When we arrive at the embarkation site we find at least 100 buses all lined up and parked, and literally thousands of Chinese and other Asians streaming through the turnstiles to get on another boat leaving earlier than ours.
Buses were just literally arriving one after the other stopping near where we were standing with a dozen or so other groups waiting patiently, and with people were everywhere it could only be described as organized chaos.
Someone obviously knew where everyone was supposed to go, and when it was our turn, we joined the queue. There were a lot of people in front of us, and a lot more behind, so I had to wonder just how big the boat was.
We soon found out.
And it was amusing to watch people running, yes, they were actually running, to get to the third level, or found available seating. Being around the first to board, we had no trouble finding a seat on the second level.
I was not quite sure what the name of the boat was, but it had 3 decks and VIP rooms and it was huge, with marble staircases, the sort you could make a grand entrance on. The last such ornate marble staircase we had seen was in a hotel in Hong Kong, and that was some staircase.
But who has marble staircases in a boat?
We’re going out across the water as far as the Bund and then turn around and come back about 30 to 40 minutes. By the time everyone was on board, there was no room left on the third level, no seats on the second level nor standing room at the end of the second level where the stairs up to the third level were.
No one wanted to pay the extra to go into the VIP lounge.
We were sitting by very large windows where it was warm enough watching the steady procession of the colored lights of other vessels, and outside the buildings.
It was quite spectacular, as were some of the other boats going out on the harbor.
All the buildings of the Bund were lit up
And along that part of the Bund was a number of old English style buildings made from sandstone, and very impressive to say the least.
On the other side of the harbour were the more modern buildings, including the communications tower, a rather impressive structure.
I had to go to the rear of the vessel to get a photo, a very difficult proposition given here was no space on the railing, not even on the stairs going up or down. It was just luck I managed to get some photos between passengers heads.
And, another view of that communications tower:
There was no doubt this was one of the most colourful night-time boat tours I’ve ever been on. Certainly, when we saw the same buildings the following day, they were not half as spectacular in daylight.
I never did get up to the third level to see what the view was like.
How often do we make a judgment call simply on what we see?
I knew what I saw, and it looked exactly like a situation that, if you asked any ten others who witnessed it, they would agree with me.
And then there would always be one that wouldn’t.
The prosecution had made a very good case, the defense counsel had woven a brilliant tale from start to finish, and he delivered in an almost persuading tone, with the subliminal message, the defendant was not guilty.
I felt sorry for the prosecution because his delivery had been halting, filled with ums and ers and in the end, everyone, from the judge down, wanted it to end.
As for the jury, it was an odd assortment of characters, a lawyer, a builder, a plumber, a housewife, two sales staff, two clerks, a janitor, two retirees, and a motor mechanic. I thought it would be the lawyer who would be the problem.
The trial had lasted 22 days, and over that time I noticed that groups would form, and discuss aspects of the case, each of the groups forming a different opinion. Sometimes, the dynamics of the groups changed as more evidence and testimony was revealed.
But, I think on those first few days, opinions were made, and judgment was passed.
In my opinion, based on looking at the defendant, it could be said that she didn’t look like a murderer, nor did she seem capable of committing such a heinous act. Having said that, as a throwaway first assumption, the lawyer nixed it in a second. Knowing something of how these trials worked, he said there would have been a lot of careful grooming, dress down, but not to drab, look demure, not aggressive, and speak in a modulated tone, like everyday conversation.
In other words, he was basically telling us she was giving an academy award performance.
I certainly looked at her in a different light after that, but the fact remained, for some of us, that initial assessment said not guilty.
A few days before we had to deliberate, a very damning piece of video was tendered and we all watched as the defendant was shown talking to her alleged accomplice, the victim’s current girlfriend, and passing an enveloped which the defense claimed was the payoff for helping her dispose of her husband.
It seemed odd to me that someone had known she would be in that bar, perfectly placed under the CCTV camera, both women so easily recognizable. Of course, the woman in question could not be found, and the inference was that she might also be one of the defendant’s victims.
Several people were called by the defense to assert a line of defense that the husband was a cruel man, who had treated his wife very badly indeed, to the extent her best friend remarked that she had turned up for work on several occasions with the results of what looked like a beating, and another, an ER nurse, had confirmed the defendant had visited the hospital on several occasions with lacerations consistent with what was considered spousal abuse.
Those photographs were quite confronting, but a question had to be asked, why had she not gone to the police with that evidence and let them deal with the husband.
The fact she hadn’t was one weakness in her defense. The thing there was why the defense introduced such testimony because, to me, it confused the issue by pushing the jury into thinking she had killed him, but in mitigating circumstances. Was she looking for a verdict of justifiable homicide?
