Book launch on 19th May

The Peninsula Papers will be launched on Thursday 19th May, at Millennium School, John Harrison Way, Greenwich, 6pm-7.30pm.

Peninsula Papers book now being edited

Thanks everyone for your contributions. The 15 chapters plus numerous interviews and recollections are now being edited ready for a book coming out later this year. Further details to follow...

Chapter 15 by Kate Bromfield

We sat by the window overlooking the Woolwich Road. There was very little traffic; a four-wheel drive and a 422 bus sped by. Four kids kicked a football around Glenister Green. The taxi driver drummed his fingers on the table and sighed.

           

‘I wish she wouldn’t do this,’ he said.

           

‘Do what? Who?’

             

‘My wife. She tracks me down. Phones to find out if I’m here. Listen, he’s talking to her now.’

            

 We could hear the man in the smart suit laughing in the kitchen. He came through the door grinning.

            

 ‘You’re in deep ‘doo-doos’ John Nyguen. She’s already on that 422. I’ll do you a carry-out man.’

             

The taxi driver slumped in his chair and covered his face with his hands. Outside the window stood the woman with the three little girls I’d seen it seems like decades ago. The two older girls were jumping up and down and the little one in the pushchair kicked her feet excitedly.

           

‘Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!’

           

The woman opened the street door.

           

‘You’re one useless man John Nyguen! You go and take your children to the park on Sundays like the other Daddies do. Go and buy them some ice-cream.’ She looked at me.  ‘He’s been givin you that tale about “keeper of the diamond” has he? He’s not livin in the real world. Huh!’

             

The taxi driver raised his eyebrows and shrugged at me and then he was on his feet walking to the door.

           

‘Thanks Delroy! I owe you one,’ his wife said to the man in the suit.

             

She went at a fast pace, the taxi driver hunched over the pushchair, trying to balance a tub of chicken feet, his two older daughters skipping by his side. I followed behind. We passed the flats again where Annandale School used to be, past the shop that was once the post office where I bought my pic n’ mix as a child, past the house with the big white posts and the tall blue iron gates and turned right into Chevening Road.

            

 The sun shone brightly on the mosaic plaque as we came in through the Pleasaunce gates. Daffodils and forsythia glowed. The shadows from the trees stretched over the emerald grass towards the mellow brick wall. John Nyguen the taxi driver took the girls and the pushchair through the gate and wheeled towards the slide in the dog-free zone. The little one began to grizzle.

            

 ‘Teddy! I want my teddy!’

            

 John Nyguen’s wife grabbed my arm and pulled me in the direction of the café. A magpie ‘raarked’, a flash of black and white in a tree. The park was teeming with dog walkers, dogs on leads, dogs off their leads, running, barking. We took the path through the gravestones, ‘in loving memory of Sarah Ellen, wife of …’, past two men in their 30s playing table tennis competitively. Toddlers bumbled busily on the stretch of uneven grass in front of the café. The wooden tables and chairs were full.

             

‘You’re not the first you know. I have to speak to you,’ the taxi driver’s wife said.

            

 We’d reached the café door. It was packed. There were people at every table and a queue standing facing the counter waiting to be served. They turned to face us as we came in – Delroy, Martin from the flat, Dave the caretaker, the crane driver, the head teacher, the fisherman, Mr and Mrs Smith, the elderly couple with the child.

            

 I was so tired. WHAT NOW?

Kate Bromfield lives in East Greenwich.

Remaining few days!

Chapter 15 will be on its way shortly... We are only collecting contributions until next Friday March 18th, so get in touch if you would like to take part. This doesn't need to be a new chapter, it could be a description of a place that has been visited in the story or a section to be added in between chapters. Get in touch by emailing rohini@streamarts.org.uk

Chapter 14 by Daniel Davies

We sprang up and bolted for the door. 

‘No good, it’s locked’ I said as the taxi driver rattled and twisted at the handle ‘We’re stuck’

‘That’s right’ said the tiny woman. ‘Now tell me of the diamond!’

Her voice and manner were transformed and she made an unsettling silhouette against the window.

‘I don’t know who or what you are but we’re not saying anything!’ I said.

There was a pause. A slow and ominous rattle could be heard. It took me a moment to realise it was coming from her, from the old woman’s throat. As she lunged across the room the rattle burst into a blood-curdling scream.

