1,158 words most of ’em my own but not necessarily in the right order. 🙂
Click!
“The time is 14:30 4 Oct 2011. Present in the room are Detective Constable Savage and Mr W Kodogo of 55 Mercer Road, Billericay, Essex. Continue reading “Not so Creative Scribble”
It is time to restart the short story competition and as I raised the subject this time I have I stepped forward to set the ball rolling…
The short story should be posted as a separate blog and linked to this one.
It should be up to 2000 words long on the theme of ‘wedding.’
The first scene will start with two people in a room. There’s a key on the table. During the story you should include the words ‘football’ and ‘armchair’.
The closing date is October 31st at UK midnight. I will judge the entries and announce a winner. The winner will set the next competition.
Have I missed anything?
There was talk a little while ago about reinstating the creative writing / short story competition at the start of the September term, or end of September – and now we are 2 days into October – so I thought I’d test the water on how interested folk are in taking part.
As the sun goes down in the back garden it lights through the bathroom and banisters and onto the landing wall.
For this challenge
The Muse gig campaign was a Stonewaller. With great inspiration we laid a trail of destruction in our wake, living off the land, taking no prisoners before triumphing without any casualties. We had reached our goal within a few songs. In front of us, swelling as big as a carpet burn, stood the mighty legions of fans of the medieval torture instrument. They would be a more formidable foe.
Our numbers were only three: Chibber, Steff and me, sometimes less is more as stealth can win out in a crowd of 10,000. None of us knew the difference between tactics and strategy, all we knew was that our objective was to get to the front row. The front row is the ultimate in concert-going. Continue reading “The War Journal : Three Spartans”
This just in, courtesy of StumbleUpon.
The Best 100 Opening Lines From Books
The Best 100 Closing Lines From Books
About half the books on each list are on my to-read list. The other half are about evenly distributed: those I’ve read and would read again, those I’ve read and wouldn’t touch again with a bargepole, and those I haven’t read and don’t plan to.
Judging a book by its opening line is more reliable than by the cover – lines don’t get affected by editions – but still a crapshoot anyway.
I am a great fan of Charles Dickens, and one of my favourite books is Bleak House. However, I have always had a problem with Mr Dickens in that many of his stories revolve around improbable events.
In the Tale of Two Cities, the similarity in appearance between Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton was such that on two occasions the courts, (one English and one French) could not determine who was who. It led to the famous execution of Carton under the blade of Madame Guillotine. (It is a far far better thing …)
In Oliver Twist, Oliver is rescued by Mr Brownlow who was an old friend of his father. The list goes on. All his novels depend on similarly outlandish coincidences or unlikely events to make them work.
In Bleak House, one of the villains, Krook dies of spontaneous combustion something that Dickens believed could happen, but which some critics of the novel such as the English essayist George Henry Lewes denounced as outlandish and implausible. I shared such sentiments and have always felt that it greatly damaged the credibility of Dickens and his otherwise wonderful book.
So I was delighted to read this article. Maybe Dickens was right after all.
Two of the books in this pile were not for me, but for Cycloman. I expect you can guess which two, without much thought.
There’s something so very different about reading on holiday.
I had started and not progressed with ‘The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society’ months ago and put it away. Something made me pull it out and pack it for the holiday and this time I found it an enjoyable and informative read while relaxing in France. Amusing and light, but still managing to convey some of the horror of living under German occupation. Continue reading “Read any good books lately?”
Ever fed up doing the same old thing? Has routine got you down? The only way to stop the rot is to do something out of the ordinary. You know the types of things I’m talking about: go to the library and hire out a Louise Doughty book, memorise pi to seventy-three decimal places, seek out broken traffic lights on a four-way junction and direct the traffic.
Well I always like to cover new ground and a dangerous inclination came upon me in the pub this morning. Continue reading “Impulse”
🙂
Boadicea's Chariot 
You must be logged in to post a comment.