RESOLUTIONS

Posted on by under 2020, Jan 2020 - New Year Resolutions

In their 23 years of cohabitation, Mel and Ron had reached achieved an efficient level of consensus. Holiday, theatre and cinema choices had all passed without rancour. Co-operation in the upbringing of son Ben was effective (although Ben was unlikely to return to the family home once his college days had expired).

They had reached deep agreement over the marking of high days and holidays. Birthdays were briefly acknowledged, Christmas was not much different from other days in the way of festive food. New Year resolutions were beneath contempt – that is, until quite recently.

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HAPPY NEW YEAR

Posted on by under 2020, Jan 2020 - New Year Resolutions

Helen sat down with a sigh. It was time to think of a new year’s resolution.

Why do I do this to myself? she pondered. Each year promising myself to do something useful. My spare room is filled with things from years past. The cross stitch still unopened, the exercise bike which I generally hang my ironing on. Shelves stacked with books I never get round to reading, exercise videos that maybe were watched once, and I nearly put my back out with them.

Think I must have tried every avenue to a healthy life. It cost me a fortune in gym membership, even personal trainers. They all fell by the wayside. Even tried volunteering with charities, every time finding out I couldn’t give them the time required with my work schedule.

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For Auld Lang Syne

Posted on by under 2020, Jan 2020 - New Year Resolutions

Father O’Brien was already waiting in the confessional. Mary could see his shoes tapping expectantly through the gap under the curtain. But she wasn’t here for the usual forbidden tryst.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…”

“Come into the Vestry, Mary,” Father O’Brien interrupted, breathlessly.

“Father, listen. I’m with child. Yours, of course.” She dissolved into tears.

Father O’Brien muttered a prayer. “Wait there,” he said, finally.

His footsteps echoed and faded as he clattered out of the church.

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FIT

Posted on by under 2020, Jan 2020 - New Year Resolutions

Look at yourself man! Paunch soft enough for a bouncy castle, out of breath, and you smell like an outbreak of leprosy. New year’s resolutions: get fit, have a healthier lifestyle, use deodorants.

            That very morning Atkinson jogged on the prom.  After a hundred yards he thought cardiac arrest was imminent. The next day the exercise bike his girlfriend, Jackie, had bought him for Christmas was set up in the spare room of the flat. He pedalled furiously for thirty seconds, then coughed and spluttered so much he had to lay down.

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Backwards Jak’s resolution

Posted on by under 2020, Jan 2020 - New Year Resolutions

The Aurora, a Danish research vessel, had been sailing for over five years when it hove-to West of Swansea Free Port. Kaj Lydafspiller stood on the bridge looking at the structure in the distance through his binoculars.

Only a few times since fortune had favoured him with a right place, right time confluence after the “Big Splosh” had he found habitation. Mostly they were primitive, hostile or both, until now.

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Christmas in Hospital

Posted on by under 2019, December 2019 - Christmas in Wales

So here I am, 24th of December, aged thirteen, lying in my bed and I don’t want to weep but there’s a real good chance I won’t see Christmas Day.

It’s no fun having a brain aneurysm, because hey it will be the death of me. I know this because Death himself sits by my bed.

No honestly, it was yesterday when I found the bald boy, that lad who glared moodily at everyone lying still on his bed. He wasn’t blinking or breathing. And as I stood there gaping at a dead body, I heard a strong steely voice behind me, calling out with a cackle “Oh don’t worry, he wasn’t going to amount to much.”

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Christmas in Wales

Posted on by under 2019, December 2019 - Christmas in Wales

By late September, the cement in the foundations of the Christmas plans was setting nicely and the scaffolding was under construction for our two families. Shared festive traditions had evolved through their years of friendship. Each purchased a tree bauble for the other during their holidays and each had amassed a collection of these items which came to include German figures capable of appearing to puff smoke, and smoked glass globes with holiday place names. Food was always exquisite and achieved courtesy of the Marks and Spencer pre order and pick up service.

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A Christmas in Wales

Posted on by under 2019, December 2019 - Christmas in Wales

I remember years ago Christmas was very special and not about commercialism like it is today. You would have a stocking with an apple and peach and orange, and a shiny fifty pence, and some nuts and some bath salts, and then you would have one or two presents if you were lucky. Not like today where everyone wants loads of gifts like the latest gadget or iPad or phone or T.V. The good old days are gone.

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A470 at Christmas

Posted on by under 2019, December 2019 - Christmas in Wales

We were up at dawn. I was so excited I was nearly sick, but I still managed to eat a bowl of porridge. This was our Christmas trip we were embarking on … to have Christmas with my grandparents and my uncle and aunt in Cardiff.

‘Come on, Glynis,’ my mother shouted. ‘What on earth are you doing?’

I came downstairs wearing my pink fairy dress which I insisted was the proper outfit for Christmas.

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Esmeralda

Posted on by under 2019, December 2019 - Christmas in Wales

Christmas Eve 1950, we four children, aged from 2 to 8, crouched in front of the roaring fire ready to blow our lists up the chimney to Father Christmas as we did every year. We called out our desired gifts full of optimism that we might get just one of them as well as our usual apple, orange and new penny! I’d been very good and desperately wanted a large walking, talking doll which I’d seen in town, with long, curly hair and eyes which opened and closed. I’d chosen her name already: Esmeralda: a beautiful name for a beautiful doll.

