Author Archives: Ellie Ness

Mother, daughter, friend, teacher. 12 hour work-related days were common. Carving out a new routine. Amateur writer.

Rogano’s Reunion

Rogano’s in Glasgow had been loved and frequented by Glaswegians since the 1920s. Most people ate to excess upstairs in their infamous oyster and champagne bar but for those on a budget, like Maggie, the subterranean restaurant reached by labyrinthine stairs offered a bargain basement glimpse of the past.

Crisp white linen tablecloths, highly polished gleaming glasses and silvery Dubarry cutlery welcomed the pre-theatre dinner crowd. Booths accommodating large groups backed onto backlit art deco stained glass windows, an artificial semblance of being somewhere bright despite being underground next to the metro Clockwork Orange. On the walls were photographs and silhouettes of famous diners harking back to when Rogano’s was in its heyday. Dorothy Parker and other witty writer quotes, captioned each picture. Maggie’s absolute favourite was “If you have nothing good to say, come sit by me…” under an image of Hedda Hopper.

The “girls” arrived in dribs and drabs but the chattery excitement level increased every time someone new arrived at the table. The noise level seemed disproportionate to the size of the group. Ten long term girlfriends who had done their teacher training together, knew all the ups and downs of life added like a chef’s kiss of flavours at the annual get-togethers. To an outsider, it might have sounded like euphoria.

God, it was so good to kick back with people who remembered you before you were decrepit! Within the group were one widow, two divorces, two living with serious illnesses and two whose children had grown up and emigrated to Australia with hardly a backward glance.

Maggie stood up knocking over a glass of fizz which smashed onto the tiled floor. A loud cheer went up from the group, “There’s always one!” laughed Jenny as the staff gathered with dustpan, brush and cloths like magic elves restoring order. Maggie’s face was scarlet, mostly from embarrassment but also from the exertion of bending down to pick up her floral collapsible walking stick. Even a trip to the toilet could be such an effort.

When Maggie returned, the group was a bit more subdued, possibly due to the visible reality of infirmity which had crashed in on the reverie.

“Did I tell you that I bumped into our former lecturer Mr Brown the other day?” Maggie began. Nine eager pairs of eyes turned to hear which bright young thing he had on his arm now…

Old friends are the best friends, especially when they share a love of gossip.

Rogano’s

Synchronized Chaos Feature – August 2023

Pleased to be included in this month’s issue to Synchronized Chaos.

Forbidden Door

It was a large house he brought me to – all marble floors with punkahs on ceilings to cool feet and heads. There was a vineyard between this house and the one next door where my brother-in-law lived and towards the side of the house swinging hammocks had been set up for the extended family to enjoy the cooler evenings when the searing heat abated. We had been given the upstairs rooms of the big house which had been readied in preparation for a western girl coming to live with an Arabic family. There was a modern bathroom with a flushing toilet which I didn’t initially understand was a real luxury in Sharaban, Diyala. In the corridor between the staircase and the upper floor rooms, pickle jars and fruit preserves at various stages of production lay stacked on the floor. Yom, or the “Duck” as the family called her, ran a busy and productive household. The flat roofed verandah could be used for sleeping under the stars when she was too hot or wanted to remember her youth. Amina – her real name – Om Yas, Yom, Duck – she answered to them all. Illiterate, she had married her cousin when they were both very early teenagers which is why, I suppose, they looked a bit similar. She had a black ink tattoo on her face which seemed to be some sort of tribal marking and was bilingual. Turkish was her first language but when Iraq had been created the population from the north had been forced to learn Arabic. She knew a lot about a lot of things and it’s no surprise that all seven of her children went on to be engineers, teachers, a farmer and a vet. Not being allowed to go to school didn’t dim her intelligence. When I first appeared at her door she performed some sort of spell with fiery smoke and water before letting me in the house. She might have known about the world and breeding champion horses and a woman’s lot in society, but a lack of education had meant she retained the superstitions of her village, despite living in a town. Only five of us lived in the house but mealtimes usually catered for between ten to twenty as the other sons would “drop by”, with their families as nobody could cook like the Duck, or so they said. Amina waddled wrapped in her black scarf which covered her hair and shoulders like a mini abaya, sitting down cross-legged on a cushion directing daughters and daughters-in-law to attend to the men and children, lest they should starve. She could get up again with great difficulty doing that downward dog style of pushing herself back into an upright position. The children laughed and played on the periphery of the meal and if they became too audacious one son or another would stand to pick up the boys – always the boys – by their wrists and heels airplane-like for a spin or grab them to throw them upwards towards the ceiling. No child was ever hurt while I was there but it must have come close a few times. The bulk of the house was downstairs. A huge kitchen with multiple stoves and freezers was mostly where I was expected to reside. The Duck tried to teach me how to make various favourites in gigantic quantities. The kitchen led to what in the west would have been called the family lounge. And lounging was definitely what happened here, just not on chairs. Harking back to Bedouin days, cushions littered the ground and people grabbed however many they wanted in order to be comfortable on the smooth, white marble while the overhead punkahs whirred, wafting a gentle breeze around our overly hot bodies. The women, of course, fetched and carried dish after dish, drink after drink from the kitchen to the table cloth laid out without ceremony on the floor. Everyone tore off giant flatbread pieces to make edible spoons, scooping up vegetables and meats to eat their fill. There was a part of the house downstairs that was off limits to me, well I was allowed to clean it when the men were out – lucky me – but it housed a western style toilet and a very formal lounge and dining room. There was a huge marble table with upholstered chairs set off with ornate golden woodwork. There was a collection of plush red velvet and gold throne type chairs to the side of this where presumably, people more important than women and children were brought to. If anyone arrived at the house they would enter by the main door, forbidden to me, and taken to this huge room. If anyone was visiting, the men who normally lounged around being catered to, suddenly became the servers – running through from kitchen to table with gigantic silver platters brimming with delicious food. I presume that business was conducted there, possibly even bribery and corruption because carrier bags of money would be brought through from a backroom to the dining room and nothing would be brought back in exchange. I was reminded of this when reading about UK royals, being given carrier bags of money, to be used for pet projects. Men from the Middle East still seem to do this. Amina must have died by now, as she wasn’t fully fit over thirty years ago when I lived in her house. She was one of the women who publicly gave away all her gold to help the Iraqi war effort. I often wonder, if her end was as peaceful as it deserved to be.

