Creative Writing Bath Spa University

Last week  I was accepted onto the BA Creative Writing course at Bath Spa University, and I am incredibly excited about this next chapter as a writer.

Not having taken formal exams in the subjects I studied at GCSE and A-level I have had to produce samples of my work and write a 500 word piece entitled ‘The Tools of the Trade’ which you can read below.

Maybe the next time someone asks me if I’m going to write another book the answer might be less elusive!

Tools of the Trade by Jonathan Bryan

Some stories can only be whispered in the half light, on the hearth rug with faces set towards the glowing embers; others come to the surface in a man’s dying days like scum that needs to be cleared from the surface of a pond. So when my beloved 72 year old uncle told me about her that November evening, whispering out his confession in between pushing the button for more Morphine from the driver beside him, I knew this was going to be extraordinary.

“Hunger. Before I tell you the rest of the story you need to understand the extremities our hunger had taken us to; it  gnawed at us from the confines of our shrinking skin and devoured our resistance, causing in turn both a desperate flare of passion and an all-consuming apathy. As one of the few remaining fishermen on Guernsey I felt responsible: responsible for the hollow look in the islanders’ eyes, responsible for the children too weak to get out of bed, responsible for the death of Pippin our family dog. But with U-boats and mines it was too dangerous to fish at night, and when I did persuade the Germans to let me go during the day my nets were often hauled in empty, like the fish were cowering on the seabed.

So when William came to me that night and told me about the size of the creature they had landed on the rocks near Fermain Bay and told me to bring my longest fillet knife, I didn’t hesitate. There was a fingernail of moon and we dodged from one shadow to another in silence, letting our childhood legs take us through the woods.

It was the scales I saw first – absorbing the moon and rippling emeralds and amethysts in their silken reply.  Maybe looking back at it now, it was just that – a large fish cleaved at the end into one bony seabass tail; maybe the arms and hair and face weren’t there after all. In any case, there was no sound which came from it, and surely it’s speech which demarks us from creatures.

We had to be quick, being caught after curfew was an offence punishable by incarceration, and with my fillet knife I could only be involved in the aftermath. So maybe I just provided a tool. A tool of my trade.”

My uncle, my fishing mentor for the past 30 years, clears his throat and fumbles behind the thick mesh of linen and wires. Finding the leather pouch that always sits at his waist his fingertips curl around the familiar bone handle; the handle he taught me to grasp, the handle I filleted my first sea-bass with.

“But its eyes… her eyes… endless fathoms, deep and wide and imploring have accused me every day since then.

They watch me now…

She is waiting for me.”