From day two, after the lawyer had told us about how lawyers schooled their clients, I watched her carefully, when sitting beside her lawyer, or when on the stand. There were interesting actions she made when certain events occurred, like brushing a stray lock of hair back behind her ear, like teasing it out with a slight shake of the head, in a subtle but obvious show of displeasure. Like smoothing out the invisible wrinkles in her clothes, perfectly fitting and obviously made for her, but understated in a sense that she would stand out in a crown but not ostentatiously so. It was almost a ritual when she came in at the start, and when she took the stand, preparing herself.
Perfectionist, maybe. Or trying to convey a certain picture. Certainly, in the early days before the trial began, the media had a field day with the case, whipped into an even bigger frenzy when the police finally arrested the wife for the murder of her husband. Almost all of them said he had it coming, with page after page of revelations about a man who could not have done half the things he was accused of.
The trial by newspaper done, I suspect it was hard to find 12 unbiased men and women who could be trusted to make the right decision. I knew 100 would be jurors had been called up.
Now, in the jury room for the third day, trying to reach a verdict, it was the lawyer trying to wrap it up. He had a job to go back to. So did everyone else, for that matter.
“So, in essence, we are all agreed, that she is not guilty.”
It had been an interesting change in his position on the morning of day three of our deliberation. Before that, he wanted to hang her from the nearest yardarm. Interestingly enough, that morning, after he had given us his reasons for changing his mind, it would have been unanimous, and over.
The thing is, I didn’t like the way he changed sides so easily or for the reasons he spoke of.
So, in that vote, I changed my decision to guilty, and watch a group of people who had been friendly suddenly become enemies.
But at that moment, that other ten didn’t interest me, it was the expression on the lawyer’s face. He hadn’t expected the vote to go that way. It was like he had been goading everyone into voting not guilty and weathering the storm because of his stance. Had it been staged, had we been led down this path, and then all of a sudden, the verdict he wanted being reached?
I had to find out.
I watched the eleven raise their hands to vote not guilty. I did not. And immediately felt the looks of every one of those eleven on me.
“Why?” he asked.
By this time he had taken the lead, and the others had let him. Now I suspect they would let him do the talking.
“You’ve got it all wrong. The reasons are the same. There are two sides to that tale you came up with this morning. The problem I have is from being adamant she was guilty, and as you said, without a shadow of a doubt, now all of a sudden you’re having doubts.”
“So, you don’t think she’s guilty, you’re just voting that way because you suspect my motives?”
“What I think is irrelevant right now. You need to convince me that you truly think she’s not guilty. What is it you saw, or heard, or know that changed your mind. It certainly had nothing to do with that so-called video in the bar being staged. It has nothing to do with the fact they can’t find that woman so they can either verify or dispel the accusations being made she was an accomplice. It had nothing to do with the fact you think she might have been goaded into it and was left with no other option. In that case, it might well be a case of manslaughter rather than murder. Is that what you’re trying to suggest?”
“I think given the evidence, or lack of concrete evidence against her, she is not guilty.”
“But given everything you have said, it seems to me you think she had some crime to answer for.”
“Hasn’t she suffered enough?”
“That might well be the case, but it doesn’t give you an excuse to murder., and there’s certainly no forensic evidence that she was defending herself against an attack at the time. She should have taken her case to the police and have it investigated. She chose not to, for reasons that were never fully explained.”
“And didn’t we hear that the husband had links to various police that might have made such an investigation a waste of time. This was a woman trapped in a bad situation with no way out.”
It was a long way from where we, as jurors, were at the beginning of our deliberations. The first vote at the end of the first day was four voted not guilty and eight voted guilty. In the following days, a lot of arguments changed the decisions of those seven to vote not guilty, when they believed, in their own minds the defendant was guilty.
In my mind, the first instinct was usually correct. Over time that decision was only changed because of expediency, not necessarily for the right reasons. My first instinct was that she was, in fact, not guilty for all the reasons the lawyer cited.
“Look,” he said. “We’ve been here for three days. It’s an open and shut case. Let’s vote.”
We did with the same result. Eleven for not guilty and one against.
A hung jury. I wasn’t going to be moved on my position, and so it went back to the court. It was declared a mistrial and the defendant was returned to custody and a new trial was to be scheduled.
I was reading the paper’s version of events, and speculation on the result. Several of the jurors had featured in the discussion, but none were willing to talk about the result or who was responsible for the hung jury, only that one juror had not agreed with the majority. In some states, it was argued, it only required a majority, but in this and other states, quite rightly, it needed a unanimous decision to confer the death sentence.
Justice, it seemed to the writer of the piece, had prevailed.
