|
|
| contact details
|
Mary V. Williams' Inky Digits
46 Smithsfield Road
Market Drayton
Shropshire
TF9 1EN
Tel No: 01630 657055
|
|
|
|
|
 Ok - I'm a bit older now but it was definitely me...
About the author:
Mary V. Williams, 46, Smithfield Road, Market Drayton, Shropshire TF9 1EN 01630 657055 mary@williams98.demon.co.uk
Brief biographical details:
-
Mother deaf, father narcissistic genius, childhood difficult.
-
Bank clerk (gruesome). Sixties hippy student (fun) Studied Art and English. Bummed around Europe and North Africa. Teacher in Hackney, London (exhausting).
-
Kids/poverty/work Move to Lancashire. More kids, less poverty, more work
-
Training in psychotherapy (testing). Relate marital and sexual therapy, training and supervision (very testing!)
-
MA in Writing Studies, Edge Hill, 1999
-
Retired from University of Central Lancashire UK as staff counsellor /lecturer/ trainer. Move to Market Drayton.
-
Novella The Watcher erotic fantasy, Black Lace Publisher, 2003
-
Poetry published (Flarestack, Lexicon, The People’s Poet, Decanto, Pulsar, Borderlines etc ) Three poetry prizes in last year
-
Unconfirmed Reports From Out There, a collection of short stories, published individually in Darkness Rising, Horror Masters, New Fiction, Dark Tales etc
-
Commissioned by Sheldon to write a book about marriage Make Up or Break Up 2003
-
Overcoming Impotence published by Sheldon, September 03.
-
Just Me And Marilyn won first prize for an opening chapter at Birmingham Library Undiscovered Authors competition.
-
Prize Pelt recently won the Dark Tales horror fiction prize and publication.
-
Runner-up in Apprenticeships in Fiction competition with The Broilerhouse
I live with my first and only husband in a strange little house in Shropshire full of paintings, which we share with the fourth of our four sons.
I began writing poetry at age sixteen, and was encouraged by Alan Brownjohn and Martin Bell, my tutors in the Sixties, and had poetry published in Encounter and the college magazine The Occasional Windhover, (Gerard Manley Hopkins had studied for the priesthood there). Rob Sheppard, at Edge Hill where I did my MA eight years ago, also gave me great encouragement. I’ve never stopped, and now I run a small writers’ group here in Market Drayton. Writing gothic and horror stories has provided me with a different discipline, though one publisher wrote that my book on impotence sounded like a horror story to him! It's just good to take off the intellectual and moral filters for a while and let my hair down in a literary sense.
The Engineer's Daughter, which is a fictionalised memoir, is a book about family relationships, where horror and self-help meet, at around the dangerous age of fourteen. I'm sure you'll remember it well! Below is an excerpt from the book - the first day at school.
"We follow the other children to the yard where a teacher leads us into a cloakroom to hang up our coats. Our mother, under instruction from the school, has sewn up for each of us a blue plimsoll bag with a drawstring opening, and we have new black plimsolls to put in them, marked in indelible ink with our names. After the first few days the ink becomes smudgy and it's anyone’s guess who the plimsolls belong to. We have to memorise which peg we have left our coats on.
All around us bigger children are running, laughing, shouting, banging each other with satchels, and it is exhausting trying to stay out of the way of so many flying arms and legs. We do not have the regulation black velour hat of the other children; our mother had been unable to get into the town to buy them. Instead we wear knitted woollen pixie hoods, and have to endure the taunts of the other girls until our uniform hats arrive.
Janet needs the toilet by this time, and we find them close by behind the coat racks, reeking of Jeye’s fluid. The doors do not come down to the floor, and it is possible for people to look over the tops as well. They are held shut by flimsy little bolts and I live in a constant state of panic when I have to use them because people burst in, or school hats and bags come flying over the top, or someone bangs on the door. There is something exposing and frightening about such a place, and I have dreams afterwards where I am in a toilet with no doors, trying to protect my privacy but failing, and the feeling of nakedness and vulnerability still haunts my dreams.
I stand guard for my sister on this occasion, wishing there were someone to stand guard for me.
Damp coats (ours are the standard dense black wool variety common in the Fifties, faded along the seams and itchy next to the skin) give off a dirty laundry steam as they dry and the brown slightly fishy smell of rubber from the plimsolls mingles with the scent of leather from our satchels and the smell of grubby little bodies. It’s a smell that marks the beginning and end of every school day.
A whistle blows. A teacher summons us all to line up in the yard and takes my sister and I to one side. Suddenly Miss Mabel appears as if from nowhere and leads us both off into the kindergarten, a light and airy room built off the dinner hall. I sit at a low table and thread big glass and wooden beads on to long green shoelaces. The glass beads, which I prefer, are mostly green and brown with tiny bubbles in the glass, and there are a few in other colours, orange and blue, thrown in for good measure, and we are encouraged to thread them in colour sequences. The weight of the glass makes the beads swing satisfactorily when the lace is held up. Later we learn a poem:
‘Nymph, Nymph, what are your beads?’
