HIGHER CREATIVE SHAWLANDS ACADEMY Well I said to

HIGHER CREATIVE SHAWLANDS ACADEMY

‘Well, ’ I said to her, ‘what kind of time do you call this? ’ and she looks at me with that face she puts on when I know she wants to strangle me. ‘Well, ’ I said, ‘I’m waiting. ’ So she stands there inspecting her nails and heaving big sighs and rolling her eyes up to the heavens. I drum my fingers on the formica table top. Always irritates her, that does. I can give as good as I get, I tell you. I point to the clock again. ‘ I told you no later than eleven, my lady. How many bloody times have we been through all this? I’ve had it up to here. ’ I don’t know. The sacrifices you make for them. And what thanks do you get? How do they repay you? By worrying you sick, that’s how. Then all of a sudden she starts to move off. ‘Where do you think you’re going? ’ ‘To hell and back, ’ she says. ‘Don’t you use language like that you little tart, ’ I say but as soon as I’m out of my seat she puts on a burst of speed – how she does it with all that fat I don’t know – and I start to follow her but my knee goes and I have to stop. I shout up at her again but her door’s closed and I can hear the radio on. I stand still for a few minutes, wondering if the neighbours have heard. Then I go back into the kitchen and pick up my knitting. I’ll wait till she’s asleep, then I’ll go back to bed.

Bit nippy this morning, by Jove. Could see my breath in the air. Showered, shaved, by which time Fiona was knocking on the door. I knew it must be her because it’s Friday. Easy to remember – same starting letter, F. ‘Cup of tea, Walter? ’ she shouted. She says I’m deaf but I keep telling her she mumbles. Pleasant type, though. Reminds me of Sophie, the Resistance girl I did training with in’ 42. ‘That would be nice, ’ I called back. When I opened the door she brushed past me and laid my cup on the bedside cabinet. ‘There we are, ’ she said. ‘Drink it up quickly now. We don’t want it to get cold, do we? ’ I thought of complimenting her on the perfume she was wearing but before I could find the words she was off down the corridor and knocking on Simpson’s door. Poor sod. Can’t hold his cup any more, so they’ve started making him drink through a straw.

I swear by olive oil. It lubricates the tonsils. You get used to the taste after a bit. I find that two tablespoons in the morning do the trick. Funny, there was probably more reason to take it years ago, when people smoked more in the clubs. I didn’t seem to notice at the time, of course. Though when I did start getting a bit hoarse on stage Deirdre wasn’t at all upset. ‘Makes you sound sexy, love. The women’ll love it. ’ Some hope. I was just thinking this morning that it’s almost ten years to the day that Deirdre passed on. ‘A lethal cocktail of drink and drugs’ was how the local paper put it. Poor Deirdre. All those bangles, and her hair done twice a week. Since then I’ve looked after the management side myself. Made a bit of a saving, if you must know.

I've never liked public transport. Waiting under the shelter, getting wet on rainy days when it comes through the holes in the roof. Drivers shouting at you to hurry up as well as never getting a seat as they're always taken by youngsters pushing by. Doesn't bother me anyway, they're so hard to sit on. Smokers, though, they bother me. Blowing their smelly smoke into your face. That's only the people at the bus stop. When you get on, the drivers are so rude. "Hurry up, woman, get a move on. " The youngsters push past as you struggle to get your pass out. If Jimmy and I had only saved a bit harder, we could have had a car. Come to think of it, a 73 -year-old woman driver would probably get more hassle in a car than getting on a bus just going into town for the bingo. I won 150 pounds the other day. I went into Aberdeen Angus butchers and got myself a nice wee steak pie. Then I popped into Greggs and got myself a fruit scone with special butter and preserve and a French fancy for dessert. On the way home on the bus my French fancy got a wee bit squashed but I didn't mind. I picked up my Daily Record and some sweets for the grandchildren at the newsagent's below the tenement. I really enjoyed my meal and Jane phoned later and told me the good news. I was going to be doing some more babysitting again in six months. She was pregnant with her third child.

