Tag: Am Writing

The flame is dying

April 15, 2018

<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/photo-challenges/awakening/”>Awakening</a&gt;

My 21 year old eyelids flutter open as skylarks chirrup in a far away place. Other sounds filter through the open window. A steady noise up higher in the sky, an easyJet passenger plane returning from Europe on the flight path faintly rumbles across the sky.

More gentle than a breeze, cool air moves across my naked shoulder like the lightest weight silk being drawn across it.

A closer bird, in the blossoming cherry tree in the garden below, sings a dawn chorus of clackety clacks.

Pheasants also stirring make that sudden ruffling to announce their presence, then a squawk in nearby fir woods.

I think about the night before; the lantern of conversation between us flickering softly, at first.

Always there for you I’ve wanted to help in all your troubles. I think I finally see that my help, words, touch, understanding is not enough. You repeat your issues time and time again.

My words now sound repetitive and I realise they did not become absorbed but were allowed to bounce off and around you, left on the ground to die away.

I’ve grown up now and I see I cannot change you to help you. Only you can do that.

Writers MUST read, says Stephen King and many other published authors

March 3, 2018

I just had to start with a GIF; I just love them and we haven’t enjoyed one for a while have we? Look at this baby’s face; that fascination with shapes on a cardboard page. Colours perhaps, faces which we all know babies zone in to from a very young age.

Our desire to hold and communicate with any form of reading material is born with us. Some let it slide and prefer instead to develop dexterity in other areas, such as my son. By four he could just about write his name when he started school, but give him a ball – rather than a book -of any shape or size, and he would hurl it through the air using his right shoulder for propulsion, aiming for and often making contact with some previously decided location on his horizon.

When he was two and his neat two-plaits big sister was at school, devouring the reading scheme books with ease (but who couldn’t catch a balloon from three paces), I took him out. Everywhere. I was determined the next generation of farmer in this family would not be shy of leaving the village boundary and I had two years of 9am-3pm alone time with him to lay the base of interest and intrigue in his mind outside the farm, while his dad did the Man of the Woods and tractors bits onsite.

I digress (never) because I was talking about reading and that spark of something – happiness maybe – we feel when we engage with words which strike a cord or make us laugh. Or cry in my case. I luurve a weepy (they know that 🙄 oh yeah).

You know when you’ve written a blog, a poem, a short story, 2000 words on your WIP (that would be nice… sometime, when you’re ready) you feel quite satisfied and sit back and press publish, or throw the phone to one side like it is covered in the plague and you ‘shalt no longer need it pray’

It’s that same part of our brain engaging which the baby has tapped into in the first GIF. When Mike writes about his old cars, for example, he relaxes. You can hear it. Well I can but I’m weird.

Joseph Beech, another clever blogger friend is also writing and has experienced that questioning thing which gets in the way. Check out his Part 1 of something he has dreamed up and I find rather fascinating. Joseph’s writing takes some concentrating but if you look, you will see depths and hidden whispers. Well I do, but I told you – I’m weird!

He and I were idly chatting yesterday about the possibility of starting a little reading club. Just a silky bit of literary chit chat fun, nothing pressured like wallcharts and marks out of ten.

We thought some of you might like to join in and read perhaps a chapter of a chosen book and all ‘meet up’ on a set day, across a 24hr span perhaps? To chat and share or thoughts on the same chapter.

It will be no pressure because usually there is a whole book to wade through and I just cba (as my daughter would text these days) when I’ve got really important things taking up my valuable time…. like my present rather sexy read; have I shown you? Sshhh … the main lead? He’s mine 🖤

I’m so excited – I sort of know the author!!! 😬🙈😍🥂. I am SERIOUSLY impressed with this author.. she has written a trilogy (this is the first) and self-published then. OMG .. I’ve just had genius on-the-spot idea … I shall invite her on for a guest blog spot .. yes!! Once I’ve finished this, ok? 💃🏼

Anyway, Joseph and I wondered if anyone would be interested in a chapter reading club… so here’s me asking you to let us know in my comments with a simple YES (preferably followed by an emoji because life is too serious without them) …

Book choice to be agreed – perhaps you could suggest some and we can pluck from a choice of 10.

