Mother Dearest

Posted on by under 2026, July 2026 - Confession

She stood there, red-ringed eyes, mouth downturned, her white hair dripping with the thick April rain. “Seeing you brings it all back. Ten years, and you still haunt me.”

Salterman nodded, clenched his hands, and drew a deep breath. “I can’t help that. We, Jinny and I, were together a long time.”

“On and off,” she said. Her eyes lit momentarily. This was how she threw her barbs: short, well-targeted, utterly truthful, but it was her truth, not all of it.

“Yet, in her final moments, when certainty dawned, who did she turn to?”

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The Prompt for July is “Confession”

Posted on by under 2026, July 2026 - Confession

HOMEWORK for deadline Thursday 10pm, 02.07.26.

TASK: ‘Confession’. Write 500 words or fewer about ‘Confession’. Your story title isn’t included in the 500 words.

Homework to be in by 10 pm at the latest, Thursday 2nd July 2026. (This time deadline will be helpful to both Martyn and Pat).

Meeting at 1.30pm, Sunday 05.07.26, Waterstones Bookshop, top floor [via stairs or lift], Oxford Street. Finish about 3.00pm.

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A Cultural Climate

Posted on by under 2026, May 2026 - Climate

The dwarf realm of Barin-Ti had held strong for a thousand years but now it was dreadfully sick.

The native dwarves had resisted the attacks of the warriors of Am-Nor and An-Morn, defending themselves with axes and cannons, refusing to surrender.

Only now a more persistent and insidious threat had appeared. These new invaders method of conquest was importing huddled masses, coming to the dwarf kingdom in hopes of a better life.

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Gumboot and the Meteorologist

Posted on by under 2026, May 2026 - Climate

‘Trail my wife and get me evidence of hanky-panky. That way I can divorce the bitch cheaply.’ The guy, Ben Blaidd, had mean eyes that might have been filched from a rat. Then he hissed, ‘I want dirt, I want grubby.’

I’m Johnny Gumboot, private detective. Grubbiness, you could say, is engrained in my calling. Blaidd added that his missus was seeing an audiologist whom he referred to as Huw Jeers. Was that the man’s name or his affliction?

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Goodbye

Posted on by under 2026, May 2026 - Climate

Phil Moody crouched beside his daughter as she sat cross-legged on the wet sand, and tucked his coat around his knees. Jeez, he thought, the weather forecast wasn’t wrong about the change.

“What are you doing, love?”

Arabella had her palms pressed flat to the sand, head tilted, as though listening for something underneath.

“Saying goodbye.”

“Goodbye to what?”

“My friends.”

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Prompt for May 2026 – Climate

Posted on by under 2026, May 2026 - Climate

HOMEWORK for deadline Thursday 10pm, 28.05.26.

TASK: ‘Climate’. Write 500 words or fewer about ‘Climate’. Your story title isn’t included in the 500 words.

Homework to be in by 10 pm at the latest, Thursday 28th May 2026. (This time deadline will be helpful to both Martyn and Pat).

Meeting at 1.30pm, Sunday 31.05.26, Waterstones Bookshop, top floor [via stairs or lift], Oxford Street. Finish about 3.00pm.

Send all homework to Pat

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Beauty Duty

Posted on by under 2026, April 2026 - Vanity

As Bella ripped the false lash from her eyelid, a hot salty tear slid down her cheek. An avalanche of smoky mascara followed in pursuit. Flannel in hand she began to scrub the orange skin on her face, enraged she ever thought she needed to be the colour of a carrot. Looking down at the cracks in her ornate gel nails, her anger flipped to exhaustion.

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Beneath the Froth

Posted on by under 2026, April 2026 - Vanity

The door to the coffee shop tinkles as Charlotte opens it. At first glance, it bears no resemblance to the busy hairdressers it used to be, though there is something familiar in the warmth that envelops her the moment she steps inside.

            It’s called ‘Froth,’ which Charlotte considers an appropriately shallow name for a place that was once called ‘Vanity Hair.’ On the surface, it was just somewhere you came to fix your hair. But the healing went deeper than that. People left feeling better about themselves on the inside as well as the outside.

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Glorious Vanity

Posted on by under 2026, April 2026 - Vanity

 Bob Hawkins nudged his empty pint glass across the beaten copper of the barroom table. Opposite him sat Jim “Kipper” Jones, whose weather-beaten face was an object lesson in why digging roads through West Wales winters was no career for an aspiring film star, especially not after thirty years. Bob was no picture himself, either. His lived-in face topped a scrawny frame wrapped in a Gannex mac two sizes too big, fished from the back rail of an Oxfam shop fifteen years earlier.

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You’re the Villain in Someone Else’s Story

Posted on by under 2026, April 2026 - Vanity

09/04/2012

Mildred Addams is an eyesore! Did her mum marry a gorilla? She’s a girl from school, built with the size and dimensions of a stone boulder, so shave her head and plonk her outside a nightclub and you’ve got yourself a bouncer. I swear if I pull down her knickers I’ll see her willy.

