Pushing through the door laden down with her weekly shop, Mavis waddled across to the nearest alcove. Time for a cuppa and teacake. The waitress looked across smiling, ”Your usual Mavis,” then nodded as she settled into the corner.
With her tea and teacake, she listened to the chatter from the other alcoves. Over the years she had heard so much local gossip which she shared with her close friends. Today would change everything.
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Welcome to my blog. I’m Sarah, a theatre enthusiast and aspiring actor. Follow me as I explore the hype surrounding Attrition, the play everyone’s talking about.
If you haven’t heard of Attrition, where have you been? For those living under a rock, here’s a quick low-down. Attrition opens in the West End tomorrow and no-one knows who wrote it. The writer is known on Instagram simply as @TheMysteryPlaywright.
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The Austerik Muminsim are an ancient race, who emerged from the quark aggregation taking place just millionths of a second after the big bang, so they aren’t exactly matter, but they really DO matter.
A lot.
They allowed nuclei to form, which also permitted everything else to happen, like stars and galaxies forming. So, it was a surprise when I was asked to meet them.
How do you “meet” an entity with no physical dimensions existing simultaneously in all places and times?
I got an invitation.
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The discussion always went round in circles like a serpent consuming its own tail. It was a tough problem, and becoming important that they found some solution, what with the cost of living crisis.
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Billy Thomas and the boys met at the edge of the village. Maldwyn, the farmer, had promised them sixpence each if they cleared a field of potatoes. Armed with sandwiches and bottles of water they wandered up to the field. Maldwyn showed them how to do the job.
Toiling away, they split the field into sections and a competition started. Billy really wanted to win, so he was tugging each plant and throwing his catch into the wooden crate. As the day wore on, they were all tiring; time for a break. Laying against the wall petty rivalry and squabbling broke out, each convinced they would win.
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…”The health of our nation is dependent on the wealth of our nation. The poorest of our society has had to endure great hardships …”
Kathleen gives the remote control button a vicious prod.
“Oi, I was watching that!”
She turns and gives her husband a look of disbelief.
“The last thing we need right now is some stuck up government speaker telling us what we can’t afford, I already know that.”
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Smayle’s concrete grey face was a Niagara of perspiration. War was ongoing with the slugs and snails. He had three large dustbins on his plot, where he mulched food waste into fertiliser. Little burrowing creatures got in there sometimes, and partook of dinner. Birds, butterflies, and he didn’t know what, slipped under the netting around some of his raised beds. But none of them had inflicted damage on his most prized growth: his pumpkins. His wheelbarrow bulged with them, fat, comfortable, like the heads of yellow turbaned oriental aristocracy.
None of the other allotment holders grew them in such volume Once fully grown these mighty plumped fellows were allowed access to his house, just yards from the allotment gate. Sometimes there were so many, he believed they could practically march down there in military columns.
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1985
Gran and I fly together after dark. Our sparkling wings streak through the skies like shooting stars, lighting up the night.
‘Girls have secret powers,’ Gran says with that twinkle in her eye. It makes my heart flutter and the magic flow through my veins so fast I tingle all over.
First, we fly to the grave of Gran’s Gran. It’s overgrown and we pluck daisies that have sprung from the earth.
‘This one’s wisdom.’ She drops a daisy into the open bag beside the grave. ‘And this, hope. Then we have love, happiness, bravery and ambition.’
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Tourdor stole a secret recipe book from a brewer and set himself up as the kingdom’s best innkeeper. Without it, he could not enjoy the wealth to which he had become accustomed, so he stuck a notice on his door: “Wanted! Three stout fellows to guard my secret.”
An old man with a white beard approaches him.
“I will guard it.”
Tourdor says he wants a stronger man.
The man points a wand at a barrel and lifts it across the bar.
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Will had always loved wood. He loved trees and sawdust and the curls of planed wood. The tools for wood working were endlessly fascinating; sharpened chisels, saws and delicate nails. Even the smells of wood were pleasurable, both timber being worked and wood rotting in country glades.
As his school reports, carefully preserved by his mother, attest Will was a student of broad abilities and his future was an open book that could fall open on a number of different pages. Will’s mother had her own set of expectations and was quietly confident that her son would attain well paid professional status in due course.
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Just forgot.
Joe had not meant to leave the seat up again. He had promised Mam to mend his ways but talking it over afterwards with Geraint in the railway sidings had spawned a flow of subversive mycelial thoughts that spread and advanced each time he used the bathroom.
The rails were a comforting backdrop for the boys to try on the fit and suitability of new ideas before integration into their developing adult identities. The clatter of rolling stock, honk of diesel horns and that special click as the point changes engaged oiled the process.
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Do you remember when we made that promise, Dad? In the fading light of a summer’s evening, when you sat beside my bed and closed the book you’d been reading, leaning in to kiss me and wish me sweet dreams? Always that. Never goodnight. Definitely never goodbye.
You smelled of tea and biscuits. The beginnings of a beard peppered your chin, bristling against my cheek. Your beard was dark then. Not even a whisper of grey. Nothing like the creep of white that haunts your face now. Your skin in the glow of my bedside light was bright and flushed from a day’s work, and the comforting clatter of Mum washing up floated through the floorboards. I don’t remember how old I was, but I remember the book. The Tiger Who Came to Tea.