They also believed that the plight of women trapped in marriages to violent men was a matter that should be looked at and that such women should be treated better in the eyes of the law. It was not a position that I disagreed with. What I disagreed with was the notion of jury tampering.
It was, apparently, the fifth time that a case such as this had a similar track record, that the deliberations of the jury had swung from an initial guilty verdict to not guilty at the hands of a single juror. In each of the five cases, the circumstances were similar, the wife had endured violence by her husband, and then, in odd circumstances, the husband had finished up dead.
Someone had discerned a pattern, and this had been a test case. In each of the other four cases, a not guilty verdict had been handed down by a jury that had also started with a majority guilty verdict, only to be worn down by a single juror with an agenda. To get the defendant a not guilty verdict.
My job was to find out which juror it was that was there to change minds. Then it was a case of finding links between him and four other jurors who were equally instrumental in obtaining a not guilty verdict. In each of the five cases, there was irrefutable evidence that the defendant was, in fact, guilty of the charge, and the expectation was the legal system would prosecute them.
And then, in each of the cases, a weak prosecutor was selected, and a particular juror was selected by that prosecutor. From there, the trail led back to a particular assistant District Attorney who had overseen each of the five cases. The fact was, justice was not served, and four out of the five defendants had escaped justice.
I hated it when I was younger, namely because my brothers always cheated, and that had been carried through to adulthood.
Now, I just avoided them.
It left me wondering how I managed to paint myself into a corner, and agree to do the one thing I assiduously avoided.
You could chalk it up to being persuaded by a pretty girl. Yes, I am the typical male, a sucker for a pretty face and a little flattery.
It would not have happened if I’d just gone home, instead of being asked to go and ‘just have one drink’ on the way home from work. I used to, once upon a time, before I got sick. But, perhaps it was a combination of cabin fever, and the monastic existence I’d adopted since that saw the one visit a chink of light at the end of a very long tunnel.
Whatever the reason, had I not gone, I would not have met Nancy. I’d seen her before, off and on, at work, and had noted, probably with a degree of disdain that where she was, was the most noise. You know, the one who talks loudest in the elevator, or the one who was the center of attention at a dining table.
And yet, underneath that, if or when anyone got close enough, there was something else. Something that fascinated me. But, having become reclusive had made me more reticent, and even though I was sitting at the same table, almost within arm’s length, I was too shy to strike up a conversation.
Until it was time to go home. I had moved out of the way so she could get out, and as she passed me she said, “You’ve been very quiet, Brian isn’t it?”
“Yes. And I know it’s rather lame but I don’t have as extensive knowledge of sports, which I guess I should. Ask me about old movies, and I’m your guy. Anyway, I pride myself on being a good listener.”
“Old movies eh. I’ll keep that in mind.” A smile, she went to leave, and then turned. “Look. I have this thing I have to go to, and I don’t want to go by myself. It’s not a date or anything like that, I just need someone to come with me. You might even find the people interesting.”
“I’m sure there’s someone else here more qualified than I am.” It was lame and I was floundering. It was not every day a girl asks you to go out with her. Even if it was, to a certain degree, and unflattering invitation.
“They all seem to have something else to do. Look, here’s my phone number,” she handed me a piece of paper with her cell number scrawled on it, “Call me if you change your mind. It’s not going to be as bad as you think.”
I should not have picked up the phone. I definitely should not have called her number. And I knew I was going to live to regret telling her I would go to her ‘thing’.
Before I walked out the door I looked at myself in the mirror. It seemed to be telling me, ‘you are a fool, Brian’, and I agreed. This had disaster written all over it. I hadn’t been out for a long time, and if anything, those few hours last evening were a sign I was not ready to face the world. Not after being so long away from it.
A lot had changed in the fifteen months I’d been in a coma. It was a miracle, the doctors said, that I came out of it with very little damage. I’d lost a chunk of memories, particularly surrounding the accident, and perhaps, I’d been told, that was a good thing. Cameron, the guy I worked with had summed up the change in a few short words, ‘you’ve gone from being the biggest dead shit in the world to something that resembles a human being’. I didn’t remember that person, though others did.
Maybe she remembered who I was, and, if she did, that didn’t explain why she asked me. The person Cameron described was not a person I would want to be with, so I guess the answer to my rhetorical question would soon be revealed.
Nancy was bright, talkative, and, at times, over the top. She was the loudest in the room and the center of attention. I wondered if the old Brian had been like that because if he was, I wouldn’t like him. It begged the question, why did I agree to go with her?
Curiosity? Maybe. That I might find some people who knew the old Brian? I certainly hoped not.
