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greg2

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About greg2

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    On the end of the dog's lead
  1. Apologies for lack of contribution recently - a wedding intervened! LIKE BUILDING AN ORANGE This was one of the best bits he thought, as the first light oozed out from behind the eastern horizon and you could see the road stretching ahead through the greens and yellows and reds of autumn and you were very alone but on the way. It would not have been like this in an office job. It would not have been like this, regularly, even if he’d been able to stay in the army. Another one of the best bits was that the Goose Fair was a big fair, big enough for Slim Al to be taking all his concessions. That meant Margot would be there too, probably running one of the game stalls. He liked seeing Margot. The prize goldfish liked seeing Margot. It was about 6.30 when he pulled the tractor unit on to the lot and felt the bump as he eased the trailer down off the tarmac on to the grass. There would be a plan, Al would have told Greasy Jim the Mechanic how the lot should be laid out, and then gone to bed. He lowered a window and Greasy Jim appeared as if by magic. ‘Hallo Army boy. Get this tiddler out of the way. You can go down left next to the kids’ roundabout.’ It was true this was the smaller model of ferris wheel. But that made it easier to put up with a plate in your leg, and kids were a better class of customer. He drove slowly to his place and spent time with chocks and his spirit level getting the trailer absolutely level. Then he turned the engine back on, and operated the side controls to begin lifting the tower. He loved how, as the tower rose, it dragged the radial arms up from the floor of the trailer. A police car pulled up on the perimeter of the lot, keeping an eye on things. Army Boy climbed the tower so that at the top he could turn the small but vital control which locked the tower upright. As he reached the top he saw Greasy Jim on the field, exercising by walking backwards. He turned the control, and checked it. Then, looking out again across the field, he saw that Jim had walked backwards into a hole opened up by heavy rain. But Jim seemed to be OK. He seemed to be pulling some sort of package from the hole. The police car was bumping across the grass towards Greasy Jim, with the passenger officer hastily phoning HQ for guidance on the law on treasure trove. Army Boy climbed down the tower and pulled the first pair of radials towards the back of the trailer, bolting the first set of circumference sections in between the first and second pair of radials. It was like building an orange by adding one segment at a time. He would smarten up before the concessions started arriving. He had a story he could tell Margot.
  2. I'm afraid Tallyman and Ron Blanco are crediting me with a higher level of sophistication than I intended: it was purely coincidental that the name I plucked out of the air for Mark's wife or landlady (I never quite decided which) was the same as the name of a character in mr blue owl's piece. I am sure I had read mr blue owl's piece earlier, and perhaps the name Mrs Dawson had lodged in the back of my mind, but at the time of writing it was a random surname which could equally have come out as Mrs Smith. So the two Resurrections were simply two of these cars on the car transporter. The company Resurection SA is buying up these old cars before it relaunches itself in the UK, so that the old cars do not confuse and cloud Resurrection SA's new image. I shall try to be more careful with names in future. But I do like the idea that one contribution could interact with another. Perhaps I will try it one month. greg2
  3. UNDER ONE THOUSAND Mark glanced up from the sports section of the paper to check whether any potential customer had entered the showroom. It was pretty unlikely, especially on a wet weekday afternoon, but the professional salesman is constantly alert. To his left, across the Citroens and Fords, there was no sign of life. To his right were the Vauxhalls and the old-but-nice group, currently headed by a BMW with a patched up exhaust. Nothing there either – no, there was someone in the far corner. The far corner …. Mark strolled over in as casual a manner as he could manage given his rising excitement. ‘Interested in the Resurrection, are we, sir?’ he enquired. He would tell this to Mrs Dawson this evening, and then say if the car business ever got difficult he could always work for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and they would both laugh. The Resurrection would have looked entirely appropriate in downtown Havana. Its Brazilian designer, inspired by the heyday of the US automobile industry, had equipped it with so many lights and so much chrome that there had been little room left for paint, though these distinctions were now being eroded by the general advance of corrosion. There was leather upholstery and a cavernous boot and it sucked in petrol like a basking shark amongst plankton. ‘Yes I am.’ The customer wore dark glasses and a black leather coat but don’t start thinking about The Matrix, this was a much more avuncular package. You could believe it came from a good Brazilian gents outfitter about the same time that the car had been bankrupting its first owner. ‘I believe this car is a Resurrection from Brazil?’ ‘It is indeed,’ replied Mark, and he reached into the passenger compartment to finger the gear stick which, uniquely in a Resurrection, was a six inch model of Rio’s famous statue of Christ the Redeemer. ‘But you don’t have to go to Brazil for spare parts, there’s a dealership in Algeria.’ ‘Splendid. I’ll take it,’ said the customer, taking out a large pile of £20 notes and handing about an inch of the pile to Mark. ‘I have to go somewhere else but Richard here will take the car away.’ Richard must have come in to the showroom while they had been speaking. He didn’t mind when the Resurrection failed to start, he and his mate just winched it on to their car transporter, which already contained one other Resurrection. Mark had never seen two Resurrections at once, but he was still silly in the head from selling that car and for £999. The next morning Mark picked up the paper from the doormat – a classy car outlet should have a paper for customers – and read ‘Pele buys Post Office.’ It seemed the UK Post Office was to be purchased by the Brazilian communications and hi-tech conglomerate Resurrection SA, for £10 billion. There was nothing about cars.