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A bell rang.
‘It’s Linda, Mum,’ her son said. ‘With her husband, Jeff. They’re driving you to your brother’s.’
‘Linda?’
‘Hello, Aunt Violet.’ A woman at the door was kissing her.
‘She’s not been there in decades,’ her son said. ‘Good of Ronnie to deign to see her again, isn’t it?’
He was chuckling but the woman kept a straight face.
In the car the woman said, ‘It’s Uncle Ronnie’s sixtieth wedding anniversary.’
‘Anniversary? Is he married?’
‘To Betty. Remember Betty?’
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“I’ll get you Lewis! And that’s a promise.”
With his words still ringing in my ears, I hastily packed a suitcase. I just had to get away.
A new town, a fresh start, I could only hope.
I picked up a job quickly and began to settle down. My jangled nerves were slowly uncurling with each passing day.
It took him six weeks to find me.
I awoke one morning to find a note on the doormat. Things started to spiral out of control.
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“In my life,” Becca said to the class, concluding her written homework, “I have worn the masks of a wife, a poet, a teacher and a lover, but none of these can disguise, the empty space inside, where once lived a mother.”
The class was silent until the new boy, Bill Transom, flicked a piece of spittle-soaked paper at Rebecca. “Well, that was shit.”
Laughter erupted, and Becca flushed. She turned to Miss Jackson, who stood with her back to the class, studying a jogger crossing the boundary between the school playing fields and the village green. She turned to face Becca.
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Alice arrived late for the third time that week. Just my luck, she thought, as she saw the boss talking to the receptionist. She saw him glance at his watch, but to her surprise, he seemed to ignore her. She hurried on up to the office.
Dan heard the door opening and automatically looked at his watch and then towards the door. Noticing it was the new girl, a blush rose up. He quickly lowered his glance and continued his previous conversation.
The office was in pandemonium as everything was behind schedule for the Children’s Christmas Party. Alice redeemed herself by offering to stay late and help out with the colouring sheets packs.
Everything had to be right for tomorrow. It was the first year that Dan had been in charge since his Dad retired, he couldn’t let the firm down. He worked later than usual to make sure that there was nothing that could go wrong.
Alice would have been in tears if her anger hadn’t been so focussed on the Gestetner Duplicator. She swore at it as it gobbled up yet another one of the copies into its internal workings. It was all she could do to stop herself kicking the damn thing.
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After the speeches, people drifted away from the demonstration, some still wearing outfits representing the main focus of their complaint.
Having responsibly abandoned their placards, a group of five in search of food and drink settled themselves in the Hog’s Head and placed their orders.
These were veteran activists. They had witnessed mounted police moving through the crowds at the poll tax rebellions; they had collective memories of the ‘not in my name’ protests; they had stood with the miners during the long strike; two could even look back to the anti-apartheid rugby protests in 1969. Between them they had been kettled, abused, arrested and beaten.
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Mitzi nudged Helen’s leg, breaking her out of her reverie. Sighing, Helen collected the lead, her coat and the little booties they had bought the previous year to protect her little paws in the icy weather.
The front door opening, a shiver ran down her back as the cold wind hit her. As Helen looked down, Mitzi pulled her out of the door. Everything sparkled, little diamonds shone on trees and hedgerows, houses were all lit up. There were Christmas trees in windows, and families gathered together playing games, and laughing together.
Helen took their usual walk through the village, stopping to sit a moment on their usual bench. The pond glistened and ducks, all warm in their nest, murmured to each other. Mitzi started pulling, jumping excitedly, looking across Hubert who was sat there.
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‘It’s day three hundred and sixty of the kids singing and the band playing, and I’m starting to wish it wasn’t Christmas every day,’ I said, my paper hat falling down over my eyes. ‘I’d feel rude sending my family home though.’
Sombre nods spread around the circle, everyone at the Christmas Song Support Group feeling my pain.
‘I hear you,’ said Bethan. ‘When the first partridge in a pear tree arrived, I thought, how romantic. But by day six, my neighbour with the bird phobia had called the police. It was the twelve drummers drumming that got me evicted. I didn’t have the heart to tell my true love that it was too much.’
Daniel was the longest-standing member. Every year without fail, he gave away his heart only to have it cruelly given away on Boxing Day. Despite his resolutions to give it to someone special next time, it inevitably happened again.
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The orange-acned teenager read part of the letter to me: ‘Fit to go back to work.’
Fit? Twelve months of depression after being passed over for the headship at Ysgol Milton Friedman. That went to a kid with a face on him like a lamb sucking on its mother’s teat. Not to the school’s deputy head, with proven management skills garnered from thirty years teaching. ‘The successful candidate has more energy,’ I was told. Meaning obvious: Phillips, you’re too old at fifty-four.
Shortly after came melancholy and lethargy. The GP prescribed anti-depressants. She was a kid too, fresh out of doctors’ college.
It got worse. My wife, Sandra, left. Told me my moodiness would try the patience of an angel, plus she’d met a nice, younger man. That word was like a knife in my heart. Soon after, an overdose of paracetamol. They pumped out my stomach and I’m in the bin, sectioned. Four blurred weeks.
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