Birthday

They only comes once a year and so I aught to commemorate it in some way.   I have a child's mind.  I see things in very black and white ways.  I react to things with extremes of pleasure or of pain.  I have adored the prospect of my birthday and intensely as Christmas every year of my existence and the enthusiasm I had for them never waned with the passing of years. Now my birthday has started to mean less to me. 

I think it began when my sister's behaviour when drunk became a source of pain for everyone and then my stance on it alienated me slightly from the rest of my family.  I refuse to attend family events if she was there, as this meant that it risked seeing her drunk and the rest of us retreating into the deepest of shadows that ours mind's possessed.  Then, when she sobered, and lacked any kind of condition, I refused to attend at all.  I do not seek sympathy or blame that is just the way things are, now.

Celebrations become a source of concern even when the prospect of them are mentioned.  Because whether she is there or not we all feel the sorrow of her absence, the real her.



Time up.
Inspiration: The reality of my birthday, today.

Time

There is simply not enough time.  Where exactly does time go? 

Some weeks I can see that my leg hair has reached neanderthal proportions and that there is simply no time to wrench myself into the twenty first century.  Above the temples, silver sprouting of the most obnoxious kind can see seen after some weeks of neglect.  Left long enough they will turn into what is, euphemistically, know as mallen streaks but which are just, frankly, grey.  A perfect arch of my eyebrow can become as blurred as a bow after the arrow's flight.  I have time to rectify none of it.

You may ask how I could let things get to this pass.  Just blame Time, or the absence of it.  There are far too many pressing things to do.  Work, more work, shopping, cooking, cleaning, walking the dog...I could go on.  I don't even have the added responsibility of children, thank the Lord.  Children would have no place within the frenetic pace of my world.  I am too busy working hard to impress people that only care for themselves.  After all their opinion of me matters - doesn't it?



Time Up.
 Inspiration:  It's Friday and I'm just reflecting on the nature of work.

Hands

Put your hand in mine.
Then, wrap your arms around me
So that I feel I am yours
And that we are two in one,
even for a moment.

You may have to leave,
Rip yourself away from me,
Without any sense of the pain that
I feel each time we part.

But for now, feel my hands touch
Yours and yours mine.
Let our skin feel the warmth
that we share together,
However the heat arrives.

So that when you are gone,
I will press my hand to my face
Imagining it still holds your essence
Here, with me, so that you never truely
Leave.



Time up.
Inspiration:  I haven't written a poem in a while.  so it thought I'd have a go.

Still Life

It had not put up much of a fight before it died, but then, it was so tiny.  It wasn't a wren; it was a trifle bigger and the tail wasn't the stubby exclamation that is the wren's trademark but it had the same colouring. 

It was almost over before I'd had a chance to intervene.  My little Jack Russle had starled it from a patch of mottled undergrowth and it must have been too shocked to have got enough momentum to burst into flight.  She pawed at it and then, like a cat, toyed with it for some moments before I'd even realised what it was.  I shouted and ran towards them both.  The dog stood back to let me approach.  The bird cowered by a clump of grass.  I could see its chest rising and falling very lightly and slowly.  As I bent towards it, the chest stopped half way before rising fully and the tiny pointed beak slowly opened, as did the eyes, taking it's last look at the world before darkness fell.

I picked up the creature and, although it was all in the run of the wild, I felt choaked and angry that this timy life was taken so suddenly and violently.  It made me think about the arbitrary nature of all life and I felt the awfulness of the injustice that I mean very little in the scheme of things not better than the buddle of feathers in my hand. 

Looking back at my dog, she was ashamed.  I left her to feel the weight of what she had done.  I put the bird back very gently on the grass and pushed a tuft of the sweet green fronds over the dun feathers.


Time up.
Inspration:  I thought of an incident about a year ago. It happenend exactly as above and it has stuck in my mind and will do for some time.

Spontaneous

'Let's have some fun,' she said.
'O.K. what would you like to do?' he replied.
'I dunno. Let's just be spontaneous and do anything we fancy.'
'I'm not exactly sure what you mean.  What d'you wanna do?'
'Well, I'm not sure, but let's just do the first thing that comes into our minds.'
The first thing that came into his mind was a nap on the sofa but he didn't say that out loud.
'Alright,' he said.  'You go first.'
'Um, right, now.  Let's think. Hang on. Why do I have to go first?  Why don't you suggest something?' it came out a little more acerbic than she was expecting but she stood her ground.
'Because it wasn't my idea, that's why.'  he replied, rather piqued at her tone.
'Well, it's always me that thinks of the ideas and things to do.  It's about time you thought for us instead of me.'
He thought of all the times he'd tried to please her by organising or suggesting places only to see a look of boredom if he was lucky and down-right disgust if he was not.
'I'm happy to do anything,' he mumbled, tiredly.
'Oh for God's sake.  It's like talking to a brick wall.  I'm going into the bedroom to read.
He was relieved.  A nap on the sofa was beconing with open arms.

Time up
Inspiration: I missed two days due to work commitments so I'm catching up with whatever pops into my head.

The Gentle Tide

Gentle breezes and the delicate kiss of the sun on your skin.  The world, an expanse of sky, a very pale blue touched with the merest hint of yellow.  The glorious soothing scent of the salt drenched air and a slow rake and draw of a receding wave pulling stones which spin and whip out circlets of spray; a pause, a held breath; the whisper of the fingers of the tide reaching in once more to caress the shore - an eternal dance of love.



Time Up.
Inspiration:  I'm upset so I looked at some old photos and this reminded me of the beautiful summer.

Sitting Here, Listening

Here I sit, listening.  It is night and quiet.  With everything off, no television, no music or radio I can hear the buried sounds that have been masqued until now.  The continuous, but gentle whir of the fan on the laptop, a distant dog barking once or twice, the tick of the clock - that timeless sound that could easily be in a Victorian parlour as in my front room.  The indescribable sound of your own fingers running through your hair: a scratching echo that must only happen internally, resonating in the cavities in your skull. 

Then the unwelcome, vulgar sound of the door opening, a voice asking a question.  It seems intrusive and alien in the peace that has cocooned you for what has only been minutes but felt undefinable as if centuries could have passed in a moment.  Because peace brings its own timelessness.



Time up.
Inspiration: The Write Practice: Focus on your breathing while you create and listen for sounds that you may not usually notice: Pen noise against the paper, the sound of the keys as you type, birds chirping outside, quiet hum of the heater, etc.

Predator

There's a flash of blurred colour; it hovers for the briefest moment and then, in an instant, it is perched and probing jerkily into the feeder outside the window.  It is a goldfinch.  I don't think they are rare, there's plenty in it garden, at any rate, but they are very exotic- a really out of place bird amongst the gentle pastel colours of an English country garden.

It's head is constantly moving like a piston, in and out of the feeder, out to either side, twisting round to look behind, on constant lookout for predators and they are always about: Cats.  Domesticated predators; savages. Mauling their victims, toying with them,  dismembering them, as if for sport, rarely for food.  I don't often see them as they slink through then along the hedgerow, undulating in and out of the foliage, at the hint of detection creating a lean statuette and then moving on placing their paws gingerly and neatly keeping their eyes riveted on the vulnerable creature fluting from branch to branch.  It might dip and lunge ending in a fluffy of feathers and a corpse on the ground but, today, the goldfinch is lucky, I am there to stand guard against our common enemy.




Time up.
Inspiration: my garden. 

Golden bubbles.

"Alright, Hels? How's the heart today?"
That's her nick-name, Hels.  Her real name is Helen.  So, I suppose it's not really a nick-name, just an abbreviation.  She is my sister.  We both know, too, that there's nothing wrong with her heart; it's a euphemism for her mind.  She's always been quite a ebullient person but there has always been the slight hint that the effervescence is the tiniest bit forced and that the golden bubbles on the surface are an attempt to hide a certain cloudiness below, even from herself.

For few months she has not acknowledged problems, she has surrounded herself with people that don't discuss important things with her or challenge her opinion, at all.  There have been massive family issues that we've all been trying the cope with and she just won't talk, just cuts the conversation off or leaves the room or cries so that we are forced to change the subject.  So much burying.

It didn't come to any good, avoiding things.  She had a panic attack at work, thought she was having some kind of seizure and now she can't stop shaking.  I know there is a clawing in the pit of her stomach, night and day, and the fear will not give her a moment's peace.  That is how it works, the fear: the feeling that she has lost control and can't see a way out of the void.



Time up.
Inspiration: I forgot to post this yesterday.  So this is my instalment for yesterday.  I hoped to capture the idea that bottling up problems is not good and the effect it can have on the mind.