I had barely got out of the car to go and knock on her door when she came out, a small gym bag on her shoulder, dressed casually. I had to admit, in the morning sun and surrounded by an idyllic setting, she looked almost like an angel. She jumped in the car and all but slammed the door shut.
“You’re early.”
I looked at my watch, then the clock on the car’s dash. Both said the same, Eight a.m. exactly. “You did say eight a.m. and not p.m.” I couldn’t remember what she said, not right then.
“I mean most guys who come to collect me are always late.”
“Then I guess, by inference, I not like most guys.”
She smiled, one of those impish smiles I’d come to recognize from anther woman I’d dated somewhere in a distinct past, and who was trouble. I did, for some strange remember the night we spent in jail, though I couldn’t remember why, except the impish smile.
“I suspect you’re not. Cam said you were different.”
“Cam did, did he?” The mentioning of his name raised a red flag in the back of my mind. Cameron was not above playing complex pranks and I was beginning to see indications that this might be one. I would have to be careful.
“Not in a bad way, I mean. He had nothing but good things to say about you, though I had the feeling there was something he wasn’t saying. You’re not an ax murderer or anything like that?”
“Shouldn’t you have done some more research before asking me along?” I had also heard from another source, actually, a chap named, rather aptly, Jones, who was also at the party. He had left earlier but was still in the carpark, apparently his car parked next to mine, smoking a cigarette. A suspicious man might say he was waiting for me.
He had some ‘sage’ advice. “You want to be careful when you’re with Nancy. She’s not what she seems.”
I asked him to elucidate, but, cigarette finished, he stubbed it out rather violently under his blood, and left. He looked angry, sounded angry, and it was an angry warning. Perhaps he was a current or, more likely, ex-boyfriend. That ‘advice’ only added to the intrigue value.
Someone else, when he asked them about Nancy, had told him she was ‘brilliant’ with computers. Was that in programming, or hacking, or simply data entry? He only knew she had helped the web site programmers when the company had built its intranet. Computers and I never got on, and I was the only one who got a weekly visit from the IT help desk, just in case.
“I did. Do you remember anything from those fifteen months?”
“Like what?”
“They say that when you’re in a coma you can still hear people, you know, that sort of stuff.”
I thought about it for a minute. I wasn’t one of those lucky ones, though I did have one of those out of body experiences, where I suspect I’d nearly died. Just not my time, I’d thought, later.
“I’d like to meet the people who have that ubiquitous title of ‘they’. They have a lot of opinions, most of which are about the unknown.”
“So would I, to be honest. All you ever get to do is read about them. So, are you ready?”
“For what?”
“A weekend away. It will be fun if you want it to be.”
“Otherwise?”
“It’ll be fun. You have my promise.”
“And where is this ‘fun’ going to be?”
“Rhode Island. A friend of my parents, son is having a party and a few side events. There’s about 40 of us, so there’s no shortage of interesting if sometimes eclectic people. I’ll put the address in the GPS.”
Rhode Island, the other home of the New York rich, as well as others, and I hoped it was the others we were going to see. The host was the son of possible millionaires, so that was an interesting description for me to mull on. Would he be an ex? It seemed to me that Rhode Islanders would be less likely to mingle with the paupers, and if they did it would be for their own amusement.
There was a memory on the back of his mind, that popped up, albeit briefly when she mentioned the destination. The fact it didn’t want to come to the surface told me it was a bad memory. One from ‘old’ Brians days.
Nancy’s beauty, manner, and the fact she was clever might just win over the son of a millionaire, an heir to a fortune, whereas it would intimidate a lesser man. As for me, I was a means to an end, so it didn’t matter what I thought, other than it was better than staying home.
It was the house with all the cars parked out front. Multi stories, with towers that no doubt overlooked the ocean, and extensive gardens that seemed to be shared, that blocked the sightlines from the street front to that invisible ocean. I was will to be, once on the other side, the never-ending sound of the sea might be heard.
In winter, this would be bleak. In summer, well, what was the saying, anyone who is anyone would be here. Well, the sons and daughter thereof, perhaps.
I had expected the moment I parked the car she would be out, and gone, like a proverbial schoolgirl dying to get back to school after the holidays. She was not. She stood there, at the front of the car, and looked at the scene before us. To me, it was just a building, with trees, shrubs, and grass around it. To others, it was a portal into another world, one that would never be available to that 95% of the rest of the world. It was a phrase that popped into my mind, again, randomly, that said, the top 5% of any country held as much if not more of the wealth belongs to the other 95%.
I came up beside her and looked in the same direction, at one of the towers.
“Having a Rapunzel moment?” I hoped she had some memory of fairytales or it would seem an odd comment.
