Libby

Well done all of us, especially Knicky. A great read. And well, done Seagreen. Worth waiting for.

Wow! Looks interesting. Thanks Daeds.

Under the Yoke

The security guard didn’t notice the elderly woman by the checkout. She noticed him. She noticed as his arm shot out, shielding the aisle so that the distinguished visitor could walk by unimpeded. The distinguished visitor, his blond hair carefully disarranged, smirked as his eyes slid, unseeing, across her face. He had come for t…[Read more]

Fine writing. Compact and perfect!

The trouble is, it’s easy to get used to odd phrasing or vocabulary when I’ve produced it myself.

There’s definitely something in that. It’s a similar issue to writing something which doesn’t make sense on its own because you know all the back story that your audience is missing. You know what a turn of phrase means and it’s something of a sur…[Read more]

Re the bee in your bonnet. My comments about commas were not directed at you. Commas are wonderfully useful and under-used.

No, I don’t worry too much about rules. Most of the rules are inventions of  over-educated elites designed to reinforce the idea that how the aristocracy spoke and wrote was the correct way*. That’s how we end up with such nonsense as split-infinitives and pointless debates about whether there should be a comma prior to and in a list. Seeing as…[Read more]

Crossed with your reply Kate.

Yes! It is creepy. I have been discussing it offline with another member of the circle. We thought that ‘against her hair’ was perhaps one of the worst possible adjectival phrases.

I did think of a comma and I agree that it helps. What still interests me is whether the construction actually breaches any commonly agreed grammatical rules.

I take your point about common speech tags being transitive, although several are actually ambitransitive e.g.

It was necessary to answer. John answered.

I agree that ‘against’ is a poor…[Read more]

I can’t offer any grammatical analysis, but it does certainly sound wrong. Almost creepily so. I did have to have a giggle at Libby’s analysis of the hair as ‘a nasty piece of work’.

Super story @seagreen. Positively inspired and a worthy winner.

Thanks for the comp @knickylaurelle. I enjoyed it in spite of it bringing back a few awful memories.

I went to his funeral a few weeks back. Still a bit raw for everybody but I’m glad I went. He came from a BIG family with ten brothers and two sisters and it was very interesting to meet some of them. Did have one amusing incident. I spoke with the wife of the eldest brother who told me that she always found the brothers, including her husband, ‘a…[Read more]

Teddy was lost.

Teddy’s owner, Joe, was inconsolable. His face red and blotchy, his screams ringing through the house. How could Joe and Teddy survive apart.

Teddy himself was having a nice time. He’d been left on the bus, propped up next to the window where he could see the world go by. Life with Joe was nice, but sometimes a bit boring. Teddy…[Read more]