The Cabin

This is my favourite place.  It is my home.  I bought it and I helped make it.  Many people think that this is a poor substitute for a real house or flat.  they come and admire it and comment on how quaint it is but, they go home and ask their husbands or wives how anyone could live in such a tiny place. They don't realise how lucky i feel to be here.  it may be cold in winter; I have to put on jumpers in the evening and a few winters back I even went to bed in a hat for a few freezing nights.  In the summer it can get boiling hot and stifling until you throw open the door and the double windows and the fresh breeze wanders through the house.

Yes, it might seem like a doll's house to many but I don't mind.  It fits me and there is no space wasted.  There is no guest room and I have to climb up a ladder to get to my own bed at night but this to me is joy, not deprivation.  I walk out on warm evenings feeling the grass underfoot and watch the midges dancing in the air.  I rest my back against the front door and feel the caress of the sun on my face.  

I watch the apple tree turn from bare, to blossom, to fruit and then watch as it weeps it's brown leaves to the ground.  I watch the blackbirds feasting on the fallers; pitted with disease and harbouring some maggots but such richness is still encased in those rosy orbs.

When I am at home, I feel that I can do or be anything I want and although the house is animate I can almost hear it's breath synchronised to mine.


Time up.
Inspiration:  I'm really rushed tonight I have loads of work to do so I wrote about a special place to me and this is the easiest one I've done.

Dormant

The North wind blew.  It blew so hard that the dew froze on the leaves of the trees making them like lace.  It froze the water on the stream at the edges leaving only a turgid and slothful movement in the centre.  It quieted the tiny song birds in the trees who were now intent only on finding enough food to see them through the day and night to come.  It whipped across the faces of people desperate enough to venture outside like razor blades until they scurried back into the warmth of their homes, shriven. It threw crows like missiles through the grey, bleakness of the sky.  It was a day to be dormant.



Time up.
Inspiration: none tonight.  I just needed to write and that's what came out. Clearly not as much as usual. 

Chekhov's Gun

Ellis wasn't an unattractive kid, he was just awkward and quiet.  Like so many teenagers, he spent too much time thinking, his black thoughts turning inwards, constantly tormenting himself over trivial inadequacies.  As a consequence, he was sullen and avoided the other students at school as much as possible.  All apart from one.  She was a golden girl, popular and beautiful but gentle and 

open, completely the opposite of himself: Jessica.  It was as if she existed for him in a permanent halo.  When she walked past, along the buzzing corridor, his gaze, although covert, devoured every single fragment of her.  He had been watching her like this for years and he was exhausted by the hollowness of his adoration.  He needed recognition.  He felt compelled to make some sort of connexion, he didn't care how small, he just wanted her to notice him, to witness in his eyes the awe in which he held her.  Ultimately, he wanted her to love him like he did her. 

He hadn't planned it exactly but he took his chance.  As she walked past on her pilgrimage to class, he allowed his books to tumble from his hand.  They slid like a wave breaking at her feet.  She looked at him and down at the floor, looked back, cocked her eyebrow at him, without the the hint of the gentle smile she used so readily for others, nearly everyone, he thought, and walked on. 

Time up.

Inspiration:  from The Write Practice, they suggest: Practice foreshadowing by writing a scene, early in the first act of a story, and slip in Chekhov’s gun. Don’t fire it yet.  Just make it present somehow.

Beautiful People

Vincent Peters Photography

"Oh, God, yeah, completely.  I know exactly what you mean."

"He really gets it, you know?  He really capture what's going on in the mind.  You know?"

"Oh, yeah, totally.  He really gets that." Christina had completely forgotten who or what they were talking about.  It didn't matter though, she'd worked with Javier on a couple of shoots now and he was always the same: completely focused on himself and the jobs he'd been on, who he'd worked with and for, and how he really wanted to break into acting.  Reflecting on the echoes of his last sentence she concluded that he must have been speaking about a photographer but she couldn't remember which one.

She was so unbelievably bored.  She was hungry too and the stench of the cigarettes they'd been using as props had started to turn her stomach.  It felt like the tar was permeating her every pore.  Her neck was sore from the ridiculously hackneyed position she'd been asked to hold, a rip-off of the 1950s Hollywood publicity shots - done a million times before - and she was freezing cold.  What was worse, Javier, the self-centred idiot, didn't seem to notice or mind the inconveniences of the shoot, he just kept on taking regardless.  She really just wanted to yell at him to shut up but satisfied herself with the mental image of stubbing the lit end of her cigarette out in his eye.



Time up.
Inspiration:  The photo.  I wanted to image an interaction from a given image and imagine what was going on beneath the gloss.

The Desperate Man

                        
'Tempt not a desperate man'

With a mind quivering like the tender leaves of the birch in a spring gale, he writhes there in his agony.  She cannot be his.  She will not be his.  He will never possess her.  His dreams and fantasies, tender and dramatic, domestic and passionate, that have supported his body and soul for so long, have been ripped away.  A huge cavern has appeared at his feet and now his mind turns to the temptation of flinging himself into the abyss.  His expressions of longing, of the justice of his claim over her, of the deep connexion that he could never break, now or ever, are as useless to her as the empty leaves of the memoir next to the corpse.

He cannot conceive the future, he flings his mind to the past, reliving the promises made and given, the two souls entwining to become one.  His incredulity that is was possible for one soul to break free from the commixture of the two.  How could it be possible that her vision of their future could possibly differ from his?

Who would he spend eternity with now?




Time Up.
Inspiration:  I saw this picture and the title reminded me of Romeo.  Naturally, it made me wonder why a man might become desperate and, like Romeo, my mind lead its way to love.

Change

There is a change coming, I can feel it.  It is the lightness off the air, the glow that lingers a fraction longer in the darkening sky.  Perhaps it started with the song of the robin in the hedge.  Perhaps it started when I felt suddenly overburdened with the layers of clothing I wore for the ritual Sunday walk.  I feel sure, though, that it was some internal kind of clock.  The same one that tells us when it is time to wake or sleep; the same that tells us that something is not quite as it should be and we need to be on our guard; the same that tells us that we have found someone that will make our life more comfortable than it has every been before.

Change is not always for the good, but more often than not it is.  In any case, we can't stop it, not this change, being in the hands of Nature and this change is always for the better, long anticipated and wished for, longed for, in fact, and when it starts to arrive it is like a deep sigh, a knowingness that everything will be alright. 



Time up.
Inspiration: was a bit lacking tonight.  I just wrote about how I felt about the change of the season.

Clock watching

Do you ever have that feeling that the clock beating inside you is permanently telling you that you're late for something? Well, that's me. Right now.

My skin is alive to every sensation but heightened to a ridiculous degree. Sounds, especially are abhorrent; loud sounds unbearable.  If there was a door that opened into my body you wouldn't find pulsing red organs, oh no.  There would be a sheen of metal and the black ooze of the oil needed to drive cogs, which would be grinding away relentlessly like some Victorian treadmill.

If my mind were personified it would resemble some snarling beast backed into a corner, froth hanging in ribbons from its yellow fangs, one front paw poised in front of it's body as defence or leaverage for it's next pounce.  The one thing that can barely be seen in the eyes of the creature there, muscles taught like spun steel, is not the rage but the fear.


Time up.
Inspiration: the anger at obliging myself to write every day.  I'm stressed and angry. I don't want to write this but I want to keep my promise to myself.

Void

Then, he felt the shattering inside and then the void.  There was nothing left.  He had no more inside him.  He didn't cry, those tears of bitterness and pain had dried up a long time ago.  And the nights spent embryoed, the nausea and the pain of the spasming stomach, the constant fear, had all melted away.  Now he lay in blank dryness.  At the bottom of everything he stared up at nothing.

He glanced at the laptop screen that had brought nothing into his world except agony, and wrenched the plug out of the wall by the lead.  He stared at his school books, the posters on the wall, the curtains.  His home; his prison.  He picked up his rucksack and stuffed the laptop lead inside it.  Without another backwards glance he walked out of the quiet house as silently as he could and into the night.

The pathway was familiar to him and he found his way without the need for much light.  There a small slice of moon, not enough to illuminated but enough to send a cold glow onto the trees.  He might have tripped, but if he had it wouldn't have hurt, his body was a numb as his mind.

When he reached the place, he squatted and wrenched open his rucksack.  He lifted the lead of his laptop out, thin and coiled, the moon allowing it the thinest blue sheen.  He slung the end of it over the sturdiest of the branches above him and looked at the free end hanging loosely in his hand.  He gave it a tender smile.  It was the only message he wanted to leave:  his torture and his relief.



Time up.
Inspiration: I heard a sad message on Twitter tonight.  I'm hoping it's clear what the topic of the tweet was.  I hope i dealt with the issue sensitively.

