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write-invite.com result
'A kick up the backside' came 4th. Only the top three selected by the judges go into the ballot of all those who participated, and so it came nowhere.
I fight on.
A Kick Up The Backside
This is my current entry for write-invite.com. The prompt was 'The secret is to keep breathing'.
The railway sleeper is made of pine, and only about 30 centimetres shorter than Vladislaw, my work-mate. Vladislaw's uniform is baggy. I have seen him naked dozens of times, mostly when we are being de-loused. His body looks as if it is made of white pipe-cleaners covered in dirt.
We have to lift the sleeper into position in the little trench that the pair before us have dug, and then two Kapos on punishment duty hammer it down with mallets. Only those who are on full rations can do this job, because it really takes it out of you, and requires the kind of intense burst of energy that we are no longer capable of, no matter how much we are beaten. I will not let myself think about whether I might ever be capable of that kind of feat of exertion again.
I have recast my mind into a series of what I mentally refer to as wooden channels. My train of thought is a shiny metal ball bearing, like those at the Krupp works where I used to be a technician in the test laboratory before the war. The ball bearing gets dropped, and I often have to stop it, and so I imagine a little block of wood being stuck into the channel to stop the thought from reaching the bottom. If it gets to the bottom too often, you stop being able to survive and I don't want to stop. I want to carry on. Why? That's another wooden stop: a little block of oak with dovetails on it and plenty of glue.
I have put a stop in with regard to the pile of pine railway sleepers that we have to get through before we next eat and before we can lie down. Exhaustion is worse than cold. Cold goes away in the summer, but exhaustion, like hunger, never goes away. We drop onto the wooden slats of the bunks into which we are packed and we never move. Human beings would roll over and kick each other and get their elbows in each other's eyes, but we just lie still. If one of us feels really reckless, he squanders a bit of energy on emitting a low groan, but otherwise we remain completely inert until it is time either to relieve oneself or to get up for more work.
I am worried about Vladislaw. I thought he was a survivor, like me. When I call myself a survivor, I don't mean necessarily that I am going to survive, but that I am not going to just sit down and die like so many of them do. Hunger, cold, exhaustion, call it what you will. They just die. The Germans don't even have to expend a beating or a bullet or any poison gas on some of them: they remember their orderly and dignified home, or their job, or their loved ones, or their pocket-watch or an old wallet that they bought in Bruges on a trip there once, and then they realise what is happening to them, and they die.
Vladislaw's stops aren't working any more. He keeps remembering things. He keeps thinking about things he should not think about. Like the number of railway sleepers in the pile over there. Like the amount of effort we will have to expend before we can lie down. Like the wateriness of the potato and cabbage soup we had this morning.
I think about the air, when I need a change from just stopping thoughts going down and down. There are millions and billions and trillions of molecules in every breath you take. Every breath you take contains at least a few molecules that were exhaled by Julius Caesar at the moment he died. That sounds ridiculous, but it is a statistical certainty.
I try to imagine the dazzling quantity of molecules in my nostrils and my lungs, and I wonder what Julius Caesar was thinking at the moment he exhaled all those molecules of which I am now partaking. And I remember that in those days there was no Nazi party, and no Hitler, and none of this camp, and no railway sleepers to lay. And I reflect that, even if the Nazis win this war, eventually sun, and wind, and water will blow over everything they have wrought, and sweep it away, and the world will be clean again.
I think I am going to make a supreme effort and kick Vladislaw. Maybe a sudden inward rush of breath will impart some of the guile and determination of Julius Caesar to him. Kicking him is the best way I have to show him that I love him, and will always love him, even if he gives. Even if he gives in and leaves me here on my own, I will forgive him, and will still love him.
www.write-invite.com: result for 19 October 2011
I didn't make the short-list. I did not get an "also read" (the worst of all) but I did not make the short-list and so I came nowhere.
I fight on.
Another crack at write-invite.com
I enter a weekly, on-line writing competition called "Write-invite" (www.write-invite.com). It costs £4 per week, and lasts for 30 minutes (starting at 17:30 on Saturday afternoon). The judges choose what they think are the best three entries, and then these are voted on by all the people who entered that week's competition. I have been short-listed once, and came second.
I am probably going to stop entering this competition soon, because I think the judging is very inconsistent.
This is my entry for this week. The prompt was "Meddling".
Another letter to write
It makes me laugh inside the way that that Henry Caldwell always makes a point of greeting me in the morning, and saying goodbye when he leaves the office. He is a polite boy, I will give him that. I say 'boy' - he must be pushing forty, but he has a lot to learn about life. A lot to learn. About life. About the way the world really is.
He it trying to be a writer. I can't work out why people go to university and college and do all this studying, run up debts and so on that you keep reading about now, and then say that they want to chuck it it. Do something 'more creative' I hear him saying. What's he want to do that for? He must get paid three times what I do. Four times. Maybe even five times. And what is it that he actually does? That's the thing about people in computers and information technology: you ask them what they do, and what they come out with makes no sense to anybody - not even them. In the old days, people had proper jobs, like farmer, soldier, factory worker, policeman, schoolteacher, miner, docker, builder, plumber. Not anymore. I used to be a security guard. Now I'm a 'Customer Operations Officer', whatever that means.
I've seen the screen that the supervisor uses to monitor people's internet access and emails, and Henry Caldwell has held the record, every day for the last 139 days running - running - for time spent on websites other than the company's website. It's all to do with this writing nonsense.
A few weeks ago, he started putting letters in the post tray. I'd never noticed him doing that before. Whenever anybody puts a letter in with a hand-written address, I make sure to find out who wrote it. I compare it with room-bookings and other things we have behind the desk that the people in the office write in, and I pick out the handwriting. If I suspect who it might be but have not got a sample to compare it with, I make up some excuse to get them to write something, like I ask them for the email address or phone number of some-one I know they know who has a very common surname, which I don't want to look up in the company directory in case I get the wrong one. That works every time. They always fall for it. It is funny how gullible and stupid educated people can be. If I still can't find out who wrote the address, I have got this very strong light which I keep in my private drawer. The bulb is shaped like a knife-blade. The police and MI5 use them. You stick the bulb in the little gap where the flap of the envelope folds over, and you can usually make out what is written inside, if there aren't too many sheets, or anything inside made of cardboard. That is how I learnt to recognise Henry Caldwell's writing.
That means that when he puts one of his envelopes in the post tray, I recognise it straight away now, when I go through it at 4:30 to make sure that all the personal items have got stamps on, and to pick out all the company ones that need weighing and franking.
I've got quite a fat file now of the stuff he has sent off to magazines, and publishers and people. Some of it is quite good, actually. Interesting. Sometimes with really unexpected endings. Not the poetry, though. He should pack in writing poetry completely if you ask me. It's rubbish. Hardly any of it rhymes. Some of it is all in little letters, with no commas or full stops. Drivel.
I take out the letters he puts in with the stuff he is sending off, and I write a rejection letter. Dear Mr Caldwell, or sometimes even Dear Henry, depending on how he has addressed his letter. I am afraid that we cannot use the material you sent. Best wishes, and I wish you every success with the people you next send your work to. Except he never has any success, because 'the people' is really me. I've got some stuff set up on my computer at home that lets me print what looks like franking on the envelopes I use, to make them look more proper, more official.
Oh, god - here's another one, addressed to somewhere called 'Stand Magazine'. Another letter to send off.
He'll never be a writer. He just hasn't got what it takes. I know he hasn't.
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