book store shelves soon.
 
Caleb has had a novel idea (pun intended) to promote his books- a virtual world blog tour. For “Stranger Will Tour for Strange”, the Kansas-based writer will be guest-posting on a series of blogs all over the globe, right from his living room. His writing will appear on my blog on 22nd August 2011.
 
Check out his own blog here:
 
http://www.calebjross.com/
 
He still has a few spaces in his schedule… Do you have a blog? Why not let him write for you? Not only will you be helpin’ a brother out, you’ll be branching out and showing that bloggers don’t just sit in darkened rooms and think only of themselves. We’re a whole community. Having a guest blogger posting on your blog is practically a merit badge.

Get involved in Caleb’s project! Contact him at caleb {at} calebjross {dot} com.

Is There a Novelist in the House? Yes… and There Is Also Injustice.

The Manchester Literature Festival and Commonword Cultureword joined forces on 23rd October for the event Is There a Novelist in the House? Seven budding Manchester novelists competed in this novel-pitching competition in Manchester’s Waterstones, which the judges described as “The Literary X-Factor.” (This is the second night in a row that an MLF presenter has used an X-Factor analogy. It’s a shit TV programme. Please stop using this show as a pitch for your event, people. And stop watching the programme as well. Moving on.) The prize: £250 in cash plus the chance to work with an editor to get the book into print.
 
The judges received completed manuscripts. The panel:
 
Author Jane Rogers
Cannongate editor Dan Franklin
Associate Agent at the Darley Anderson Agency Zoe King.
 
They received full texts but without author names. The judges had read all seven novels in full before the event.
 
Judges picked names out of a hat, on the night, to decide the order of running:
 
Benjamin Judge
Nicola Turres
Andre Wzoijf
Gary Parkinson
Deborah Mann
Suzie Stubbs
Katie Massey.
 
Benjamin took centre stage to read a section of All Creatures Great and Chips, his funny and absurd speculative fiction story. His tale featured a depressed flamingo and a sadistic mansion owner, and he wrote the darkly humorous piece to challenge “what is acceptable as normal”. Who can resist talking animals and macabre violence? As Benjamin put it, “It’s not for thirteen-year-old boys.” I like.
 
Nicola Turres followed this with a pre-scripted intro and a passage from her work, This City of Steel We Live. The city- Sheffield- she describes as “a weird part of the world”, and the passage she read featured a care home, where a crazy woman in an underskirt is covering herself in baked beans. “Sheffield gets more and more beautiful in real life,” said Nicola. “I’ve tried to show that in the novel, and it reflects that world of steel in Sheffield.” After a mechanical start, her reading went down a treat. Slightly reminiscent of the film Tommy, though.
 
Andre Wzowski’s Three Days in September featured the German invasion of Poland in 1939. “War is still a living, breathing thing,” says Andre, who has previously written fantasy and has now entered the realm of historical fiction. Although it’s set in the past, he says the genre is not historical but more “literary”. (Somebody used this phrase the previous night at Women and Crime Fiction; it's the polite way of describing something as “genre-less”, it seems.)
 
http://powerisastateofmind.blogspot.com/2010/11/women-and-crime-fiction.html
 
When Andre described the plot it started to sound a lot like the movie Uprising, about the resistance displayed in the Warsaw ghettos. Sorry folks, but I thought the segment of Three Days was crap. How did he get a previous book deal?
 
Gary Parkinson darkened the mood with Scarecrow, a macabre story about a woman impregnated by her father (like in the film Chinatown…) Former advertising man / magazine editor Gary, who due to self promotion said he has “no shame left”, read out a section. The girl narrates the book in first person. The judges admitted that they assumed a woman had written the work, which pleased Gary. Fair enough, but I wasn’t so bowled over. The question I found myself asking was: how young is the narrator character? I thought under eighteen, hence vulnerable to her father’s advances. Here’s a line from the reading: “I slip out like a candle blown out.” Very descriptive. But an image like that, I’d imagine, would be used by an intelligent, creative-minded adult. Not a young girl. “I actually did some plotting in this one,” said Gary. Why would you admit this? I thought. Why tell your audience that you don’t normally plot your work? What kind of novelist do you want to come across as? He then rounded off with a writer’s cardinal sin and told us the end of the story. No. No. No.
 