“I used to have long hair once. But, the last time I was here, I can’t remember. My mother’s hair was always long, some sort of hangover from hippy days, you know, the 1970s. She was here once. The stories she used to tell me about the houses, and the people she used to know. I’m ready. Are you?”
It was like a walk through the park, getting to the front door. There was a driveway, but there must have been a rule, no cars on the property. Or perhaps the front gate was locked and the owner had thrown away the key.
Or, more than likely, the butler, standing at the front door, welcoming guests, had it in his pocket. He was a tall, severe-looking man, with a military bearing. I somehow knew he was more than just the average butler.
Nancy gave him our names, and in return, he gave us a sheet of paper. The rules and the room number where we would be staying the night. I had thought that we would be given separate rooms, but that wasn’t the case, and it didn’t seem to worry Nancy that I would be staying with her. The only other words he said were, “The rotunda, 11 a.m.”
The room overlooked the ocean, today more or less a millpond, and a number of yachts were out making the most of the weather. There was a pier at the end of the property, and, yes, a reasonably large boat attached to it. There was also a view of a croquet lawn, the rotunda beside the rose garden. On the other side was a large pond, and seats where, no doubt on days when people like us were impinging on their solitude, they sat and contemplated how to make more money.
I didn’t realize I was that cynical.
The room had two beds, and it’s own bathroom. She had thrown her bag on one, checked out the bathroom, then dashed past saying, “I’ll see you at the rotunda.”
I followed her down about a half-hour later, descending the stairs at a more leisurely pace, looking at the paintings on the wall as I did. Forbears, and landscapes that were from around here. The one with the lighthouse was of particular interest. It brought another memory to the surface. I’d been there before, sometime in the distant past, and it was significant.
The Butler was standing at the bottom of the stairs, having stopped there when he saw me descending.
“It’s nice to see you again, Master Brian.”
“Not Master Brian, anymore, Jeffery. Sadly, I had to grow up.”
“We all do, sooner or later. Pity we can’t say the same for Chester.”
“Where is he?”
“You need to ask. I hope you’re up for a little X marks the spot.”
I groaned. Chester and his treasure hunts.
My last memory of that he had hidden a fluffy bunny stuffed with money. It was the weekend I had the crash the result I was told of too much booze, too much alcohol, too much of everything. I was just glad the girl I had brought up with me had left with another chap, a decision, I told her when she visited me in hospital, was probably the wisest thing she would ever do.
I just shook my head.
“Even if you don’t think so Brian, we have missed you.”
Another look around, I sighed, then went outside. My doctor had been right. Coming back had stirred up the mush in my brain, those thoughts, feelings, and memories of who I was, and what I was. And who I would never be again.
Nancy was waiting by the rotunda, talking to a more youthful version of myself, Chester. It was an awful name, one that our mother must have come up with in one of her drug-fuelled dreams, and he had taken a ribbing at school, and a willing participant in many a fight.
Chester looked surprised to see me, no, that wasn’t surprise, but shock.
“I thought you said you would never come back.”
Nancy looked from him, then to me, then back again.
“I’m not here, Chester. It’s just Nancy and Brian, here for the treasure hunt. And this time there better be more than a hundred dollars in that stuffed animal.”
Chester looked confused for a moment, then smiled he brand of childish smile, that of a child that would probably never grow up, the result of what I did to him, and would spend the rest of my life trying to earn forgiveness for.
“OK.”
“What was that about?” she asked.
“Long story. Remind me to tell you one day, if you stick around that long.”
In the background, I could hear Jeffery calling the treasure hunt participants together.
Can you actually say you know the exact moment a story is done, finished, and that’s it?
For me, the end never quite seems to be the end, that point where you finally draw a line in the sand and say, that’s it, I’m done, step away from the typewriter.
But are we ever satisfied the story is done, can we not make one more change, it’s just a little tweak, it won’t take long.
Please!
My editor tolerated three ‘minor’ changes.
Firstly, a change of name for a character
Secondly, consistency of word use, such as times and contractions
Thirdly, I wasn’t happy with the overall story, and it needed some more action. More writing, more editing, more prevaricating.
It took three weeks to sort out all of those issues, and last night I send the final draft to the Editor.
It’s like watching your child go to school on their first day. Not knowing what will happen but expecting everything will be fine.
This morning I sat in front of the computer, a blank sheet of paper on the screen. I know it’s not a matter of starting the next story from scratch; I have so many started and finished, sitting in the wings to be ‘tinkered with’.
A long time ago when I spent time at a newspaper, I wondered what it was like to get to write what essentially was an opinion piece. Did it have to tow the newspaper owners’ point of view?
