It’s In The Bag

It is, perhaps, a bit of a cruel title but facts are facts.  Sometimes we don’t like facts, this is when a little white lie comes in handy.

You will observe that I referred to a little ‘white’ lie as opposed to... what?  ‘White’ lies are OK but any other hue is, apparently, not.

Something like ‘red’ letter days and hitting a ‘purple’ patch are all good things but ‘black’ anything is not. ‘Black’ Friday, for example. Dad was born on a Friday the thirteenth in 1922.  He regarded any Friday the thirteenth as a ‘Lucky Day’.

I regard it, as I do any date, as ‘a day’.

The colour of any particular day, philosophy, metaphor, maxim, what-have-you, is entirely irrelevant to me because I am colour blind.  This is not a disease – although you could, reasonably, say that I could allow myself to be dis-eased by it!  One of the advantages of being colour-blind, for me, is that my wife likes to say that I have yet to realise that she is black.

Of course, I am not ‘shade’ blind.

Mum was blinded by her perceptions of her origins.  Perhaps I should explain that.

In 1916 a gentleman walking his dog in a London park, the park was called Barnes Common, heard noises emanating from a paper bag.  He examined the contents and discovered that the bag contained a baby.

In those days, during the First World War, abandoned babies were not uncommon.  This particular park was then a place where people ‘of quality’ might stroll; nowadays it is a place where junkies and muggers disport themselves.

The gentleman took the bag, plus baby, to the police station at Marylebone (pron: Marlybone, for those unfamiliar with London).  From thence she was checked by a certain Nurse Houghton and whisked off to the orphanage at Richmond on the banks of the River Thames, near Kew.

For eight years, Mum lived in the orphanage.  It was tough in there, there were no perks or frills unless you count being awarded the crackling from Matron’s Sunday pork joint for being especially good as a ‘perk’.

One of the senior girls used to take delight in trying to drown Mum in the bath when it was her turn to wash the junior girls.

All the girls had jobs to do – and woe betide them if there was any shirking!

Nurse Houghton was tasked, from time to time, to check the girls’ health.  There was a photograph, at one time, of baby Mum being held by Nurse Houghton but a search of old newspapers in the British Library archives in North London turned nothing up and Mum’s old copy could not be found.

I would like you to close your eyes and imagine, if you will, that the first eight years of your life were in an all-girl environment governed by strict discipline.  There was very little light shining into their lives.  I have told, already, the story of the singing so I shall not repeat it here.

Their only contact with the outside world was a controlled walk in the park – Richmond had, and still does, a large deer park, and the ‘choosing’ day.

At pre-determined intervals people would come to the orphanage and choose a girl to take home with them.  There appeared to be very little control or legislation about this and the reason is very simple.

Towards the top of this ‘Blog’ I mentioned that discarded babies were quite de rigueur* at that time.

[*‘de rigueur’ = Required by the current fashion or custom; socially obligatory. From French: de, of + rigueur, rigor, strictness.  Just saying.]

Why should this be?  Well, there a couple of reasons that spring immediately to mind.

Firstly, World War One was raging on the Continent.  The Generals of both sides were busy organizing a war of attrition that was denuding several Nations of their men folk.  This means that there were lots of women ‘at home’ – some of whom were ‘with child’, as it were.

Young ladies with no means of support – and that means ‘no husband’ were at the mercy of the elements.  “Get out and never darken our doors again” would be quite a common instruction.  It would be far better, if her boyfriend had been terminated for the war effort, that she go ‘on holiday’ to some fictitious relative, give birth and heave the baby over a hedge somewhere dark and, preferably, remote.

Secondly, women were second-class citizens by a very long chalk.  Tendrils of this mindset still linger on in many backward places – like Newcastle, for example.  If a young girl were to actually get a job it would, very often, be ‘in service’ to some member of the gentry or a rich businessman. 

Members of the aristocracy and rich businessmen alike were not above a bit of ‘messing around with the help’.

When ‘the help’ started to become plump they would be offered a choice, “You can keep the job or you can keep the baby!”

Now what?  Keep the baby?  Where to go?  How to support yourself and the child?  There was always the ‘Workhouse’, of course but, well, hell...  A place for the homeless and destitute that was little better than death; the last one hung around until about 1948 with the abolition of the ‘Poor Law’.  Of course, they changed the name a few times.  As they do!

