The new norm – short story

(An excerpt from a little something I’ve been working on)

We have been travelling for weeks now – the days rolling by with a steady, repetitive pace that makes it difficult to isolate one from the next.

I’ve been trying to keep track of the nights, scratching tiny marks in to the soft leather of my bag. But it’s too easy to become displaced, removed from it all in such a way as to get confused with time.

With winter approaching, the days are becoming shorter – and the heavy cloud cover means you can’t see the position of the sun at any one time anymore, or notice when it disappears.

Small chat is no longer necessary. We realised long ago that there was no point talking about the niceties of life for the sake of politeness. Thinking about our old life only brought up emotions we’re not ready to wear.

Those enjoyable moments that build the foundation of a normal, civilised life seem too distant – it’s as if they never happened. Slipped through the crevices of memory, into a dark and unreachable hole.

The days consist of walking, hiking, and climbing our way across flat plains and rolling hills. We have become one with the earthy soil, the crunchy grass, the dribbling stream beneath our feet. We don’t know what the landscape has in for us next. The environment seems in flux, rebelling against the practical and surprising its travellers along the way. Yet still, we persist, ignoring the protests of our bodies each and every minute.

I can’t help but shiver. The temperature is dropping.

Lumiere Festival, London

The past four nights have seen Central London transformed. Regent Street, Oxford Street and Piccadilly were just a few of the usually-very-busy roads that were closed off to traffic and opened up to pedestrians. The reason? To allow people more space to enjoy the light installations dotted around the area for the Lumiere Festival. And good thing too, the amount of people that came out to experience the show was insane – it wouldn’t have been ideal to have to deal with overflowing pathways while dodging buses and taxis at the same time.

We finally wandered around the area last night, the last chance we had to catch it all on display.

Memories before bed

Staring at the bookshelf, whiling away the minutes

I’m getting lost in the designs on the spines, the wording of the titles. 

Snippets of beloved stories enter my mind as I scan each one, but they float by too quickly, the next swiftly taking its place. 

How many have I already read? Which ones are left? Should I rearrange them, by height, by colour, by alphabetical order?

Turning to the other wall of my bedroom. Favourite cards, concert tickets and restaurant tokens pinned to a cork board. The smiling, giddy faces of my baby nieces, nephew, siblings, girlfriends and main man. 

Elena Ferrante’s My Beautiful Friend has me gripped

Book one of the Neopolitan series: My Beautiful Friend. I’ve been meaning to get stuck in to this book for a long time. The pressure peaked in September, around the time Ferrante published the fourth and final novel in the series. I found it staring at me from the bookshelves of Waterstones with more gumption than ever. In true marketing style, the book sellers tried to get everyone who missed the boat in 2012 to jump on. Shoving the whole series on to elaborate displays as they have, it’s all been a bit difficult to escape, particularly in the lead up to Christmas. I’ve seen the books on so many ‘to buy’ recommendation lists I’ve lost count.

But rightly so. Now I’ve dipped in to the first, I’m totally convinced and am keen to spread the Ferrante love.

The other side of the world

Take me back! Here are a few snaps from a recent holiday to the home country (from top left across: Byron Bay, Gold Coast, Sydney and Melbourne – @paigielong)

Stranger danger – short story

The expanse before me was endless, I didn’t know which way to look. The sheer cliff to my right loomed jagged and severe, the stone fading from white to grey and back again like painted streaks, topped with a delicate green that spread like moss.

To my left was the sea: a dark, ominous sight, the path that led to it made up of rocks, chunks of earth that signified a treacherous footing.

But there was something serene in looking straight ahead at the wide, open green space in between these two natural walls.

A double stroller was parked some way ahead, the shapes of two small children running around in the distance, a relaxed mother and father looking on, enjoying the freedom the spot offered, if only for just a little while.

The family’s laughter filtered through the air, the sound echoing across the field and reaching my ears as I sat on a stone of my own at the base of another cliff.

There was nobody else in the area besides us.

I wondered if they had seen me. Surely they had. Did they wonder who I was, what my story is?

Did my presence only fleetingly enter their minds, before they became distracted by their young children? Or were they still thinking about me now, annoyed, even, at the fact I was watching them? Perhaps they feared a predator – hawkish and manic eyes looming at an untouchable target. When really, they should have felt concern for a lonely, unpredictable soul who could rob their children of their innocence in one single action…

Driving with a view

It’s a harried affair, driving through London.

No matter how much time you give yourself, you will always get the estimate wrong. And there is a delicate swing between being far too early and far too late.

The further in to the centre of the city you venture, the number of ordinary cars start to drop, and buses, taxis, delivery vans and other trucks become the main companions on the road. Streets start the awful trend of being one-way, and you find yourself participating in an inexperienced race through an endless maze; nervousness and anxiety never too far away. If you get it wrong or hesitate a bit too long, you feel the heat – the frustration – from those behind and beside you. Meanwhile, the number of tourists or arrogant locals trying to outpace the traffic on foot and get in your way, starts to grow.
But there is some upside. And that comes from seeing the city transform.

Us, by David Nicholls – an ode to observation

Us. It’s a tale of highs and lows, told with such bluntness it will leave you analysing your own thought-processes for days afterwards.

This is the story of one man’s journey to self-realisation. Clichéd, you may wonder? Definitely not. It’s an emotional ride full of cringe-worthy and hilarious antics every bit of the way.

David Nicholls has that enviable skill of being able to translate everyday observation in to simple words. Every scene is written down to the minutest detail – to the point where you find yourself balking at the page: “I thought I was the only one who thought that?!” Moreover, those words are put into logical, relate-able sentences that are as gripping as they are pensive.

Remembering holidays by writing

A few weeks away on holiday really does know how to mess with your system. It’s just enough time to let you fall in to complacency. Everything becomes a sign, a whimsical wondering of how your life was supposed to be spent. It’s too easy for a sense of make-believe to take over, where you start to doubt reality while sharing in the experiences of all these new places and people you meet along the way.

But then it’s back to the real world, and the ups of the holiday are suddenly met with simple monotony. The trip really did take me to some interesting places. Up in Ireland it was a full family affair for my Dad’s wedding as we crossed in to Belfast, Portadown, Loche Erne and Derry. Then it was down to Cornwall where I stayed at a B&B in the surfy town of Newquay with my sister and three-year-old nephew, and besides the beach we also got to go on a few driving adventures, one of which was to a traditional country (i.e. cyder) farm.

Each place was so distinct and I have so many different impressions and emotions rolling around my brain whenever I pause to think about what I’ve experienced.

Finding refuge in a bookshop

Like many writers, I love a good bookshop.

That feeling you get as soon you take one step inside is just bliss… You’ve reached your sanctuary.

No matter how long you’re there, you can trick yourself in to thinking that nothing else is worth worrying about anymore (except how you can budget for the next addition to your book collection, of course).

Forget the outside world for a while, and just let the words housed within the four walls wash over you. You try imagine reading this, reading that. You wonder about the authors. How they came to be. What drives them? How on earth did they have enough self-discipline to write an entire book, rewrite it a few times, find an agent, an editor, get a publishing contract, and then promote the book to such an extent that they can actually sell the thing? It’s insane.