One's own path

They had walked this path at least once a week for the past fifty years and more.  Ever since they were married, in fact.  It would have been lovely, looking back, to say that, as they strolled, their feet making barely any noise, muffled by the decaying leaves that mouldered in the damp moss growing there, that the sun was always an apricot glow behind the tree's charcoal bark. It wasn't, of course, but sometimes it was.


Walking side by side is normal but they always followed the tracks that the farm vehicles had imprinted over generations of continual use, it was if the tracks were made for the two of them so that they could walk comfortably alongside each other but slightly distant.

They often chatted as they walked, about life's trivialities and it's triumphs; about the most mundane of things and the most important.  But, more often than not, they walked together quietly, even in silence.  They thought their own thoughts, fought their own internal battles and poured privately over stored memories. 

If they stretched, they could hold hands and sometimes they did that too, and smiled.



Time up.
Inspiration:  I say this picture on Pinterest.  I can't find the original source other-wise I'd be happy to give credit.  The pinner said that it was Godolphin Wood in Cornwall.  Photographer unknown.

She Wants

She passed him everyday.  He had exactly what she wanted. 

Anne had long felt a hollowness inside her; it had been growing for many months now until she almost felt that the core of nothingness had taken up nearly all of her being.  She felt too light: light enough to float away. She had begun to think more about things too.  What did she really want?  Did this new path she was taking really fulfil her?  Was it going to take away the feelings of self-loathing that she had been living with for so long and re-ignite the exhuberence of her youth? 

The determination that she had had at the beginning of the new epocha that she had envisaged for herself, and was trying to implement, had slowly started to seep away like a leaking pipe.  She had felt herself faltering many times only to catch a brief snap-shot of herself in the mirror and, with the stark reminder of the disgust with which she held herself, she had managed to crawl through those times when she felt like breaking the promise she had made to herself.

Now, however, watching him, she stopped and boldly peered at him through the glass.  Would he notice her? Would he be as disgusted with her as she was of herself?  Frankly, she no longer cared, her desire had reached such a pitch that her mind screamed her greatest need.  She pushed through the door screening him from her and holding his face in her gaze she marched up to the counter. "How much for that Raspberry Mille Feuille?" she purred.


Time up.

Inspiration: 
The Write Practice suggestion tonight was: Take fifteen minutes and come up with a MacGuffin scenario. You can either make your characters play the MacGuffin straight, or turn it on its head and have them start questioning what the significance of the MacGuffin is.
I chose the former without exactly playing it straight.

Not of Woman Born

Your tiny head nestles into the crook of my neck, my arm supports the bend of your spine and we share our warmth.  My spare hand strokes your front. I allow my fingers to trace paths down your chest, meandering along the length of your body, white, patches of black and brown and faintest glimpse of pink beneath sparser hairs.  Your eyes gaze directly into mine, you do not flinch or turn away, those deep, black pools reflecting my face, distorted.

What would you tell me, if you could? Would you repeat the loving words I murmur to you?  Would you chuckle when I bury my face into your chest and rub my nose against your cheek, whispering simple nothingsof love? Your look conveys nothing except your trust, binding.  A contract, everlasting between us.

You are more my child than anything I could produce with another of my species and when your paws fan the air near my lips, begging for more tangible affection, I would deny you nothing.



Time up
Inspiration: I wanted to write about my dog tonight.  So I did.

Heal

  Jessica had always felt embattled.  The stresses of work had got so much that she had taken far too many days off sick and her family had begun to shove as many of her concerns under the carpet as possible.  They said dismissive things, such as: she should go and see someone, she needed to take the pills that the doctor prescribed, perhaps she should think about a retreat to really relax her mind, she should take up yoga; it would really help her mind and body.  The fact is, Jessica would have gladly taken on any of this advice if she felt that it had been even remotely well meant, but she knew that everyone just wanted her to be normal again.  They didn't want her to cause them any problems or embarrass them or make them have to do anything outside of their routines. 

She didn't want to follow any of their advice because she knew it would just be plastering over the cracks that were far too deep rooted.  She didn't understand where the cracks had started or how deep they actually went but she knew doctors couldn't help her.  Luckily, she had her own treatment.  It was secret as no-one would believe her.  It had begun when she had started to take walks during her time off sick.  At first it was a way of relaxing and exercising, but mostly just to get out of the four walls that oppressed her so.  It was on such a walk on a bitterly cold and blustery day that she heard them first.  Merely whispers.  She thought at first it was her imagination, but then they became more distinct.  When she recognised certain words she was petrified; she thought she had gone completely mad but, when her heart had stopped roaring in her chest and she had taken her hands from her ears, the voices were so calm and relaxing she had listened. 

Now she went out everyday onto the hill.  Whether the rain beat down or the sun burned, she would stride into the midst of the weather, because she knew they were there, waiting for her, to heal her.  They were far too shy yet to show themselves but she knew if she was patient and followed their advice they would reveal themselves to her.  Although, whether they showed themselves or not she was already reaping the rewards of their ancient wisdom.  She was getting better, she knew it.



Time was well up but I wanted to finish the section.

Inspiration:  The Write Practice site suggested thinking about how to 'incorporate magic, or fantasy elements into your fiction'.  As this is something I haven't really done  thought I'd give it a go.

The Walrus

Jutting belly, under a glossy nylon shirt, his profile like an enormous D, he watched the screen with one hand gripping an amber brew. His hair was shorn (what was left of it) and speckled the rolls of fat with clustered where the nape of his neck should have been.  There was clear pitting on his cheeks: the result of acne as a youth - hormonal, or was it the result of poor nutrition self-indulged or otherwise indulged?  Probably the latter.

His clothes looked clean but there was a distinct smell of fermentation.  I could say cheese but that would not account for the squalid sourness of the sweat which must have oozed from between crevices despite the top notes of deodorant and a musky cologne. 

When he moved, witnesses might be hypnotised by the undulation.  there was a sinuosity to the flesh which moved independently to his core structure which was almost balletic.  But was female could possibly be drawn to this?

Time up:
Inspiration: I happened to be looking at the title of one of Lewis Carroll's poems, 'The Walrus and The Carpenter' and I used the title to start me off.

Beyond the Window

It was so dark outside that the massive windows merely reflected his own face back at him.  He wasn't really looking at anything other than himself, in any case. He took in the pale complexion and the slight movement of the skin under his right eye.  It had been twitching on and off for the last few hours.  He pinched his cheeks and rubbed them to give himself an artificial healthy glow.  He looked at his hair for the hundredth time and moved a strand a minuscule amount higher on his forehead.  Better.  Only his fringe was showing under his beanie hat and the peak of dark hair was slicked with grooming product.   He flicked open his mobile again but the unwelcome sight of an empty screen made the knot in his stomach more apparent.

He lent forward and cupped a hand around his eye and pressed his hand onto the cold glass.  Nothing but the orange glow bouncing off the slicks of water pooled on the Tarmac of the car park.  He looked back at the Formica table and the coated cardboard cup, beads of water still clustered on the straw which was poking up.  He daren't eat before she arrived, that would spoil the date.  The faint tap on the window startled him slightly and he twisted round to see splats of rain starting once again to smear the windows. His fists had made a ball.  Now she wouldn't want him to walk her home, she'd definitely just phone for her dad to pick her up, no chance of a hasty kiss.

Then the buzz.  He fumbled with the phone case.  Finally, she'd be on her way.  The knot in his stomach blossomed and burned and his throat went dry.  He fought back tears of anger and humiliation as he snapped back the phone case and stared out through his own warped reflection into the wet bleakness of the night beyond the windows.


Time up.
Inspiration: I wanted to have a go at pathetic fallacy.   Connecting the emotions of the character to their surroundings.

The Night Before

She was trying to piece together the events of the night before.  They were there, the memories, but in fragments, not in order.  More like a patchwork quilt, all over the place, a mess. 

Very clear, bright even, was the euphoria of getting ready.  Reflections in mirrors.  Singing along to tunes.  Chucking dresses, tops, skirts all ahoo over the bed until she'd got the picture that she'd made of herself in her head.  Teetering heels.  Slap, on.  Pouting and dropping an A-bomb of perfume.

The noise of pub was there in a pocket in her mind.  Bright but rippling like a shiny pebble dropped in a stream.  The movement of people jostling, rushing, slouching, gesticulating.  The sound. Those bits, they were in her mind, there or there abouts.

Drinks.  Yeah, there were plenty of those.  Chasers.  Laughing really loudly, scarlet mouth stretched in a permanent O.  Swearing and arguing was flitting about in there somewhere but the memory was getting darker, less secure.  Was there drink slicked? Sick? Why did her heart hurt?



Time up.
Inspiration:   It just came out tonight.  I just thought of an image and wrote.

