Story Shop

@ 4pm in the Spiegeltent

Celebrating the short story and its compact beauty, Angela Jackson was the seventeenth -and last- reader in this year's series of daily showcase of the up-and-coming writers living and working in Edinburgh today.

Angela Jackson concluded this year's showcase of our city's emerging talent. This reading was the second take for the "Take Two" lady, as she also read at last year's Story Shop showcase - when she picked an extract from her novel-in-progress Take Two. With the new Spiegeltent stage for Story Shop readings in mind, she decided to enter a more comedic piece. Something light-hearted. Something funny. Something called "Freud".

It will now be another 12 long months before you'll have the chance to hear daily short stories and flash fiction by our emerging writers, for free, @ 4pm, in the Spiegeltent.

Biography

Angela Jackson has just completed her first novel and is currently working on a comedy script. She has had several pieces of academic work published and was recently presented with an award by Bidisha for a short story she wrote for Oxford University’s Gender Equality Festival. She is a psychology lecturer, coach and a teacher trainer, and she also runs courses at Edinburgh University on coaching and happiness. The piece she will read was inspired by her experience in the further education sector.

Freud a short story byAngela Jackson

If you were to watch a film based on life at Hawn Sixth Form College, you would do so without popcorn. You would sit with thoughtful, spectacle-wearing intellectuals, and occasionally make splotchy notes with your most serious fountain pen. The film would flicker on the screen in grainy black and white, while sombre music by some obscure Russian composer mirrored the endless cycle of conflict that was playing out before your eyes. There would be intermittent shaking of heads and occasional gasps and sighs.

It would be one of those rare films that did not feature either Jennifer Aniston, Sandra Bullock or Julia Roberts. It called for actors with more grit: your Robert Carlyles and Ray Winstones of this world.

Or, if the budget couldn’t stretch to Russian composers and gritty actors, it would be a heavily bleeped documentary of chaos, narrated by an outraged Jeremy Kyle.

Either way, it would be a film short on laughs but, if you looked hard enough at the real thing, they were there.

7.30am saw the first arrivals of the day - cleaners, senior management, lecturers keen to park near CCTV cameras. By 8, the only parking spaces left were the riskier ones, like those underneath the cookery classroom windows. Most of the teaching staff were at their desks by then, finalising lessons, photocopying handouts, eating microwaved porridge. 20 minutes before lessons started, the train from the city would spew a hundred or so students onto Platform 2, and they would dawdle towards the college like a condemned mass.

On Mondays, especially Mondays early in the academic year, lecturers would swoop into classes, high on enough sleep and having forgotten their frustrations of the previous week. They would distribute carefully crafted handouts to students who were furious at being spoken to over their hangovers. Some would shade their eyes with hoods and scarves, pull their hands up into their sleeves and refuse to hold pens or listen or stay awake. Those with less delicate constitutions would swagger in late, and the teachers would remember why they didn’t Mondays.

Kelly Banks had the constitution of a great herd of oxen. This morning, she rocked up at the staff room at quarter to nine, a study in raging hormones and thick, flicked eyeliner, and peered around the door to see if her whining, demanding, ancient and boring psychology tutor was at her desk.

"Ah, Kelly!" Jackie Fitzgerald spotted her most challenging student. "I hope you’ve brought me your completed assignment." There was nothing quite like a little passive aggression to get one going on a Monday morning.

Kelly let out a little laugh and did that Beyonce thing with her head: "Er, that would be no." There was nothing quite like a little insouciance to get the tutors wound up on a Monday morning.

Jackie slowly swivelled up from her chair. When people - potential boyfriends in particular - asked what she did for a living, she used to feel a smidgen of pride as the word ‘lecturer’ formed in her mouth, but lately - if she was sure she’d never see the person again - she had started to make up jobs to try them on for size. Over the past academic year, she had lied about being a journalist (a dull start and not popular with men at all), a massage therapist (somewhat more popular), a tantric advisor (the most popular career choice with neurotic men, she had found), a chef (mummy’s boys flocked to her in the hope of free samples), a nanny (an absolute winner with frazzled single dads), and a roller-skating waitress (generally popular with all groups). To be honest, if she could brush up on her skating, she wasn't ruling out a career change next year. Most teaching staff at the college dreamt of being a waitress or a checkout operator at least once a week.

