Those were the days

When he was young, in his teens, Ernest learned to strum a guitar. He got the hang of a few chords, just the basics like C and F and A minor. He also sang a little, usually B flat! Anyway, he used to bowl up every Friday night at a local pub when most of the regular drinkers were three sheets to the wind and treat them to his hardly recognisable renditions of the big hits of the day. He strummed and sang and swayed and screwed his face up to show how deeply he was feeling the emotion of the words he was crooning. They always said that he was Ernest by name and Earnest by nature! They always appeared to be enjoying his performances; after all they laughed a lot and even joined in if the song was recognisable. All this apparent adoration gave Ernest the false impression that he was on the way to becoming a major force in the recording industry; one mega break, that’s all he needed. Little did he realise the reason for his popularity.

Thirty years went by and Ernest never did get that break. His performance tended to be in his bedroom, or the garden shed if his wife insisted he stopped making ‘that awful racket’ in the house. His favourite piece to play was Those Were the Days My Friend, his personal anthem. He had a stash of beer in his shed, or studio as he called it, from which he drowned his sorrows. The more he drank the better he seemed to play, or at least that’s how it seemed to him. He felt that he was misunderstood and one day he’d show the world that they had been deprived of his talent for a generation.

Then one boring Sunday night whilst watching a repeat of a repeat of The X Factor he mumbled something under his breath. He’d had an epiphany, a sudden realisation that the perfect way to reach his deserving audience was via Simon Cowell. He looked around the room at his wife and kids and proclaimed that he was going to win the next series of The X Factor. There was a look of amusement on his wife’s face and looks of horror from his teenage daughter and son. Their expressions spelt out like OMG very loudly! What on earth would their friends think if their Dad popped up on the screen; they'd like LOL!

To cut a long, very long story short, he applied to The X Factor the following year and was duly summoned for the auditions. He spent the next few weeks getting himself a new look. Much to his kids embarrassment he now sported spiky balding hair and greyish fuzz on his lower face. When he experimented with wearing his jeans fashionably half way down his back-side, the family said he’d gone one step too far, in fact when he took one step into the street  they dropped down around his ankles. He also felt he need a catchier name to go with his new youthful image and he duly re-christened himself Eric; if it was good enough for Mr Clapton it was good enough for him!

The day arrived. He had expected to be standing in front of the judges for his first performance; it hadn’t occurred to him that there would be a preliminary panel whittling down the many thousands to the chosen few. And of course, the selected acts which were to go forward to the TV auditions were chosen as much for their Cringe Factor as their X Factor. Clearly his act went down well, and when he was told that he was to be appearing in front of Simon and Louis and those young ladies from so called girl bands (what did they know about real music?) he assumed that stardom was only a few songs away.

One of the judges (a pretty girl with a Liverpool accent who he knew was once married to millionaire footballer  and sang in a band he thought was called No Girls Allowed or something like that) asked him what he was about to entertain them with. Those Were the Days My Friend he muttered. Simon asked him to speak up and he bellowed the title down the microphone causing the assembled thousands to jump off their seats as one! He was a couple of minutes in, and he thought it was going down pretty well; after all the judges were pulling faces at one another and the audience were laughing just as they did all those years ago in the pub. Louis shot his hand up into the air and the backing track fell silent as did Ernest – sorry, Eric! He had expected rapturous applause and to see the judges on their feet clapping their hands in utter amazement. But all was quiet. It was time for Plan B. He had another trick up his sleeve if only they’d let him try it. This time the audience were on his side and they started calling E-ric, E-ric, E-ric.  Eric of course didn’t realise that they were more a baying mob than an adoring audience desperate to hear more. Well, he was given a second go, and Plan B turned out to be a more active version of Plan A with Eric attempting frantic dance moves and even failing to perform a hand stand.

Eric – sorry, Ernest didn’t make boot camp, in fact the only boot he got was being booted out of the auditions. His kids asked to go to a different school and his long suffering wife has been shopping online rather than making her weekly trip to the supermarket.  But he hasn’t given up. He’s still convinced that he has a talent deep within him which will someday emerge to enthral and entertain the nation if not the world.

Carry OnTuesday prompt is Those Were the Days my Friend

SundayScribblings  is Plan B

(Fiction)Friday) is Drown your Sorrows

Halfway through and they are spellbound!

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Right, I have my props; a stool, a silly hat, two balloons filled with water, they love that part of my act, and a glass of wine which is really vinegar! I hope it’s a good audience, and I hope I can find a willing victim to hypnotise. Quick glass of water, my throats a bit dry........ that’s better. There goes the music. I love this bit when the voice booms out across the theatre announcing my name..... fantastic. Curtain’s opening, must get on stage.

Ouch those lights are bright tonight! Listen to that applause. I hope they are as enthusiastic when I finish in 30 minutes time!


