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Marx Memorial Library is hosting a series of readings from left-wing fiction writers. Each month a fiction writer, dramatist or poet will read from current work and discuss their writing processes with the audience. These sessions are ideal for avid readers as well as writers. The writers in February will be Jan Woolf<\/strong> and Anne Aylor. Here is one of Jan’s stories, The Baton.<\/em><\/p>\n We make our way along the Sidmouth prom, two feet and four wheels: a warrior queen in her chariot, me her slave. A Happy Birthday<\/em> banner covers her knees, the red felt tipped lettering percussive against white. \u2018Happy birthday,\u2019 strangers say. But my mother ignores them, looking resolutely ahead, the beach to our right, stalls to the left. Selling joss-ticks, jewellery, vegan curries, fish and chips, ice cream: and hippy clothes like there\u2019s no tomorrow.<\/p>\n \u2018Bloody hot Mum,\u2019 I shout.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2018Aye.\u2019<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2018Even for August.\u2019<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2018Aye, the sixth, and dinnae shoot<\/em>.\u2019<\/p>\n Fuck off, I mouth. \u2018Sorry,\u2019 I say.<\/p>\n We pass a young man crooning into his ear with cupped hands. Morris dancers skip and lurch; a woman in a leather dress decorated with spoons, feathers in her high black hat sings at the sky. \u2018Barmy isn\u2019t it?\u2019 I say, leaning over her, trying not to shoot.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018As ye said, bloody hot.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018No Mum, barmy, bonkers, not \u2013 \u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Wit d\u2019ye expect, it\u2019s Sidmouth not ma darlin\u2019 Clydeside.\u2019 Another pop at me for bringing her down here.<\/p>\n I push her on, into the glare of the sun. \u2018Put your sunglasses on, you\u2019ll hurt your eyes, you\u2019re friggin\u2019 ninety.\u2019<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2018Och.\u2019 But she does.<\/p>\n We reach the end of the promenade\u2019, where the river Sid flows into the sea. There are railings and a bench. Briny, mineral smells dominate. I position the chariot, pull at its brake, and sit beside her: an audience for the water theatre, as fresh meets salt \u2013 swirling and whorling \u2013 warm meets cold, silt meets sand, working out how to be together. Like me and Her. My mother looks mesmerised, almost content, her hands folded, nestling between the Y and B of her birthday banner. I look up at the great Jurassic hill, its dorsal hump turning to cliff face as it zigzags into the sea, a shed squatting precariously on the edge. I point it out. \u2018Hanging on for dear life, eh Mum?\u2019<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2018Aye, like me.\u2019<\/p>\n I change the subject. \u2018That hill, so dramatic, like a ginormous humped back whale.\u2019<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2018Tha\u2019s twee,\u2019 she snaps.<\/p>\n \u2018What. Whale?\u2019<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2018Ginormous.\u2019<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Not as twee as that daft frizzy perm you just got yourself.<\/em> \u2018Monstrous, then!\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Aye, tha\u2019s better, yir a writer, remember.\u2019<\/p>\n She called me a writer. She called me a writer. Oh Mum. <\/em>I pat the stiff white hair kept in shape by the aerosol glue she calls lacquer. <\/em> \u2018When I was your age,\u2019 she says, \u2018I was rattlin\u2019 the fence at Greenham, while ye were jus\u2019 writin\u2019 aboot it.\u2019<\/p>\n She\u2019s been picking fights all morning. \u2018Journalism is<\/em> action Mum,\u2019 I say, \u2018and anyway, Cruise Missiles have gone.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Aye.\u2019 That edge in her voice.<\/p>\n I know we\u2019re both right \u2013 as usual. But that I have allowed her the last word \u2013 as usual! \u2018What about Faslane!\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Ye dragged me doon here.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018You\u2019re too old to get arrested, Mum.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Bin arrested before, ah know what to do.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018You were only 79.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Och.\u2019<\/p>\n I put my arm around her, my mother the heroine. She pats my hand, her daughter the writer. She checks her watch. \u2018It\u2019s time,\u2019 she says.<\/p>\n I turn her around, wheel her back a few metres, then cross the road, into an empty car park, a Mr Whippy van lurking at the edge.<\/p>\n \u2018Nothing doing, Mum.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Will yir just wait.\u2019<\/p>\n We wait.<\/p>\n A trim, bearded man in Birkenstock sandals, not yet old enough to be called sprightly<\/em> sets up speakers and a microphone. A couple of middle-aged women slide poles and black flags from canvas bags. Another grey beard, balding with a ponytail sets up a stall with pamphlets and papers. Something is about to happen, something the middle aged would call a happening<\/em>, the muddle-aged a pop-up<\/em>. The flags unfurled, reveal CND symbols. They are attached to poles, placed in each corner. It is as if pirates are capturing a ship in dry dock. Mr Whippy starts his bells. He\u2019s asked to turn them off. He does, halfway through Lily Marlene<\/em>. A rack of chairs is pulled apart like vertebrae. Up goes a banner:<\/p>\n HAPPY 60th<\/sup>\u00a0BIRTHDAY CND<\/span><\/p>\n A gaggle of teenagers turn up, a few children with their parents. But it\u2019s mostly the middle-aged: people in linens, cottons and defiant denims. Good people. People who talk about integrity to the young, as their elders talked about character to them. People who played in woods, crawled through hedges, camped in fields, watched Pinter plays, laughed at Morecambe and Wise, loved the NHS, wept when their children went to university, sang in choirs, marched on demos, picked blackberries, bought stationery, felt the seasons change, went to evening classes, posted letters, picked up grant cheques, wept again as their first grandchild was put in their arms. People who knew the old fear; wise enough to know it could be the new. Who\u2019d lived through the old Cold War, worried about the new hothead in the White House.