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 fiancée, 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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