Woollen Picnic Rug

Hi everyone!!

I apologise for the long time between blog posts! (Although of course it's way less than the huge break-from-blogging I've been having all year, but anyway...)

I meant to post this last week because I wrote it last Thursday during my Creative Writing workshop, but obviously I never got around to blogging.

For those of you (and I think *maybe* I have at least one...?) anyway, for those of you who are doing the Theory and Practice of Creative Writing workshop, you'll have read the story in the Artifice chapter of the course reader that's about a girl who kills herself at a dinner party.

Our writing task was to write something that's based on any of the pieces in the course reader and that's the piece I chose. Some people chose that piece and then wrote something with similar subject matter, but I chose to change (significantly change, you'll see) the subject. The inspiration that I took from the original piece was the levels of description and the factual tone of the writing. If you comment, I'd be interested to know if you feel I've achieved this, even if you haven't read the original piece.

Anyway, here it is, I hope you enjoy it and please consider commenting to make me feel good about myself (or even perhaps because you love the piece)!

♥Nancy♬

On a woollen picnic rug, two teenagers relaxed under the hot sun. A wicker picnic basket lay beside them with the remains of sandwiches and chocolate cake dumped  carelessly into its bowels. The teenager, the boy, stroked his girlfriend’s hair. She smiled and sat up and kissed him.

On a leisurely stroll with Delilah the Corgi, Mrs. Peters from number 4 Snickety Lane entered the park. It was a lovely sunny day. She’d made sure to cover up and wear sunblock and a hat. The grass smelt dirty and was uncut. Mrs. Peters from number 4 Snickety Lane shortened the leash on Delilah the Corgi so that she could keep a closer eye on where her precious puppy was walking. As she passed by a patch of soft grass, she saw the young couple on their woollen picnic rug. The boy lay down and pulled his girlfriend to lay next to him. And there they were, legs entwined and mouths locked in the middle of the park. Mrs. Peters would tell her friends later that she’d nearly had a heart attack at the indecency of it all. She coughed loudly. And coughed loudly again. The teenagers did not stop their kissing. Muttering about the state of society, Mrs. Peters from number 4 Snickety Lane walked Delilah the Corgi right back out of the park. She was going home to write a letter to the council.

Two little girls in bright pink dresses held hands and skipped barefoot around the park. One was blonde and the other was brunette, but they were sisters, you could see it clearly in their faces. They skipped across the expanse of grass where people often sat for lunch. A woollen picnic rug felt cuddly warm against the blonde girls feet. She stopped and then her sister stopped. They both looked down at the rug. Both girls made a noise of distaste and disgust. Then they held hands again and ran all the way to the playground, to slide down the slide. The teenagers on the woollen picnic rug looked up from their kiss. They smiled and made comments about how cute the little kids were. He kissed her again.

The chains of the swing creaked as the swing swung back and forth. The child on the swing was oblivious to this fact, concentrating pointedly on his goal of swinging his feet high into the clear blue sky, above the treetops beyond. His mother stood behind him. She was slumped to the side with all her weight on one hip. A mobile phone in her hand beeped obnoxiously with every key she pressed. She was texting her friend. Her other hand occasionally pushed the child, but he knew how to swing without someone pushing and was getting higher without her help anyway. They were both entirely ignorant of the kissing teenagers.

The old man on the bench waited until Mrs. Peters from number 4 Snickety Lane had left the park before getting his binoculars out of his satchel. She’d had more than one good rant at him because bird-watching wasn’t an appropriate sport for an old man. She thought he ought to take up reading newspapers and writing to the council. His only response to that was that his lovely wife Milly would find it awfully boring, and if she were watching him from Heaven like he thought she was then he ought to do things that she’d find interesting. In a scan around the park through his binoculars, he saw two young teenagers laying on what looked to be a woollen picnic rug. They were kissing. He smiled first because he knew that would have outraged Mrs. Peters if she’d seen it. He smiled again when he remembered kissing his lovely wife Milly on a woollen picnic rug one day when they’d been as young as those teenagers.

All of a sudden all the heads turned. A tan-coloured canine raced across the park, bouncing across the long soft grass. It ran under a grove of trees, sniffing everything in its path. An old man who sat on the park bench put down his binoculars and laughed, greeting Delilah the Corgi by name. Delilah the Corgi barked as loudly as she could and then turned and raced off again.

This time she ran until there was a big metal pole in the way and she found that the ground under her feet was no longer soft grass but was now brown wood-chips and she looked up to see a child flying through the sky! He made a long creaking noise as he did so. Delilah the Corgi barked as the child began to plummet back towards the earth and then barked again as the child flew back up in the other direction. A grumpy voice behind the child shooed Delilah the Corgi away from her son. The child managed to swing so high that his feet were above the trees.

As Delilah the Corgi sped across the park again, she saw a blur of pink and blonde and brunette and ran back to turn circles around it. The two little girls yelled and giggled as Delilah the Corgi raced around their legs and jumped up at their knees and licked their ankles. They both fell to the ground in hysterics so the little dog could slobber all over their faces.

A scream wailed across the park as skinny old Mrs. Peters from number 4 Snickety Lane also raced across the park, in pursuit of Delilah the Corgi. She couldn’t run half as fast as her dog but she certainly tried. Her purple handbag flapped around comically. Delilah the Corgi heard the infuriated scream of her master and raced off again across the park.

She revelled in the feel of soft warm grass beneath her doggy feet. All of a sudden there wasn’t soft warm grass but a hot-from-the-sun woollen picnic rug. Surprised, Delilah the Corgi leapt into the air, intending to jump over the unfamiliar feeling beneath her feet. Being a Corgi, however, she couldn’t jump very high, and found herself tumbling down a hill made of teenage boy to land in between two teenagers. The teenagers stopped kissing to laugh and pat Delilah the Corgi.

Purple shoes belonging to Mrs. Peters from number 4 Snickety Lane appeared at the edge of the woollen picnic rug. Delilah the Corgi stopped licking the face of the teenage girl to look up at her owner and bark. Mrs. Peters from number 4 Snickety Lane faced a conundrum. Here was her precious Corgi Delilah in the middle of a picnic rug of debauchery. But out of the corner of her eye, she could see the old man watching her through his binoculars, the young mother looking up from her mobile phone and the two little girls in pink dresses staring at her. Mrs. Peters from number 4 Snickety Lane bent down stiffly and picked up Delilah the Corgi. With her nose in the air, and the dogs nose still sniffing all about in excitement, she walked out of the park. This time she kept a fierce hold on her mischievous dog. The teenagers laughed, and started kissing again.