Mirissa Beach

This is Mirissa Beach on the South Coast of Sri Lanka. It is one of the places that Ethan visits on his trip away from England.

This picture was taken before the 2005 Tsunami.

Assessment One: 'Indulgence'

The assessed part of my course is three 500 word stories. This is the first; a 'character summary.'

Mr Studer was a pale, imposing man of fifty six. He was as broad as a telephone box and nearly as tall. He stood in his gloomy study admiring a picture of his second wife. Behind him the shutters kept out the streaming Puertabanus light and the room retained some semblance of cool in the middle of the day. People said that he must be north facing, because he never caught the sun.

Maria, his old maid of eighteen years knocked at the door and brought him in a tea set that clinked on the tray as she moved. She laid it on the desk next to a hard backed volume on oenology.

“Thank you” he said without smiling.

He looked back at the photo ‘She was the best looking’ he thought ‘of all of them’. Mr Studer was obsessed with women and their fine elegant features, their necks and fingers; a constant obsession that skipped from one woman to the next so much so that he was found to be most inconstant by both his previous wives. Like the women, the divorces had been very different; the first had been happy to get the money, but the second he had hurt very badly. He gripped the top of his padded chair; its leather was stiff and cracked, ‘but by and large they did not impact upon me too much’.

Still with Anna, the delightful third, he had been faithful. She reminded him of the second; blonde, sylph-like, thirty four and so full of newness and joy that he could almost cry when he saw her. It felt different this time; there was something about her, and there was also something starting to be different in him.

He poured himself a cup of tea. The liquid was dark and its smell bitter. He wrinkled his nose; it was stewed. Maria never got the tea right, and he always tipped it away so as she wouldn’t know that he hadn’t liked it.

Behind him was a large framed picture of a horse situated in a Gainsborough country scene. It had an unusual amount of relief even for an oil painting. He had loved horse racing and sponsored many events a long time ago. He adored the thrill of the day, the beautiful animals and the girls in all their finery. The horse in the picture was ‘Promised Land’; the very first indulgence he had bought for himself when he sold the company. He loved that horse; back then for a time he had wanted to set up with a colleague and start a stables. But when ‘Land’ fell and had to be put down he had lost interest in the idea for good.

Most of the time he looked at the painting without experiencing any of the sadness he once bore, and today was no different, he looked at the glossy flanks and remembered that moment of painted perfection, and nothing else.

Levi's Story 1

With a jolt eighteen year old Levi woke at a thunderous roar right by his head. He lifted his aching temples in shock and saw that the noise was coming from a convoy of juggernauts that were crashing along the carriageway beneath him. Relieved, he shut his eyes again: they were fifty yards away from where he lay dishevelled on the grubby slope of the autopista embankment.

Now conscious, but still confused, he touched his hair and his pale face. There was dirt in the wet corners of his mouth and an acute throbbing in the left side of his head. He lay still for a moment longer before pushing himself up onto his knees and falling back gingerly onto his dusty jeans. The sun was dazzling; he had to shade his ice blue eyes from the flashes of the glittering Mediterranean that stretched from the far side of the road on to the horizon.

‘Another night’; the familiarity of the situation steadied him. But even as it did he panicked again and felt his wrist anxiously for his watch. It was still there; his granddad’s old
Oyster. He took a deep, unpleasant breath of fumes and finally after a flying start, his heart rate had a chance to lessen.

He looked back down at the passing traffic, his shivers subsiding in the warm air. He could not recall the previous night as distinct from the others but he knew what it would have been like; he smiled knowingly.

There was certainly a girl involved, there always was: Levi fell in love, and out of love every second day. He considered Lucy, his old girl back in England, and shook his head. It hurt, and a flicker of malice momentarily dislodged the smile.

He brushed the grassy debris from his black shirt, casually noticing that it was ripped and ruined. Then he looked to his left knowing already what he would see. At a distance of two hundred yards along the scrubby noisy verge was the nightclub where he had spent most of the last week.

