Who turned the light off?

I’m a little overwhelmed at the moment by the amount of work that I need to do for my MA... And the perfectionist in me isn’t making it any easier.

Anyway, I sat down last night with no idea about what I was going to write for this week’s theme. I started four posts and abandoned them all – and then, surprisingly, I started to write the beginning of (what I think might be) a short story. I don’t know if I’ll ever get round to finishing it – but I’ll share what I have so far...

Who turned the light off?

Light is what they tell you to believe in. They tell you that things will get lighter, brighter, that it won’t last forever. They say that someone has just switched the light off, and that someone will be around shortly to switch it back on. They try to convince us that there is hope, that we each have futures, but we don’t believe them.

We sit in our own private darkness every day. Some sit in the dayroom, chain smoking in front of a flickering TV, others pace up and down the corridors counting the number of stains on the carpet and a few don’t even manage to rise from their dormitory beds. But the new girl is different; for a start, she’s younger than the rest of us. Sixteen, I think they said.

You can tell she’s met the darkness. She has that same look that we all have – like you’re balancing massive invisible crates on your back, or like you’re about to fracture into a thousand pieces.

It’s not long before the whispers start – people guess: pills? blade? rope?

When we get our first proper look at her, we all glance, firstly, at her neck – clear – and then her wrists – also clear. Firefly, whose real name is Amber (but only they us it), is the first to talk to the new girl.

“So was it pills, like, paracetamol?” she says

The new girl is sat cross-legged in a corner – writing something in a small grey-covered notebook. She doesn’t react to Firefly’s question, she just continues writing. These are the second and third things that make her different to the rest of us: she writes, sometimes for hours, and she never talks. We decide to nickname her Shush.

Thank you for reading,

Lara 

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A thrilling finale

On Saturday night the people of Great Britain voted a dancing dog to be the most talented act in the country. They deemed a dancing dog fit to parade in front of royalty in Jubilee year. They gave light to the bleakest of talentless nutcases that it can be done whilst plunging the nation into what will hopefully in two weeks be regarded as shame.

If you enjoyed the dancing pooch, fair play to you the first time, I did myself. The second time. The third time? To think that this is the pinnacle of talent the island has to offer annoys me. I hope then, that maybe the people who should have didn't bother auditioning (as always seems the case).

Back in the real world, yesterday saw Man City pull off their first Premiership title win in my lifetime. I sat there as most people did thinking the blue half of Manchester had thrown it all away, that QPR had done a job and that somewhere in the madness of it all everything had flipped on a knife edge. The whistles started to go in around the country, with Mancini time still being played at the Etihad and would you believe it, they smash two in and steal the title back from United's noses. By the time the papers are opened tomorrow, the whole thing will be relegated to statistics (and the top half all ended the day exactly where they started it).

Last year I sang beyond the final whistle at Old Trafford as Blackpool were relegated. The pride, the glory of it all and then the disappointment were all a little bit too much and, unsurprisingly, there were tears. That day inspired me to write the Dreamland poem when the Dead Good Poets were seeking submissions for the Blackpool anthology. This weekend, with a blog post in mind, I found myself thinking football poems again. Light and Dark is our theme for the week, and though a little rushed through, this is where I went with it.



We talked of legends for hours. Always legends. 


In the playgrounds we traded icons like stickers
Your Lee for my Matthews, some other kid's Law.
We played cup final day in the alleys back then, every night
we played pens with one poor sod on stones. 


Those were the days, in the days of our elders
the legends of their youth, the nothings of ours
the light we hold up in their memory brings darkness
overshadowed by heroes, here a long time before.


You talked then of fortress Maine Road, you went down
and I laughed as United swept off with the league
and my lot milled along: results read out last, goals never shown
but just three quid in each gave us somewhere to go.


Nobody told us back then, as young boys, that the games
we built childhoods on course through the veins of the men
who remember Maine Road on a wet Tuesday night-
with that tunnel out back, being penned in through spite. 


The Blue Moon never rose in my lifetime before-
at one point I doubted that it would endure through the dark
then from somewhere, as legend, came Keegan to steer
then Sven, Hughes, Mancini- one to make his name here


Glass eyed fan on the telly, I'm glad you've now won
Enjoy it, think of all the grounds the lads have been on
This was one for the memory bank, no shame now in tears
Light has come from those dark days, light to hold up for years. 



Thanks for reading,
Shaun.

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