Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer
‘This may be the last chance you have to write anything. Write it like it is the last time.’ Deveny meant it, and she had to do it. She wrote something. She had ten minutes. She didn’t need writeordie.com or bloody Freedom App. She had Deveny breathing down her neck. In fact, she’d had a day with the ‘who gives a fuck?’ CatherineDeveny, an ex Irish Catholic (still Irish maybe?), a room full of women and a man who kept quiet. It was Stella’s idea of a dream day.
Tea towel under her arm, timer at the ready, Stella left the Gunnas workshop. She walked out into the crazy Hobart Street. The street was filled with a huge blue and yellow water slide, yellow plastic rings, people in swimmers and screams. The DJ was doing yet another count down and music was pumping. Just another Saturday in Hobart I hear you say? But no. This was different. Stella looked left and right for an escape route. It was yellow plastic rings whichever way she chose, and as she turned on her heel to go north, a huge yellow ring with a woman in situ came flying over the barrier. It landed with full force onto Stella. They both fell with a thud to the pavement. The woman sat astride Stella, water dripping from all her sticky-out bits onto Stella’s new trousers, now patchy all over. The woman saw that Stella was still holding a tea towel – a tea towel? A piece of paper had fallen from her left hand. ‘She’s not moving. She’s not breathing.’ The woman stood, staring, with her yellow ring still firmly in place. She started to cry as people pushed past her to get to Stella. She opened the paper and read ‘Inspiration follows action. Catherine Deveny’s writers’ workshop. Melbourne – next month. Don’t fucking miss it!’
When Mavis had left the house that cold, dark morning to go to the water slide event with her four children, (only because it was pre-booked and her mum had paid for the tickets), she did not know that this day would change her life forever. She had always wanted to go to Melbourne and she had always wanted to write. She ran to the top of the queue through the field of yellow, ready to scream.