Greyling Bay

Clare In The Dunes

2009-07-14T10:45:00.004+01:00

Clare sat in the cleft between the rocks, stretching out her feet, thinking of the treats snug and secure in her bag. A cheese and onion batch, a large slice of chocolate cake, a huge family sized bag of crisps. This secret place was her favourite for eating. No one would see a crumb. She liked to sit in this little dim nook and imagine tasting everything before her fingers ever touched it.
She saw a flash of red between the dune grass at the front of her hidey-hole and frowned, shifting forwards for a closer look. It was him. He walked arm in arm with a young girl across the deserted beach. Oh no, she thought, ice in her stomach. He’s doing it again. She clamped a hand to her mouth. The couple stopped, they laughed, they threw their arms about each other in a move that looked half protective, half not. Clare cringed and gathered up her bag, almost crushing its precious cargo.

Leave them alone, a voice inside her yelled. He wouldn’t dare be with her if he were guilty. Someone might see him, even here out in the dunes where only the dog walkers ventured. What the gossips were saying were lies. Either that or they were out of their tiny minds. Just like Doug. Just like half the bay. Don’t go near the man. Don’t get his attention. She watched him take a grip on the girl’s frail arm, locking her in place as he studied her for a long drawn out second. What was he thinking? What was he imagining?

Clare wriggled free of her hiding place, snagging her T shirt as she hurried to watch. They were heading away from town. Out where the dunes crowded. She stooped low and ran after them, wishing she were thinner, faster, less of a lump of lard. She dated behind the grasses as she followed them. Straining to hear their words the breeze carried to her. Was he quoting poetry? If he was the girl was doomed.

Then she saw another figure on the beach striding towards them with more purpose than she had ever seen. Doug. Marching like a solider. Carrying something dark and shiny in his hand.

Clare held her breath.

Big Fat Lion (a real life lion.)

A Hot Potato

2009-06-30T10:00:00.001+01:00

Carmelle.

She was everybody’s dream girl. Greyling never had anything like her before. She embodied the charm of the foreigner, the exoticness of well rounded language, the fullness of youth. The assurance of her painted toenails gleamed red and inviting against the grey, squally skies and weather beaten rock surfaces of Greyling Bay.

Slim.

Despite her penchant for potatoes. Oh, they had noticed all that was about her. How she gorged on creamed potatoes. And potato fritters deep fried in oil. And hot potato buttons split open, covered with butter. She would flick a page of her book with the end of a filed nail, then pitch a mean fork into the soft potato, open her plump lips wide so that her lipstick remained intact, and roll the taste in her mouth. She often let out a deep sigh when she did this.

Lonely.

Despite her books and her smiles, her reading and writing, her hair and her body, despite all that she had, the loneliness leaked from the sides of her eyes. It just added to her flavour. The loneliness that drew you towards her like a magnet, hoping that you were the topping to her succulence, the silencer of her sighs.

Clare, sitting on another table, watched her with eyes filled with scorn, loathing and wanting. Carmelle just did not know the smart, thin and pretty girl that Clare held captive within her own fat exterior. Clare could, if she unleashed the woman within, give her a good run for her money. She concentrated on her plate, but her eyes kept flicking to Carmelle.

Darius also watched Carmelle as he walked in. “Hello,” he said, and Carmelle looked up, her cheeks warming to the feel of his voice.

Clare looked up too. Her lips twitched. Carmelle would soon wish she had never left the city sidewalks. A village was not all about romance.

Darius slid into a seat next to Carmelle. He speared a potato on her plate with the fork and held it up in the sunlight. “Ready?” he grinned.

She was.

Abha Iyengar

Gossip

2009-06-10T10:00:00.001+01:00

“Have you heard the latest down in the town?” Gwen is purring under Louise’s magic fingers again.

“What? This stuff about the teacher?” Louise isn’t really interested. Too much happening in her own world. “ Do you think he’s guilty then?”

“Darius?” Gwen’s snigger is faintly malicious. “Windbag, that’s what he is.” She shifts and indicates a sore spot. “Hasn’t got it in him,” she laughs dismissively. “All talk and no do, that’s Darius.” She grins at Louise. “He’s a great one for bluster but he can’t keep order in class and he likes his little pets; but fiddle with them? Never! Probably the last virgin in Greyling Bay.” She hears Louise’s slight intake of breath. “Or maybe the second last?”

Nicola Slade

Graham's List

2009-06-05T10:00:00.003+01:00

1) Book the car in for its MOT.

2) Cut the front lawn before it takes over the world.

3) Is that guttering blocked above the bay window again? Because last time it happened we had to plaster where all the rain got in and we mustn't ignore it again.

4) There's been far too many things ignored in our house over the years.

The guttering.
The state of the garden.
Us.

5) Are we going to have a holiday this year or not? And if so, where?

I don't want to go and stay in that Villa in Tuscany again. I don't like Tuscany, it's far too hot, and Alice never leaves me alone.
Did Helen notice what Alice was up to?
Did Helen care?

6) Things that Helen hasn't noticed:

The guttering's leaking again.
The state of the garden.
The way Alice behaves with me, when she's meant to be Helen's best friend.
The way I watch Helen whenever she leaves the room. As if she might never come back.

Rod Holland

Escape

2009-06-02T10:00:00.001+01:00

Ger leans back into the seat and stretches his long legs out before him. He should be feeling joyful, but his smiles cracks off his face like old plaster.

Nobody came to wave him off. Mum and Dad are too busy in the caff, chewing over Chelsee’s news. Don’t tell, she’d said. Of course he told. Chelsee must have known that he would. Intended that he should.

With a slick hum the train moves off. The whinging child at the other end of the carriage runs up the carriage, hollering. Cadell. It would be. Spoiled brat. Ger glares at him. Cadell’s face falls and he retreats.

The train gathers speed and the images flick past, beginning to dizzy him. He shuts his eyes but older images flick past, burned onto his retinas. Mum and Dad aghast. Mum pragmatic after the initial shock, Dad… Dad just weird about it.

Ger’s eyes snap open, and the world speeds past. Sickness tugs his guts. He swaps seats and now he is looking back. But that is worse.

The train slows, stops at the next station. Rachel, Tanya and Cadell get off the train in a tangle of pushchair and bags. Ger knows he should have helped, should have been a gentleman. But if he’d stood up he would have got off too, and taken the next train home.

Linda Gruchy

Cider

2009-05-29T10:00:00.001+01:00

“They say it’s all in my head. But it isn’t,” the wind bullies her words. “I know the truth.” She slides another pill into her mouth and drowns it in cheap cider. She shudders and wipes tears away. “He’ll get away with it all.” She’s not alone. Doug sits by her side on the bench. He’s seen it all, the shadow lands. The in-between. “Where’s the truth,” she asks. He shrugs. “I’m going to get him. I’m going to make him suffer. ”

He takes her hand, holds on, stares at the wrinkles on her fingers. Age, longing, wanting, it turns you inside out. She knows. He does. “I hate him. I hate him for being happy.” Her voice crumbles into sobs. “It’s not fair.”

Chris Leonard

Serafina, Come Home

2009-05-26T10:00:00.000+01:00

Dodging the rain and the plague of students Louise slips into the café after her stint with the two brothers. Chelsee gives her a slight, conspiratorial smile as she pours Louise’s tea but the place is packed and her usual table occupied by a young man hiding behind the Guardian. She sits down, murmuring an apology.

Louise sees no sign of the anxious, put-upon mother or the volatile brother so she relaxes and nods again to the skinny girl now clearing tables. “You’re busy today?”

“Students,” she replies, looking almost friendly. “Term starts tomorrow.” Both girls look curiously at the Guardian man who gradually seems to realise he is under scrutiny. Chelsee turns away but is still in earshot when he grins at Louise. “Hal Thompson, lecturer, Physics.”

Louise blushes under his admiring eyes but answers in the same vein. “Louise Jones, aromatherapy, massage, holistic care.”

“Aha,” he looks pleased. “You’re not a local either, in spite of the Jones? I thought I was the only foreigner in the entire town.”

After a quiet, cautious day, finding her way with Malcolm and George, aware of a knife-edge between the brothers, it is astonishing to find someone cheerful in Greyling Bay, someone besides Gwen, that is. She is aware of Chelsee’s covert stare but Hal’s warmth and his unashamed interest in her overwhelms her, so she manages to ignore the other girl’s down-turned mouth and unsmiling shrug of farewell.

Hal walks her home and talks her into a dinner date for the next night. This is what normal people do, she realises. Dare I?

Gwen’s robust laugh echoes in her head: Go on with you, girl. Grasp at life with both hands, start living.

Suddenly, shockingly, a woman’s voice says Andrew’s name out loud. Last night’s extravaganza in Cardiff was broadcast live though Louise’s television stayed firmly off, but here he is again on the local telly: so trustworthy, so lovable, so charismatic, charming the interviewer who flutters her eyelashes. Louise listens, nausea rising.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” he confides, and where the reporter hears melting honey in his voice, Louise hears only danger and familiar shards of ice. “ I’m looking for a girl called Serafina and something tells me she’s out there watching us.” He lifts that handsome head and those sincere red-brown eyes glow as he gazes straight at her. “Serafina,” he smiles. “Come back to me, darling. You know you want to.”

Nicola Slade

Field Trip

2009-05-22T10:00:00.000+01:00

Phyllis watches them as they scatter across the dunes. Darius before them, walking backwards, talking, always talking; each time he turns another child slips away until there is only the skinny girl left, standing beside him, straight as a rod. Field trip, Darius calls it; skiving, Phyllis thinks.

She can see them from where she waits, engulfed in the burr of her generator, the smoky fug of her van a bubble of heat. The children clustering together in the hollows of the dunes; smoking, some of them. Kissing. Never thinking that they're overlooked. The things she sees.

Darius stands awkwardly with the skinny girl, staring all around; his reedy voice rises as he calls for them. "Jellybean," he shouts, "Legless!" The thread of his voice tangling round the dunes where the children are all hiding.

Silly old fool, thinks Phyllis, not unkindly. Watching as Darius surrenders and runs down to the sea, squealing like a child, and his pupils peel out from the dunes and run after him, all pretence of work abandoned, their voices rising together into the thin blue air.

Jane Smith

Every Time

2009-05-19T11:30:00.000+01:00

“Every time I do something worthwhile, you go and spoil it. Attention seeking, that’s what it is,” Ger hisses.

Chelsee blinks. She looks at her wrists. She frowns. “You can’t leave. Mum and Dad need you to help in the caff now the summer’s coming. I can’t do it any more.”

