Yesterday I shard my panic because unusually, I had left the task of writing for our group until the last minute, what a fandango! (I use the word as Queen did in Bohemian Rhapsody – “metaphorically in the lyrics ‘will you do the Fandango?’ to suggest a pressured, frantic situation“. I had ideas but they would not coalesce into anything like a proper story, but i did scrape it together and I did have something to share when we got together this morning.
The writing prompt (which my friends rose to magnificently) ‘the kitchen drawer’ – -with the implication that it was the contents of the drawer rather than the actual drawer itself – although one writer described attempts to get into a kitchen drawer which was stuck and how the whole unit was destroyed as they tried to access the contents!
My concept was ok – in my head i imagined being in an old house. that of a recently deceased relative, elderly aunt, granny, and coming into the kitchen from somewhere else – upstairs, the living room, wherever, to find a stranger in the kitchen, going through the kitchen drawer, obviously searching for something:
“What are you doing?” I asked. I should have said who are you and what are you doing, because in fact I could see perfectly well what he was doing, he had the kitchen drawers pulled open and he was rifling through them.
“I’m just looking for – ”
“Get out – get out now or I’m calling the police!”
“Let me explain!”
“Get out!” I bellowed, although actually I was more frightened than furious. Fortunately he shoved the drawer shut and turned and fled and I ran and slammed the back door and turned the key in the lock. I was shaking so much I’m surprised I managed it but as I roughly pulled the curtain across, I managed to pull some of the hooks off the rail.
I really got into what I was writing, but began to realise that the story which was forming in my mind would be far too long to share with the group. We get together for two hours and there are eight of us to read our work, discuss, gossip, chat about other writing stuff etc, so for me to have to read something twice as long would not be possible. It was too late to write anything else, even if I could think of anything, so I printed off part of what I had written, stopping at a natural break.
All would have probably been well, except i then lost my glasses (we have a boggart in our house, as I’ve mentioned before, a perfectly harmless creature who tries to be helpful, and no doubt he had found my glasses and put them in a safe place. However, I had no idea where the same place was, and had to grab my emergency green glasses, a non-prescription pair which are sort of ok. However, as a result, I could barely read my story with any sort of fluency, and i felt on the edge of ashamed for such a poor effort. Never mind – we are a lovely group, we had a great get together as ever and i look forward to meeting them in April when I will have prepared better with a story to share!
Lois Elsden 