Posts Tagged accidents

ACCIDENTS

A sudden heavy shower of summer rain

slows the early evening motorway

to a blood red blur of brake lights.

In my mirror, I see two cars collide,

career across the lanes - and others stop,

receding out of sight into the downpour…

 

I am thirteen and a half and tall for my age -

the year of Hungary and Suez;

am sitting on the red leather back seat

of an almost straight-from-the-showroom

Morris Minor (in the inexorable green),

having dined at Heathrow’s new, five star

restaurant and sampled hors d’oeuvre

and tasted Riesling for the first time;

am being driven back to Golder’s Green

by Yvette, the car’s owner, a fashion designer

and childhood friend of the other passenger,

Angela, my aunt, a night club pianist,

briefly home from Johannesburg -

both daughters of Tzarist refugees,

both light years from the Pale,

bleached blondes, smoking Sobranie

Black Russian in ivory cigarette holders;

am listening to these nubile women,

our daughter’s age now, talk acidly

of their exes, wearily of their dads

when a four door car, overtaking,

somewhere on the Great West Road,

comes seemingly too close and Yvette

swerves sharply right, her bumper

striking its fender with a metallic thump…

 

Fifty and more years later I forget

the dénouement. Certainly, no one died.

I think of you, somewhere perhaps without rain,

watching the sun set, perhaps wondering where I am,

why I am late, while I drive homewards.

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A Jar of Sticklebacks

Coming Soon:

‘A Jar of Sticklebacks’, a short, episodic novel about deception, love and prejudice. The story is set in Liverpool, London, Marrakech and Nigeria and takes place between 1940 and 2006.

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THE MEMORIAL by David Selzer © 2008

THE MEMORIAL is a feature length screenplay. Set in the immediate aftermath of the First World War (against a background of mutinies and the influenza pandemic), it is a love story, which explores class, religious prejudice and anti-war issues through the eyes of Captain Edward Standish.

Much of the action takes place at Edward’s country seat, an east Midlands village dominated by a colliery, as well as in London where Edward falls in love with an artist, Clara Zeligman. Edward has to choose between Clara and and his fiancĂ©e, the Honourable Charlotte Antrobus.

The story also takes us to Flanders where Edward faced the toughest choice of his military career - an event which haunts him throughout the story.

min-pdf

 

You can download this screenplay as a .pdf

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