A Wee Guest Fiction: Brendan Gisby

Extract from the Journal of a Highland Journey, Circa 1970

 

He seemed to have left Pitlochry behind in no time at all.  When he came to the top of a rise in the road, he looked back to see a faint silhouette of the town away in the distance.  Ahead of him, stretching for miles on either side of the narrow strip of road, the ground was flat and purple with heather.  Mountains, blue and hazy, filled the far horizon.  This is more like it, he thought.  This is what he had come for.

          And then he saw them.  They were about a hundred yards away on his right, standing beside an old, battered wooden caravan that had been parked a few feet back from the road.  A skinny-looking pony grazed at some distance from the caravan.  The four men all had long hair and wore black bonnets and different coloured kilts.  The one furthest away wore a green kilt and was fiddling about with what looked like a set of bagpipes.

          Tinkers!  His mother detested them.  She said they were a blight over in Eire, her homeland.  ‘They’re not like the Gypsies,’ she once warned him.  ‘The Gypsies are a proud people.  Tinkers will rob and murder you as soon as look at you.’

          He told himself that he couldn’t turn back, that that would be cowardly, that he had no option but to brazen it out.  He gulped and crossed over to the other side of the road, so that the width of the road would separate him and the tinkers, and then he marched towards them.

          As he got closer to the men, he saw that their hair and their clothes were dirty and unkempt.  When he passed them, the one in the green kilt shouted something which he didn’t understand.  He just smiled and waved nonchalantly and kept on going.

          It was only when his back was to the tinkers that he really became frightened.  How stupid could he have been?  He was trapped now, unable to turn back.  They could drag him out into the heather and cut his throat and leave him there, and no-one would know.

          There was a boulder by the side of the road just ahead of him.  When he reached it, he sat down on it, pretended to tie one of his laces and looked back at the tinkers.  They were all too busy to notice him, though.  A bus full of tourists – Americans, probably – had come up from Pitlochry.  Three of the tinkers were selling sprigs of ‘lucky heather’ to some of the tourists, while the fourth tinker, the one in the green kilt, was starting up the bagpipes.

          He got up from the boulder and continued on his way at a brisk pace.  He was immensely relieved not only to be leaving the tinkers behind, but also to be quickly out of earshot of the screeching and wailing of the worst rendition of ‘Scotland the Brave’ that he would ever hear.

*     *     *

Brendan Gisby was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, halfway through the 20th century, and was brought up just along the road in South Queensferry (the Ferry) in the shadow of the world-famous Forth Bridge. He has published two novels, "The Island of Whispers" and "The Olive Branch"; a collection of short stories about growing up in the Ferry during the 1950's and 1960's, "Ferry Tales"; and a biography of his late father, "The Bookie’s Runner". His author's website can be found here. Brendan is also the founder of McStorytellers, a website which showcases the work of Scottish-connected short story writers.

Wee Fictions: Call For Submissions

Wee Fictions is accepting submissions of poetry and prose (maximum 500 words) all through December.

Submissions should be sent to andrewmccallumcrawfordAThotmailDOTcom, with 'Wee Fictions' in the subject field.

Andrew McCallum Crawford - 'Gimlet' in Spilling Ink Review 7

Well pleased to have my story, Gimlet, in issue 7 of Spilling Ink Review.

A cracking sound. A crack and a jolt. He opened an eye. It must have been his head off the step. Marble. There was no pain. How did he get here? He’d climbed three flights and he was outside his gaff. He leaned over and dug the key out of his pocket. It was buried under a wad of coins and banknotes.
The place, in darkness, stank of old shoes. He managed to open the balcony door. He staggered to the mattress and collapsed. Old shoes and newsprint. Joss sticks.
The Weeping Song.
He reached over and pulled the phone out of the wall.
Oh, Matt.
Pissed again.

You can read the complete story online here.

Nick Cave gets a mention. He's singing this:

Nick Cave - The Weeping Song

The McCollection - an anthology of Scottish short stories, 2011

The McCollection - an anthology of twenty short stories by contributors to the McStorytellers website. Edited by Brendan Gisby.

Tom Greenwood
Pat Black
David D. Sharp
Alan Crossan
Gavin Broom
Skagadol Husche
Angus Shoor Caan
Alan Gillespie
Alan Brough
Bill Kirton
Andrew McCallum Crawford
Jack O’Donnell
Alasdair McPherson
Stewart Wright
Gurmeet Mattu
Brendan Gisby
Kevin McCallum
Ron A. Sewell
M. W. Harris
James McPherson

You can get the book on Kindle at Amazon co uk and Amazon com. The print edition is also available from Amazon com. Reviews will follow.

Sofitel

In this rented room
his thoughts are
of who
owns whom.

