Cyril the Ack

Just finished reading Stephen King’s On Writing.

He thinks most books about writing are” filled with bullshit.” Well his wasn’t. Found it most entertaining and thought- provoking.

Vocabulary should be real and reflect your character’s education, social standing and physical surroundings.Why write“he wished to defecate” when what he would really have said is “I gotta shit.”And if the Christian /Muslim/Buddhist Reading Circle objects then tough excrement to them.

All his talk about shit, childhood memories and life experiences took me back to my own, in a village in South Wales. 

My brother and I weren’t allowed to say shit in case our playtimes were overheard by the chapel neighbours who surrounded us. Besides, Grandpa was a big noise, a deacon, and my mother played the organ. And so we made up a new word which we could shout from the rooftops without fear of retribution. The new word was punchy, short with a satisfying resonance:-

ACK!

How we loved that word. When Richard Burton in The Longest Day was forced to bail out of his airplane, he complained he’d been hit by Ack Ack fire. We howled with laughter as our parents looked on, bewildered. And then Tim Burton goes and gives his Martians in Mars Attacks the alien language- one endlessly repeated word:-

ACK...ACK...ACK...ACK...ACK!

Well I was doubled over, crying and laughing so much I nearly had a heart att-ack! (Sorry, couldn’t resist).

So we solved the “that which cannot be mentioned” problem in much the same way as Granny did hers. The Welsh equivalent of Heavens’ above (yes I know it’s mild) is “Nefoedd wen”, white heaven. Granny’s solution was to call it “navy blue. “So whenever she stubbed her toe or tripped over the dog it was navy blue this and navy blue that. 

In Wales people are often known by their first names followed, not by their surname, but by their occupation.

And so we had Idris the shop, Will the papers, and Mary the Plough (her farm). Idris’s wife, Peg the shop, had a maniacal laugh. She may have sounded like a hyena but with her bouffant brown beehive, scarlet lips and thick orange make up she was considered quite glam. There was a bright blue van, emblazoned with James which used to come round selling food. James, seeing three generations settled in the old house once annoyed the elders by asking whether we were living “through and through.”So my parents called him just that.

We thought that was his real name and when we heard his van chime we cheerily yelled out “Through and through “is here. His didn’t sell madeleines but I can still smell the old Camp coffee and that coconut snow cake with a cherry on top.

One day Dai Bomber was coming to mend the boiler.

“Why he’s called that?” I asked my mother.

“Shhh, they say he’s one of the Free Wales Army.”

In case you’re wondering, nobody was hurt in these short-lived arson attacks on English owned second homes in Mid Wales. And the boiler survived his attentions.

Up the road lived Cyril. Cyril worked for the sewerage company so we dubbed him, yes, that’s right-

Cyril The Ack!

My mother finally cottoned on. She was more concerned about the dangers lurking in the sewerage works, situated on our land.

“Don’t you dare go there, it’s very dangerous and full of snakes.”

We made a beeline for it.

Scrambling over the No Trespassers sign we found one small gap in the mighty metal 10 foot fence enclosing it. It looked that high, but I was small then. Listening out for snakes rustling in the grass we stared at a fetid brown square area surrounded by a concrete wall and wondered.

Later that night I could not sleep. I was haunted by the What Ifs.

What if I walked on the concrete walls, just for the thrill of it?  What if I slipped and fell into its stinking, suffocating open mouth?  What if it engulfs me mercilessly and, as I scream, it sucks me down, down, helpless into the dark abyss. What if adders slither up and strike from all sides hissing and laughing in their own adder language:-

“Welcome to hell Persephone .No pomegranates down here love. Just oceans of Ack.”

What if I’d bloody written this stuff years ago, and better than I’m doing now?

I know a guy who would have, even at that age.

An expert alchemist like Stephen King could turn any old ack into pure gold.

Unfriending

Went to lunch with my friends yesterday. In the car was dismayed to find my expensive Philip Kinsley comb was severely damaged. Something or someone must have trodden on it.

“Look, it’s got half its teeth missing!”

“Well it’s getting on a bit, just like you!” said Ann- Marie. Huh! Some sympathy.

Over lunch, I moaned, yet again, about my weight while tucking in to a Caesar Salad. Sophie’s party was being discussed. A fancy dress one themed on the letter “P.” 

I was musing whether to come, being the shape I was, as a pumpkin, but I settled on Princess, yes, that was more my style I said, flicking my long blond hair.

“You could come as Miss Piggy!” chortled Ann-Marie.

You can go off people can’t you?

As I beat her about the head viciously with a paper napkin I wondered.

Now if that was said on Facebook, then I could unfriend her at the stroke of a key. But in real life you can’t do that. Real friends are the flesh and blood people sitting next to you, not some ersatz figure spouting one liners in the “Like” space on a computer screen.

Last week I happened to bump into an acquaintance at uni. We sat having tea in the students cafe, surrounded by undergraduates.

She was telling me about the storyline in her latest chick lit novel which she’d self- published. Well she calls it chick lit, I call it soft porn. There was one part where she was describing some unmentionable foreplay with a lipstick. As the youngsters’ aghast faces turned towards us two middle-aged ladies I really wished she hadn’t mentioned it.

 I wanted to shout-

“We’re not cougars (though I was wearing a leopard skin number at the time) and this is just stuff she’s made up!”

“Shhh” I told her, “Or we’ll get chucked out of here for corrupting the faculty.”

Now that was a case for unfriending, there and then, but I didn’t.