Category: Stories

April Short Story: Winner

Thank you very much, Nym, PapaG and LW, for your entries, which I enjoyed immensely.  Well done!

Nym: Magical thinking

An excellent take on the fairytale, Cinderella, which flows nicely and is an absorbing read (you are good at dialogue, Nym; tricky stuff, in my opinion). I expected a happy ending (almost obligatory in such a tale), but still found the final paragraph surprising and delightful.

PapaG: Worlds Apart

This is a difficult and painful subject, but a good choice for the theme.  It is usual to attempt to include the required words seamlessly, but I liked the way ‘orange peel’ is used as a conspicuous introduction to the story; very effective.  A poignant, affectionate and sensitive portrayal of Auntie, PapaG, with sprinkles of humour.

LW: A Very Short Story for Bilby

I had my doubts from the beginning about the wisdom of this inter-species union. It is an odd match, even bizarre, one may say, which makes for a wildly imaginative and entertaining piece, well suited to the theme. I think you could go for a trilogy, LW; this story has legs!

Continue reading “April Short Story: Winner”

A very short story for Bilby (May 9, short story comp)

Worlds Apart

 Zorb of Klig was late…..again.   Billa of Arachnia his wife of ten years on this day was losing what little of her patience that remained.  Zorb was a three-eared, odd-tentacled cephalopod and Billa was an even-footed arachnid as were all of her species but all of this we have heard before.
Continue reading “A very short story for Bilby (May 9, short story comp)”

Worlds Apart

There was orange peel all along the mantelpiece. Not so much ‘S’-shaped orange peel, more ‘C’ shape as if Auntie hadn’t the strength to peel a whole orange in one strip. Her hands were arthritic and she was in her eighties at that time, though still fairly tough and resourceful, making her own envelopes and birthday cards and chopping her own firewood. But the orange peel was something else. When we questioned her she said it was for the fire. I guess it was some kind of fuel. Besides the orange peel, there were two or three candles on the mantelpiece. Auntie didn’t like to waste electricity. In fact, auntie didn’t like to waste anything.

Her nephews would visit her two or three times a year and would usually find old food in the refrigerator, food long past its sell by date. Auntie used to treat her nephews to dinner and tea but that was before she began to get dementia.

Continue reading “Worlds Apart”

Short Story – ‘Magical Thinking’ for Bilby

Magical thinking

I come downstairs just as the girls are ready to go out – they had spent so much time getting ready and now I can see the end result of their ‘finery’ – their hair, the fake tan, the spiders’ legs coatings of mascara. All that time and money does not disguise their thickened waists. Rowena at 5’11” is taller than me, just, but in her 4” stiletto heels she towers above me, and Angelica is wearing thigh-high black boots and a very short leather skirt, of the type I have heard described as a pussy pelmet. I didn’t understand how Melinda could let them go out like that. Since I only assumed the role of step-father just as they were going into their teens I have never felt I have any authority over these girls and they treat me with disdain.

Melinda arrives in a gush of exuberant compliments.  She can’t wait to see her darlings before they go out and I can so clearly see the similarity between her and her daughters: the coarseness and petulance if everything doesn’t go their way. Of course in the early days I couldn’t see that, smitten as I was, still grieving for my first wife.

The girls call me Albert.

“Hey, Albert,” said Rowena, “What d’ew think?” She strikes a pose.

“Will you be warm enough?” I ask her, “without a coat?”

Three pairs of eyes are raised to the ceiling and I shrug as I pick up my newspaper. Continue reading “Short Story – ‘Magical Thinking’ for Bilby”

Who do you think you are kiddding, Mrs Windsor?

Yes, I know how sensitive cherished colleagues are when it comes to Buck House and its endless soap opera. But p-lease. The ever-loyal DT opines how ‘wonderful to see how (Camilla) has won the public over’, thus deserving the Queen’s gift of the ‘Dame Grand Cross’. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/queen-elizabeth-II/9193856/A-gracious-gift.html

I’d be absolutely astounded if any opinion poll supported such a statement. I believe the public’s perception is still of a manipulative interloper who has succeeded in bagging the rôle she wanted all along. She will never be forgiven for ousting Diana, whatever gloss the Windsors choose to put on it.

Have a guess

Hay-on-Wye is the place of legend, or so it would have us believe. A place for writers and writings, with its annual book festival, mysteriously situated in Powys, Wales but with a postal address in Herefordshire, England (no bull – geddit?).

So have a guess which other mysterious place – somewhere in the world, perhaps at the other end of the rainbow – is ‘twinned’ with Hay? (No googling just yet, p-lease.) Then, if you get it right, you might wonder Wye!

CRIKEY! Judging now completed….. short story competition

This is difficult.

I have just read the two entries for the creative writing competition and find I’m completely stuck: I can’t make the decision.

Both Ara and Bilby have written stories that carried me forward, making me want to read on. Each story is so very different and that makes it harder still!

Ara’s story made me feel so sad for all boys sent out to boarding school at such a young age, especially as I am currently reading Andrew Motion’s memoir of childhood (In the Blood) which details the horrors of his schooling before common entrance. Her blending of the scary fearsome tiger into AA Milne’s Tigger at the end made me smile.

Bilby’s story of an evil man looking for a way out of a relationship is chilling – in that it could really happen! This man, an opportunist,emotionally cruel, and completely ego-centric, is caught out while the girl is saved by the skin of her teeth. Interesting stuff.

I’m going out into the garden where the frost has now lifted.

I may be gone sometime. By the time I come back in I shall have made a decision 🙂

I shall add it to the comments

The Scales of Justice (March Creative Writing Competition)

He didn’t know why he’d agreed to go on the bloody walk. He was bored by the routine, the domestication, the girl; however prettily packaged.  He watched her pick up the house keys which shared a ring with a miniature red penknife (nail file, corkscrew, scissors, blade) and an antique silver whistle, made in England, with some stranger’s spit lurking inside; useless things, worthless sentimental nonsense. He had never understood her attachment to memories. Continue reading “The Scales of Justice (March Creative Writing Competition)”

The Tiger: March Short Story Competition

It was only his first term at School. The Child was homesick and miserable at first, but he was only seven. He hated the noise and bustle, and the strangeness of it all. He missed his mother and his sisters, and home seemed so very far away. Be a brave chap, his father had said, and he tried his best to fit in, and did not mention his unhappiness in his letters to his mother. Continue reading “The Tiger: March Short Story Competition”