Bar, Graphite on Paper, 2011

The place smells stale, it smells of things that have been bottled up too long and are beginning to seep out. He positions himself at the bar. The tumbler is thick, squat. Whisky covers ice bricks: his optico-acoustico-olfactory pleasure is satiated. The verb 'articulate'. Words. He's not scared of them. Words are for playing with, it's not a thesis, although he is an educated man. The verb 'orchestrate'. Whisky. First the words, now the images, time to watch them flow before he messes with them. Cut and paste, rearrange, but stay shy of delete. Never delete. Conditional 3, if he hadn't done that he would have done something else. They all would. Things would have been different. Things would be different. Things wouldn't have gone stale. Yes, they would. Same stale, different bottles. Same man sitting in a bar, alone. A different bar, but the same alone, which is the point. 

A Wee Poem: Lignite

You dig it up.

It’s been buried for years –

millions of them.

It used to be trees.

They must have been beautiful.

You burn it.

The smoke makes patterns.

Dark blue on sky blue.

People see things.

Beautiful things.

Some people

claim to see trees.

Others stare into the ashes

Trying to rekindle the memory

Of a moment’s warmth.

The Next Stop Is Croy - A Wee Film

Here's a short film of my story, 'The Next Stop Is Croy', which was first published in Spilling Ink Review

Part 1

Part 2

Taken from my collection, 'The Next Stop Is Croy and other stories', which is available here and here.

The Next Stop Is Croy and other stories

Reviews:

`The Next Stop is Croy and Other Stories' is a skilfully written collection of short stories that takes the reader straight to the bittersweet spot of the human condition. Exploring familiar terrains of shame, frustration and loss, the writer differentiates these stories by revealing those elusive, critical moments in life that knit together to make a boy into a man. The writer manages to distil a lifetime into the spoken (and unspoken) language of fathers and sons. I've had the honour of publishing other works by Andrew McCallum Crawford and I hope that you seize the opportunity to read this moving collection of stories.     Amy Burns

*****

This is a short collection of six, easy to read stories which recount various incidents in the life of a young Scot. We see their surfaces, their separateness, but we're also made aware of the echoes between and the depths beneath them.

In a foreword, the author prepares us for the collection by reminding us that they're stand-alone pieces which `in no way' constitute `a novella or a novelette'. Equally, though, he acknowledges that strong links and themes run through them and the resultant grouping conveys very strongly their potential as a `continuous narrative'. The tantalising effect of the sequence is to make us want to know more of what happened between the episodes and events he chooses. As it is, we can enjoy each passage as a self-contained story but, simultaneously, we create our own version of how the relationships shifted and developed in the `gaps'.
They're all told from the perspective of a single narrator, Alan, observing and experiencing the separation between his own lifestyle, choices and opportunities and those of his father. The language often seems to suggest confrontation and yet there's no mistaking the tenderness, nostalgia and love that informs it. There's an artlessness, a deceptive simplicity about many of the exchanges between Alan and his father when we hear the abruptness of the delivery, the seeming carelessness of the remarks and hidden accusations, and we know that both parties want to say other things, want to express the love that connects them. It's a love that never gets articulated and yet it suffuses nearly all their contacts.
The writing is clever. There are no great tragic outpourings; tragedy is a very personal experience, marked by memories of seemingly trivial things - finding lost golf balls, sharpening a saw, cutting through a counter, sensing yet never penetrating a secret shared by two girls. But, when recollected, they have the resonance of major life events, signifying much more than their surface suggests. The stories convey the fragmentation of life, its refusal to cohere into a constant flow, the power of memories and the helplessness we feel before them.
The feeling which remains is that Alan is somehow lost in his own life. It's failed to settle into the meanings he seeks for it, remaining instead as a collection of disconnected fragments, each consisting of elements which should draw them together. So in the end, we come to realise the artfulness of those claims in the foreword. Our lives consist of fragments - we can group and structure them to imply a significance but, in the end, the idea of a `continuous narrative' is a myth. We need to live in and understand the moment. Above all, we need to be prepared to see the value of the trivial and tell the emotional truths which are the real driving force of our being.     Bill Kirton

*****

28 years ago Alastair Gray changed the landscape for short stories by a Scottish Author with "Unlikely Stories, Mostly". Those of us who love Contemporary Scottish Fiction have since found the ground rather barren.

Andrew's new collection is like finding a flower sprouting out of cracked concrete - it's unexpected and he's yet little known. But it is eminently readable, even when it hurts a bit.'

He'll kill me for writing this.     Steve Alker

*****

Andrew McCallum Crawford reaches into his wordsmiths toolbox to investigate the relationship between boys and fathers. Although the stories have a Scottish background there can be no doubt the truths of the relationships will be felt worldwide. As before, the humour and veracity of Scottish life is laid bare... this is quite simply the work of a fine author on the rise. Buy it before he gets too famous.     Peter Murphy
 

The book is available on Amazon co uk and Amazon com.