Bhdandme's Blog

Here is a story:

Measurements
 
Her grandfather turned up without warning. I didn’t know him at first. It was thirty years, more, since we’d last met. He wasn’t sure either. Then I said, yes, when he spoke my name.
He had a small, round canvas bag, leather reinforced and with a fold-over flap. It looked vaguely familiar. He handed it to me.
Inside was my father’s old hundred foot Chesterman Constantia reel tape measure. It had vanished shortly after we moved in. Some bugger’s walked off with it, I’d said. One of the builders, I expect.
The leather was scuffed, but the lettering was clear, and the stitched seam still showed pale, if not quite white. I pulled out a length of tape. It was frayed a little. You could see it had been used, but looked after too. I wound it back, slipped it into the case.
Why now?
My son, he said, runs the company now. His eldest just joined full time. I was going to pass it on, to mark the occasion. But he said I’m not giving your stolen goods to Sam.
He’d known for years. Worked it out for himself. Didn’t know where from, of course.
He fell silent. The tape felt solid, heavy, a real craftsman’s piece of kit.
It’s the best I’ve ever had.
It was my dad’s.
He looked away. I remembered my dad.
It would never have got used here, I said, not properly.
I held it out.
Tell your son that if it was good enough for my dad, it’s good enough for his boy.
Girl, he corrected.
If he doesn’t believe you, I’ll tell him myself.
He took it back, held out a hand. We shook.
Thank you, he said.

That’s her on the roof now; with the pony tail and the claw hammer.
>END

POSTFACE
Here is a little paragraph I wrote by way of pitching this very short story to an editor a while back:
I've been scouring my files. I think you'd like this story (below). It's a flash fiction - a man recalls an injury done, a confession made, a reflection and forgiveness; reconnection and renewal, which he draws attention to at the end. I imagine him (and hope a reader would too) talking in the now of that last sentence to someone who had maybe posed a question.... The Measurements (of the title) are those of the participants, judged by their actions and their reasonings, and by themselves as well as us, and by extension of us as we reflect on ours! (as I'm sure you will realise).

Here is the editor’s reply:
If you could add in what you have written at the top to make it a bit more comprehensible for the reader, we could use it.

What interests me is whether or not the story has already ‘told’ those elements I intended it to, or whether, as the editor suggests, they need to be ‘added’.
	I don’t doubt that there are disparities between what is intended by a writer, and what understood by a reader. It’s what makes the game worth playing on both sides of the line. Here we have an issue, not so much of ‘show don’t tell’ – a concept I rail against frequently – as of ‘tell don’t explain’ – which is my go-to alternative.
	The question is, have I told all that I intended to tell. I’ve listed it all in that initial pitch:

a man recalls an injury done, a confession made, a reflection and forgiveness; reconnection and renewal, to which he draws attention at the end.

	There are seven elements to the list. If I have told them all, then we should be able to find them all in the words They are, when all is said, all there is:
1.	Some bugger’s walked off with it, I’d said. One of the builders, I expect.
2.	But he said I’m not giving your stolen goods to Sam.
3.	I remembered my dad. It would never have got used here, I said, not properly.
4.	I held it out. Tell your son that if it was good enough for my dad, it’s good enough for his boy.
5.	He took it back, held out a hand. We shook.
6.	That’s her on the roof now; with the pony tail and the claw hammer.
7.	on the roof now
The first three short sentences place the remembered event well back in the past.

‘Her grandfather turned up without warning. I didn’t know him at first. It was thirty years, more, since we’d last met.’	

The last sentence places the telling of the story in that ‘now’, with the ‘her’ on the roof indicating the reconciliation that the incident has triggered. It’s as if the first-person narrator is commenting to a bystander, perhaps a neighbour on the fact and the backstory to it. The fact that the narrator has not seen the bearer of the tape for ‘thirty years, more’, and the fact of the granddaughter being ‘on the roof now’ signals the reconciliation, the reconnection and renewal.
	Are these elements of the story so hidden in and by the story that they would not be communicated to a reader? I don’t think so. But we can all be mistaken in each other at any moment.
	As a curious aside, if I’m right that the story has done its job, and in the lines picked out and quoted, then it has done so in about 15% of the words used, which is worth considering in its own right. What, if that is the case, are the other 85% doing? More pointed perhaps, is that if a story can be misinterpreted, misunderstood, so to can be the events, words – spoken and reported – and actions of real life. What percentage, I wonder, do we ‘get’ of those we see and hear around us?

