My latest assignment on the Open University’s ‘Start Writing Fiction’ course, is a study of an imagined character:
The effects of the oil of cloves were already wearing off as she wandered aimlessly around the aisles in the co-op. Shrink-wrapped displays of fruit and veg and a bargain bin of pumpkins that had missed out on halloween did nothing to lift her mood. Golden Delicious from Spain? Bobby beans from Kenya? What’s wrong with seasonal produce home-grown right here in the village? The Howgate Wonders from her orchard wouldn’t get held up at the Channel Tunnel and why pay for beans that have flown halfway around the world when you can save enough broads and scarlet runners to grow a crop for free each year? She was still growing the old varieties that her mother had grown thirty, no forty, years ago, when she’d kept the family allotment.
When people called her old-fashioned, she’d smile politely and suggest that sometimes the old ways were the best. But one old remedy really wasn’t working any more and very soon she’d have to face the consequences. The sharp ache deep in her lower jaw was coming back with a vengeance. She walked across the green to the church and paced around amongst the headstones.
She felt like a condemned prisoner awaiting execution. Perhaps, like them, she could allow herself one last cigarette. As she sat on the bench, going through the familiar routine of rolling her Golden Virginia, she felt a little calmer, even though, if anything, the throbbing pain was increasing.
The church bells chimed for quarter past. Tuneful, yes, but no character. Why had they melted down the old ones? When they’d hoisted them down from the belfry she’d seen an inscription on one which showed that it was as old as the church itself. Cracked and tarnished with age. Why can’t things stay just as they are?
She stubbed out her cigarette and dropped it in the bin. She couldn’t leave it any longer. Ten minutes later she was there in the waiting room. The last time she’d been in here, Mr Emmerson’s father had run the practice. Bored-looking goldfish pouted and flounced their diaphanous fins as they rose, then subsided, in the tank in the corner. Why did a creature with no teeth take pride of place in a dentist’s waiting room?
A soft but insistent beep. Her name came up on the screen:
‘Rosemary Lister, Benjamin Emmerson, Surgery 4.’
