No Milk Today

By AM Friday, November 5, 2021

Share Tweet Share Share Email

Christopher Owens ✒With TPQ regular Robert ‘Beano’ Niblock announcing that he has a new collection of writing coming out next year (his first since 2019’s ‘Troubles Curriculum’), I thought it only appropriate to get in touch and ask a few questions.

CO: With this collection of short stories that you're working on, can you talk about what inspired them and do the stories have a connection to each other?

BN: They are basically a collection of 10 or 11 that I have been writing over the years. Most of them are standalone but there is a little connection with a couple of them. You will have spotted the lineage of the two main characters in ‘No Milk Today’: revisiting the legacy of the Tartan gangs of the time and the subsequent journey into loyalist paramilitarism-with heavy influence from “older men”.

I suppose inspiration comes from reading other short stories-and it’s something I always intended to do.

CO: 'No Milk Today', is quite an evocative piece with a bit of humour (I did chuckle at the bits about 'Last Tango in Paris' and Top of the Pops). The contrast between the youth of the characters and the heavy atmosphere of violence, rumours and paranoia makes it an intoxicating read. Are these some of the reasons why a good lot of your writing focuses on that period of the conflict?

BN: It’s how I grew up and what I remember from my personal experiences of that time, the early 70’s. Things were dark and bleak and violent, and, in this story, I try to capture that. I love reading noir novels and I think there is an influence there.

I love Elmore Leonard-George V Higgins-Frank Bill-Donald Ray Pollock...and some of the stuff from Irish writers like Eoin McNamee and Adrian McKinty is brilliant as well.

CO: Your last collection, 'Troubles Curriculum', came out two years ago next week. I described it as capturing “...the visceral feelings of those trapped in a war, torn between having a normal life and defending their community." In retrospect, do you feel you achieved what you wanted to do with it?

BN: Again, it’s how I seen what was going on at the time and tried now-to translate it to poetry/prose. Some of those poems-although short-had an impact-definitely on me and from talking to many who read them on them as well.

CO: Out of the two mediums (prose and poetry), which do you find easier, and which is more of a challenge?

BN: I get stressed out and anxious when writing the drama pieces. Especially if you are commissioned which usually means you are working to deadlines. I don’t use the same method with the poetry, I tend to have an idea and get it on to the page pretty quickly. It works perfectly for me and makes the process enjoyable.

CO: You once described yourself as someone:

...who never seem to complete things and always have stuff lying around part finished or pages full of ideas scattered about the place. 

With the recent lockdown, and the world going to hell in a handbasket, were you able to focus on your writing in a way that maybe forced you to complete some ideas?

BN: Sadly no. The lockdown, particularly the first few months, of it zapped any creativity I had. In late March last year, I took seriously ill (non-Covid related) and was in and out of hospital quite a lot. I was confined to bed for quite a while too and binged on box sets-something I never did before. I just couldn’t get in the zone for writing. This year I have picked up a bit.

I hope to have the booklet out certainly by the new year and I have just completed the first draft of the play I had been writing about the late Davy Ervine.

CO: The last time we spoke, you were gearing up for a small tour of 'We Taught Our Children How to Lie'. How did that go, and will we see a full production in somewhere like the MAC?

BN: We, Etcetera theatre company, managed to get a reduced version of WTOCHTL out to the public and it was well attended and well received. Sadly, Covid came at the wrong time for that as well, but we hope to revisit it and if fortune smiles on us-we may get a spot of funding to reprise it in its fuller form.

⏭ Beano Niblock lives and works in East Belfast. He writes drama, short stories poetry and prose.

⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist.