Story

The Snack Bar ConMANdrum

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) adult, British, comedy, Dating, Economy, Europe, Event, food, Humor, Humour, job, Literature, London, love, Mellennial, Nonfiction, Office, Prompt, Review, shopping, sophistication, Swindon, Uncategorized, Work, Young Professional , , , , , ,

In the office (yes, I do have a respected profession beyond this blog) someone set a unique challenge…

1. Write a short story that in some way is connected to you based on this format:

THE STORY SPINE

STRUCTURE

FUNCTION

Once upon a time…

Beginning

The world of the story is introduced and the main character’s routine is established

Every Day…

But, one day…

The Event

The main character breaks the routine

Because of that…

Middle

There are dire consequences for having broken the routine. It is unclear if the main character will come out alright in the end

Because of that…

Because of that…

Until finally…

The climax

The main character embarks upon success or failure

And, even since then…

End

The main character succeeds or fails, and a new routine is established

2. Pick an image or photo that captures the essence of your story.

In essence I wrote a more condensed version of a previous blog post, the one about the letter to Jordan’s cereals: “Why Can’t Men be More Like Snack Bars?”

My submission went like this:

The Snack Bar ConMANdrum

Once upon a time, I used to be obsessed with eating breakfast cereal bars (like, “this girl is going to turn into Tony the Tiger” obsessed).

Every day, I’d power through multiple Kellogg’s bars, if not whole boxes of the sticky bars of milk coated treats.

But, one day my dealer (Mr. Asda Supermarket) well Asda, he only had “Frusli Bars” to offer me. They’re like cereal bars but more fruit, less cereal and more socially acceptable to eat as an adult.

Because of that, I developed an even stronger addition to the new substance. Frusli came in different varieties and kept me going when I needed the energy or strength to haul luggage across the London Underground. They were always there for me (in my bag) and didn’t give me grief when I wanted to eat something.

So naturally, because of that, my dating life went to pot.

Because of that, I wrote to the makers of Frusli, Jordan’s Cereals, with a well-constructed argument that the world would be a better place is men were more like snack bars. I kinda hoped they’d send me their equivalent of the Milk Tray man to help, but instead they sent me a three month supply of their products.

Until finally, after devouring everything Jordan’s had sent me, I realised that I needed to apply my energies into something other than consumption. But also, that stringing a funny tale together can get me free stuff and exposure.

And, ever since then I’m more open and honest with my writing and send more physical letters to the people I want to grab attention from. And trust me, it works.

sb

 

Originally drafted in October 2019 for later publication.

 

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Every Book has a Million Stories

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) adult, Book, British, comedy, Culture, Humor, Humour, Literature, Novel, Review, Social Media, sophistication, Swindon, Tourist, train, Travel, Uncategorized, University, Young Professional , , , , , ,

You know that feeling when you walk out the door without a book?

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Nicole Scherzinger does, it’s probably why her and Lewis Hamilton aren’t together anymore.

“Nicky, did you remember to pack War and Peace?”

“Urm…”

“Oh for Christ’s sake Nicole, you had one job to do, one! What am I supposed to read now? Thomas Hardy?”

(That’s totally what caused their countless break ups and getting back togethers. I mean what else could a pop star and racing car driver possibly talk about?)

It’s no secret I like a good book. I like the escapism they provide, the ability to make you conjure an image in the mind that can vary incredibly from person to person. It’s a testament to the human mind that we can read a bunch of random symbols on a page and turn it into pure emotion. It’s equally a testament to incredibly skilled writers that the reader can be taken on a journey and laugh, cry or even be deceived by the story before them and yet, despite the abuse, the reader carries on to find themselves begging for more when the tale is complete. I refer to this feeling as a ‘book hangover’, when you finish a novel but feel empty inside. Unable to come to terms with the end of a good book.

My recent read, Gone Girl, was one recent example of a book hangover. Without spoiling the book and/or film (NB I have not seen the film yet, but am quite sure it’s terrible vs the book – they always are), Gone Girl is a gripping thriller involving the disappearance of Amy Elliot Dunne. A whodunit with countless twists and turns. A book worthy of anyone’s time.