I was idealistic then. I believed in freedom of the press, and that cornerstone of democracy, freedom of speech.
I did not realize then that freedom of speech also meant the freedom to spread ‘plausible’ lies, dressed up to be the truth, to achieve a particular result. In just one instance, and editorial, and the editorial line of a newspaper had the opportunity to influence an election, favoring one party over another.
With age came wisdom? Perhaps it was more cynicism because now I tend not to believe anything I read in the papers, when I deign to buy a paper which isn’t often, or read online, or listen to on the television or radio.
What happened to factual reporting?
What happened to opinion pieces being labeled as such so that we know that it is not a representative opinion, just the columnists?
What we all tend to forget is that everyone makes mistakes. Whether they’re deliberate, or stupid, they happen, and they can cause a large number of casualties, or cost a lot of money.
What’s lost in all the screaming and yelling is the fact we should be looking for answers so that it doesn’t happen again, not blame every man and his dog, or those in opposition, for everything that is wrong in the world, and, quite likely, your own mistake.
What’s also lost is the truth.
In every ten tons of rubbish that are coming out of the media, so-called reported directly from the horse’s mouth, there are just a few grains of truth. That’s what we should be listening to.
But, drowned out in all the lies, half-truths, and outrageous statements that on the surface doesn’t make any sense, we get to a point where we no longer know what the truth is.
Or do we?
We all have one thing in spades, common sense.
Unfortunately, we sometimes suspend it, because we all have our biases and idiosyncrasies, and beliefs and these can sometimes get it not the way. Now is not the time to forget that common sense or the fact we should be using it to filter out what is not relevant and get to what is.
And what is relevant?
You.
You matter.
Your life matters.
The life of others, whether you like them or not, those lives also matter.
And when we all realize we are in this together, and then rise above the petty and stupid lies and fear-mongering that is being peddled, will the world, yes, the whole world, finally overcome the worst assault on it ever devised.
Can you actually say you know the exact moment a story is done, finished, and that’s it?
For me, the end never quite seems to be the end, that point where you finally draw a line in the sand and say, that’s it, I’m done, step away from the typewriter.
But are we ever satisfied the story is done, can we not make one more change, it’s just a little tweak, it won’t take long.
Please!
My editor tolerated three ‘minor’ changes.
Firstly, a change of name for a character
Secondly, consistency of word use, such as times and contractions
Thirdly, I wasn’t happy with the overall story, and it needed some more action. More writing, more editing, more prevaricating.
It took three weeks to sort out all of those issues, and last night I send the final draft to the Editor.
It’s like watching your child go to school on their first day. Not knowing what will happen but expecting everything will be fine.
This morning I sat in front of the computer, a blank sheet of paper on the screen. I know it’s not a matter of starting the next story from scratch; I have so many started and finished, sitting in the wings to be ‘tinkered with’.
This is not a treatise, but a tongue in cheek, discussion on how to write short stories. Suffice to say this is not the definitive way of doing it, just mine. It works for me – it might not work for you.
Everyone has one in them, possibly more, and me, well, it’s how I keep the wolves from the door.
Yes, I read my stories to them and they fall asleep.
Or maybe not, I’m never quite sure what effect anything I write has on anyone. And, reading a lot of the posts on how to handle bad reviews and rejection, such a recurrent theme, I don’t think I want to.
Ignorance is bliss, is it not?
Well, one day I’m sure something will happen. It’s probably in the seven stages of writing:
Euphoria
Planning
Research
Writing
Failure
Search for the guilty
Distinction for the uninvolved
I guess you don’t fail if you don’t put it out there. Searching for the guilty, well, there’s only one person to blame, the editor, and distinction for the uninvolved, didn’t your friend, relation, confidente, significant other, say it wasn’t going to work?
But, despite everything, I like writing short stories and try to produce one in a single sitting. I try to keep the word count down, but the stories, somehow they just evolve in my head and don’t want to end the main character’s story.
In reality, there is no end to the story unless they die, and then, of course, the story branches off, just like a family tree,
Some stories are so intricate, they need another story to fill in the gaps, and then another because the plot is running through your head at a thousand miles an hour and your fingers won’t stop typing, because if you do, it will all dissipate into thin air like smoke.
Stories can, you know, dissipate like smoke, one minute your mining a rich vein the next, you’ve hit a ton of worthless quartz.
Then all the constraints come into play, nagging at the back of your mind, and you find yourself waking up in a bath of sweat crying out, I didn’t do it, the crime that is, not lose the best 2,000 words you’ve ever written.
But that’s all of those words you write, isn’t it?
But I digress, and I’ll write some more on the subject, what was it again?
It is sometimes quite trashy and that’s saying something!