So far so good. They laughed at my jokes especially the one about that bloke in the front row with bald head. Let’s find a suitable person to join me on stage. She looks a bit prissy, hardly giggled. I suppose I could use her. No, it has to be him just over there. He’s been showing off to his mates and trying to make clever comments since I started. Here he comes. Perfect. I’ll teach him to try and take the Mickey out of me.


Mmm. Not sure if he’s going under or not. Let’s click my fingers again. No, he’s pretending, he wouldn’t have let out that stupid snort if he was and he’s still mucking about a bit. The audience is very quiet though. They must be enjoying it. They’re spellbound. Right, 15 minutes gone, we are half way through. I need to get things moving.


The audience really is quiet. My stooges mates aren’t even responding to his showing off. Hang on a minute. When I said the crowd were spellbound, I don’t think I was wrong. I seem to have hypnotised... them, not... err...him.  What on earth do I do now? I have half of my act to go. Oh dear, my unresponsive victim has stormed of stage and he’s shaking his friends. Only one thing for it. I’ll get them all barking like dogs. That was great. Now I’ll get them shaking hands with each other. Now I’ll try to get them back with a click of my fingers. Oh dear, it didn’t work. Try again. Click. Nothing.


What to do? What to do? Paul McKenna where are you when I need you? Got it. I’ll get them all to clap and cheer. Great. A couple of bows, a cheery wave, I’ll thank them all for coming then exit stage right!


Right, run for it before the management realise they are still under my influence! Down the steps, good, the door to the street is open....here goes...RUN!


Written for both Writers Island and Sunday Scribblings 


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I was a little messy!

I was thinking about this week’s Sunday Scribblings prompt ‘Mess’ when my mind suddenly shot back to something that happened when I was taking an autumn holiday in Greece a couple of years ago.

I was sitting under a delightful vine covered trellis at the front of a picturesque tavern on the island of Samos. The floor and the tables were strewn with fallen leaves and the odd grape or two. It was wonderful. I’d ordered a tankard of Mythos beer and a glass of ouzo which was delivered by Stavros along with a dish of local olives. As he placed them on the table he beamed at me and said what I thought was ‘messy’! I commented that I found the debris rather attractive, but the way I which he shrugged his shoulders told me that he’d not understood what I’d said.

Anyway, I got started on my refreshments and plunged my nose into my book. A couple of minutes Stavros re-appeared. He pointed to the table and said something like ‘you messy’! I immediately thought he had a point because it was a bit of a mess. I’d spilt quite a bit of beer on the table and several olive stones had missed the pot. I looked up, grinned back and said ‘Ne’ (that’s one of the Greek words I actually  know - it means ‘yes’! The other word I know is ‘birra’!)

A few more minutes passed and back came Stavros who presented me with a platter of little fishes, cheese, tiny sausages and dips galore! He pointed at it, puffed out his chest and said what I thought was ‘messy meester’. I was baffled.

And then I suddenly remembered another Greek word I knew, and realised he'd been asking all along if I wanted a ‘meze’! It is of course the name of the traditional selection of nibbles and treats that go down so well with a drink under the Hellenic sunshine! 

It all started when the guy eating in the middle of the restaurant tried to crack the brittle topping on his crème caramel. He stabbed it with his spoon, but it refused to yield. He then jabbed it with a fork. Mistake! It had the desired effect inasmuch as the topping cracked, but unfortunately the entire dish leapt off the table sending a slimy slick of crème across the floor.

Unfortunately a waiter carrying a tray of drinks was but a step away when the puddle appeared at his feet. He made a gallant attempt to stay upright, but he began to slither and slide around like a drunken skater! Needless to say, by the time he gained his composure the wallbangers, whiskies and wine had launched themselves into the air. There was a crashing of glasses on the floor and their contents shot up and then down again splattering everybody in an alcoholic shower!

As if that was not bad enough, a couple of drink drenched diners jumped to their feet knocking their table skew-whiff, and as a result two plates of the chef’s 'plat du jour' landed upside down at their feet. The waiter, still shell-shocked realised that one of them was beginning to lose her balance, so he shot towards her in an attempt to keep her upright. Whilst his feet seemed to move at double speed like Fred Astaire performing a tap-dance, he made no forward progress whatsoever. Then it all went into to slow motion. As the young lady fell backwards as the waiter leaned forward, and they ended up in a tangle of arms and legs in the slop on the ground.

One by one, fellow diners tried to help the hapless couple get back onto their feet, but one by one they too ended up on their back-sides. You should have seen it!

Then the fun began. One of the fallen guys started laughing. Then another, and another. Before long everyone was laughing! Suddenly one girl grabbed a fistful of food and rubbed it into her friends face. Someone else did the same, and in no time at all it had turned into one hilarious food fight!

People still talk about that night. One letter to the local paper, presumably from an ex sailor, suggested the name of the restaurant be changed to the Mess Deck! Several other correspondents thought it would be a great idea if they made the food fight a regular event! Now that really does sound like fun.

The new Carry On Prompt is HERE!

