Handiwork

In today’s writing class we considered excerpts from Sara Baume’s Handiwork. We discussed some of the themes of her book – labour, home, hobbies, inheritance – along with the craft of her writing. We also returned to Lopate’s work on the writer as character in essays.

The fragments below are from the writing exercises in the class.

Queensland 1987 in the last pass of the cucumber season. Twenty-two years old and leader of a chain gang. Picked up on a dusty violet dawn by a gang master outside a state government unemployment office. Back tray of his ute backward-facing leant on backpacks, towels tied around faces as dust jackets. Later, the conveyor shuffles the cucumbers in starts and fits. It’s the motor that’s distressed. Sacked by the gang master for the audacious act of fixing the conveyor belt chain.

This is the desk that Scott built. Scott is dead. Killed, he said beforehand, by the genes of his father and the distractions of his doctor. I’ll not live past fifty he said, as he sat cross-legged on the bedroom floor building this desk from a John Lewis flatpack. He was right and I write here in amongst the skirmish of desiccated pens and never finished notebooks and mugs of hot water, mugs bought on the Wild Atlantic Way from an Irish woman in a yellow apron who threw in a fruit scone with the white tissue-paper wrapping. How to Write Like Tolstoy. March Was Made of Yarn. The Trip to Echo Spring. The Student Guide to Writing. Concise Scots Dictionary (nothing concise about it). Scott is dead but he built this desk and now he is rinsed from the Internet. A GoPro, a stapler out of staples, a dried-out Pritt Stick, a Christmas stamp yet to be used, a wash-blue ceramic plant pot crammed with pointless pens for a pointless whiteboard I never crown.

Bought. A red sandstone flat, listed, in an empire building named Windsor Mansions by someone who may or may not have been taking the piss in 1896. Bought from a couple who rode a motorbike over the Alps in 1949 and never invested in gas central heating. Inside the flat, plants clamber and vegetables spoil and there’s a red thing happening which all started with the purchase of a post-box red Bakelite phone, bought with the proceeds of a focus group payment.

Some people have hobbies. She has campaigns, diatribes, schemings, manoeuvres. It is said, in whispers, that she begs, cajoles, witters on. She crusades and yet she is no crusader. No tunic or tabard, no applique red cross or oversize brown leather gloves. There is a sword in a museum up the road. If push comes to shove.

Watching north is not the same as watching south. The accordion bounces chipper on the Macedonian’s knees, the wheeze of his instrument his wheeze, my wizard. His knitted hat turns bare head turns sun hat turns bare head turns knitted hat. A year in hats with a constant, three beat, bouncing wheeze. Or a tango. Hats and accordion watching north.