wordwringers – Vicky Gemmell

HuckFinn is our garden stray. He is nothing special. A medium sized, medium pretty grey-and-white boy (although I believe grey is in nowadays, so possibly he could raise his medium prettiness status to Hot now). He’s been walking these streets since long before we came and is battled scarred and world-wise.

I’m terrified that one of our neighbours is going to report him to the pound one of these days and that he’s going to be picked up and given an immediate green dream. He’s never been, and never will be, anybody’s lap cat. In fact he won’t let a human anywhere close. Also he has tendencies that some non-cat lovers find unappealing: food theft and a drive to spend his cat seed at loud and long length in the wee hours.

But he has an indomitable spirit that I admire beyond telling. He has dug a niche for himself in the neighbourhood, despite receiving nothing by revulsion, and he is Lord Claude’s only friend. I feed him every day, trying to keep him here, rather than on the unfriendly streets, but the streets call him, and he is only a brief visitor, sometimes disappearing for over a week at a time.

Did I mention he is a warrior? Battle scars detract from his already compromised beauty, and he’s always gathering more. Today he’s on three legs and I’m very worried the one in the air is broken. How long before I have to trap him and take him to the vet, where I will, of course, have him desexed? I know the day’s coming, but when it does, that will be the end. He will never let me near again and my back yard will be minus a brave wanderer, Lord Claude minus his friend.

I have just posted 73,000 words to a publishing house’s writing competition. I may as well have sealed myself in that super strong envelope for the yawning reader on the other end to pull apart, dissect and criticize inside and out. Because, unusually, this manuscript is about me.

The idea dawned last year, which was my year for memoir writing. (The one before that was the year of writing about farming; the one before that, Kenyans; the one before that, property.) Anyhoo, I wrote two ladies’ memoirs in 2011 and became tail-waggingly excited when I learned that there is an annual competition for such material. I could not, however, persuade either of the ladies to enter. Then I remembered that I’d written my own memoir of a sort…

Do any of you remember Australia News? It was a pre-Facebook, pre-blog, wanna-be-monthly (often quarterly) newsletter I sent to loved ones, updating them on our doings Down Under. Well that’s what I’ve submitted.

I feel as though I’m lying on a slab, naked, exposed to strangers. And I need them to love me. It’s different when it’s an article about renovating or fertilizer. It’s even different if it’s my novel. Not everybody’s going to warm to material that doesn’t do it for them. But this time the material’s me. And there’s 73,000 words of it, so the stakes are higher.

Love me: it’s shortlisted.
Love me not: it’s not.