I’ve mentioned over the last week or so that it’s our writing group meeting tomorrow, and I’ve been really struggling to write something for it. Our challenge – a very good one because it was indeed challenging, to write a monologue. I’ve started a couple of times with different ideas, but nothing seemed to gel. Looking back over my short stories, there are quite a few which are actually monologues, but it would be cheating to read something I’d written ages ago. So I pondered on.
Suddenly… bam! An idea came and I set too and it just flowed. Once I had finished it, I read it through a couple of times and then spent a while editing it, tightening up parts, excising others, and putting in a few extra little details. I had originally imagined someone musing out loud to a friend or family member – in fact I half wrote a story in my head about an imagined conversation with my cousin. I am almost exactly a year older than her and we were particularly close as little children, still close now of course but unfortunately we don’t see each other as often as we used to!
I planned to write a one-sided conversation with her, thinking back to when we were small and would meet at our grandparents’ house in the small Cambridgeshire village of Harston. My cousin and her little brother lived almost opposite and her mum would see her across the road to where grandma would be waiting. There was very little traffic in those days, so few people had cars, so it was no danger. We lived over the other side of town, about four miles away, so my dad would take me on his bike (I had a little seat which fitted onto the frame) to the bus station. He would put me on the bus, in the care of the conductor, which would take me to Harston. The conductor would make sure I got off at the right stop, where my grandma would be waiting for me.
Can you imagine a parent putting their four-year old child on a bus nowadays, even if there was a conductor to put them off at the right spot!! Imagine if the conductor forgot? Or the bus took a diversion, or grandma wasn’t waiting? Unimaginable in actual fact! I remember a particular occasion, when the lady bus conductor took me on board the double decker bus and put me to sit up at the front, with my back to the driver,
“You’ll be alright here, duck!” she said in a nice friendly voice. I was quite happy but perplexed at being called “duck” which was then a common endearment.
I don’t remember the journey, and I don’t remember being put off the bus – although maybe I do in a very hazy way. I remember the fun my cousin and I had, playing in the large unkempt garden, with fruit trees all around, including the most gorgeous greengage tree. Grandma had a piano, she was very musical and a talented pianist apparently but I don’t remember her playing it. I remember playing ‘thunder and lightning fairies’ which was just me bashing the keys with both hands!
So I was all set to write this story – and then I thought, how is this a monologue as opposed to a story read out loud? Scrap that… start again, fifteen hours before meeting the writing group! This time it was someone on a train who engages the person sitting next to them in conversation… a very one-sided conversation! I have finished it, read it to husband, printed it,, and I’m ready for the group tomorrow!
I think I need to update and add to my media files – trying to find a featured image, and I don”t seem to have any trains, bikes, buses, or pictures of me aged about four. My image is of me, but probably aged about two.
Lois Elsden 