Night Duty

Another story written for  The Temple Works Christmas Story Project

*********

Peter sat at the small table – not quite a desk. He glanced towards the book, just not in the mood. He felt cold, and didn’t really want to be there, his watch told him half eleven. The door behind opened and in walked the uniformed guy he had seen earlier. They nodded at each other.

“Well, all ok?”

“Seems fine,” said Peter.

“I’m James, is this your first time on the job?”

“Well here anyway, first night. Just trying to get a bit extra for Christmas.”

“8 to 8?”

“Yep, what’s the ropes?”

James walked around the table.

“It’s easy enough, the area’s fine, sometimes a few homeless try to take shelter but we can move them on easy enough. You’re due you’re outside tour now!”

Peter stood up, “Sure.”

He walked out the door, glanced from side to side and then made his way through the main entrance. It was freezing outside and dark. He felt for the torch but once he had it in his hand he just lowered it. No need to turn it on.

He slowly made his way around the side of the building and out to the front. He saw the young man standing half way between the two middle pillars, just staring at the building. He cursed and briefly put his hands to his face. He waited for a minute but when it was clear the guy wasn’t moving off he started to walk towards him. He was young enough, maybe 25, and had a small bag over his shoulder, which told Peter he was looking for some where to stay.

“All right then?” said Peter as he approached.

“Ye, sure, no problems,” replied the young man in a cheerful tone.

Peter looked out across the road. Snow had started to fall and he thought about what he had to do next.

“Well eh, everything okay then?”

“Everything’s fine, just taking a look!”

“It’s just that you can’t really stay around here, you know? You’ll just get moved on if you try and sleep.”

The young man looked at him and smiled, “I know!”

Peter waited.

“Amazing building isn’t it?”

Peter looked at the pillars stretching up before him. It seems he was looking at a lot of amazing buildings these days. He hated night work.

“Ye, bit grim & dead, but suppose it has character.”

“For sure, do you know the things that have happened here?”

Peter looked at him. He wasn’t the usual vagabond type.

“Don’t really know it at all, first night here.”

“Well there are some stories. It was the largest room in the world you know!”

Peter glanced at the pillars, “No I didn’t, as I say first night and all!”

“Ye, it was some place. Sheep grazing on the roof, thousands working next door in Marshall’s, it was some place!”

“Look you can’t stay here, anyway it’s freezing so you’ll need to move on.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve somewhere to be, just like stopping to take a look. I used to work here you know?”

“Really?”

“Yep, along the front here, just a bit out, there were great railings. When the day was over it was mad, people pushing their way out.”.

Peter looked around.

“Hard to believe how things can change.”

“Ye, my last day here was around this time of year, didn’t expect it. Just like to drop by and take a look.”

Peter nodded, feeling a bit guilty. He was having trouble keeping work going himself.

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t worry, there’s something about this place, once you have a connection, it just stays with you, that’s all!”

“Snow’s getting worse, you sure you’ll be ok?” asked Peter.

The young man nodded, “I’m fine all the best!!”

He turned and walked away. Peter looked back towards the pillars.

“Hey!” called James from behind.

“Ye, what’s wrong?”

“It’s just a walk around, freezing out here, only takes two minutes!!”

“I was talking to this young guy, had to run him off. Sad really, he used to work here in the mill by the sound of it. Hate doing that at Christmas.”

“What do you mean used to work here? Place hasn’t produced anything in decades, no-one working here.”

“Well he was just here, told me all about the sheep and the old railings, and even the workers next door in Marshalls,” Peter threw his arm around.

“But sure all that has been gone for ages, don’t even know how long.”

“No couldn’t be, this guy was only in his twenties.”

Peter pointed in the direction he last saw the young man. The snow had rested a perfect white blanket across the road and he just stared.

“Oh, I see you’ve met one of the residents then!”

“What?”

“They come back from time to time, just to keep an eye on the place. Harmless really, by the sounds of it you met one of the nice ones!”

James turned and started back towards the door, “Come on, you’ll need a nip after that!”

Peter lowered his hand, and then placed it to his lips as if to check if he had actually spoken.

“But he was here…..”