“Don’t be daft. I can’t afford to miss an opportunity like this. You’ll be right as rain, soon, you’ll see.” Ger’s fingers press hard into the arms of the bedside chair he’s seated in. That face, that impassive face. He knows she’s gloating behind the mask, trying to twist him like she always did when they were small. Do this or you’ll make me cry, then Mummy will smack you. The words are unsaid, but he sees her thoughts like wasps. “You take the tablets, same as always, and you’ll soon be back to normal, see. No more of that bloody nonsense. It doesn’t work any more. You can cut yourself to kingdom come for all I care now, see. It doesn’t work any more.”

“I can’t take the medication.” A contrived tear escapes down her face. “They have to sort me out something new. Therapy or something. Tablets is too dangerous, now.”

It’s a new strategy, Ger tells himself. The old one won’t work; bring out the next. “What’s wrong with tablets, then?” She’s winning because he has to ask, and he hates himself for asking.

“I can’t take them. Not now. Not this time. Because. Well, just because, OK.”

“No, it’s not OK. Tell me. So help me, I feel like slapping you.” Ger’s eyes flick round the ward. The bed next to them is empty just now, sheet and blanket rumpled. The nurses are all busy, and nobody has heard. Nobody but Chelsee.

“I’m pregnant so I can’t take the tablets, see. And it’s why you’ve got to stay and help Mum. Because I can’t. Not with a baby.”

Ger flops back into the armchair, mouth flopping open as the breath is yanked out of him. His eyes scan down over the scrawny ribs, down to the belly. Stick-like arms with one bandaged wrist move protectively over the bump. Ger looks back into Chelsee’s eyes set in sunken pits. “You’re lying. You’re lying to keep me chained to that bloody caff. You selfish cow.”

Chelsee says nothing, but stares back at him. Behind the sly power he sees something slinking like a cat: fear.

“Christ.” Ger stands so abruptly Chelsee flinches and seems to sink deeper into the mattress. “Who’s is it? I’ll smash his face in for him.”

“That’s why I’m not saying. And don’t you go telling anyone.”

“Can’t you get rid of it?”

Chelsee’s face is shuttered again, the fear-cat vanished, or trapped perhaps, behind those shutters. His audience is over.

Linda Gruchy

Secrets and Burdens

2009-05-05T10:00:00.000+01:00

“You want another job, Louise?” Gwen takes silence for assent. “Two brothers,” she explains. “Malcolm writes text books or something at home; George is helpless, spastic they used to call it. Anyway there’s two days when he doesn’t go to the day centre.”

Louise nods absently, letting the healing power flow into Gwen’s shoulder as she relives yesterday’s nightmare in the café; dreamy Chelsee, so absorbed in the scarlet flow, obediently standing still while pandemonium reigns.

I’ve been almost happy, Louise screams inwardly now, I won’t get involved. But it was too late, the message, the entreaty, in those pale eyes, the colour of seawater on a wet day, compelled her, so later that evening she’d slipped in to see Chelsee in hospital.

Neither spoke a word. Chelsee trembled, staring, at her visitor. Louise, hating Chelsee, hating herself, hating most of all what was unknowingly asked of her, reached out reluctant questing fingers to the bandaged arm. It happened at once – sometimes there was nothing but today the warmth flowed out of her and into the damaged girl. She took Chelsee’s hands in her own and felt great surges of power drain from her, like nothing she had ever experienced before, leaching from her till she almost fainted.

Chelsee relaxed, eyes half-closed, her breathing regular but Louise knew the girl was greedily sucking the strength from her. What was different this time? Why so needy? Louise shook off her weakness and centred herself until intuition found what she sought.

Chelsee’s eyes snapped open and Louise stared down at the bony body with its slight tell-tale mound just visible under the blue bedspread.

Her intuition was never wrong.

“So you’ll go then?” Gwen speaks sharply, twisting under the competent hands so Louise has to break off and stare blankly. “To see Malcolm,” Gwen sounds exasperated. “Get a grip, girl. I told him you’d call in today on your way home.”

“Fine.” Louise writes down the address, conscious all the while of the shrewd blue gaze..

Gwen stops bristling and pats her hand. “I saw him too, you know; on the News, night before last,” She twinkles as she scores a hit. “I knew you’d be at your wits’ end. Oh yes, booked to work his magic on the Welsh in the Millennium Stadium, God help us all.”

Louise had almost forgotten about him, with all this on her plate, but she shivers now. No need to pretend with Gwen thank God.

“Clever idea though,” Gwen smiles. “Where better than Wales to hide a girl called Jones? Not Louise though, surely?”

“My middle name,” she says absently, then looks down into the wise, kind eyes. “Oh Gwen,” she whispers. “Something terrible has happened, but I really couldn’t help it.”

Nicola Slade

The Darkness

2009-04-22T10:00:00.001+01:00

It is night, and darkness has settled over Greyling Bay like a shroud.

Out in the ocean, just off the bay, a deeper darkness gathers. Just below the surface. Thickening almost into substance as the tide swells strangely high towards the light-strung promenade.

Rosie Able

The Outsider

2009-04-08T10:00:00.001+01:00

He fools everyone but her. That’s the way of them. ‘Them’ as if they’re a separate species, an influx of aliens, masking their true selves. Only a few see beneath. She has. She flexes her hands, makes fists as he walks by, red beard like a beacon but nobody’s seen the warning. He laughs, his eyes twinkle. It’s all deceit. He’s so respected and she’s the trollop, the little whore, the town bicycle. He picks his victims with care, smothers them in words, with unworldly grace and then… and then… and then....

Her lip trembles. Seduction is a gentle thing. What he did was nothing like that.

Chris Leonard

The Quality Of Mercy

2009-04-03T10:00:00.000+01:00

Welcome sunshine glitters on the furrowed sea. A gentle, salty breeze ruffles the dark plumage of a cormorant drying its angular wings as it stands on a barnacle-clad post.

“What poise,” thinks Carmelle. She is sure she can incorporate some reference to the statuesque quality of this motionless seabird into her latest piece of writing, which she has entitled “The Soulful Sea”. She will discuss her latest ideas with Darius when she meets him in The Ship. She enjoys their verbal entanglement and is keenly anticipating the delicious frisson generated between them. She is ready, eager, for more than that now, and Darius cannot help but have noticed, surely? She has put clean sheets on the bed and flowers in the room.

Carmelle has stayed on at Greyling Bay longer than she intended, having found the sympathetic eye and ear of Darius, whose particular interest, fortuitously, she has discovered, is the written word (when Laura, a slim, long-limbed student from the university had made his acquaintance at a fund-raising barn dance last summer, his particular interest then, usefully, had been political history. Greyling Bay has a veritable polymath in its midst).

Enjoying the unexpected warmth and stillness of the day sit Frances and Mercy on a bench at the edge of the sand. They watch Carmelle walk past, antelope-like in her fluid gait, hips swaying and arms gently swinging. Oh, how they wish they could regain their youth. That bloody war took their husbands and now all they have to contemplate is a fortnightly visit from the chiropodist and a chip supper with entertainment in the community hall on the first Tuesday of every month. Failing joints, false teeth and thinning hair. Loneliness. That is the reward life bestows for hard work, loyalty and stoicism. But still, they can laugh and feel the warmth on their paper-thin skin, grateful for their friendship.

They could have been something, Frances and Mercy.

Faith Bretherick

Stepping Stones

2009-03-31T10:00:00.001+01:00

Louise gasped at the altered landscape. A flight of stepping stones, puddles like silver pennies scattered in a line across the ribbed wet sand, rising to meet the full moon bellying low. Black and white and silver, Greyling Bay in negative.

Each day a stepping stone; an outing with ‘Call-me-Gwen’ – ripe for adventure, her grin cynical. “Greyling Bay might be new to you but I’ve lived here eighty-seven years. Besides, the old mill does decent coffee, just outside town.”

Another footstep: massage, accompanied by peals of laughter. Gwen Parry telling dirty jokes. Again. “Gwen, you’re awful.” Louise mopping her eyes, massaging Gwen’s frail shoulders.

“I know far worse than that.” A triumphant chuckle banished by a purr of pleasure as the strong young hands resumed their work, sending warmth and power and healing into the knotted muscles and sparrow bones. The pleasure, as always, two-way; Louise giving and receiving, her own tensions slipping away.

Earlier stepping stones: escaping after Father’s funeral. But the house! How had her mother dared? Father, unforgiving as the icy God he made in his own image, too lofty to be troubled with details, making Mum act as his secretary. Getting his signature, forgery perhaps? Just in time before his stroke. ‘All yours.’ Mum’s last whisper. ‘The house, everything - provided he lasts the seven years.’ And he had, just. The second stroke relieved them both – and here she was.

Wherever here was.

“You have healing hands, Louise,” Gwen told her and twisted round to stare, with shrewd, narrowed eyes at Louise’s harsh gasp. “Don’t worry, child,” she said. “I can keep a secret. But I do know who you are.”

“Insatiable curiosity, see?” explained Gwen, shifting painfully. Louise hastened to help, her mouth still sour with denial. “Something about you,” Gwen told her. “Intuition, auras, moments of clarity, not limited to the Scots, you know; plenty of Welsh witches.” That warm, knowing chuckle again. “Besides, I’ve an excellent memory for faces when they come with an intriguing story.”

Her knobbly, blue-veined hand covered Louise’s small, strong one. “You stood on the quayside, bathed in light.” The quizzical amusement vanished and Gwen’s blue eyes were grave. “I knew you at once, God knows how; then you saw the celestial city and I knew it was meant.”

And that was another step forward; Gwen knew, and the sky hadn’t fallen in.

Shivering as a cloud drifted across the moon, she closed the window, suddenly craving company. The spicy warmth of Curry Night at the café beckoned.

Another stepping stone here: a tentative welcome from Chelsee whose brother, about Louise’s age and calmer now after yesterday’s drama, shot her an abashed smile and showed her to the last remaining seat in the café.

“It’s a new thing,” he handed her a menu. “Curry night. Chelsee’s brainwave.”

Louise loved the lilt in his voice. “Seems very popular,” she smiled then the colour drained from her face as she glimpsed a face on the television screen on the wall.

Andrew!

Nicola Slade

Cor-Blimey Corinne

2009-03-27T10:00:00.003Z

Following disturbing allegations about Douglas Bruton's working habits I no longer feel comfortable including his work in Greyling Bay, and so have deleted the four pieces which were attributed to him here.

