One of this week’s assignments on the Open University’s FutureLearn Start Writing Fiction course is to take a flat, stereotypical character and to re-imagine them in some unexpected way.
In my writer’s notebook, I had this sketch of a larger-than-life tattooed lady and her friend chatting at a table in a pizza restaurant. I could imagine her holding the stage as a stand-up comedian but I was struggling to find an unexpected twist until we got chatting to John, a dog walker, who always has a few odd stories to tell us.
‘They’ll hide behind a tree, next time they see us coming!’ his wife warned him, as he got into full flow.
He was telling us about a school friend who had gone on to take a degree in Egyptology but had then taken a job compiling bus timetables, as ‘there weren’t many opportunities around here for an Egyptologist’.
That could explain why some bus timetables are as hard to read as hieroglyphics.
Live at the Osiris
‘It went really well last night.’ Stephanie clinked her lime soda against Ruby’s Diet Coke.
‘You think so?’ Ruby seemed sceptical as she reached for another olive.
‘The audience did!’ Stephanie insisted, ‘Your riffs on using a hieroglyphic typewriter really got them going!’
A larger than life personality, Ruby could hold the floor on the stand-up circuit just by standing there. Every visible surface of her ample form was decorated with the baroque flourishes of extravagent tattoos. The strappy back to her baggy top revealed snaking designs running alongside her spine.
Her raggedly-cut blue hair with tousled grey-blonde ends wouldn’t have looked out of place on a kick-ass character in one of the big-screen blockbusters at the multiplex across the road.
Stephanie leaned forward, arms crossed, resting on the table, and hesitated, ‘Well, your closing routine went a bit above my head. That weird dog you were taking for a walk, Anna something? What was all that about?’
‘Anubis? I’m glad you mentioned him. Steph, there’s something I need to tell you: I wasn’t always in stand-up.’
‘I know; you worked in Cambridge before we met. Some kind of secretarial job at one of the colleges?’
‘Something like that. Yes, I did a lot of typing but it was at the Department of Archaeology. I was studying Egyptology: Anubis is the Egyptian god of the dead.’
‘So not a dog, like in your act?’
‘Sometimes a dog, sometimes a man with a dog’s head.’ Ruby leant forward and rested her left elbow on the table. She pulled back the top of her sleeve and looked up at Stephanie.
‘Oh, like your tattoo!’
‘All my tattoos are inscriptions from the tomb of Perenbast, a temple singer at Amarna.’
‘Wow! That’s incredible!’
‘Yes, and that’s just what my professor thought about my dissertation. He refused to accept it. And I refused to rewrite it. My doctorate was suspended. I’d put everything into that monograph and no way was I going to get dragged into pointless arbitration. Professor Dwyer’s word was law. I knew that I wouldn’t get a fair hearing. I fell back on what I’d loved doing with the crowd down at the ADC. I’ve made a good living from stand-up.
‘That’s why I need to talk to you, Steph. I know how much you’ve been looking forward to our sea, sand and sangria break at Makadi Bay. I’m afraid there’s been a slight change of plan. We’re still flying out to Cairo as planned but from there we’re heading south, through the desert, to Amarna.’
‘Amarna, what’s the big attraction of Amarna?’
‘Well, there’s no sea and sangria . . . but there’s plenty of sand! In March, Dr. Hawass and his team broke through a collapsed wall into a new chamber. What they’ve found there looks certain to rewrite everything we thought we knew about Akhenaten. They need the world’s leading expert there, on the spot.’
‘Don’t tell me, that awful Professor?’
‘No, Dwyer’s been totally discredited. There’s only one person they can turn to . . .’
Ruby shrugged modestly and raised an eyebrow in a distinctly conspiratorial fashion: ‘Tar-rah!’
‘And one more change of plan,’ she continued, ‘Can you pack your case now? We fly tomorrow: the thirteen ten Lufthansa flight from Manchester.’