One Last Christmas Job

I recently wrote some stories for The Temple Works Christmas Story Project and really enjoyed it. These relate to a building in Leeds called Temple Works and to read the story you really need to see the building. Here goes, the first story:

One Last Christmas Job

“Jayzuz, Johnnie, pull in quick!”

“What?”

“Comeon, quick pull in!”

Johnnie pulled the car over to the side of the road.

“Mick, we’re gonna be late for the flight.”

“Johnnie, we’re goin home, how much have you got?”

“Look we’ve been through this, we agreed it wasn’t worth bringing, that’s why my bleeding head is running a kango with no brakes.”

“Ye exactly, and you and I both know that when the women find out there’ll be murder.”

Johnnie looked at Mick and put his hands out as if he was raising a desperate prayer to heaven.

“Work is scarce, we’ve tried everything.”

“Save it for yer one, what if we were to bring a few hundred home?”

“And how’s that gonna happen? There’s six days to Christmas, there’s no job gonna happen now and anyway I’m in the season mood.”

“You get off that plane in Dublin with a fiver in your pocket after six months and I’ll tell you what that mood will be like.”

Johnnie looked at the steering wheel, he knew it didn’t just go straight and he felt like turning around.

“I have a solution.”

Johnnie slowly looked back at Mick.

“You, You have a solution?”

“Look, we’ve made a good bit of money out of the painting jobs right?”

“Ye, with the builders gone, the jobs still have to be finished but they’re all done now.”

Mick smiled and pointed out the window.

“What’d ye think?”

Johnnie followed his finger.

“What the hell is that?”

“Ye, exactly. A big old grey building, needs a good lift ye?”

“Look at the size of it, who’s gonna give us a job to paint that just before Christmas? The government probably own it anyway.”

“No-way, that’s one of those old wrecks of a building, the government don’t bother with that stuff anymore. They’re only into big flashy glass buildings. It’s probably some local group looking after it sure it’s in bits!”

“And how are we to find out who that is?”

Mick put his head in his hands.

“Johnnie, you have to think outside the box!”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“You don’t have to find who’s looking after it, they’ll find you!”

”Mick, there’s twenty pints of Guinness and half a bottle of vodka doing an impression of Niagara falls against my forehead, I don’t have the energy to work out you’re stupid schemes.”

“We’ve a load of that stuff from the last job in the back, what’s the best way to get work, show how good you are!”

Johnnie looked to the back of the van, inside there was a stack of paint tubs.

“You want to paint the grey building?”

“Don’t be stupid, without getting paid? Look, that’s a fierce dead looking place, the way to do it is to paint a bit, show them how good it will look and the job is our’s!! We can get it done before the big day!”

Johnnie looked at the grey building.

“There’s six pillars and it’s big.”

“Relax, look, with your skills with the auld abseiling, we can get two pillars done tonight, that’ll get the message across and then once we get the job, we can do the front and the side wall for a good price and finish it in the new year”

Johnnie sat thinking for a few minutes.

“It looks like some sort of palace.”

“No, it’s not a palace, it just looks like, I d’know, it’s just a big block, anyway there’s no flags.”

“Well, if we did two pillars, then what?”

“They’ll see it and give us the gig. We’ll agree the price, cash up front, and we’ll be hero’s when we get home! Delay the flight ‘till Christmas eve, the brother will get us on the flight!”

Johnnie was nodding his head.

“Might work, and we’d get the finish job work in January! We might get more work when people see it!”

“Comeon man, let’s go !!!”

<————12 hrs later————>

Johnnie hit Mick in the arm.

“Ow, dead arm man.”

“I told you it was a palace.”

“It’s not a bleedin palace, some eejit build a pyramid in Leeds.”

“She didn’t say it was a pyramid, she said it was a Temple!”

“Well whatever, she said some Egyptians built it.”

“Are you stupid or what? She said it was like an Egyptian Temple, not that Egyptians built it. Why do I ever listen to you?”

“Right lads, are you comfortable in there,” said the officer.

Johnnie looked out the window and saw the caretaker in tears pointing at the two blue pillars.

“What’s the big deal, why is she so upset, I did a good job on those pillars.”

Mick looked at the lady in tears being consoled by the lady police officer.

“You did a great job Johnnie, sometimes people just don’t appreciate a good job. It’s art, you’re an artist did you know?”

