Bar Grapple

At some point I remember: Don’t work hard, work clever.

Play jazz, soul, funk, or whatever.

Loose ends, flirt, snort, you turn the lights out and you sort of like,

work off a playlist, a dj, you wanted to party,

but it was you coming out in the eighties,

all the yawn get away with stuff that you weren’t into the music

we would elation it’s not the size of the dog in the fight,

when I got and the whole crowd over and they would chokehold

at the time I was working at 2 and o’clock I would just get my record nervous around the area all the there sort of like 1984/85

I continued the tradition because it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

Explanation.

Ghosts on the Dancefloor

Take your best memories of Manchester night life, on paper form. Take a transcript of an interview with a local DJ. Take a personal hobby, and a few of your favourite elements from this. Cut them all up and throw them in a blender. Pour your literary smoothie out on your desk, and form something striking and jagged: an experimental, surrealist autobiographical poem.

26^th September: Nexus Art Café in Manchester. The small eatery is in the heart of the Northern Quarter, the city’s creative hub. A Tom Selleck movie is projected faint onto a lit wall. Customers are engaged in games of chess and Trivial Pursuit.

A group of writers gather. Commonword writer Segun introduces the Ghosts project- a gathering of written material detailing the birth of the Manchester club scene. Segun’s handout explains that the project “aims to capture the so-far unrecorded roles that the clubs in the Moss Side and Hulme areas of Manchester played in the heritage of the Caribbean community.”

Segun tells us how, in the fifties, African seamen set up social groups in the city which developed, over decades, into the nightclubs that we visit today. Soul nights emerged throughout the sixties, eventually influencing a range of music events- including venues playing drum ‘n’ bass and house. (House in particular is still played a lot in the city’s clubs.)

Segun hands us a transcript of an interview with Manchester DJ Hewan Clarke, who came to Manchester in “the notorious winter of 1969”. It gives us a taste of the styles and atmosphere of the city, from a popular DJ’s perspective- a man who brings people together to share something that they love- good music. It’s an era that I was, enviously, too young to be a part of.

“We’re going to look at Surrealism,” says Segun, enthusiastically. “Surrealism accesses our subconscious through randomness. It’s our egos that prevent us from properly expressing ourselves, but you can drop your ego and express through automatic writing- just let the pen hit the paper and keep going. Remember,” he says with emphasis, “nothing is forbidden in surrealism.”

We then performed three minutes of automatic writing on the theme of Manchester’s night life: Our memories of the city and it’s bars and clubs.

Here’s my three-minuter:

2002. Deansgate Locks is not yet the rammed street end populated by the moneyed scally and every other reveller. It’s spacious- The brick arches are clearly visible, even from the inside. The music- cutting edge house. The people- well-dressed and good-looking. It’s the first time I’ve walked into a bar and thought, yes, I like this place. I could be a regular here. It’s the only bar I’ve been to with a curved ceiling. The only bar with a full glass front. It’s Baa Bar, apparently the only cheap bar on the strip. Next door, Sugar Lounge is apparently the reverse. Your month’s wages for a glass of coke, populated by footballers and BBC types. Ying and Yang, practically. I neck another Woo Woo and watch the women.

Next, we took another sheet of paper and tore it up into small slips. Segun asked us to pick out, from our three-minute pieces, five words or phrases that we particularly like. We wrote them on the slips.

Then, we thought of another subject altogether- not night-life related. I chose Mixed Martial Arts. We wrote a few key words from the hobby onto the remaining blank slips of paper.

Following this, we took the photocopies of Segun’s DJ interview and cut it up into lines. We bunched up the lines of paper, holding them like a bunch of flowers, and cut them into chunks.

On three more slips, we wrote a body feeling, an action and an emotion- relating to either night life or our unrelated hobby.

We mixed up our slips like a DJ mixes records. Or like an amateur writer mixes clumsy metaphors. Cough.

Segun, his hands deep in paper slips, says “Pure surrealists would just read out whatever text they’ve got, no matter where it falls. But I think we should mix it around and find a phrasing that you’re happy with.”

I lay my slips out in lines on the table. It looks like the letter that Whitney Houston receives from her stalker in The Bodyguard.

To see how it transcribes, check my next update. There will be a combination of three very different writing elements… but will it reveal anything about my subconscious? Could I- or you- interpret anything from the result? Comment if you think so…

Doris' Legacy

We’ve done this writing exercise before… I really must research some new ones. Regardless. Here we go.

