Late last year I planned to take part in “Nanowrimo” - the annual internet novel writing event. Unfortunately circumstances got in the way and my attempt was over before it started. I did spend one evening (while sat in a hotel the other side of the country) starting my story, so thought it might be nice to share the little bit I did write…
Brownian motion. That’s what they call it. When dust floats around in the air, and catches the light. It’s all about the “jiggling” apparentlysomething to do with energy.
As the alarm clock crept towards 7am, shafts of light were finally making their way through the gaps in the curtains - cutting the room into variously sized chunks with their blades of floating, jiggling, dust.
One chunk contained a slice of desk, some computer and a bit of monitor. Another chunk contained the bindings of a number of books. The final chunk had some kind of pop art print material, with fingers and a tuft of hair poking out. If you listened very carefully, you could hear the fingers and hair make gentle breathing noises now and again. Sometimes they spoke. On rare occaisions they shouted, and woke up the creature they belonged to.
“No, you can’t do thatto carry on his attempts at burrowing through the bottom of the cage. In the last 12 months, through continual effort during the hours of darkness, Jimmy had managed to make definite scratch marks. At this rate he would be out inside 5 years. Of course hamsters have very little understanding of long timescales living for about 18 months as they do.
The light of course didn’t stop at Jimmy’s cage. It exploded around the room in the instantaneous way that light tends to, and suddenly Buzz Lightyear found himself greeting a new day at the far end of the book shelves. He was stood in front of a book called “The Big Boy’s Book of Tall Tales”, with a painting of a diver fighting a shark on the fly-sheet. The diver had a very impressive knife attached to his calf.
An assortment of spaceships, second world war aircraft and a huge pile of books on the floor also took in the warmth from the window.
“We’re going to take some things to the car boot saleare you going to help me fill this box with things you don’t want any more?”
Joe didn’t say anything. He was still studying the bit of alarm clock he could seewatching the second hand tick it’s way past, and trying to count the seconds until it re-appeared. He was nomally within a second or two. Not bad.
“Are you going to help or not?”
Joe felt something big and Mum’s hand-ish poke his leg.
“If you don’t help, I’ll do it myselfthen you’ll be sorry, won’t you.”
Ooh about half a second out that time. Somewhere in the deep recesses of Joe’s mind, a cog turned and a penny started to fall quite some distance. When it hit the ground (or wherever it is that pennies fall to), it caused Joe to sit bolt upright in bed and try to focus his eyes on what his Mum was doing. Why is bright light blurry anyway?
“No, don’t take those Mum!”
“Why not? You don’t read this rubbish any more!”
“But they’re my favourite!”
Joe’s mum was grabbing handfuls of comic books from the floor and putting them in a box.