  4. THE NOTE John arrives in the kitchen but cannot then remember why he has come into that room. This is not unusual. He has heard lots of people in their late forties onwards describe exactly this experience, and has more than once found his wife Maria standing in a room looking slightly puzzled, so this is common amongst older people, and not a cause for concern. He begins looking around the kitchen for anything which might provide a clue as to why he is there. He spots a piece of paper, folded over and wedged between a jar of dried lentils and the tiled splashback. He knows Maria often leaves herself notes as reminders, and sure enough as he unfolds the paper he recognises Maria’s handwriting, ‘Tell Helen about John’s dementia next time they visit.’ John’s hand twitches; he drops the note. Helen is their son Mervyn’s new girlfriend. John likes Helen, and he likes the idea that they begin to tell things to Helen as one of the family. He just wishes he’d been told this thing first. Forgetting that he has forgotten why he has gone into the kitchen, he walks back into the hall and looks in the mirror. There is the familiar reflection. He has brushed his hair. He is dressed tidily. There is no fleck of foam at the corner of his mouth, no strange glint in his eye. Yet it seems he is looking at someone who is mad.
  5. THE DRUMBURN SHRINE Cathy was still growing up in Drumburn when the Provost of the town announced that the Virgin Mary had appeared across the river from the new car park. The Provost had issued a Press Statement, with the enthusiastic support of the local Catholic priest Father O’Callaghan, and had even been interviewed on TV. Father O’Callaghan was subsequently summoned to discuss his behaviour with the Bishop, but by then a momentum was already building behind the story. Two evenings later Cathy was lying beside the river with her right arm in the icy black water tickling a trout for tea – this is a boy’s job, but Cathy is an Amazonian huntress, while her brother Jimmy is bookish and ineffectual, so Cathy did the fishing – when a huge beam of light shot over her and across the river. Drumburn then was a quiet place, the smallest town in what was the smallest county in Scotland. There had once been sheep on the hill behind the town, however they had been moved down the valley as they had disturbed the peace. But now the construction teams were arriving. At the centre of the plans, just a few feet from where Cathy was lying, was to be a Visitor Experience Center in which visitors, pilgrims indeed, could relive the moment of the apparition. There were also to be hotels, shops, a new and much larger church for Father O’Callaghan, and behind a screen of trees, industrial units producing Shrine of Drumburn memorabilia – Cathy’s mother had been pleased to get a job in one of these units. Down the valley, at the first available stretch of what could be made to be flat land, an airport was under construction, with a runway long enough for a Jumbo jet, because there was already a confidence that the faithful of several continents would be visiting the Shrine in considerable numbers. Cathy herself worked briefly in one of the Shrine’s shops. But once she qualified she moved up the valley, and there isn’t much now to identify her with Drumburn, apart from the plastic tree trunk on her windowsill from which an illuminated Virgin Mary emerges if you press the button on the base. I was round at Cathy’s one evening – I can’t remember on what pretext – when she suddenly confessed “I knew it wasn’t true about the Virgin appearing across the river from the car park. I should have said something at the time. I knew it wasn’t true because the Virgin always appeared to me in the trees up the hill, where the sheep used to be.” I made some excuse and left. I still think Cathy is a great girl, but I’m puzzling what to say about appearances of the Virgin Mary.