Alternative?  Find a dark and secluded spot, a paper bag...

Orphanages were expensive to run and were funded by public donation; possibly as a result of guilt complexes from the rich and famous.  Naturally disposing of as many children as possible to caring foster parent can only be a good thing.  Background checks were minimal and the foster parents were paid a small stipend to cover essential costs.

We will look at Mum’s progress in that direction later.

As a result of my Mother’s beginnings she was convinced that nobody, ever, wanted her.  She was abandoned at birth and therefore had no value.  This thought continued with her until her death in 2010, almost exactly 95 years after she was found.

I, on the other hand, am convinced that my, unknown, Grandfather was a person of note – very likely Royalty.  You will observe that I do have, not only aristocratic features, but also a noble, if not Royal, mien.

What does this have to do with writing?  Not much except that, very often truth is stranger than fiction.  Whatever story you try to make up somebody, somewhere, will have something to top it and it will be, moreover, fact.

You don’t think I’m Royalty?  You disprove it.

I’m happy to know that Kate just married into MY family.

Emotional Rescue

To paraphrase the ‘Rolling Stones’.  Great album.  One of their best, in my view.  ‘Tattoo You’ and ‘Exile on Main Street’ were, also, up there in the clouds.  So many to choose from.  So much to enjoy.

We do, most of us, have fairly catholic (small ‘c’, please note!) tastes in our pleasures.  We like, by and large, a wide selection of music.  Few of us are fixed to one particular genre unless we are teenagers, perhaps.

I must confess a liking for most A.O.R. (Adult Oriented Rock) that would include ‘Aerosmith’, ‘Queen’, ‘Heart’, ‘Meatloaf’ amongst many others – in no particular order.

There are also odd bands that crop up from time to time with amusing little songs that resist the passage of time but the band itself fades into obscurity.  ‘Georgia Satellites’ is one such band.  ‘Springfield Buffalo’?  OK.  You’ve probably heard them but didn’t know it—they supplied the theme to ‘Lord of War’ starring Nicolas Cage.  An emotional film.  Very moving.

Films.  Films are just the same.  We watch endless films, most of them generated and adulterated by Hollywood who presume to tell us what we should watch and what is ‘marketable’ where, in truth, they do not know.  They are, more often than not, surprised by what sells and what does not.

Do we watch the same genre of film all the time?  No.  We do not.  ‘Ice Age’ mingles with ‘Serenity’ and ‘The Book of Eli’.  We veer happily from a dystopian (oh, dear—sorry!) future to a happy display of lunacy created by animators and voiced by brilliant artistes.

There are few, successful, groups or singers that dish out the same fare with each song.  ‘RAP’, for me, would be an example of a successful genre where one ‘song’ sounds exactly like the previous one.  My apologies to fans of ‘Eminem’ and the like but, to my ears, they are just an interminable string of sameness that blend into one homogenous whole.

Who produces the same film endlessly?  Apart from Bollywood, of course.  The ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Star Trek’ films were similar but each had a different story to tell based on the same characters; nobody makes films that are the same in spite of the success of the original.

We have discussed this in a previous ‘Blog’ so I will move on.

Books, we said in that ‘Blog’ are superior to films—unless, of course, you can’t read.  That would always be a stumbling block on visits to the library.

Except!

Songs and films—especially songs, really, are based on emotion.  The release of emotion.  Love is the one that springs immediately to mind unless you are a Country singer when your girl/boy friend leaving you and your dog dying provides moments of grief.

They say that if you play a country song backwards your blanket folds itself up, your boy/girl friend returns to you and your dog comes back to life.

Humour aside, songs depend on emotion.  A singer who cannot convey emotion tends to wither in the early stages of their career.

Rarely are films devoid of emotion.  I remember a film starring Kurt Russell called ‘Soldier’ in which Kurt Russell hardly spoke, if at all, and showed absolutely no emotion—yet it was a brilliant portrayal of that army Sergeant.  Then there are those films that are meant to be emotional—Joan Chen and Rutger Hauer starred in ‘Blood of Heroes’ (also released as ‘Salute of the Jugger’) that died shortly after the opening titles and never drew breath again until the closing credits.

Sorry, Joan and Rutger—you were both far too good for this rubbish.

