Constantine, "Tales of the Charnwood"

Congratulations to University of Leicester MA Creative Writing graduate Constantine on the publication of his new book of short stories!

Constantine is an autistic author and father. He achieved a first-class B.A. at Middlesex University in 2017 and completed his Master's Degree at the University of Leicester in 2022. Between the two degrees he wrote four episodes of the Children's T.V. show Pablo and has written and published the picture book Tiya and the Minotaur and The Cats of Charnwood Forest and its sequel Jötunheim. He runs the not-for-profit publishers Coalville Community Publishers CIC, which concentrates on the central Midlands, and Midlands generally. 

About Tales of the Charnwood, by Constantine
Tales of the Charnwood is eight bedtime stories about life on the Charnwood as recounted by a Vixen to her cubs. The book is set in the universe of The Cats of Charnwood Forest. 

You can read more about Tales of the Charnwood on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read a complete short story from the collection. 

From Tales of the Charnwood

Chapter Four: Badgers. 

The following evening, Vixen sat at the mouth of the den watching her cubs play for a few safe pre-dawn hours. She noticed that some of her darling children were teasing the smallest cub.  Every family has someone who is the smallest, just as someone must be the biggest. Being a fox of the Charnwood, Vixen knew right from wrong and made plans to teach her cubs the difference. 

She had a good store of stories at her command and soon remembered one that would suffice. 

The story of the Friendly Badger. 

Once her cubs had come back inside and had finished suckling, she began. 

"Now, dear ones, I will tell you a story of a Badger. Some Badgers are okay in their own way, some have even been known to share a den with a fox and even be on talking terms; however, these are few and far between. 

"Generally speaking, Badgers are grumpy and aggressive and quite scary, even when they’re on friendly terms, except for one. This is the story of the Friendly Badger." 

*** 

A long time ago in the quiet of the forest, a litter of Badgers was born.  As with every family, there was a biggest and a smallest; but while the smallest had a small body, he had the biggest heart. 

He wasn’t so good at the rough-and-tumble games his siblings liked to play. He much preferred to sniff flowers, watch the stars, or talk to any creatures he happened to meet. 

His own brothers and sisters were the first to tease him for his size and poor skill in wrestling contests. So, bit by bit, he started to avoid his siblings. Feeling lonely, he tried to make friends with the other night-time forest dwellers.    

One night, he met a fox going about its business.   

"Hello," said the Friendly Badger, "how are you?"   

"Are you talking to me?" said the fox. 

"Yes," said the Friendly Badger, "I’m hoping we can be friends."   

The fox laughed at him. 

"You can’t be a real Badger. Real Badgers aren’t friendly. You must be a rat with white stripes."  

And from that night on every time the fox saw him, he would delight in saying something cruel.   

On another night, the Badger came across a bat darting from tree to tree eating tiny insects.   

"Hello," said the Friendly Badger, "how are you?"   

"Are you talking to me?" said the bat.   

"Yes," said the Friendly Badger, "I’m hoping we can be friends."   

"Is this some sort of joke?" laughed the bat. "You’re more like a stripy bunny rabbit."   

And from that day on, whenever the bat saw the Friendly Badger, he would laugh at him and make up new insults.  

The Friendly Badger started to feel that maybe nobody would like him. Then, one evening, sitting on his own watching the stars, he heard a snuffling in the bushes. A moment later, a head appeared under the lower leaves; it was a young hedgehog.   

"Hello," said the hedgehog, "what sort of creature are you?"  

"I’m a badger," said the Friendly Badger. "Would you like to be friends?"  

"Oh yes," said the hedgehog. "Do you like hide-and-seek?" 

"Yes," said the Friendly Badger, "it’s one of my favourite games, but I’ve never had anyone to play with."   

In no time at all, the pair were playing merrily and agreed to meet up the following night.    

The next evening, when the Friendly Badger arrived at the meeting place, he was surrounded by a crowd of adult Hedgehogs, their spines quivering with anger. They shouted at him and chased him away, warning that they would hurt him if he came near their children again.   

Every creature the Friendly Badger met hurt and rejected him. He didn’t understand why. He meant no harm to anyone, and yet everyone hurt him. 

That autumn, he dug a new home (which for Badgers is called a sett) just for himself and went to sleep dreaming about all the horrible things people had said to him.   

Now, when animals like Badgers hibernate, they often grow, and when he emerged in the spring, he had gone from being the smallest to one of the biggest Badgers the Charnwood had ever seen.   

He was no longer the "Friendly Badger."   

In the long winter, dreaming of all the horrid things those other creatures had said and done to him, his heart had frozen and would never thaw again. He sought out everyone who used to tease and bully him, and, one by one ... he ate them.   

But even then, when those who had teased him were gone, and no creature dared come near, the horrible names stayed with him. He spent the rest of his days lonely, sad, and angry.   