  6. THE AUBURN HILLS RESOLUTION There was a business owner in Auburn Hills who discovered on New Year’s Eve that his wife, a local beauty, had eloped with the Front of House Manager of the Plaza Hotel. The business owner spent a long but not celebratory evening in Ford’s Bar, eventually announcing, before being assisted from the premises, that his New Year’s Resolution was: “I will get even with that pondlife.” Rumours damaging to the Front of House Manager’s reputation began to circulate in the local community. The business owner was known to have hired the Pinkerton detective agency, at some cost. Coverage of the local hospitality industry in the Auburn Hills Chronicle seemed always negative in relation to the Plaza. The Front of House Manager was blackballed from the local Chamber of Commerce, depriving him of the networking opportunities afforded by the Annual Fundraising Turkey Dinner. A Wal Mart trolley full of rotting fish appeared on his front lawn. Meanwhile to enhance his chances of enticing the lady back, the business owner purchased a huge black Duesenberg Model J with dual windshields and whitewall tyres, which was said to be the largest car anywhere between Detroit and Canada. He purchased a matching new wardrobe of Italian suits both formal and casual, and memberships of several exclusive Country and Golfing Clubs in the area. It emerged that the business owner, nearing destitution, had been back to Ford’s Bar trying to hire a local hoodlum to give the Front of House Manager a few bruises. The bruises never happened because the Front of House Manager left the area at short notice, to take up an appointment as General Manager of the Grand Plaza Hotel in Grand Rapids. The lady in question left with him. I hear they now have an old dog which they rescued after it had been abandoned in a wardrobe at the National Home Furnishing Convention that year.
  7. Many thanks for all your entries. Here are my comments: Ian Rivedon – “Just Desserts” I liked this crisp, direct, earthy story. By writing in the first person and avoiding abstraction you have produced something compelling, and much farther away from the South East than your Hertfordshire location – this is definitely Alan Sillitoe rather than the Bloomsbury group! I found the local accent convincing, and as I completed the last sentence I could smell the present. Your piece joins a number of recent entries which choose to come in well under the 500 word limit – interesting trend. De Batz – Untitled An enigmatic piece, which succeeded in making me reread it several times as I grappled with the twin questions of what was the gift and who was the writer. My current hypothesis is that the gift is an abstract quality such as beauty and the writer some form of supernatural being, though I remain unsure as whether their inclination is positive – a god? – or negative – a devil? Is this part of a larger piece, in which I would read on to discover more? Hazel – “The 11 o’clock call” Another piece which makes a few words count for a lot, again capturing a South Yorkshire feel. This simple telling of the classic romantic-encounter-which-can-never-last successfully gets the reader’s imagination working to fill in the details. We will each have our own version of the details, but the core story still ensures there is not a dry eye in the house. Perhaps a strand of this is autobiographical? mr blue owl - “A Grouch in the Grotto” An umph in the ending which caught me by surprise. It was only afterwards in nit picking mode that I thought Debbie was unusually articulate and insightful, and exceptional in remembering what happened “a few years ago”. Your writing demonstrated very effectively the power of dialogue to capture and hold our attention. And I always feel a proper story is coming up when I see some alliteration in the title! As is often the case a strong field and a difficult choice, but my winner for December is Ian Rivedon for “Just Desserts” - congratulations! With best wishes for a Happy New Year for all greg2
