The Outing by Johnny Barclay
It wasn’t exactly a pea-souper; we don’t tend to get them in Brighton. However my walk from the station down Queen’s Road in search of Radio Sussex’s studios was shrouded in pulses of sea mist and no less disconcerting. Here I was joining Roger Quennington as a guest on his morning show ‘Start the Day with Quen’. It was Peter James yesterday, me today – police work and crime the current trend.
‘Thank you, Dusty,” Roger said to his listeners as he gradually reduced the volume. ‘And now let me introduce you to my special guest, Rory Stein.’ Roger paused for effect.
’So Rory, tell me what lured you into a life of crime?’
‘Well to begin with,’ I replied ‘I felt a bit like Dusty, not quite knowing what to do with myself. I could have joined the army like so many but instead decided to give the police a go.’
‘And where did that lead you?’
‘Lots of training, then security work – you know, secret stuff. All a world away from Brighton and the sea-fret.’
‘But what about those secrets … I’m sure our listeners would love to know a bit more. After all, it’s a long time ago.’
‘You’re so right. It was, and a long way away too. You see my boss then was popular, very, but vulnerable too, so we had to be forever watchful, on the ball and ready for anything.’
‘Perhaps one special event comes to mind?’
‘Ah yes, a celebration cricket match. I remember it well, way out of the city it was, and the first time an International Team had ever visited this barren wasteland. Just coarse tufts of grass, no trees to be seen, and crowds of children amidst the dust and heat, transported to the ground on rickety buses.’
’Then what?’
‘The usual palaver – sirens wailing, lights flashing, a convoy of black vehicles, sinister with darkened windows. Ominous thunder-clouds bubbling up from the heat …beginning to grumble and threaten. Please don’t rain!’
‘What could possibly go wrong?’
‘Anything and everything. A bomb concealed in the dilapidated pavilion, a stray bullet, a riot, swarm of bees … any number of things.’
‘So how did you cope?’
‘Quite simply serenity and calm, upon the face and in the eyes to disguise any sense of panic, as well as the presence of a gun in its holster under my jacket. Children were everywhere of course, tennis balls flying about … a chance for them to play and have fun without fear.’
‘Did he have a go?’
‘I asked him if he would like to join in, yes. But with balls now whizzing about everywhere and chaos reigning, I began to regret this remark almost immediately.’
‘And then?’
‘Someone shouted ‘Good Photo Opportunity’. That clinched it of course. And so he had a hit and, if not as memorable as the rugby shirt photo, it still made its mark in the morning papers.
‘Quite a day, Rory.’
‘It certainly was and extra special for him to come home and walk amongst the children … not a long one by his standards, but almost certainly his first taste of cricket.’
No idea where this is, but I like the kind of jumbled vividness of the interview!
On first reading, I found this a bit confusing, thought I must be missing something. Second time round, though, I was clearer about what was going on. The clue for me came in the line ‘not as memorable as the rugby shirt photo’. I think then I knew who the piece was about and where the location was… though I’m ready to be proved wrong. I thought, given the 500-word limit, the piece was a little unbalanced. The detail about how the narrator got to Radio Sussex’s studio was perhaps not necessary, because the meat of the story is in the interview itself and the celebration cricket match. It often happens – and I still find this with my own writing – that one tends to put in too much preamble in a first draft and getting to the main action quicker is almost always an improvement. I recommend always looking at something you’ve written and asking yourself whether you can trim down the opening. Having said that, I thought this was a good piece of writing, describing an unusual but significant moment. It also fulfilled the brief well, giving sufficient clues to the location, without actually telling us where it was.