Anyway, come lunchtime, whilst me and my girlfriends are hanging out by the picnic tables, she’ll be there, eating by herself, her miserable stink putting me right off my lunch. Delia tells me to ignore her but I’m going to give it to golem girl someday.

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Prompt for April 2026 – Vanity

Posted on by under 2026, April 2026 - Vanity

HOMEWORK for deadline Thursday 10pm, 23.04.26.

TASK: ‘Vanity’. Write 500 words or fewer about ‘Vanity’. Your story title isn’t included in the 500 words.

Homework to be in by 10 pm at the latest, Thursday 23rd April 2026. (This time deadline will be helpful to both Martyn and Pat).

Meeting at 1.30pm, Sunday 26.04.26, Waterstones Bookshop, top floor [via stairs or lift], Oxford Street. Finish about 3.00pm.

Send all homework to Pat

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Art is Sacred!

Posted on by under 2026, March 2026 - Art

Harlan Ray dismissed modern culture as “a lot of gay shit” and longed for everyone to agree.

“You faggots ever heard of Buster Keaton,” he’d scream. “Son of a bitch wasn’t human, he was a refugee from the planet Krypton. Christ, everybody these days thinks they’re a genius when Hollywood should come with a disclaimer: Only Superhumans need apply!”

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THE ART OF CHAOS

Posted on by under 2026, March 2026 - Art

Hearing the side gate opening, Mavis sighed. What’s happened now? Mitzi, Mavis’ poodle, raised her head and groaned, and disappeared behind the sofa.  Puffing into sight was Eva, her daughter-in-law with the twins in their buggy. Thankfully they appeared to be asleep. 

She stomped in: ”You’ll never believe what your waster of a son has done now!”

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 Creation

Posted on by under 2026, March 2026 - Art

            ‘Jed Newton. The hospital? Yes that’s right the wife’s on the list. We was told she’d be a proper good match in the right circumstances but… What? An opportunity has…? I’m not following you, mate. Listen now, she was informed the chances weren’t great due to the rarity of… What? A dying woman has what…? Are you saying Tracy can have her womb transplant?’

/

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Museum of

Posted on by under 2026, March 2026 - Art

The aboriginal spear looked unsettled in its pristine glass case. Visitors circled it like an enemy surrounding it’s prey. “Kangaroo skin” they murmured after reading the description, “seventeenth century… I wonder if they used it to kill emus” they continued before drifting away.

David stood nearby, rolling his eyes inwardly. As a security guard at the Museum of Ethnic Art it was easy for him to hide in plain sight. Not unlike his Aboriginal ancestors did in the scrub when hunting using a spear like the one displayed.  David recognised this weapon, a woomera, as one used by his people for hunting, fishing, fighting, punishment and as a symbolic marker of masculinity.

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The Sleep of reason

Posted on by under 2026, March 2026 - Art

It was feelings of both fight and flight that hastened Veronica’s trip to Milan. She urgently needed time away to collect her thoughts and prepare for an inevitable fight to come.

Already she had mapped out her problem on a series of mental index cards: Simon; nightmares; feedback from friends; and exit.

In the hotel the task began in earnest.

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Good in Taffeta

Posted on by under 2026, March 2026 - Art

It was after the phone call informing me of the sixth divorce that I looked into my family history.

            Sure enough, my mother confirmed I’m from a long line of bad-omen bridesmaids. We stretch out through time like twisted trees in a forest. Every single union attended by one of us as part of the wedding party has ended, sooner or later, in divorce.

But damn, do we look good in taffeta.

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In Wales, We Call March Tuesday

Posted on by under 2026, March 2026 - Art

For three years, the paintings had been stacking up against the walls of Rhys’s studio. Mostly landscapes: the Preseli Hills under lowering skies, the Teifi estuary at low tide, the Pembrokeshire cliffs captured in thick, honest brushstrokes. Everyone agreed they were beautiful. The bank statements confirmed they were unsellable.

The Bwthn Colony had eight members left. There had been twenty, once.

She walked in on a Tuesday in March, her bright American accent cutting through the warm, sharp smell of linseed oil.

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Gloria’s Gifts

Posted on by under 2026, February 2026 - The Gift

I must admit, I hoped Gran might leave me her jewellery. Instead, on her deathbed, she passed me a box with a shaky hand and said,

‘Melody dear, take this to Chris at Hedgehog Aid. Oh, and this is for you.’

Now, this did look interesting. An ornate gilt-edged diary.

            Her death was peaceful, or at least it looked that way from where we were sitting, on three wooden chairs dragged in from the kitchen. I was perched between my Mum and her estranged sister Alice, engulfed in their icy silence. The moment Gran passed, a warm glow filled the room, easing the tension and even some of the grief.

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A SPECIAL GIFT

Posted on by under 2026, February 2026 - The Gift

Adam Taylor bounced out of the office, a ruggedly handsome man. His life revolved around getting that sensational story that would guarantee his fame and fortune. Life had other plans, he would become famous just not in the way imagined.

Adam had been working on something secretly for months. He was getting close and the lady Audrey, his snout,  promised it was the real deal, she had inside information. Walking to the quiet gardens in Kensington he smiled to himself. At last it was going to happen. He was writing the story in his head.

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