For more information read this post on Vanessa Gebbie's blog, and this post on my main blog, How Publishing Really Works.

Apologies for any difficulties this might cause.

About The Contributors

Talk To The Knife…

2009-03-24T10:00:00.000Z

…‘cos the face ain’t listening.

Ger’s escaping. The thought is piggybacked on Chelsee’s shoulders, the weight of it dragging at her with every move. A proper job, he said. Like working in here isn’t a proper job.

Well, it isn’t, is it?

A proper job you get paid for all the hours you work. A proper job has prospects.

“You’ll have to do more hours now,” Mum had said. She should have told Mum then.

That Louise is back. Same time, same table, same drink. Habit-forming, life is. Do the same things over and over, and it reminds you who you are. It makes you safe.

The bread pudding needs cutting into squares. The knife is sharp. It slices through her arm as easily as the cake. The skin gapes like a smile, bubbles of fatty tissue gleaming pinkly. How come she has so much fat if everyone tells her she’s skinny? She tries another slice. Odd how it doesn’t really hurt. “I am alive, after all,” she thinks. Red wells up round the tiny beads, gathering in to a trickle. Chelsee moves her wrist, watching the trickle changing direction, controlling the flow.

“What the…? Chelsee.” Louise is with her, clamping a tea towel on the arm, yelling for Carol.

Carol bursts through from the back. “Oh not again. I thought you’d outgrown all that stupid nonsense.”

Later, lying powerfully in her hospital bed, Chelsee allows a smile to slither across her face. Ger looks angry, Mum looks cross and worried: Dad just looks impotent. That’ll teach him.

Linda Gruchy

Phyllis

2009-03-09T10:00:00.001Z

To the south of Greyling Bay the mountains smooth and flatten and the beaches are bright with sand. The road cuts away from the water and for a couple of miles the salt marshes stretch, shallow and grassy, and narrow ridge of dunes holding them back from the beach.

Phyllis drives her van out every day and waits in the car park for customers who rarely come.

While she waits, she watches over the marshes and the distant line of dunes, the curve and flow of them so familiar to her now that even when she leaves she can see their low profile, their salted, faded greens: the water beyond them a narrow silver flash and then the sky arching above them felted with bruise-coloured clouds, constantly changing.

She used to be able to spot who was out on the water from the shape of the boats’ cabins, silhouetted against the glittering grey seas. Now she can barely see the boats at all and she stares at each distant blurred dot as it passes and wonders if it’s the Gwiddon. Thinking of Owen’s hands on the wheel, their familiar callouses softened and gone. The hot rasp of his fingers against her skin.

Jane Smith

Helen's List

2009-03-06T10:00:00.000Z

THE LIST

Start diet
Get job What? Paid? Voluntary? Local paper
Second-hand car? (later)
Meet new people. Not from university. Clubs? Evening classes?
Rent cottage? How much?
Learn Welsh? Class? Book?
Check trains/buses/taxis?
Leave Graham?

THE WRITING OF THE LIST

Late afternoon. Low tide. Cool. Two men dig for worms at the water’s edge. A man walks his dog. Beyond them, the pirate ship chugs back to harbour with its cargo of fretful tourists. Above the horizon the sky is navy blue but the sun shines fitfully, netting the seagulls in a silver flash; the cottages tucked beneath the cliff a necklace of shining sweets, yellow, pink and blue.

A woman walks along the seafront, stops and leans over the railings gazing out across the bay. She walks to a bench, picks up a polystyrene chip-tray between her finger and thumb and drops it into a litter-bin (Keep Greyling Bay Tidy) and sits down.

She pulls a notebook from her raincoat pocket and scribbles as the sky darkens further and spits of rain speckle the concrete.

She stops, reads, then slowly tears the page out, screws it into a tight ball and tosses it in the bin. She walks away. The bin is full. The paper ball rolls off and drops into the gutter. A seagull hovers, lands, stabs hopefully, flies off.

A boy on his way home from school dribbles it five hundred yards along the pavement until, bored, he kicks it over the railings.

The sun sets. Rain falls. The tide comes in. Goes out. The sun comes up, veiled and weary. A man walks his dog along the beach. The dog stops at something. Sniffs. The man calls. The dog runs on.

Sally Zigmond

Darius Bredwyn Is Loved

2009-03-04T10:00:00.001Z

Triple Chocca-mocha Macchiato—With Whipped Cream

2009-03-02T10:00:00.000Z

Carmelle Jones blew into Greyling Bay one sultry afternoon, surfing good intentions and waving doubts farewell. Armed with deliciously strokable notebooks, modest wine supplies, and chocolate for every chapter, Carmelle was ready for writing heaven. She’d spent the train journey—followed by a taxi ride with a driver who didn’t seem to hear her mention that she was A Writer—being progressively less able to contact her Facebook friends, as the signal on her dongle dwindled and died. Good people, gorgeous, whose hugs and kisses and virtual chocolate touched her on an hourly basis. Carmelle felt perfectly nurtured by them. But this week was a challenge that she (and her Creative-Life-Counsellor) had set—to come where she could not be fingered by Facebook or touched by Twitter or anything else that damaged her acclaimed alliterative ability.

Prospect Cottage had no wifi and no phone signal. Truly, Carmelle was facing her fear, but her writing group had sent her off with encouragement in her ears and Valrhona in her handbag. You’re fabulous, Carmelle. You have a gift. Ignore that editor. What does she know?

One look inside Prospect Cottage and she’d known this was the place. It had Genuine Atmosphere. Two looks and she felt the need for coffee. It wasn’t the cottage, just how the fisherman owner guy had eyed her. God, she hadn’t come here to be seduced by some bitter herring-breathed rustic with a nasty madness in his pink eyes.

Carmelle approached the café, sucked in her stomach, swung her hips like a hammock. A little pout would do no harm. They’d be watching her, clocking her pre-Raphaelite hair, jealous of her smooth city skin, skin which a boyfriend had described, so sweetly, as being like a piglet’s. Carmelle was used to people envying her. Which was why that editor’s comment had wounded her so, until her wonderful friends had poked her on Facebook and reflated her self-esteem.

Carmelle wielded a notebook and two pens: pink and turquoise. The café doors hung open in the heat and voices limped into the air like tired butterflies. She smiled at this image: she must write it under the heading, “Similes for future use”. With the turquoise pen, she thought.

God, but this lot ...

Fat girl with her rosebud mouth slightly open, waiting to pay for a cream cake that she’d already gouged with her finger. Grinning biddy in a wheel-chair. Sepia woman staring at her hands with a Jesus expression. Two tarty young women and a kid with a buttered face. A couple staring at the table as though they’d rather be anywhere else. And the men—Christ, they looked spiritless. Seaweed had more zest.

And into their midst, Carmelle.

“Triple chocca-mocha macchiato with caramel and marshmallows and a butterscotch twizzlestick. And whipped cream.”

“What?” The waitress was waxen-faced, hollow-cheeked, as though something was sucking her from inside.

“Tea. Please.”

Behind her, someone smiled.

Nicola Morgan

Something To Tell

2009-02-27T10:00:00.000Z

Mum, I’ve got something to tell you. Chelsee wipes the wetness round the countertop. The cloth refuses more moisture, leaving a damp rash behind. Chelsee looks up furtively. The café is empty but for the newcomer. Staying, she is; so the rumours go. Why do people sit in the same seats? Habit, Chelsee guesses.

Mum, can you keep a secret from Dad? Only I’ve got something to tell you.

The dishwasher beeps. Chelsee opens it to a dragon’s breath. The crocks are still hot but she stacks them up, the clatter ripping her eardrums. Mum… listen a minute… Mum, I won’t be able to… Mum, I’ve got a problem.

She ought to tidy the tables before more people come in, change a few grubby tablecloths for clean ones, but she needs to rest. She makes a half-hearted circuit round the tables, then sits at one of them with a sigh.

The newcomer smiles at her. Louise, someone said her name was. “Quiet today, Chelsee.”

“Yes.” Chelsee rummages around for something else, something sensible to add. Mum, I have a problem. “Yes, quiet. Often is, this time of year… been lucky with the weather, like. Not much rain. Cold though.”

Chelsee’s mum comes into the café from out the back. Chelsee stands guiltily.

“Hello Carol,” says Louise. “I was just saying to Chelsee here what a blessing the weather has been.” She gives a conspiratorial smile to Chelsee.

Now, thinks Chelsee: “Mum, I’ve…”

The café door is flung open and in walks Ger, with the scent of seawater and winter air pursuing him. He’s wound up like a kid on Christmas Eve. His excitement crackles over them like static.

“Mum,” he says too loudly, “I’ve something to tell you…”

Linda Gruchy

Under The Pier

2009-02-25T10:00:00.000Z

Darkness soaks across the bay and settles in swathes over the heaving oily water. Chelsee stands in the seaweed layered beneath the pier, away from the reach of the moon, and listens as they talk.

“Course I don’t love her,” he says, his voice as oily as the waves. “Never did. I was just being kind, you know. A charity job.” A bubble of laughter from them both then the smooth drag of clothes against skin as Chelsee waits in the brine-spiced darkness, water seeping into her shoes, and presses the back of her wrist to her mouth.

Later, when they have finished, when they sit silently in the shelter of the rocks, their cigarettes punctuating the darkness, Chelsee circles behind them and flings a fistful of gravel and sand at the two bright spots of flame. She hears its wet weight shower over them in the dark; the girl’s shriek rising above his barking curses. Chelsee is out in the moonlight now and when he stands he sees her there. Stares at her for seconds as waves break softly beyond them on the shore: then he says to the woman beside him,

“There’s no one there. No one at all.” His eyes locked to Chelsee’s as he speaks, his voice as cold as the sea, watching as she turns and runs away.

Jane Smith

Gideon Smiling

2009-02-23T10:00:00.001Z

Following disturbing revelations about Douglas Bruton's working habits I no longer feel comfortable including his work in Greyling Bay.

For more information read this post on Vanessa Gebbie's blog, and this post on my main blog, How Publishing Really Works.

I apolgise for any difficulties this might cause in reading the rest of the work here.

About The Contributors

Shapes

2009-02-20T10:00:00.001Z

I wondered at the little girl, painting her in fast thin lines. I didn’t want to capture her details, not the folds of her coat, or the wild streamer of her blond hair. There was no time. I wanted to capture her spirit. The energy that made her run as fast as she could down the sands, her footfalls as brief in life as she will be. As brief as we all are. I wondered if I could capture her giggles. Is laughter a spiral or a circle? Should it roll or wriggle across my canvas?

