Another Day in Ghana (illustrated)

Year 9 Geography. Unfinished and incomplete.

18th February 2011, written between 12:17 and 12:53. A Powerpoint presentation, representated here without the slides.

The African images I used come from Google Images, and the image from 'The Pandorica Opens' of the Earth comes from the excellent Doctor Who screencaps site Tragical History Tour. Effects added through Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007.

Whilst "when" is seemingly a typo, it does seem to capture an African accent. The circular effect on the images of the mother and child now remind me of Marvel Point One.

Another Day in Ghana

Directed, written and produced on Microsoft PowerPoint by Peter Webb

Ghana, Africa.

2011.

06:00 am.

Grace wakes up.

She goes to wake up her three surviving children.

“When will Papa be back?”, her youngest asks.

“I don’t know; he when missing after we left him to find a job in the town,” replies Grace. “I will see you later,” tells Grace, “I have to find some water. You can make the porridge whilst I am gone.”

Diary of an African Water Girl

I'm being naughty and posting this from ICT class.

Year Nine Geography. 26th April 2011, 10:33:03.

 Today Mother sent me out to get some water. It was a long and tenuous trip, but I found some eventually. I passed cattle and climbed through the murky water and walked across the piercing rocks. I was dressed in a light blue dress of thin fabric, wearing cheap shoes, and carrying a bag made of material to contain the water. We are getting desperate for water at home. This is why mother sent me out. There has been a Summer drought; we are all too hot, need something to drink, and yet there is a lack of water to go around. Rain does not fall leaving our buckets empty. The water on the streets have evaporated; and become clouded with the faeces of the people with no sanitation blocks in a nearby radius. So I have to walk to this river, bag in hand, and get as much as possible. And, since there are cattle, to get their fresh milk as well. Mother stays at home making a substitute meal of the last supplies. Father is out in the city, several miles away, trying to get a job. It is our last hope. When this water has been drunk, I will need to return here in a few days time to collect more. And more. When the sun shines on the grass (what little of it there is), it does not spell happiness on us as it should on us. It spells dehydration, long tasks, and hell for the family and townspeople.

© 2011 Peter Webb

Ebenezer Scrooge (illustrated)

Year Nine English. This isn't really a short story, more a fictional biography. This retells, and adds greatly, to the backstory of Ebenezer Scrooge, if he were an older man of the Twentieth Century, not the Nineteenth. There's some sketches too.

Wednesday 8th December 2010.

Ebenezer Scrooge

Ebenezer Scrooge was born on December 25th, 1944. He came from a German background, though living in England, and become much hated by his fellow people. He faced many hardships post-war whilst growing up in school, frequently bullied, and at the age of 14 he left, and joined his father for a course in business studies. Following this course, he became out of work, and spent the following years living off his Beatles-obsessed girlfriend, but, in 1971, she left him, after discovering that he had pawned in her original '1 of -' copy of The White Album, so he could set up a company with his best friend, Jacob Marley. After multiple unrecorded tax evasions, he had earnt enough money to set up the business, in 1975. Several decades later, his tax scam was discovered, and his both work and sexual partner, Jacob Marley, comitted suicide. Let out to attend the funeral, he scammed both his deceased partner and the police, thus allowing him to continue as a free man. Through the business he earned a fortune, and yet his record-breaking amount was never recorded in records, and so to keep the unearned title, he lived as a poor man, and spent little. He soon assisted the help of a Robert Crachitt, a family man, to work in his bank. However, Robert regretted this, and became a member of the poor, living with his family inside the cheapest flat available. With his wealth, Scrooge's hatred has returned, with even his family and friends bad mouthing him.

© 2010 Peter Webb

Mary Maloney to the Slaughter

Again in the original format; only in paragraphs to divide between lesson's work. Year Nine English again.

Monday 14th June 2011, and onwards. Unfinished and incomplete.

Mary Maloney to the Slaughter

1992.

The vinyl spun through the tune of 'Roll Over Beethoven'. Berry's lyrics echoed around the room, as Mary Maloney sat and listened, remembering the time this was new in that wonder world of a secondary husband, a young daughter, girls running around if with no panties, and Armchair Theatre on the BBC. Il Mary Maloney was now old and frail, with dyed red hair mixed in with shards of grey, deep indented wrinkles spread across her skin, several dimples now forming across her skin, and a figure which was certianlly no longer hourglass. Sam's had been shut since the dawn of the nineteen-seventies, as he retired to his family, and the dawn of supermarkets began to spread across the land. The counter of Sainsbury's now inhabited the counter of Sam's.

