Hunter Gathering? by Annabel Howarth

As I sat in a much coveted chair, resting my aching back and swollen feet, I wondered at the man parading as my husband.    We didn’t know it then, but our first born would be safely arriving into the world in less than 24 hours.  I had been nesting, it was true, cleaning out all the kitchen cupboards and scrubbing the floors on my hands and knees until they gleamed, which was unusual, but not completely out of character.  The impending birth had had a much more dramatic effect on my husband.  He was shopping!

Anyone who knows my husband well, is aware of his generosity.  He thinks nothing of paying for everyone’s meal when we are out for dinner, taking family members on holiday, buying lavish gifts, but when it comes to buying a more tangible, practical item, particularly anything for himself, it is generally an agonising experience.  In the days when we first lived together, a day shopping for furniture or another item for the home would probably end with me having a complete meltdown in the middle of the store, on my knees, with my head in my hands in sheer frustration - and after having spent hours looking at and debating the same items, we would invariably go home without any purchase.  I would be left feeling exhausted by the energy I had invested in the excitement of the pending purchase, disbelieving at the number of hours we had wasted, and as empty as the boot of his car.

I am not the best shopper.  I don’t particularly like shopping.  Unlike my sister, who can spot the perfect pair of earrings for THAT dress from the opposite side of the store in the next street, I can spend hours searching for something and come away from a long day pounding the streets, with absolutely nothing.  But for me, shopping is simple.  If you see something you really like and you can afford it, just buy it, as the chances are if you think about it too much it will have gone while you are deciding.  

My husband, however, takes the game of shopping to a new level. There are usually three elements to purchasing an item with him.  He first needs to be persuaded that he might WANT a particular item.  Once that is established, he then has to go back to the same shop (or now, website) several times and discuss and debate for hours, days, weeks, before he can persuade himself that he actually NEEDS said item.  This is particularly important, in order to live with his methodist influenced conscience.  Honestly, he struggles to even buy himself a new pair of jeans.  The last, and most infuriating step, is that he then has to go away and RESEARCH every other possibility available before he can go back to buy the item he thought he might quite like to buy in the first place.  This process has been known to literally last years.     

Imagine how surprised I was when in the last couple of weeks running up to my daughter’s birth my husband became like a man possessed.  Not with buying things for the baby though.  Suddenly he seemed panicked by the notion that he had to buy all of the things he had been thinking about buying for the past three years as soon as possible, before the baby was born, as after that he would never be able to buy anything for himself ever again!  

Shockingly, and without much warning, my husband had already ordered a digital mini grand piano.  We had a week to wait for its arrival, and I felt excited by the prospect of spending gentle hours playing the music I used to play when I was at school and practising new pieces until I could play them perfectly and by heart, in a way I had never done as a child.  Meanwhile, my perfect little child would be sitting, contentedly playing on the rug.

Half an hour earlier, we had been sat in our favourite cafe chatting to the owners about the impending arrival of our baby.  When a slight feeling of panic had struck.  My due date was 11 days away and I was confident that my husband’s child would be late.  I had been two weeks late, my husband was always late.  Smug in our certainty, there was no bag packed ready to go off to hospital, although all the books said I should have had it packed two weeks previously.  “I think you should have your sandwich in the freezer by now!” said the owner.  We laughed, but his serious face made us stop and stare at each other for a moment.  “You don’t think....we had better go,” my husband said.  

So that was how I found myself, not panic packing my hospital bag.  That process happened at about midnight after my waters broke.  We were now panic shopping, for electrical items of course.  The last boys toys before fatherhood.  There were three items purchased without much agonising that afternoon: (Although to be fair, my husband had been at the “contemplating whether I want it” stage for some time previously)  a large flat screen HD ready TV; a blu-ray dvd player; and, something I really wanted, a new Dyson.

The hastily bought items arrived two days after our daughter, and I will never forget the look on the midwife’s face as she was weighing our tiny little baby on a winter’s day and the alarmed raise of her eyebrows when the patio doors were opened so that a piano could be delivered into the room.  

We did enjoy our new toys for a few months.  My husband would put on his ear phones and slide into a different world at the piano, and I could mask the sound of the pedals by turning up the TV, marvelling at the blu-ray picture curled up in a little love nest with my beautiful baby.  Our carpets were beautifully fluffed and cleaned by the cyclone suction of our stunning new vacuum cleaning machine.

But as you might expect, seven and a half years later, the piano is mostly collecting dust, apart from the days when a group of excited children might huddle round to test out its different sounds and tell each other “you’re doing it wrong”.  The TV and DVD player are no longer ours.  Moments of my husband’s life worrying whether I had let the baby put her hand on the screen or feed food into the DVD player are way behind us.  He gave up long ago.  The Dyson is still mine, and way past its best, despite having spent  most of its life so far as a clothes horse.

After this bank holiday weekend however, I am wondering if we might be having another baby.  Granted, I have been dropping heavy hints for a few years now, but it has taken less than 48 hours to look at and order a sofa and an armchair.  Never in the history of our 18 years together (apart from the pre first baby birth incident) has any item been viewed for the first time, ordered and paid for, at such speed.  It takes us longer to do the weekly food shop!  Time to get my order in quick for a new vac...

