Author: Sarah

No time to lose. No, time to lose. Make time to stand and stare.... Did you see that?

Monkey Business

Monkey was a ‘give away’ associated with a popular brand of tea ( CORRECTION INSERTED: on the TV ad, any fule kno that Johnny Vegas is the straight man to Monkey who is actually voiced by Ben Miller – the one that looks like Rob Bryden) – my Monkey arrived in a box of tea well before Christmas 2010 and has lived in my car ever since. He’s still wearing his Christmas jumper and I felt it was about time he had something else to wear so I bought him a daffodil.

The daffodil appeal is run every year by Marie Curie, a UK-based charity providing care for those with cancer – in this area they work closely in collaboration with the primary health care teams, most commonly providing night-time nursing to support those who chose to die at home. The care is free to the patient and the family. Some of you may remember I have done sponsored swims in previous years and though I am slow to get going, I plan to do the same again this year! (Now I’ve told you, I shall just have to get on with it…)

Here’s monkey sporting his new daffodil

and listening to his favourite author.

Garden maintenance

I remember reading once that 80% of gardening is the equivalent of housework…. keeping things tidy and doing the routine stuff.
In some ways this is a fair analysis: yes, the garden has to be kept tidy and ordered, the grass cutting and weeding are necessary…. but as comparisons go it’s rather incomplete.

Indoors the floor is washed and gets foot-printed again, the carpet is hoovered and gets bitty again. The toilet is cleaned and gets….. well you get the picture.

In the garden, especially at this time of the year each action brings on an even bigger reaction (sorry Newton, your law doesn’t work in the garden)

Today I have mainly been gardening. Well for three and a half hours. I got out the hoover lawn mover and did the grass, then trimmed the edges. Suddenly the garden looked sharper and more cared for. Where I didn’t cut the lawn, just where the snow drops are finishing and the crocus are boldly doing their thing the longer grass looks right: bright and strong against the colours.The bumble bees were out in force, exploring the flowers and getting covered in pollen.

Then I started on the borders, accompanied for a while by radio four and ‘Gardeners question Time.’ (My wind-up / solar-powered radio is my gardening companion.)

I cleared away all last season’s growth which had died back during the winter. And as I cleared new tips of growth were pushing up through the warmed soil giving me that feeling of hope that comes each Spring.

Of course time ran out before the jobs were finished. I had to come in to have a bath, scrub behind my fingers nails and assemble a fish pie before trotting back into Oxford for a poetry reading which was very entertaining and inspirational.

And I returned from the poetry reading to the rest of the fish pie and a glass of wine. Pretty perfick. Oh… and a slice of collapsed banoffee pie! (Not bad, with the topping scraped off.)

And in the morning  when I look out of the window I shall have a huge feeling of accomplishment which I NEVER get from housework.

 

March 2012 Short Story Competition

And now for Something Completely Different!!

Below there is a list of questions for you to answer.

On a scrap of paper jot down a few ideas that spring from the questions and try not to look ahead to the next question until you have written your response to the previous one. Give yourself a couple of minutes at least for each question, if you can .

(I will insert picture spacers to help stop your eye jumping to the next Q)

Use the ideas that come from the questions to help you start a story… you can of course remould your answers as your story dictates.

Here goes:

QUESTION 1

Think of a person you know by sight but haven’t met properly. Describe that person – What he or she looks like, maybe their character traits, a favourite colour etc…

Continue reading “March 2012 Short Story Competition”

Short Story for Low Wattage

The Journey’s Start

Even as we waited at the coach station I had misgivings. We had been planning this for months – but now Laura had a boyfriend, and that boyfriend, Sam, had come along to see her off on our trip. They stood under the bus shelter engrossed in one another, as if I wasn’t even there. He was tall and blond: slightly androgynous in my view. I suppose I could see what she saw in him, though was so completely not my type, he was very much hers. She fitted neatly under his arm when they walked along side by side, wrapped in each other, her thumb in his belt loop or fingers in his back jeans pocket. His height emphasised her petite frame and her delicate prettiness. He had to tilt his face down to her upturned one to kiss her. They said nothing much and I realised, when I looked up again from checking the tickets that she was crying. Continue reading “Short Story for Low Wattage”

Looking up and down

An afternoon in Oxford on my own to attend a talk by the artist in residence at Modern Art Oxford, Tamarin Norland (who is exploring the interface of art and the written word…. ) turned into a meeting-up with several friends from a poetry group I attend. We stayed on for a chat and cup of tea afterwards.

By the time I came out the sun was going down and the temperature was dropping. Mainly my eyes were drawn upwards to the tops of buildings caught in the soft light

Continue reading “Looking up and down”

Order

The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has recently had a grand make-over, but as the exhibition (New galleries of Ancient Egypt and Nubia) has been open a while, that is since November, I had hoped that there would be fewer visitors today so that I could enjoy it in peace and quiet.
Nah.
It was crowded and there was  great deal to see and take in. We borrowed the hand-held sets for an auditory commentary which was a little unsatisfactory being incomplete – and with so many people around it was difficult to be in the right place at the right time! In addition two things I had been keen to see (the ultrasound scan of a mummy which has been taken to show the insides of a mummy which has never been unwrapped and a CT scans of a child mummy) were both out-of-order… so I shall have to go back. However the artist Angela Palmer has used these scans to make a wonderful piece of art which you can read about here.

I took a few pictures, but it is difficult to capture the exhibition. The order and exactitude required to be a museum curator is illustrated here

for the Photo Competition