“What you doing?” she drew to a halt right by my side.

“I’m painting. Painting you. Do you want to see?”

She giggled, looking at the sand, awkward and embarrassed. I turned my easel to show her her figure. The joy, could she see it? Was she too young to know how lucky she was to be so uncomplicated? She pointed at the squiggles I’d made. “What’s that?”

“That’s laughter. That’s what it looks like to me.”

She shook her head. “That’s not laugher.”

I offered out my palate, a brush. “Then paint it for me.”

She picked the sunshine colour: yellow. She painted with studious concentration in one low corner. A swirl? A lump? Two eyes?

“That’s a snail,” I said when she’d finished.

“I like snails. They’re funny looking. They make me laugh.”

“Gwyneth”? A voice called to her. “Come along now.”

She ran to her mother, two arms becoming a protective ring about her shoulders before she was gathered up. Precious little bundle.

I hoped she’d always run free. I hoped she wasn’t always told endlessly to be careful of this, careful of that. Don’t touch. Don’t look. Hardly be. No, you couldn’t trap a spirit like hers, why would you even dare to try?

I breathed the sea air deeply; smiled then out a laugh of my own. Snail shaped, of course. A swirl. A lump. Two eyes.

Rona J Frith

Ann

2009-02-18T10:00:00.000Z

Ann stands on the hollow rolling cobbles of the beach and watches the Gwiddon as she sails into the soft curve of the harbour. From this distance there is nothing but the angle of the cabin roof, the push of her through the waves to distinguish her from the other vessels on the sea but, after decades of watching, Ann knows her husband’s boat. She would know her even without looking: the ratchety sound of the engine, the stuttering exhaust; the Gwiddon needs money they don’t have.

They’d be better off if they scrapped the thing: the price of fuel, the endless repairs; it brings in no money. But Owen shouts whenever she suggests it; whenever there’s a bill to pay.

She can hear him shouting now. His voice rolls out across the heaving waves, the wind whipping the words away, leaving just the sound. And the Gwiddon: silent suddenly, no longer pushing on across the grey water but drifting, the tide dragging her swiftly back out into the bay as a burst of black smoke surges from her exhaust and Owen’s voice rises, dark across the swilling seas.

Ann imagines the tourists on the slatted bench seats which line the sides of the boat. Huddling against the wind, gripping their children’s arms as the engine fails. The splutter and fall of the engine and then nothing but the slap of the waves; the call of the gulls above as Owen, his temper freed, whacks his wrench against the engine.

Ten seconds, twenty: then the engine catches with a bang and the Gwiddon lurches forward again, cutting hard against the waves. Ann hears, from all this distance away, a ripple of voices, cheering; the belch and pull of the engine.

If she leaves now she’ll be at the harbourside to meet them when they get in, as she always is. To take the passengers’ money before they leave, to show them how to climb the algaed ladders which line the vertical harbour walls. To drag Owen out from the cabin where he waits for the last of them to leave. He’ll still be swearing.

Ann turns. Stares out across the ocean, and up into the sky. Watches a vapour-trail from a plane thin and disperse and imagines herself leaving here as easily, melting away into nothing against the dove-grey sky.

Jane Smith

Alice Has A Framed Photograph By Her Bed

2009-02-16T10:00:00.002Z

Chips

2009-02-02T10:00:00.000Z

“Inside me lives a skinny girl crying to get out, but I can always shut the bitch up with chips,” Clare muttered, examining a lean crisp chip. She sat on a bench outside the fish and chip shop, her cod and chips hot in her lap on their polystyrene tray. Her thoughts brimmed with vinegar and cooking fat, her lips rimed with salt, her insides warmer now but never content. After this she had a doughnut planned in the cafe, after that perhaps a big Mac, fries and a nice thick milkshake at the new McDonalds. Oh yes, she had Saturday all planned out, all right. People said she had a pretty face, as if her face was all she was worth now she’d surrounded it with soft white padding. She hated them for that. Hate made her eat; she wrapped her hand about her hate right now and crammed more of it into her mouth. Hate tasted good, but it had a high fat content, it might one day clog her arteries and kill her. But right now, at fifteen, she didn't really care. She wasn't supposed to be here in this boring town but at fifteen your parents just bundled you up like luggage and carted you about. This town, that town. Never keeping still. Why were her parents still together at all? They ought to be divorced by now. They should be arguing and throwing things but no, they were like a couple of teenagers slobbering over each other every night. That was their version of normal.

A man waved at her as he weaved down the path, as he tilted up his head and yelled at a seagull. He came and sat next to her. Shouldn't tramps smell like pee and sweat? Shouldn't he be drunk? Shouldn't they be the last person you’d ever want to talk to? Clare chewed, swallowed. “Hello Doug.”

“Hello.” His voice was always diamond sharp. “A man painted me the other day.”

“Really? What colour?” She smiled. He didn't.

“Sandy. He painted me sandy. Like the beach, so no one can see me.”

“I can see you.”

“That’s because I'm not on the beach.”

He really was insane. She always wondered what he'd look like without his beard. Ugly? Handsome? Young? Old? “Who are you Doug?” she always asked him that. He always shrugged.

“Who do you want me to be?” He always said that too and she always came up with a silly answer. The Prime Minister. My Aunt Lilly. Roland Rat.

She just wasn't feeling so silly today. “Somebody normal.”

His blue, blue eyes stared at her, through her. “Might manage normal for a chip.”

She offered him the tray and he plucked one from it. He held it aloft, fingers reaching into the sky. She squinted and watched Whitey swoop. “He'll get fat,” she muttered.

“He'll be all right, Clare,” Doug returned, his voice suddenly as silky smooth as warm butter. “God gave him a pretty face.”

Clare huffed in disgust. “I hate normal.”

“Me too,” Doug said in his usual brittle tones. “That’s why I gave it up.”

Rona J Frith

Cold Light of Day

2009-01-30T10:00:00.000Z

Every morning Gino watched her as she ran along the sea-front. Her trainers, white with candy stripes, struck the asphalt with a whispered one-two. She wore leggings and a plain white t-shirt that flapped around her hips. She lived up the hill, with the university people. But in the early morning, she was his.

The café, with its herbal teas and mocha chocca coffees, wouldn’t open for at least another hour, so only Gino saw her as he rolled down his awning and unfolded his sandwich-board price-list: tea, coffee, filled rolls. No fancy stuff here. No fancy prices.

By the second set of steps that led down to the beach, the girl slowed and came to a halt. Gino knew the routine: three upward stretches, face to the sun, then the leg extensions, hands across the thigh, like a ballet dancer. He didn’t need to watch the rest, the final stretch, the jogging on the spot. She knew his routine too: the awning, the setting out of wares. Today he would offer her a smile.

He’d seen her once in a group, the university running club. They called her Laura. She kept her distance from the students, running with the older crowd. But she was no teacher, weighed down by learning and common-room clutter; she was light as air.

Gino switched on his urn, wiped down the hotplate and looked up, ready with a smile. But his timing was out: Laura was still at the steps. He watched her take the hem of her t-shirt in both hands and pull it over her head, back arched, like a diver on the high board. Underneath, a racing vest, skin-tight, electric blue. She knotted the outer layer around her waist and gathered hair back into its black ribbon tie.

Gino flinched. Her shoulders cut the raw air like knives, her arms were twig-thin. He thought of a sparrow, fallen from its nest, the web of bones on show like so much underwear.

Gino rearranged the sauce bottles and spat on the cloth he used to clean the counter. He wouldn’t watch her any more.

Ali Bacon

Ruth And Judy

2009-01-28T10:00:00.001Z

As the day tips towards twilight the lights flicker on along the seafront, garlanding the bay; tracing the stretch of the pier across the dark heaving water.

The daytime crowds disperse. In an hour or two the night-time crowds will emerge, all fancy clothes and swagger but now, this pause between day and night, is Ruth’s time. As the light leaches from the sky the tides seem to hesitate; even the gulls are subdued. Just the quiet pad of a runner passing by and a solitary walker letting his dog chase the waves as they retreat. The sky flushing gold and soft, bruised mauve above the reach of the sea. And Doug, out on the beach still, stumbling across the cobbles. His worst time of day.

Ruth clips on Judy’s lead and grabs the bag and soon she is out beneath the softening sky and Doug when he sees her stops his frantic lurching, his yelling at the promise of stars and he is quiet again, so quiet that just for a moment Ruth thinks that today might be one of his good days. She lets Judy off her lead and watches as the little dog runs stiffly up to Doug, her stump of a tail wagging frantically, even after all these years.

Ruth has had Judy for longer now than Doug ever did: has fed her and walked her and watched her transform through the years from a swift little terrier to this lumpen, arthritic thing yet everyone still calls Judy Doug’s dog.

Doug walks towards Ruth, smiling; takes the bag from her hand without a word then hurries to the rock pools, Judy beside him. He sits with the little white dog and eats the sandwiches, the apple. The piece of cake that Ruth wrapped so carefully he flings to the few remaining gulls and soon the air around him is full of white flashing wings and as his voice rises with them through the cooling darkened air Ruth remembers when he laughed with her on this same beach, and held her hand and smiled. The way his gaze had focused beyond her, telling her before he spoke that it was over. His dog left behind with her like some sort of consolation prize.

When the food is finished and the gulls have dispersed Judy noses her way back across the stones and stands by Ruth’s side, ready to go home.

“Same time tomorrow, then, Doug?” Ruth says but he is too busy pointing out to sea to reply; too busy watching the waves washing his footsteps off the beach, reaching for him still. Searching for Whitey in the dimming, empty sky.

Jane Smith

Bob At Home

2009-01-26T10:00:00.001Z

Robert counts five rings before picking up. “This is Robert Whiteside.”

An unfamiliar voice greets him. “Good morning Mr Whiteside, and how are you today?”

Robert considers the question, searches for flavour in the voice, but finds none. “I have to feed the cat.”

Undeterred, the caller invites Robert to imagine how much better life would be if he were to have replacement windows. Taking a moment to examine his current glazing and, facing a conversation of uncertain destination, Robert gently replaces the receiver.

In the kitchen, he carefully cleans a small ceramic bowl and measures out seven spoons of cat food from a freshly opened tin. Setting the bowl down on a brightly coloured plastic mat, he checks the time and returns to his front room to take up position at the window. Owen the fisherman will be passing soon on his way to the boat; this may be the day he brings his tax return, and Robert prepares himself to answer the door.