"Kelly, this assignment was due in a week ago, and..."

"Right, that’s what I want to talk to you about. I don't know how to start it."

"Well, have you made any sort of a start on it?"

Kelly pulled a sheet of paper out of her file. "Yeah!"

Jackie peered at the creased piece of A4. Kelly had typed the question and the rest of the sheet was blank, save for a sticky red smudge of - what was it? Jam? Lip gloss?

"Right," said Jackie, "well, that’s not much of a start, is it? The assignment is to explain what the psychodynamic approach is."

Kelly made no move to forage in her bag for a pen. "Is that Fraud?"

"Freud, Kelly. It’s Freud."

"Is that him? Is that who I’m supposed to be writing about?"

"Well, it was Freud who founded the psychodynamic approach..."

Kelly brightened. "So do I just write about him?" This was going to be easy. Five minutes on Wikipedia - date and place of birth, main achievements, a photo. She’d have it done by morning. A bit of cutting and pasting.

"No," said Jackie, wiping the smile off her student’s face. "You’re writing about the psychodynamic approach."

"So, I’m not writing about Fraud, then?"

"Freud! Freud was a very important theorist, and you need to talk about his approach. Do you remember what he said about the unconscious?" Jackie started to feel sure it wouldn’t take much to master the trickier turns and stops on her roller-boots.

"Is that the thing that leaks out?"

"Yes, that’s right! It leaks out in our dreams and our actions. You remember?"

"So where is it?"

"Where’s what?"

"The unconscious? Is it in our brain?"

"Well... look, just focus on trying to outline the approach. OK?" She would try skating around the kitchen first, maybe practise in the park at the weekend.

"I’m just thinking about the leaking," said Kelly. She did look rather concerned, as though she expected to find a bit of her unconscious on her pillow in the morning.

"There’s no need to think about the leaking, Kelly. Just focus on the approach."

"Is he dead?"

Jackie’s patience was wearing slightly. Her voice started to take on a Wednesday afternoon, almost Thursday morning tone. "Yes, Freud is dead, but that’s not relevant for this assignment. Now, do you remember what he said about the iceberg?"

"No. What?"

"Well, he said the unconscious is like the part of the iceberg that's under the surface."

Kelly looked blank, and started to scratch at her scalp.

"Remember? The conscious is the tip of the iceberg; the bit we can see..."

"Shall I write that, then?" she asked, as she cleaned bits of scalp from under her fingernails.

"You need to include that, yes."

"Right. Iceberg. Got it," sighed Kelly. "Have you got a pen?"

Jackie had many pens, mainly because students who would never forget their phones or their travel passes or their ID cards regularly arrived at college without the one thing they would definitely need in a classroom situation. She disappeared briefly back into the staff room and couldn’t help thinking she would be able to do so more quickly on skates. She emerged with a pen.

Kelly poised the ballpoint on the back of her hand: "How do you spell Fraud?"

Angela Jackson's Bibliography

• In Print:
• Poker Face (short story in forthcoming Oxford University anthology)

Other Places to Find Her

audio snippet: Take Two (excerpt) (2010, Story Shop reading @ EIBF)

About Story Shop

Story Shop is a free, un-ticketed event produced by the Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature Trust. It is a showcase at the Edinburgh International Book Festival for new writing and new writers from Edinburgh. Each day features one author, giving them a ten minute slot to read either two 4-5 minute ‘flash fiction’ pieces or one 8-10 minute piece of fiction. The idea is to give a free taster of local writing to a new audience. The 17 Story Shoppers in this year's line-up were hand-picked out of 97 applications by emerging Edinburgh talent.

Story Shop 2011 overview >
the Edinburgh International Book Festival >

visit the Edinburgh International Book Festival website >

We are grateful and proud of the support that the Edinburgh International Book Festival gives to the Emerging Writers in our own City of Literature, and for their technical help with the interviews.