Through his eyes

He watched her chestnut hair lay smooth on the pillow next to his. He let his lips drift over the apricot flesh.  He listened to her breathe and allowed his soul to wallow in it.  For a moment he was at peace. 
Her eyes flicked open and she flipped herself over like a fish on a hook. 
"What?" she barked.  Her eyes narrowed.  "You woke me up.  So, what is it?"
He began to stutter; mumbled something about just wanting to be as close to her as he could; enjoying watching her sleep.  It was the wrong thing to say.  It always was.
"Jesus, John," she hissed.  She swung her legs over the side of the bed.  Her dressing gown was hastily wrapped around her shoulders.  Then, with a glance which spat venom, she yanked the light in the bathroom and slammed the door.



Time Up.

Inspiration:  The Write Practice website provided the inspiration today.  They suggested trying beige prose.  They instructed to base it on the aftermath of Valentine's day.

As She Walked

It was that time of the morning when you're awake but you may as well not be.  Your eyes are still itchy from the adhesive of sleep that had been wrenched apart, your face is peachy and warm from the blankets and the blast of cold air as you open the front door is as rude as an unfounded insult.

Yes, it was that kind of morning. But dogs need to be walked and so that is why I set out with the frost still thick on the grass and sounds muffled by the cloying mist that fondled the earth.  I trudged along the road and up into the field.  My blood had started to charge my mind and I was sloughing off the drain of sleep just as the warming winter sun was beginning to wade through the fog.

I crested the hill into the sun which had crowned the top and it was then I saw it.  Lying flat on its
stomach as if asleep or waiting silently for its prey to be fooled by its prostrate form. It's enormous
head far out into the bay, it's back curving up between the cleft of the downs ; there was no doubt about what it was.   I turned desperately to check behind me, to the left of me, to my right; no one.  No one to witness or share this sight.  No one to believe me either.  Then I realised, my mobile phone had a camera. I fumbled in my pockets, letting tissues, poo bags and gloves fall incontinently as I searched.  I felt the hard case and flipped it open.  It was only then, when I aimed the lens at the shape, that it started to disappear.  Clearly it sensed that it was being watched, thought better of
appearing so obviously in daylight and had decided to leave no trace except the ghost of its presence.


Time up.
Inspiration: I took the photo at the top this morning.  When I showed my mother and said what I thought it looked like she didn't agree with me.  Hence the story of truth or imagination. 

An Empty Bench

She sat there as we drove past in the heat.  A few seconds worth of a brown patterned nylon dress and home knit cardigan stretched over her squat and square body as we peered through the back seat window.  Her face watched us back.  She sat slouched on a rickety bench, her thick legs splayed apart, showing a pink blush of knee length bloomers.  Her face was like a nut coloured boxing glove; her hair a disc of grey beneath a crushed cotton cap. 

The morning heat was stifling in the car as we headed out.   It was like that everyday of our holiday and everyday the car threw up dust from the road as we passed the old woman, sending a small cloud which exhausted itself around her plimsolled feet.  She was there, stationed on her bench, when we left and was still there when we returned in the evening, tired and ratty.  We sniggered to each other, squashed into the car, and she looked back at us, intruders into the calm and dusty silence of her village. 

She wasn't there on the bench the following year when we returned for more excursions along the dusty road.


Time up.
Inspiration.  I'm tired but I wanted to do a character study tonight and this woman came into my head yesterday as we reminisced about a holiday some years ago.

Pain

The silence was all around her like a fog.  He had gone.

A few moments only had past or perhaps hours, perhaps days, it didn't matter.  She sat with her hands cupped in front of her, on her lap, her eyes staring but seeing nothing, her mind was nothing, nothing at all, just burst, disabled, all in a moment.  Her breath had stopped with her heart and she was inanimate, devoid of all, except the burn in her throat. A mere portrait of loss.

There must slowly have built a roar from somewhere, from her very toes perhaps, but she was aware of the grip it had only when it was within her stomach.  The sound of crashing waves, the tearing heat of fire inside her, moving to her arms and into her head and her mouth opened to scream.  No scream came.  Just a silent rush of air.  The exhalation of her dreams  and hopes, the very essence of her life, all out, all in one long breath.

He had betrayed her and her mind had fractured at that moment, a shattered mirror, distorting what she saw from then on.

A Taste of Honey

Bees, mellowness, plenty.  The warmth of the sun on your skin after the dark of winter.  Watching the  sabre-like shoots of the plants as they birth themselves from the damp earth.  Bare branches of the trees budding after sleep and the song of birds.  As long as there is always the song of birds, there is beauty in the world.

The first sight of the face of a loved one after their absence, whether short or long.  The plumpness of an child's apple cheek and their continued breath after the pause; their weight on a mother's chest.  The wrinkled skin of your lover and friend as they share life's twighlight hand in hand; their returned smile for yours; their white hair on the pillow beside you; their scent pervading the very clothes you wear.

The taste of clean water; the feel of it running over hot skin.  The tide shifting out, dragged across the pebbles, the beauty and the rage in that sound.

That rare autumn warmth in early spring. The taste of honey.



Time up.
Inspiration: I stumbled on the song, A Taste of Honey, covered by the Beatles and took inspiration from the title.

Banish What Ifs

We can always look at the past and wonder what if we had acted differently; what might we have changed? What butterfly's wing might we have stilled to avoid the present tsunami? We could spend our entire days in the past, constantly in reverse, going over our memories like a film real and rehearsing different scenarios to achieve the finale that satisfies us. Only to come back to the reality of the now and find that we still have the pit of guilt, sorrow or anger living crouched within us and our fantasy was merely that.

It has to stop. We have to change. We cannot spend our lives in the past, as damaging as living in tomorrow. The 'what might be' as dangerous as the 'what if I had'. Leave it be. Slough it off like a old skin. Break free from the flagellation of regret. It is like poison, sucking at the happiness that we have right to. Do not turn back and perhaps, like Persephone, we might see as much light as darkness. At least we must try.


Time up.
Inspiration: just wrote about something I want to be free from.

The difference the sun makes

We drag ourselves through the gloom of winter, our steps splashing through pooled water and splattering mud. The clouds crowd round us and drape us in grey, our winter mourning. Sometimes, chilling mists might creep along the roads, wind around the naked branches of trees and envelop chimneys and roof tops. The world becomes a mystery but only for a while. Those crisp, cold days we long for are few and act as the merest gulp of air before we sink into the murk again.

But when the shoots start to poke their thin fingers through the sodden ground and the days no longer last for moments it is then you might start to dream of summer days, and, as if to confirm your hope, the sun might burst open your inward turned mind and send an unexpected warmth onto your upturned face. A reminder. Be patient. Wait. I will come again and perhaps for longer next time.


Time up.
I don't know what you think but this is just seems god awful writing tonight. I'm in a sad frame of mind and I just can't get my head round ideas tonight.
Inspiration was the sun which was warm for the first time this winter.

A mark

"When you are quite a girl grown, and the tree is more than this little sapling, we will carve your initials into the bark.  As you grow up into a woman you can watch your name widen and change as they tree grows bigger around it.  Won't that be nice?"
I didn't like the sound of becoming a woman.  But I looked as his paw clasping my plump little hand, both ingrained with the black mud of the field and said, "Yes, Dad."  Surely, I could cope with being a woman as long as he was beside me.
After six years, I got a penknife for my birthday.  It felt drawn to it's danger as if it might make me run mad, a danger which frightened me into being tentative with it as I teased out the different tools, all offering a cold mystery.
We took the penknife to the tree and with his massive hand steadying mine we etched into its still supple flesh my monogramme.  And then we watched it grow.
I was right to be frigtened of womanhood but I was also right that with my father standing always beside me anything was bearable.


Time up.
Inspiration today came from the Tumblr blog Writer's Inspiration and the task simply said: what is the significance of this tree.  Open for lots of scope there.

Dearest you

I could tell you how much I love you. I can talk and use words that others have used before me and have stumbled over. Feelings they wanted to sing to you but couldn't; shied away from exposing themselves at their very core - too vulnerable by far. But spoken words are as dust blown by a wind, only a shadow of them remain after the merest of moments. They do not last.

But if I write, well, those words will remain as long as this letter of my love is held in your hand and in your mind or the ink refuses to fade through the severest of life's agonies. My letter will last as long as you for once read it becomes a part of you. Even discarded or burnt the letter cannot be unwritten, the script cannot be unformed, nor love's language erased. It will not change and neither will my love.

I want to say, i need to say, with my heart ringing and my mind chiming, that your face is my silence and peace, your hand is my heart, your eyes are my eternity, as they hold my soul, mine with yours. You are all my joy and all my sadness. Your presence or absence is my clock and so ticks past my day, my life, wound by yours. And if you go, I will always be at the door waiting for you to come home.

Yours




Time up.
Inspiration was from 'write practice' again. They challenged you to write a love letter. I did the challenge but I bore my soul mate in mind while writing. Everything written here today, I do feel.