Because there was no emotion in the film it failed to inspire any interest.  I know nobody who enjoyed it.

Emotion is vital to a story.  If there is no emotion the story has no soul.

We writers are faced with a monumental task.  Singers have a voice that can be inflected to produce the desired effect; films have visuals where even moderately accomplished actors can tell a gamut of emotions readily.

We have words.

That’s it.

We have to convey emotions through black and white words...

Wow!  A damn great stork has just glided down the river outside my window—how cool is that!  So exciting!

Sorry.  I digress.

Where was I?  Oh, yes.  We have limitations imposed upon us by the words we can use.  We could, perhaps, use foul or profane language to express extreme emotions but a lot of readers don’t like it; this is something that can only be used in specific circumstances in your narrative.

We are, often, advised by various experts that adverbs are the death knell of any story and yet they can be useful tools in conveying emotion:

“She ran into the compound and gasped, “They are coming.”

cf

“She ran erratically into the compound gasping, “They are coming!”

The second example would, hopefully, convey the idea that she was exhausted—reinforced by the fact that she was ‘gasping’.

We do what we can, when we can.  Emotion is a personal thing so I will say, again, what I have said before, try to feel the emotion that you are writing about so that it appears in your words.  The words then become a mirror into which you reflect your feelings.

Now, where did that stork go...

Perfection

How lovely to be perfect.  Not many of us are, of course.  We favoured few, so gifted, so talented that everything comes easily to us; effortless, our lives are.

Many years ago I was privileged to work with a reasonably young man who was very, very good at his trade.  Nice person, too.

He could not pass exams.  Put him in front of an aeroplane engine and he was in his element, put him in front of an examination paper and his brain froze up.

No exam pass equals no promotion.  After many years the ‘Powers That Be’ decided to let him prove his worth by testing him on a practical level.  Flawless.  He was promoted.

About the same time, or shortly thereafter, a young man (this was a young man) passed his promotion exam with flying colours.  There now came a problem.  The upper echelons of command did not favour him.  They regarded him as irresponsible and incapable of discipline either in himself or with others.  He had been shifted from one post to another only to be moved on at once having fallen into disfavour with his superiors.

At the time that he passed his promotion exams he was one of my ‘underlings’.  The ‘Boss’ summoned me to his office.

[Note: we were never ‘called’ to the office, much less asked to ‘drop in’—we were always ‘summoned’!]

“Chief,” he said with the tone of one who does not expect any sort of intelligent response, “Young ‘X’ has passed his promotion exams.  Not sure that we should approve it.  Your thoughts, since you work rather closer with him than do we.”

“SAH!  YES, SAH!” I replied in the way of one who was oft obsequious, “He is a good worker but needs careful guidance.  Nobody has, as yet, taken the time to give him advice.  He has just become married and has, I believe, a baby on the way—not him, his wife, Sir!”  I wanted to be clear on this point, “I suspect that a promotion will focus his mind and do two things.

“The first thing is that it will give him more money—a desperately needed resource at this time and for which he will be grateful.  The second is that he will respond favourably to people having a trust in him.

“My opinion is that he should be awarded the promotion.  SAH!”

Sire replied that he would, grudgingly, accept my considerations but any problems resulting from this decision would fall upon my head.

Fine.

Within six months of his promotion several factions, who all said that they needed ‘a good man’, were requesting his presence!

We change.  We change as individuals but, sometimes, we need an incentive to do so.

Very often the incentive comes from those who are in charge of our lives.  All of us have a ‘boss’ somewhere,

Very often it is the ‘Boss‘ who must organise the desire for change by seeing the problem and coming up with a solution.

Everyone sees problems but problem solvers are, in my experience, a bit thin on the ground.

How often do you hear “Someone should do something”?  The ‘someone’ or ‘something’ is never quite clear.

But I digress—as ever!

This was all set off, this thought process, by a fellow author, an accomplished and respected one, mentioning that she had problems with spelling.  Specifically spelling one word.  Occasionally.  No, no!  She doesn’t have occasional problems—the word misspelt is ‘occasionally’.  She has said so on ‘Facebook’ so it is no secret.

Is it, India Drummond?

We are all frail.  Each of us, in our own way, has failings.

We like to think that we can do no wrong, that we are, individually, infallible, but the fact of the matter is that we are not perfect.  None of us.

