‘Butter’ was the inspiration for this short, sensual piece.
The sun’s rays filter through the window and the light curtains move gently. The clock says 12 noon. I slowly lift my head off the pillow and take in the room.
The breakfast tray is tumbled at our feet. The golden slab of butter is now pooled in its porcelain dish, no longer holding the weight of the silver knife which has tipped and lies to one side, its blade oily and glinting.
Warm doughy croissant crumbs and a coffee stain on the duvet tell the story of a langorous breakfast hours earlier and our indifference to tidying it up before we fell into a fitful, sated doze.
A trail of clothes which begins at the bathroom door with my jeans and her blouse and which ends in a discarded heap of tangled underwear tells of the night’s activities which gave us our morning appetite.
I look over at my wife and see a languid smile spreading across her face. The sheet has imprinted itself on her cheek and her hair is mussed up, making a messy golden halo around her face.
I just heard a piece on the radio from three different couples who had to cancel their wedding ceremonies due to the current lock down, so decided it might be quite timely to post these two stories back to back. They were written for ‘Shattered’ and ‘Pitch’.
The reality slowly dawned on her that the wedding would have to be cancelled.
First, a third of her international guests were grounded, unable to fly in. Then, the 100 people at one gathering rule fell way short of their 250 invitees. Now the lock down was putting an end to everything that she had been dreaming of since she was a little girl.
She reflected with horror at the hours spent on meticulous planning. Colours, themes, tasting menus, sifting through photographers’ portfolios for the one who could best capture her day, dress fittings… every last detail had been put into place.
Shattered, devastated, she wept and howled.
“As I see it,” observed her fiancé, “all you ever actually wanted was a wedding and not a marriage. I see that now. So, this might be the best time to tell you that I don’t even want to reschedule. It’s over.”
And the Groom’s point of view…
The pitch of her voice reached a crescendo as hysteria over the wedding mounted.
First, international friends began cancelling forcing them to make daily adjustments to the numbers. Then they were restricted to 100 people only, so they culled the guest list further, Jeanne insisting everyone was invited for a reason. There was nothing superfluous about a single detail, she shouted.
Now the wedding could not go ahead at all. She screeched about her carefully selected menu, paired with boutique wines, about the photographer whose skill with lighting was legendary and who was going to make her look like the most beautiful bride ever.
It had all spiralled horribly out of control with Jeanne fulfilling her own every whim.
And then there was the dress…
The dress was the pièce de résistance. He hadn’t seen it, but knew it was the price tag that would bring tears to his eyes when he saw her at the altar, not her shining radiance.
“As I see it,” he observed, “all you ever actually wanted was a wedding and not a marriage. I see that now. So, this might be the best time to tell you that I don’t even want to reschedule. It’s over.”
You can imagine on a writing site that the prompt ‘Font’ would elicit many clever stories personifying Sans Serif, fighting in CAPITALS, falling in love in flowery letters, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to match some of the other authors and so went with a story that takes place around a baptismal font.
The wind blew in through the porch of the draughty old Norman church, which had been the Borthwick’s place of worship for generations and whose patron saint gave the male heirs their names.
The Sunday morning service concluded, the family moved to cluster around the old stone baptismal font. The entire clan was gathered, in their finery, to formally bestow their ancestral patronym on the newest member of the centuries old dynasty. They had all been christened in the same place and all had worn the same elaborate lace gown.
Will and his wife stood nervously together with the godparents, two male and one female as tradition prescribed for a boy.
After intoning the prayers, the vicar asked, ‘What is the name of this child?’ He held his arms out to receive him.
Will stumbled, ‘W-Wilfrid Dunstan Oswa…’
‘You coward,’ hissed his wife, stepping forward. ‘Kyle, his name is Kyle.’
Just 95 words to tell the story of the hearing journey of my son, Benjamin, barely seemed enough, but given the word ‘Listen’, it was impossible to think of anything else to write about. Now 21, Benjamin has bi-lateral cochlear implants which have made an immense difference to his ability to connect to the world around him.
Some days he was more difficult than others. We called him ‘perverse’ when we were angry and ‘free spirited’ when we felt more generous towards his contrary behaviour.
Mostly, he was just a normal little boy.
But he was often frustrated with us and himself. We took him for a barrage of tests. We were shocked to discover that his three year old chatter had been disguising a profound hearing loss and he had learnt to cope in his muffled world all alone.
He taught us that there is more than one way to listen.
As the world searches for a vaccine against COVID-19, we should be grateful for the eradication of so many childhood illnesses, thanks largely to school innoculation programmes, which I remember well. I have a pathological fear of needles and always dreaded the line up outside the ‘san’ or, more often, the principal’s office. Here is a 75 word piece, written for ‘Vaccine’.
The girls were lined up on the bench outside the principal’s office.
Some were more accustomed to being there than others.
Today, however, it would not be the stern reprimands of Miss Riley that would sting, rather any pain was going to be inflicted by the school nurse.
The office had been transformed for the school vaccination programme.
Sleeves rolled up (usually forbidden) they edged along, proffering their upper arms.
The second poem I wrote after Mother is called a Villanelle. When I saw the subject for the poetry challenge I had to look it up as I had no idea what the word meant. It turns out that it’s a poem with a very technical and specific structure and rhyme scheme, the most famous example of which is probably Dylan Thomas’s ‘Do not go gentle in to that good night’ . Luckily I had written a short piece of 150 word prose on ‘Tree’ which someone had suggested would translate into poetry, so there was my starting point. It took a lot of plotting of the verses, rhymes and syllables to get the right rhythm but I was quite pleased with the result. First, the prose piece…
The weeping willows encircled the dam, creating a humid green refuge from the city. The dragon flies zig zagged across the water in staccato movements, and the sound of entrapped insects hummed inside her sanctuary’s canopy. The surface of the static water was slimy with algae and the shy water lilies were beginning to open their buds. When the wispy fronds of the willows wafted and parted in the shallow breeze, the sun glanced through and an iridescent sheen glanced off the body of water.
She lay on the damp grass, legs outstretched and crossed at the ankles, her arms under her head. She stared straight up to where the trees opened to the blue sky and watched the contrails of a jet passing high overhead. For now, her escape was right here. One day, such a plane would take her far away from the suffocation of this small life.
And now the Villanelle…called The Escape
For now, her escape is here by the lake.
She stares up at the contrails in the sky
A plane will fly her far from her mistake
A green canopy of weeping willows make
A humid refuge from the hue and cry,
For now, her escape is here by the lake.
Dragon flies dip and dive their thirst to slake
And with shy lilies for attention vie
A plane will fly her far from her mistake.
Static water made by algae opaque
Willow fronds in the breezes waft and sigh
For now, her escape is here by the lake.
The glancing sun’s rays through the branches break An iridescence on the water lies A plane will fly her far from her mistake.
Entrapped insects hum low as they awake
Like them she feels entrapped, releases a sigh
A plane will fly her far from her mistake
But for now, her escape is here by the lake.
This piece was written for the prompt ‘The most beautiful’. It made me nostalgic just writing it.
She hoarded buttons, twine, sweet paper wrappings and cellophane, pretty packaging and glossy magazines and kept them in a special box that they hauled out on rainy days. They would stick and glue and make models and collages which now adorned the shelves and walls.
Sometimes they would dress up and she kept a musty chest full of squashed hats, cowboy waistcoats, pirate eye patches, swords and capes which they would don, transforming the playroom into make believe galleons, saloons and spaceships. Furniture was dragged around, dens were built and strange names, voices and accents adopted.
Occasionally they would bake where she directed his creativity a little more closely, not wanting to waste gallons of milk, pats of butter and bags of flour, but their favourite was always chocolate Krispie cakes, which he managed without too much supervision.
She adored the little years when he was receptive, responsive and gleeful. He listened and learned, regurgitated funny things he heard that made them laugh. He could keep himself amused for hours on end in his own world, safe in the knowledge he could explore literally and figuratively as far as his imagination allowed.
And then he went to school, leaving the magic world she had created for him behind. He came home with a new vocabulary, new songs she hadn’t taught him and new artwork in whose creation she had played no part.
He had been an only child and now he was flourishing and it was the most beautiful thing.
Some writing prompts are harder than others, and I felt sorry for most writers when the random number ‘Fifty-Four’ came up after we had been writing every day for over a month. Coincidentally, it had a special significance for me as 54 on Bath is a lovely hotel in Rosebank, Johannesburg where my son, Sébastien chose to spend his 18th birthday, so what else could I do but give my 120 words over to that evening.
When asked where he wanted to have dinner to mark his 18th birthday, my first born chose the roof top restaurant at 54 on Bath, a beautiful boutique hotel in Rosebank, Johannesburg.
My heart sank a little. We had marked a number of wonderful occasions there as a couple, which is perhaps why Seb chose it. He had heard from us how good the food was, and to him, it represented the epitome of being grown up.
It would be our first attempt at being grown up ourselves, post divorce. I wondered, could we be civil long enough to make the evening special, one for us all to remember.
We drank champagne, smiled at each other and toasted our son.
Maybe you can guess where this little short story is going from the title and the three images… With ‘Screwdriver’ and 100 words, this is what you get…
Bob had three most treasured possessions. His toolbox, his golf clubs and his ’66 Mustang.
Beryl also had three most treasured possessions. These were Bob, her beautiful home and her marriage.
Bob had recently added a fourth item to his list. Her name was Anna.
Beryl went to Bob’s workbench, grabbing the first implement she could find and marched out to the car. Gripping the handle of the star screwdriver tightly, she laid its head against the driver’s door and walked around the vehicle, gouging into the bright red paintwork.
She surveyed her handiwork and wished she’d used his 9-iron.
Here are two quick pieces that were written back to back in response to ‘Magnolia’ and ‘Elaborate’ (85 and 120 words respectively). A comment by a friend on Facebook about the job she most wished she had was, in part, the inspiration. Well, I guess, someone has to do it…
Magnolia Home
Magnolia. How our minds work. Mine went straight to a pot of paint. Imagine being a Paint Colour Name Thinker Upper. This season’s Magnolia Home Range includes Watering Can and Webster Avenue. Rainy Days and Garden Trowel.
Another range’s warmer hues include Downy Duckling (I especially like that one)
And then there’s nail polish colours. It’s a Boy! (Blue, obviously) Suzi Without a Paddle. How about Exotic Birds Do Not Tweet? But even worse is the naming of car models. Don’t even get me started…
and…The Job Interview
‘Perhaps you’d like to elaborate on your previous experience’, the paint technician asked.
‘Well, I came up with our entire Spring range’, I boasted. ‘Nail polish is an extension of your personality. The colours need creative thinking.’
The paint technician glanced down at his interview notes.
‘I see your creativity ran away with you sometimes. How does Suzi Without a Paddle say pale blue? And why don’t exotic birds tweet? How about Can’t find my Czechbook?’ he looked up and rolled his eyes.
‘I find your colours a little …obscure. Here at Daub Paints we’re a little more conservative. Take Downy Duck, for example. One of my personal favourites. So descriptive. Tells you exactly what’s inside that paint pot.’