 ‘Enough of this!’ said the taxi driver as stepped back and shoulder barged the door with alarming force.

The old woman still screaming at our backs, we threw ourselves through the doorway. My head still spinning, I drew breath. But it wasn’t the stale air of communal corridor that greeted us but the note of a crisp clean green space, an outdoor space.

‘I know this place’ I said.

‘Mmm’ grunted the taxi driver as he dusted his clothes, still visibly shaken.

‘It’s the Pleasaunce, off Halstow Road. I went to school just down the road from here. Why are we here?’

‘The diamond must be gaining strength’ said the taxi driver wearily and then after a second ‘I don’t know about you but I could do with a cup of tea…followed by some Chinese food. I could eat bucket of chicken’s feet’.

‘You’re odd man, you know that?’ I said but the taxi driver simply only responded with a flash of a grin and a sweep of the hand, which I took to mean ‘let’s go’.

As we left the Pleasaunce, I cast a glance back. I’d always liked it there- the feeling of simultaneously being outside and safely nestled within the park. I remembered the old ping-pong tables, concrete, outdoor ones, like they have in France. I remembered the little café as it was and the view of the tiny graveyard tucked in at the bottom of the slope. It was womb-like and comforting to be here again.

After a minute or two we found ourselves down at the Woolwich Road.

‘Ahh! Wing Wah Buffet!’ said the taxi driver, pointing to the corner. ‘Perfect! But wait, what day is it?’

‘I’m not sure what year it is, to be honest’ I said

‘Not to worry. It’s just there’s no ice-cream on Sundays’

And it was true. There was the sign in the window in undeniably bold and forbidding vinyl lettering.

NO ICE CREAM ON SUNDAYS

‘Huh’

We pushed through the glass doors to a flood of hot, delicious, savoury smells. A odorous soup of curries, fried fish, steaming rice and cooked peppers.

‘Hello’ said the smart-suited man calmly walking towards us, his hand outstretched. ‘We’ve been expecting you two’.

I turned to the taxi driver. He swallowed almost imperceptibly.

‘Chicken feet!’ He hollered through the doors and into the kitchen. ‘You’ll be staying a while, might as well eat’.

Daniel Davies is a teaching assistant at Halstow School. He is also an artist and his work is here: http://gentleistheword.blogspot.com/

Chapter 13 by Jamie Walker

At that moment there was a huge explosion, and all I could see was a huge kaleidoscope with every colour of the rainbow swirling around it, and at the centre was the taxi driver's head, turning furiously like a spin-top that had just been released.

My body felt very hot, and then suddenly, as quickly as it had started, it all stopped as I fell to the ground in a heap.

'Are you OK?' asked the taxi driver

'I think so,' I replied, 'where are we?'

'We're back in 2011, where we belong, at the Oval Square back at the Greenwich Millennium Village. Let's go over to Martin's house for a cup of tea.'

I had no idea who Martin was, but I wasn't about to argue and a cup of tea sounded like a great plan. It occurred to me that the Oval Square was a funny name, as a square cannot be oval, and something that's oval cannot be square.


There were big residential buildings on three sides of the oval square, with shops occupying the ground floor level. There was a convenience store called Nisa, an estate agents called 1st Avenue, a pharmacy called The Village Pharmacy and a dry cleaners called Starshine.

We walked up to one of the residential building entrances, and the taxi driver punched in the number 334 to the shiny intercom panel. There was a slight pause, and then a man answered.

'Hello?' the man said.

'Hello, is that Martin?' asked the taxi driver.

'Yes, this is Martin, come up. I'm on the 3rd floor.'



A buzzing sound came from the door, and the taxi driver pulled it open. We walked down the corridor and waited for the lift. I noticed that there were hundreds of letter boxes in the corridor, and wondered how the postman managed to get to the letterboxes through the electric door. He must have a key, I guessed.

When we arrived on the 3rd floor, Martin was waiting for us.

'Follow me' he said, and hurried down the corridor to flat 334.



Martin was a very tall, thin man with no hair. His flat was very empty, with almost no furniture. The main room had a kitchen and a balcony, with three plastic chairs grouped in the centre.
Martin went straight to the kettle to fill it up with water from the tap. The taxi driver and I sat down on the plastic chairs and waited to be offered a cup of tea.



