Tag Archives: their

Trapped

Posted on by under 2023, July 2023 - No way out

There’d been an atmosphere of suppressed excitement in the village that morning.  The boy was glad to go into the solitude of the woods to search for the fox.  It wouldn’t take long.  Foxes didn’t hide their tracks, unlike people. He stopped to hoist the shotgun onto his shoulder, then moved stealthily forward.   Most of his friends knew nothing about foxes, but the boy knew where they made their dens and when they were most active.  He could even tell if they were a dog or a vixen from the muskiness of their scent.  The fox couldn’t escape him. 

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Festival of fun!!!

Posted on by under 2023, June 2023 - Home Sweet Home
Rock festival sufffers downpour - two people - male and female stand in the rain under an unbrella

Putting up the tent, Sam and Evie smiled at each other. They felt like naughty teenagers. It was to be their first music festival. Both in their forties, they had always wanted to go but life had always got in the way. With the twins off on a school trip for a week their time had come. The Hadfield music festival happened to fall at that time.

            They had booked a quiet field that overlooked the stage area and had showers and toilets. The weather looked fine, so excitement was bubbling. Wandering around the main area a cacophony of sound and smells assaulted their senses; so much choice and so many people. Although they did notice that a majority of the crowd were quite young, they were determined to enjoy the experience.

            The bands started playing, they wandered around getting a taste for each brand of music; some they enjoyed, others not so much. One of their favourite bands was due to play the next night, so they settled for a takeaway and returned to their tent for a reasonably early night.

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Cross

Posted on by under 2023, June 2023 - Home Sweet Home

The summer city riots had spread to the rural north. The news eventually filtered through to the isolated mining village of Brookover. Its pit had long been closed, a sportswear assembly unit squatting on its corpse. It was the main employer for miles, the owners having brought in scores of Eastern Europeans on the minimum wage to toil there.

            The presence of the ‘foreigners’ was a grievance: Polish shops, strange languages in the market square. Their healthy diet marked out the incomers too. They were thin and fit, not paunchy and panting like some locals.

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The Contract – Special Causes and Conditions

Posted on by under 2023, May 2023 - Commitment

I have reached the age where wraiths of the dearly departed,-siblings, parents, babies lost before birth, partners, friends,- slip unbidden into the monochrome days and restless nights. They dart and hide at vision’s edge, ever eluding the spotlight of full consciousness. Yet as the procedure progresses, notwithstanding this lack of clarity, they appear more substantial, more tangible, than the creature standing beside me on hind legs.

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Fly Away

Posted on by under 2023, April 2023 - Missing

Rose settled into her nest, another busy night, sighing as she turned to the others.

            Lily poked her head up: ‘Hard night Rose. You wouldn’t believe it. I had to rummage under the bed to find the tooth, all those dust bunnies’ bits of food. It was disgusting’.

            Marigold piped up: ‘Last time that happened to me there was a mouse there, eyeing me up.’ Gasps from the girls.

            Lily shuddered: ‘What did you do?’

            ‘Chucked a bit of biscuit at it, grabbed the tooth and scarpered.’

            Hyacinth joined in. ‘I had a fright not long ago when a dog came sniffing around sucked me halfway up his nostril. Thankfully it tickled his nose, he snorted and blew me across the room,’

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You Chose to be Colourblind?

Posted on by under 2022, Nov 2022 - The Lesson

“Toby Metcalf!” thundered Mrs Thomas. “Are you insulting my intelligence with this effort!?”

It had been a simple request. Mrs Thomas, covering Mr Ellison’s art class, had tasked the students to colour in a black and white drawing of a king standing outside his castle. Whilst the kids scribbled on their printed copies with coloured pencils, she had marched between desks, sniffing out any miss-behavers.

“I want normal colours,” she boomed, “no purple grass or orange skies, realism is your goal!”

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Learning Together

Posted on by under 2022, Nov 2022 - The Lesson

Lewis and Jackie Mullens accommodated mother and son asylum seekers for six months. Their action surprised the neighbours who’d considered the childless pair to be the most boring couple on the estate, Jackie doing something with ledgers and her husband something similarly uninspiring with laminate flooring. Both had fewer interests than a sleeping tortoise.

            Initially the visitors brought no change to their lives. Lewis tall, walking with the gait of a superannuated guardsman, had a face stamped in capital letters with silliness of the kind found in nineteenth century inbred, minor European royalty. Jackie was equally unemotional, her mouth usually clamped shut as though she’d swallowed a rat. Occasionally when nervous she uttered a loud laugh that could cause a stampede at a horse fair. They were expecting Greta and Volodymyr to fit in with their rigorous dullness.   

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