Easington Writers & Pandora’s Box

What Thatcher did with her actions over the miner’s strike was to open a Pandora’s box, freeing up the potential that has existed in this village for generations, unleashing the talent and energy here that shows itself in this book. It is a credit to this community. John Cummings MP for Easington. ‘ (Right, with Avril and myself and his successor)

Now I’ve completed the work on the book I feel differently about the place, I see it with a fresh eye. I see its beauty now, its potential. I am more positive about it now. Agnes Frain Easington writer. (Read her 'Tunnel Vision ' p55 & 'Gladiators' pp 136.)

This project is unique in that the outcome, in this lovely book, is tangible. So many of our projects have intangible outcomes but here we can see the work that has gone into the project and the benefit that is coming out of it. Emma Snowden, of the Lottery Fund.

And here is the Book, now available. I has taken eleven people, including nine great Easington writers, Avril. Gillian. and myself a year to write, edit, select, print produce and publish, It was hard work but a labour of love on everybody’s part, and illuminated by the paintings, drawings and photographs of Fiona Naughton. Now it is now out there. It is being snapped up by people who know Easington by residence, association and affection. It is also being widely bought by everyone who knows a good book when they see one.

If you would like a copy it is available through all good bookshops (ISBN 978-0-9564823-0-3) OR through AGNES FRAIN . Email her at agnesfrain@hotmail.co.uk)

On Saturday a crowd of more than two hundred friends, well-wishers and fans the packed the magnificent ball room of Easington Welfare Hall, to launch our book Shrugging Off The Wind. As the writers read their work to this great crowd I felt proud of them and the progress they had made in their writing this year. Aged from thirty plus to seventy plus., each one of them had entered into a contract with me to work hard at their writing and editing, to develop their work and produce something unique in this field of local and community writing. As I say in my preface (reprinted below) I wanted them to move out of the sentimental and nostalgic field of community writing and produce something dynamic and modern which still paid respect to the uniqueness of their own community. On the whole they managed that. Anyone who reads the book carefully will note that the writers in this collection have aspired to that quality and lifted their writing game.

But today we writers were not writing. We were celebrating. We gathered there in all our finery: Mary B in her lace skirt and beautiful beads; Chris with her silver butterfly belt; Ann in her elegant shawl; Joan in her sweet pink jumper; Susan with her new make-up; Terry in full Goth gear, including his stick with its silver skull head; Agnes in her elegant grey jacket; David in his best shirt; Mavis, as promised, in shocking pink; me with my red spotted tie and Avril with her head wrapped in a pretty scarf.

Gillian, in a lovely tourquoise jacket, took on the selling of the books. She sold more than two hundred….

I was going to write here about my perspective in dedicating a year to the project but decided to copy across the preface that Avril and I wrote for to the book, Perhaps it says it all:

Preface

When we agreed with the Easington Writers’ group to mentor and tutor them through their Tall Tales Project, we did not realise what we were getting into. First there was Easington itself. We knew of its strong association with the history of mining, right up to its crucial involvement in the 1984 Miners’ Strike. We also knew that – in common with most mining districts – it had lost its mines and with that its central livelihood and its working energy.

But, until we went there regularly to work with the Easington Writers’ Group in their magisterial Welfare building, we had not realised the beauty of this place, with its long beaches and inlets, its wooded denes and everywhere the sea. Of course there are no gantries and pit wheels but – as at least one poem here shows – these icons of a bygone age are missed and are still seen to have had their own unique beauty.

The other special delight has been the sheer character, energy and originality of the writers with whom we have worked. As these very original writers tackled our writing tasks with open minds, the quality of their writing grew enormously, month by month. They have embraced the challenge of transforming fact into fiction with great imagination and have written pieces which contain gold nuggets of truth for all of us, whether or not we come from Easington.

These writers, having fulfilled their brief to talk with Easington people, have come back with stories ranging widely from well-researched historical tales to tales of Easington before even the railways arrived, to heart-felt narratives based on Easington’s mining heritage to contemporary tales of the disaffection of the young and the social consequences of the lost industrial base. Here also are well-wrought ghost stories and poems of lyrical quality that reflect the poignant beauty of the landscape and its meaning for Easington people. Humour and occasional roguish insight lace many of the stories with the unique quality of the Easington point of view.