I suppose that a modern day non–Hindu mantra sits somewhere between a prayer, a habit and a superstition. It’s something chanted, listened to or carried out which somehow helps one to blot out all that is around thus enabling the mantrist (Is there such a word? If not I claim it as my own!) to focus on that which needs to be achieved and nothing else around.




I’ve been thinking about this. In fact as I was writing the first paragraph it occurred to me that I was muttering to myself! I’d never really thought about it before. I’m a very poor typist and even after years of banging away at my keypad I still often have trouble finding the letters. So I say ‘where are you little B’, or ‘come here you naughty W’ and the key magically appears!


I must just tell you this! I have problem with my keyboard at the moment. Because I tend to nibble cookies and things as I type I get a build-up of crumbs and other gastronomic debris between the buttons, so now and again I attack the keypad with my vacuum cleaner hose. Well, I got a new cleaner the other day because the old one packed up and went Hoover Heaven (not actually true, I took it to the community tip). For a long time it had got less and less effective and it sucked dust in at the front it blew it out of the back! I did wonder at one stage if the dust cloud hanging over England which stopped flights was less to do with the Icelandic volcano and more about my Vacuum cleaner! Anyway, I used my smart new black machine to clear out my keys yesterday and it was so powerful that it sucked up one of the letters! I only discovered which one had gone when I spelt the name of that black and white striped animal that looks like a donkey, ‘ ebra’!


I digress! The other thing I need is quiet music. It’s always classical and more often than not spiritual. Right now I’m listening to the Faura Requiem. Nothing too rousing or I go double speed and the spell checker throws its hands up in defeat!


My grandfather was a funny chap. He had a couple of mantras which he employed regularly. Every morning as  he shaved and went about his daily ablutions he used to quote the bible. I supposed it helped him concentrate on the task in hand. How, I really don’t know! But it wasn't any old preaching. His wife’s name was Maudy and he used to go ‘I’ll lift up my hands Maudy, and say unto him Maudy, father I have sinned against heaven Maudy and am no more worthy Maudy to be called thy son Maudy’. Come to think of it, Maudy had a sort of Mantra too. Her task was to make sure things were turned off before retiring to bed, and she’d wander from room to room tightening every tap and checking every plug muttering ‘off, off, off...!


Grandpa’s other one was more of a plea! If it was a sunny day and we going for a family picnic, he’d go out the back garden and point up to any cloud that happened to be passing and shout ‘Send it down David’ at the top of his voice in the hope it would start raining! Quite what David had to do with it I was never entirely sure!


You are probably thinking what a weird lot we are! But I bet if you give a bit of thought to your habits you’ll find you are not so different! Now admit it, when a black cat crosses your path, you spin round three times and spit on your little finger!




I've finished. Time to turn off the soothing music of Mo-art and stick on some Led -eppelin!

This weeks Carry On Tuesday prompt is right HERE!

Such courage!

Poor little Toby! In the ten short years of his life he’d endured one form of torture after another. But what he lacked in size he made up for in courage.

Toby was always the one to volunteer at school when some kind of challenge was thrown out to the class. When playing with his friends he jumped at the chance to take up a dare. He may have been quaking in his little size 4’s but he needed to prove that he was a bigger boy than his diminutive frame suggested.

When he was six he climbed a tree that his mates said was dangerous. He got half way up but then a man with a ladder had to rescue him. When he was seven he accepted a challenge to cross a field filled with cross looking sheep. He was scared stiff but he made a run for it. He ended up with a sore backside after a ram butted him.

When he was eight he sang a solo at the school concert. It was a silly song about helping Grandma in the vegetable garden. No one else wanted to sing it which was hardly surprising because the words went like this:-

‘I gotta carrot, I gotta yam, I gotta a green bean fresh not in a can.

I gotta potato, and as you can probably see,I also gotta pea.

I gotta pea, I gotta pea. Why is everyone laughing at me? 

So if you find a little pea on the floor after I leave I think it probably belongs to me’

When he was nine he kissed Matilda Pargiter. Yuc! But in his tenth year he was to face a challenge that just about every child dreads!

It was Christmas Day. His Mum had spent all morning in the kitchen slaving over a hot stove and the smells which filled the house made his tummy rumble with hunger. But he wanted the meal over as quickly as possible because until the table had been cleared and the pots and pans put away he couldn’t unwrap the special present his parents had put for him under the tree.

What stood between him and that taunting teasing gift backed parcel required him to summon up every bit of courage he could muster. He had to eat some brussel sprouts! It was a condition. His happy Christmas depended upon it.

He prodded one of those nasty vegetables with his fork. He slowly raised it to his mouth as his family looked on in silent anticipation. He opened his mouth then closed it again. He glanced over his shoulder at the package below the tree, then with his eyes screwed firmly shut he popped the nasty sprout into his mouth. He chewed it once. He bobbed up and down on his chair, chewed it a couple of times more then swallowed it almost whole. Then his eyes sprung open and he smiled a great big smile. He’d liked it! He really liked it! He liked sprouts!