'So,' said Martin, 'what have you guys been up to then?'

'Well,' replied the taxi driver 'we've been to 2060 and seen some very strange things. More importantly, we have seen some very worrying things.'

'Yes,' I agreed. 'There will be a flood in 2025, and from then on the weather will behave very erratically.'

'Oh dear,' said Martin, 'that's very worrying indeed. Is that all that happened when you were in 2060?'

'We also saw an animal that was half pig and half horse that belonged to a woman who ran in the Olympics.' said the taxi driver.

'Ah!' exclaimed Martin. 'Now, what did this woman tell you? Tell me all, in great detail my friends.'

'That's it really, there isn't much more to say,' said the taxi driver, acting slightly nervously.

'What about the dia-' I started.

'Shhh!' hushed the taxi driver.

'Carry on!' boomed Martin 'Tell me more!'

'It was nothing,' I lied, 'I was just going to ask the time.'

'Tell me the truth, tell me about the diamond!' Martin screamed.



Just then something very odd happened. Martin turned from a very tall, thin man with no hair into a very short, fat, hairy woman with red eyes and blue lips.

'It's a trick!' shouted the taxi driver. 'That's not Martin! Let's get out of here!'

Jamie Walker is a local resident

Chapter 12 by Year 6 students at St Josephs School

The taxi driver looked around him and asked, “So what has happened since 2010? What happened when some of it was flooded?”

The woman sounded well-rehearsed as she narrated the story: “The Thames Barrier did not hold back the flood. The water rose over the gates. There was so much water that it came in a great wave knocking aside everything in its path. It surged onwards and upwards, when it arrived in Central London it was as high as Nelson’s Column. The water was so dirty, it was almost black, taking with it dead animals, buildings, rotten food, and goodness knows what else! Downstream, all the water meadows were deluged, Hall Place was submerged, Sutcliffe Park, Belvedere and all parts of Essex were unrecognisable.”

“So what about all the things that were planned… what about the Olympics?” I asked, aware that it was perhaps a strange question, but all the preparations had been happening when we left 2010.

“Well, I was in the Olympics actually,” she said, smiling. “I was a runner. But it didn’t go so well.. it was complicated.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was the keeper of a magic diamond.” She replied. “But when I took part in the race it fell out of my pocket. When I stopped to pick it up all the other athletes ran past me and it got kicked into the crowd. The race was won by someone else, everybody stood up, clapping and shouting and hurried out of the stadium.

“The diamond? Do you mean our diamond?” the taxi driver asked incredulously, but she simply continued with her story.

“A little girl from the crowd had taken it. I tried to get it back from her- I even chased her mother’s car- but she threw it into the River Thames and I had to swim after it. But a fish had swallowed it and I ended up having to cook it to get it out!” she smiled at the memory. “But it is difficult to keep hold of things when the river keeps flooding every few years.”

“So these floods,” I said, “why are they happening? Is it because of climate change?”

“Yes,” she replied. “The first big one was in 2025, and then there was another one in 2040. I tried to keep hold of the diamond like I was supposed to, but every time it flooded all of our possessions would get swept away. It once fell down a pothole and we had to get some archaeologists to come and look for it. But in 2040 it was knocked into an oyster shell along the Thames beach. When we found it that time King Joseph sent us a letter to congratulate us.”

“King Joseph?”

“Yes, William’s son,” she said, as if it was obvious.

As she spoke a strange animal walked past.

“What on earth is that?” asked the taxi driver with a jump.

“That is Dynamite Danger,” the woman replied. “He’s my pet- he’s half pig and half horse.” She patted him on the head as she spoke.

“Half pig..?” I began.

“Yes, he has amazing special powers and can sense danger from afar. When he senses danger he bangs his hoof on the ground. He can create an earthquake which only applies to the victim. Then with his laser eyes he burns the evil out of them. He grows bigger and more powerful each time he uses his powers. When he can’t burn the evil out of someone he eats them. He consumes the scorched plants that can’t be eaten by the humans. He used to live in caves hidden deep in the grass on the mountains. He drinks salty water, pond water, animal Red Bull, Coke, lemonade.”

The strange creature suddenly jumped and lifted his front leg. Shaking his head he stamped it into the dusty ground in front of us.

“Danger! He can sense danger!” the woman exclaimed, and looked at us with a worried expression.