On the window ledge is a framed photograph of an elderly man and woman, staring awkwardly as if, in the moment of capture, the camera’s shutter had frozen them in some unnatural act. In the foreground, a young boy with thick rimmed glasses and unruly hair cradles a dozing white cat.

Robert’s fingertip brushes against the image: Sleep tight, Thomas. You’ll have let your food go stale again.

A flash of colour and Owen rounds the corner, walking with purpose into the wind and rain. Robert holds his breath as Owen looks towards the house but, without hesitating, strides on. Robert exhales, misting the inside of the window, while heavy raindrops smack at the outside.

Looking through the glass, he can see the effects of the weather—flailing umbrellas, flapping raincoats—but no attendant sound reaches him.

Robert and the outside world, divided by the double glazing’s silent void.

Peter Drobinski

Whispers

2009-01-24T10:00:00.002Z

Ger plods through the dry sand until he reaches the part the sea has licked clean. He huddles into his coat, fingers feeling the envelope crinkling in his pocket.

He tells himself that the water in his eyes is from the wind.

He lies.

The sand is slick from the retreating tide, shells with tiny pools around them, gulls following the tide.

The nutter is absent, thank god, or he’d have had to be patient and nice, and that would not suit. Not today. He needs to keep today to himself. Hard work, Doug is now. When he was a tiny lad Doug had helped him tie hooks on his fishing line and shown him how to fish for crabs. Then one day Doug told him that he’d joined the army, told him with a big grin that he was leaving forever.

Ger picks up a few flat stones, and a shell with an inside as pink as a sunset. The stones are spun into the water, just like Doug taught him years ago. Before. The shell he keeps.

He pulls the envelope from his pocket, the wind snatching at the paper. He reads the letter through, just in case it has changed since he read it last. The tears threaten, so he stuffs the letter in his pocket and zips it up. He runs to the water’s edge, where the waves keep time with his breathing.

He whoops and runs along the edge of the waves as they foam round his ankles. He yells, he screams, and waves his arms as he goes. He is six years old again.

Doug rises out of the rocks, horror on his face.

Ger stops. “Doug. It’s only me, man. I’ve got a job. I’ve. Got. A. Good. Job.” He grins wide enough to crack his face.

Doug relaxes, smiles vacantly. “A job.”

“Yes, man, a real job, not a part-time-helping-out-Mum job.”

Doug picks over each word like the pebbles he plays with. “You’ll go away, then?” he says. Today must be a good day.

“Yes—not for a while, though. Not for a couple of weeks.” Doug’s blue eyes lose focus. Maybe not such a good day. Or perhaps he’s upset, hurt. “I want lead my own life. I have to get away from here, see. I need to get away.”

Doug is looking skywards, lost again. Looking for Whitey. Ger shrugs. “Bye now,” he says. And as he walks away he hears a twenty year old whisper following him. “I’m going away, Ger. I’ve got away. And I’m never coming back.”

Linda Gruchy

Dead Wood Greening

2009-01-22T10:00:00.003Z

“They say you can see America.” The voice was old and cheerful, and down near Louise’s hip. Someone had parked the wheelchair so there was an excellent view of a rusty old iron shed. Automatically, Louise kicked off the brake and pushed the old lady slightly to the right.

“That’s better.” A nod of thanks and an appraising glance. “As I was saying: America. I reckon you’d need to lean sideways so Ireland didn’t block your view.”

Louise laughed, surprising herself, and peered, tilting her head to the left. “Nope,” she said. “Not today, anyhow.”

“What can you see, though?” The question was suddenly urgent. “There, where the sun’s breaking through? Don’t stop to think; tell me what you see?”

Oh dear. Louise shrugged and looked up and saw: Heavy charcoal clouds hemmed in flames with spires of opal, gold and rose, shooting heavenwards. “A celestial city!” The words burst out of her and she heard the sound of old, gnarly hands clapping drily together.

“Yes, you’re the one,” she nodded, gnomically. “Standing there like a lost soul; I knew you’d been sent.” She met Louise’s blank stare with a suddenly impish grin. “Don’t worry, dear, just let it happen. Still… better ask, I suppose. Needing a job, I take it?”

How did she know? Louise nodded. I could be a tourist.

“Used to looking after people, aren’t you?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Plenty of work round here, then. Living museum, Greyling Bay is, only most of us don’t realise we’re already dead.” She followed her witchy cackle with a nod towards the rock that overhung the bay, dominating the little town. “See up there? Black dots, high up? That’s George and Malcolm. Brothers sorely in need of a miracle, those two.” She held out a gloved hand. “You’ll take the job? Give my granddaughter a break? We’ll discuss it tomorrow.”

Louise walked thoughtfully back along the quay, drawn to the cheerful warmth of the café. Warmth, company—even if it was only the skinny, anxious girl behind the counter—and a cup of tea: that’s what I need now, she decided. That, and some time to consider the old lady’s offer. Smiling at the girl, Chelsee, Louise took her tea to the window where she had sat that first day.

Something different now, dead wood greening, cold bones warming, life doing what life does, in spite of you. ‘Cheerfulness breaking in’; a quote from something? Trying to ignore the old lady, Gwen Parry, and her parting thrust. “This whole town needs a miracle, dear.” Again that shrewd, appraising glance. “And you’d be the girl to know about miracles, wouldn’t you?”

Nicola Slade

Alwyn

2009-01-20T10:00:00.003Z

Find something ugly in the nets and you throw it back. That’s how it is in my world. Not in hers. She displayed her deformed catches in the museum and wrote about them endlessly.

We had just one thing in common: we trawled the depths.

The contents of this box are the last of her. The unpublished writings of a grave robber. I don’t believe in hanging onto the past.

As the flames snatch at the pages her last article, The Iron Age Castle, is published to the wind, together with umpteen letters from the hospital and a handwritten order of service with her name on it.

A Valentine’s card with a big red heart, signed with just a question mark. I don’t even remember sending that. Which proves my point. I used to argue with her: how can you say what people were doing two thousand years ago when we can’t even remember facts from our own lives?

Another layer of things from a much earlier time. A newspaper cutting: New findings at Bronze age burial mounds. Stacks of lecture notes bundled up with string. Exercise books: A history of Greyling Bay, parts one, two and three. What a bloody waste of paper. I told her that nobody would read it. Now they never will.

Photos of the twins’ first Christmas. I’ll keep those.

Another article: The Mesolithic Fisherman of Greyling Bay. It’s about how hard it was for the Stone Age settlers to fish. All of this from some pieces of flint.

Photographs of the wedding. Even in the best suit she could afford to buy me it’s still obvious that the posh totty had potted her bit of rough. Our black and white selves, smiling and innocent, are cremated as one.

Last is a letter, dated five years after we married. It’s not like her to have anything out of order. It’s on headed paper from the University, and although the writing looks like a woman’s it is signed Malcolm.

Dear Cerys,
I don’t know why you are avoiding me, I only want to see the twins and…
The letter ignites.

Find something ugly in the nets and you throw it back. That’s how it is in my world.

Allan Mayer

Breathe In, Breathe Out

2009-01-19T10:00:00.001Z

A sea fog like gunsmoke rolls in over sleeping Greyling Bay. Five AM and the only sound is the clank of bottles in a distant milk float: the fog has choked the dawn chorus. In Prospect Cottage, Sam awakes. There was a dream but it has dissipated before he has time to remember any of it. He gets out of bed and pokes his head out through the curtains, wrapping the ends around him to keep the cold out. Somewhere out there the sun is trying to rise, but it’s going to take all day for it to force its way through.

Sam goes for a leak. His head is thick with unfocussed thoughts. Steam rises from the pan. He staggers back into bed and curls up against Melissa. A brief grunt passes through her snores, then she settles down again. Sam, though, remains awake. For him, breathing seems to take too much effort, and his body is afraid of surrendering to the auto-pilot of sleep. His heart pounds out a strange, alien rhythm—a dull irregular thudding against the dead air.

Yesterday he and Melissa argued again. Why are we staying in this damp, overpriced little cottage with fake beams and a broken-down boiler, she had shouted. What are we even doing in this one-eyed town? If he were truly honest he was wondering the same thing himself. Because we’re broke and it’s all we can afford. Because. Because. The silence between them persisted for several hours before they surrendered to desperate, unsatisfactory sex.

Sometimes Sam wakes up and imagines that Melissa is dead. She is breathing so softly that he can’t detect a single movement. So he imitates her by lying still himself, straining his ears for the slightest sound. A raging silence envelops him. Nothing. She is dead, then. It is over. And then a sudden snort and twitch and she is back to life.

But now Sam worries that it is he is the one who is dead. Perhaps this bedroom is just some after-life simulacrum, a cheap copy thrown together to ease his passage into the beyond. That would explain the fog. The universe that Sam is in right now could stop at the end of the road.

Sam places his hand on Melissa’s buttock. It is warm. It is firm. She mutters something in her sleep, and he takes his hand away. She is alive. He is alive. Breathe in, breathe out.

Jonathan Pinnock

Caroline

2009-01-15T10:00:00.002Z

I forget things now. My memory is going the way of my bladder these days. But I remember others, a lot more than people give me credit for. By people, I mean him. He’s taken to calling me dad instead of Frank, as if that ring on his finger makes him my blood. My Sarah tells him to leave me be. She always was a good girl that one. As pretty as her mother too.

Caroline. The wind still carries her laughter and the sand still holds her footprints. There, at the window of the old Macphearson café, she sits bobbing up and down as she plays peek-a-boo with Sarah. It’s called the Greyling Bay Café now, all fancied up. But I still see the checkered tablecloths and gleaming salt shakers. And I still see Caroline. There, down by the pier where the Browning children are throwing bread to the gulls, Caroline walks to meet me for a date to the picture house up the road.

Bill approaches, net in hand. I’ve never seen Bill without a net in his hand.

"Hey Frank, nice weather for it, eh?"

I’m not quite sure what "it" is or what sort of weather would be good for it so I just smile. Bill’s a good man. His wife used to be one of Caroline’s pupils and when she came to the funeral she was the only one who didn’t try to say anything stupid. She just held my hand for a bit then said, "This is horrible."

"Frank, mate, why don’t you come in a bit and sit on one of the benches? This old rock of yours can’t possibly be comfy. You get soaked to the bone every time there’s a wave."

But I like this rock. Caroline sits by my side, her head in the curve between my neck and shoulder and talks about how many more hours we’d have to put in at the university to afford a house on the waterfront. Turned out it was a lot. I smell her Pears soap when I sit on this rock. I tell Bill no, I’m fine where I am.

