Finding Words in Whitechapel and other stories

The launch brought  a crowd of people to Waterstone's to buy Sydnee Blake's book, Finding Words in Whitechapel and other stories. The actor Kieron Jecchinis read the title story beautifully...'I was moved and thrilled to hear your title story', said Louise Bangay, actor. 'A lovely launch party. My husband bought the book,' Catherine Shakespeare, photographer. 'A wonderful book,' Cheryl Moskowitz, poet, author of The Girl is Smiling.

 Follow Sydnee at sydnee blake.blogspot.com

Her book is available at Waterstones, Amazon and on Kindle.

To be a Pilgrim

This morning Luke met up with his long-time friends, Peter, a retired Professor of Archaeology and his wife, Jenny. Together, they left London to drive to France,‘ to make a pilgrimage to celebrate the men that fought in the First World War...their commitment …their comradeship.’

Now Jenny is driving through the region where the Battle of the Somme took place. Luke has always wanted to visit here; it is where his father’s eldest brother was killed. 

With him in the backseat of the car, are jackets, bottles of wine, several cases of Stella and tins of Dulux, ready for him to decorate Peter’s and Jenny’s French cottage. Luke has been an artist, but to earn his bread and to once keep a wife and son, he became a decorator of other folks’ houses, now he appreciates ‘the French furrowed brown earth stretching to the horizon’. A litre of Stella adds to his enjoyment, helping to wipe out twenty years of experiencing ‘…the desolation of filling cracks, rubbing down, applying Dulux…’ 

They stop at a lay by called Little Vimy. Leaving the car to explore a Commonwealth Cemetery, Peter and Jenny go on ahead. Luke walks on alone. He looks up at the vertical slope far above him. ‘It made him dizzy, seeing the edge of the ridge hanging over him…Didn’t a hundred thousand men die here?’ Then he asks, ‘Comrades, you know loneliness, pain. Is it possible to blow life into the dying?’

Finding Words in Whitechapel and other stories - Launch!

We are delighted to invite you to the Book Launch of Finding Words in Whitechapel and other stories.

Date:  31st October 2013
Time:  6pm - 8pm
Where:  Waterstones, Upper Street, Islington Green (opposite the Cinema)
How to get there:  A 5 minute walk from The Angel.  Highbury/Islington cross the street and take bus number 4, 19, 30 to Islington Green.  

An extract will be read by actor, Kieron Jecchinis.

Hungarian Teeth

Have you ever sat open-mouthed, as an expensive English grinding-down-dentist starts to drill? Malcolm has. (Speeding on his bike at ten years old, he’d fallen off, broken his front teeth.) To put him to sleep, a BLACK rubber cup was placed over his nose. Breathing in the gas, ‘a thick dozy feeling swamped over him.’ And ‘Help, Help,’ he cried. But no sound came as ‘he felt himself sliding down a giant’s throat.’

   This is why he has not been to an English dentist for over twenty-two years. But now his future is ‘Sweet Lucy, with her baby blonde hair, her delicious perky breasts’. Yet all is not well. Lucy keeps telling him not to smile - that his ragged teeth are a deal breaker. What can he do but try an inexpensive all-in-dentist trip to Hungary? 

A Jazzy Evening In Old New York

‘Jazz –Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, the great Louis A – Oh God. Fifty-Second Street in 1950’. 

Tonight me, Laura, who began life on West 87th Street, who as a kid could only listen to Jazz on the radio in secret after mom stopped listening to her soaps or dad to the News.  Well, tonight I am going to see and hear the special, the wonderful Sarah Vaughan! Oh, what a great evening that will be. 

I’ll tell all the guys at university how I was taken to the famous Music Box on 52nd Street by Jimmy, my  roommate’s dad, a dad who dares to be different. And sitting in clouds of cigarette smoke, drinking lots of scotch I’ll hear satin-dressed Sarah Vaughan sing. ‘Her dark voice low’ and from her guts ‘she pulls out the sounds.’ Tonight, her music, her life’s pain and passion, will be shown to me. An experience I’ll never forget!

Finding Words in Whitechapel

 The becoming of a poet...

Whitechapel Library

                       
July, 1903
‘Sweat dripping heat. Lining up, Isaac Rosenberg peered from behind Jacob Rosen’s wide back and silently urged Mr.Usherwood to ring the school bell.’ The Headmaster does nothing. He keeps you waiting, lets you worry about what’s happening at home. Why has your younger brother’s straw pallet been moved to mama and papa’s room?  It’s not right.

School is out, and ‘Isaac flies swift as a Mohican Indian’s arrow’ to Whitechapel Road, where trams clang up and down. Around him peddlers sing their wares, ‘Alte zacha’, ‘Shmaltz herring’, ‘Pretzels, two for ha’penny.’ Although his mouth is watering, ‘his pockets are empty.’ 

Crossing the street, Isaac wonders why there is no love at home, no money, even though mama and his sister Minnie sew dresses day and night? Papa? He reads Tolstoy and is a peddler selling buttons ribbons. But Brother David isn’t sick, yet he’s being moved! 

The door to the flat is open; mama and Minnie are sewing. Papa is not out selling, but reading. Mama asks,’ How was school?’ 

Isaac can’t stop himself from reciting the poem To Autumn. Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Close bosom-friend of the maturing son. He must talk about the words, ‘how the autumn produce is tied to the helpful sun.’ ‘Your eyes and nose know because he speaks of the roots of things…See we are sharing pictures and thoughts with John Keats.’

‘You’re a good boy,’ says his mother.

 But why is David being moved?

Then, his mother folds the finished blue silk skirt into a piece of tissue paper. ‘Isaac, you won’t like it, my son, but it has to be...We are having a lodger, Mr. Abou Saleem is coming. He arrived from Kashmir… His cousin sells fruit...has eight children…He pays to sleep on the floor. There is more money.’ 

‘Trapped.’

AN E-VERSION OF THE BOOK WILL BE AVAILABLE ON KINDLE AS OF 13TH AUGUST 2013

Tall & Short Tales

Come share these tall and short tales about vivid but hidden lives.

Finding Words in Whitechapel and other stories explore lives in England, France and the United States. Men, women and children experience love, passion, failure and wonder, as they follow different paths to become their unique selves. 

Among the twenty stories in Finding Words in Whitechapel, is one concerning a future poet, Isaac Rosenberg.. In their East End flat, the Rosenberg family live in poverty. Isaac, 13, sleeps on a straw pallet. To earn money, he must share his small room, the floor space, with new immigrant Abou Saleem. A Jazzy Night in Old New York sings of Fifty Second Street in 1950, the jazz centre of the world. When eighteen-year-old Laura is invited to hear the great Sarah Vaughan sing, she experiences not only great music... Highbury Fields. Recently dumped by her husband, can Sally save her Highbury family home by finding proof that her ex is lying about being jobless? The Death Hat. Mrs Lovejoy waits at the bus stop for an old man to be her first New Hampshire summer visitor. Instead it is a young man, Arlo, who turns up - his face scarred by cold burns. The Roofer. Professor Andrew Harris and his wife return to their French cottage for a holiday. They watch the roofer place a weather cock on the 20 metre high church steeple. The experience alters all of their lives.