Tuesday 16 December 2008

I don’t know why I agreed to this…

We had an early writers group meeting today – Christmas gets in the way of our normal date. Last meeting's home work was to write about ‘I don’t know why I agreed to this…’ We actually started this in the last meeting so I only had to finish it off, but that was sooooo hard.

Here’s what I ended up with;


She does this every time, makes me agree to something I really don’t want to do. This time it involved a tight black tux and shoes that pinch.
I guess I don’t look bad in a kinda James Bond way, but I can’t see why he wears one for so long. Give me jeans and a t shirt any day.
Anyway, there we are walking up the steps of this huge mansion out in the country somewhere, lights everywhere reflecting on the snow and people to take your car away or take your coat or give you a glass of Champaign, when this girl I haven’t seen in years waved at me from inside.
Waving back I had Rachel, hanging off my arm, hissing at me to tell her who it is.
‘Its only Nikki, her dad owns a pile like this.’
We wondered over to her through the crowd of richly dressed people to say hi. She was the only one I’d recognized so far, although Rach was in her element, it was after all her friends party.
Nikki looked different to how I remembered. Her eyes were glazed and her normal year round tan, from all those holidays aboard, seemed to have faded leaving her looking so pail. Her hair was flat and slightly greasy and was now a mousy brown, with none of the shiny high lights I remembered. And she’d gained a little weight so the dress she wore didn’t quite hang right.
As she leaned into me for a kiss on her cheek, I caught the aroma of chips and burgers.
‘Alright Nikki, how are you?’ I asked. But before she answered I remembered to introduce Rach. She hates it when I forget her.
With the pleasantries done we got down to life in general.
‘Wasn’t your dad in the news recently?’ I asked her. I didn’t expect that to bring on tears. I racked my brain to try and remember what the article had been about.
‘Yes’ she whispered through the tears. ‘And he’s lost everything.’ Now I remembered, his stocks had crashed or something. Whoops.
‘I’m, I’m working in Burger King now just to keep my flat.’ It ended in a wail. People where starting to look round and Rach was looking mortified.

Considering I was finishing this at about 11.30 this morning its not so bad. I couldn’t work out how to get him out of this so thought I’d just leave him. Poor guy.
At least I’ve got loads of time to work on the next home work.

2 comments:

Henry the Dog said...

Whoops! Bit of a 'faux pas' I reckon - I did one of those yesterday.

When you write stuff, do you read it out aloud to yourself? As if you were reading it to an audience? I do, because I find that sometimes when it flows ok in the head, as soon as I read it out loud it sounds unnatural in parts (particularly conversation) so I change those parts until they flow too. Then it seems to improve the whole thing. Anyway, that's how I do it. It might not work for everyone. After all, I'm only a dog.

Wild Creations said...

Hey Henry, you are so right! Everyone i have spoken to says this is the best way - and that includes my tutors at the OU. Thats why the writers group is so good - i have to do the work by the deadline of the next meeting and then read it out to people. Its a great way to improve your writing.