Back a bit sore this morning. Damn. Can't get used to soft beds. All those feathers. Too much fuss if you ask me. Too much mollycoddling for my taste. Beds are for women and children, a hard floor is good enough for me. Oh well, better get up some time. Goodness, I must have finished that bottle of malt. I remember when Crusty and I would go out for a drink and come back three days later. These were the good old days. The doctor said I need to stop because I can't handle like I used to. But it's all I've got to look forward to in life. I know it makes money a bit short, but I suppose I could turn the heating down a bit, even though it's the middle of winter, or maybe sell my medals. I could easily get 50 quid for my Burma Star.

TASK • Pick a speaker and a situation from the following two slides and write around 300 words detailing your character’s thoughts during the situation.

SPEAKERS • Dentist Actor Website designer Firefighter Circus performer Taxi driver Police officer Chef Nurse Deepsea diver

SITUATIONS • Hates his/her job but is too old to change it • Attracted to someone who is not interested in him/her • Still lives with his/her parents despite being forty years old • Turning increasingly to alcohol to solve his/her problems • Haunted by memories of the last war • Living alone on a run-down council estate • Trying to get his/her poems published but always failing • Finding that his/her business is losing a lot of money • Feeling that he/she no longer loves his/her partner • Facing the death of a much-loved friend

Annie Hall There's an old joke. Um, two elderly women are at a Catskill Mountain Resource and one of 'em says "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible. The other one says "Yeah I know, and such small portions. " Well, that's essentially how I feel about life. Full of loneliness, and misery and suffering and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly. The, the other important joke for me is one that's usually attributed to Groucho Marx. But I think is appears originally in Freud's "Wit and It's Relation to the Unconscious. " And it goes like this, I'm paraphrasing, um: I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member. That's the key joke of my adult life in terms of my relationships with women. You know, lately the strangest things have been going through my mind--'cause, I turned 40. And I guess I'm going through a life crisis or something, I don't know, and I, uh, and I'm not worried about aging. I'm not one of those characters, you know, I, uh, well, I'm balding slightly on top. I guess that’s the worst you can say about me. I, um, I think I'm going to get better as I get older, you know, I think I'm gonna be the, the balding, virile type, you know as opposed to say, the, um, distinguished gray, for instance. You know, 'less I'm neither of those two. 'Less I'm one of those guys with saliva dribbling out of his mouth who wanders into a cafeteria with a shopping bag, screaming about socialism. Annie and I broke up. And, and I, I still can't get my mind around that, you know, I, I keep sifting the pieces of the relationship through my mind, and examining my life and trying to figure out where did the screw-up come. You know, and a year ago we were, in love, you know. And, and, I'm not a morose type, I'm not a depressed character. I, I, I uh, you know, I was a reasonably happy kid, I guess. I was brought up in Brooklyn during World War Two. . . https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=Es. Hw. IBR 6 iv. A

Good Will Hunting Why shouldn't I work for the N. S. A. ? That's a tough one, but I'll take a shot. Say I'm working at the N. S. A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, 'cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people that I never met and that I never had no problem with get killed. Now the politicians are sayin', "Send in the marines to secure the area" 'cause they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot. Just like it wasn't them when their number was called, 'cause they were pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some kid from Southie takin' shrapnel in the ass. And he comes home to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, 'cause he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies used the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. They're takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin' play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy's out of work and he can't afford to drive, so he's walking to the fuckin' job interviews, which sucks 'cause the schrapnel in his ass is givin' him chronic hemorroids. And meanwhile he's starvin' 'cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat the only blue plate special they're servin' is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what did I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. I figure, fuck it, while I'm at it, why not just shoot my buddy, take his job and give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president. https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=m. JHv. Sp 9 AKYg

