A short story Warning: questionable language alert. I fix a smile and open the door. ‘Hi, Pol. Good holiday?’ ‘Brilliant! Did Peter Piper miss his mummy?’ She flies to the birdcage, where a blue budgie bobs up and down in front of its mirror. Polly chirps, ‘Who’s a pretty boy, then?’ Blue Peter is silent. … Continue reading A Right Pickle
Déjà Vu
At last, the UK's drought has come to and end (with a vengeance in some areas) although not in time to stop much of the country experiencing hosepipe bans which are still ongoing. Who in the UK recalls the nineteen seventies? Drought, inflation, widespread industrial action, and the Cold War. Sound familiar? I had one … Continue reading Déjà Vu
End of Life
A poem Commissioned, instructed, and set on my course, Programmed to adapt and to learn from mistakes, To modify pathways encoded at source When new data is input that changes the stakes. Commands and procedures, appearance, behaviours Adapt and survive. Flexibility saves us. Failure to adapt leads to breakdown and damage, Repair and reprogramming, out … Continue reading End of Life
Ageing Gratefully
It's not all bad. As things start to travel downhill, they pick up momentum. Eyes that once read the London Underground map and the A-Z London Atlas with no difficulty began to deteriorate in my last decade of employment and my spectacles prescription changed every few years. Since retirement, I've needed new specs every time … Continue reading Ageing Gratefully
Online Editors
Things to look out for I have used the free versions of both Grammarly and ProWritingAid and found them similar. This was some time ago and I was fortunate be able to take advantage of a subscription offer from ProWritingAid, which is what I use now for final edits. My choice was a question of … Continue reading Online Editors
A woman’s work is never done, so why bother?
Don’t you just love bluebird of bitterness?
More gems
Where Do Ideas Come From?
More successful writers than I, have blogged on the topic of finding ideas for stories (or blog posts). Writing magazines and author blogs offer prompts to fire the imagination. Few inspire me. Only when I have to follow a prompt – for our monthly writing group 'homework' or a competition I want to enter – … Continue reading Where Do Ideas Come From?
Slip-up
What to do when you can't think what to write about... Post a poem 🙂 Photo by Tairon Fernandez on Pexels.com This one was written to the prompt Slip for the 'Twelve Poems in Twelve Months challenge at https://deadlinesforwriters.com/. One of my rare attempts at blank verse. ~ ~ ~ Slip-up I slip in with … Continue reading Slip-up
Colour Me Faded
### Back in my early forties, when I worked in London’s Bunhill Row, I signed up for a Colour Me Beautiful course that was running in the nearby Bishopsgate Institute during my lunch break. (Other colour consultants are probably available.) At the first session, the consultant introduced the course and held up a coloured scarf … Continue reading Colour Me Faded
Fashion?
Who remembers fashion in the nineteen-sixties and seventies, when it seemed that whatever the fashion gurus told you was ‘in’ was what you had to wear to be 'with it'? Or was that just me being young and easily-fooled? It seemed to me, that by the time my own kids were teenagers they wore whatever … Continue reading Fashion?
Writing Wrinkles 