That said, I think a sizeable chunk of my present book hangover can be attributed to all the locations I read this one particular novel. Now I likes my tea and coffee and I likes my intellectual style. For as long as I can remember I’ve dreamt of being sat in a stylish coffee shop and a handsome male swooping in and saying ‘Orwell, nice. What do you think of the book so far?’ instead of ‘is this seat taken?’ which is what I usually get. Hopelessly romantic ambitions aside, a good coffee shop with the right music and buzz is the best place the read a book. Fact.

One wash out weekend I basically went from coffee shop to coffee shop to read my book. (‘Oh look, its stopped raining’ *goes outside* ‘ah damn, its started again. Oh no, I’ll have to find another coffee shop to read in. The horror!’) What started as a one ‘look at me, I’m so intellectual!’ Instagram post turned into a mini series, a documentary of all the locations I read this one book. Aside from the plot of the novel itself, I now look back on these carefully posed photographs and think of the stories behind the locations. Those mini tales of no consequence or interest that form the back bone of daily human interaction.

Below are these said photos, complete with a slight description of the location. In taking and stylising these photos I learnt a bit about my tastes, how I like to relax and also that Gone Girl looks great in every filter. Show off.

Enjoy.

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Work, Swindon. I started and read a lot of Gone Girl in the break out space at work. This particular day I was in a good mood because I’d used a £2.50 Benugo voucher and the space was empty enough for me to take a picture without many people seeing. This area of the office houses a lot of meetings and discussions, I often hear fragments of interesting conversations causing me to lose my place mid paragraph. I wonder what people think of me reading in such a corporate environment. This is also the only photo which didn’t have a filter applied.

 

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Coffee #1, Swindon. This is my favourite coffee shop in Swindon. Upstairs it has a lot of space and never feels busy, perfect for reading and writing. Just out of shot (North West) a young couple were smooching on the sofa and spent the whole time I was there very much loved up, opposite (far right) a date was taking place and straight in front of me (where the Barista is) an older couple were reading the papers. To see three different relationship stages in a small area was charming.

 

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Caffé Nero, Bath Spa. I’d just arrived in the city on a Sunday morning and it was raining hard and steady. It was around 10:30am and none of the shops were open so I headed to a favourite haunt. The only seat available upstairs was a large sofa so I reluctantly took that. 30 minutes later an older man came and claimed another sofa that had been freed up and took possession of all the surrounding chairs for a upcoming group. Two friends, also awaiting a party, scrambled to get seats together around a table for two. A lady who’d sat in the corner eventually left and I claimed her armchair. The two friends turned around, having moved a number of seats, and saw my large, vacant, sofa. I apologised and invited them to claim my old space, which they readily grabbed. The older party discussed walking and the changing layout of Bath, the younger chatted about dating and studies. An interesting mix.

 

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Waterstones, Bath Spa. On the same day as the above photo, I dived into a bookshop to avoid the rain and happily discovered this place on the first floor. The area had largely been taken up by groups of young men with sci-fi t-shirts and beards, playing fantasy board games with excitement. I wondered if this was something they did regularly here and how they found a location with enough space to accommodate them for lengthy periods. It made me think that their gaming and my reading made us actually quite similar in that regard.

 

Reading at home
Home, Swindon. I’d just got back in from a two day Excel training course and felt shattered due to an information overload. I put on my oversized hoodie and felt relieved to have the option to read something which didn’t contain formulas.

 

Wine Bar Reading
Harbour, Bristol. I’d always wanted to go into a wine bar by myself, to defy the British stereotype that ‘it is ok for a man to hang out in a bar alone, but for a woman it’s weird.’ I’d never had the courage to do it, especially somewhere I didn’t know. I’d spent the day hanging out in Bristol with a friend and felt really good about life. Having missed my train I had some time to kill, so I ventured down to the harbour. Deciding it was now or never, I went into a bar (not my first choice, but everywhere was packed) and sat on a window ledge stool, between a large party of students and a first date-in-progress. I read my book for about 20 minutes before heading off. I felt so empowered that, on a Saturday night in a busy bar in a city I barely knew, I’d been able to do that. It wasn’t necessarily the action itself, but knowing I could perform the action by myself. I walked out with my head high and the eyes of numerous men on my back (including the man on his date).