The group sits at the table. We each have a sheet of paper.

Write a character name. Fold the paper back, so you can’t see the writing, and pass it to your right/left. Keep all the passes in the same direction.

Write an age. Fold. Pass.

A place. Fold. Pass.

A time of day. Fold. Pass

An object. Fold. Pass.

This didn’t bring us full circle, but it doesn’t matter. There were enough elements, by this time, to make a good story. Here’s what I had:

Name: Doris Andrews

Age: 107

Place: Farm

Time: 2:30am

Object: Bracelet

Here’s what Doris is doing:

She had a legacy. A whole branch of the family tree was underneath her. Two daughters. A son. Nine grandchildren. Five great-grandchildren. Without her, there would be none of it.

Doris sipped her water. She took another pill. She looked at the packet of pills. She couldn’t even remember what they were for. But when the alarm beeps, she takes a pill. That’s all she could remember about it.

She looked at the mould of her body from above the covers and thought about how small she looked. She was 6 foot at 21. Now, her teenage grandsons were a head taller than her. Her family, their heights, the size of the whole Andrews clan: Everything was large. Even the farm she lived on was spacious- bigger than most dairies.

She put the water down on the cabinet. She’d left her bracelet on the side, a thin, silver line reflecting the moonlight through the aging curtains.

Doris wasn’t in the habit of taking pills at 2:30am. She wasn’t in the habit of anything. She must have noticed she’d missed a pill, and shifted the alarm on a few hours to compensate.

I’m still sharp, she thought. Still compus mentus. She thought of the lifetime of country air she’d breathed in, and thought of her family in the city, and what was going through her lungs.

Still, she thought, it can’t be harming their growth. The kids are tall enough.

Awkward.

This week’s dig-a-hole-and-hide-in-it moment occurred at a writers’ feedback meeting. I’d brought in a screenplay- a short comedy featuring homosexuality and Sadomasochism in gangland Britain. As you do. Before the critique I suggested each part be read out by a different person. I purposefully didn’t tell anyone about the content- I just reeled off the character names and let people pick them.

Unfortunately, this led to one man picking the role of a suppressed gay, and his own son- who’d only been at the group a couple of times- picking the role of the straight object of said gay man’s affections.

Criiiinge.

Still, they were good sports and got through it. The script was well-received and needs tweaking only a little. I’ve been advised to get in touch with a few drama workshops to see if it could be acted out. The Northern Film Network were good for this kind of thing… but they folded a couple of years ago. Does anyone want a bash at shooting this script?

Get in touch! I’ll send it out to you.

matthewtuckey@hotmail.com

Those who beg for mercy...

I was attending a writers’ group in Oldham for a while, a couple of years ago. We’d warm up for the sessions with a written exercise at the beginning of the meeting. As a group we’d look for writing competitions and writing prompts in magazines and on websites. On one week, a group member found a competition in a TV Times magazine, who were looking for new crime-writing talent. The weekly mag wanted short story submissions in the crime genre that must begin with this opening line: 

In my experience, those who beg for mercy seldom deserve it.

We used this prompt phrase as an exercise, and spent a few minutes developing our stories. Here's my attempt.

--

In my experience, those who beg for mercy seldom deserve it. The theory behind this is, if you know you’re not guilty, you don’t have to beg. After all, who begs if you don’t have to?

The alibi saw the attacker fleeing in a red waterproof. The team had scoured the CCTV and on that day there were two people captured on camera matching that description. Made them both guilty as hell, one after the other. We bent the rules a little- circumstances dictated it- and told each man they were the only suspect.

Michael Bishop, a distressed young man, sat in the plain room looking at the floor.

I took a chair. “You think any lawyer is going to pluck you out of this?” I tried to ask as calmly as I could, suggesting I was presuming his guilt. I wasn’t presuming anything.

“Well, yeah,” he said. “And he’ll help me to sue you for defamation of character.”

“Give it your best shot. I look forward to see you in court.”

*

Later, with Mr. Bishop counting the bricks in his cell and joking arrogantly with the officers, we dragged Robert Neild into the interrogation room, the cameras watching his every move.

He was shaking as he slumped in the chair. “Look,” he said. “Yes, I was on the street.”

I’d not even asked him a question.

“You can’t do this to me. I was provoked. He was gonna kick me head in. I was just, um… pre-empting it.”

I raised my eyebrows, encouraging him to continue.

