The Last Clockwork Whippet On The Tyne
Launch of my first short story pamphlet collection THE LAST CLOCKWORK WHIPPET ON THE TYNE
At the Lit & Phil, Westgate Road, Newcastle upon Tyne
Wednesday April 5th @ 7.00
Free
http://www.redsquirrelpress.com/KellyKnowFootstepsBIOG.html
I will be also reading at the Word, South Shields on Sunday April 23rd @ 2.00 with Nancy Revell.
The Last Clockwork Whippet on the Tyne
Thanks for the feedback (usually in my local, the Black Bull, Blaydon) on my short story pamphlet and Keith Parker, in particular, for his detailed (and positive) response: thanks!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/569592176426053/permalink/1531048833613711/
Review of Tom Kelly`s short story pamphlet, `The Last Clockwork Whippet On The Tyne.
`The Last Clockwork Whippet On The Tyne` by Tom Kelly. Published by Red Squirrel Press.
Tom Kelly has a very good ear. Before I get the obvious response, `And the other one is also perfectly acceptable,` I, of course, mean he has the ability to hear and empathise with others. When I was a teacher I often engaged in an activity I called `hot seating`. I would take a character from the past, one who challenged our normal moral expectations. I would play that character in role and engage the class in question and answer sessions to bring out the uncomfortable fact that people in the past had different views about reality and morality. These views were often repugnant but were, none the less, genuinely held. Thus I could be the captain of a slave ship, who saw the slave trade as a good thing, an advisor to Charles 1st who believed in absolute monarchy, an imperialist dedicated to empire, even, with older pupils only, a Nazi soldier who justified conquest and racism. Of course , in the end I always allowed my adopted ideas to be defeated, I am after all a leftward leaning, non-racist, anti-nationalist, democrat. But the point of the exercise was to inhabit and defend the practice of empathy. Unless you exercise empathy, understanding of perhaps your worst enemies view`s, then you can never effectively counter them. The difficult issue is always to learn that empathy does not mean agreement, it does mean understanding, which in turn does not mean tolerance. I reserve the right to empathise and also the right to then condemn.
In this series of sparkling monologues Tom Kelly shows us how to be empathetic. Here is the gambler in the story, `The Machines` , so seduced by his own clichés, that winning streaks exist waiting to be found, the belief that supports the profits of those who organise gambling throughout the world, that he has become convinced that slot machines are sentient creatures who need feeding. The more this belief takes hold the more his belief in real humans deteriorates with disastrous consequences.
Here is the woman in the story `Poor Woman` fundamentally in tune with God and his unwearying quest to rid the world of evil and vileness that threatens the welfare of all around her, but in particular her son. The deeper and more fanatical her vision the weaker and weaker the bonds of her community and family become.
In, `The Club Doorman` , the narrator seems to welcome the disintegration of his family as they are substituted for a colourful and very amusing cavalcade of eccentrics and misfits who were and are his substitute family. All conveniently associated with the,` CIU Club`.
In `Neighbourhood Watch` an obsessive snooper watches his street and everyone in it . It is never fully explained how he operated the road block! He is unshakeable in his belief that his relentless twenty four hour activity is bringing his community together as it steadily drives a wedge between him and his neighbours.
What links these monologues together is that Tom is able to present the characters beliefs from their point of view which, if you accept them temporarily, have an iron logic about them. When technology becomes human, when religion explains all, when good neighbourliness becomes jealous surveillance, when a drinking place becomes a family home, then each of these surreal scenarios becomes real and commonsensical. So for each character, however skewed their approach to life, whatever the desperate condition they now find themselves in, we feel sympathy for them, sympathy because we understand them empathetically, from the inside. That afterglow of sympathy is what marks fine monologues such as these.
In the last story and the title of the collection, we are presented with a dystopian world, not entirely different to our own. Here the social engineers, the image makers, the progress at all cost brigade and their iron logic view of the world have won. It is a world where the past is being systematically obliterated. The clubs are closed, the `Society for the Protection of the Leek ` is failing. Flat Caps are banned with a vengeance, as the `Clockwork Whippet narrator points out, “The Anti-Flat-Cap Brigade has the power to enter homes of those suspected of wearing flat caps and have them destroyed on the premises, sometimes on the wearers heads. Two men ended-up completely bald after flame throwers were used.” In this world art galleries have projects to make shipyards out of soap. (This last seems very familiar sounding to me.)
Here the `Last Clockwork Whippet` to walk the earth gives her last testament. Her words are bitter sweet , funny and satiric. Like all the best satire it carries a message, in this case about history and its vital relationship to the present. This resonated strongly with me. I live in `D` village a village that was literally condemned to demolition with its population dispersed, in the sixties, in a crazy scheme dreamt up by well-meaning social engineers to improve the image of the former coalmining area. Dystopia was not so far away in this case. Luckily the scheme was strongly resisted. As I write this I am looking out at the latest incarnation of its traditional allotments. The leek thrives here, flat caps are still worn without fear, soap is used for washing. The allotments are seen as trendy, attractive, life giving, green, enterprises. Beware, the `Clockwork Whippet` whirrs, of those who seek to scrub away all of the past.
This is a fine collection of writing. The stories are amusing, some terrifying, highly imaginative and deeply moral. By this last I mean moral and not moralising, they don`t preach, they evoke sympathy and we could all do with more of that. Glad I am to have been in the company of the `Last Clockwork Whippet` and her creator.
Keith Parker July 2017.
And you can buy a copy The Last Clockwork Whippet on the Tyne as it has just been re-printed.
from:
http://www.redsquirrelpress.com/SquirrelCAT%20POSTBOX.html
Comments
The Last Clockwork Whippet On The Tyne — No Comments
HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>