He’s eleven now, and still small for his age. But Toby has one boast which he uses to put down his friends. He’d eaten sprouts on Christmas Day. Needless to say he didn’t admit he’d enjoyed them!

This week’s prompt at Carry On Tuesday awaits you! Just click HERE to join in the fun 

Sunday Scribblings - 'Wonder'

Little Jimmy went to stay with Granny and Grandpa. He always had fun when he went there. Grandpa had false teeth! Jimmy was fascinated by them because they seemed to move around in a different direction from his gums! Granny said that they’d never fitted properly and sometimes when he dozed off in his chair they fell out completely!

Well, the other morning when Jimmy came down for breakfast, Grandpa had lost his teeth! He was having great difficulty chewing his toast and had to dip it in his cup of tea to make it soft enough to swallow! 'I wonder where they've gone?' said Grandpa scratching his shiny bald head. But he had a huge toothless smile on his face which made Jimmy suspect that Grandpa was about to have a laugh  at his expense!

On the table was a new pack of Jimmy’s favourite breakfast cereal, Chocolate Puffs which Jimmy always called rabbit droppings! There was a big bright splash on the box which said ‘Surprise Gift Inside’ so Jimmy plunged his hand into the cereal to dig it out. 'I wonder what it is?' he laughed. 'I love a a surprise!'

Suddenly he yelped! ‘Ouch’ he shrieked, and when he pulled his hand out Grandpa’s set of false teeth were attached to his middle finger. Jimmy shook his hand and the teeth flew across the room then bounced off the wall and fell to the floor.

‘There they are’ said Grandpa with a huge gummy grin on his face. He bent down to pick them up and suddenly they started to scurry across the carpet. Jimmy, Granny and Grandpa’s eyes popped out! The teeth were alive. Casper the cat looked on terrified. As the teeth rat-a-tatted towards him he turned round and fled, but the teeth were too quick for him and all of a sudden they shot across the floor and bit into Casper’s tail!  Casper was not impressed and he spun round and round until the teeth let go and went flying up and up and up into the air.

Jimmy, Granny and Grandpa looked up in amazement, their eyes bulging, wondering where they were going to land next! Then down and down and down they fell, straight into Grandpas open mouth! Plop!

Jimmy decided to have a boiled egg and soldiers instead of rabbit droppings. Hopefully there would be nothing unusual lurking deep inside the yolk!

Don't forget to take part in this weeks Carry On Tuesday. Click HERE!

One two one two testing.....

Most little children strut around the kitchen wooden spoon in hand, miming to the latest pop song. Every teenager has at some time stood in front of a bedroom mirror singing into their hair brush. Mike was no exception. It was obvious from his very early years that the microphone was a natural extension of his arm. Trouble was, when miming changed to singing things went rapidly downhill. He looked the part, but oh dear, the sounds he produced upset every dog in the district! As he grew older the dream he had of becoming a performer became more and more distant.

Mike was watching a stand up comedian on television one day, and then it came to him. You don’t need to be a singer to use a microphone.

As soon as he was old enough he started visiting local pubs when they held open mike nights. Would-be comedians would scamper up onto the podium, grab the microphone, tell a couple of poor jokes and get booed off again. And our Mike was no exception. But he was determined not to give up. Something inside told him over and over again that one day people would want to listen to him. It would just be a matter of time.

Fast forward three years. Mike has achieved his ambition; he is now the king of the microphone. He spends a few hours each afternoon adjusting and perfecting his words making sure he meets his daily deadline. Every evening hundreds of folk eagerly await his voice and today is no exception. Unseen he checks the time on his watch, clears his throat, takes a sip of water then slides the switch on the microphone to on. The speakers crackle into life and the assembled hoard falls silent in fervent anticipation.

‘Good evening ladies and gentlemen’ shouts Mike. ‘The train now standing at platform three is the eighteen ten service to London Waterloo.’

     

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Fluent

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A few random thoughts on the word Fluent

Fluent is a lovely word. Floooooent. Say it slowly, roll it around your tongue. It sounds delicious and it’s a perfect example of an evocative verb. Smooth and flowing, effortless and graceful. Our language is blessed with many such words, effervescent, languor and serendipity are among my favourites.

A gentleman by the name of G Joslin Vethakumer, I’m not sure of his nationality, is quoted as saying that that the beauty of the English language lies in its simplicity. He pointed out that if you say ‘I love you’ in any other language you will hear the difference (actually I think that je taime sounds rather nice too!) He goes on to suggest that in English it’s more than just a formal expression as it’s cloaked in a certain warmth and sincerity vital to make it reflect the delicate inner closeness you cherish in a relationship.

