Bloganuary week 1

Last year I joined the challenge late with a summary of the previous week’s bloganuary prompts. I don’t blog daily. Anyway, a one-word blog seems a waste of cyberspace.

It worked for me last year, so here we are again.

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1^st Jan        What is something you want to achieve this year?

Placement in more short story competitions.

(That one was easy!)

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2^nd Jan       How are you brave?

Cautiously.

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3^rd Jan     What is the earliest memory you have?

Climbing out of my pram having been put down for an afternoon nap in the ‘front room’. The pram was a sturdy, large-wheeled affair such as was common in those distant days.

Our ‘front room’ was the living room of a BIG, Edwardian, square-bayed terrace. Plenty of room for a perambulator.

I don’t know how old I was. Three sticks in my mind, but I may have been younger, since I don’t recall my brother being around. He is two and a half years my junior and would have slept in the pram during the daytime, rather than the cot upstairs in our shared bedroom.

I recall Mum and Nan’s surprise when I trotted into the back room, known as the ‘kitchen’, although it wasn’t. (It was the ‘scullery’ that held the cooker and sink with hot water ‘geyser’. A floor-standing hot water ‘boiler’ occupied the chimney space. A kitchen dresser with flip-down front was the only workspace that I recall in there, apart from the draining board, so preparation and cake-mixing often happened on the back room ‘kitchen’ table. This was also where we children were sat beside a bowl of hot water for our evening and morning wash.)

I suspect that after my escape from the pram, my afternoon naps would have relocated to Nan’s bed, which was tucked into a corner of the front room, but I don’t recall these.

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4^th Jan     What is a treasure that’s been lost?

I’m not into amassing treasures. Hostages to fortune, they can be lost, stolen or broken. (Any half-decent glassware I ever had has mostly been dropped. Usually by me. My home is not worth breaking into.)

After one of my moves, I was annoyed to find – much later – that a roulette wheel was missing. The family (mine and my sister’s and anyone else who joined us for Christmas) used to play on it after Christmas dinner, using pennies collected all year in a money box resembling a red telephone box. I didn’t notice its loss until the year after I’d moved and never followed it up with the removals firm, partly because so much time had passed, and partly because I wasn’t sure that I hadn’t just failed to finish packing up that drawer unit. The wheel and another couple of items I later missed (a favourite jigsaw, some low value commemorative coins…) wouldn’t have filled a tea chest, so it can’t have been a whole packing box that I was missing.

I now have a cheapy, lightweight roulette wheel. The children enjoy it just as much; last Christmas my four-year-old grandaughter broke the bank (held by my eldest son).

A niece found a copy of my favourite jigsaw on a second-hand stall at a fete a few years ago. (Thank you again, Vicky.) The new version doesn’t have that chewed puzzle piece, though. It was stolen by the puppy of the time before we ever put the puzzle together.

If a roulette wheel and a jigsaw are the first things I think of for this prompt, you will understand that I don’t invest much value in ‘treasures’.

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5^th Jan    What brings you joy in life?

Family get-togethers (preferably those I’m not hosting), my dogs, other people’s dogs, competition placings, dancing, singing… I’m sure I’ll think of others after I’ve posted this.

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6^th Jan       Why do you write?

I began writing in retirement in the hope that it would help me find the words I struggle to fish out of the pea soup that is my brain.

Aren’t those online thesauruses useful? (thesauri?)

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7^th Jan       Write a short story or poem about rain.

Today

Grey sky, grey day,
Dark clouds, windspray.
Dogs' walked dodging showers.
Black mud, stained towels.
Dry slippers, warm mug,
Fireside, shared rug.

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Maybe I need some prompts to get me thinking again after the Christmas break.

Maybe I’ll find the next seven more inspiring.

Maybe I’ll catch you next week?

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