Wendy Robertson and Avril Joy

Consultants and Mentors

Easington Tall Tales Project

Time With Hawk-Eye and Easington Writers.

What at couple of days!

One day I sat side by side for four hours with the hawk-eyed John Maughan - Design Manager of HPM Printers - entering the what seem to be thousands of final amends on the first printer’s proof of Shrugging Off The Wind our Easington Book. The next day the final penultimate proof is checked yet again by Avril and Gillian and myself. We still still find more amends. And yesterday back sitting beside John to enter these final-final changes. John has the eyes of a hawk and spots minuscule further improvements.

This is the sign off day, when we have to say that it is all OK and the print run can start. One holds one’s breath at this point. Gillian has told the writers that if anyone now finds a typo or any mistake they can take us out for a slap up lunch as a penalty.

Next Monday will be a big day for the group. That’s when the whole group will visit HMP Printers to witness a thousand copies of their book begin roll off the machines. More about that event on my next blog.

I have to say the book is looking brilliant. Amazing! This is how it came about.

Nearly a year ago I agreed , alongside my friend and colleague Avril Joy, to mentor the Easington writer’s group through their Tall Tales Lottery Project. We were in for lots of surprises. First there was Easington itself. I knew this village had a strong association with the history of mining, especially its crucial involvement in the 1984 Miners’ Strike. We also knew that – in common with most mining districts – it had lost its mines and with that its central livelihood and its working energy.

But only when we went to Easington to work with Mary, Susan, Mavis, Ann, Agnes, David, Terry and Joan, did we realise the sheer beauty of this place, with its long beaches and inlets, its wooded denes and everywhere the sea rising up before you, demanding your attention. Of course nowadays there are no pit gantries and great black pit wheels but – as at least one poem in the book shows – these icons of a bygone age are missed and are still seen to have had their own unique beauty.

This beauty is reflected in specially commissioned art work by Fiona Naughton and superb black and white photographs by Fiona and Mavis Farrell - one of the writers who turns out to be a very fine photographer,

The other special delight has been the sheer character, energy and originality of the writing. As these unique writers worked through the year with open minds, the quality of their writing grew enormously. They have embraced the difficult challenge of transforming fact into fiction and have written pieces which contain gold nuggets of truth for all of us, whether or not we come from Easington.

The stories ranged widely from well-researched historical tales , to tales of Easington before even the railways arrived, to heart-felt narratives based on Easington’s mining heritage alongside contemporary tales of the disaffection of the young and the social consequences of the lost industrial base. Here also are well-wrought ghost stories and poems of lyrical quality that reflect the poignant beauty of the landscape and its meaning for Easington people. Humour and occasional roguish insight lace many of the stories a visceral sense of lives really lived.

The book will get a great send-off at its launch at Easington Welfare Centre on Saturday 6th March. More about that anon.

In the meantime here’s a sample. Perhaps you’ll read it over your coffee…

The Jackdaw

Susan Robinson

Beacon Hill draws Joe to it like a lodestone. He lies as still as a sunbathing hare in the short tough grass on the hill’s brow. The thin earth on this bony skull of land has a bitter-sweet sap smell. This is his place. He’s on top of his world here. The sea guards it from the east, stretching north beyond Seaham and then south where the land drops and the flights that tip waste from the three pits of Easington, Horden and Blackhall stretch like blackened skeletal fingers across the shore. He puts his ear to the ground and listens to the pulse of the limestone rock beneath him, and hears the pull and push of the sea, which sounds like womb sounds, and it makes him feel safe.

Joe has the ‘sight’. He sees things that aren’t there to others, ancient memories that echo through the bones of this hill. He knows it better than a history book at school. It gives him a sense of belonging to this land. He knows these things while he waits for his friend Tom.

Tom is wise in a different way from him. He shows Joe fox tracks and bird nests warm with eggs. He points out the up-and-down flight of the green woodpecker and spewed up owl pellets they find near fence posts. These two teach each other the things they know, but Tom finds it hard to be like Joe. It doesn’t come natural, he says.

