Creative writing

I've signed up for a course with the Writers Bureau. Don't know what'll come out of it, but I thought it worth improving my writing skills. I had to write a couple of pieces for the first assignment and I attach one of them below.

In a couple of weeks time I will be attending the Woodcraft Folk's annual conference (or gathering, as its now called). The piece is supposed to capture its essence, although with the rain pounding on the windows outside, whilst I sit here writing, its hard to visualise those balmy June days!

THE GATHERING

Every year the Woodcraft Folk, a youth charity, organise a national event bringing together members from across the country. This “Annual Gathering”, a democracy under canvas, has a unique ambience and vibe.

Tents sprout like fungus across tendered lawns, a veritable panoply of colours and shapes. The excited chatter of delegates mixes with joyfully shouted greetings to friends and colleagues long missed. The voices are punctuated by the bass chink of sledgehammers on steel pegs, and snowy white marquees rise from the ground like overdressed brides. Elsewhere the sound of mallets on pegs adds a gentle and rhythmic drumming to the music of a community being born under a glorious blue sky.

The phut of burners and the scrape of kettles full of water denote people who have pitched their tents and stowed their gear. In some places whistles blow or boiled water furiously bubbles. These sounds are joined by the slurping of tea or coffee, and invariably accompanied by heart felt sighs as muscles are released from tension.

Woodies (as members often refer to themselves) sit in groups eating, drinking and sharing a well earned repast. Rangy teenagers stalk through the tents looking hungrily on, or flop under the shade of a tree in dappled light, “chilling out” cocooned in a world of digital music. Older members disdain the rich green sward, preferring to sit on tubular steel folding chairs made with gaudy nylon covers and passing between them ham and cheese sandwiches from tuppleware containers.

In a surprising short period of time the Woodies are gathered, fed and watered. Inexorably they start to head towards the conference hall. The streams of humanity ebb and flow around the tents, tributaries joining a larger flow, and the buzz grows louder and the atmosphere turns from a sleepy village fair to the electric hubbub of a collective will dedicated to the maxim “Education for social change.”

I stand for a moment in dazed amazement at the contradiction between the lazy Englishness of it all and the forthright commitment to Blake’s New Jerusalem as “we go singing into the fashioning of a new world.”