Sadly few of us can be said to be wholly fluent in our own language and this clumsy sentence I think proves my point! Foreigners learning English often fail to recognise Mr Vethakumer’s description of our language as simple and literal translations rarely work.You may recall that some time ago I carried out an experiment using the famous Babelfish online translator. I tried it again today. I typed in the words ‘very few of us are fluent in our own language’ and this this what I got:-

English to Italian – molto poca gente e fluent nella loro propria lingua

Italian to French – de beaucoup de peu gens sont coulantes dans leur sa langue

French to German – von viel Leutebitchen sind in ihrer seiner Sprache flussig

German back to English – from much people-little are liquids in their its language!

I remember hearing once of a teacher who was telling her students about the common mistake of using double negatives in spoken English. She explained that a double negative makes a positive, for example ‘I don’t want nothing’ actually means that 'I do want something'! She went on to say that on the other hand, a double positive never makes a negative. A voice at the back of the class called out ‘Yeah right’!

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Anew

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She stands in darkness atop a hill with the wind in her face, her hair streaming behind her. She glances over her shoulder and watches as another year blows away taking with it unhappy memories and shattered emotions.

As the angry black clouds scurry out of sight the moon appears spreading a silver blanket of hope all around and casting her long grey shadow behind her.

Suddenly all is calm. She looks toward the future. Another year approaches, another chance to start her life anew

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Offered as my contribution to Sunday Scribblings prompt A New Leaf

The dinner party

This week at Sunday Scribblings we are to write about a fictitious dinner party.

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For the best part of a lifetime the words of Phaedrus lived inside Mike's head. The words were written 2000 years ago, yet they could have been written yesterday. They could have been written especially for him. ‘The old knives that have rusted in my back I drive in yours’.




For the best part of a lifetime Mike had been the victim of taunts, deceit and scorn. Quite what happened I know not, but suddenly some kind of higher being scooped him up and promised him that his time had come. Time to reap the revenge he so deserved.




He’d lived in the area all of his life. He’d walked in the woods since he was a child yet he’d never before seen the crumbling gothic bastion he saw before him that day. The rusty iron gate was open, a chain and padlock swinging from the bolt. An irresistible force drew him in, along an overgrown avenue and through the sagging doors of Hades Hall. He found himself descending a flight of stone steps and entering a grey cellar illuminated by a dozen flickering candles. A table was set along the length of the room. It was covered with a white cloth and adorned with gleaming cutlery and sparkling crystal glasses. There were huge vases of white lilies and in the centre sat the skull and twisting horns of a deer.


A voice inside his head told him what he must do. The scene was set. All he needed now were the players. Seven people were to be chosen, and seven people were to each receive an invitation. An invitation they were strangely powerless to refuse.
.Childhood for most people is a precious time, but for Mike it was a time when he was bullied and isolated from his peers. One boy in particular made his life a misery, and one of his teachers persuaded him that he was worthless and inferior. They were both invited.


His real father had died when he was quite young and his mother remarried. His stepfather abused him both mentally and physically and when he went to his mother for comfort she accused him of lying and punished him severely. She died believing that everything he’d said was nothing more than attention seeking. He couldn’t blame her. After all her man could be very persuasive. But her man was to be one of the seven guests at the table tonight.




It came as a complete surprise to everyone when Mike married. His young wife was an outsider but she made sure she integrated herself into village life from the day she arrived. His parents had been comfortably off and somehow she just knew that when Mikes mother died he would be heir to a small fortune. She gained a somewhat unsavoury reputation in the village. It seemed that there was hardly a young man in the area had not fallen prey to her not inconsiderable charms. Mike knew of course but was too weak to do anything about it. When his mother eventually died his wife made off with more than half of his inheritance, plus the boy from the blacksmiths. But tonight she would be back. She was powerless to resist.
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There were three more places to fill and he chose one person from each of the last three decades, someone who had taken advantage of him, ignored him or made him feel inferior. A place was laid for the bank manager who tried to help himself to the money entrusted to him in the hope it would go unnoticed. There was place for the so-called friend who had tipped a beer over his head in the pub one night. He did it for no other reason than to get everybody laughing at our sad victim. It was not to be forgotten.


The seventh chair was to be taken by the counsellor who he’d had by his side for most of his life. The counsellor had done nothing to help him. If anything he’d made him feel even more inferior. It was obvious that to him the regular meetings were an unnecessary chore and a waste of time. It didn’t go un-noticed and the counsellor was to join the others at the table tonight.


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The night arrived and the guests assembled in the cellar. A ghostly looking master of ceremonies rapped three times on the table then asked everyone to take their place at the table. A fleet of waiters carried in platter after of platter of delicious food and the wine flowed.


Mike stood up and banged the table with the back of a spoon. All seven people stopped talking and stared in his direction. ‘The old knives that have rusted in my back I drive in yours’ he said. It was greeted with mocking laughter, then the seven got back to their talking.


