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. 

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! 

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.

Greed

She watched him. From the corner of her eye, from underneath veiled eyes, she always watched him. It might happen that she followed his car into work. It wouldn't be intentional, merely a coincidence. His sleek car that his father had bought him for his birthday would roar past her own second hand saloon. She might follow him through the lobby in the wake of his cologne as the receptionist dropped whatever she was doing to straighten, flick her hair and bid him as sultry a hello as she could muster at eight thirty in the morning after her toddler had kept her up half the night. He looked sharp, there was no doubt. He didn't wear designer clothes, not recognisable ones that is. She suspected that his outfits were bespoke, made by a tailor in Bond street, no doubt. It wasn't just the accoutrements, though, the gloss, he was incredibly handsome - film worthy. Good genes. His chin was chiseled beneath a Romanesque nose and dedicatedly tousled hair. Oh, yes he was handsome. But her fascination wasn't with him. She just felt an aching, desperate longing for his money.


Time up.
Tonight's inspiration came from the Fiction Writer's Workbook. Which was definitely more manageable: take a common emotion and create a character around it.