‘Green glass, goblin. Why do you stare at them?’
In my grown-up world, whenever I see green glass beads I have two memories; one of threading green glass beads on long laces in the kindergarten room, and one of standing up reciting the poem, aged seven, lisping because of my lost teeth, to an audience of indifferent adults."
On a lighter note, here's a poem about a town I hate - Rhyll, where I was once stuck on the bypass for hours...
THE THRILL OF RHYLL
"Stuck on the bypass, love.
I’m still in Rhyll.’
Mean little bungalows with no gardens
Packed. In. Tight.
Caravans. Caravans. Caravans.
Cram them in. Cram them in.
Cram them in.
NO VACANCIES.
LIFTS TO ALL FLOORS.
ALL ROOMS ENSUITE
FRESHLY FILLED ROLLS
ALL DAY BREAKFASTS
FAMILIES WELCOME
NO VACANCIES
‘I’m still in Rhyll.’
I’ll take a pill
Or try to kill
If I have to stay in Rhyll.
Past the pier
and the amusement arcade-
I’m not laughing -
and the Sea Life Centre -
though what I saw wasn’t sea - and
boarding houses, piers and funfairs
candy floss and sticks of rock.
ALL DAY GREAT VALUE
CRACKING EASTER DEALS
PRAYER PRAISE AND PREACHING
and I’m still in Rhyll.
But heading for Llandudno.
and Aldershot...
WEARING SILK PYJAMAS IN AN ALDERSHOT HOTEL
The scarlet paint was peeling in the dingy B & B
They had picked at greasy chicken in the local KFC
And she was feeling lonely and in need of TLC.
The bed was cold and creaking, with a damp and musty smell
But she wore her silk pyjamas in that Aldershot hotel.
They watched a Beach Boys tribute band to pass the time away
And the waves came up and hit them as they sat in dumb dismay
In a theatre full of pensioners far from surfin’ USA.
And the sound of squaddies fighting, getting drunk and raising hell
Erupted in the street outside that Aldershot Hotel.
And secondhand pornography filled up the bedside drawer
Where lonely men too far from home had spent the nights before
And the small TV’s remote control lay in pieces on the floor.
But they were passionate and young, and loved each other well
And she wore her silk pyjamas in that Aldershot hotel.
Here's a brief story I wrote as a challenge. The theme was animals.
The True Story of the Ark
You’ve probably heard about how the Ark and how it came to rest on Mount Ararat. But no one ever tells you what happened after that. The first animals to be let out were the small rodents and herbivores, obviously. The rabbits hopped around gormlessly looking for something to eat, but as you’d expect, the land was slushy and steaming, with not a blade of grass in sight. Eventually they went up the hill, where the water had drained off properly, and presumably found enough to eat there.
This was just as well, as they had to reproduce like fury to feed the next lot of animals to be let out, the foxes and wolves. The two rabbits who entered the Ark had reproduced while they were on board, but the sea sickness and a feeling of insecurity led to them eating most of their own young. Mrs. Noah probably turned a blind eye to this, as it saved them food.
The mice, shrews and rats scurried under the Ark and stayed there until night came, when they crept out and tried to avoid the foxes.
The foxes, wolves and hyenas, the jackals and small wild cats left the Ark during the afternoon, the wolves loping uneasily, the foxes trotting confidently, the hyenas sneaking round the back to urinate on the base of the Ark, embedded as it was in the mud and shale, while the cats refused to leave at first and stood bristling on the gangplank not moving but spitting at anyone who tried to shoo them away.
You have to remember we were all weak through under exercise.
As dusk fell the other larger animals were let out. The gazelles and antelopes were given a sporting chance and let out way ahead of the lions, but Noah mistimed it and let the unicorns out a bit late, and by the time they had organised their long legs enough to move away, the lions were on them.
It was carnage all night I’m afraid, with many animals trying to sneak back on to the Ark and being pushed back down the gangplank by Mrs. Noah’s broom. Of course, those animals that had not reproduced on the Ark were in real trouble, because if one was eaten by another, the one left behind would not be able to breed alone. Several small deer species perished forever in this way.
I was one of the luckier ones; my mate and I left shortly after the rabbits, Noah not fully realising the rapacious nature of ferrets, and we accounted for one of the rabbits in the night as it trembled behind a small boulder, unable to hide on the slippery shale. We also caught, I’m ashamed to say, one of the doves that had landed on the Ark. The poor thing was so trusting that we killed it as it roosted in a muddy tree stump. Hot fresh blood excited us greatly and gave us the energy to leave the others behind. This is something all the vegetarians on the Ark would never understand, this instant buzz from blood, but can tell you it’s terrific. My teeth itch at the thought of a freshly killed bird.
During the night the air was full of the sounds of animals calling. The sensible ones kept quiet and waited for sun up. We watched the sunrise on the day after the Ark had landed, and saw the top of the Ark from our vantage point up the mountain. Shem was on the roof, doing something.
One of the horses was dead, and a lion was still crouched over it daring the hyenas to come near.
There was no sign of the rabbits.
|
|