Nobody noticed him slip away. So intense was the conversation that the locking of the doors and the sliding of the bolts went unheard. So did the sound of his laughter as he walked through the gates, locking them behind him, then into the woods. He stopped and looked over his shoulder. Hades Hall was no longer to be seen.
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Perhaps it was never there. Maybe this was all a dream. But he still held in his hand a bunch of rusting keys. At least, he did until he tossed them into the stream. A distant clock struck midnight. The day which was about to start was to be the first day of the rest of his life. A new life. Mike's life.
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Terrified

A scratching sound. Scraping on a pane of glass. A high pitched screech that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. It sounded like a branch of thorns scraping up and down the window. Yet there were no trees. A few bushes grew in the soil below but this room was high up in the house, and on that night there was not a breath of a breeze in the air.

A few minutes earlier the lights flickered then failed. All she had to illuminate the room was the stub of a candle which was getting dimmer by the minute. How long would it last? Minutes? Perhaps. An hour? Probably not.

A knock, rat-a-tat, from somewhere in the gloom. She gasped. She drew her knees up below her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs, cowering in a ball in the corner of the room.

The remains of the logs in the fire glowed orange. It was cold, very cold, but there was no way she could venture outside to fetch a new supply. Soon the glow would fade away. All that would remain would be a blackened pile of hot ash. And darkness.

The scraping on the glass became more frequent. More frantic. She could hear the beat of her heart. It was pounding, far too fast - it felt as if it was about to burst.

Rat-a-tat from behind her. She began to whimper uncontrollably. Tears of fear ran down her cheeks.

She tried to make herself breathe deeply. She decided she had to pull herself together. There had to an explanation.

The window. It was locked. Whatever was scraping on the glass was outside. She was inside. She was safe. She told herself over and over again, she was safe, she was safe.

She loosened the grip on her legs and slowly let her body unwind. Then a screeching on the glass sent her shivering back into the corner. Be brave she told herself. Nothing could harm her. Nothing. 

The candle flickered then died. All that remained to light her way were the red embers glowing in the fireplace. She raised herself up, and then slowly dragged herself along the wall. A chill breeze brushed her face. Where did it come from? Surely the window was closed. She gripped the edge of a curtain with her shaking hand, and moved her face close to the window. She drew the drape aside just an inch or two, and peered outside through half closed eyes. A swirling mist wafted a few feet above the ground. A full moon in a cloudless indigo sky shone down on the eerie scene below. Nothing scraped the glass. Everything around was motionless.

Still, silent.

A fluttering bat crashed against the glass. She flung herself backwards sending a table flying onto its side and scattering glasses, pictures and flowers all around the room. Rat-a-tat from behind her, scraping and scratching from in front of her. She was beside herself with fear.

In an instant the lights came on. She screwed up her eyes. The brightness hurt.

She thought she heard a voice. Listen. She was sure she heard a voice. Then a knocking. A knocking and a calling voice. A voice she thought she recognised. Was it her husband? Hush, listen, shhh. Yes, it was him. She rushed down the stairs and pulled open the door, just as far as the safety chain would allow.

Her husband stood shivering on the step. He’d returned early from a business trip and had mislaid his keys. He’d been trying to attract her attention for ages, knocking on the door and using a fallen branch to reach the window in the hope she’d hear him.

With quaking hands she fumbled with the chain for what seemed like an eternity. She flung open the door and collapsed into his arms. The past hour had been like a bad dream, a nightmare, and now it was over.

Suddenly there was a crash from upstairs.

Sunday Scribblings - A Ballet

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A thousand dancers adorned with

softest pink reach skyward

on a stage of April green.

The magnolia blossom

performs a ballet to celebrate

the gentle days of spring.

Growing old disgracefully!

Isn’t aging wonderful! Gone the inhibitions of youth, caution thrown to the wind!

Once I cared what people thought, now I don’t give a damn! Once I agonised over what looked cool, now I couldn’t care less.
Yesterday image was everything. Today I’m content to blend, to disappear, to be invisible.

No longer do I tread the catwalk of life. Happening has happened! Fashion has flown and style matters not.
Now I am the audience, not the attraction. Now I’m the critic not the criticised.
Isn’t aging wonderful!

What next?

If I was to ask you when it was you realised that you had a flair for writing, what would you say? I bet most people discovered a burgeoning talent when they were at school. Perhaps theirs was the essay which always got read out in class or during assembly. Your pieces were probably published in the school magazine and printed in the yearbook.


Quite often the distractions of those heady teenage years mean that writing gets put on the back burner. After all it’s not considered particularly cool to be hunched over a piece of paper with pen in hand while the rest of your mates are out doing what mates do best – having a good time!


The explosion in blogging has no doubt brought many a decent scribe out into the open. It offers a chance to show off your skills to a usually appreciative whilst invisible audience. Certainly it’s less daunting than sitting in a circle at a writing club facing the direct criticism of your fellow struggling authors.


I’ve often been asked when I started and I can remember quite clearly. Not for me back in school. In fact I didn’t exactly shine in things literary back then. I failed my final English exam with aplomb! It wasn’t that I couldn’t get to grips with grammar and Shakespeare, I simply wasn’t interested. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I never read a book from cover to cover until I was in my forties.


