Heard on the radio (and on YouTube) #flashfiction and singing

Do you listen to the radio? I was weaned on “Listen with Mother” at home on weekday mornings and progressed to “Music and Movement” a weekly treat at infant school. Although we did have television, there was more variety on the radio, as I recall. Nowadays, the only time I tune in is in the car and, since the pandemic, I’m in the car less often. It’s a pity, because I’ve discovered some fabulous music through the radio and, despite the competition from podcasts and the like, there are still some excellent spoken word and magazine programmes on BBC Radio Four. But even in during the old normal, my radio regime was flawed, as I couldn’t always dovetail my journeys with the broadcasts that interest me. I find it frustrating that, stuck in queueing traffic after a choir rehearsal, it’s Hobson’s choice between stabbing rap (no thank you), up-your-arse philosophising and choral Evensong (love the music, hate the prayers).

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

But controlled, individualised listening has its downside too. Just as writers often find inspiration earwigging in cafes, the unexpected on the radio can spark ideas too. A fictionalised radio broadcast can provide a similar function for our characters, illustrating some quirk of personality or progressing the plot. I’ve drawn on that option in both my published novels, which provided the inspiration for the following 99-word stories as my response to this week’s Carrot Ranch flash fiction challenge “something heard on the radio”.

He never intended to be a jailer

After years of travelling, responsible to no-one but himself, Steve has resolved to settle down. He gets a job, buys a house and persuades Liesel to move in with him.

Life’s perfect, until Liesel delivers her ultimatum: if he won’t agree to start a family, she’ll have to leave. He can’t bear to lose her, but how can he face the prospect of fatherhood when he has no idea what being a father means? If he could somehow make her stay, he wouldn’t have to choose … and it would be a shame not to make use of the cellar.

Will this be the solution to his problems, or the catalyst for his own unravelling?

It had to be a sign
 
“Living Doll” crescendoed as Steve pushed through the swing door into Theatre Six. Three figures in scrubs, and no instruments in sight except the whiteboard marker pens held, like microphones, to their mouths. It had to mean something, Jerry dancing in the middle, the father he never had.
 
He used to jive with his mother when his big sisters were at Guides. “Did he really do that, Mummy? Did Cliff Richard lock a lady in a trunk so no-one else could have her?”
 
Now he has a house, a cellar, bolts across the door. A girlfriend, threatening to leave.

At fifteen, she made a life-changing decision. Thirty years on, it’s time to make another.

When Diana escaped her misfit childhood, she thought she’d chosen the easier path. But the past lingers on, etched beneath her skin, and life won’t be worth living if her secret gets out.

As an adult, she’s kept other people at a distance... until Simon sweeps in on a cloud of promise and possibility. But his work is taking him to Cairo, the city that transformed her life. She’ll lose Simon if she doesn’t join him. She’ll lose herself if she does.

Sugar and Snails charts Diana’s unusual journey, revealing the scars from her fight to be true to herself. A triumphant mid-life coming-of-age story about bridging the gap between who we are and who we feel we ought to be.

Triggering the howling stage
 
I considered myself happy, that final summer of my childhood, playing housewife, home alone. My mother away, securing my future, my dad at work, my brother at play. My chores complete, I’d doze off with the radio in the afternoon heat. Until a sentimental song kicked me into consciousness, ambushing me with feelings I didn’t recognise as mine. A howling thrusting from my bowels and discharging from my throat. An animal sound, alien, drowning the jingle, almost choking me. Arrhythmic breathing, such wild and weird wailing, it made me laugh. A dramatic overture before the symphony of weeping commenced.

I’ve also made a playlist for each of these novels – here for Underneath and here for Sugar and Snails – but I should have done as Charli has and added them to my YouTube channel. But that was just a spindly seedling when my novels were released; I’ve recorded several more readings in the past couple of years – click on the image to subscribe.
 
My latest short story recording is “Fat Footprints” about a woman haunted by her carbon footprint.

I’m thankful to my publisher for the logo in the corner and for editing out a chunk towards the end where I repeatedly mangled my words! But videoing a reading is nothing to the challenge of submitting an audio recording of my singing for the self-isolation choir. I previously shared a couple of tracks from the first two weeks of summer school in another post; here are a couple more from the third week. (Doesn’t sound like a choir that would let me in to me either!)

But hey, the thing gets progressively more ambitious. This weekend, I’ve managed to record the rest of the piece (another seven tracks) to be included in a ‘performance’ later this month and on the summer school CD. Given my lack of talent, it’s a major achievement. Once my copy arrives, that'll be another reason I won’t be listening to much radio!