  8. THE AFRICAN QUEEN Deep within Police Headquarters the surveillance room displayed a map of the south of Sheffield on which six red dots were visible. A second display showed the progress of the Prime Minister unter Fuhrer’s train on its journey from London. The train had reached Derby. No army of agents fed in information to update these displays. Surveillance of occupied populations had been greatly facilitated by the National Socialist Satellite System and its global positioning capabilities. The occupied had proved only too willing to rent mobile phones from National Socialist Telecommunications (other operators had been eliminated), ensuring that their conversations and their whereabouts could be monitored twenty four hours a day. It had been inevitable that as soon as plans for the Prime Minister’s visit began to be known, there would be attempts by local resistance groups to disrupt the visit. Each red dot on the display showed the location of a person suspected of involvement in activity to undermine the visit. They appeared to be forming a group - the red dots were converging on a single point in Millhouses Park. The only event authorised in the Park that afternoon was the monthly meeting of the Boat Boys of Millhouses, during which they would be exhibiting their radio controlled model boats on the boating pond. Soon the six red dots could be seen to move off together, slowly making their way north out of the Park along the Sheaf valley towards the station. The Prime Minister’s train was approaching Chesterfield. It was time to eliminate any possible threats, and two fast top security teams with portable gps were dispatched to the Little London Road area to deal with the subversives. Sure enough, about 5 minutes later the red dots stopped moving. On the ground the security teams moved swiftly and silently across waste ground – the result of one of the last bombing raids – towards the river and the subversives’ route. Their location was pinpointed as a darkened bend in the river, still dotted with fallen masonry. Two long burst of fire from automatic weapons into the shadows left little scope for anyone to remain alive, but the area was thoroughly searched nonetheless. “No bodies sir, but look at this.” This was an old car tyre, still dripping from the river and now with a number of bullet holes. Six mobile phones had been taped inside the rim of the tyre. Prime Minister Goering’s train was emerging from the Totley Tunnel. The Boat Boys of Millhouses had been joined by an additional member, who had no mobile phone but did have a radio control set with which he was controlling a model of the African Queen. The control set had three buttons, one for forward, one for reverse, and one which he pressed as the front of the Prime Minister’s train burst into view under the Abbey Lane bridge. Explosions began to topple tons of earth and whole trees down from Hutcliffe Wood towards the track.
  9. Thanks - I am honoured and rather surprised, as this seemed a particularly strong field and there were several other entries I wished I'd written. I will try to think of a theme for December which is better than my woefully uninspiring September theme!
  10. THE PASSENGER FROM THE ZOO It was a long journey home across Berlin on the U Bahn, and it began ominously, as the train slowed down for the ghost station of Unter den Linden, crawling but not stopping past the dimly lit platform, watched by the Vopos with their automatic weapons at the ready to deal summarily with any East German intent on fleeing to the West by jumping on to a train. But with Unter den Linden behind him, Konrad changed to a line passing under the Kurfurstendamm, with bright well-lit stations used by bright well-fed shoppers. Standing at the end of the compartment Konrad would catch a glimpse of well dressed couples, hear a snatch of laughter as the doors opened. As the train moved on towards the Zoo station Konrad noticed a red headed girl sitting on the right, further down the carriage. She seemed to be reading a letter. When he looked again a few seconds later she was blushing slightly, and putting the letter back in her bag. She was pretty, and very pretty when blushing. But then the train arrived at the Zoo station, and an elderly couple got on, partially blocking his line of vision. The train seemed to dip slightly on the side beside the platform, then the doors closed. As the train began to move Konrad thought he heard a muffled sound, and looked at the elderly couple. The man was looking straight ahead with the non-specific smile of someone enjoying deafness. But the woman seemed to have slid down in her seat and as he watched, slid further, out of sight. He began to move towards them, in case she was in some kind of difficulty. He had taken a few steps when he saw something roll out from under the elderly couple’s seat on to the central corridor. It was an eye. He broke into a run. The elderly man began to move a little lower in his seat. The train rounded a bend, and the elderly woman’s body toppled from her seat into the corridor. “Something’s wrong. We need to help them” Konrad called to the red headed girl. She put down her newspaper and he looked into the two empty sockets where her eyes had been only minutes earlier. He shrieked, and turned to run away. An overpowering smell hit him as something damp seized his ankle and at the same time felt for his head.