First Love

The clock hand lingers over each minute, unwilling to take it's leave like a frightened child clinging to his mother's skirts.  So slowly passes the time, until you see that precious face or hear that voice, the voice on which lies the very wing beat of your existence. It could not be called comfort when your mind is so very deeply enmeshed in another, as if you could breath in their very life force, watching out for every sign, a look or casual phrase, that will either be torture or exquisite pleasure. 

Yet there's the threat of what may be.  The future: such a dark place.  Does it hold images of a dove's wing or a flickering street light extinguished by the grey dawn of a sleepless night? Such a dire fear of having one's heart punched out whole.  A pain too great to be imagined.



Time up
Goodness that was hard, tonight. The inspiration came from the Write Practice, again.  I didn't want to do it tonight because it sounded such a trite idea.  It was hard trying to make it NOT trite.  I hope I managed it.

Searching

What and where is thing we want, that we search and yearn for? I'm sure that no one ever finds it or even know what it really is.

I see it the broken eyes of an old friend who wrecked four hearts against his lust. Unsatiated. Unsatisfied. He did not find the thing he sought and ran from unrealised dreams to broken ones.

I see it the middle aged couples who barked and snapped at each other and gazed wistfully over each other shoulders at bluer skies and the promise of a warmer touch. Until they found that the other touch grew cold and they longed for the safety of a home now laid waste.

Watch those listless and lost souls, desperate for someone else's joy, an antidote to their pain. watch them leeching themselves on to those who have held on to their stability, who rode the storms, who felt the siren song of this fantasy of 'what might be' and laughed at its naivety. Those lost ones hang from those who knew better, those that saved themselves from the ashes of the search for...



Time up
Inspiration: just thinking of that thing people try to go off to find.

But what's it like?

The sea.
Is it gentle like a first kiss?
Is it as chilling as bad news?
It is as refreshing as a peel of laughter
Or the gurgling laugh of a child.
It is often like the voice of god at his most vengeful
Or at his most forgiving.
It brings a shining brightness to the skin, like the rays of the sun, yet far more tangible.
But dangerous as the night and glistening like the cold steel of a blade, the sea rages.



Time up.
Inspiration: tonight the challenge came again from the Write Practice site. I wasn't going to do it as it asked you write nearly similes but as I need to try different types of writing I thought I SHOULD do it. It took me ten minutes to complete the few lines above.

What is beauty?

She sat on the stool in front of her dressing table and looked at her reflection. She was wasn't gauging her attractiveness or whether her hair had gone awry or if she needed something to brighten her complexion. She was looking to see if it would be obvious to her husband that she had been crying again.

When she looked down she did not see the mottled skin on her wrinkled hands nor the tiny tags of skin that had started to multiply, she was elsewhere in her mind. She did not see what I see. She did not see the tiny glow of love, ever present, in her tired eyes. She did not see hands that had worked themselves to the bone in the care of those she cherished. She did not see the floating crown of grey that encircled her head, familiar yet wild. She looked but did not see herself or anything around her and she cared less. She was ensnared, mind and body, by the pain of loving a daughter who drank, night and day, to escape the harshness of life.



Time up

Inspiration: today the writer's inspiration blog on tumblr suggested writing about beauty. For me beauty comes from what people do and say rather than how they look. I hope this conveys that sentiment.

Shame

It was the white trousers.  I had put them on in the morning with such pride - a size smaller than I'd been wearing for years.  I'd customized the festival t-shirt as well - trying to look original.  Honestly, it did look good and, unlike most of the other times I'd thought this, I was confident I wasn't fooling myself.  My hair was doing the right thing for once and I turned up to do my shift hoping I would turn heads.

I walked up to the staff office to clock on and get my I.D pass.  One of the girls behind the desk (always perfectly turned out) actually did a double take and deigned to comment on how great I'd made the t-shirt look.  I flicked my hair and said a cool, "Thanks,"  like it was just an every day thing.  Still smiling at her I bent to write my name on the log when I felt a brush of lips on my exposed shoulder and stared into the brown eyes of one of the competitors.  He was handsome but I wasn't about to play the part of a blushing teenager and I raised my eyebrow at his impertinence and flounced off.  I couldn't deny, though, that he'd made me feel good.  It had created a fluttery feeling in my stomach.

As I walked down the track towards my stand, a handful of men, the bloom of exertion on their cheeks and the sheen of water still on their hair, strode to pass me.  Normally, I'd have been self-conscious and would have studiously ignored them; this time I was going to meet them eye-to-eye.  It was then that I felt the sharp pain in my lower abdomen and the bud of wetness seep from between my legs.  The jolt of horror must have shown on my face as they covered the remaining distance between us and stared full at me, while the fan of scarlet threaded its way across the pristine front of my pure, white trousers.


Time up.
Inspiration tonight:
is thanks again to the Write Practice website.
 'Write for fifteen minutes about a something that really happened to you, without revealing any of the people or places involved. Try to keep all other details the same.'

I've been posting in their comments section and getting feedback, which is nice but that challenge was not comfortable for me.  I clearly don't do well in the first person.  All my creativity went.

The ring

She gazed down at her finger, still bound by the thin band of gold.  She tilted her palm up and flexed her fingers as if admiring it.  She was not.  She was trying to picture it gone and wondering if the memory of it, a phantom, if you will, would still remain.  It had been there for so many years and in it she had found pride and the security of belonging.

She moved her right hand over and allowed her middle finger and thumb to twist the ring in its place and then over the groves that it had created, up and down, twisting round and round all the time as if she were winding a clock.

Then she pulled and it slipped over her knuckles and she let it clang onto the floor beneath her.  She didn't look at the ring, she held her left hand up into the light and let her liberated finger feel the unaccustomed coolness of the air.  She stretched each finger in turn, easing them back and forth, exercising them as if rehabilitating after a lengthy illness.

It really didn't signify, after all.




Time up.
Inspiration tonight: just a reflection on the nature of marriage and its effects.

Purple Prose

The friends clustered around the fire; it provided the merest kiss of warmth but it would suffice; the rest of the room was bitter cold. The flames flared and flitted, unpredictable yet compelling. Occasionally, a blue wisp would bounce on a log drawing all of the half slumbering eyes momentarily before darting up into the penumbra of the chimney.

The darkness outside bled in through the bare windows and clawed at the glow from the flames. There were half visible things in the dimness that surrounded the figures that huddled there: the sheen of the fire reflected in the wooden panelling of the walls; ancient and rusting bronzes on mottled tables, merely shadows in the dark, stood guard in the alcoves and the books, shredded by mice and age, were only visible when lit by flashes of lightening that burst into the sanctuary. It was a dark and stormy night beyond the windows but those by the fire found a brief peace.


Time up

Inspiration was from a writer's group email I have subscribed to. It offers a daily writing practice. Today, the challenge was write purple prose around the able line: it was a dark and stormy night.

Adrift

She forced her numb fingers to grip the exposed side of the upturned hull, the only part of the boat still visible above the water. The pain in her leg had started to numb and she took a moment to look at the shapes of the children huddled in front of her in the dark. She could see the distant lights of their rescuers advancing but there was still the doubt: how quickly would they arrive? The sea was ice and the pain of it tore at her throat but she wrenched words out of it, nevertheless.
"Laurie. Laurie, are you awake? Esther? Henry?"
"Yes. Will they be here soon?"
"I'm freezing."
"Will they find mum first and bring her or will they come for us and get her after?"
"I'm so cold. Will they come soon?"
Came the all too plaintive replies. The whispers of shock still hindering their tongues.
"They'll be here sooner than you think. You can see their lights, look. Keep focused on the lights and watch for them. Don't go to sleep. Laurie, promise me you won't go to sleep. You have to stay awake and keep the others awake. Do you understand how important it is?"
"I won't go to sleep, Martha. I've got watch out for mum in case the rescuers don't see her. I wish I knew where she was to tell them."

Her hands had gone numb long since and she felt the weight of her life oozing away. Thoughts of what she might have been, memories of looks exchanged, the risks she hadn't taken, the time that she had wasted out of the embrace of those she loved, they kissed her thoughts as she forced her mind to focus on the children. They must not sense the fear that clawed at her eyes and lips.

Her mother's warm touch was on her for the briefest moment but she forced herself back from the warmth of her dream into the night of pitch and the unforgiving sea.

"Laurie? If I fall asleep promise me you will stay...stay were you are. Keep watch. Keep everyone watching...for the men. Laurie?" The words pounded inside her head, her jaw tighter than iron. She could see nothing at all now and knew she must have gone blind.
"You said we shouldn't go to sleep Martha. Why would you?"
"My eyes might close. Promise. Promise. Laurie, promise."

...................................................................................................................................................

Time was up ages ago.
Inspiration: I was out on a walk and thought what it would be like to die at sea. Not a pleasant thought. The time constraint hindered the possible creativity with words tonight, even though I went ten minutes over.

Alter Ego

As she walked into the staff room, the noise of tin foil being unfurled and tupperwear boxes being burped open lifted to greet her. She sat quietly at the table; everyone else slouched in the comfy chairs. They didn't look up or greet her. It was not that they didn't like her, it was just that her presence never really registered on their radar. She was quiet, scrupulously polite, always diplomatic and could rarely be drawn into displaying an unbalanced opinion.

She was quite unreadable, really, and after many attempts at engaging in veiled stabs at other colleagues, in the hope of a reciprocated slur, went begging, the colleague would give up, feeling that they had somehow let themselves down and exposed themselves to being perceived as jealous or catty. Conversely, they also felt confident that neither would she betray them to a third party.

She was often forced to listen to pathetic confessions or overly dramatised personal monologues about someone's husband, child, boyfriend, but she did so with fortitude and what appeared to be unfeigned sympathy. These events would be, more often than not, followed by over familiarity, then sly avoidance, returning eventually to the general bland acknowledgement that was habitual.

Time up.
Inspiration: I was browsing a writing blog and saw that a previous challenge was to construct an alter-ego. This is mine.

Sleep

To drift off in the dark warmth of sleep. The first feelings of relaxation and the body slowing down. The lids becoming heavy and the mind smiles when it is allowed to retreat into the dim caverns unchecked by stress or the responsibilities of life.

Sounds around us become more keen and a discordant knock or whine may bring a wrinkle to the brow and there may be part of the conscious mind that still will try to place it so that it can be rejected as safe and we can be at peace.

The flicking on and off of light as the lids droop then lift, droop once more, lift ever slowly once again as the world becomes a blur and they close for the last time.

If we are lucky we will not dream and our whole being can float the black silken road until the body is fully sated with slumber.

Perchance to dream? Then hope it is something gentle: the caress of a loved one; water, soft and cleansing, drifting over our outstretched arms; a cooling breeze making leaves dance; the welcome of a smile and soft skin.


Time up.
Inspiration: I had a nap today and the only person I know who had written about sleep is Shakespeare. I don't doubt others have, I just haven't read them.

London

If it's not the place of hackneyed pearly kings and queens any more (pun not intended but acknowledged) then what is it?  Can it be found in the braying voices of upper-middle class financiers and P.R. reps who are doing a couple of years 'graft' in town before marrying someone wealthy enough to keep them in Hunter Wellies and au pairs with out lifting a finger for the next fifty years except to tilt the Gin bottle? Can it be found in mockney cackle of the middle class journos and ad men who went to public school but are desperate to be taken as a bit tasty by their legitimately working class colleagues who can barely contain their resentment.  Is it in the myriad accents, dialects and languages spoken in the offices as the lights dim and when the last suited wage-slave has pushed through the door to make his way to a bar to self-medicate his anxiety disorder, his eye-twitch slowing the emptier his glass gets? 

London.  Can it ever, has it ever been defined? 

Time up.

Inspiration: I'm in London. 

January

A month of crispness. Hoare frosts encrusting the leaves and branches of the hedgerows. The sound of crunching grass under foot. The rasping warmth of wool against a freezing neck and a huff of steam as every breath escapes. The sun, rarer than blue sea glass, bursting through a dense cloud to remind us of its white beauty low in the sky.

A month of darkness. Grass sodden. Water pooling on the lawn. The pavements a dark mood and the roads merely islands surrounded by mirrors of the sky and the starkness of trees. Days short like tempers and the nights too long for comfort when alone with our thoughts.


Time up.

Inspiration: the dream and reality of January as we come to the end of it. But I had to think today and that means less writing.

Hot skin

She rounded the corner and immediately wished she could jump back the way she'd come. It was too late, though, she'd already taken a few paces round the shop door on the corner of the high street and, although the group on the bench weren't aware of her yet, she knew a flustered retreat would have drawn more attention to her than just keeping her head down and shuffling on. She felt the blush riding up her neck, clawing at her cheeks.

She tried not to look at them and made a effort to look absorbed in the passing shop windows. Her pace increased but she could still see their reflections blurred in the dark glass. All the popular girls from school were there. They seemed so much more knowing, so much more mature than her, that she would have done anything to avoid their notice; she feared them too: They were loud, they showed no respect for their elders, authority, the rules and she couldn't understand why or indeed how young women could be so lawless, so wild. They revolted her with their coarseness and yet there was something strangely attractive about them. Why did she long for their approval? Why did she want to be part of their tribe? Was it because, deep down, she longed to be free from the constraints of her own safe upbringing? Perhaps it was merely the vaguest atavistic stirrings in their last throws before the responsibilities of adulthood eclipsed them completely.

Solitude

Solitude doesn't mean loneliness to me.  It is something craved - because a mind never seems still, nor the body.  Even when at rest there is always some movement, some thought that means almost constant alertness or tension that never quite relinquishes it's grip.

I'm thinking of that desire, a yearning wish: your mind singing out for the moment when it can release all the thoughts, memories, the hurts and confusions and for a while just tick over, like a clock in an empty room. Your body longs for a moment when your hands are at rest and your muscles melt into soft grass and feel the sun ooze onto your flesh or wind whip your flesh into a natural flush.  When the crushing talons of life release you for just a short while and you forgot to think.  That is what I long for.  Not love, not excitement, not adventure.  Just peace.

Time up

Inspiration today was the prospect of a retreat.  Merely the idea of what it could be like.

She was all bosom.

You know the kind of woman I mean, like the Queen, they have a mono-bosom.  The Queen or Ida and Cissy (Les Dawson's immortal alter-ego).  They have a bosom that stretches the entire length of their, usually heavily rectangular, torsos making them like a perambulating sleeping-policeman. Following me yet? Oh, good.

Well, she was one of those.  The worst colleague you could possibly imagine.  She wouldn't never have thought of herself as your equal you understand.  She would have said colleague with the same intonation that The Duchess of Kent would say staff.  She wasn't the gossipy kind or the maternal kind.  She was the triple-thick-skinned-bitch-from-Hell dressed in Hobbs and Marks and Spencer.

She had the most winning smile, when you first met her, and she would make her middle-middle-class drawl lift slightly to a welcoming purr for the first five minutes worth of judgement until she'd summed up how profitable it would be for her to be seen talking to you.  If her assessment was favourable, you would be treated to distain with snatches of condescension; if not the claws started to protrude from the fur and she would make it her sport to needle you with them, interminably.

Secretly, we called her Delores Umbridge.

Yes, we hated her but we feared her, too, exactly like she wanted.


Time well up.
Inspiration: I was reminded  about an old colleague, tonight.  This was a portrait of her.  More fact that fiction! 

Friends

They had grown up together. They knew almost everything about each other save the innermost workings of their minds. But everyone is a stranger to our secret thoughts.

When Anne's mock results were not as good as Harriet's she coached her until Jane went into the exam hall feeling as though she could have solved the meaning of life. When Harriet's heart was broken for the fifth time in a year, Jane took round chocolate, tissues and her best non-verbal responses. When Jane was sick after their Fresher's ball, Harriet held her hair and stayed up until she was sure she wouldn't choke in her sleep. They worked in the same cafes, bars and hotels and later they would call each other after work to mutually moan about their hideous bosses. They talked about the children they wanted, the homes they would have, holidays, clothes and who would provide them.

Jane married first. Martin was something in the city, had connections, parents with houses in town and in the counties. She no longer needed to work. She had her children, clothes and took wonderful holidays. It was with utter bewilderment, shock and grief that after five years Martin took Harriet and never brought her back.


Time up.

Inspiration: rather obscure today. I saw the word twins and thought I'd write about that but then it lead me thinking about friends and how to turn the idea of friendship inside out. Not sure I totally accomplished what I had in my head within the ten mins, though.

White sky

What could possibly be in that white cloud, whiter than the underneath of a seagull's wing, as pale as sea froth, delicate like morning breath on a winter's day, as impenetrable as the mind? Why does it draw you and scare you all at once?

Is it like death: The promise of perfection, everlasting love, all peace, no pain, as yet unknown and unknowable? Is it the mystery of what could be beneath, behind, within?

A childlike wonder, our imaginations running wild through a summer meadow of cornflowers, roses, dew, rainbows, wild horses.

Or is it merely mist before our eyes, designed to confuse, loose us? Or to make us trust the inner compass and walk on through holding our fingers out to caress the whiteness that envelops us?

Time up.

Inspiration: on my walk today I could see a really white, dense mist around the cliffs. It hid them from and made me think: what COULD be in there.