Having been a journalist in a previous lifetime, and one that always believed that the truth mattered, it didn’t take long to realize that journalists should never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
Newspapers, and all other forms of media, will only write what they believe will sell, or what they think the public wants to read. The truth, sadly, is not the first thing on the reader’s mind, only that someone is to blame for something they have no control over, and it doesn’t matter who.
And the more outlandish the situation, the more the public will buy into it.
This, I guess, is why we like reading about celebrities and royalty, not for the good they might do, but the fact they stumble and make mistakes, and that somehow makes us feel better about ourselves.
Similarly, if the media can beat up a subject, like the corona-virus, and make it worse than it is, then people will lap up the continuing saga, as it relates to them, and will take one of two stances, that they believe the horror of it, and do as they’re asked, or disbelieve it because nothing can be that bad, and ignore it and the consequences of disobedience. knowing the government will not press too hard against the non-compliers simply because of democracy issues it will stir up.
That is, then the media will get a hold of this angle and push it, and people will start to think disobedience is a good thing, not a bad one.
So, our problems of trying to get a fair and balanced look at what the coronavirus is all about is nigh on impossible. We are continuously bombarded with both right and wrong information, and the trouble is, both sides are very plausibly supported by facts.
And that’s the next problem we have in reporting. We can get facts to prove anything we want. It’s called the use and abuse of statistics and was an interesting part of the journalism degree I studied for. We were told all about statistics, good and bad, and using them to prove the veracity of our piece.
I remember writing a piece for the tutor extolling the virtues of a particular person who was probably the worst human since Vlad the Impaler, using only the facts that suited my narrative. I also remember the bollocking he gave me for doing so but had to acknowledge that sometimes that would happen.
The integrity of reporting only went as far as the editor, and if the editor hated something, you had to hate it too. This is infamously covered in various texts where newspaper publishers pick sides and can influence elections, and governments. It still happens.
So, the bottom line is, when I’m reading an article in the media, I always take it with a grain of salt, and do my own fact-checking, remembering, of course, not just to fact check to prove the bias one way of the other, but then get a sense of balance.
We have state elections coming up where I live, but it does not sink to the personal sniping level as it does in the US, we haven’t sunk that low yet, but we haven’t got past the sniping about all the wrongs and failed promises of the government of the day, or the endless tirade against the opposition and how bad a job they did when they were previously in government.
You can see, no one is talking about what they’re going to do for us, no one is telling us what their policies are. It’s simply schoolyard tit for tat garbage speak. What happened to the town hall meeting, a long and winding speech encompassing the policies, what the government plans to do for its people in the next three years, and then genuinely answering questions?
Perhaps we should ban campaigning, and just get each party to write a book about what they intend to do, and keep them away from the papers, the TV, and any other form of media, in other words, don’t let them speak!
And don’t get me started about the drivel they speak in the parliament. Five-year-olds could do a better job.
For a story that was conceived during those long boring hours flying in a steel cocoon, striving to keep away the thoughts that the plane and everyone in it could just simply disappear as planes have in the past, it has come a long way.
Whilst I have always had a fascination with what happened during the second world war, not the battles or fighting, but in the more obscure events that took place, I decided to pen my own little sidebar to what was a long and bitter war.
And, so, it continues…
Jackerby came back and sat down. It was clear he was annoyed his lunch was interrupted.
“Atherton’s not among those Leonardo brought back.”
Johannsen silently breathed a sigh of relief. While he was still outside there was hope he would not get hurt. If he had the sense to keep his head down. Anyone else, Johannesen would not have cared.
“Who did Leonardo bring in?”
“Some woman called Martina, the one he says is in charge of the resistance. He said he raided their last stronghold, killed everyone except the three people he knew were in the resistance. They’re now in the dungeons.”
“We should be down there asking questions.” A pointed glare from Wallace carried the message, what are you doing here?
“No use. He nearly killed them, and it’ll take a while for them to recover.”
“To find out where Atherton is?”
“It seems that was the least of his concerns. Apparently, she apparently humiliated him so he was more interested in payback.”
“It wouldn’t be hard to humiliate a fool like him,” Johannsen muttered.
Wallace glared at him. “You should have more faith in our Italian friends, Richard.”
“My faith in him extends only to the fact he will drink the cellar dry.”
Wallace shrugged. “Once he’s served his purpose…” and left it at that. “Have you got onto London and asked them for further information on Mayer?”
“I think, by now, they would have tumbled to what’s going on here. Especially after I saw Atherton come out of the radio room just before Jackerby arrived. I asked the operator, and he gave me a coded message, but it’s not like any code I’ve seen.”
“And you’re telling me this now?”
