Monthly competition May 2026

(15th March 1969 Wedding – Songs: Where do you go to, my lovely,Peter Sarstedt and The way it used to be, Engelbert Humperdinck)

Marie Claire

The sun filtering in through the yellowing net curtains barely lightens the dim, soulless room, mirroring the dullness I feel inside as I watch you staring at me with blank incomprehension.

We have lived a long time, you and I, Marie Claire and have come a long way from our humble roots in Naples.  Childhood friends, we both eventually clawed our way out of those dingy back streets and ended up in Paris, but you somehow climbed higher than I did.  I have never dared dwell on exactly how, not wishing to sully my idealistic vision of my beautiful friend.  You became part of the Jet Set, living a life of decadence and luxury, whilst I eked out a living as a songwriter.

But you never forgot the close bonds we had as that young boy and girl and for this I am grateful; treasuring the occasional meetings we enjoyed.

Now, on this early Spring morning, I am trying not to shed tears, as I acknowledge the way it used to be between us will never return.  You do not recognise me and all I have left are my solitary memories of our amicable relationship.

A carer knocks quietly at the door before entering to administer you some kind of medication and to sit you up straighter in the high backed chair.

My sad musings are disturbed and I ask the carer if I can help in any way.  She replies that all I can do is be there for Marie Claire and hope there might be a brief glimmer of recognition but not to hold out too much hope.

When she has left the room, bustling away to tend to the several other residents in the private care home, I take Marie Claire’s wrinkled hand, praying that this tactile gesture might jog her brain into recognition.

She pulls her hand away, as if in fright.  Then the blank stare returns and she sits as still as one of the statues in the Paris museums.  A seemingly empty shell.

I wipe away the tears which have refused to be stemmed and, unexpectedly, the words of a song which we had both loved when we first came to this city pop into my head.

‘Where do you go to, my lovely’.

As that young aspiring songwriter, I had envied the skill of Peter Sarstedt and imagined he must know my Marie Claire and had written the song about her.

Perhaps he had, for the words did reflect the life she had come from and the life she was then leading and would continue to lead until this cruel disease had beset her.

I wonder where Marie Claire’s mind now goes.  Is she able to dream or to have flashes of remembrance?

I kiss her gently on the top of her head and depart.

499 words including preamble and title

My Birthdays, My Parents’ Wedding Anniversaries

‘Got to get you into my life!’ sings Mum. She and Dad have brought me, newborn, from the hospital. She sits at the kitchen table, cradling me, delivering the loud lullaby.

Or so she tells me, when I’m seven. We’re at the table again. I say, ‘I was already in your life. In your tummy and then outside it.’

I’m a literal-minded daughter.

‘I know, but it was exciting!’ she says. ‘And that song was in the charts.’

That was September 1966 and Mum was twenty and married for exactly a year.

‘I loved it. The words, the saxophones. So gutsy,’ she says and blurts, ‘Pa-pa-pa-pah, dah dah!’

I try to pick out the tune but can’t.

Mum is always eager about life. This is mysterious. I like circumspection.

‘What else did you sing?’ I know the answer but we’re in our routine now.

‘”All Or Nothing.”’

That is because, I realise when I’m seven, she fancied the singer who has elfin looks like her own and is nearly as pretty.

*

My father has a square face and a nose thickened by breakages. They met at a dance. ‘Your Dad’s a fine dancer, a nifty mover,’ she has told me more than once.

I make a deduction I’m proud of and pipe up, ‘That’s nifty cos of the boxing.’

‘Yep,’ she says.

*

There are photos of Dad in the ring, a welterweight winning amateur matches. Not quite good enough to turn professional. ‘Not keen enough on the hard work,’ Mum says.

*

In our bathroom I talk to Dad while he’s shaving. In his pyjama bottoms and a towel round his neck he leans over the basin.

‘What’s on at school today then?’ he says, lathered jaw twisted.

‘Dancing class.’ I like the rhythms of dancing.

He finishes with the razor, wipes his face with the towel and turns to face me. ‘Dancing,’ he says, and bounces from side to side on the balls of his feet.