Here's another not quite so short story, which I think touches on that theme:


Cries for Help

It’s a classic cry for help.
	It was Gary’s first case meeting and the Probation Officer was holding forth on the pilfered crisps: obviously ours. Taken from the kitchen store. Six bags of them, still in their larger trade pack. Not for sale to the public like that. We kept them as treats, for the residents.
	A cry for help, he said again, adding, and no crime. And Gary, the newest member of staff, put his oar in straight away.
	Surely that’s not for us to decide.
	An intellectual, you see. Education degree. Brought in to ginger us up. Besides, graduates were ten a penny back then, what with the economy in the state it was.  Academically higher than the P.O., but as the newest Assistant Warden, lowest of the low in the team. The P.O. smiled indulgently.
	I mean, Gary went on, shouldn’t it be the Courts?
	Theory is always so neat: real life not so. 
It’s hardly the way a home would behave, is it? The P.O. raised an eyebrow. Taking their kids to court?
Of course, they weren’t our kids. Weren’t kids, technically. They had to be over eighteen to be placed with us. They could vote. They were grown-ups, allegedly, and ranged up to sixty-five in age. We weren’t really a home; even a dysfunctional one. We were one last chance before prison, or one last attempt after it, repeatedly.
Like the week before. Gary’s first sleep-over shift. Not on his own, of course. One of the residents came into the office. Friday night. Anything left over after yesterday’s rent already spent in the city’s pubs.
You’d better come! Taz and The Wanker are having a go!
And they were. In the dining room. Chairs overturned. Cutlery and plates on the floor. Taz swinging a tomato sauce bottle.
Leave it to me, Rosie said. Four foot ten. Petite. I said to Gary, they won’t go for her. The language will stop too, in front of a lady. 
And it did. She stepped in between them. Reached up for the sauce bottle and took it. Made them shake hands and make up. Minor bruising. Each as bad as the other.
Fuck! Gary said. College boy, you see. Believed in equality.
I’ll phone the police, he said. He would have too. In breach of their Probation Orders. Well, one of them at least. Attacker. Other would be self-defence. Police wouldn’t have wanted to know. Common Assault. ABH at the worst, if the bruising came out. No harm done. Save the paperwork. Save Court time. Taxpayers’ money. Keep it out of the local press.
Gary couldn’t believe it. Not the way to teach anybody anything: well, anything worthwhile.
Don’t want them to fall at the first hurdle, we explained.
So, what? Wait for a bigger one? Gary said. Well, yes, we all thought.
And a month or two later, another Friday night, but this time out on the street. Taz at it again. This time the bottle was heavier. A Wainrights Bitter, I think. Not with the one they called The Wanker either. Just some passer-by. Wrong place. Wrong time.
The man had slumped against the wall of a Hotel. Taz knew he’d won. He held out a hand to shake and make up. But the guy wasn’t having any of it. He didn’t realise he was in a sort of game, a sport. He didn’t see it that way at all. He turned to the doorman who’d stepped towards them, slurred the words, call the police. 
So Taz hit him again.
Gary never said, I told you so, but we all knew he had.

I met him a decade or so later. Gary? He remembered me. I was retired by then. What a coincidence. Taz had come out that week. Not like that. On licence. Didn’t last twenty-four hours. Amazed. Stunned at how things had changed. Doors that you could open and shut without anybody else’s say so. The traffic. The clothes. The speed of things. All that technology. The way people talked. Wicked. Sick. Nobody was shaking hands and making up either. By dawn of the next day he was back in the cells. Safer there, where he knew the ropes. Made all the local papers, of course.
How is the old place, Gary asked. There was an edge to his voice. 
Just the same, I told him.
I told him about Fred too. Fred had been another Assistant Warden. Stole a pack of sausages. Three pounds ninety-five worth. Hid them in his overnight bag. Caught red-handed. They let him resign. No need to make a fuss; drag him through the courts. Lost his pension, of course, but kept it out of the local papers. Took his own life a short time later.
I don’t want to read any more bad news, the C.P.O. said. I want people to forget this place exists.