Category: Creativity

Books, who needs them?

So it’s books, who cares? Reading’s such a bore
My Information comes off the streets
from Facebook, Google, Wiki-p and more
to my hand held phone or simple tweets.
Knowledge they cry, ‘you should read and learn’
But Why? In the twenty first century.
Go green don’t chop down trees or slash and burn
think the future, save our ecology.
Agree that books and paper are finish
so last century, old, so outdated.
A laptop, TV and satellite dish
keep me up to date and educated.

So if your out looking for me
It won’t be Waterstones but HMV!

Another sonnet for the pomes comp

Its all a load o balderdash! Dyou wish

To keep those pesky commas in mid-air?

How can they influence the price of fish?

If bookshops want to drop them, do I care?

Them Waterstones will still sell books, I smise

Like Boots will do the drugs and Tiffnys jewls?

And Ronald will make burgers, Sainsbrys pies?

Do squiggles in some logos make them fools?

So lets go back to dear old GBS.

He knew a thing or two bout grammar stuff.

Lets rite it ow we say it – dont digress.

Of snobby arty farty crap – enuff!

Shall I compare thee to a summers day?

I shall! And sweep that comma clean away!

Sonnet-Waterstone’s: A rally cry.

Waterstone’s: A rally cry.

In London, Kensington, young Waterstone,
It would appear, sold out to a stranger,
So punctuation is now in danger;
Waterstones, now writ, lowering the tone.

Grammatically unsound you say, but hark!
Printed books or wet garden stones for pools?
Or are apostrophes for older fools,
We ancient pedants who insist and bark?

No, war it is and we are right to fear
The loss of this small mark, by which we own
Still our proud language, although loud we moan.
Standards will not slip despite those who jeer.

Save the apostrophe I hear you cry,
In this small mark all we possess must lie.

January Short Story Competition: What then is time?

Theme: Marking time.

“There was really nothing he could do but be patient. Freedom could come in the next hour, or the next century, or never.”

Hugo registered this thought and decided it was intensely irritating to deal with a creature who regarded any division of time smaller than a decade of no particular importance. Continue reading “January Short Story Competition: What then is time?”

Waterstone’s Sonnet -Jan Poetry Comp.

I’m found high up, a tiny crescent mark
a comma wand’ring from its rightful place
abused by every ill-read grocer’s clerk
some oft’ used plural noun to sore deface.

When I’m true placed, behind all proper nouns
the power of possession, I’ll at once confer.
I’m in mid-word?  I beg thee, spare thy frowns,
you’ll know the missing letters I do there infer.

A worthless vestige, or some antiquated sign
I never was.  Sad victim of some Ad-man’s pen
will never be, until the writing of the final line
means to us all the great, and last, amen.

When the rules of English usage they defile,
ALL the many Waterstones must we revile.

Waiting for Clarkson (Jan C/W)

Those deck chairs were a waste of time. There we were sitting out all night to be first in the queue for signed copies of Jeremy Clarkson’s new book, eating our packed lunches, chasing away scavenging foxes and arguing with late-night revellers as they mocked us on the way past.
“Where are your sunglasses?”
“The Germans are up early as usual”.
Now it was two in the afternoon and we were still the only two people to have turned up at W.H.Smith’s so far. We were standing at the back of the shop in front of an empty desk set up for the promotion; we had folded the deck chairs and placed them in front of Louise Doughty’s books; I don’t know anyone that would ever read that heap of compost. At least in an hour’s time the great man was scheduled to appear. Continue reading “Waiting for Clarkson (Jan C/W)”

January 2012 Short Story, Marking Time.

Marking time

Margot had found it rather comforting, after the turmoil of the previous few days, to lie awake in the dark, waiting in the pause before the weighty inevitability of the funeral. It had been restless night: her sleep interspersed with vivid dreams and it was pitch black when she woke, no light yet edging in around the curtains.  Once awake she had just lain there inert, but acutely alert, with every cell of her body tuned into the emptiness beside her in the large double bed. Eventually she had reached out into the chill air for the light, and peered at the clock. Not yet five.

Continue reading “January 2012 Short Story, Marking Time.”

Marking Time – January 2012 CW Comp.

Marking Time

Len Larcombe, teacher of Chemistry and fifth form master sat at a small desk in the staff room of the provincial public school. It was the spring of 1928 and Larcombe was almost forty years old, ten years before he had been a captain of artillery and ten before that an amateur boxer of some note. His service in the war and in the ring had left him somewhat deaf in both of his large somewhat battered ears. He settled himself into the wooden chair and lit his pipe, pushing the glowing embers deep into the bowl with a calloused and nicotine stained forefinger.

Continue reading “Marking Time – January 2012 CW Comp.”

Beyond the gravy train

I like Cracked. Beyond funny as hell, they can be amazingly insightful. Sometimes the insights are obscured by the lulz, but sometimes they’re so clear that the only reaction can be ‘yeah, what s/he said’.

This is the latest, brand-spanking-new specimen of the latter category:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-4-biggest-missed-opportunities-in-fiction/?wa_user1=3&wa_user2=Movies+%26+TV&wa_user3=blog&wa_user4=feature_module

I don’t watch The Walking Dead, comics leave me indifferent, and I’ve always found Superman overrated and irritating. I’m a Star Wars fan, though, and that part says everything I could never have found the words to express myself.