“At least he didn’t smash it, which is what I would have done. We haven’t heard any more from High Command other than to say the traitor was thought to be heading for Innsbruck and coming over the mountains near the Brenner Pass. They’ve got people looking, but nothing as yet.”
“Now we’ve lost Carmichael, do we have a description of him?”
“Yes.”
“Good. At least something is happening.”
After lunch, Johannsson went down to the dungeon to check on the prisoners. Wallace had assigned their ‘welfare’ to him. It was a difficult assignment seeing they arrived both exhausted, weak, and then subjected to an initial interrogation that determined whether or not they got medicines or food.
Most were left to starve. Any women were sent to the soldier’s barracks, where they were out of his control. None had ever come back, and he was ordered not to go check on them.
All told, there were 12 still in cells, with three due to be executed later that day. All had worked in an armaments factory and had admitted to having information about the bombs that were being dropped over England.
Another six had yet to say what information they had, and had been subjected to severe torture, the handiwork of two of Jackerby’s men, and who Johannsen thought had been trained by the Gestapo. In fact, he believed they were Gestapo, and that Jackerby, though he didn’t have the uniform, was a ranking SS officer.
Not a man to cross. Leonardo would find that out soon enough.
The most recent three, the resistance fighters were put in separate cells next to each other. The guards had been told to listen to any conversations they had, and report. As yet, none of them had spoken.
Considering the condition they arrived in, that was no surprise.
He stood outside the cell holding the woman they called Martina.
The leader.
She hadn’t moved from the moment she had been dropped there.
A guard appeared beside him.
“Nothing yet?” Johansson asked him.
“I doubt they’ll speak again. If that’s what Leonardo does to his so-called countrymen; I’d hate to see what he does to his enemies.”
“You let me know if she says anything.”
The soldier nodded, then went back to his station.
The other two were men, one old, one younger. An odd group to be part of the resistance. The woman he could understand and was the key.
He now believed Atherton would come to rescue her. Like any good British soldier, his empathy would be his downfall.
A long time ago, when I was 17 or 18, I used to do a lot of reading. It was a long ride in on the train from home to work, and back again, and I did, then, have the time to read.
Having my own money, I was able to buy my own books, and these generally ran to mysteries and thriller, and naval stories. The later took my interest for a while because I had notions of becoming an Ensign until I realized I needed better educational qualifications and a higher level of fitness.
So much for those aspirations, so I just read about what it would be like.
However…
I worked with a number of interesting characters, including one, a chap who was about 25, really old and wise to a 17-year-old, who deplored my reading choices.
It seemed Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Brian Callison, Hammond Innes, and Alistair Maclean didn’t quite fit the reading profile he thought I should follow.
Well, I hadn’t been to university, and I hadn’t realized there was such a thing as English, or any other, literature. He was adamant that if I wanted to call myself a ‘man of books’ I had to read ‘proper’ books.
So, what eventuated, was a reading list.
If I wanted to converse with him on literature, I had to read every book on the list.
And I wanted to appear, at least, slightly more sophisticated, that the reader of penny dreadfuls. I didn’t know what that meant, and in those days there was no internet, so it remained for a long time a phrase of mystery.
But, the reading list,
‘Hard Times,’ and ‘Bleak House’ by Charles Dickens
‘Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ by T.E. Lawrence, yes, that famous man who was better known as Lawrence of Arabia
‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ by Thomas Hardy, which fuelled a desire to read most of Hardy’s books
‘The Day of the Triffids’, by John Wyndham, a rather strange addition to the list since it was science fiction. I suspect he was a closet Trekker.
‘To the Lighthouse’, by Virginia Wolff
‘Pride and Prejudice’ by Jane Austen
‘And Quietly Flows the Don’ by Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov. I had great fears that I would have to learn Russian, but that wasn’t the only shock, so was the size of the book
‘War and Peace’, talking about long books, by Leo Tolstoy
‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’ by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and thereby concluding the Russian classics
Of course, your definition of literature can change, and as a result of reading all of these books, and it took quite some time, and this led to selecting a more interesting collection of books to read, which he, in some small measure, took the credit for.
I discovered R.F Delderfield, and the trilogy, ‘A Horseman Riding By’, which led to ‘The Headmaster’, ‘The Avenue’, and ‘God is an Englishman’
C.S. Forester and the Hornblower series, but who also wrote several mysteries
F. Scott Fitzgerald and ‘The Great Gatsby’ as well as several other classics
Eric Ambler, master of thrillers from the ’30s and ’50s, particularly spy novels, and was probably the one who introduced me to the world of espionage
and last but not least, Dashiell Hammett’s ‘The Maltese Falcon’.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 