WOULD I LIE TO YOU?

Hello - yes, I know it's still only November - just - but welcome to December's edition of The Autolycan. Two or three months ago we found out that a much earlier blogger on Alderney had experimented with writing stories which combined two news items, and I thought that if he could do it, perhaps I'd better give it a go as well.  Even though the subject matter of one of them - sheds - doesn't sound very promising.  And the subject matter of the other is lying, which means the whole thing could be very confusing.  Oh dear.

Anyway, here it is - hope you like it!

WOULD I LIE TO YOU?

2014 marks the centenary of esteemed Welsh poet Dylan Thomas' birth. A replica of his iconic writing shed in Laugharne is coming to Hull for three days as part of the Dylan Thomas 100 celebrations.               Guide to Humber Mouth literature festival

LIES HAVE BECOME AN ACCEPTED PART OF BRITISH LIFE, POLL REVEALS

                                                                                   Daily Telegraph

To begin at the beginning.

I knew I'd made a mistake the moment I swerved across the pavement outside Sainsbury's in order to avoid the Big Issue seller. Looking back, it would have been so much easier to hurry past glancing importantly at my watch, feigned interest in the adverts on the bus stop or even parted with the quid.

Instead, I found my way barred. She had a clipboard and what I had to admit was a very engaging smile.

'Good morning, sir, and what a lovely morning it is!'

I shaped to pass her, but she was made of sterner stuff. She sprung her trap.

'I wonder if you have a moment to answer some questions about whether you tell fibs?'

Trapped! Say 'yes' and the interrogation would begin; say 'no' and there would be the inevitable follow up about whether that was a porkie and what I really meant was 'yes.' And the interrogation would begin.

I was wrestling with the logic of this when I noticed the Big Issue seller wink broadly at the girl. Her smile broadened. Surely I detected what in my youth would have been called a come-hither look......? No, I really wasn't kidding myself at all when I said 'Yes, truthfulness and evasion are subjects I've always found intellectually most stimulating. I'd love to take part.'

There were a couple of preliminaries about age group and ethnicity, and when she got to the question about gender and I quipped that there wasn't much point fibbing about that one her laughter rang out melodiously for what I later supposed to be the twentieth time that morning. Then she got to the one about occupation.

'Ah,' I said, 'I am a writer.'

Did I stand just a little taller? Puff my chest out, just slightly? Her pen hovered uncertainly.

'I'm so sorry, what was that?'

'I am a Writer' I said, dignifying the word with a capital W this time and hoping she'd notice.

'Really? What sort of things do you write?'

I was listening carefully but couldn't detect a capital W.

'Short stories mostly. I'm doing one at the moment about sheds.'

Her face fell.

'Sheds? Are they very interesting?'

'Well, there's a rather special one on tour – it's coming to Hull you know. It was Dylan Thomas's; he used it when he was Writing. Well, not his real shed of course, that's probably full of old bikes with flat tyres and pedals missing by now. No, this is a replica. With a replica desk and chair and even a replica jacket hanging on the back of the replica chair. You probably saw it in Replica Sheds Weekly.'

She frowned. 'No, funny, I must have missed it. And do you have a shed?'

'Me? Oh yes.'

'And do you use yours to write in?

'No. Dylan's had great views over the Taf estuary and the Gower peninsula. It's how he got his inspiration. Mine offers a rather less stirring view of a scrubby brown patch choked with brambles and goose grass. Oh, and he could watch lapwings and herons, otters and seals. Me, I've got pigeons and squirrels. I've tried, but it's not really the same.'

'But what is there to say about a replica shed?'

I tried hard to look like a poet. It wasn't easy.

'Well, I'm chucking in a couple of cultural allusions, Dylan Thomas quotes, that sort of thing.'

'He wrote about sheds?'

'No, but I'm starting with To begin at the beginning; that was his.'

'So you're just copying him.'

'No, I'm parodying bits of it as well. Listen. It is spring, moonless night in the small back garden, where the starless, bible black sky cradles a chill, squat, shed; a humble brown shed; a tumbledown, stumbledown, crumbledown shed..... It's better if you imagine Richard Burton doing it.'

I looked in vain for approval. There was none.

