Joking Apart – Blog 91 by Ms Paige Turner
I forget how nervous new creative writing workshoppers can be. Last week I was taking a workshop in a present Creative Inker’s house. Catherine has been organising these highly successful soirees for the past year. She does it all with wine and canapés so do email me if you are interested. Anyway a new workshopper turned up and said, “I’m so very nervous. I’ve never done this before.”
I said, “Oh. Well. It’s a good job the film crew didn’t turn up then.”
The new nervous workshopper’s eyes widened bigger than Timothy Winter’s football pools and then she smiled and said, “Oh, it’s a joke.”
I was workshopping The Serious Business of Humour and realised she thought my response was a teaching tool. I had to explain, no, this wasn’t a joke as a few hours earlier I had been contacted by the National Film and Television School asking me if I would like to take part in a documentary about writers getting inspired. I always say ‘yes’ to these things and when they discovered I had a workshop on that very evening they were camera ready. I did think to ask Catherine’s permission. It was, after all, her house. She promptly phoned back and said, “Pas possible.” She’s not French. I just threw that in as I love the way the French say, “Pas possible.” And rightly so. Catherine didn’t say, “Non!” She was very polite but it wasn’t possible. When I thought about it, anything can end up on You Tube these days. Not that the NFTS would do this but new workshoppers don’t know this. I’m always so gung ho about being filmed but maybe we should think carefully about such exposure. Anyway, the workshop went down a hoot. I think I did the Bulgarian Snake Dance and I only ever drink sparkling water when I’m teaching. I did an interview for the NFTS the next day, only I fear it will be a meta-film. There was no soul stripping story of mine I was going to reveal and the whole thing ended in a poem I wrote and now this blog. So there you are.
I think it’s worth thinking about how easily we are exposed and what we publicise on blogs. There’s still some places on September Creative Ink courses, so email me for a syllabus.
Re-creative fiction is what is also termed as non-fiction but that sounds negative with the non! It’s anything which isn’t made up: fact. And if anyone knows which poem and which poet wrote about Timothy Winters and his football pools then there’s three hand out sheets or a feature of mine on Creative Writing for them.
Joking Apart
13/07/2014 // by Jan Moran Neil
‘Timothy Winters’
Timothy Winters comes to school
With eyes as wide as a football-pool,
Ears like bombs and teeth like splinters:
A blitz of a boy is Timothy Winters.
His belly is white, his neck is dark,
And his hair is an exclamation-mark.
His clothes are enough to scare a crow
And through his britches the blue winds blow.
When teacher talks he won’t hear a word
And he shoots down dead the arithmetic-bird,
He licks the pattern off his plate
And he’s not even heard of the Welfare State.
Timothy Winters has bloody feet
And he lives in a house on Suez Street,
He sleeps in a sack on the kithen floor
And they say there aren’t boys like him anymore.
Old Man Winters likes his beer
And his missus ran off with a bombardier,
Grandma sits in the grate with a gin
And Timothy’s dosed with an aspirin.
The welfare Worker lies awake
But the law’s as tricky as a ten-foot snake,
So Timothy Winters drinks his cup
And slowly goes on growing up.
At Morning Prayers the Master helves
for children less fortunate than ourselves,
And the loudest response in the room is when
Timothy Winters roars “Amen!”
So come one angel, come on ten
Timothy Winters says “Amen
Amen amen amen amen.”
Timothy Winters, Lord. Amen
Charles Causley