Newsstands of magazines now inhabited where the vegetables and meat were. Mary Maloney now inhabited where Sam stood. Rest. In. Peace. Mary Maloney removed the spool and shelved the record away as she put on her uniform. It would be another long day. She picked up her keys, and locked the bedroom, locked the kitchen, locked the front room, locked the cellar, locked the back door, opened the front door, went out of the front door, locked the front door, ran over to the garage and locked the garage. Nobody could find out. She unlocked her rectangular brown car, got into the driver's seat, started the engine, locked the car, and began her short drive to over to her workplace. As she drove, people stood and stared. What did this damned youth culture think was so wrong with a sixty-something year old woman using hair dye, with touched up hair lips and face driving a car produced in 1987, to go over to Sainsbury's and blandly answer each consumer's needs? Oh yes, you're too busy glammed up with your umbrella haircuts, dressed in your hoodies cuddled together in gangs, thinking punk-phase music is cool, piercing your bodies with earings and masturbating if you had a home computer. As she drove into the car park and over to the staff-reserved spaces, the thought stuck with her. What impression did this society think of her? They didn't know about what happened really with Patrick in '52. She sighed, parked in the last remaining space which she could 'legally' park in, put the handbrake on, flipped the switch to unlock the doors, turned off the ignition with her keys, removed the keys and slipped them into her trouser pocket, and exited the car, locking it as she did so. She walked past the bollards up to the front of the store, and entered ready for her work. Mr Wilson directed her over to the area she would be working at. Oh boy she thought, four hours at the tills and then lunch at the crappy café. Soon afterwards, customers would begin to approach. Trolley fulls of tins of peas, bags of Idaho potatoes, shrink wrapped legs of lamb and boxes of cheescake. Oh, the irony. Even more ironic that Mr. JD always kept them on sale. Is it a regional thing? Or is it country wide? She stared out of the window as she waited for customers to approach. Twenty minutes after she had started her shift, she saw a Ford Quattro pulling up in the car park. Shit! she cursed internally in her head. Fuck, please don't be her... She stared at the door being open and she soon realised it was what she feared. Her fat, drunk from birth, conditioned with ADHD daughter, going out for some shopping with her girlfriend.

It would be 3 months until Miss Maloney turned 40. Mary Maloney didn't care. "Go get yourself a husband!" a she'd said as she was growing up in the 60's. Now, the Maloney family line is doomed. Mary Maloney didn't care much about that either. The family line was screwed up enough already. The shop was bec starting to become alive. With a flick of a switch, Heath turned on the speakers, and inserted a compact disk into the machine. Hold on, thought Mary Maloney. Is that Ringo Starr? As the lyrics of the song began, she was proved correct. At least they were taking a stepback, and not going into those modern boybands, girls in bras singing lightly, and the punk leftovers from the previous decade."In the town where I was born, lived a man who sailed to sea, and he told us of his life, in the land of submarines..." sang Ringo, as the disc continued to spin round whilst being hit by a laser. When it hit "We all live in a yellow submarine...", Ms. Maloney had reached the door, and with a kiss the automated doors opened. Mary was so much dreading this. As her eyes glanced, she was relieved to see she was not approaching the tills to say hi. And soon, more people began to spread inside. She and her partner glanced through the magazines. She picked up a copy of The Times... and her girlfriend picked up a copy of the Gay Times. As the song reached Ringo's sound effect of bubbles, Maureen Maloney had spotted her mother, and began to walk up to the tills. THE till Mary had her shift at. Bugger. Soon began a series of hellos. Mary didn't give it much effort, replying to her blandly with a "Hullo", very reminiscent of Patrick's responses to her on that tired night. "How's it going mummy?" asked Maureen. With another bland response, Mary replied "Alright," gave it a pause and added "Thanks." "I love you so much!" she said in a cutesy voice. "You love HER too," was Mary's drab response. "Yes, I do, very much so," replied Maureen, and let out another kiss, as Mary felt disgusted by it. By now, the song had faded out. Please don't let it be 90's... Mary wished. Phew. Thank god. It faded into The Final Countdown. "So, what have you got there?" asked Mary, as she scanned the barcodes of the magazines through tills, and Maureen packed them into a plastic bag. "GT and The Times," replied Maureen's girlfriend. Mary couldn't be arsed to give a response and they left. Bitches, thought Mary. She stared at the window again as she watched them approach their car and leave. It did not take very long for another customer to approach her till. Other people's shifts were getting started too. The person's trolley contained, strangely, peas, Idaho potatoes, leg of lamb, Glocuester cheese, and cheescake. Coincidence? As the man placed the items onto the till, Mary commented on how this reminded her of what Sam's stocked, and what she bought back in the day. Being in his thirties, the man had recollections of Sam's too, and made replied talking about going their during his childhood to help out mother. The next four hours of her shift would become boring. At the end of it, she ran right over to the alcohol section, and purchased herself a bottle of whiskey. Downing it outside the store in the car park, she then returned, drunk, and went up the café.

To be continued in computer Word document

© 2011 Peter Webb

A Dead Body Was Discovered in the Undergrowth - Draft Plans

o   SECOND DRAFT!!!