Roses

There were roses in the bouquet he bought her for their first evening walking out. He called for her in his serge suit and her father, an enormous man whose shirt gaped between the buttons exposing dark hairs on white flesh, grunted an acknowledgment before she squeezed past him to meet him in the evening air. She was flushed and lovely just like the promise of spring. He was coy and awkward but he could see in her eyes that his love was returned and that made him a little bolder, enough to reach for her hand when her house was out of sight. She dutifully put the pink, tightly curled buds to her nose and breathed in their musky scent and the tiny burst of gypsophila danced around her cheeks.

There were roses in her bouquet, as her enormous smiling father, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye, passed her arm to his as he waited at the end of the aisle. He wasn't nervous like they warned him he'd be, just filled with calmness and peace and love.

There were roses around the door of the house they shared that sent their heavy perfume through the door as they reclined, loosely embraced, watching their children crawl and stumble, then walk, skip and run out of the door.

It was only right that he lay a single rose on her coffin when he said his last goodbye. The scent was gone or he was no longer aware of it. He did not see the blush of colour that could only match her cheeks but saw too clearly the browning edge of the petal and the thorn on the stem.

Time up.

Inspiration: I've got a box of Roses left from Christmas. You get the connection...

The silence of a bird's wing

Although I am behind glass and metal, and I am moving at forty miles an hour, I am struck dumb and deaf for a moment that's lasts for the three beats of a buzzard's wing.

I saw it gripping the frail twigs of a hedge, the flimsy branch bowing under the weight of this creature of dark nights and fallen leaves, scanning the field for prey. It turned at the noise of the moving metal beast that hurtled towards it and for a moment I was close enough for our eyes to lock; it's golden, mine the colour of mud. For the briefest second it saw me. It looked into my eyes. What it saw there, I do not know but it did not make it stay. The bird didn't seem threatened, just disdained my proximity, even for the time that it would take for me to pass. It lurched its body upwards and proudly turned its head away as if I no longer held it's interest. It launched itself languidly into the grey sky, allowing me the merest flash of brown-speckled white of its underwing which it beat three times before drifting out of sight.

Broken

She had just looked round for a moment. A moment was all it took.

Her foot was down on the accelerator. She just wanted to get home. Work had been murder and she had been late again to pick up Josh from his after school club. The apologies pouring out of her mouth did nothing to thaw the frosty glares of the assistants who were used to her lateness and now seemingly empty promises that it would never happen again.

Josh was in the back messing about with her phone, he always asked for it in the car and she gave it to him, it generally stopped him kicking her seat. She had been on the motorway for twenty minutes, planning their evening meal in her head, when she felt the first thump from behind. She warned him, angrily, she'd had just about enough today. The lights from other cars were making her eyes smart and she passed the back of her hand across them, little relief there.

Another thump and that was it. She sat up in her seat, whipped her head around and began to yell. Then it was noise, lights, metal scrapping, dizzying spinning and then nothing. Only a small, grubby trainer abandoned against the curb.

Time up.
Inspiration today was via Rusty Magee on Twitter who gave me the prompt of the trainer on a motorway.

Do you know who I am?

I'm a straight-talking, hard-nosed bitch and everyone knows it. I like a drink. I'll smoke a cigar in the club with the chaps but just because I wear a dress, don't try to mess with me if you want to come away with your balls and dignity intact.

I like myself this way. It's got me this far in a man's world and I plan to get a lot further. I haven't got time for sentiment or love or care; I haven't got time for anything for that matter, except, of course, spitting my thoughts onto an electronic page and hitting send. No time for revising, no time for regrets. That's how I make my living but really there's not much else to living except work. I'm a hack. God, I love that word, it's so hard and it's damned hard profession. A man's word for a man's job? Men, pah! Do they still really believe they run things? Are they still perpetuating the myth that they are anything but tragic parodies of their ancestors? Isn't obvious that men are just raging hormones on stick and pathetically easy to manipulate. We let them believe what we like. Let them parade, let them try to 'drink me under the table', I'll be the one at the head of it in the board room tomorrow.

Time's up
Inspiration: @AlexLSpeed responded to my plaintive request for inspiration.
He said pseudo-celebs on Twitter. This is how I imagine Fleet Street Fox.

Paint and death

There was once a painter. He was not a Royal Acamedian or a painter of the lofty-garret-in-Paris type. He painted people's houses. He considered it an art. He drank tea while at work, thirstily, more in the morning when he could never seem to satiate his thirst even with the bucket loads he drank.

He worked intermittently because he didn't always need the money. He other half had plenty and she kept him, mostly comfortably, most of the time. His wants were simple. He wanted no one to tell him what to do or how to behave. He wanted to be free from virtually all responsibility. He wanted to drink beer as much as he liked, without anyone questioning him. He always said he didn't need to drink but he enjoyed it. He actually enjoyed the release from the crushing sense of his lack of ambition, of wasting his life and never reaching his potential. He din't know what his potential was, but he knew he would never reach it, so he never tried. He just drank.

One day he drank. It was after work. He went home from the pub and drank some more. He sat in the sofa and watched the football. The football finished but he was no longer watching, he was no longer going to do anything.

Time up

I took inspiration from the Writing inspiration tumbler blog: 'Write about paint. Fresh paint, dry paint, really hideous colour paint, peeling paint on your grandma’s rocking chair.'

What makes a soul?

What is a soul? How is it different to thoughts and feelings? How can we tell what will damage our souls and what it can live through unscathed? What makes someone's soul black and another's white?

Does ours sparkle when our mind is darkened and clouded, preoccupied with thoughts of ourselves? Or does it diminish when our thoughts dim? Is it a lifebelt when our emotions are sinking? Or can it, too, not breath underwater? If it lives on after our body clicks off, what will it take from our small life? Will it take our loves big and small? Will it have room for memories, laughter, hands held, the softness of skin, tears brushed away? Will it carry our essence or will it become a blend?

In the meantime, how can with live without the other half of ours when that other half doesn't feel part of the whole any longer?

Charity

The old lady, not so little, sat behind the glass counter like Mrs Slocombe's older sister. Her pink lipstick had feathered, bleeding into the puckered wrinkles around her mouth. She smelt of Tweed and gin. It was a dark day outside and when the bell of the shop chimed to admit a fresh customer her voice rasped, 'Hello there, dear.' in tones that would have suited the phrase, 'What the hell do you want?' much more.

She wore a grey dress with a nylon blouse underneath, the colour of which was probably invented purely for I-tell-it-like-it-is brigade. She had a on a home knit cardi, of a similar hue to the blouse, slung around her shoulders with one button done up at the neck, over which the golden beads from her glasses' chain dangled and swing when she moved.

Her kind are passing. I wonder if I will miss them? If anyone will?

Time up.

Inspiration:The kind of ladies who volunteer for charity shop work, to 'do their bit'. I saw a couple today. Why do they really do it?

Snow

Look outside. See. It's snowing!

Peering out of the frosted window glass. Snow on the ledge outside, to see a dark and white world. The sky lightening behind the low grey cloud enough to bring a sense of day but no light is needed to bring joy. Snow brings its own lightness.

Watching your boots make dents in a soft carpet and listening to snow drop from branches; listening to the silence in-between. Aware of your body inside its snug layers but your face slapped red by the cold. Breath billowing in front of you.

Looking. Looking around. Watching the tiny movements in the hedges, the odd chirrup or click of a bird. Watching smoke start to curl reluctantly from chimneys. Listening for the first shouts of joy from children in the quiet air.


Time up.
Inspiration: It snowed today. Could you tell? Just some thoughts and images as I walked out in it this morning.

Static travel.

There was a piece of music that I recall was called 'travelling without moving', I can't remember who by. I don't often connect with lyrics, really, my mind is taken up with a melody. But it was when you see something, an image in this case, that reminds you of a lyric or title or quote and then you start to reflect on its possibilities.

At first I thought about how, when you are a passenger in a car, you are sitting in the seat of the car and no actually moving yourself but the car is moving you. My mind dwelt for a time on the loss of control and freedom that this could suggest or conversely that it could mean that you have great faith or trust in your pilot or indeed in the conveyance itself. But I didn't dwell on this for long.

It came to me that the most important idea about travelling without moving is the idea or possibly the 'fashion' of going travelling. These days a person's education isn't deemed complete unless they have 'travelled'. I was struck by the idea that travel is supposed to enlighten, to widen the mind and create a greater bond between people and cultures. Often, is has very little effect except to reinforce the self-importance or smugness of the person who considers themselves well travelled and therefore enlightened. They fool only themselves and others like them. They have travelled but not moved.

Time up.
Inspiration: I was really struggling tonight. I'm tired and so went back to the tumblr blog, writer's inspiration and the prompt for today is the following picture.

The smell of smoke

She trudged up the steps to the door of her flat. The expanse of black window above stared impassively back at her and she let the straining plastic bag drop onto the door mat while she fumbled underneath her many clothing layers for the key.

