Stevie

Oh heck – I never saw that coming, not among so many superb entries – thank you, Libby, for comp and comments, and thank you all for much reading awe and entertainment. I’ll aim to post September’s competition before the end of the day. [but isn’t it odd how often a last minute, popped into one’s head,  final sentence seems to make what seems  a d…[Read more]

Don’t envy your task of choosing a winner, Libby!

Probably a bit aslant of what you were hoping for Libby, but is the idea that stuck

‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’

I guess you had to’ve been there, because even now,  months later, just thinking about it makes me smile. It was the usual semi-dormant Friday afternoon meeting, Anton, our boss, wanting us to brain-storm some sort of…[Read more]

“Season to taste”

I could say it started as a joke, except I knew, at that age, Suze and I were, a bit self-consciously, aiming to bridge the gap between our schoolgirl selves and the mysterious, scary-but-enticing grown-up world we were bracing ourselves to enter.

Both of us were in top English. Read our homework to each other, critiqued (a mor…[Read more]

Wow. Thank you Libby for this at-first-sight innocuous challenge. (I tried to resist the autobiographical, but in the end it was the only way for me to go) so thank you Terrie and Ath for such impactful alternatives; I’m glad I didn’t have the task of choosing between them.

Electricity and us

Electricity has played a considerable part in directing  the path our lives have travelled, from the instant (if only sensory) flash of knowledge, at the end of our first date, that “This man is who I can safely be ME with!” to our fifty years of living in the North East.

At that time (5th April 1963) he worked for a comp…[Read more]

Thank you Ath, both for the competition and for your encouraging summing up. I certainly would’ve been hard-pressed to choose a winner, so congratulations and thanks to Libby, and also to Terrie and Seagreen.

(This may well be missing the point)

The language of flowers not always sweet

Only after finding, (months later)  photographs other than the ones taken by fourteen-year-old schoolgirl Kally Logan that caused all the trouble did Luke Darbyshere register flowers had twice been fleetingly present on his wedding day. Much of the time he’d been su…[Read more]

Sea, thank you for the useful challenge, especially because it helped me formulate my character as well as sparking such a brilliant range of responses; I wouldn’t’ve liked to choose a winner.

Mishaping to fit

Only as he pushed open the door into Haugesund’s Folkepuben, his mind occupied not only with what he needed to establish with Lars Sigmundssen but also a slightly fearful curiosity as to how Lars would react to his having slept with Maja, Lars’ current woman, was Rick Thorssen reminded, by the roar of convivial con…[Read more]

Thank you for this challenge Terrie, and your kind comments; I was glad of the opportunity to make best use of it. Well done Sea – and never doubt those who have read you KNOW full well you are indeed a talented and sparkling writer, and thank you Ath for evoking. albeit dimly, the challenges of childhood.

Cheeky leap into an attempt of an opener for ‘Snap is not a children’s game’ 

Vic Duncan. Did Lucy but know it, the first of three Duncan men she’d sleep with before she died, possibly dangerous, but an especially satisfying addition to her habitual  maintenance of a quartet of alphabetically consecutively-named lovers.

It began in the final yea…[Read more]

Congratulations Terrie – a tale that got richer with every re-reading, as did those of Alex at Ath. And thank you Pinkbelt for the challenge.

Retrieving memories

When on the Word Cloud, in 2014, Alan P proposed the challenge ‘We’re not in Kansas anymore’, I was in need of an explanation as to why Luke Darbyshere ( DI and main character in my ‘Love triangles with murder series) regularly sabotaged relationships at the point when they looked like becoming meaningful. His upbring…[Read more]

Have to confess I avoid much of that for Steve, by ordering and collecting the books I want and handing them over for him to ‘hide’ (recognising he is doubly challenged by my having a birthday five days before Christmas.)

@ Terrie – I second Ath’s recommendation for hard drives: the one my thoughtful elder son bought for me, having listened to my moans, scrambled its contents when my laptop blew several gaskets.

@Athelstone – “gift lists for next year” not illegal, they masquerade as Amazon wish lists, ready to be re-written for handing to my local bookshop.

Thanks, Athers, for a competition theme that gave me much head-scratching before I found a direction, and for chuckling, since I didn’t intend to sound self-pitying. Also I thoroughly applaud your giving Pinkbelt the opportunity to challenge us in February.