Short story from Ellie Ness

A Prickly Tale

“Ma faither wis cooler than me,” Iain allooed as I FaceTimed him in his hospital bed.

“Wha’ dae ye mean? He wis mair stoic when he wis ill?”

He shook his heid, “Do ye mine tha hedgehog yairn? Are ye sure? Well stop me if ye mine hauf way through. So, ma faither spoke to his pal Mick who telt him aboot a man who had died in weird circumstances in Ulster: tha man had cam hame wi’ a sack oan hïs back an’ drapt doon deid when ‘e closed tha door. When tha man wis examined, it happent that tha sack hud containt a hedgehog an’ tha spines hud entered intae tha man’s back draining him slowly o’ bluid until he drapt doon deid frae shock.

“Ma faither wis a quiet man who hud ne’er gotten tha chance tae gang tae university because he helpt raise his brithers yince his mither wis widowed but he wis no fool.

“He argued wi’ Mick that this haed tae be a myth fur it dïdnae mak sense. Despite tha fact that Mick didnae ken tha man killt by a hedgehog he believed tha man wha telt him did, so stuck tae his storie.

“A few months later a letter arrived on oor doormat tae ma faither wi’ a Queen’s University, Belfast postmark. Ma mither was beside hersel a’ day til ma faither cam hame an’ showed hur tha contents.

“Dear Mr Patterson,

We write regarding your enquiry about a claim of death by hedgehog quills.

We have checked various resources in the library and, although several here in the University have also heard the tale, there are no newspaper articles, medical journals or literature that can verify the claim.

Moreover, the physiology of both human anatomy and hedgehogs makes it impossible that blood draining from multiple wounds would be pain free. We hope this answers your query.”

“My mither sayed, “So will ye phone Mick the noo an’ tell him he wis wrang?”

“Naw Dorothy, it’s eneuch to be richt.”

“So yon’s why ma faither wis cooler than me. Can ye imagine being proven richt aboot it and saying naethin to tha person who wis wrang?”

“A’ the years we’ve known each other Iain we’ve spent our lives trying to best tha ither, so naw.”

“Naw, so. Cooler than me. I wush I hud telt him.”

Published by Yarns (Twa) 2022

Tick Tock

Underneath the Botanics in Glasgow lies a labyrinth of tunnels from an old railway line closed to the public in the late thirties. Only valiant daredevils ever venture through the narrow gap that segues from city life to this abandoned, dark space – that inky blackness that your phone torch will only be able to illuminate a small sliver of relief in your immediate vicinity. Leaks from the city above have calcified over time to create moist, puddled areas of slippery danger which appear suddenly without warning as you venture further into void.

There’s an honour code amongst taggers: unless you’re declaring war you find your own space, you don’t cover up someone else’s art. And it is art – if a handprint in a cave in Indonesia was the first artist at work forty thousand years ago, then “we wiz here” tags under the city were nothing less than art. Listen up Glasgow School of Art!

Jamie was properly prepared this time. First time he had only had his phone to record the event and his cans of spray paint in his rucksack and it had been hard to find a large space without venturing further than he felt was sensible so he had left a mini version of the tag in his head on one of the drier ramparts holding up the vaulted ceiling just beyond the station platform. This time though, he had added in proper full beam torches and a runner’s head torch. He also had a tripod so his hand were free to complete the tag while capturing steady footage of his creation. Jamie didn’t work like Banksy, he didn’t have cardboard pre cut templates to spray through to speed up the process. He created on the spot – not primary seven bubble writing of his name enlarged to fit the space, or teenage dick pics for him.

