An Alternative Writing Retreat
When the bridge was built it was brilliant white, but now the cars have spat their soot and the rain has found the cracks in the paint to make it rusty and orange. They painted it 10 years after it was built, 20 years after, 30 and on and on until one year they painted it and the next day it looked grey and orange again and the council said they weren’t coming back for it…
On this particular occasion I was returning home from doing some temp work in Cheltenham. I was a catering chef and was often away for a couple of weeks at a time, going wherever people needed to pay an eye-watering amount of money for some finger sandwiches and dry scones. I’d just missed my connection and according to the board my next train was delayed, indefinitely it would seem…
Sometimes as he walked, taking long and meandering digressions down side streets and across squares, through underpasses and over raised walkways that spanned like triumphal arches the segments of silent motorway, the architect liked to think that the very formlessness of his wanderings was a kind of pattern in itself…
You leave them dancing and sneak away. Everything has been said that can be said. You’re never going to forget each other. You’ll always be friends…
“Crystal Palace Park still carries the name of something that is no longer there, a building of plate glass and iron from the high Victorian age…”
“I’ve kept on being aware of sky since I lived in Norfolk. Up at Ivinghoe Beacon sky is paramount. Everything around you bleeds into it…”
Writer Jay Merill provides some background on the genesis of her short story “At Ivinghoe Beacon”, a tale about an apocalyptic cult in Buckinghamshire…