“I think we’ll move on when we come back after Christmas. What about Newcastle? I like Newcastle.”

“Newcastle? They got demoted last year, why do you want to go there?”

“I’ve twenty on them getting back up – I think I’m gonna win that one. Anyway, there’s lots of grey buildings, I’m just thinking about that now and I know there’s work there.”

“Fair enough. Yer man with the funny hat says they’ll let us out tomorrow so we should still be able to get a flight home.”

“Ye, what about the fine?”

“We won’t say anything about that at home, the usual story, slow pay money due, ye know!”

“We could have said that yesterday!”

“Over a hundred and sixty years !!!” the woman shouted at them as the car pulled away.

“You were right then Mick, over a hundred and sixty years and no-one had even finished the job. Maybe summer time would have been better. We should keep it in mind.”

Day 18 NaNoWriMo – It’s Over !!

Yes, it’s over !!!

18 days into NaNoWriMo with the challenge to write a novel of 50,000 words in the month of November and I hit the target today. The actual total at the end of today is 50252 words !! The story isn’t finished yet but not far off. My aim from the start was to get to that target and I wasn’t too concerned about the notion of going on much further. So I’ve worked to try and get my story to fit and I’d say another 2,000 max and it will be over.

It’s been a bizarre seven days. At the end of last Wednesday I had hit 33k, which probably gave me a good week ahead of schedule. But then as per my last post I missed Thursday and Friday, and Saturday / Sunday were always going to be dead days. So I faced into Monday with some concern and it felt like an age since the story was in my head.

Fear not, however, and the mother of all writing sessions kicked off resulting in the most written in one day since the start. I set myself a new target to hit 40k by Wednesday night, but the genie was out of the bottle and not only were the fingers moving faster than the brain, the ending to the story had now become clear. The fever continued through Tuesday into today and the final barrier was crossed just in time to watch Ireland and France in the world cup 2nd round playoff. Such timing. Would that the result of the soccer had returned as much joy as achieving NaNoWriMo, but it was not to be, seems my hands were not the only one’s in action!

I will finish the novel over the next few days and that will be it.

Then I will face the decision of what to do with it. Clearly it will be in no state to allow anyone to read it, so if I do ever want to let someone at it, I’ll have to read it myself and clean it up (they call that editing and proof reading I believe.) However, no matter what I do, I will always keep a copy of how it was when it was just finished.

I’ve enjoyed this and I’m really glad I did it.

Day 13 NaNoWriMo

Well, the best laid plans.

As I write this entry I ask the same as you, why isn’t he just doing the NaNoWriMo thing instead, and if you didn’t ask it, you may do by the end!

Working on the self fulfilling prophecy, as I tend to do, of the wall approaching and the stalling of the NaNoWriMo project, I had cushioned myself with a reasonable word count – giving me at least a week’s potential lost time. But the funny thing is – it wasn’t happening. While there was a ‘blip’ on one or two mornings, they were minor and were overcome with almost as much veracious attendance as this post is causing me.

But then a single event, resulting in a day away from the effort (surely allowed for) and a follow-up day to solve issues caused from that event, has thrown the invariable spanner. Surely not at this stage !! A word count of 33k out of 50k is an invitation to complete! Killer issue, the proximity of the two lost days to a weekend, which I had mentally flagged as the break (worked last week), might just finish me off.

Then I thought, maybe it’s not the lost days, maybe it’s the story itself!

In a recent forum post to the #NaNoWriMo group that represents my ‘area’ I did express a concern about part of the story that I wasn’t sure about. My story starts with a relatively clear idea, that a character you see will not survive the full story. Problem is as the story progressed, I didn’t want them to ‘not survive’, and the time was looming. I had to decide a course of action that would fulfill the original idea, or change that outcome.

I made that decision, and I am convinced that, which ever decision I made would result in the same, a complete halt to the proceedings. Maybe that’s the way it should be, I didn’t deliberately time it to coincide with a Friday 13th anniversary marking, but I’ll take it as it falls!

This is indeed a very strange world, and as I step back and consider my next step, I have a sneaky suspicion that this story will be written, read I’m not sure, but certainly written.

My best wishes to all #NaNoWriMo participants, it is an incredible experience.