Jamie’s tag, this time, was a girl’s face resting on her hand. Her scarlet lips pursed into a blown kiss or a look of surprise and her auburn hair blew outwards and upwards, as if caught in the updraft of a ghost train passing through the tunnel. One of the highlighted tresses curled into the word Jamie.

Afterwards, Jamie examined the video footage. Once speeded up it fitted perfectly into a TikTok upload with retro Art For Art’s Sake as the backing track. He always used that.

As usual, he went viral and this month’s income was assured.

He tagged in Glasgow School of Art again once it had over 100k thumbs up. If only they hadn’t turned down his application, they could have had all this creativity to nurture. By the time he finished this campaign, they would be begging him to become a student – Jamie was sure of it.

Published by Free Flash Fiction 2023

Cold Comfort

She limps, her walking stick tap-tapping

struggling to remember why

she is wearing her favourite floral dress

she glances at her sister-in-law,

overwhelmed


they were young teens

snatched from their homes,

dragged along dusty roads

imprisoned in a blood-red house

raped repeatedly

comfort women,

now in their twilight years

tap-tapping into rooms with sticks

trying to forget what can’t be forgotten

Waiting Room

Everyone from the terminal to the malingerers passed through Westfall waiting room. Magazines to soothe patients lacking patience when appointments overran lay splayed in one corner and a multicoloured child’s toy to foster coordination and curiosity sat in the other. The pale duck egg blue walls accented by succulent vegetable and fruit photography were deliberately chosen to convey calmness and healthy reminders of the five-a-day mantra.

Rocked babies fussed while waiting for boosters, elderly patients lingered to be called by their first name as if they too had regressed to childhood.

Sandra enveloped in the hubbub waited her turn, already running late. Her boss had originally had a semblance of compassion, but these monthly bloods to ensure that her cytotoxic injections weren’t killing her were eating into the 9-5 and his irritation was ostensible.

It didn’t help that Sandra’s veins liked to hide themselves deep on cold days. She had tried everything: hot drinks; gloves and hats; running on the spot to make those thready blue lines rise to the surface but sitting waiting her turn seemed designed to make them burrow down still further. Her arms and the back of her hands were various shades of purple and yellow. Even her boss wouldn’t have been able to insinuate that she was making it up although it didn’t stop his eye rolling when she submitted her next written request for a late start.

“Sandra, would you like to come through?” broke through her reverie.

”I drank two pints of hot water Doctor. Let’s see if you can find the buggers today,” she laughed.

As usual, the doctor’s humour bypass displayed itself as she led Sandra out to the less welcoming room where a tourniquet and needles awaited if her veins were prominent enough to check for kidney and liver function deterioration.

God bless free-at-point-of-use healthcare. In America, on her salary, she’d be in God’s waiting room, not bemoaning the pricks.

Published by Free Flash Fiction 2023

Mother’s Day in Middletown, Middlesex Co.

I sit beside you and hold your hand Brandy, more for me than for you. “Sweet girl,” you say but I am both no-one and anyone to you Mom.

You taught me how to bake cookies and restrain myself from licking the spoon, to lie in the dappled sunlight with my legs closed instead of akimbo and put on a good show when out in the world – perfectly turned out, smile painted on, a credit to the family.

Do you think, Mom, that when your folks called you Brandy, they realised how ludicrous it would sound on an elderly woman? It’s a good fit for the child you have reverted to but it’s hard to take when you sometimes call me “Mom”.

I get an occasional glorious flash of the old you – a smile, a chastisement, a stroke of my hair but it’s ephemeral and quickly replaced by your need to watch familiarly favorite shows at full volume. You laugh and clap your hands every time Three’s Company or The Golden Girls comes on, you answer the occasional quiz show question and grin from ear to ear. We have a stack of recordings we replay interminably in your room but to be fair, even if we just played one tape over and over it would all be shiny and new to you.

I long to lie on the couch with my head in your lap while I explain my life. I could tell you about my miscarriage and being told this year that that finite motherhood window has probably shut for good without some very costly interventions and we just can’t afford it, not with the care home fees.

“Your mom’s strong, physically,” they reassure me, “she’s got years left.” and they mean it kindly, really they do.

And, you’re very happy Mom – you’re very easy to please food-and-entertainment wise. When I visit we sometimes play cards. Cards meant Bridge in the past but now Snap can be a challenge. As long as I remember to slow down you still get to win.

You’re still teaching me Mom, patience is most definitely a virtue, even if Patience is no longer practised. You’re the child I take care of, who gave birth to me.

Published on Story Nook 2022