  11. Coming down from the mountains I find that judging the September competition will be less demanding than I feared! Many thanks for your entry De Batz, which cleverly created an epic atmosphere in a short passage, and is a worthy winner. The orphaned brothers build authenticity by echoing classics such as Romulus and Remus. I particularly liked the reference at the end, creating the impression of a story which has passed through many tellings, and reminding how much we are in the hands of the translators when reading a story originally written or spoken in another language. If I have understood the ending correctly, the sharing of the curse means both brothers live forever, so we can perhaps look forward to their entries in the October competition. greg2
  12. Hi all I hope you will forgive a slight delay in judging the September competition - I'm afraid I have to be out of touch at the beginning of October. But I should be able to find something connected by 7 October, and promise that the writing competition will be the first thing I deal with! Apologies for prolonging the suspense greg2
  13. ONE SUMMER’S MORNING They were hungry when they came down for breakfast, and suddenly both wanted the contrasting colours and textures of the apricots and prunes. Sally filled two bowls and brought them to the table, because she liked to bring Michael food. She seemed to Michael to walk on air. “Is it a Scottish thing, apricots and prunes?” she asked. “I’ve only ever found them in this hotel” replied Michael. “It must be a combination invented by The Laird.” This was their name for the owner of the hotel. Two plates of fresh eggs, local bacon, haggis on a tattie scone, and wild mushrooms appeared, carried by The Laird in person, for he liked his young, laughing guests, and had a suggestion if they would like a drive in the country on such a fine morning. “There will be rabbits in the fields, trout in the burn, and pheasants in the hedges. Maybe grouse too.” They ate swiftly and easily, gazed across the valley at the sunlight on the hills, and crunched toast made tangy by The Laird’s homemade raspberry jam. “The raspberry is to Scotland what the lemon is to Italy” he had said, winking this from a pomposity into a joke. The drive was all the Laird had promised. Once they had turned off the main road into The Laird’s “Secret Valley,” Michael saw his first grouse, then another and another, all along the side of the winding road. Sally was entranced by the rabbits gambling across the fields, then caught her breath as a heron rose suddenly from the burn. The road had just emerged from woods when Michael brought the car to a halt and opened his door. “What’s the matter?” asked Sally. “I think we may have hit something. You wait here while I check.” Twenty yards back from the car Michael found a rabbit in the road. It was still alive – months later he was still seeing its eyes move towards him – but it could not move and its back legs twitched involuntarily above a red stain which grew slowly larger. Michael went back to the car and took a wrench from the toolkit in the boot. He looked away as he brought the wrench down on the rabbit’s head, again and again. Then he had to look to be sure the legs had stopped twitching. They had; relieved he stood up to see Sally had got out of the car and was watching him. He had wanted her not to see this. She was pale, and as he started to say something she rushed to the side of the road to be sick. When they drove on, the sun was still shining and other rabbits were still gambling in the fields, but inside the car it was very different and very quiet. It was not yet clear whether Michael and Sally were going anywhere, but if they were, they would need to deal with times when the wild trampled their meringue.
  14. Lady A Thanks! It is a long time since I won anything. I guess I'd better start thinking about a theme for September. greg2
  15. THE HOLIDAYS GO ON FOREVER Jane was looking forward to the summer holidays. She would get away from Liam Jones, who punctuated her schooldays with taunts of “Plain Jane always the same.” But more than that, these were going to be the holidays when she grew up. Jane’s Mum had said that when she finished Year 9 she could choose her own hairstyle. As she walked down the hill from school at the end of the last day of term, she considered again the choice between a Kate Middleton style or something bigger, like Beyonce. Suddenly her schoolbag was dashed to the ground as Liam shot past on his one pedalled mountain bike. Jane heard his “Plain Jane always the same,” and the sniggers of other boys, as she bent to retrieve her bag. Then there were clothes. A trip into town with saved up birthday money and Tracey from class, who was not as much of a mate as Sarah but who knew about grown up clothes. Jane was particularly pleased with her biker jacket. She had just got off the bus with her bags when “Plain Jane always the same” rang out from across the road. Liam spat on the ground and rode round the corner into the street where he lived, in a house where the curtains were always closed. Nonetheless it would be a very different Jane who returned to school at the end of the holidays. And the change would not be ruined by Liam. It had been easy to bump into Liam in the park and tempt him to the old container on the other side of the railway line. As they walked to the container Liam had suddenly started to talk – about Manchester United, about why his bike had only one pedal, about his younger sister who was in care because his mum couldn’t look after her. Jane had asked him to wait in the container while she got ready, then quickly bolted the door shut. He would learn a big lesson by the time she let him out the next day. She got home to a whirlwind of excitement. “Jane where have you been we’ve got this fantastic holiday on lastminute dotcom the last week of the holidays in Spain for next to nothing, you must pack, the taxi will be here in half an hour” said her mother breathlessly. In the container that night Liam was hungry and cold. The next day he resumed his efforts to attract attention, but again no one responded. By the third evening – or was it the fourth – he was desperate. Surely they would come looking for him? But was there anyone who cared? In the dark cold, in the smell, in his hunger, in his panic, Liam began to cry. Jane returned from Spain a little anxious, but found no one seemed to have missed Liam. After a few days the teacher removed Liam’s name from the register. Some families are always moving.
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