Ode to the Olympics by Emma Harding

Like a bolt from the blue

You high-jumped into my heart

I tried to outpace you

But you had me, right from the start.

I tried to focus on the target

You had your eyes on the prize

You wowed me with precision 

And caught me on the rise.

It was a whirlwind romance

Synchronised to perfection

A double-somersaulting, triple-twisting back flip

A gold-medal-winning connection.

We went the long distance

Your hand in mine

We didn’t want it to end

Then sprinted for the finish line. 

Summer school by Andrew Shephard

My granddaughter proudly told me that she has already gone up into Year Two, even though it is the summer holidays. They manage transitions very well at her school, preparing the youngsters for the next stage in their learning. She was surprised when I told her that I wouldn't see her the next week because I was going to a writers' summer school, but quickly accepted that even granddads still have a need for schooling. Often I play stupid so that she can tell me things, but probably she thinks I am stupid. I certainly do have a lot to learn.

The Swanwick Writers' Summer School has now completed its sixty-eighth year, a week of workshops, courses, speakers, and social events and I am back home catching up on sleep and Olympics. There is no better way of adding to whatever writing skills you may already have. It is by turns entertaining, exhausting, enlivening. This year I focused on poetry workshops, but there are always a variety of courses in writing novels, non-fiction, and short stories as well. Whichever courses they choose, people come away armed with enough ideas and inspiration to last a year.

The staging of the school is an entirely voluntary effort. As one of the helpers, I attended the welcome for nearly seventy people who were at Swanwick for the first time, and the follow-up later in the week to check that they had been made to feel welcome. What a privilege it was to listen to the enthusiasm expressed by first timers from eighteen to eighty, from novice to professional.

Tea break on the lawn at Swanwick

The courses themselves are only part of the Swanwick effect. Writing is a solitary activity, so it is an invaluable experience to be surrounded by other writers morning, noon and night - people who understand through first-hand experience the need to create something as perfect as possible with words. The learning is as likely to happen over lunch as in a workshop. Contacts are made which can lead to future projects. In the end, it's all about communication, a means to go beyond the self and reach out to the other, which can be a struggle at times.

Password to you

Our connection is unstable

I can’t hook up with you.

The template’s been disabled

because you’re using version two.

We exchanged our metadata

when signals were so strong,

but now, just one week later

you won’t let me log on.

To me you are an icon

With pixels sharp and bright.

Why can’t we test our functions

or share a megabyte?

I’ve searched your patch for malware

and clicked the mouse all day,

peripherals are all hooked up

but still you say no way.

I’ve ticked terms and conditions,

my interface is strong.

Please save me from perdition,

don’t make me wait too long.

For more information, click on this link. I hope to see you there next year.

http://www.swanwickwritersschool.org.uk/

The Periphery by Dave Rigby

I’m not sure I can run any further.  Henryk doesn’t seem to be following. Maybe I threw him off at the station gate. Not everyone can climb over.

My breathing is ragged, a mixture of breathlessness and fear. I slow to a walk, my feet soaked from the headlong dash through the lakes strung out across the deserted, potholed car park beyond the station. 

The curfew will start soon but I’ve nowhere to go. Zone 7 is unknown to me. Maybe I can make it as far as the Periphery, where shelter awaits.

He steps suddenly from the shadows, late-teens perhaps, automatic weapon at the ready as he demands my papers. It’s unusual for one of them to be out alone, no sign of a partner. He scrutinizes my pass. I’m not sure he can read. He tells me to take off my rucksack and tip the contents onto the pavement, under the dull orange glow of a streetlight, which zaps off and on at irregular intervals. The smell from the tannery seeps over me, making me nauseous. 

The remains of a sandwich, torch, street guide, pen, notebook and a photo of her. Until it’s all out there, at my feet, I can’t be sure, but I feel utter relief when the bolt-cutters fail to make an appearance. They must be back at the storage unit. The Guard prods the small collection with the toe of his unpolished boot, clearly disappointed. The contents of my pockets also fail to make the grade. I’ve learnt to travel light. He takes one of my cigarettes and lights it, removes the notes from my wallet – little enough – and gestures for me to pick up my belongings and disappear.

Momentarily, beyond his pock-marked face, I catch a glimpse over his right shoulder of a figure hovering in the shadows, just enough of an outline for me to know. I have to turn back, no chance now of reaching the Periphery. As I walk away, I know I’ll be safe for just a moment, ironically protected by the receding presence of the Guard. 

What would she do?  

I break into a sprint, my knee resenting the continuous pounding of the pavement. A dog barks in the distance, night clouds mass on the far hillside, the tower blocks are plunged suddenly into power-cut darkness. The bridge is high above the river. I’d expected the canal first but of course that’s beyond the railway line. Through missing stones in the parapet I can see Henryk moving quickly in my footsteps. 

She would jump. 

Swift currents swirl debris towards the Periphery. I cannot move. The waters closed over me that day, sucked me down, rescued only by chance. 

His smile drives me over the parapet. I know only too well what that look means. The torrent sweeps me away, plastic bags, tree branches, shapes I would rather not know about, the cold unbearable. On and on, barely conscious, teeth gritted until the river’s curve throws me onto the tiny shore.

In the half-light of the morning, rain dripping from the overhanging trees, I’m still breathing and Henryk’s not there.

Maybe she and I can meet again and we can start from the beginning.