I can pretty well put a date on when I found words tumbling from my head. It was one day in August 2002!


At that time I had my pub, the Brewers Arms in remote farming village miles from any main road in the deepest Sussex countryside. Our community and that from the next village had a joint Village Diary which was published monthly and popped through the door of every house in our area – about 160 in all. I used to advertise each month, and gradually my copy was becoming more and more wordy.


It was suggested that I take a whole page each month and use it as a pub newsletter, and that’s what I did. Virtually everything that happened in the village took place or started in the pub. We had no village hall, my public bar doubled as that. We had committee meetings for this, annual general meetings for that, never a dull moment. We were always putting on some function or other and now I had the perfect place to shout about it.


Suddenly the Village Diary was eagerly awaited each month. Not for the date of the mobile library visit or the neighbourhood watch report, but for the account of the goings on at the Brewers Arms!


It scrutinised very closely too. One month I mentioned that the pub would have been serving beer for 250 years without missing a single day since July 5th 1753. I got a call telling me I was wrong. It actually opened on July 6th 1753!


So much for the past. Where will we all go with our writing in the future? Who knows? For my part, I hope I will still have my enthusiasm for scribbling for as long as I can string a few words together. If I could just get one small piece published without having to fund it myself it would at least be a form of ratification, proof that I have not been suffering some form of self delusion over my writing ability. I the meantime I’ll carry on spending far too much time here with my keyboard, and of course with you dear friends!

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I’ve just been reading back though a few issues of the Village Diary, and much of what I’d written back then I’d forgotten about. I’ll finish with a few entries from all that time back.


August was a fantastic month for the Brewers with record beer sales and enough food cooked to feed one of the smaller nations! Thank you to all who visited this strange hostelry with its wacky staff and fine upstanding landlord


Another said


A For Sale board will shortly appear at the Brewers (who cheered?) No, I’m selling up and leaving (who groaned?) It’s simply a board on which you can advertise your unwanted items (no husbands please) and the best bit – it’s free to use!
I also used my page to publicly tease my wonderful staff and I’ve just found this
My bar and kitchen slaves have been somewhat critical of remarks I’ve been making about them in my previous jottings, I can’t think why. They were offered a Right to Reply but nothing was forthcoming thereby leaving me an open goal! I will however moderate my remarks lest militancy sets in.
And finally
I’m a little aggrieved that so many of you where heard to cheer and applaud when I recently tripped on the stairs and landed on my derry-aire on the floor of the bar. Remember – I know who you are and I pour your drinks. There’s nothing more dangerous than a landlord scorned!

Click on picture to enlarge - and read!

A passing stranger

The night is as still as the grave. Everything around glistens white with the harsh winter frost.


My white breath drifts skyward as a shimmering moon shoots shafts of silver light twixt the frozen trees and across a blanket of pure white snow.

So bright is the light that long black shadows stretch out from the hedgerows and wooden poles that line the narrow lane. My own walks alongside me.

I see the vague figure of a man coming towards me. He wears a hooded cloak and although he becomes clearer in the moonlight as he approaches, I am unable to make out his face. Just a hollow void.

As we pass I nod my head in greeting, but it’s as if he doesn’t see me. I look over my shoulder and notice he has no shadow, and leaves no footprints in the virgin snow.

Suddenly I am blasted with a rush of freezing wind that stings my face – then it is stops as suddenly as it started.

When I open my eyes he is gone.

Nellie the Nag

I knew instantly that it was wrong. An alarm rang in my head warning me not to do it, but in the back of my mind something told me it was worth the gamble. So I decided that I would.


I went along the road, up the hill and round the bend. Then over the bridge, through the gate and across the park. Past the pub, by the church and into the mall.
Still that little voice in my head said no, but all the time there was a chance I simply had to take the risk.


I strode into the betting shop, puffed out my chest and with a confident air strode up to the counter.


“I’ll put everything I have on Nellie the Nag in the nine nineteen at Newmarket” I said. “Every single penny”. Everyone else in the shop heard me and immediately thought that I must know something that they didn’t. A queue formed and one by one each of the customers staked some money on Nellie.


The bookie's eyes lit up. It was a rank outsider with odds of ninety nine to nine. The race was about to start. I sat myself down and fixed my gaze on the TV screen. They were off!


Out of the stalls, down the straight and around the curve. Rush to the first, jump the hedge, and down again. Nellie is last, dropping behind and looking tired. I turn away, cover my eyes and switch off my ears.
Suddenly I am aware of shouting and cheering. I part my fingers, peer through them at the screen and realise that Nellie the Nag is coming up the outside. She is gaining fast and there are just three fences to jump before the home straight and victory.


Clear over one, scraped over two and high over three.
I was on the edge of my seat and bouncing up and down in time with her galloping. Everyone was calling out and yelling “Nellie, Nellie, Nellie”


It all became a blur. I shut my eyes and when I opened them again the race was over. The silence was deafening. I knew instantly that my horse has lost. I had lost and so had everyone else.


