Writing for Fun
The Lure Of The Wild - Joan Bond
June 2014
Sometimes, as she watched her husband asleep on the settee, as usual, she felt again the lure of the wild.
All of the things she had wanted to do in life flashed before her eyes. The trips to Sainsburys and dying to put her foot down on the trolley wheels and tear around the aisles, catching the old dodderers in the ankle, and pushing aside that overweight young woman taking up all the space and on the phone. 'I'm here. They have small peas and large peas and some of them French ones. Which shall I get?' But most of all she would have loved to skid to a halt before the snotty manager and tip him straight into the Weight Watchers ready meals.
I did go on a foray to a newly opened bowls club. The men had been playing for ages then they condescended to open an hour a week for the lesser people to play . . . the women!
It wasn't too bad when we started – just Joyce, Ada and myself; we had a little knock about and shouted in glee when we actually got a bowl within a yard of the little ball.
Then it was mostly chatter and gossip until coffee time when we turned to our little flask of reviving juice, then home. But then Moira came on the scene; she turned up in her white jumper and skirt with tights on her legs, they were a concession, she said, as we were supposed to wear stockings. She started to lay down rules and said if we were going to enter for the cup we should look the part. We looked down at our jeans and sandals, and at her, then as one moved on.
Someone suggested I join the U3A. If you want something on the wild side they said there was a Belly Dancing group there. Well, might wake the old man up, she thought and let's face it she already had the belly. Well, she was well taken with all the fit looking ladies there: move it, shake it and twirl it all around – she would have to try that. Loved the gorgeous skirts and filmy tops they wore. So she had a go. Crumbs, she thought on her way home, she would have to fight him for the settee tonight with all the aches and pains it left her with.
Then she came upon another study group Writing For Pleasure. Hmm. Well what would she ever write about? She did nothing exciting, went nowhere . . . how could she start. She remembered her granddaughter once telling her that it was easy to write stories, she had written a play or two which she persuaded her friends to act in when they were at school. You just need a person, get to know her, name her, give her a family, a life, her appearance, was she old, young, pretty, dull? Colour even of her hair. Make her a person you are familiar with. Then you can find the limitations of what she would do; how daring she would be. The point is you can travel to another life in your imagination.
You as she can go anywhere, do anything, live life on the wild side or just write about her let others get to know her. The world is your oyster.
That's how I started. Now Jesse, that's the name given, has a family, husband Mike and two children Tim and Mia, they live in a country house but by the sea and Jesse's life has become alive, she no longer worries whether her old man is asleep or not, she is in her den with her little lap top and her on-line family. Only problem is, somehow in her mind she keeps being interrupted by a little old lady and her friends who seem to be crying for attention . . .
They will probably be very boring and she will deal with them later.