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]

It was adopted by the Den when the Cloud finally closed

https://australis.eocampaign1.com/web-version?ep=2&lc=f8781b16-01c8-11f1-82c9-6dbe39b3a791&p=73063d3a-a20b-11f1-8471-0d8778dd4b7d&pt=campaign&t=1788260504&s=2e7939182f1b0d843e4b788f91b732e3d93a4739fffcb3526c7f265bf8507035

I hope to stretch you now…

There’s a body.

Whether…[Read more]

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

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

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!

@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.

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]

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]

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]

‘Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself…’
Shakespeare, Macbeth

British technology has been so dominant in motor sport for so long now that it is hard for many to imagine the time before World War II when British motor racing was an insular, gentlemanly affair (‘The right crowd and no crowding’ was the slogan…[Read more]

In July 1953 we  – Dad, mum. brother and me, left  our  now-echoing  and curtainless home on the edge of Dovercourt Bay – an Essex seaside town dominated by a pair of cast iron  lighthouses whose clean, and well-protected sands were sectioned by sea-slimy black wooden groynes within which squatted large black crabs. There was  also a…[Read more]

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…[Read more]

You are right – I am old enough to have gone through quite a few similar challenges in my time, so do echo your thoughts.  A lengthy training and practice of counselling and the p…[Read more]

I wrote quite a long reply, but cannot find it anywhere.  Blaming the heat or perhaps the computer thought my reply far too long!!!

Anyhow, thanks for asking.  We are coming th…[Read more]

(Immediately inspired by July’s theme)

When I was a little girl the high point of the school Summer break was our family holiday by the sea.  It was only for a week and very often to Goodrington near Paignton in Devon.

Just writing that paragraph has immediately brought back so many memories of carefree, happy times…[Read more]

500 words max, deadline midnight 31st August.

Secondly, I echo Sandra in the fact that childhoods now past have been vividly evoked here in rich words worthy of Denizens!  In addition, thank you Sandra for introducing me to a word I had never heard before and one which is impressive in i…[Read more]

(385 words)

At dawn she was in the kitchen, a follow-on to hours of restlessness, the turning over under heavy blankets, a heart driven to pump quicker than usual, a fluttery stomach. She was sixteen. It was a relief to get up and do something.

The first person downstairs each morning had to check the Aga. The temperature gauge on its…[Read more]

The much faded five inch Quality Street tin I inherited from my mother is near-filled with  buttons, their variety in part due to them having been donated by my aunt Muriel, who was a dressmaker and her mother Dora who was a tailoress. Needless to say, had there been such, I would’ve won ‘best-dressed child’ many a time had…[Read more]

As years roll away from me I look back at reflections caught in memories rainbow.

I know I was lucky. My childhood was idyllic, because woven among the colours of my life and simplicity of youth, the feelings of each moment are held, perfect and bright, like small lights of sheltering warmth against the…[Read more]

Please note that this doesn’t have to be about an object. From the theme up there (points up) “an object, or an event, or a saying, or anything at all really that you remember as commonplace when you were young”