Activity

Episode from  long-running tale ‘The Blacksmith’s wife’

Kick a corpse to life and you’ll inevitably disturb carrion.

Tao knew this but only recalled it on attempting to leave his inn-room. The body that had earlier impeded his exit messenger for the man whose name Tao had evoked in hope of boosting his financial standing, believing those who…[Read more]

(Certainly stretched and apologies for one fleeting mention of blood!)

444 words excluding title

Behind Closed Doors

Neighbours stood around gawking.  I saw them from the window as I stood handcuffed to a policeman.

Our quiet cul de sac was a scene of mayhem with ambulance and police cars; blue lights flashing.

The paramedics stretchered him…[Read more]

Thank you, Athelstone.  It has come back to me now and I probably did enter the Word Cloud ones.  Wrathner was a lovely member, but it all seems so long ago…. Glad The Den took up the idea.

The original idea came from Harry Bingham on the WordCloud, who presented a bottle of something similar to Champagne as a prize each month. When it began to fall apart it was taken up by Wrathnar the Unreasonable (sans Champagne) and then by the winner of the competition each month.

It was adopted by the Den when the Cloud finally closed

Yes!  I did mean to say the medals included Libby who prompted us so well in the heat of 2026 August!   Encouragement…
For me, these monthly competitions have been ensuring those writerly muscles are kept in peak condition and other writing has emerged too, so thank you to whoever dreamt up the idea!

Great monthly comp, Libby. And a well-deserved win for Seagreen.

Thanks for the prompt Libby. It seems to have been an age since I  tested the writerly muscles…

And I second Jill’s call for virtual medals all round! 🙂

Congratulations, Seagreen ~ as Libby says it is an intriguing story.  Wonder what intriguing challenge you will be setting us for September…

As usual, I loved all the very different and well written entries which embraced the theme so well.  So virtual medals to all!

Thanks Libby for the prompt and your kind words. Only as I finished writing my entry did I recall the only holiday spent with my parents was in 1973 , after chld#3 born. It was NOT a success (and Dovercourt still feels like home)

@athelstone

I realised after I pressed send that the POVs of your three characters  responded to the three possible POVs I’d put in my comp task. Neat!

As befits pieces about holidays and sea, all this month’s entries evoked a sense of place and, in their different ways, the rituals of leaving home for time away.

@jillsted

A lovely interweaving of different memories focused on the annual seaside holiday. Your depictions are very atmospheric, such as, “We would stand in the corridor and e…[Read more]

John on holiday

John.

This is the strangest holiday ever. Chris should have been here. She even did all the bookings for us, and now I have to explain to everybody why it’s only me. The weather is perfect. Not too hot, not too cold. She’d have loved it—walking along the coast, looking down on the seabird colonies. Salt, warm seaweed on the narro…[Read more]

The Space Between the Notes (334 words inc title)

It was more than a holiday; it was a ritual, starting with the drive north. The choice of music; what the kids called my soppy stuff – Savage Garden, Beautiful South and sshhh, don’t say it out loud, Barry Manilow – and the way I always packed the car with a hundred and one things I wou…[Read more]

A quick reminder that the end of the month is growing near for anyone who’d like to enter the monthly competition.

August, peak holiday season. For the August comp please combine the themes of holiday and sea. It could be from the point of view of a holidaymaker or a person who works in the tourist industry or someone who simply observes.

500…[Read more]

Your thought about the V16 engine and the 1966 formula is indeed intriguing, but if anyone at BRM did seriously consider it then I think it would have come unstuck on the fuel question if nothing else. It is my understanding that one reason for the Alfetta’s inordinate thirst (1.5 miles to the gallon in its final form!) was that it relied on…[Read more]

Great blog as usual Richard. It’s a fascinating story. One of those that has so much promise of what might have been, yet also so typical of the often shambolic British way of going about things that one feels it could only ever have ended up this way. Look at the contemporary British aviation industry – much brilliance and yet so much avoidable c…[Read more]