Creative Writing Assignment 2: “The Fairweather Hotel”

The assignment was to write a short story. I decided to go for a spooky story.

“The Fairweather Hotel” by S. Dawson

Tom Christie pulled open the door to the Boar Arms, walked into the welcoming warmth and scanned the packed bar. He saw his friend, Chris Jones, seated at a corner booth and made his way towards him. Tom was in his early thirties, stocky with thick lightly curling black hair. He wore black combat trousers, a thick green fleece under his blue waterproof and heavy pair of walking boots. Chris was dressed in a similar fashion, a large rucksack resting at his feet.

Tom reached the booth and greeted his friend. They had been friends since university, sharing a common passion for hiking and the English countryside. This trip was the first they had been able to organise since Chris had married earlier that year and each had been eagerly looked forward to it.

They discussed their plans and examined the map before retiring to bed, ready for an early start the next morning.

Creative Writing Assignment 1: “A Late Arrival”

This is the start of a detective noir piece that I was thinking about extending for a later assignment (then I read the rules and realised we can’t do that so this is just the start of a detective noir piece ).

“A Late Arrival” by S. Dawson

Leaning back in my chair, I tipped back my whisky, savouring the burn as it slid down my throat and settled the fire in my stomach. Closing my eyes, I inhaled deeply on my cigarette and listened to the soft click-clack of Missy’s typewriter. There was a pause in her clicking, and I heard voices. My nine o’clock must be here, about damned time.

I looked up as my office door swung open, the early morning fog drifting in from the open window, diffusing the harsh overhead light, giving her an angelic look.

She was dressed modestly, knee length brown skirt with a slit half-way up giving a teasing glimpse of her thighs. Her stockings were silk, high end, shoes, too, must have cost a dime. Her blouse clung to her in all the right places, buttons straining over her voluptuous bosom. She had a vulnerability to her that screamed to stay the hell away.

Bizarre Holmesian Scholarship

In Ms Holmes of Baker Street: The Truth about Sherlock C. Alan Bradley & William A.S Sarjeant argued that Sherlock Holmes was actually a woman and that her mood swings could be attributed to her periods. In their book they attempt to show

“evidences of Holmes’s feminity which might equally well be regarded as indications of homosexual proclivities. That alternative can, we feel, be disregarded in view of the evidence presented, not only that Holmes suffered from the physical vicissitudes to which all women are subject until released from them by menopause, but also twice became pregnant.”

Samuel Rosenberg theorised in his book Naked is the Best Disguise that ‘The Red Headed League’ was actually about the prevention of homosexual rape. Christopher Redmond discussed this in his book In Bed with Sherlock Holmes in the chapter ‘A World Without Women’:

“…one must consider the opinions of Samuel Rosenberg, the frequently reviled pioneer of Doylean criticism to whom nothing is scared and all is Freudian…He finds great significance in the scene that has Fleet Street clogged with men all bent on a single object, and he uses the first name of pawnbroker Wilsen (Jabez is the town where lived the scribes – I Chronicles 2:55) to connect the encyclopaedia-copying redhead with a scene in the Old Testament (Genesis 19:4-11) in which men converge not to apply for a job but to attempt homosexual rape on two exquisite creatures who are in fact angels. Rosenberg goes on to stress the ‘womanly’ character of John Clay: Watson actually uses that word, and there is mention of pierced ears and other effeminate characteristics. Finally, he identifies the pawnbroker’s ship and its three hanging balls as ‘a symbolic area of unhappy homosexuality‘ and the bank’s vault as a ‘cloacal cellar filled with fecal gold‘. The result: the planned robbery is symbolically a homosexual rape, and Holmes thwarts the perversion as well as preventing theft.”

Redmond goes on to say

“This analysis, though it may sound both far-fetched and distasteful, is supported by many details in the story, from Holmes’s affectionate reference to Watson early in the story as ‘my partner and helper’ to the gratuitous reference to the sexual ambiguousness George Sand at its very end. And, as already mentioned, there is the absence of women even in supporting roles, to which Holmes draws particular attention: ‘Had there been women in the house, I should have suspected a mere vulgar intrigue. That, however, was out of the question.’ It will certainly appear far-fetched to use it as the basis for an allegation that Holmes is drawn as homosexual, or that Doyle deliberately wrote a story with homosexual motifs.”

You could probably write an entire thesis on Christopher Redmond’s often problematic attitudes towards homosexuality and women in his books on the canon but I’m not clever enough to do that, but I thought people might interested in seeing some of the stranger scholarship out there.

More BT fun

Yesterday I had a bit of a moan about my phone bill and how I’m not too keen on being essentially fined every month for not having anyone to call. I have my blog set to post an alert on Twitter when I’ve made a new post. BT must have an alert for whenever someone mentions them as I certainly didn’t tweet my blog post to them.

I’m now having this exchange with them

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now don’t get me wrong, I understand fully that it’s part of their terms and conditions but I still find it a bit odd. If I don’t use my free minutes up each month with O2 I don’t get an additional charge, I will get charged if I go over my 100MB data allowance though, like most things – use too much, get charged more, not charged more for not using something.