Bill is saving to buy a new boat, he thinks he’ll have it by next spring.

I may well not be around for that. I may have gone to be with my girl. But you’ll hear me, catch a glimpse of me sitting on this rock from time to time. Caroline, Greyling and me, we’re in the fibres of each other. We’re a trinity.

Anna Russell

Gwiddon

2009-01-14T10:00:00.001Z

The men drift about the streets and pubs of Greyling Bay, their ropes slashed, their rudders broken. It’s a women’s world now. They own the cafes, the boarding houses and the knick-knackery shops. They clean the holiday cottages, mow the tidy handkerchief lawns, paint the fences bright blue and pink and plant the window-boxes with pansies and geraniums. The men no longer hunt after the shoals of silver but collect coins in buckets from tourists who peer suspiciously at the rust on Gwiddon’s breast and ask, “is it safe?” before stepping aboard with nervous, sandaled steps.

Yes. Greyling Bay had changed but not so much that Owen can’t still see the granite and feel the pain beneath the hanging baskets, and feel the worn treads in the steps up to The Jolly Fisherman, once the harbour-master’s office but now a shop selling baskets from China at silly prices, crab shells turned into ashtrays and plaster seagulls on metal spikes. Does it matter? The sea is still there, sighing, whispering and wailing. The bitch. The whore. His lover. She will bring the men to her again. She’s only biding her time.

Owen wipes his eyes, surprised to find them wet. The warming sun has lifted the wind. Gwiddon bobs like a bath toy on waves flecked with white-tipped waves.

He jumps down. Her engine starts first time. Sweet as a nut. Ann will be wondering where he is, complaining about wasted fuel. She has a meeting this afternoon with the local tourist board and he has to pick Beth and Gwyneth from nursery and then he and Gwiddon will chug around the bay, wearing a silly pirate’s hat with a harvest of eager tourists on board and dream that once their quota is exceeded he can toss them overboard.

Once he wished for sons. Now he is glad he has none.

Sally Zigmond

The View From the Edge

2009-01-10T10:00:00.002Z

From up on the Icarus Rock, the sea looks as smooth as a steel blade and almost indistinguishable from the sky. When I was a child I used to watch the fishing boats from up here as they returned to the harbour. Now only three remain.

Malcolm stands behind me. He’s a big man. When they downsized the university, he had to leave. He just didn’t fit anymore.

We walk together a lot. Well, Malcolm walks and I get pushed. I am playing my part in the ancient Greyling Bay tradition of “showing the cripple to the wind”.

There used to be a hospital here where people came to get better on fresh air. Only I will never get better. Nothing in me has ever moved properly, and it never will. They say I’m not wired up right. Even now I’m telling my arm to move. Nothing. When I do make things move they call it an involuntary movement.

Involuntary my arse.

“George,” Malcolm said to me this morning when he lifted me out of bed, “You know I love you, don’t you?” Of course I know that. I was there when Mum said, you promise to look after him until the day he dies, and he said yes. And then she closed her eyes.

I’m looking down now, at the rocks and the beach. I have never been this close to the edge. Beyond my tartan blanket my front wheels turn in the air, my harness holding me safely in my wheelchair. Malcolm buckled me in tightly this morning, like he always has. He has lifted me all my life without once dropping me. I can hear him mumbling away now, but the wind whips away his words as quickly as he can say them.

“Don’t worry son. I’ll come with you. We’ll be together. All of us. Please forgive…”

“Whitey!”

The voice comes from below. A man scuttles like a shabby crab along the beach. For a moment he stops and looks up, following the progress of a solitary gull as it heads towards me in its spiralling flight.

The rocks, the sand, the sky and sea retreat from my sight as Malcolm pulls me back.

And although he is silent, the vibration from his hands passes through the handles of the chair, into the backrest, and communicates to my bony spine that he is sobbing.

And when my right arm raises, I smile. I knew it would.

Allan Mayer

Let There Be Light

2009-01-09T10:00:00.002Z

“Mind if I open the shutters?” A faint sweaty waft as he edged past Louise: hard times for estate agents everywhere, especially here at the back of beyond. She suspected that he really needed this sale.

“Yes. Let there be light!” The words fell out of her mouth before she could stop them.

“What? What was that?” Louise met his bewildered gaze and gestured with her hand; a “silly me” flapping that seemed to satisfy him. The biblical stuff had got to stop; she’d left it behind, with all the rest.

He tugged at the latch and the light surged in through the wide windows, stencilling bright panels on the long cream wall. Behold, there was light. Outside yesterday’s greyness had bled into a watercolour, wet on wet; pale and luminous.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered, smiling.

“It’s very light,” he said, smiling back. “This is a unique development, not many old warehouses left untouched. Most of them were pulled down so this is special.”

She looked away from him and down the long sunlit room and wanted to weep at the sense of homecoming. This place was her place, the light was her light. From the window she could see the café’s scarlet sunblind: a brilliant spot of brightness amid the grey stone buildings.

“This was the show flat, you know.” She could hear his worry that the deal might slip away. “Hence the furniture.” An uneasy laugh, followed by: “Of course, you could always rent this place while you make up your mind? Get to know Greyling Bay? In your own time?”

Two hours later she was in. A month’s deposit paid, bags moved in, car in the designated slot. As she turned the key in the door she hesitated; what if the shadows were back?

But no, the long room was flooded with light and she felt a tremulous happiness. Let Andrew look for her; let him find her, even. There was nothing he could do now. She leaned out of the window and snuffed the salt on the air and the words were banner-high in her head again before she could help herself.

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills.

Nicola Slade

Owen and Glyn

2009-01-08T10:00:00.003Z

When his mother died, he was all for selling Prospect Cottage. Ann stopped him. She said they should tart it up and rent it out in the summer season. He told her she was mad. Gwiddon needed new lifting gear and her engine was a bugger to start. And without his boat how would he earn a living? But she’s right. Visitors pay silly money. It’s fully booked from Easter to October. They love the beams that were hidden under wallpaper until Ann got at them with a steam machine; they marvel at the stone bench carved into the side of the hearth. But they can’t see his mother there like he can, sitting stiff-backed, a pile of darning untouched at her feet, night after night, her ears stretched towards the booming sea and the wind howling in the rafters, praying, like every other wife and mother, sister and aunt and afraid to sleep in case they let go of the invisible rope that tethers the men to their hearts.

They weren’t there fifteen years ago when he and Glyn had to tell her that her husband of forty years had been dragged off the deck of the Merlin when he caught his foot in a tangle of rope. How they had watched helplessly as his skull smashed repeatedly against the hull like an egg, until the sea took pity and dragged him down. Owen can see him still, that look of disbelief and resignation as he went under, once in fact, again and again and again in his dreams. These strangers can’t know that his mother didn’t cry. She opened her arms as wide as the bay and folded her sons to her like a hen does her chicks although they were both grizzled men twice her height and girth. They had wept like babbies until she looked at them and said, “He wasn’t the first. He won’t be the last.”

Sally Zigmond

Bob The Books

2009-01-07T13:37:00.008Z

With watchmaker’s precision, Robert inscribes an inverted ‘V’ against the final figure on the bank statement, rules a red line beneath it to mark the month’s end. The bank account, adjusted to allow for cheques still uncleared, agrees with his total in the café’s cash book; reconciled to the penny, the weights of debit and credit in perfect balance. Robert Whiteside, negotiator of numbers, reconciler of differences, returns the ledger to its shelf in the windowless back room with a quiet reverence.

Now his mind is free of the accounts, noises from outside begin to find their way to him. Human voices and mechanical maneouvres; the random chaos of the café. Chelsee will be hot and bothered, boiling with endeavour.

It’s time to go home. Robert feels the first small waves of panic lap against his temples; a coolness above his upper lip. He forces himself to control his breathing as he clasps his hands around the door handle. A short walk, that’s all it is.

Three, two, one…

Zero.

Robert snatches the door open and steps into the disordered stew of clientele. If he keeps his glance aimed straight ahead he has a chance of escaping without incident. And yet disorder claws at the periphery of his vision: the new woman by the radiator, her car with the number plate not in the middle of the bumper: he’d seen it outside the B&B and couldn’t walk past it. The other two with their shrieky voices and cloying scents; Chelsee, distracted again.

“Bye, Bob,” reaches him as he finds the door. “See you tomorrow.”

He’s outside, head down, counting the paving stones.

One, two, three…

A cacophony of gulls swooping above him, swirling with the wind, clamouring for the attention he refuses to give.

…nineteen, twenty, twenty-one.

His key in the lock, unlatching, pushing open the door; and then turning, shouldering it shut against the chaos. Closing his eyes and feeling the calm order of his home cocoon him once more.

The cat will need feeding. Seven spoonsful.

Peter Drobinski

Owen

2009-01-06T09:55:00.002Z

The sea is smiling today, soft and beguiling. Damn her. Damn her. Owen scowls at her from the prow of the Gwiddon, hands gripping the rusty rail, feet apart, knees locked as of habit although the swell is as gentle as a lullaby. He prefers the whore, the witch, the harpy. He knows his place then. He knows every inch of her, every gentle curve, every bone and sinew of her but can never sense that moment when she’ll snap, snarl, catch you in her jaws and spit you out on the shore for the women to gather up like flotsam. But then, no man can.

He shuts off the engine. Gwiddon rests on the water, a baby at the breast, sated and sleepy. The only sound is his breathing, rapid and hoarse. He looks back into the smudge on the horizon that is Greyling Bay. The air is still; the sky a pane of frosted glass; the smoke from the chimneys as straight and true as a plumb line. A few desultory gulls drift across the quay waiting for the boats to return bursting with their slippery, silver cargo. They don’t know about quotas, about net gauges. They’ll have to make do with rubbish bins and scattered chips.

He slipped out that morning to scuttle his beloved Gwiddon and sink with her into the seductive mattress of water. Why fight? Why rise before a winter’s dawn and set out against the tide, sleet blinding him, the wild wind tearing his hands, scraping the skin from his cheek; the triumphant struggle to haul in the swollen nets only to weep tears of rage back on shore where, calculations made and heads shaken, most is poured back into the water, dead and rotting?

On such days he feels the madness rise in him. He lurches blindly into The Ship and then, too ashamed to face the look in Ann’s eyes, sleeps off the madness on Gwinnod’s deck.