‘Let’s go get a Jackdaw instead,’ says Tom.

‘Me mam won’t let us have a wild bird in the house. It’s unlucky.’

‘Aw! That’s nowt. Keep it in the shed, man. Come on, I know where there’s a Jackdaw’s nest – the young’uns’ll not have their full feathers on yet. They’ll be just right to take.’

They ride imaginary horses, as boys do, away down the slope of the hill, to clop down the wooden steps that lead to the railway line, then over and up the other side. They stop with a ‘Whoah there’ and dismount on the cliff top above Boaty’s Bay. Then they slither down the narrow path cut into the side of the cliff to the beach below. Joe grabs onto clumps of grass to slow down and to save himself from falling head first.

They stand on brown sand struck with sun-bleached rocks and stare at a jut of land that probes amoeba-like to the sea. This is where the jackdaw’s nest is: right at the top of a two-hand-span crack that splits the limestone cliff-face to the height of ten men. The fractured rock-front is sheared off while the top narrows and threatens like the spine of a dragon’s back as it snakes to the land. From where the boys stand the monster’s curves covered by cruel brambles seem like sleeping green velvet.

‘Don’t do it, Tom! It’s too high.’ Joe can’t bear to look at how far above the ground it is. He turns and skims flat pebbles across a smooth sea, counting five, no, six leaps with his best one.

‘It’ll be all right man. I’ve done it before.’ Tom starts to climb the cliff. He seems to know what he’s doing. He reaches, his hands grasp rock and feet jam into cracks. He hoists himself higher and higher. He’s almost there when a jackdaw screeches out of the split limestone and starts to attack him. It swoops and swerves, mobbing Tom who curls himself to the rock face trying to hide. ‘Help. Help. Joe! Do something.’

Joe throws stones. They miss. He waves his hands and screams. ‘Get away, get away.’

The jackdaw flies at Tom. It claws at his head, wings flapping, shrieking.

This time Joe’s stone finds its target. The bird retreats to a rocky ledge, to caw-caw its anger. Its evil black tongue sticks out of a gaping beak. And outstretched wings menace the air like Dracula’s cloak.

‘I can’t move, Joe. I’m frightened. I want me dad. Help.’ Tom wails.

Joe looks around, hoping to see someone, anyone who could help. He yells at the top of his voice. ‘HELP…. HELP…’ His voice bounces back to him from the cliffs; the thin echo of his words mock him. The only other sound is the sea that whispers a quiet in-tide to where the boy stands.

Then he’s startled by a movement where the Jackdaw sits. He sees a withered woman sitting on the ledge. She smokes a clay pipe, taking long sucks on the stem. It’s covered with froth like the cuckoo spit that hides the froghopper’s spawn. She has a spiteful look in her eye. She spurts a vicious stream of tarry spittle towards Tom. She waits.

Joe’s heart pounds, threatening to split open his chest. There’s not much time. He knows that the witch-woman wants Tom to fall. He can’t let that happen.

Trying to remember Tom’s movements, he reaches upwards. His hands grasp rock and his feet jam into cracks. He drags himself bit by terrible bit higher up the cliff-face. He daren’t look down. He daren’t even look up. He asks God to help and promises he’ll go to church on Sunday. He tries to match his ragged breath to the ebb and flow sea - sounds that usually make him feel safe.

His fingers feel again for security in the rock. ‘I’m coming Tom! Hold on.’ He says the words almost to himself.

At last his hand touches Tom’s foot. ‘I’m here. I’m here Tom. You’ll have to move up again. Go on, I’m right behind you. We can’t go down, the tide’s in.’ He doesn’t say there’s a witch-woman who waits for one or both of them to fall.

He hears Tom crying. ‘I can’t Joe. I’m scared. That bloody bird. It was going for me eyes.’

‘The bird’s gone. Honest’. He hopes Tom can’t see the Jackdaw from where he is. ‘You can do it. Come on. Move! ’ He pushes his friend’s foot. ‘We can’t stay here all day, Tom. I want me dinner, I’m famished.’

Tom releases a sobbed breath that’s almost a snort. It is this that gets him moving.