 

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Home (bed), Swindon. By this stage I only had forty pages left to go so was thinking ahead to my next read. I was in bed, blinking off the sleep dust from my eyes and lolling around the duvet covers. On each of my bedside tables are piles of books, I had to carefully pull novels out of each tower to avoid the entire stack falling over. I placed a selection to my right, pulled the covers up and finished reading Gone Girl. Once I closed the orange cover I sighed, made myself a tea, and quickly disregarded a number of my earlier shortlist selection. A Clockwork Orange felt too challenging to deal with whist suffering from a book hangover. I couldn’t make a finial decision, but left it at TBC between a F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, or a children’s classic that I’d never have considered reading had I not spotted it in a charity shop.

 

 

Every book has a million stories.

The Fifty Words That Started It All

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) adult, Book, British, comedy, Humor, Humour, Literature, Uncategorized , , ,

I found this under my bed the other day…

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To the vast majority of people it represents just another book. Priced at £16.99, to my parents it probably represents an overpriced, emotional blackmail purchase, but to me it will always represent something far more significant. Unknown at the time (and for many years afterwards), this represents a key cornerstone in my life so far. For in this thick little book is my first ever published piece of writing.

Back when I was thirteen years old my English teacher got the class to write mini S.A.G.A.S (short, adventurous, gripping amusing, stories), short pieces of writing no longer than fifty words in length. At the time we were suitably hyped up by the prospect that the top students would get their work published in a book. My teacher’s words had the same effect on me as a child on blue Smarties (I was that sort of kid). Rising to the challenge, I poured out tens of short pieces in quick succession. While my peers scratched their heads over content, I found the greatest difficulty was knowing when to stop. Fifty words in which to write a complete, self-contained, passage is actually quite hard. In the end I selected the piece of work I felt best reflected who I was and my writing style (it was also the piece that my teacher chose to read out to the class. Take that Will Townsend!)

Unfortunately what our teacher had failed to tell us was that being selected to appear in the book wasn’t quite the big achievement originally billed up to be. It turned out that every submission made it to print, so long as their parents were prepared to stump up the money to buy the book in advance. Barring one girl, everyone in my class got a mention in the publication (even Will Townsend). Of course at thirteen this didn’t stop me being dead chuffed that something I’d written had achieved a degree of recognition. It meant that someone had seen value in my work. The fact that I still own this book in a state of near mint condition says it all.

Flicking back through the pages of Mini S.A.G.A.S. all these years later I still feel the same way as I did then, that for a thirteen year old my entry is by far the best. It’s certainly the most cohesive and unique of my class and regional peers (oh yay, yet another entry about a crush). And, although it would take another eight years to get me into proper writing, I like to think getting a little piece of my mind published sowed the seeds of creativity. If there was a prologue to my blog’s creation this would be it.

(And the best bit? You’ll never know what it was.)

An Amazing Story With a Strong Moral Message

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) Humour

This is the sort of story my future children have to look forward to.

A Powerfully Deep and Meaningful Story

by Alice E. Bennett

In the dark, dark Universe,

There’s a dark, dark galaxy,

In the dark, dark galaxy,

There’s a dark, dark solar system,

In the dark, dark solar system,

There’s a dark, dark planet,

On the dark, dark planet,

There’s a dark, dark continent,

In the dark, dark continent,

There’s a dark, dark country,

In the dark, dark country,

There’s a dark, dark region,

In the dark, dark region,

There’s a dark, dark county,

In the dark, dark country,

There’s a dark, dark city,

In the dark, dark city,

There’s a dark, dark area,

In the dark, dark area,

There’s a dark, dark street,

In the dark, dark street,

There’s a dark, dark house,

In the dark, dark house,

There’s some dark, dark stairs,

Up the dark, dark stairs,

There’s a dark, dark hallway,

Off the dark, dark hallway,

There’s a dark, dark bedroom,

In the dark, dark, bedroom,

There’s a dark, dark bed,

On the dark, dark bed,

There’s dark, dark sheets,

On the dark, dark sheets,

There’s a dark, dark rock,

And on this dark, dark rock,

Is a dark, dark substance,

And what is this dark, dark matter?

Well, be prepared to be amazed,

For this dark, dark substance,

In the dark, dark Universe,

Is spec of dark, dark…

…mud

Moral of this story: Some things are not worth waiting for

 

I’m going to be an awesome parent.