hush my inner critic!

i am so behind the target number of words for the na na nee nee writing competition. i have decided i can no longer claim to be writing a novel, but perhaps what is left may become a novella. here is another tiny excerpt, describing the streetcar ride to the old jewish cemetery in berlin.

"The cemetery was way out on the eastern side of the city. Rafi took the train to Haeckische Markt, and then went to find the tram stop. She punched her ticket again on her way in, just to make sure, and found a seat. Although it was the end of October, the weather was unseasonably warm. However, the person in charge of the heating system for the carriage had not taken this fact into account, and hot air blasted from a vent beside Rafi’s right knee. Another passenger leaned over her to open a window, and caught her eye. They smiled, and Rafi reached for her purple bandana. To take her mind off her discomfort, she looked out of the window. It was not long before the construction sites and modern superstructures of the centre of Berlin gave way to the East that she remembered. The buildings were old and pockmarked. People always said the holes were made by Russian bullets back in 1945, and maybe some of them were. Rafi felt a general air of apathy, and thought that many of the houses were just crumbling from neglect. The tram passed a small green area, and at its centre was a giant bust of Lenin, gazing unsmilingly at the passers-by. People on the street were wearing drab colours, and seemed to lack the forward drive that propelled pedestrians on the streets of London or New York. Many of the shops along the way had posters announcing bargains for that week, and most of the shops were either video stores or shoe shops. There were no Starbucks, no Macdonalds, no Dunkin Donuts to be seen. In the early 1980’s, Rafi had spent a couple of days in East Berlin. A memory of that visit suddenly came to mind. It was about a piece of chocolate that she had bought there. As she walked down Unter den Linden, admiring the Prussian architecture that reminded her of her grandfather, she began to eat the chocolate. It tasted like sawdust, and she spat it out. The next day, she found some of it still in her pocket, and tried it again. It didn’t taste so bad this time. She supposed that if it was all there was, one could get used to it after a while. The people on the street looked as if sawdust-flavoured chocolate would be a big treat for them.

Rafi pulled the cord and waited for the streetcar to stop. She stepped down onto the pavement and crossed onto the shady side of the main street. She turned left into Herbert-Baum Strasse, and began to walk up the hill. The road was lined by two rows of tall trees, and when Rafi looked at the leaves on the ground to see if she might identify the type of trees they were, she was delighted to find the ground covered with conkers. She picked a few, and continued up the slope, examining each chestnut to see if it had the pattern and shininess that gave her pleasure. She cast the losers back to the pavement, and pocketed the rest."

the first bit of the novel-writing month novel

THREE DAYS IN BERLIN
a NaNaNeeNee Novel

CHAPTER I

The trouble with leaving more than enough time to check in and go through security at the airport is that invariably you end up with more than enough time to sit and wait. How do you pass that time? First, you wander through the Duty Free section. No longer interested in the cut-price Silk Cut cigarettes, you lust after a tin of Quality Street the size of your head, drool at the gift-sized truncheons of Toblerone, and console yourself with several squirts of very expensive perfume. Next, you trail up and down the parade of shops, perhaps buying a dvd that you do not really need to own but it costs less than you would pay for it outside the airport. You check out the electronics store, diffidently considering which digital camera you wish that you had, and end up buying some AA batteries, or a travel converter plug. Finally, because you didn’t really have breakfast, or dinner, or anything; you look for something to eat that is neither your last meal nor your next. Since you are going on a journey, normal rules do not apply, so calories do not count and all diets are off. This is how Rafi found herself sitting in a saggy armchair outside Caffe Nero in Terminal Four of Heathrow Airport, with a glass of pressed apple juice in her hand, and her mouth full of Mississippi Mud Pie. It had seemed a good idea at the time, but the cake was stale and her tastebuds were disappointed. There was a woman on the next sofa, trying to feed a fidgety baby in a pushchair from a glass jar full of bright orange goo. She filled a white plastic spoon and aimed for the baby’s open mouth. At the last moment, the baby gurgled and twisted out of the way. “O bugger!” said the woman as carroty pap smeared across the baby’s face. She reached for a napkin, and the baby grinned. As the smile was being wiped off its face, Rafi decided it was time to go to the gate.

The flight was departing from one of the very last gates at the end of the terminal. Rafi stepped onto a moving walkway, and began to glide. Each step carried her three times further than it would on the ground, and she imagined herself skating gracefully across the ice. “Excuse me,” she said, as she rounded someone who did not seem to know that those who stood still should do so on the right-hand side. She swallowed her irritation, and continued to sail forward. The walkway ended, and she stumbled back onto dry land. The last few hundred yards were the most barren section of the airport. There were no more toilets. Neither were there any computer ports or telephones. There was nowhere to buy a junky magazine, nor a coffee. A lone Coke machine stood by the window. A Chasidic Jew sat in the middle of a row of chairs, clutching a large white hat-box in his left hand, and reading from a small gold-embossed hardback book in his right hand. The desk at her gate was empty and she sat down to wait.