Now they crab-crawl, upward then sideward, making a tortuous way to the top. Finally they slide on their bellies over the cliff’s dragon- spine down a grass slope until they are back on the beach, just above the high tide mark. They look at each other and each recognises the terror in the other’s eyes. Joe’s freckles stand out stark against his white face.

Then they start to laugh and their laughter sounds crazy. They rush home, their imaginary steeds left forgotten to graze in the field at the top of the cliff at Boaty’s Bay.

The jackdaw circles its nest as it caws its victory. Of the witch-woman there is no sign.

wx

The Over-Wound Clock

Apologies to good blogging friends for not being around lately. So many things have been crowding in!

I’ve been dealing with the aftermath of our Room To Write week-end conference.  Full of good writers, goodwill and good cheer, it took a lot of planning, preparation and doing -  but was all worthwhile . It seemed that they got a lot out of it .Already some of the participants have signed up for our booster day in the spring. Must be a good sign.

And then – along with Avril – I have been very busy with the final writing stages of the wonderful Easington Tall Tales Project. At the very beginning of this project I said it would be wonderful if we could have ten pieces of work from each of the eight writers. Looking at the final edited haul I see we have eighty items for the book which at l east, means that the average is ten, although some have done more and some less than ten. Styles and times differ.

This is no mean feat. We have funny stories, serious stories, short pieces and great poems from these talented writers: sixty thousand words in all. As well as this we have wonderful photographs, an amazing map drawn by Mavis Farrell, one of the writers, and fabulous drawings by Fiona Naughton whose paintings have featured here on this blog. All this will make a substantial and satisfying book which will illuminate life in this unique place.

We are now deep in the final editing and anthologising process (hard work, that!), then after Christmas the book will be off the printers, being shepherded through the printing process by Gillian Wales, who knows much more than me about these things, having produced several much admired books of her own. By February we will have this lovely book in our hands and will be launching it in this special by the sea. That will be a good gig.

More about that`at the time.

And finally in these last weeks I’ve been buried in the last stages of my French novel which is now at last there. (Hooray!)

Ending a novel is the hardest thing! When do you know it is finished and the story is ended? You go through it so many times and it is still wobbling about,  like a building held together with soft cement. Then there comes a time when you go there again and it’s firm and immoveable, as though this is  what it always was and always will be. There may be things to tinker with and fix, but the novel is sturdy and solid. there. (In the building world here they call this tinkering and fixing snagging. I like that thought.,,)

So this is how I ended up as tight as an over-wound clock, incapable of thinking any fresh thoughts. Certainly not able to write a post for my much loved blog.

But tick-tock, the hands are moving again. This mend has been helped by a few days here in London with Debora and Sean and Barney (dog) and Liberty(cat) and I’m loosening off - something to do with lovely meals, lots of kindly conversation, benevolent barking and lots of purring.

To top it all I’ve just had lunch with my lovely agent, J, who has read my novel and gets it, likes it.  It has its go-ahead: just a very little bit of snagging and my baby will be there adventuring out in the world strutting her stuff.

Now I really am ticking over.

Back soon

wx

Morning Creativity and Dreaming Up Projects

I love those times in the morning when my mind wakes up before my body. In those long minutes my mind is full of words. Sometimes the words are thoughts about the novel I’m working on, decisions made. I asked myself this morning whether Starr, dripping wet now in her Pentecost clothes, should go back along the canal to the boat, or walk up into the town to the Maison d’Estella. I decided on the latter

Sometimes the words are actual prose that might go straight into the novel. Fire. Water. Darkness. She wondered vaguely of this was what death was really like. That went straight into the draft. Sometimes I hear dialogue - Starr talking to young Thibery; Modeste talking about his cures; the way the Empress addresses Starr. I hear not just the words but the register in which each person speaks. Of course this all gets into the draft and is developed as the story evolves in a more conscious daytime mode.

The temptation here is to say that I am in a trance at htat time of day and that I am in mystic communication with my characters. More probably I've been imagining characters and inventing so many stories for so long that a special bit of the brain is hyper-efficient and supple and works on my stories in the night.