It is Easter in AD30-something and a rabbit's corpse is found by Joseph Carpenter in the undergrowth of a cave and he wonders where Jesus' corpse has gone so he goes and proclaims the news to the village and they become suspicious of Joseph.

                                                                     

Second draft plan

April, the First Century AD. Joseph Carpenter has returned to the Eastern countries on pilgrimage, having heard rumours of the passing of his adoptive son. He treks to the tomb of Jesus, but upon opening there he does not find the body of the holy prophet - instead he finds the bloody body of a rabbit in the undergrowth. But when he tells the people of the village that Jesus has gone from his resting place, having been replaced by a rabbit, people begin to accuse Joseph of murder, others think the rabbit was a reincarnation of Jesus (which begins to form Buddhism) , and a few believe it is the next prophet (forming (and named) Easter). They return to the undergrowth and find eggs, and new life is formed.

A Dead Body Was Discovered in the Undergrowth

Written in Year Nine English over two lessons, on the theme of, well, what the title says - a dead body being discovered in an area of undergrowth - though not necessarily a human one. But don't worry, I did not go the alien route, or even the contemporary route. In the original writing, I did not divide the story into paragraphs, though it should be. Therefore, it remains in the original format, though I did place a divide between lesson's writing.

Monday 27th June 2011, and onwards. Unfinished and incomplete.

A dead body was discovered in the undergrowth. But it was not of the holy prophet. "What has happened to my son?!" shouted Joseph. The pilgrimage had not been going well for him. Having left Jerusalem, he approached a trader, gave him a few coins, and bought a camel to ride on his journey. He had packed bottles of water, too, as the trip required a trek through the hot, stuffy desert, where there were no residues of water for miles. The journey had been promptly prepared, having had the news of the passing of his adoptive son only just spread into the city of Jerusalem. Bethlehem had returned to its silent night, and the Roman armies had begun to spread closer. When walking to the inn, amidst the silent citizens and deceptive centurions, he began to hear whispers from a woman. "Jesus has returned to his father..." she had said to her friend. Initially confused by this, Joseph soon realised she was referring to God. His cheeks reddened up with shock. He then asked of her "You mean he has died?!", to a reply of yes. She soon added "Who are you?". He was surprised that she did not recognise him, but then she appeared to be only in her twenties, and would not have lived through the nativity. "But I am Joseph Carpenter - the one chosen by God to father his son Jesus, and to stay by the side of his surrogate mother, and my wife, Mary.". The woman was shocked, and suddenly felt incredibly sympathetic for the man. Having noticed the darkness, Joseph thought it would be too late to ride off on pilgrimage to visit his resting place. Instead, he parted from the helpful woman, and went off to sleep at his bedlam - the inn. That night, as his head rested on the hay, a vision came to him. It was mother Mary, speaking words of wisdom.

"Let it be," she repeated several times over. "Let it be.". Joseph was confused. Was that her? Was that my wife? "Mary?" he asked. "It's going to be alright," she said, calmly. "Alright... Alright..." "But our son is dead!" responded Joseph with a slight anger. "He is with his father now," said Mary. "And not on Earth! His body may be, but his soul is in heaven!" Joseph shouted. As soon as he said this, chickens clucked. Mary faded from his mind. The innkeeper knocked on the stable. She wasn't there. He slumber'd back to the hay, and drifted off to sleep. The next morning, he rose early, and rushed off on to pilgrimage. Placing himself on the camel, the hooves clunkered across the roasting grains of sand at a brisk pace. The journey should be faster than I initially thought, contemplated Joseph. An hour of trekking later, the camel was tiring, and as was Joseph. He removed his bag and took out a bottle of water, stopping near a palm tree. He unscrewed the top, and placed it under the camel's mouth, who, with the aid of Joseph's steady hand, drank the entirety of the contents of the bottle fairly quickly. But Joseph was alright with passing on the water for now. He was not the one using the energy, after all. When he placed himself back on the camel's saddle, and rode a little further, he found a lake just over the sand dune. Well, that was annoying. He paused to refill the bottle and then continued the journey. Across the journey, he found himself passing a few groups of Romans. One of these people was riding a camel, and chanting "My camel! My camel! My kingdom for a camel!". The second group of Romans he passed a little later were interested in his camel. This small group of thugs pushed him off, forgetting to take his back pack, and rode off with his camel. He would have to walk the rest of the journey. Two hours later, with five more miles covered, he passed a legion of Roman centurions, carrying staffs and shields. But he had to finish his pilgrimage and visit his son for the last time. It was getting dark, and he was getting tired, so he reached a place of moderate concealment, and set up camp. This time, mother Mary came to him again. "You are doing good, my love," she said. "You are almost there!" she said, reassuringly. "But I have no camel!" replied Joseph.

© 2011 Peter Webb