Yesterday evening, me  in mindless  mood, scrolling between television programmes, and phone an Instagram a reel came up, featuring the ever- crumpled face of Mick Jagger. He answering some question about song writing, where he got his inspiration from.

His ‘Everywhere! -Sometimes I only have to look out the window –‘  spanne…[Read more]

Uniform (as a noun or adjective)

Cumulus

Television

Mood

Spanner

500 words max, deadline midnight October 31^st

@Jill: you gave me exactly what I asked for – an insight into the mind of a killer – in this case, a victim of domestic abuse who was finally pushed too far. Your words paint a quiet picture of an unseen tempest.

@Sandra: Your words pai…[Read more]

450 words

Her brother and she were the youngest of five, he the youngest of all.

‘Follow me!’ he called, pedalling hard. To keep up, when he was eight and she nine, stole her breath. Also, there were more interesting things to do: reading a book, doing piano practice. Soul-bolstering things. Becoming your own person.

Ahead, her…[Read more]

https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/on-demand

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]

I hope to stretch you now…

There’s a body.

Whether…[Read more]

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

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]

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]

500 words max, deadline midnight 31st August.

(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]

Pre-dawn on a midsummer morning, Tait Duncan, drove  south-east along an A1 empty of all but Highlands-bound supermarket wagons, conscience similarly uncluttered by the lie he’d last night told his wife as to the reason for his early morning departure. (In what had become th…[Read more]