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Christmas in Wales

Posted on by under 2019, December 2019 - Christmas in Wales

I’ve lived in Swansea all my life and the lights in town used to be across the lamps, and brightly lit. The parades were great and fun with always Lewis’ Pie van going past. The tree was always great. But times have changed and the lights are new, and are more up to date. But I think the lights now are not as good as they were before. The tree is still good but Swansea seems bare across the sky. And the parade now is not the best but the waterfront is lovely and bright, and the wheel is nice, also the ice-rink is fun.

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A Christmas Cwtch

Posted on by under 2019, December 2019 - Christmas in Wales

19th October

Dear Gwyneth,

It won’t be long now, my love. Soon I’ll be with you. Eighty years old, twenty-five of them spent without you. I’m tired. I’ll be ending my life on Christmas Day, the anniversary of your passing.

Until then, Cariad…

Love, Dai.

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Grandpa’s Visit

Posted on by under 2019, December 2019 - Christmas in Wales
Mum“Robin, please spend some time with Grandpa this Christmas.”
Robin“Yes mum, but he‘s so boring, everything was always better in his days, the snow was colder, the sun shone more and blah de blah de blah.”
Mum“I know, but just be nice will you, he’s quite lonely now since Grandma died.  He’s only staying for two days, so let’s just try and make this a nice Christmas for him.”
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A Card

Posted on by under 2019, December 2019 - Christmas in Wales

The Christmas card simply said: ‘Bill.’ No jolly message, no ‘to Henry.’ Just the one word as usual. He put it on the mantelpiece and over Christmas, whenever he glanced at it, he thought: ‘Some friend!’

            He spoke to his wife Jan, workmates, pals. We knew each other at college, he told them, and have kept in touch by Christmas card since. We’ve never met up, never phoned, and he never says a damned thing in his card! All of them gave him the same message: just stop communicating with the blockhead.

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Merry Christmas (Everyone)

Posted on by under 2019, December 2019 - Christmas in Wales

Albert eased his cold, aching bones into the embrace of his sleeping bag, stuffed old newspapers in around his toes, shucked his collar tightly around his chin and prayed for no snow. The freezing wind coming off the Taff was already flecking his tattered ginger beard with the icy remnants of his wet breath and inserting itself between the flaps of his hat and his ears.

Lucy, his half-breed whippet and collie, curled against his body and he pulled the over-blanket he wore as a cape during the day tightly over her body, affording them both a shared warmth.

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Christmas past

Posted on by under 2019, December 2019 - Christmas in Wales

Our Christmas began with the arrival of the food hamper, mother had paid for throughout the year. It always contained weird and wonderful things, all treats. A day set aside for making ceiling decorations with sticky back shiny paper, the tree decorated, a cheer when the lights worked.

Christmas eve building up the excitement, the chicken cooking ready for sandwiches after midnight mass at our local church, the highlight for me, all the hymns we all knew by heart. So sandwiches, and bed straight after with our hot water bottles.

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The Cure

Posted on by under 2019, November

The nurse scans my vitals, and performs a daily blood pressure check; together we scrutinize my  skin for abrasions, rashes, – anything that looks out of the ordinary. People remark its repetitive, beginning the day this way, but it’s nothing compared to the monotonous existence I inhabited before the trial. Pain and disability has a way of souring life.  It’s like having to drink your tea cold all the time.

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But

Posted on by under 2019, November

She had dreamt of winning the really big fortune
And now she had finally done so she had also won
The lottery and she had also finally learnt about politics
And got to marry her sweetheart but it was not how
She imagined it would be or feel. She was living the dream
it was not all it cracked up to be. She had thought it
Would be living the dream it was living the dream but not
living it at all it, it was not like living at all.

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The Opportunity

Posted on by under 2019, November

As I reach to put my key in the front door, my husband pulled it open from inside. He shouted “You’ve won, you’ve one, we’re going on the cruise.” I was taken aback by the word “we”, I had had no intentions of taking him, as he had been getting on my nerves quite a lot lately.

He explained that he received a phone call whilst I was out, and had already given the lady all our details. We were to board at midday on 30th June, everything else had been taken care of. Not everything I thought to myself. I would have to go with the flow for now.

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The Cefn Wen Farm Hoard

Posted on by under 2019, November
Inspiration for the story

Ben it was who found them, whimpering and circling the freshly turned sods like he was shepherding  our black Welsh  Mountains. ..   sheep that is. The slope in that field is treacherous for a tractor. Ben was my rescue service in case I turned turtle.  

Thinking it over, leaving it to the last of the day was foolhardy after 10 hours ploughing. But I can’t resist the evening light slanting over the hedges, particularly after an electrical  storm, with the brown damp smell of the land and the sun catching the earth’s drops of moisture, throwing it back in rainbow jewels.

Dad had always said that this field held more promise than being left to lie fallow. Just plough a portion of the field and across the slope so that the ridges would make the water “walk off not run off”- another  from Dad’s tomes of witty farming wisdom. That way you  stopped all the richness of the top soil cascading down to gather at the slope bottom. What’s more Mystic Meg had  this morning pronounced that today would be  “a day to remember…. when all your dreams come true.” A pot of gold at the rainbow’s end will do me I thought.

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