Chris A

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

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! 🙂

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]

Jill, the Den’s Activity Page posts extracts changes (replies, new topics etc) from the public sections of the Den. You replied directly to the Activity Page version of this thread – you can check by selecting “Activity” from the menu at the top of all the Den’s pages. It’s all still there, although you’ll need to scroll a *long* way as my…[Read more]

Jill’s entry grabbed my attention straight away, because although my own childhood was a few years later, so much was the same. And yes, all the shops shut. In fact, almost everything shut on a Sunday apart from Church and Sunday School. “Hear the pennies dropping” for those who remember it. So much centered on the home back then. A wonderful…[Read more]

A brace of fabulous entries this month. Real life has struck at an awkward moment with silly demands on time. I hope you won’t mind too much If I pinch a day from the next comp. and post the results tomorrow evening. So sorry about that.

Dear All,

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”

Thank you, Jill. I forgot to set a word limit, so I take your entry as “the bar” and set it now at 400 words.

Incidentally, I wanted to call the girl Aelfwin but I had trouble getting the A and e to combine into a proper “ash” at the start of the name. Then it occurred to me that a drunk Teabreak would be unlikely to remember that anyway, hence “Alwin, or something like that.” I think Alwin is still sometimes used as a female name, but I could probably…[Read more]

I confess I feel slightly guilty. I read Sandra’s entry and thought it was splendid. Then I sneak in at the end and…

Anyway, thank you for the prompt, Jill. The solstice was my 70th and I went from not thinking I’d make it, to writing a little story about it so that’s something.

Stonehenge

The moon has departed leaving an impenetrable night with a cold mist gently rising across the still fields around Amesbury. In the hedgerows around one expanse of grass, sparrows packed close are beginning to shift in their sleep. To the east of this field a steady gaze would be rewarded with the slightest bloom of purple in a world…[Read more]

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

Thanks, Kate. I’m trying hard to get better.

I’m not a huge fan of cosy crime, and I think that the television series of TTMC is rather better than the books, although only because the acting is good. However, there are many variations within that genre and I wouldn’t dismiss everything. The same goes for anthropomorphised animal stories. For instance, Charlotte’s Web and Animal Farm spring…[Read more]