--

I think in order to write a realistic police story, you’d need knowledge of police procedure. I don’t have it. That’s one of the reasons I never developed this, and it sat in an ageing notebook in my cupboard for a couple of years.

However, if you're looking for more inspiration try Writing Magazine and Writers' Forum: two good publications for authors and poets. The magazines often feature competitions and prompts that could be used by writing groups as opening exercises. Find them in WH Smith and other outlets.

For more creative writing prompts online, see here.

Odd French Jam Scenario

Jam jam jam jam jam. I’m looking at my Blogger stats right now. And I’m confused. I’ve been writing this blog for four years. I’ve discussed the antics of a range of celebs, described numerous creative writing exercises, detailed a plethora of bizarre anecdotes and detailed numerous techniques for developing blog stats. Yet, when I look at my own blog stats, the search terms (what people put into Google to be directed here) don’t exactly reflect this. Do you know what the top key search word is?

Yep. “Jam”.

I wrote this post  a while ago- a creative writing exercise where I linked one person’s opening line to another person’s closing line. It’s the only post I have written, to my knowledge, featuring “jam”. Other than this one. Whether the written exercise will satisfy the curiosity of Googlers is beyond me.

But, in the interest of developing blog stats- if it’s jam you want, it’s jam you shall have. There’s space to jam in a story, even if it is a sticky one. In fact, while you’re reading, why not have some background music to jam to?

Picture the scene. Some time in the early nineties. On holiday. South of France. Breakfast in the sun outside the caravan. Toast from the grill. Unusual margarine from the hypermarket. Authentic Bonne Maman French jam. You can find this in Tesco back in rainy England- Mum has always bought this brand, certainly for as long as I can remember. She unscrews the lid as normal. It’s designed to be lumpy jam, with chunks of strawberry mixed in with the jelly. She scoops out a chunk with the knife and lands it on the toast. And pauses.

There’s something in the jam. It’s small and black. It looks like discolouration at first.

“Eurgh,” says Mum. Her top lip turns up. She digs her knife in like a scalpel. She cuts out a lump and scrapes it onto the side of her plate.

It’s a beetle. A dead one.

I wonder what French peanut butter tastes like, and how secure their packaging procedures are. Jam is, for the next few weeks, off the choices.

It’s now, what, fifteen years later. I’ve moved out of my parent’s house. I just buy your standard Tesco jam. Mum still buys Bonne Maman. As far as I know, there have been no freebies since that summer.

The REAL Reason for Facebook's Subscribe Button

“Subscribe, get your issue”

-Snoop Dogg, Drop It like It’s Hot*

You’ve probably noticed that Facebook has recently changed its privacy settings, now allowing you to “subscribe” to people’s public updates without needing to add them as friends. Some might say it complicates things. I say, things change.

I’m sure I’m not the only one to see the motivations for Facebook’s newest adjustment. First off, understanding your own privacy settings has suddenly become much easier. We can now choose how much information we want a person to see, and can view our page from the perspective of this person to check we’ve adjusted the settings as we want.

A bigger driving factor: Facebook wants to take on their biggest rival, Twitter. Twitter has gained popularity massively recently- partly due to news of cheating footballers and sly, doomed tabloids breaking on the site before the papers can report it. People started to try out Twitter en masse, and saw the array of celebrities sharing updates. It’s fascinating for movie fans and pop music lovers.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is just filling a gap in his product’s service, tempting celebs to share info with their fans. Celebs don’t run their own fan pages and they have probably set their own profiles to the highest security settings… until now. We have already started to see some big names adjust their settings to allow their fans to see their personal Facebook updates through subscriptions. This will mean celebrities' accounts, like actor Jared Leto's, will need to be verified, in a similar way to Twitter’s system, to prove the celeb is really the person updating the account.

I bet that’s the covert reason for the new change. It’s all about taking on the new competition from Twitter, disguised as a genuine concern for the control of your privacy.

*You can follow Snoop on Twitter. There's a Facebook “Like” page that looks like it's ran by the man himself. But now, Facebook are now tempting celebs to make some of their personal updates public so that their subscribers- usually fans- can see what they have to say. Obviously, a celeb like Snoop might use Facebook to promote himself, making some of his updates “public” for all to see. (There will be a small image of the globe next to the update.) For his close friends, he can make an update “private” for only his friends to see. For his public updates, he should be able to syndicate his Twitter account to his Facebook so updates appear on both simultaneously.