Greyling Bay once was home to a hundred fishing boats. Now the three that are left are the tattered remnants of sanity in a world where a London newspaper pays him to talk about the ‘good old days’. The girl smiles as he swallows glass after glass of whisky which he isn’t used to and only drinks because she’s paying. He isn’t a man of words like this chattering exotic bird with her jangling bangles who sits across the table from him, affecting wonder and astonishment at his nonsense. He’s stiff and awkward at first—he hates to see a woman at the bar—but soon enough he stops caring and demands more and the more he drinks, the more lies and fairytales pour from his loosened mouth because that’s what she wants hear. When his own idiocy stares back at him a week later he wants to vomit but Ann, who knows it is nonsense, kisses him and says never mind, bach, the money will pay for shoes for the girls.

Judas, the sea whispers in his ears. Judas Iscariot.

Sally Zigmond

Greyling Bay Café

2009-01-05T19:06:00.004Z

Chelsee crushed the sweat from her forehead with the tea towel then looked round, her neck burning under the collar of her overall. Nobody had noticed. She breathed out, and a popper on the overall unpopped.

The dreary woman sat by the radiator stirring her tea to death, staring out across the bay. She probably thought the caff was too working class. Stuck up, miserable cow.

Another dribble of sweat ran down behind Chelsee’s ear. She shuddered. Tanya and Rachel were huddled over their drinks, laughing, co-conspirators. Rachel twisted her wedding ring as she sniggered over some bitching titbit, and slid a sideways glance at Chelsee.

Cadell the heroic, Cadell the wonderful, Cadell the two year old prodigy wriggled free of the chair, clutching the biscuit he’d been mumbling over and toddled over to the dreary staring woman. Chelsee hoped he would smear the soggy biscuit over Mrs Snootyboots, draw on her like a blackboard, but he didn’t.

Sweat trickled down the valley between her buttocks. So freezing outside, so hot inside. They called it a bun in the oven, didn’t they? But this wasn’t a bun, it was a time-bomb, tick-tick-ticking away. She blundered to the loo, grasping the seat with both hands as she puked. Great chunks of envy soured with despair.

She looked at her wrists, porcelain thin, poking out of last year’s cardigan. The thin tracery of old scars freshly overlaid by the purple and yellow from where dad had mashed her flesh with hands hard as coal.

He’d kill her when he found out. He’d bloody kill her.

Linda Gruchy

Invisible Ice

2009-01-05T10:45:00.007Z

Louise hunched against the radiator. The café was steamy but no heat reached across the counter to the customers even though the skinny woman brewing up tea had sweat running down her forehead. Maybe the cold is inside me, Louise wondered: maybe I should be drinking antifreeze? Hysteria threatened, sourness rising in her throat. She picked up her mug of tea using both hands to steady it.

Well, here I am, though God knows where “here” is.

She had slammed the door behind her, tossed the keys on to the estate agent’s desk and gunned the car towards the motorway. Go West, young woman. It would be difficult to go much further west without swimming, so here she was. Car parked outside the B & B, suitcase unpacked, registered for a week while she looked for somewhere to live, details already with a local agency.

A “stranger in a strange land”. “New beginning;” “fresh fields”. All that kind of crap. The lifeline she was clutching at was that nobody knew where she was. Dead to the world. Old life over. Gone. Andrew would search for her, of course, and he’d be efficient. Efficiency was his middle name after all; well no, actually his middle name was Daniel, but still.... Discreet questions, that’s how he’d start, then phone calls, online enquiries, perhaps even a detective; he’d try the lot but he would fail. Dogged Daniel, dogging her footsteps. The view from the steamy window was bleak and the beach deserted apart from an old man shouting at the seagulls and another figure (male? female? hard to tell) standing in front of an easel, wrapped up against the chill and painting the old man’s picture. If I walked into the sea, would they stop me, she shivered: would they even see me? I think I’m invisible; I’m nothing. A nothing-creature made of invisible ice.

“I got a bikkit,” confided a small voice at her elbow, startling her out of the dark thoughts. It was a small, round child, not obviously male or female, just a generic toddler creature. It held something up to view. “It’s a rectangliar bikkit.”

“Don’t bother the lady, darling.” The mother sounded half-hearted, deep in conversation and, the gesture made, she turned back to her friend.

“Look,” the small voice was polite but persistent. “There’s bumps on my bikkit. There’s ninety-seventy-nine.”

Louise stared at the child and mumbled something that seemed to satisfy its proud boast, then she exhaled a long, sighing breath.

Not invisible then, after all.

It was a start.

Nicola Slade

Whitey

2009-01-04T20:13:00.006Z

I watch a tramp sitting on a rock on the seashore. He chews on pebbles and starts swearing at the seagulls. 'Where's Whitey?' he yells. One of them is his friend, the locals say; only he's not sure which one it is. His name is Doug, I think, but I’m just a tourist, I came to observe, nothing more. My easel sways with the wind. It’s an isolated spot here between the rocks but he’s staring at me now in that vacant way of his. They say he was in a war but nobody’s said which one. He’s too young for it to be long ago. I try to capture the folds of his coats as he holds his hand above his head. The morning sun is low in the sky but it still blinds him. My brush sweeps across the canvas. I’m stealing life, I always think. Holding it prisoner. Playing God with a man who talks to birds. A man at my hotel told me he’s been yelling at the gulls for years. That he used to live in a home until it closed down. He pushes himself from his perch.

“What you doing, mister?” His words are brittle, unpleasant. He isn’t drunk. I always expect him to be but I’ve never seen a bottle of anything in his soiled fingers. His face is unshaven. His eyes two bright blue beacons shining out from a face darkened by madness.

“Painting.” I always keep my voice low and even. I imagine him carrying a gun, slung low. A soldier stalking me.

“Painting what?” he demands.

“Painting you.”

He moves around my easel and looks at the hunched figure on the rock. He laughs then leans around me to trace the faint lines of the seagulls above the figure’s head. “Is that Whitey?”

“Who’s Whitey?”

“Whitey’s flying. Whitey’s free.”

“Did Whitely die in the war?”

“No, Whitey didn’t die.” He shakes his head. “He flew. Up he went into a sky full of smoke and he never came back down. He turned into a bird, you see. That’s what Whitey did. He turned into a bird.”

“And you’re looking for him?”

“No, he’s there.” He points to the gulls dancing and whirling over the foam of the outgoing tide. He raises his hand and waves to them. “There’s Whitey.”

I stare at the gulls, waiting. Waiting. One splits from the flock, crying out, swooping earthward towards us. It follows Doug as he turns away. A white and black shadow, it follows him down the beach. “Whitey,” he calls to it. “Whitey.”

As I watch it stays with him. It rises and falls but it never turns away. “It’s just a gull,” I tell myself. “It’s just another gull. Anything else is madness.

Rona J Frith

Greyling Bay

2009-01-03T14:15:00.003Z

A seaside town with a harbour full of fishing boats and tourists, where you can pay to sail across the bay and imagine yourself pulling your living from the lapping waves as the sky soars blue above you. But think about fishing in winter, when you set off hours before dawn; when the lines freeze to your hands as you heave them in, and the waves lurch above you with every turn of the wind.

Where the mountains rise high behind the town and the only road out is sometimes blocked by a sudden fall of snow, a slow slide of mud-choked rocks; a tree, falling away from the sweeps of pine which cloak the mountains' lower reaches, beaten by the relentless slicing of the wind.

There used to be a hospital in the town which people came to from all over: it overlooked the promenade and all day long the patients turned their faces westwards, to the sea, watched the silt-green waves rolling across the cobbled beach, and slowly they improved. Now the hospital buildings are raggedy flats and residents come and go as regularly as the waves on the beach.

There's a university a little inland, quietly failing; to the north, around the peak of the bay, a caravan park. The students, the holidaymakers, the tourists—these transitory people wash through the town, the numbers swelling and retreating like a tide. The real inhabitants—the fishermen and shopkeepers and cleaners, the waitresses and teachers: the permanent inhabitants, the people who live here, with nowhere else to go—what do they do with their days? What do they think? And why do they stay?

Jane Smith

If You Want To Contribute

2009-01-03T12:07:00.001Z

If you'd like to contribute you must read the whole blog before you start to write, otherwise you’re likely to write something that’s redundant, or miss something significant.

I'll consider any thing up to a maximum of 500 words. Please check your work carefully for errors and typos before you submit, as I won't accept anything slapdash or hurried: it’s your job to ensure that your work is as polished as you can possibly make it before you send it in. I’m prepared to tweak the odd comma, but I’m not prepared to rewrite your work for you to make it good enough for inclusion.

Each piece must centre on just one person, location or event. Greyling Bay isn't very big: it will probably have room for more than one school teacher, more than one police officer, but only if they're required. Please don't duplicate professions unnecessarily. Focus on creating characters and locations; on developing relationships between existing ones; and on exploring histories and situations. Don't attempt to cover too broad a subject in one piece: I've deliberately kept the word-count low to encourage the observation of relatively small events. Telling detail. That’s the thing.

Your contribution doesn’t have to follow on from the last: each piece should stand alone as a piece of flash fiction, but contribute something tangible to the overall work. Feel free to develop themes or plots that other writers have introduced: this is a collaborative work. But don't rewrite characters or force them into uncharacteristic behaviour for no good reason.

6 Jan 09
Edited to add: If you're working on developing a particular character or theme, then it would be a good idea if you'd say so in the comments section beneath that character's original piece: that way, we can avoid duplicating work or sending one character off in two different directions at once.

You're welcome to submit more than one piece to me at a time, so long as they both contribute something and are complete alone: I'm anxious to avoid pieces that need to be read in series to make sense.

Genre, Tense And Point Of View

2009-01-03T12:06:00.000Z

I write literary fiction; I read literary fiction; I love literary fiction; and it's what I want you to send me. My definition of literary fiction is fiction which is beautiful, lyrical and pure: as close to poetry as prose can get.

I don't exclude any genres from this definition: I've read crime and fantasy and memoir which all qualify for the label. You are going to have a hard time persuading me to include anything here that is to genre-specific: I can't see too many pointy-eared elves or sonic screwdrivers appearing on these pages. But still: write them so well that they fit right in and I'll give them my serious attention.

Tense and point of view are trickier. For now I'll consider anything but in future I might have to impose a few restrictions to help flow and coherence. I'll see how we get on and let you know if I need to make any changes.

Submission Guidelines

2009-01-03T12:05:00.000Z

There’s no payment for any work accepted: we’re all just doing this for the love.

Email your work to me at "HPRW at tesco dot net". Mark your submissions "Greyling Bay" followed by a colon, then the title of your piece, and your name. Please make your title pertinent to your work to help everyone know what they're reading: character names, place names or events can all be used, but do try not to duplicate any existing titles.