“So...” he said quietly to himself; his clear, correct accent was immediately drowned by the passing tyre roar. He looked at his watch, its face comforting him ‘… it’s ten thirty on Sunday February the 18th…’ and with a mental clunk he suddenly placed himself “…fuck I’m late for school.”

School started that evening than 1000 miles away in south east England, it was the end of half term.

Levi's Story

So a fortnight into the Open University course and I'm having some misgivings about the depth and clarity of some of my character development in Elision.

A lot of our work at the moment is helping make our character development as clear and as dramatically dynamic as possible. With this in mind I have decided to take some time off from Elision while I finish the course and work on a backstory for Levi.

The plotting of the story should not be affected but I would feel more comfortable with a little more definition about the characters. The time, and the course will hopefully help with this.

I am looking forward to writing Levi's Story soon, maybe one day it will prove to be the first part of a two part book... maybe!

Picked Up

Just a shout to Iqubed for putting my Machinima piece on their blog:

http://www.iqubed.biz/blog/category/creativecoffee-club/

(Interviews by Leean Pindar)

Creative Coffee Club in Machinima

After dissecting the interviews from the first Creative Coffee Club meeting at Foyle's Cafe and resaving them as .wav files I could import some of them into a short Machinima sketch, again using Moviestorm.

Chapter Four (Part Three)

After they had said goodbye and Jen had taken the short walk back to Levi’s flat; the four rooms above his shop. She sat down on a sofa in the small cream walled lounge and, while listening to the occasional car rumble past, she thought first about how the windows needed double glazing. Then as she settled down with her peppermint tea that was too hot to drink she thought about Lucy. She considered her life in relation to Lucy’s. It was strange for her to put someone on a pedestal like that she thought, forgetting, in her usual degree of self reflection, how she had lionised Levi for such a very long time.

That was exactly what she was doing. ‘As if Lucy was my older sister, my comparator’ she smiled ‘I anchor myself on her even try to emulate her’. As this thought lingered satisfyingly she did not consider that how she regarded Ethan; that just as she looked up her older sibling, she disparaged her younger for mistakes she had made. He was little different at all to the way she was a few years ago.

Instead of becoming aware of this Jen felt a sudden discomfort in her thoughts about Lucy; the reason for which she could not arrive at so she picked up the TV remote. Thirty seconds flicking persuaded her to turn it back off again.

As she finished the tea in the quiet of that room she looked around at the flat. It used to be owned by Levi’s mum and dad. He had never changed it in the time she had known him, the same pictures, the same books on the shelf, the same furniture all in the same places. Everything was tidy. The only extravagance in Levi’s life right now was the cleaner he had come twice a week to dust and vacuum the rooms. Four rooms that needed dusting just to look as if they were inhabited.

She brushed her teeth climbed into bed next to Levi, turning off the light as she did so. His breathing was even and slow. And she lay next to him peering at his outline in the orange glow afforded by nearby streetlamps she thought about him in ways that she nearly never did. In many ways he was the perfect man, strong willed and handsome he was like the ideal of a man from some bygone age; there was something patriarchal about him. He was ambitious, self controlled but not reliable, no, she had to stop herself there: reliable with work, yes, but not reliable to her. He didn’t love her she was sure of that, he didn’t seem capable of it. He had never said it, and she had thought several times before that she didn’t love him, not really.

He was a practical guy, and she a practical girl. Together things just worked. So what if she didn’t really believe that he had been faithful to her for the whole time she was away. Had she been faithful to him? She thought it with a tinge of sadness, but no regret. She turned onto her back and sank back into the pillow deflated; they were not so different, her and Levi.

The last thing she thought of as she slipped off to sleep was the look in her brother’s eyes that evening. They had looked so warm and then so cold, like two different people. As she slept she dreamt of life in London, the money, the freedom, the dream she had for herself. Next to her that night Levi dreamt the same dream for her.