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.

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. 

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.

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.

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?

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.

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...

Inspiration from a quote - day 8 365 writing challenge

'If an idea is worth having once, it's worth having twice.'
Tom Stoppard

Harvey sat there with his pen in his mouth idly copying figures onto his computer.  But it was an automatic action as is mind wasn't there.  He was thinking of his wife. He was thinking about what a sour-faced old hag she'd become over the past year or two. 

They used to be such a tactile couple, always holding hands as they walked along the crowded pavements of town on brisk Saturday mornings in Winter, sneaking kisses whenever they passed each other in the hall.  They once would lounge over each other while watching something rubbish on television while their feet mingled and he could be gently taken into the soft arms of sleep. 

Now things were different, they no longer spooned in bed.  In fact, there was always a frosty resistance to his questing hand under the eiderdown even if it was for nothing more that a basic connection of his hand on her skin. She would shift away minutely but noticeably.  They greeted each other like strangers from different ends of the room, even the house on occasion, there voices drifting briefly through the barren rooms between. They might not even see each other until bed and sometimes not even then if she sneaked in after he was asleep.  He would be left to sidle out of the room and look blankly and the rise and fall of her covered back as she slept on.

It wasn't his idea that had got together in the first place. It was his mate Ben's.  He had fancied her, loved her and he had definitely wanted to marry her but now...
Perhaps Ben had some more bright ideas.

Time up.
I decided to get a quote, randomly from the Internet, today and take inspiration from that. 
I have to say that starting a new job at the same time as tasking myself to do this challenge isn't easy but at least I AM writing despite my semi-conscious brain.

What does the universe taste like? -Day 7 - ten minute writing challenge.

What does the universe taste like?

Have you every had popping candy? I hate the word 'candy', but have you? It's little bits of sweet dust that you got, when young, from your local newsagent or sweetie shop, in a slim and shiny navy packet. It had a carton with a wide-mouthed child on it which only slightly made me turn my nose up at it, then. See, even as a child I had my own view of aesthetics.

I found the packet itself quite sophisticated as you had to rip the top open and silver paper shone through from beneath the wound. You'd make the packet gape and tip some of the contents into your mouth. Or, sometimes, you might slip your tongue in and let its tip touch the grains of pink rubble inside.

The anticipation was the best thing. That's something that hasn't change over time: the expectation. Waiting for the explosion in your mouth. It wasn't a long wait even in a child's sense. It would be a breath of time only and then the tiniest explosions would start. It was always gentle - depending, of course, on how much you imbibed. You might get a furious eruption in your mouth if you tipped too much in or were all for the excitement of the thing. You might even get the shock pop of a mine going off between two recently clenched teeth. Those kinds of blasts were my favourite because they were unexpected. The only kind of surprises I've ever liked, really.

So, for me, the universe tastes of popping candy, in a blue foil packet, containing all kinds of furious excitement and fun.


Time up.

Another task from the tumblr site - writer's inspiration.
The task was simply the title of this post.
i found it a little bit more manageable this time. I'll try them again, sometime.