<\/p>\n An old man arrives, also propelled by a carer\/daughter. The caught\u2018er<\/em> and I exchange empathic glances. As she tucks a bottle of water down the side of her father\u2019s wheelchair, my mother gets out of hers \u2013 insists on standing as she does every year. She lays her birthday banner on the ground, then, taking my arm, stands as tall as she can. It used to irritate me when her wee claw<\/em> as she calls it, poked through the crook of my elbow, but now I\u2019m pleased to see it, a sign she\u2019s still here. Maybe I\u2019ll have it chopped off when she\u2019s gone \u2013 get it wind dried like those ducks in the windows of Chinese restaurants. I could put rings on the fingers, paint the nails scarlet and fold my arm around it when I miss her. I laugh out loud.<\/p>\n \u2018Whit yir laugin\u2019 at Hen?\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Nothing Mum.\u2019 I squeeze her wee claw to my side.<\/p>\n \u2018It\u2019s open microphone time,\u2019 says a henna haired woman in a white linen dress.<\/p>\n \u2018Open mic, Nan,\u2019 corrects a Young Person in shorts and tee shirt, looking all of sixteen.<\/p>\n \u2018Sorry Molly, open mic.\u2019<\/p>\n The woman resumes. \u2018Seventy three years ago today, August the sixth 1945, the day I was born, the Americans dropped an atomic bomb called Little Boy on Hiroshima. Two days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. 380,000 were killed.\u2019<\/p>\n The facts hang in the air like ghouls.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2018And now Molly will read something written by one of the survivors of Hiroshima,\u2019 she says, handing the mic to her granddaughter. Molly takes it in her right hand, a piece of paper in her left \u2013 her voice clear and strong.<\/p>\n Through a darkness like the bottom of Hell I could hear the voices of the other students calling for their mothers. I could barely sense the fact that the students seemed to be running away from that place. At the base of the bridge, inside a big cistern that had been dug out there, was a mother weeping and holding above her head a naked baby that was burned bright red all over its body, and another mother was crying and sobbing as she gave her burned breast to her baby. In the cistern the students stood with only their heads above the water and their two hands, which they clasped as they imploringly cried and screamed, calling their parents. But every single person who passed was wounded; all of them, and there was no one to turn to for help. The singed hair on people’s heads was frizzled up and white-ish, and covered with dust \u2013\u00a0<\/em>from their appearance you wouldn’t believe that they were human creatures of this world.<\/em><\/p>\n She steps back, into the silence she has created, her grandmother\u2019s hand out for the mic\u2019. But Molly doesn\u2019t let go \u2013 holds it tight. A breeze, as if an oven door has opened, carries sounds from the beach: the hawing of gulls, kids running into the sea \u2013 and a lone female voice; \u2018Put some cream on sweetheart \u2013 you don\u2019t want to get burned.\u2019<\/p>\n Jan Woolf was at Sidmouth Folk Festival, 6 August 2018, for the 60th<\/sup> birthday of CND.<\/strong><\/p>\n Marx Memorial Library is hosting a series of readings from left-wing fiction writers. Each month a fiction writer, dramatist or poet will read from current work and discuss their writing processes with the audience. These sessions are ideal for avid readers as well as writers. <\/em>The writers in February will be Jan Woolf and Anne Aylor.<\/p>\n Jan Woolf is currently writer in residence at the Marx Memorial Library. Her first collection of short stories Fugues on a Funny Bone was published in 2010 with Muswell Press, and many others with New River Press and International Times. She is working on her first novel, Hannibal and the Masked Girl, set in Tate Modern in 2003, where a painter plans a citizen\u2019s arrest of Tony Blair.\u00a0<\/p>\n Her plays Sphinx and Porn Crackers were produced at the Hackney Empire, and You Don\u2019t Know What You Don\u2019t Know at the Royal Court in 2013 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Her latest play The Man With the Gold was started on an archaeological dig in Jordan 2013, and being prepared for a run in 2019, the centenary of the Treaty of Versailles that divided the Middle East.<\/p>\n Jan also has a campaigning history: a leading member of the Free for All museums campaign, founder director of the recently re-launched Left Book Club and cultural coordinator at\u00a0noglory.org<\/a><\/em>\u00a0where she has many articles and reviews.\u00a0Further details of her work are here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Marx Memorial Library is hosting a series of readings from left-wing fiction writers. Each month a fiction writer, dramatist or poet will read from current work and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":509,"featured_media":12796,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1661],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/509"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"CND](\"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/CND_2.png\")
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