Cut and paste your submission into the main body of your e-mail: anything with an attachment will be deleted unread. Include your name and approximate location (for example, “Jane Smith, Sheffield”) so that I can credit you appropriately, and your website or blog address if you'd like me to link to it (if you want to be really helpful you can provide the code with your name already embedded in it, to save me having to sort that out myself).

I won’t accept anything that I don’t think is good enough. “Good enough” means that your submissions have to be grammatically correct; properly spelled; and free from typos and punctuation errors. Your work has to consist of more than just a good descriptive passage: it has to tell us something new and intriguing about our town; suggest new directions that other writers could take; and be beautifully written, and pared to the bone.

Finally, no porn; no plagiarism, fan-fiction or stuff about real people or places. Nothing libellous, misleading or insulting. And definitely nothing boring.

Any Questions?

2009-01-03T12:04:00.001Z

I know that this is an odd idea for a blog, and that you've probably got all sorts of questions you'd like to ask which don't belong to any of the existing threads. So go ahead: ask them here. I'll answer them if I can although if I've been on the margaritas, I might just point and laugh.

Comments

2009-01-03T12:04:00.000Z

Please use the comments feature to discuss individual pieces of work, to suggest plot and character developments to each other, or to ask me questions or make suggestions for changes or improvements. But please don't try to submit work to me via the comments: submissions have to be sent to me via e-mail, as described in the submission guidelines, and any that appear in the comments sections will be deleted.

An Important Rule

2009-01-03T12:03:00.000Z

I expect everyone here to be respectful, articulate and coherent. No long, rambling comments and no rudeness; no libel, no plagiarism; and nothing boring. I'll borrow Absolute Write’s central rule and insist that everyone here respects their fellow writers; I will delete all comments which don't comply. However, I do encourage lively debate, so please don't think we have to always agree with each other: just keep it sensible and we should be fine.

Contributors

2009-01-03T12:02:00.015Z

Rosie Able is a part-time physiotherapist from Luton, who writes in an effort to silence the voices in her head.

Ali Bacon is an exiled Scot living in the West Country. She has a part-time job in I.T. and spends the rest of her time writing, blogging and playing golf. Her first novel, a literary romance, won some prizes but hasn’t been published. Her second (a very different kettle of fish) is due to be finished this summer. Meanwhile she’s had various things published on the web, and is delighted to have had a story accepted for a forthcoming issue of The Yellow Room.

Big Fat Lion is a compulsive writer who is very fond of cheese and onion sandwiches.

Faith Bretherick writes: I am as yet unpublished and have come to writing fairly late in life, having been married, raised children, pursued a series of merely functional jobs and had various pieces of writing returned to me, most notably by the BBC and week-end broadsheets. During my life and from enlightened observation during encroaching maturity, it has dawned upon me just how absurd many aspects of the human condition are, and this has happily coincided with the opportunity to do a lot more writing, which tends to be of a satirical bent. My completed novel 'Tales from Hake on Spinach' is currently being submitted for consideration by publishers.

Douglas Bruton writes: I am a teacher in Scotland. I have been writing for years. I have won recognition in over seventy UK based competitions over the past three years. I was on the 'shortlist' for Bridport last year, a runner up in the Fish Knife Award in 2007/8, won HISSAC 2008 and am on this year's shortlist for Fish. I have been published in lots of online and print literary magazines including Storyglossia, Vestal Review and Blood Orange Review.

Peter Drobinski spent seventeen years working in a university video production unit in south London, starting as a cameraman, then editor, then finally writer and director. He became a houseparent, moved to Sheffield in 1999, and now works from home as a self-employed book-keeper. He’s co-leader of, and occasional contributor to, the Sheffield Forum Writers’ Group: and despite his occupation he insists that he bears no similarity to Bob the Books.

Rona J Frith runs a writers' forum (membership by invitation only). You can read one of her science fiction stories here.

Linda Gruchy writes crime novels, and has published short fiction and non-fiction articles. She moderates an online forum for police officers, and works as a gardener.

Rod Holland has an O-level in geography, which shows how old he is and how little effort he made at school because it is his only one, and he really should have got a few more. But he still thinks school was a blast and remembers it fondly, especially the day he blew up the bike sheds.

Abha Iyengar is an internationally published writer and poet. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, magazines and literary journals, both in print and online, such as Mannequin Envy, Six Sentences, Citizen32, Arabesques Review, Nefarious Ballerina, Dead Drunk Dublin, Nothing but Red, and others. She is a Kota Press Poetry Anthology contest winner. Her story, ‘The High Stool’ was nominated for the Story South Million Writers Award. She is a member of The ‘Riyaz’ Writer’s Group at The British Council. She does digital art and photographs street life, and blogs.

Chris Leonard: prior to my career in the manufacturing industry I published a few short stories and won a handful of prizes for my short fiction and poetry; while I was working I published only in trade publications, company brochures and academic journals. Now I've sold the business and am enjoying a very early retirement, during which I hope to return to creative writing after my extended absence.

Allan Mayer manages a day service for people with Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities in the North West of England. His first novel, Tasting the Wind, will be available January 2009.

Nicola Morgan is an award-winning author, mostly of serious fiction for teenagers, but also non-fiction about the teenage brain. A former English teacher and dyslexia specialist, she lives in Edinburgh, where she writes full-time, but she also travels widely to talk about books, writing and the brain. She blogs on behalf of aspiring authors at http://www.need2bpublished.blogspot.com/.

Jonathan Pinnock was born in Bedfordshire and—despite having so far visited over forty other countries—has failed to relocate any furtheraway than the next-door county of Hertfordshire. He is married with two children, several cats and a 1961 Ami Continental jukebox. His work has won several prizes, shortlistings and longlistings, and he has been published in such diverse publications as Smokebox, Every Day Fiction and NecroticTissue. His unimaginatively-titled yet moderately interesting website may be found at http://www.jonathanpinnock.com/.

Anna Russell is a 29 year old writer from Scotland who has had her work published in Open Mouse, Identity Theory and Cause and Effect Magazine. She mostly writes short stories and poetry, but is currently working on her first novel.

Nicola Slade lives in Hampshire where she writes romantic comedy and cosy crime. She has had two novels published along with numerous short stories.

Jane Smith is a writer, editor and researcher. She runs Greyling Bay and How Publishing Really Works, and her book The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric will be published later in the year by Wooden Books.

Sally Zigmond writes short fiction for both literary and commercial magazines. She was assistant editor for QWF magazine and a reviews editor for the Historical Novels Society. Her novella Chasing Angels was published by Biscuit Publishing in 2006 and her novel Hope Against Hope will be published by Myrmidon Books in April 2009.

What's The Best Way To Read The Work Here?

2009-01-03T12:02:00.000Z

You can just start at the beginning, and read your way through it: I'll publish work in the order that it is accepted. Or you could use the labels to find your way around our town, and get to know the people who live in it. If you’re looking for inspiration for a piece of your own, the labels which tag the smallest number of works will probably provide more potential for development than the ones which have been explored more fully.

What Inspired Greyling Bay?

2009-01-03T12:01:00.000Z

A couple of years ago William Haskins began a wonderful collaborative poetry project called Blue Rock over at Absolute Write, which developed into an amazing collection of poetry, people, and places. Haskins found his own inspiration for Blue Rock in Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, a collection of obituaries for the residents of his fictional town.

While the individual poems in both anthologies are more than good enough to stand alone, they are at their best when experienced as part of a collection. When read together, the interaction between the poems reveal multiple layers of meaning and nuance which are not apparent in the single works; and the juxtaposition of so many different voices and stories create a compelling resonance and depth that haunts me even now.

I’ve played around with ideas for various collaborative projects for some time but I've struggled to find an appropriate form. I didn’t want to repeat the Blue Rock project by working with poetry, as good creative writing should focus on making something new and fresh. I wanted to engage with as many other writers as I could; and I wanted each piece to provide an intense, staccato burst of energy and surprise. And so I came to flash fiction.

I read a lot of flash fiction. I like its intensity; the quivering potential that it reveals; the way that it says so much by leaving so much unsaid. It is an immediate, urgent and unforgiving form which allows no room for error or self-indulgence; but when it’s done well it makes words sing on the page with a clarity that fascinates me.

And that's what makes flash fiction the perfect building-block for this particular collaborative work. By accumulating a collection of varying interrelated pieces here, I hope we can broaden both the ambition and the appeal of flash fiction, and produce something innovative. I'm well aware that this project could be a disaster: but there is a chance that it could end up as an inspiring collaborative work.

The Boring Small Print

2009-01-03T00:00:00.001Z

By submitting your work to me you automatically confirm that you’ve read and agree to all the various terms and conditions which I provide in this post and elsewhere on the blog, and grant me the rights to publish your work here, on this blog, or in a physically printed form if we ever get that far (I’m not counting on it, but you never know: if that possibility arises I will, of course, do my best to tell everyone who has contributed by email and/or by posting a notice here on the blog).

By submitting your work to me, you confirm that it is your own original work; that it's never been published anywhere else, in any form or medium; and that its rights are not tied up anywhere else.

You are free to publish your own work elsewhere if the opportunity arises. In that case do please let me know of your impending publication in plenty of time so that I can make some sort of announcement about your success (and also so that I won’t get all hoity-toity and go off on a “kill the plagiarist” bender if I discover it unexpectedly). Link your new publication back to this blog wherever possible, and add an acknowledgement along the lines of "This piece first appeared in Greyling Bay in January 2009”.

What you are NOT free to do is to take any of the characters created here by anyone other than you, and write them into a piece for publication elsewhere. That would be plagiarism and might well attract legal action, from me and/or the creators of the characters, places or events concerned. Nor can you publish a piece of work which is directly about Greyling Bay anywhere else, as Greyling Bay is my creation and therefore my copyright.

If you want to reproduce, copy or otherwise publish anything that you find here, you cannot do so without prior written or email confirmation from the original writer of the piece concerned. If you contact me through the blog, or by email, I’ll do my best to put you in touch with the writer you’re after but I can’t guarantee that all the contributors will notify me when their email addresses change, and nor can I guarantee that writers will be happy for you to publish their work: that’s up to them.

I accept no liability for anything published here: all work published here is accepted in good faith as entirely fictional and free from legal implications or restrictions. If you take exception to anything that you read here, liability for any wrongs committed rests entirely with the original writer of each piece: but I will do what I consider appropriate to soothe your feelings and rectify any wrongdoings.