Bagsy I bring the popcorn coz I like it sweet where those pieces have sat in the toffee a bit too long 😍

Ok, hands up …

February 25, 2018

…. whose Christmas Tree only made it as far as the garden?

This is precisely the sort of thing Japanese Monks would not allow to happen. They never allow a no-longer-needed item to merely congregate with further objects of past usage. They give away, recycle, burn, break down. They see items no longer needed by themselves as gifts to the next recipient.

Bought this amazing book yesterday and only paused in my reading in order to drive to the end of the central line to collect eldest offspring.

The earl grey teabag was brewing and I may have mentioned before I like milk in it…. you may berate me for that should the desire overtake you to do so… but it will be water off a duck’s back. I like it that way. 🤗

I particularly liked this paragraph…..

I’m going to deal with that tree TODAY!

(No further wordcount to report)

🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄

UPDATE 12:50

I hereby donate this tree to the out-of-sight corner of the orchard, and to all the beetles and spiders who wish to make a home in it.

I’ve so got this 💪🏼

<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/congregate/”>Congregate</a&gt;

It’s your fault, 2-egg Joseph!

February 24, 2018

I didn’t have those posh mushrooms, nor many of the ingredients you used.

But, I did have two eggs.

So I proceeded to make an omelette of sorts yesterday (for lunch because I forgot breakfast – too busy mending rugs 🙄).

And it filled my belly for a very long time and I typed and typed and typed 👌🏼

Lucy is meeting Vittorio for lunch today in Milan … now which way am I going to take these two 🤔

When your heartbeat is the only thing you can hear …

February 23, 2018

Her feet wouldn’t move; welded to the floor they were. She knew she needed to leave the bedroom, wanted to most desperately. But those feet were stuck in mud, or concrete. She looked down to check but the pink socks with the dirty fluffy soles were quite free of shackles.

His voice – hoarse from shouting – was still for some seconds. The silence more scary than the hateful words directed at the back of her head on the pillow a few moments before.

She had stopped arguing. Stopped trying to reason. He had an answer for everything, and was always right. He was so hard done by, he’d shouted. And he’d punched the wooden sections on the door to illustrate his frustrations. He had never hit her and was proud of the fact he would never hit a woman. The door beading had given way at one end, but the old pine held firm at the other and she watched as he knocked it back in place. Hide it from the kids.

“I want to sleep now. We will talk in the morning.” She heard the words leave her mouth and something willed her feet to finally move towards the door.

“Why don’t you sleep in the marital bed? Hey? Hey?” He was off again, pushing himself up from the edge of the bed, pupils dilated with anger.

Those few steps gained her some courage and suddenly she was out on the landing, passing him. It would be ok. He would sleep it off, the gin, and wake the nicer version.

“I’ll see you in the morning.” more calmly than she felt, she closed the door of the spare bedroom, old wallpaper from years of tiny people showing her the way to the single bed. She wobbled a little as the adrenalin started to falter, and felt for the edge of the duvet in the dark, soft and inviting between her fingers. She fought the urge to cry.

The cool sheets felt good as she extended her toes down between the unslept-in linen… and then heard floorboards move next door. She stopped and held her breath, praying he would slump into his bed and leave her alone.

The brass door knob moved; it turned and clicked and the door gently opened. His form clearly visible with the hall light behind, he stood in silence, filling the space.

Her heartbeat was bursting from her ears, she was sure he’d be able to hear it. From somewhere she found the strength to speak calmly, “what are you doing – go to sleep.” She then laid down and faced away; faced the wall and placed her cold and shaking fingers between her thighs and wished she was wearing more than a T-shirt. Jamming her jaws together, she lay there, determined her body should gain the sleep it deserved.

Some moments passed. He stood and stared. She could just tell he had not moved. Anger bubbled away, how dare he do this. She was conversant from her research that she should be free to sleep in her own home without fear. And yet here she was scared out of her mind. It was her fault he was drunk and angry. According to him. But she was determined to talk in the morning, when the sunlight in the kitchen made everything seem far less sinister.

“I want to go to sleep!” She could bear it no longer, and begged him to leave.

“Go ahead. I’m not stopping you. This is my son’s room and I will stand where I want in my house.”

She was stuck, well and truly stuck.

<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/conversant/”>Conversant</a&gt;

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