I laugh.

*

I’m eight, setting the table while Mum makes cottage pie. Dad will be home soon. I ask Mum why Dad, an electrician, doesn’t work in people’s houses.

‘The money’s better in offices. And he can’t resist the scent of Tippex.’

‘What’s Tippex?’

‘It’s something a typist uses if she hits the wrong key. With a little brush she paints some Tippex over the mistake so it disappears, the paper is white again. It smells like cleaning fluid.’

*

At school, in English class, we learn about metaphor, but only in our set texts. The teacher doesn’t say it’s something you keep learning in real life. Nor, of course, does she tell us how marriages work, what feeds mutual attraction. That would be too personal and too oblique for the school syllabus.

*

I start a habit of reflection, contemplating, for example, Mum’s use of the word ‘nifty.’ My birthdays keep coming round and so does Mum and Dad’s anniversary. They keep marking out their moves and spaces, their dance with each other.

498 words excluding title

The two records were Top 10 hits in September 1966:

I’ve Got to Get You Into My Life, Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSL73EupKHQ

All Or Nothing, The Small Faces

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa6rZjJ43Js

Everything else in the story is fiction

  Songs from the charts  31st  October   1998  – 

Aerosmith   ‘I don’t want to miss a thing’

Bachman Turner Overdrive – ‘You aint seen nothing yet.’

Contains one, bleeped, swear word.

True   story

This story involves my youngest daughter, who’s the sassy, won’t give an inch if she thinks she is in the right, type, and the anniversary tale is the day my first grandchild arrived.

Because she was a needle phobic, headstrong, nineteen year old, who stomped along at her own pace, said daughter attended minimal anti-natal sessions and definitely not those involving a needle.  Consequently she was not booked into the hospital unit she would be attending when the time came.

On the day in question, 31 October 1998, yes that’s right, Halloween, she began having pains  and presented herself at the local cottage hospital  only to be told  that  she had  not been  booked in by a  midwife therefore they couldn’t accept her .

I wasn’t there at the time  but my eldest daughter,  who had driven her there,  said   the  diatribe  my daughter  launched at the midwife made the poor woman  take  a  step  backward  and  ended  with  my  daughter  falling out  with  both midwife and her  sister  and  threatening ‘you  aint seen  nothing  yet, ‘cus  I’ll go and  have it  in  the  F****ing woods.’

Eldest daughter calmed her enough to get in the car and drive to my house. Eventually, we got her booked into the maternity hospital in Southampton and set off again. Halfway there the heavens opened and we drove into a thunder storm that matched my daughter’s mood but we arrived safely and got her settled.

My eldest daughter offered to go back and be there for her younger siblings when they came home from school. Her excuse was she didn’t want them getting wet in the rain …. But I knew better.

She’d been on the receiving end of her fire-brand sisters temper a few times and was choosing the easy option, so I had to support my red-haired, fire-fairy.

It felt as if some cantankerous entity had conspired with the heavens and persuaded the baby to arrive on that particular evening of all evenings. Thunder boomed outside, rain spat at the windows in a heavy clatter and, that girl growled in rebellion at the nurses, called me a few truly shocking names, and yes the numbers 666 definitely crossed my mind a few times but at a quarter to  midnight, with a flurry of midwife activity the baby arrived.

That’s when it happened.

There’s an injection new mums get right after birth.

Number one midwife came at my daughter jabbed her in the leg. My daughter had a panic attack and passed out, hanging off the bed.

Hand on heart, honestly, I’m not making this up.  Number two midwife who was holding the baby thrust him at me and went to assist midwife number one. That when I looked down at my first grandchild all damp and tiny and you know what?  I’m  so, so  glad  I  didn’t  miss a thing .

Footnote :- Said daughter now has four more sons and a little red -haired fire-fairy of her own.

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Thank you, Sandra.  It was an enjoyable challenge taking us back down memory lane.  The three other entries were diverse and clever in their interpretation of the theme.

June’s prompt will be posted sometime today.  A few ideas are rolling around in my head!  Jill

Well done Jill. A bittersweet story, beautifully told. And well done the rest of us!