Inkerman Writers
a showcase of our work
OBERHAUSE TRIP CONTINUED
At last I’ve got round to continuing my blog. I’ve not had time to edit it so I’ve just typed out my notes as they were written.
Friday 10th September 2010
I decided to do something exciting before I left so I tried out our new toaster. No more excitement until the train from Darlington made its first stop. Even in the rain the view over the rooftops towards Durham Cathedral and Castle is one of the world’s best.
At Newcastle Metro they must have known I was going somewhere special – when I got to the platform the Airport train was just pulling in. At Wansbeck Road station I came across my first idea for a story. I saw a man in drag on the train going in the opposite direction. He was wearing a shiny red dress and a skew-whiff blonde wig. Where’s he going at this hour (9.00 a.m.), I thought. It took me a while to realise that, as he was coming from the Newcastle Airport, where’s he been might have been a better question. It must have been quite a stag night.
I met Lisa Bean (cultural officer, Middlesbrough Council) and Janice McBride (another semi-finalist) at the airport. Unfortunately Jennie Finch, the other Tees Valley semi-finalist, couldn’t make it. 3 or so hours later we were in Düsseldorf. It is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region. So now you know. As this was a literary trip, it’s perhaps more relevant that Düsseldorf was the setting of the first series of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet and reminded me of two of my writing heroes, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais.
We saw only motorways until we arrived at the NH Hotel.
At 5 o’clock we had tea and very nice cakes with our hosts and representatives from Italy and Turkey. The Italian writers were very young (one was 17) and, as they say in Sardinia, as trendy as owt. The Turkish writers were unable to attend as it was Ramadan, a time when families get together.
Later we went to the Oberhasen Gasometer, a spectactular blue building, which is lit up in green at night. The gasometer has been turned into an exhibition/arts centre, showing how well they have used their industrial heritage. There is a staircase running round the outside, where they sometimes have races. I can’t say I fancied all that running. Inside there is an exhibition called Out of This World about the ways we have studied the planets over the centuries. The visual impact as you walk in is staggering. The interior of the building has three storeys, with metal gantrys and stairways all around. The concret floor is as it was in 1928 when the gasometer was built.
We then had the awards ceremony. Rather than try to build up the suspense I’ll tell you the results:
1. Janice McBride
2. Jennie Fisher
3. Kerstin Franke
So Tees Valley won the first two prizes of 10,000 euros and 3 thousand euros. Janice was there to collect her prize. Extracts from each winning story were read out in German. My decades old ‘O’ level German couldn’t cope, I’m afraid.
More to come.
Bud
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About
DfC
The Inkerman Writers are members of Darlington for Culture (DfC), which was set up in 2010 to help save Darlington Arts Centre from closure.
Its members include representatives of arts and community groups.
DfC was established after the centre’s owner, Darlington Borough Council, announced that budget cuts meant that it would have to withdraw its subsidy from the Arts Centre.
Although the centre closed, the organisation remains active - more at www.darlingtonforculture.org
Publications
Welcome to the site created by the Inkerman Writers to showcase our work.
Based in Darlington, North East England, and having celebrated their tenth anniversary in 2013, members have enjoyed success in a variety of arenas, including winning, and being shortlisted and highly commended, in short story competitions, having novels published and publishing the short story anthology A Strawberry in Winter, which can be obtained by visiting the website www.blurb.com
The group's second anthology of short stories, Christophe's Farewell and Other Stories, can be obtained, cost £4.95 plus postage and packing, from
The Inkerman Writers’ latest book, Out of the Shadows, which was launched as part of the 2013 Darlington Arts Festival, is on sale. The book can be ordered direct from
http://www.blurb.co.uk/b/4204019-out-of-the-shadows
The group also produced The Last Waltz, a double CD of short stories, available by contacting deangriss@btinternet.com, cost £5 plus p and p.
Several of our writers wrote original one-act plays in a collaboration with the Green Theatre company, which were performed at Darlington Arts Centre early in February, 2012.
Darlington-based Inkerman Writers have produced their latest anthology of short stories, Inkerman Street, based on the demolition of a fictional northern street and the stories of the people who lived in it.
The book, which features a variety of stories ranging from horror to comedy, was launched to a large audience at the Darlington Arts Festival Literary Day on Saturday May 26 and begins like this:
“Inkerman Street is still and graveyard-hushed tonight, the terraced houses cold behind boarded-up windows, silent sentinels among a sea of wasteland. No one lives here now and tomorrow the bulldozers will move in to flatten the houses to make way for the Council’s Grand Plan.
“Although the people are long gone, the houses still have life. Peek into one of the bedrooms and see on the wall a painting of a seaside scene, brightly-coloured boats bobbing in the harbour, fishermen pipe-smoking in the noonday sun and seagulls wheeling high above the choppy waters. In the roaring silence of the night, you can hear the screeching of the birds and taste the salt air, acrid and herring-sharp at the back of your throat. It is an illusion; the bedroom is empty and the blooms on the faded wallpaper have long since wilted.
“The air in the houses is musty with neglect yet but a few months before, these were bustling homes filled with frying bacon and steaming irons, whistling kettles and playing children. The houses witnessed all these scenes for more than 150 years. Behind their curtains were enacted a thousand stories but tomorrow they will be destroyed because Inkerman Street is the last of its ilk.
“Now, on the eve of the street’s death, the people who once lived here have returned, gathering solemn and silent in the mist, the ghosts of the past come to pay final tribute….”
The anthology can be purchased at http://www.blurb.co.uk/bookstore/invited/7524452/bae89c993c98ec8c8b37b12d6b9b37ecced5dec3
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