Having a Break

We’re heading to UK on Friday, so will not be spending
much time on the PC or my blog, if any. I certainly won’t be writing, and
sometimes I wonder how I’ll manage to get back into it when we return. Whenever
I’ve been asked advice about writing, I’ve always recalled that Churchillian
statement: ’Never Give Up’. And that old, J.B.Priestley nutmeg about applying
the seat of one’s pants to the seat of one’s chair. It will be time to follow
my own advice. We can talk all we like about writers’ block and plot building,
research etc., but in the end it comes down to prevarication, or dithering
perhaps is a better choice of word. One sound of piece of advice I’ve come
cross is to simply write and not worry about the final result until you start
editing and getting the second draft prepared. I can’t use my struggle with
chemo as an excuse because it’s now eight weeks since my final dose. I’ve had
two subsequent medication sessions since then, but these are meant to improve
my system. I must say I have felt a marked improvement, and other people see it
in me too, but I also have to guard against complacency because I know I am now
100% yet.

Me and Pat are looking at our trip to UK as a welcome
break after the last, traumatic six months. We’ll be seeing our eldest son’s
new home for the first time. My elder brother is now living at a different
address, and two friends of ours, Brian & Pauline are living in UK after
about 17 years in Spain. We will also be travelling down to East Sussex to
spend a couple of days looking around, figuring out if we can afford to buy a
park home there. We’ll be in UK for ten days all told, and we are really
looking forward to it.

Getting back to the struggle to write; I thought it
might be interesting at this stage to put feelers out to my numerous readers
about the direction in which I should go with my novel. Bear in mind though
that I have completed a great deal of research and piled in about 40,000 words,
but I decided to let you all have a taste of the opening prologue; just to get
your thoughts on it. Here goes:

Charlie Picket woke but did not open
his eyes. He felt the dubious comfort of the hard mattress in the motel room
pressing into him, but preferred it to the squalor of the Mexican prison he had
just left. He hadn’t planned to stop on his way to the American border, but the
long drive had proved wearying, and he had finally succumbed and pulled over
for the night. He was in a small town called Los Montesinos, somewhere between
the desert jail that had held him and the border crossing at El Paso. The motel
looked like a dump, and there was nothing he found in there to change that
impression. The room was squalid, barely furnished and prompted thoughts of a
quick, morning departure barely minutes after he had stretched his weary body
out on the iron bed. But he needed something to eat before giving in to sleep.

There was a taverna
opposite the motel, its flickering, neon sign struggling to light up the
parched ground as darkness fell. Only the sound of music, faint but clear, gave
it life. Picket hadn’t eaten for several hours as he pulled into the motel, and
the thought of a meal and a drink to chase it down seemed to make up for the
paucity of life around the small town. Perhaps it was because he hadn’t eaten
for so long or had a beer for several weeks that he stayed too long in the bar.
The music was good, the guitarist accomplished and the señoritas happy to flirt.
Picket was an attraction some of them found hard to ignore, and he would have
been pleased to accommodate them, but he didn’t want to end up in some dried up
river bed with his throat cut. So he kept them at arm’s length and took comfort
in the ambience and the drink; so much so that when he stepped out of the bar,
the night air seemed to floor him. He staggered back to the motel room and
after clumsily undressing he collapsed on to the bed with the thin sheet pulled
over him.

He opened his eyes
and could feel the throb of pain beneath his skull. His bladder was full and he
had an erection that a cat would have found hard to scratch. He lifted his head
from the pillow and stared up at the sunlight filtering through the yellowing
curtain hanging loosely over the window. He groaned and laid his head back down
again, wanting the pain to go away and more sleep to come. But the nagging
pressure in his bladder forced him to push himself up on to one elbow and take
stock. He remembered where he was and groaned as the thudding inside his head
increased and the nagging discomfort in his bladder urged him to get out of bed
before he pissed himself. He pushed himself up on one arm and sat like that for
a while, his head drooping from his shoulders and his arm trembling slightly as
it supported him. The bed sheet slipped down to his waist. He grabbed at the
thin edge and was about to pull it off when he saw her.

‘What the f….!’

The expletive died in his throat as his
eyes fell on the young girl. She was sitting on an upright chair in the corner
of the room, barely three feet from the end of his bed. She could only have
been about twelve or thirteen; no more. She was wearing what looked like
pyjamas and was barefoot. Her hair was dishevelled and her pyjama top was torn
and stained with mud. But it was her small feet that drew Picket’s attention:
they were covered in blood. And she was sitting there as though she belonged,
holding a gun and pointing it straight at him.