My teacher of English Literature was one Frederick Finn.  He was a lovely man and a gifted teacher—enthusiastic in his subject beyond the call, as it were, of duty.  One of us asked him if Shakespeare had been revised over the years to bring perfection to the words.

Fred was quite shocked, “Perfect?  Good heavens, no!  The Bard would turn in his grave if he heard you say that.  He was far from perfect even then when language was, largely, phonetic.  It is, now, imperfect and it is these imperfections that lend resonance to his words; they give warmth and feeling.”

With that he reeled off several examples of phrases and speeches that were less than perfect.

Amazing man, Fred Finn.

None of us, no matter how hard we try, are perfect. 

I will confess to being, often, nonplussed at dialogue.  The format required as regards the commas and whether it needs an upper case letter, or not.  A simple thing, no doubt, but it is my undoing more often than not.

That is the other thing about errors and mistakes.  To another person they will appear basic, stupid.  The sort of thing that a schoolboy would avoid with ease.  But to those of us afflicted it is a nightmare.  Many of us have sheets of paper, with sundry rules of grammar typed on them, stuck in various places around our workstations.  Do they help?  Sometimes, but, when you are ‘in the flow’ of a story they are oft forgotten.

There is a famous proverb: “He who makes no mistakes makes nothing.”

Never fear that anything you do (or, in our case, write) is faulted.  It doesn’t matter.  Faults are personalisation—they lend feeling.  If somebody wanted to paint a perfect picture somebody else would say, “Take a photograph.”

This is not an excuse for slap-dash work, it is not a permission to discard all the rules but it is permission to write freely.  Let someone else worry about the details.

That’s what editors and proofreaders are for.

And you can’t end a sentence on a preposition—or start one with ‘and’!

Phooey!

Mechanical v. Fluent

These are the dark days of summer.

No, no.  I am not being sarcastic nor, even, facetious.

Thing is, there is no football (soccer, if you will) now until August.  Woe are we.  What to do with ourselves now that the television has nothing to offer that is entertaining; they have even removed the test card!

‘Bones’ is entertaining up to a point but she is so irritating; if I was Seeley Booth I’d very likely have given her a good slapping by now.  Sexist?  Moi?  Non, ce n’est pas possible!  Happily, there is much that is humorous in there but then again see the following comment re: personal lives.

‘CSI’?  OK, but I get fed up with all the personal lives of the characters—just stick to the crime fighting, please.

I do quite like ‘SVU’.  Meloni and Hargitay, as actors, are watchable and the plots are usually very good if, sometimes, heart-rending.

Channel hopping, then.  We have some very odd channels here on ‘Astro’.  We have a channel devoted to things ‘Bollywood’ where, in the films, someone gets stabbed, there’s lots of crying and the ‘baddy’ turns out to be the ‘goody’s’ brother.  Every song in every film is sung by the same singer and every film is identical to the one before it except for the character’s names and the location.

There are Arabic channels, Chinese channels and Malay channels.  Fortunately, there are many channels in English.  Especially the sports channels upon which there is, currently, no football!

Strangely, the High Definition (HD) channels contain no Malay channels and yet there is a Korean HD channel.  I find this to be an anomaly.

Being of a curious disposition, and unutterably bored, I watched a few minutes of a Korean show and was struck with the similarity between this and the Chinese shows on other channels.

That similarity was a stark contrast with Western shows of similar ilk.  I can’t say that there are similar Western shows now but there used to be.  It was called ‘Variety’.  Perhaps the equivalent in the West would be the burgeoning crop of ‘Talent’ shows with which we are now plagued.  The ‘Reality’ show seems to have taken over, a set of broadcasts to be, for my part, assiduously avoided.

However.

[NB:  ‘However’ is a sort of posh ‘but’.]

On this particular Korean show a troupe of performing girlies appeared.  Just as in the Chinese and Japanese versions of similar shows, they were scantily clad but in a kind of ‘chaste’ way in that their shorts had mini-legs on them; they were not, as in Las Vegas productions, cut up to the mid-ribs at the sides.

All very ‘twee’, you might say.

There appeared to be some sort of competition between some of these girls to see how high they could kick.  A line appeared on the screen showing the angle between the straight legs—one raised and the other on the floor; the trick seems to have been to get this line as straight as possible without bending the knees.  Very odd, I thought.