Oh well, fortunately for them I’ve been made redundant so have plenty of time to find people to phone. Or I suppose that should be fortunately for me?

Now, if only someone could explain why my gas bill is £107 when I used £25 worth of gas since my last bill.

BT want ALL your money

This is my phone bill

I have the BT Line Rental Saver option where I pay my line rental annually. I think it’s currently £120 a year, might have gone up. Anyway – as part of that deal you get charged £1.50 a month if you don’t make a minimum number of two phone calls. I never use my landline, the free Weekend & Evening calls option isn’t very useful to me as I (well until recently, different story) work in the evenings and at the weekends.

BT are a bit like lunch room bullies from America high school dramas. You pay a yearly protection but still lose your lunch money.

Upcoming: Sherlock Holmes – A Study in Fear

Presented by Rumpus Theatre Company at the Greenwich Theatre.

‘Sherlock Holmes – A Study in Fear’ by John Goodrum (adapted from ‘The Final Problem’ by Arthur Conan Doyle). Staring Nicholas Briggs as Holmes and Ian Sharock as Watson.

“When Holmes arrives unexpectedly at the door of his olf friend and colleague Dr Watson he begs the good Doctor’s assistance for one final case…and an exhilarating evening of mystery, chase, disguise and detecting are the inevitable result, culminating in a breath-taking showdown at the tumultuous Reichenbach Falls. The world’s most successful detective takes on the world’s most notorious villain…

Sherlock Holmes, brilliant, flawed and inclined to justice, finally confronts Professor James Moriarty, brilliant, flawed and wholly inclined to evil…”

Tuesday 2nd October – Sunday 7th October
Tues – Sat @ 7:30pm, Sun @ 6pm, Sat mat @ 2:30pm.
Tickets £17.50, £15, (concessions) £12.50

Review: ‘Hound of the Baskervilles’ at the Greenwich Theatre, 2nd July 2012

(Please note, I left at the interval and this was technically a preview.)

‘Hound of the Baskervilles’ adapted by Tim Kelly, presented by Sell-A-Door Theatre Company at the Greenwich Theatre, Monday 2nd July, 2012.

Following from their somewhat lacklustre but “staggeringly competent” production of The History Boys I was apprehensive but optimistic about their presentation of Tim Kelly’s adaptation of Hound of the Baskervilles.

Kelly’s adaptation is by far the most popular with amateur companies but it’s hard to see why. Kelly removes us from Baker Street and introduces Holmes and Watson at Baskerville Hall as guests of Watson’s old hospital associate, Lady Agatha Mortimer (Camilla Simson). The mystery of the legend is gone, Holmes is wholly familiar with the story and enlightens Watson (and the audience) of poor Sir Hugo’s fate and the legendary curse of the Baskerville’s. The genderswitch and promotion of Dr James Mortimer makes little sense, and makes for a large plot hole – why would Lady Agatha be performing Sir Charles’s autopsy and why would a court accept her findings? Presumably this is to introduce her as a viable suspect in Act 2 as Sir Charles was going to meet a woman (thought to be Laura Lyons but there always needs to be red herring, and alas – I’ll never know).

Not only are Holmes and Watson (played by Philip Rowntree) present at Baskerville Hall, but Sir Henry is as well, taking away a lot of the early dramatic tension. Sir Henry being told to stay away from the moor if he values his life is not much of a reveal when he’s already happily established at the hall and making the acquaintance of Kathy Stapleton (Elisa King)!

Holmes’s decision to return to London, leaving Watson, makes his eventual ‘return’ rather anticlimactic, we had no reason to suspect that he was returning to London in the first place. Seldon’s brief presence, presumably played by a member of the company wearing an all too obviously fake beard, is an all too late attempt to inject some drama into this damp squib of a production.

A lot of the dialogue is too modern, Watson is just as unlikely to be singing the praises of carrots as being good for the eyesight as Holmes is to be found openly ogling the maid…something that this Holmes (played by a very youthful Christopher Anderton, with slicked back hair and scruffy choice of dress) does early on. There was also a lot of gazing wistfully into the audience (mostly by Marcus McSorely’s Sir Henry, who needs to learn how to put his hands in his pockets like a gentleman) and unintentionally hilarious attempts to fake lighting a lantern with an all too audible electric click! The obvious hiss of a smoke machine did little to help the atmosphere, nor did the sellotape holding together the ‘vintage’ map of the moor and adorably bad attempt at creating a 16th century manuscript.

In the directors notes David Hutchinson talks of the “genius” of Kelly’s adaptation in that “removing much of the melodrama…placing the action at the centre of Baskerville Hall allows a director scope for atmosphere without distraction. Far from losing the epic, adventurous feel of Conan Doyle’s work, we constantly feel the external world of the moors closing in on the case and a tension from what’s occurring beyond the confines of the play.” Which all sounds rather lovely but unfortunately, that is exactly the problem with the adaptation. Remove the early tension and mystery you are left with something remote and confusing, why does it matter that Sir Henry has been warned away if we have no reason to think anything will happen to him? Nothing particularly mysterious happens to him in the first act, other than a vague suspicion that there is somebody else lurking in the house.

Overall, a poorly adapted and blandly staged production giving me very little reason to want to come back to watch Act 2.