The door swung back and although the air that drifted from within was warm and thawed her numb face, the loneliness seeped from the shadows to chill her heart. She felt desperately bleak. She had never had the warmth of a close family, jumbling on top of one another, shouting at each other, jostling for space. She told herself that it would be anathema to her anyway but she wasn't sure she believed it. What she really just wanted was to hear a voice, one voice, calling her name, asking her how she was, how had her day been, the usual fatuous nothings that make life. She wanted the light to be on once, just once, a welcoming beam behind the glass and the joy of seeing a smile behind the light. If she could, for a moment, smell woodsmoke she might know that inner lightness that the fire meant home.

But the longer it went, the more cold she became or seemed, more acerbic, bitter, and thus she remained, with the darkness behind the door.


Time up.

I was thinking about what to write tonight when I was out on my walk this evening. I smelt woodsmoke and I thought I'd write about that. But then I saw something from a twitter post about 'not having a shoulder to cry on' and I thought about the feeling one might have it one were lonely. In my existence, I've never been alone and I often think how lovely it would be to have total freedom. Then I see things like that and it gives me pause, enough to appreciate the noise and madness that surrounds me.

The north wind

It hasn't been bright for a while. By that I mean there has been absolutely no sun for weeks. In fact, when I saw some tentative brightness from behind the cloud I was almost shocked; it brought a sound of appreciative surprise to my lips, in any case. What is so lovely about extended periods of greyness is the euphoria that comes when they they are broken by glorious sun. Everyone trudging around through damp and muddy ground, head's lowered, every thought turning inwards, as if minds hibernate even when we force our bodies out into the chill, can look up for moment, their worries disperse while an involuntary smile is raised and it's as if their soul takes a fresh breath.

I was drawn outside. I just went. No coat, scarf or gloves. Just as I was. It wasn't in a trance-like state, it was just a determination to out, to give that burst of light my undivided attention with no barriers to keep us apart. And it was wonderful. It did not warm me, the north wind was blowing hard enough to chill my very marrow, but it did unburden me, unwind me and lighten me and for much more than a moment.

Time up.

Inspiration:
Today, I just took inspiration from something that happened today. I wanted just my voice, as honest as possible.

Outside

He woke with a start. His neck was wet with sweat dispute the chill that could be felt on his forehead. His mind fell slowly into place and he delved his memory to pin-point the dream that he assumed had woken him. It was then that the noise became apparent. It sounded mechanical and close at hand but it was high-pitched and he really couldn't recognise it. He tried to establish possibilities. His mind, coming more awake, made a more accurate appraisal of the direction; not inside, most definitely outside, but what was it?

His interest was piqued but he felt mildly disturbed that he wasn't hearing a familiar sound that came from either his own house and garden or that of his neighbours. The whirling continued as his mind coolly cross-reference the possible sources of the kind of whine that sounded like something metallic rotating- a wind turbine or a microscopic engine, perhaps? The less rational part of his brain cursed his neighbours. If he found out that his precious sleep had been interrupted by their fecklessness...

No, it was no good. He would have to get out of bed and go and see. He swung his legs out onto the floor and reluctantly and impatiently forced himself out of the embrace if his duvet and lumbered to the window. He brushed the curtain to one side and was met by the most blinding beam of light which stunned him instantly.

Time up
It's interesting where your mind takes you in the middle of the night. I woke last night and had the most wild thoughts about the sounds outside my window. I thought what if these ridiculous fantasies turned out to be real. So tonight, I tried to imply just that.

Weary or grateful? Day 13 -365 writing challenge

There are some times that your body aches even when you are at rest after a strenuous day and won't let you relax. And there are some days when your mind has been so busy trying organise and summarise and process endless amounts of data and complete tasks that even when you are at home it buzzes away like a dodgy plug. Today was both of those days. Your mind is screaming for relief from the worry of the countless jobs you didn't get round to despite ten hours work; stacking up the tasks that you have to prioritise for tomorrow because you just didn't quite have the staying power to work past ten at night and complete five different tasks competing for your attention.

But then you remember that you are going to bed in a warm room, with a full belly. You have no children to add to their burden to yours. You have health. You have freedom. You have safety. You have love.
How many people can say the same?

Time up.
I worked hard today doing a back breaking job with some limestone for my parents this morning and then started my lesson planning and marking for my new school after. I only just finished at just after ten and thought 'poor me'. A spoilt thought. So I thought I'd write about it.

Stars

When you look up into a sky and you see that is the darkest, deepest blue and that it is freckled with white glittering spots, what does it make you feel? Do you feel, like me, that no person could imitate such beauty in art? That a painting could never recreate the flickering of stars as their beams reach out to you in one moment and then recede the next? Do you think that no piece of music, however exquisite, could ever compare to the beautiful essence of silence that the stars bring to your soul? Do you believe that a photograph could capture the complexity, the constant shifting movement or the sense of timelessness of a star? No, neither do I.


Time is up.
I took my inspiration today from the photograph below.
Time flew but I tried to think about what I wanted to say and saying right took more thinking time than I thought.

Ghost

It started with the wind. It was the sound like the sea makes in rough weather. But there was something metallic to the sound, something man made, yet at distance. It didn't get closer, though, like she expected it to. Something large, a lorry perhaps, moving along the lane to drop off a shipment of something to one of the houses further down than her's. It never came closer and that's what made her wonder more.

Then it changed to shapes and shadows in the gloom outside her window, when the night wasn't dark enough for black but the day not light enough for clarity and they moved, the shapes. She assumed at first that it was the shadows of clouds. Then that is was some atmospheric quirk but somewhere, deep inside herself, her soul groaned with dread because she knew it wasn't natural and that this wouldn't be then end.

Time is up.
I left it late tonight and therefore it was harder and I wrote less and thought about the structure and words less.
The inspiration came from the sight of book near my bed called, The Penguin Book of Ghosts, so I thought ghost story. Didn't turn into much, though did it? The merest sigh of a story.

Rain

Streaming down in ribbons it was, the rain. Gushing and spraying like someone suddenly amused whilst drinking. It blistered on the ground for a millisecond and then pooled creating a tiny mirrors for the nettles and long fronds of fern.

It fell, not from a dark sky, but one that was a uniform light grey; a librarian's cardigan, a collared dove's wing, a pulped newspaper. It was drab but encouraged the green of the grass to glow, the brown of the trees to darkened in paths down its trunk like the skin of a snake and made the noises of man recede whilst the drips turned into a roar from above.

Wayward spray clung to windows in little balls only releasing when they encouraged themselves on each other to tear down the pane, recklessly exhausting themselves on the ground beneath, their destination reached at last.

Time up.
My inspiration today came from the weather outside yesterday evening and was meant as a descriptive piece only.

N.B. I couldn't post this yesterday as my Internet was down. How reliant we are...

Sitting alone

It was always a still place, that's why he chose it. He didn't like crowds. He was certainly never one of the lads - heaven forfend. He always enjoyed simple pleasures: the sun creating flashes on the canal as he sat next to it with a book; watching the stars at night, way out in the country where there was no orange haze to dim their beauty; listening to the football results on a Saturday, something that always relaxed him and so many other things, nothing that costs much and nothing that involved a commotion. That's why he liked the bench.

He would use it every single lunch time to eat his homemade sandwiches in peace and quiet, away from the telephones and latterly the hum of computers and, if he was honest, the vulgarity of his colleagues.

It was at the bench that he first saw her. He had never seen such beauty. She had auburn hair that was brushed into thick waves that hugged her shoulders and neck. Her checks were flushed with the fresh breeze that blew that day, highlighting the purity of her glowing skin. He couldn't see the colour of her eyes, she was too far away but he could she was lithe and elegant and, more wonderfully, that she was unaware of her magnificence.

She had walked closer to him as he sat, his sandwich paused half way to his mouth. He knew this was his moment; what would he, could he say to make her stop, notice him, stay with him? He was suddenly aware if himself, how awkward he must look with his gaping mouth and his sagging sandwich. He hastily turned to his picnic box and delved within for the foil wrapper he had discarded there. He made his trembling fingers work quickly to open the foil to place his sandwich inside, he closed the foil over the flaccid bread and wilted lettuce and twisted back to feel a breath of displaced air as her green felt coat passed in a blur in front of his startled eyes. He opened his mouth, but nothing came.

Every lunch time, he returned to the bench for the next thirty years. He didn't mind cold or blistering sun. In rain, he was hastier and more awkward with his umbrella. He waited, though, for her. Just one more glimpse would have been enough.


O.K. Today was actually 20 mins but my idea wasn't completed after the ten minute mark so I went on through, which is good practise.

The inspiration came from the tumblr blog - writer's inspiration and I just hit the random generator. Today came up with a picture.