As I was leaving I heard one of the others ask the bookie how much I’d gambled on Nellie the Nag. “Everything he had” he answered with a smile on his face. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and with my head bowed I started to wander home.


I walked out of the mall, by the church and past the pub. Across the park, through the gate and over the bridge. Round the bend, down the hill and along the road.
I knew I should have listened to that little voice. Thank goodness I only had two pounds on me when I threw caution to the wind and put it all on Nellie the Nag.


Please visit Roseys take on this prompt. It's HERE

A creature of the night

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This weeks Sunday Scribblings prompt is My Nights
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As the night drops its blanket of darkness over a slumbering world, I softly slink away into the stillness of a silent street. I hear every sound – the rustle of fallen leaves as a breeze bustles between them, the rattle of a discarded can as it cartwheels down the gutter.

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Objects which hours before sang with colour have now taken on a more subdued pallor. A paleness in the shimmering moonlight, which bathes everything in a sea of silver grey.

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I cowl and spin my head toward a screeching owl. I am not alone on my nightly journey. I turn again as a fox skips across the road on its way from one overfilled dustbin to another. A busy bat swoops, then glides then dances above me. Fluttering moths frantically bounce to and fro as they attempt to break inside a street lamp, and a spider weaves its web then waits stealthily for the flying fruits of the dawn.

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For these are the creatures of the night. My night. My world. My ecstasy.

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Here's a thought. If moths are so desperate for light, would it not be more sensible if they came out during the day?

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let me read it to you - click below!

telephone madness!

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This weeks prompt on Sunday Scribblings is Telephone.
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I’ve got a cell phone. A simple one. In theory I can make calls, receive calls and if I’ve got plenty of time to spare, send a text message on it! I sometimes receive text messages, but more often than not I press a wrong button and delete them before I read them! Actually I often do the same with incoming calls! Either I cancel them, or spend so long trying to remember how to accept them that the time runs out and it stops ringing.

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Apparently it takes voice messages too. At least that is the impression I get from a symbol which appears on the screen sometimes. How to retrieve them though – well, that’s a mystery I’ve yet to solve.

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Having said all that, if it does ring, squawk, squeak or shake, it is a fairly rare event anyway. Most people who know me are fully aware that they would be wasting their time trying to get me to respond to a call on my mobile. Everyone I know contacts me via my home phone or computer. They know they will get a reply that way!

I’m going into grumpy old man mode now. Teenagers! Why oh why do they seem to think it’s necessary to have one permanently in their hand or glued to their ear? One local council is so concerned about the danger kids are putting themselves into by walking along the street staring down and texting, that they are considering wrapping protective padding around lampposts and other pavement mounted signs!

I have the dubious honour of working with teenagers in my kitchen at work. I don’t approve of these wretched phones being used whilst they are working. Oh, they tell me, what if there is an emergency and someone needs to get hold of me? Simple! We have a landline – contact you on that!! I employed a chef once who became so annoyed with one young lady whose phone kept ringing, that he coated it in fish batter and dropped in the deep fryer!

And what about people using them on trains and busses? Don’t you just want to rip the infernal devise out of their hand and lob it out of the window? They speak so loudly! And you can’t even have a decent eavesdrop, because you only hear one side of the conversation!

Actually it is quite funny when you hear people lying about where they really are. ‘I’m stuck in the office dear’ they say as the down their second glass of beer and pinch a young lady’s bum! I know of one pub in London where there’s a special booth in which to use your phone, and it’s fitted with a sound system which plays background noises of typewriters, traffic and trains!

No, I’ll sick the old type of phone, preferably one with a proper dial and a curly piece of cable. You know where you are with those!

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I wrote a piece a while back for Fiction Friday about texting. Do take a look - click HERE

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composed

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This weeks prompt on Sunday Scribblings is just one word - composed
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Nothing could have prepared Sharon for the death of Michael. Two years ago he just disappeared. He left no note and took none of his possessions. He vanished.

They found his car, the police that was. It was burned out. Nothing was found inside. No remains. Nothing.

Searches were carried out. Local searches. International searches. Leads were followed up. His life was unravelled in the hope of finding a clue. Any clue.

All that’s left of Michael now is a file in a box on a shelf in the police headquarters. Michael’s life is summed up in three words on the cover. Missing presumed dead.

This morning she stood at the head of her staircase. Statuesque. All in black. Assembled friends and family cast their sympathetic eyes upwards as Sharon slowly descended. Step by step. So Serene. So composed.

Today was the day they all bid farewell to Michael. Today she mingled, glass in hand, floating from guest to guest accepting words of comfort, exchanging memories and dismissing trite platitudes.

This afternoon she found herself all alone. Just the echoes remained.

She shook off her shoes, cast aside her widow’s raiment’s and laughed. Oh how she laughed. For today had been a farewell from her too. Soon a taxi will arrive and take her to the airport. This time tomorrow Sharon and Michael will be reunited, and their new life begin.
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