Category: Competition

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”

Photo Competition # 24

“Food, glorious food!”

I know we have done ‘Eat drink and be merry’, but this time I want the emphasis on the food itself. Photographs of food in any shape or form. It must be edible by most sensible humans. Points will be awarded for the deliciousnessness of the subject. Hint, I am not a vegan. I appreciate that OZ, for example, would be turned on by a bouncy woolly lamb gamboling in the meadow, but he is more likely to succeed if that lamb is photographed on a spit, slowly roasting over a fire. Continue reading “Photo Competition # 24”

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”

The Journal: February Short Story Competition

It was a grey morning in November when my brother decided that enough was enough. Of course this wasn’t an instant decision; it had been creeping up on him for some years. Slowly, of course, but nevertheless it had been on his mind.

My journey of exploration through his life on reading the journals he kept, though painful, revealed such a miasma of tragic occurrences that I could not believe how the Church had kept a lid on all this.

On the whole, he had not been outwardly unhappy; one could almost have described him as contented. Good old Philip with the worthy job, the perfect wife and a couple of well-behaved children. The two girls had inherited their mother’s looks according to my brother, whose relationship with his daughters seemed tolerant but slightly distant.

Looking back, his parishioners did begin to see the changes, although being abroad at the time, I only discovered this at the funeral. He grew his hair, appeared unkempt and frequently relied on his Rector to conduct services at short notice. He grew more unreliable at time went on, and this inevitably was brought to the attention of the Dean.

Continue reading “The Journal: February Short Story Competition”

What’s so bad about extinction?

Just to put this into context: I’m much closer to extinction than I was 69 years ago. That’s life. Or in this case, death. So, musing as one does now and then about the transitoriness of this mortal coil, I wonder why the goody goodies of this world persist in lamenting the natural passing of everything they can shake a stick at!

If they could, they’d repopulate our crowded countryside with dinosaurs, woolly mammoths and giant stinging nettles. As if we didn’t have enough to worry about.

And now they even think they can save all of the 7,000 surviving languages – as if there is any lasting value in being able to say hi in Anishinaabemowin or Early Outer Mongolian.

Come on, guys. Spend your tax income on something else. Like educating aborigines. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist it.)

That’s rich!

As far as I know, the USA has exploited China’s low-wage economy for decades, sourcing every conceivable consumer product via its mammoth retail businesses like Wal-Mart, to satisfy its people’s insatiable appetite for throw-away possessions.

On the back of this trade, which has allowed Chinese workers to improve their own standard-of-living and save money, Chinese  banks have become major lenders to the creaking US economy, with dollars earned quite legitimately, and arguably saved the USA from serious embarrassment during the latest credit crisis.

Now Obama has the nerve to lecture Chinese leaders on their moral obligation to do ‘fair trade’, to allow their currency to float up to its ‘real’ market value! Otherwise the USA can’t export its cars to China.

Excuse me if I find this hard to swallow.