And then they danced.

Oh, dear.

Imagine, if you will, eight or nine small girls with, shall we say, ‘boyish’ figures, all doing the same thing at the same time to some noises in the background which, presumably, they would classify as ‘music’.

So far, so good.

But.

It was mechanical.  They were almost sexily dressed but without actually being sexy.  Their movements were not graceful or sensuous or... how can we put this?  Sexy!  They were going through well-scripted movements like a rehearsed drill sequence performed by a squad of soldiers.  With little effort it was entirely possible to imagine somebody at the side of the stage chanting out, “And one... two... three... four... and... one... ”

It was almost a depiction of Asian society that frowns on sexiness.  Family values are paramount.  This means that there are lots of nightclubs where prostitutes and other dwellers of the night are to be found in abundance.  But not in public.  One does not kiss in public.  Holding hands with one’s spouse is just about acceptable.

Western shows that contain women, and men, too, in revealing clothes are watched avidly.  Many people will point to them and say “See how decadent the West has become.  See how they have no sense of decency or morality.”

Hypocritical, perhaps, but it happens.  Mask the sexy moves and dresses in a wooden framework to make it appear more ‘homely’.

It is that wooden-ness that I wish to confront now.  It is what came to mind as soon as those little Asian girls came on to the stage and began prancing around in their well-timed gyrations.

There are stories available on the Internet from sundry sources that are badly written.  Some of them are badly written because the grammar or punctuation is really bad.

I have said before that the important thing is the story—it is, but that does not mean you cannot get an independent, and critical, eye to oversee what you have written to iron it smooth.

The difficult thing to get over, editors will give up with it, is to have ‘wooden’ texts.

No matter how good your story is if it doesn’t flow it will be a nightmare to read.

Example:

Edna said, “I think you are sitting on my knitting, Edith.”

Edith said, “No, I am not, Edna.”

Edna said, “I believe you are sitting on my knitting, Edith.”

Edith said, “I am sure I am not, Edna.”

Edith said...

I think you get the drift.  That and lists.  Especially:

“Maurice went into the night club and then he ordered a drink of gin and then he drank the gin quickly so that he gagged a little on it before ordering another one... “

Reader succumbs to boredom and slips gently into a mild coma.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the grammar, the punctuation or, even, the spelling.  The syntax is appalling but the story might be great.  Mum will tell you it is a wonderful story and that you are ever such a clever person.  Mum just told your sister, who has the voice of a nightjar, to enter for ‘American Eyelid’ immediately.  To Mum you are exquisite; to everyone else you are execrable if you write like that.

Editors will give up.  Publishers will drop your MSS into bins and Agents will note your numbers so that your calls will go unanswered.

The thing is that nobody talks like that.  Nobody.  Listen to conversations between other people when you are on the bus/train/tube or in a queue.  I find the best place to listen to other people’s chat is in the cinema!  But another time for that little gem!

People’s comments flow.  When people talk they ripple along like water in a stream.  Listen to it and then describe it.

Right, then.  Let’s relook at Edith and Edna.

Edna said, “I think you are sitting on my knitting, Edith.”

“I don’t think I am, Edna,” Edith said

 “I’m sure you are.   I had it over here before tea and put it down where you are now to go to the kitchen,” said Edna, calmly.

Edith said, with some irritation, “I am sure I should feel it if I were,”  she wiggled her rear end in the chair.

Edith sighed...

Not much of a subject but you will, no doubt, see the difference.

Writing has much to do with reading—that much is well known, but, equally, it has much to do with listening and observation.  Look at people when you are out and about, listen to them.

Asimov wrote stories about a little devil that would grant your exact wish for you but there was always a ‘sting in the tail’.  One of the stories about this imp was about a writer who became really fed up with waiting for buses, taxis (cabs), lifts (elevators), waiters—everything, in fact.  The imp granted his wish that he would never have to wait for anything again.  Taxis, buses, waiters, lifts would be immediately available for him without waiting at all.

The upshot was that he never wrote another story.  He never had time to think.  All those times he was waiting for things to come to him were the times when he was composing stories in his head—and watching life around him.

I do believe I’ll go back to watch some of those Bollywood films.  Perhaps there will be something for next time.