I sat there imagining it to be a sitcom. A delightful inconsequential flick through the, lets face it, constant barrage of negativity that life is. It played out smoothly, failing to acknowledge the flaws of character revealed by the situation. The argument, sparked by the presence of rosemary on the chicken that we had layed in front of us after ' slaving in front of a ten million degree sterilisation machine for five damn hours'. The only thing my father failed to remember after being in front of the oven for an hour and a half was that if my mum came into contact with the aforementioned herb she would sneeze violently for fifteen minutes straight
(CANNED LAUGHTER).
Me and my sister lau ghed cautiously watching as my dad sighed, waiting for the blood that was rapidly reaching boiling point opposite him. She stood up and silently walked into the kitchen. Dad stayed and and mindlessly twiddled a cube of parsnip with his fork.
' I think she wants you to go in there dad' my sister blurted out, lifting her eyes from her roasted allergen.
' did she think that maybe i want her to come back in here and behave like she isn't five' (CANNED LAUGHTER).
Then mum burst in, her face blood red;
'how dare you undermine me in front of my children'
' i'm sorry, did you mean our children? the only things that have stopped the last fifteen years of my life being a pissing shambles'. This was followed by an unimaginable silence which didn't cease to plough through the butter like tension of this last supper.
I decided to block out the rest of the evening, sweeping the trauma under the carpet. Even though the lump under the carpet is still there, ten years on i don't mind lying on it, stepping on it or even lifting it to take a look at the lump before i take the carpet to get washed.
Hi there. I think this is Naboo’s work, but I’m not sure. It says at the bottom of the piece that it’s been posted by Okle?!
ReplyDeleteI like the playful references to the sitcom form. They create an interesting tension with the emotionally-charged scene around the table. There is, of course, a certain absurdity at work here. How can something as insignificant as a sprig of rosemary lead to such an intense argument? But I think that this absurdity feels very real. Disagreements can easily spring up over tiny, seemingly inconsequential things, and whilst such arguments may seem ridiculous from a distance, they can feel anything but funny in the heat of the moment. You contrast the reality of the situation with the elements of the sitcom form very nicely, and there are some funny moments; “roasted allergen” made me chuckle!
I think the dialogue is very good in places, too. You use colloquialisms, commonplace phrases which help to give the characters’ speech an authenticity. It’s hard to capture the rhythms of normal speech convincingly, but you’ve done a good job. It’s always worth really listening to *how* people talk, not just to what they say. I always find myself eavesdropping on other people’s conversations and taking notes!
I think that you could afford to proof read this piece again. ‘Layed’ should be ‘laid’, for example, and you need to make sure that you capitalise the letter i when a character is using it to talk about him- or herself. However, aside from the need to tighten it up in terms of grammar, spelling, and typos, I think that this is interesting and imaginative work.
Well done, and thanks for posting.
Helen
My favourite thing about this piece is that chilling juxtaposition of familial tragedy and the canned laughter of your referenced sitcom. I think this renders all the action all the more tense and uncomfortable.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I sense (and I could be wrong here) that this may be an early (or even first) draft, as some parts appear in need of reworking (not to mention the typos Helen mentions). Take the carpet metaphor: an excellent idea, but perhaps somewhat clumsily employed as it is, although it could have been fashioned, with more work, into something really impressive.