'Well, it might need a bit of tidying up, but I'm looking forward to seeing what happens when Dylan's had a few, which was pretty much all the time, and gets Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard in there by herself. Could be a whole series in that. Could be the start of 50 Sheds – Way-hay! What do you think?'

'Is that it, then?'

'No. I've got to develop the idea a bit from there. We Writers - (capital W and bold as well!) - we Writers do that, you know.'

Did she look ever so slightly impressed?

'One idea I had – if they can send his shed on tour, why can't I send mine? Find the right venues, could be a bob or two in it. There's somewhere called Shedfield down South I think, find a decent field there, tour could be off to a flyer.'

'Yes, but is there anything special about your shed?'

It was my face's turn to fall as my confidence drained. What with the sun, the girl, the smile, my tongue had perhaps been running away with me. I looked down at my feet.

'It has its quirks,' I ventured.

'Quirks?'

'Well, it's settling in one corner so the door sticks. If you shave a bit off the bottom it simply settles a bit more till it sticks again. Visitors would have to force it open.'

'And if they did?'

'The first thing to strike them would very likely be the old paint tins. Probably quite literally. There's quite a lot of them, each with a residue of paint that over the years has acquired a consistency roughly that of whale blubber. Once they've forced the door and the tins have cascaded out all over their feet they'll be able to admire one of the North's leading collections of surplus creosote, wittily offset by what was once a rack which doesn't quite support a range of garden forks with bent tines. Plus there's a cat basket pointlessly and poignantly kept for a long demised cat.'

She looked at me, not without pity.

'We were on occupation' she reminded me, 'I'll put you down as unemployed, shall I?'

There was definitely no capital U, no bold font. It might even have been in italics. I was losing ground.

'OK,' she said. 'on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 is less than once a week and 5 is several times a day, how often would you say you tell a lie?'

'Oh one, definitely. If that.'

'And on the same scale, where 1 is not embarrassed at all, and 5 is extremely embarrassed, how embarrassed are you when caught out in a lie?'

Alarm bells were ringing, but I wasn't sure why.

'It's so rare, so five, definitely.'

I was starting to feel uncomfortable and needed to regain the initiative. I forced a smile.

'Unless of course that's a lie, ha ha ha!'

She shook her head.

'If it is, the computer'll sort it out. It's got a sort of algorithm thingy.'

'Ah yes,' I nodded, knowingly, 'algorithms. Dy over Dx, all that.'

'I thought you looked like the sort of man who'd know that.'

I preened.

'Did you? Really?'

She eyed me coolly.

'No, not really. You're talking about logarithms, calculus, not algorithms. Sorry, but I'm not being entirely straight with you.'

I was stunned. We looked at each other for some moments, neither of us now sure how far we could trust the other. The atmosphere grew more tense. It was the Big Issue seller who broke what was becoming an oppressive silence.

'I think you should both be ashamed of yourselves,' he began, 'I don't believe a word either of you are saying.'

Embarrassed and mortified I felt the colour rising, but he turned first to the girl with the clipboard.

'A survey on lying? Answers to that aren't going to be very believable, are they? This is some sort of con, isn't it?'

Then it was my turn.

'And as for all this nonsense about a touring shed, well, that's not very convincing either, is it, not for a storyteller, not for a so-called 'Writer.' Tell you the truth, I think I'm the only honest one here.'

Embarrassment was turning to ignominy, ignominy to humiliation. In that moment I would have done almost anything to escape the situation. What I'd said was true, mostly, so why did I feel so uneasy, so guilty? What possessed me to think of trying to regain some credibility by offering to buy a copy of the Big Issue? Why, above all, did I allow myself to be panicked into reaching for my wallet rather than my loose change?

I bought a magazine, told him to keep the substantial change and walked away quickly. Really, I shouldn't have looked back. But I did, and saw the pair of them high-fiving each other, huge grins on their faces. They waved my tenner at me as they shook with laughter.

Dylan would have approved. I raged – raged! - at myself for the rest of the day and went anything but gentle into that good night.

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ANAGRAM CORNER

                                                     DAVID MELLOR.........

                                               .........DIM LOVER, LAD!