The "Brit a Day" series

What does a months-long parade of attractive British men have to do with fiction, you might well ask? These gentlemen have inspired some lovely scenes, part of the life I live in my head. Over time, some of these scenes reach out to one another and begin to form a story. For the present, each one of these pictures provides a writing prompt for me, a way to keep me writing with a sense of passion and narrative, even when the stories are not yet fully formed.



Saturday, April 13, 2013

A Brit a Day [#1072]

And as the microphone squeaks 
A young girl's telephone beeps 
Yeah she's dashing for the exit she's running to the streets outside 
"Oh you've saved me," she screams down the line 
"The band weren’t very good 
And I'm not having a nice time” 

Yeah but his bird thinks it's amazing, though 
So all that's left 
Is the proof that love's not only blind but deaf 

He talks of San Francisco, he's from Hunter's Bar 
I don't quite know the distance 
But I'm sure that's far I'm sure that's pretty far 

I'd love to tell you all my problem 
You're not from New York City, you're from Rotherham


Men from Yorkshire seem to have a way with words.  I've always said that Sheffield boy Alex Turner [who wrote the song 'Fake Tales of San Francisco' for his band Arctic Monkeys when he was about five or something] could make the English language lay down at his feet, rhyming.

And then, of these three idiots who make me laugh until the tears come, two have a connection to Rotherham.  James May grew up there.  And Jeremy Clarkson trained to be a journalist at the Rotherham Advertiser.


And then there was Albert Gardner, a displaced Yorkshireman who, along with his wife May, made us feel like family when we visited Kilwinning, Scotland, in 2000.  The Gardners became like adopted grandparents to me, and while Al may have been able to keep the neighbors in stitches, I'll never really know how witty his jokes were.  His Yorkshire accent was so heavy that I understood naught of what he said.

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