Deborah Mann, who has a masters degree from Edge Hill University, read from her work “Circles of Eve.” Her auto-erotic piece was about finding sexuality. After a good start she also gave away part of the ending! A character in the book is a neighbour called Mary Shelley. Why give a character this name? Anyone clued up will be looking for a Frankenstein-related significance. But Deborah didn’t elaborate on this. Distracting!
 
Suzie Stubbs’ set Mother’s Beloved in Laos. The young protagonist, a native girl of maybe six years old, has visions of death. The visions become premonitions when people die in the circumstances she imagined, terrifying the people in this communist country.
 
Have you ever seen The Eye, the Japanese film that Tom Cruise has remade? Same story. Suzie has apparently had work published in Time out and The Guardian, and has won at the Manchester Blog Awards in previous years. Again, I wasn’t that impressed.
 
Suzie said that she’s never been to Laos. Judge Dan said that lack of first-hand geographical knowledge isn’t necessarily a problem, and thought the phrase “write what you know” is a cliché. I’d agree with that.
 
Then Suzie became the second author to make a really dumb mistake- the same one- she told us the end to her story! “She’s telling a pack of lies,” she said. Not only did you just spoil it for the remainder of people who might have given up the time for reading it, you’ve used a crap end twist! Ever seen Lucky Number Slevin? Narrator has been lying to viewer throughout the film. That was a crap end as well, and you’ve just nicked it, Suzie.
 
Two hours into the event, my arse began to hurt… perhaps softer seats next time, organisers…?!
 
Katie Massey read from her novel The Book of Ghosts, about Sophie, a girl with a difficult family life who imagines that distant family relatives are talking to her. (A lot of these stories are very similar to each other. Overcrowded market much?) The segment she read is pretty decent, although her intro was also pre-scripted.
 
Jane Rogers liked the language in this novel, and said it shows the differences in the characters and how they change. I concur with that.
 
There’s a break while the judges made their decision. A quick glance around the audience proved that Dave Hartley is here...

http://abarrelroll.blogspot.com/

And some guy wearing the same Nazi militia jacket that he had on at the Comedy Poetry Slam.

http://powerisastateofmind.blogspot.com/2010/11/comedy-poetry-slam.html

Hmm.
 
The event concluded with a feedback session. Dan and Jane praise the participants but also offer specific criticisms to the writers.
 
I’d have picked Benjamin Judge, but the judges go for Suzie Stubbs. Well. They did describe it as “the literary X-Factor”, so you can only expect recycled ideas and devastating injustice to prevail. Not like I watch the TV show or anything. But each to their own…

The official Manchester Literature Festival Blog coverage:

http://manchesterliterature.blogspot.com/2010/11/is-there-novelist-in-house-in-presence.html

A Novel Idea for a Writing Exercise

Sunday’s writing exercise was to choose a book from the pile of novels brought in by the group coordinator. Open it on a random page, pick a random intriguing sentence and write for fifteen minutes. I chose Dona Flor and her Two Husbands by Jorge Amada, and landed on the line “Dona Norma tried to calm her.”

Dona Norma tried to calm her. The woman was breathing heavily, staring hard into her wind shield.

“They are all locked in,” said Dona. “They aren’t going to fall.” She was shouting- the woman hadn’t wound her window down yet. She wasn’t likely to either. She was gripping the steering wheel, hard, her knuckles white like she was on a roller-coaster ride. Maybe she was.

Dona took the decision to open the door of the 4X4 from the roadside. She’d stepped closer to the smashed-in bonnet carefully, hoping she was right about the vehicle the car was jammed into.

The interior was warm, the woman’s breathing loud and high-pitched: repeated gasps of fright.

The heater must have cut off when the engine died.

How can you not see a lorry of that size, she thought, with a pile of cars on the back of it?

“Come on,” said Dona, unbuckling the woman’s seatbelt. “You’re totally sa-“

A metal groan came from beyond the wind shield, a little higher than the 4X4’s roof.

Both women, frozen like ice sculptures, lifted their eyes to the top of the screen.

Then, with a crunch, the black bonnet of a car dropped and stopped centimetres from the wind shield. They both screamed, like movie patrons at a horror show.

Dona exhaled. The BMW badge looked larger than she could ever have imagined. The seatbelt disconnected, causing Dona’s heart to smash against her ribcage once again.

“Take your right hand,” Dona instructed, “and open your door.”

On the way into Manchester to meet the group, I saw a crash on Oldham Road. And yes, it was a woman in a 4X4 who hadn’t seen the giant car transporter.