Day 9 NaNoWriMo

I either thought I was taking a huge gamble by skipping Saturday and Sunday, or I knew I’d miss them and wrote like mad for the first six days! I think both are possible and as I returned to NaNoWriMo today, I was nervous that the momentum would have been well and truly deflated. Fear not, however, as the same approach taken last week, when re-applied today, has borne fruit and I have crossed that sparkling milestone of half way at 25,927 words.

It’s a strange feeling when you have an idea  (and only an idea) in your mind for a story and as it progresses you desperately want to change it when you get to like a character you know is doomed. You almost want to reach out into the text and grab the paragraphs you know are going to affect that character and rip them out. But that I feel would be a mistake. While I don’t know yet exactly how things are going to happen, I do know how things were meant to end up, and to change now might simply sabotage the whole idea.

This whole exercise is quite bizarre. You move from creating the story to watching it and back again, many times. And as I pass the half way mark, I am about to create those circumstances for that character from which there is no return. So it continues, and as always, I still fear that wall might suddenly appear and the story might simply stop, just like a power failure when watching a film!

The Honest Scrap Blogger Award

A fellow blogger and someone who I had started to consider as a friend until he tried to totally sabotage my #NaNoWriMo efforts by giving me this prestigious award, one @goonerjamie should be visited (that later), and his excellent blog http://goonerjamie.blogspot.com/ should be high on your reading list.

This skillful and humorous scribe has awarded me The Honest Scrap Blogger Award. I will gladly accept this honor as I have never won nor am I ever likely to win such literary acclaim again. (Note I have started a new Blog Category titled Awards.)

You may think my acceptance tone a little ungrateful, and so I will reveal the reason. There are rules to accepting.

1. ‘The Honest Scrap Blogger Award’ must be shared.

2. The recipient has to tell 10 (true) things about themselves that no one else knows.

3. The recipient has to pass along the award to 10 more bloggers.

4. Those 10 bloggers should link back to the blog that awarded them.

So, as I slide off my ‘Scream’ mask I have worn with great discomfort since Halloween, rip open my shirt and bare my chest to the world (which is marginally less frightening than the mask), here is my list:

1. We did have one slice left when my wife went to work that morning
2. I lied when I told @winsloweliot that I lived in the 3^rd house past the 2^nd pub after the church where Paddy Joe fell off the roof, it was Micky Joe, sorry.
3. I’m related to the chief negotiator for Ireland in the agreement with the USA signed during the Cold War to ensure every future US President is of Irish Descent. Can’t tell you what we gave in return, but I think it was the St Patrick’s Day Parade.
4. I didn’t skip all the music lessons only some of them.
5. The local ATM wasn’t broken, I just wanted to go for a long drive in my new car.
6. James Bond was not the only thing on that night and we did have spare batteries for the remote.
7. I wasn’t sitting in as big a puddle at that Leinster Rugby match before they put the roof on the new stand, so swapping might have helped?
8. I knew “P.S. I love you” started at 8pm not 8.45pm
9. It was £7 I had left not £6.50 when I phoned home from Spain with no job & 2 weeks behind on the rent, but you get the idea.
10. I am on Facebook.

And now my soon to be ex-friends who I happily present the next round of Awards to:

1. JL Pagano – @JL_Pagano with http://www.jlpagano.net
2. Will Carling – @willcarling with http://rucku.com/mod/blog/everyone.php
3. Johnny Fallon – @jonnyfallon with http://johnnyfallon.blogs.ie
4. Kathleen DeCosmo – @katiesheadesign with http://kathydecosmo.blogspot.com
5. Laura Benedict – @laurabenedict with http://laurabenedict.blogspot.com
6. Sharon D Lovell – @NoReinsGirl with http://noreinsgirl.wordpress.com
7. Yvonne Reilly – @yvonnereilly with http://ithadbetterbegood.blogspot.com
8. Phil Kirby – @philkirby with http://www.philkirby.info
9. Rachel Pattisson – @RachelPattisson with http://rachelpattisson.blogspot.com
10. Alyssa Miller – @RedExpress9 with http://redexpress9.wordpress.com

If some of you have already been awarded, looks like you are off the hook !

And as for @goonerjamie (http://goonerjamie.blogspot.com/), well, thanks for the break from #NaNoWriMo