***   

"You see, children," said the Vixen, pausing just long enough to make her cubs uncomfortable. "When you bully someone, everybody loses." 

Jonathan Taylor, "A Physical Education: On Bullying, Discipline & Other Lessons"

The only remaining photo of Jonathan Taylor's short-lived career in ballet, c. 1977

Jonathan Taylor is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Leicester, where he directs the MA in Creative Writing. His books include the novels Melissa (Salt, 2015) and Entertaining Strangers (Salt, 2012), the short story collection Scablands and Other Stories (Salt, 2023), and the memoir Take Me Home (Granta, 2007). His new memoir is A Physical Education: On Bullying, Discipline & Other Lessons (Goldsmiths, 2024). Originally from Stoke-on-Trent, he now lives in Leicestershire with his wife, the poet Maria Taylor, and their twin daughters, Miranda and Rosalind. His website is here. 

 

About A Physical Education: On Bullying, Discipline & Other Lessons
What does it mean to be a bully? What does it feel like to be bullied—to be a victim, a pariah, a scapegoat? What are the techniques, patterns, and languages of bullying?

Intermingling memoir with literary criticism, philosophy, and sociology, A Physical Education attempts to answer these questions. A highly original exploration of the uses and abuses of power in the education system, it examines how bullying and discipline function, how they differ from each other, and how they all too often overlap.  

Taylor interweaves his own experiences with reflections on well-known literary representations of bullying and school discipline, alongside sociological, psychological, and philosophical theories of power. He discusses the transition from corporal punishment to psychological forms of discipline that took place in the UK in the 1980s, and he also investigates the divergences and convergences of physical, psychological, and linguistic bullying. 

Above all, A Physical Education sets out to understand bullying and discipline from an experiential perspective: what these things feel like from "within," rather than "above," for all concerned. There are horrors, tragedies, and cyclical traumas, certainly—but there are also absurdities, contradictions, grotesque comedies. Sometimes, beneath the Gradgrindian tyranny, there is trickery, laughter. And sometimes there are chinks in The Wall, through which other possible worlds might be glimpsed.

You can read excerpts from one of the chapters from the book on The Times Higher here. You can read further details about the book on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read the opening of the first chapter. 

Jonathan at school, c.1982

From A Physical Education, by Jonathan Taylor

P.E.

It’s January 1985. I’m eleven. We’re lined up on the school football pitch, ankle-deep in slushy brown snow. It’s -2 degrees and raining ice, blowing across our faces in gusts like acid – which may be literally true, given the air pollution in ’80s Stoke. We’re shivering in shorts, white t-shirts, itchy ribbed socks and football boots with studs on. I’ve got plastic studs on my boots, but others like Danny Beaker – who, already at 5’11, is a good foot taller than me – have got metal spikes. There are a couple of punctures in the tops of my boots from previous games, when Danny stamped on them. 

The wet is seeping into my socks through the holes, while the sleet slanting from the sky is somehow creeping up my shorts, in a cruel contradiction of Newtonian physics. Every other part of my body is already soaking, and gradually freezing over. I glance around. The other boys are the same, wet through, hands in armpits, stamping up and down in vain effort to keep warm, their smoky breaths mingling above their heads like a big speech bubble: Get on with it, sir. 

Sir gets on with it, inevitably choosing the giant Danny Beaker as captain of one team, a second Godzilla-like boy as captain of the other. They nominate who they want on their teams in turn. I’m usually last, after ‘Pi’ the school Tory (one and only), who looks like his parents mistook a Stoke comprehensive for Marlborough, and my friend Steed, who pretends to have asthma to get out of running. In team sports, the three of us are the crumbs at the bottom of a crisp packet, the broken bits of Rich Tea in a biscuit barrel. 

Steed’s on Danny Beaker’s team, so Godzilla II gets the final crumb that is myself. He doesn’t even bother to call my name, merely rolls his eyes and turns away. He slouches over to the centre spot – or, rather, the hole in the slushy snow Sir has dug with his heels, to mark the centre spot – and waits for Sir to blow the whistle. Godzilla II’s holding his balls, jiggling on the spot, his vaporous speech bubble presumably saying: Get on with it, sir, before these freeze off.

Sir’s rather allegorical name is Mr Yorwin. He’s dressed in a brown sheepskin knee-length coat, woolly tracksuit bottoms, and is smoking a cigarette. The smouldering cigarette end is the one bit of colour in the whole landscape. “Taylor,” he grunts out of the side of his mouth, “get your arse in gear.” The other boys snigger. 

I jog over to him: “Sir, please, can’t we wear …?” But he cuts me off. 

“Don’t be a poof, Taylor. You don’t need yer tracksuits. You’ll warm up on the pitch if you play proper.”

“But, sir …”

“Shurrup. Get over there. You’re defence.”

“Some defence,” mutters Godzilla II from a distance.

Mr Yorwin blows his whistle. Danny Beaker is immediately thundering down the pitch towards me like a bull ...