VISITORS TO PORT BROKEFERRY
It’s a bit blowy to be sitting outside, but it’s their holidays, so they sit at one of the tables on the pavement and they do it without complaining. They order a pot of tea for two and toasted sandwiches. He wants ham and cheese; she asks if she can have tomatoes with hers. Eileen scribbles a note onto her pad, something only she and Guthrie can make any sense of. She smiles at the visitors and asks if that will be all.
Guthrie is watching her through the window. Her hair is all blown from the tuck behind her ears. He frowns at that. He thinks there must be clips you can get for holding hair in place. He makes a note in his head to mention it to her sometime.
Eileen turns to go, almost. Thinks. Then brings to the visitors’ attention that there are tables inside the café if they would prefer. Eileen is cold and the fine blonde hairs on her bare arms are all stood up and her skin all goosebumps and shivers.
They laugh and tell Eileen they are on their holidays. As if Eileen did not know. They thank her and tell her they will be fine.
Eileen says she will be a few minutes and she retreats back into the warmth of 'The Bobbing Boat'.
Guthrie takes the slip of paper that Eileen has written on and sets about preparing the order of toasted sandwiches. Eileen lays a tray with two plates and two cups and saucers. She weights the two napkins down with two knives.
‘Shit, it’s cold out there,’ she hisses through her teeth to Guthrie, her voice so low only he can hear.
He doesn’t like it when she swears. He makes no reply. Her hair is still all loose across her cheeks. He wants to reach out and tuck it back where it belongs.
Eileen warms her hands on the sides of the urn, touching the hot metal, patting it so that she does not burn herself. Then she rubs the caught warmth over the backs of her hands.
Guthrie puts two teabags into a brown ceramic teapot. It has the words ‘Port Brokeferry’ raised on the belly of it. He has a shelf of them behind the counter. In different colours. They are for sale to the visitors. There are milk jugs to match. He points out that Eileen has forgotten the milk.
Outside the man sitting at the table holds the hand of the woman. He tells her this is nice. He means being with her. He means being together and no one else to see them. She nods. Tightens her grip on his fingers and leans in to kiss him.
2 comments:
Douglas, if you really "wish all this plagiarism thing would just end" then perhaps you should stop plagiarising people and start behaving like a responsible adult.
I've read up on this a bit, and a lot of your Port Brokeferry pieces plagiarise the work of the other writers who participated in Greyling Bay; you're still insisting that you didn't plagiarise Tania Hershman or Paul Auster, when it's obvious to everyone that you did; and you've made libellous blog posts and comments about everybody who has had the audacity to take you to task for it.
If you want all this unpleasantness to end, then stop insisting you've done nothing wrong and start apologising for your actions. Take down all your vengeful blog posts, ask blog owners to delete your libellous comments and apologise for them, and delete and forget all your Port Brokeferry pieces which contain characters or events which don't belong to you. (And no, changing their names doesn't make it alright, you just can't use them at all.)
And once you've done that, start again. Don't keep carping on about this; learn from it. You're ruining your own reputation, and if you carry on behaving this way no publisher is going to touch you, no matter what you write in the future.
Doug Cheadle
I see that you have taken control of your blog - to thereby ensure that your views are given the greater support and things said against you are 'controlled'. I think your blog has been designed to maliciously do me harm and if I ever discover who you are, then I think I would seek legal help in seeing that you remove my pieces from your site.
You ask me to define what plagiarism is. Even lawyers are called on to debate this matter in individual cases, for it is not easy. However, I would like to quote for your benefit something from The Copyright Licensing Agency (something, by the way, that Jane Smith speaks in agreement with early on her blog site 'How Publishing Really Works'):
"There is no need in the UK to register copyright. When an idea is committed to paper or another fixed form, it can be protected by copyright. It is the expression of the idea that is protected and not the idea itself. People cannot be stopped from borrowing an idea or producing something similar but can be stopped from copying."
The idea is, as Jane herself says, 'fair game'. In posting my stories on your blog, you have in fact committed copyright infringement. That cannot be argued away. But that I have plagiarised works would seem not to be the case according to the above quotation, and according to Jane Smith on her blog.
So, you see, the things I have said about Jane on my blog are close to truth and a fair response to the damage she has done to me on hers and elsewhere. And what I have said about you and Vanessa also speaks truth in response to the liebellous comments made against me.
As for Port Brokeferry, there was little in Jane's Greyling Bay project that could be said to be 'original'. What I am doing in my project is not of itself original, but it is different and my pieces are mine and are not reworkings of anything anyone else has written.
I do want all this unpleasantness to end, but if you expect me to quietly give in to the bullying of Jane and yourself and everyone else who has stood against me with such vitriol as I have read all over the internet, then you are mistaken.
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