Dogma My first year in college. All through high school, I'd dated the same guy - Walter Flanigan. We were really in love, right? So much so that we decided to go to Carnegie Mellon together. . . that's this college in Pittsburgh. So there we are - away at school, and there's suddenly no parents to worry about anymore. so we're screwing like rabbits - just constantly doing it. And I wound up getting pregnant. So he begs me to have it. He says we should quit school and get married, and I'm telling him that we'll screw up our educations. We fought for about a week - my argument being there was no rush to have kids, you know? We could always have a baby in a couple of years - after school. So I got the abortion against his wishes. . . I mean, what the hell - it was my body, right? After graduation we got married and immediately set about trying to have kids. We tried like hell for the first 6 months, and - nothing. So I went to a gynecologist to see it everything was okay on my end. It wasn't. My uteran wall had this fissure. It seems that the doctor who performed the procedure on me years before had somehow botched it. I'd never be able to have a child. So there I am - devastated. And now I have to go home to break the news to my husband who years before had begged me to have the baby - his baby. And after I explain it to him through my tears, he sits on the couch and rubs his eyes. And in the calmest, most rational voice I've ever heard anybody use in my life, he asks me for a divorce. And I fought him, you know? I tried to talk him out of it, told him there were alternatives, like we could adopt. And all he said was he wanted a wife who could have HIS children. He remarried. He had two kids in two years with his new wife. We never spoke again. And now I do this. I dated this guy a year or two ago - he was really into comic books. He told me I had the stock superhero story - I wanted to prevent a wrong that had happened to me from happening to anyone else. Kind of like Batman, he said. The only difference is I don't put on tights to do it. . . unless all my other clothes are in the wash. . . so. . . let's go over your paperwork.

Torch Song Trilogy I think my biggest problem is being young and beautiful. It's my biggest problem because I've never been young and beautiful. Oh, I've been beautiful. And God knows I've been young, but never the twain have met. Not so as anyone would notice anyway. Y'know a shrink acquaintance of mine believes this to be the root of my attraction to a class of men most subtly described as old and ugly. I think he's underestimating my wheedles. See, a ugly person who goes after a pretty person gets nothing but trouble, but a pretty person who goes after a ugly person gets at least cab fare. Now, I ain't sayin' I never fell for a pretty face, but when les jeux sont fais gimme a toad with a pot o' gold and I'll give you three meals a day, cuz honeys, ain't no such thing as a toad when the lights go down. It's either feast or famine. It's the daylight you gotta watch out for. Well face it, a thing of beauty is a joy 'til sunrise. (drags on his cigarette) There's another group you gotta watch your food stamps around: The hopeless. They break down into three major categories: married, just in for the weekend (wink) terminally straight. Those affairs are the worst. You go into them with your eyes open, knowing all the limitations, accepting them maturely. Then WHAM BAM, you're writing letters to dear abbey and you're burning black candles at midnight. And you ask yourself "Wah happened? " I'm gonna tell you "Wah happened? " You got just what you wanted. The person that thinks they're mature enough to handle an affair that’s hopeless from the beginning is the very same person that keeps the publishers of gothic romances up to their tragic endings in mink. (holds a scarf up to his face) What do you think? Gorgeous, huh? (pause) Gimme a break, it's still under construction. For those of you what ain't yet guessed, I am an entertainer, or what's left of one. I go by the name Virginia Ham. Ain't that a kick in the rubber parts? You should hear some of my former handles: Anita Mann, Fonda Boys, Clair Voyant, Fay Ways, Bang La Desh. Yeah, I'm among the last of a dying breed. Well, once the ERA and Gay Civil Rights Bills have been passed, me and mine will find ourselves swept under the carpets, like the blacks done to Amos, Andy and Aunt Jemima. Hey, that’s all right. With a voice and a face like this, what do I got to worry about? I can always drive a cab. You know there are easier things in this life than being a drag queen. But I ain't got no choice. See, um…. Try as I may, I just can't walk in flats. (laughs) You know there was one guy once. His name was Charlie. Aw, he was everything you could want in an affair and more: he was tall, handsome, rich, deaf. The deafness was the "more. " He ain't never yelled at me, never complained if I snored. All his friends was nice and quiet. I even learned me some of that deaf sign language. Oh I…I remember some. "Cockroach. " Means "fuck. " Oh this here's my favourite. Means "I love you. " And I did too. But um…"not" "enough. " (You know, in my life I've slept with more men than are named and or numbered in the bible, old and new testaments put together. But not once has someone said "Arnold, I love you. " That I could believe. And I ask myself: "Do you really care? " You know the only honest answer I can give myself is "yes. " I care a great deal. But, "not" "enough. “ https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=RMQw. XAn. Qlko

Monologue • Playing Sandwiches – https: //vimeo. com/203068908 – https: //www. dailymotion. com/video/x 7 ny 1 n 5 Trigger warning: Paedophilia.