But this process does not just apply to stories. It applies to articles and other prose stuff that might be preoccupying me. It also crucially applies to projects that I dream up and put into action.

A propos - apart from the above interventions, story making has been somewhat left behind this week as there are two huge projects to preoccupy the sleeping and the making mind: the Easington Tall Tales Project Project and the Room To Write Weekend

The Easington work is coming on a storm – sixty thousand words of stories and poems invented and created by the Easington writers in response to the inspiration of that amazing area, that wonderful community and that unique culture. Looking through the work I can see the enormous progress the writers have made in these months and I wake up thinking the book emerging from this work will. in its own way, be groundbreaking. So sometimes I wake up literally hearing the stories of Susan, Chris, Mavis, Agnes, Joan. Terry, David and Mary in my head.

This week Avril and I have been reviewing images to go in the book with artist Fiona Naughton, who has spent days across at Easington looking, noting and photographing. And then days at home drawing and painting possible images for the book. She spent one good day with Mavis Farrell (a member of the group and herself a photographer) as Mavis knows all the secret places important to some of the stories. So now I am waking up with images of a possible book cover in my head and pages of great prose counterpointing Fiona’s sensitive drawings and dramatic photographs.

So tomorrow (Thursday) in the group we will review all their work and finally choose a title. Avril and I think that a title should emerge from the range of poems in our collection. Some great words there. Perhaps I will wake up in the morning and see the cover illustrated by Fiona’s painting of the coastal path by the beach, complete with the title (whatever it may be) subtitled by Tall Tales from Easington Writers …

And the Room To Write Weekend? Well I've been dreaming and thinking and planning that for nearly a year now. And now it's imminent. My feeling is that with all this thinking and dreaming and planning it could be a success, not least because it’s the work of three dreamers - Avril, Gillian and Me.

I will post all about that here after the week-end - there could be lots to say….

w

Easington, Changing Landscapes & Storytellers

Yesterday I went across to Easington to work with writers there on the Tall Tales project. Every time I go there now I am struck by the wooded hills and denes that surround the village and the colliery areas. I especially like long straight road down through Easington colliery ending in the sea, which seems to rear up to meet it. I can only imagine - in a kind superimposed sepia - the surrounding tangle of historic but now absent pit heads and mountainous pit heaps that are deeply (affectionately, even nostalgically) embedded in the minds of my writers.

One of our objectives in this project is to pay respect to this honourable and dramatic past, but also to evoke stories with a modern feel and a modern context.

Our objective today is intense, high level editing of some of the stories they have already produced, which Avril and I have read and treated to an initial edit. There is some great stuff here, fresh and interesting - a new take on this village which already rejoices in great natural storytellers.

Editing oneself is not easy - the big task is to gain some critical distance and to be prepared to develop instead of defend. And everyone here is wonderfully up for it. Having read a lot of these early drafts Avril and I evolved Ten Golden Rules which will definitely allow these good writers become better.

The Tall Tale stories have strengthened and deepened in the process: Agnes has written a wonderful evocation of fear in a mother living in these streets, showing courage under stress, nervous about the drug culture that is threatening her beloved son; Ann has written a story of people in a close knit street community who turn on a stranger; Terry has written a lyrical and quite modern tale of early marauders on this ancient coast; Mavis has written a tale of a missing child that turns into a ghost story; Joan has produced one of her intricate and rhythmical rhyming verses that are not only funny but finely crafted; Susan has written a truly comical, well crafted story about dancing miners; Mary’s insightful story returns us to the drug problem as a woman sits on a bench outside a chemist and tells a stranger how and why drugs are rife in this innocent village.

In the afternoon I work one to one on individual story tellers and Avril gives a poetry workshop to generate poems focusing on a changing place. The writers set to with vigour and the poems that are emerging are so very original and promising.

On the way back, both over-stimulated and exhausted , we stop to have tea and biscuits with my friend Judith, looking out over her tree lined garden. She serves tea in her grandma’s delicate cups and we are revived. The talk is always good with Judith. We talk about nearby Easington, and her husband Bill - who is passing through to the garden - tells us Easington people are the salt of the earth.

Just so!

Wx

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