Sliding Doors - T. M. Alexander

What am I going to write? I thought. My first blog in the company of authors. I flicked through recent posts and there was Miriam Halahmy, talking about how she has always written. Bingo!

I was a sporty kid, most often found either hitting a tennis ball against the back of the house or walking on my hands. I liked to be outside not inside, and I did everything fast. Running was my favourite occupation,
writing my least, because my hand couldn’t keep up with my head. As soon as I could, I dropped all subjects requiring sentences, for those that relied on digits and symbols.
Ten years flew by employed in big companies, followed by another ten working as a freelancer so that I could be around for my three children. Writing was for shopping lists, birthday cards and cheques.

Then came Life-changing Wednesday.

I had rashly left my contracting job, bored with endless meetings of twenty or more suits. The children were all at school and, not used to being home alone, the days were long. On my way back home from the supermarket (oh the domesticity of it), I stopped to look in the bookshop window. There was a flyer for a creative writing course starting that day at Clifton Library, 10.30. I dumped the bags and cycled over.

It was hideous. They all knew one another having been meeting every Wednesday for years. Keen to hear each other’s news after the long summer break, they took turns around the room talking of their writing projects – books, poems, articles, plays. With every declaration of prowess my armpits grew sweatier. Finally, all eyes were on me.

‘I haven’t written anything since I was at school,’ I said, red-faced. ‘But I’ve got lots of ideas.’

Joan, OBE, elbowed me in the ribs.

‘Better write them down, then, dear.’

Ninety minutes later I hopped back on my bike, homework assignment in my pannier. I wore down several pencils that week, working on my first memory of being alone. Arriving at the next class the teacher asked if I felt brave enough to read my piece aloud.

‘You try and stop me,’ I said.

Wednesday mornings became the highlight of my week.

Months later our assignment was to write the opening paragraph of a short story, setting the scene and casting the narrative hook. The example I jotted down in my black notebook from 2005 was, ‘With hindsight, he realised he had never meant to destroy London.’ And underneath, ‘A short story is a really good day out, rather than a fortnight away.’

Armed with the rules, off I went. I wrote the beginning, then the middle and then the end. After reading my first few lines in class, the teacher exercised her honed sixth sense.

‘Is there any more?’

I read the 2,000 word story. She said I should send it off somewhere.

Receiving first prize at the London Review Bookshop

The email arrived when I was playing tennis in Ilfracombe with my sister. My husband read it to me over the phone.

The winner of the Momaya Short Story Competition is . . .

‘Muchlove later’, to steal from Roger McGough’s The Icingbus, I asked Joan what splendid deed led to her being awarded an OBE.

‘Getting to Over Bloody Eighty,’ she said, slapping my thigh.

           

The thing is, if the flyer had advertised a pottery class starting Wednesday, 10.30, Clifton Library, I’d have gone there.

T. M. Alexander

www.tmalexander.com