This story crept into my mind while I was thinking about two friends who have had recent spells in hospital.
Apart from a two day spell in the Victoria Infirmary as a three-year-old to have my tonsils removed, I have been fortunate never to need hospitalisation. Long may this situation continue!
This short piece is purely from imagination.
Make a coffee and have a delve.
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This story came from a Writers’ Circus challenge.
The starting point was a story which Peter, (our Archivist), had saved from years earlier. In that original story, a chap who was often ‘put upon’ by colleagues had a lucky (?) rabbit’s foot. When someone dissed our anti-hero, he rubbed the rabbit’s foot and bad things happened to the perpetrator.
How this present story grew from that first 200 word story is a mystery to me. But here it is.
I suggest you give it a go and if it does not grab you, let it go and do something else.
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This is an entirely fictional tale and I hope that residents of the Scottish Hebrides will accept it for what it is.
It is graphic in style and content, perhaps a bit ‘gushy’ and might be classified as a modern “Mills and Boon” novella.
It is the tale of girl evacuated to North Uist during the early stages of WW2.
She is restless, dissatisfied with her lot, forced to live a life so different from her cosmopolitan upbringing in Glasgow.
Very soon she is an outcast. Partly because she does not speak Gaelic while most locals have little English.
She is resented because she is ‘posh’, glamorous, has nice hair, owns an expensive wardrobe and wears make-up.
There, that will have to be enough.
Give it a go, you might like it, once you have your feet under the table.
As with most of my recent stories this one has been self-edited using “Read Aloud” in “Word”.
If you spot an error or typo, please use your best judgment and READ ON.
Thank you.
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The first scribing of this tory began in October 2017 as a response to a Writers’ Circus challenge “the road that must be followed”.
It involves religion, love, adultery, drugs and alcoholism and may not be everyone’s first choice of reading material.
It starts just before the 1955 Billy Graham Rally in Glasgow.
From Glasgow it then moves to The Gambia, back to Glasgow then on to Tenerife and back again to Glasgow.
Hopefully, if you give it a try, you might become intrigued and want to find out how it concludes?
The first version was edited by my friend Kareth Paterson of Writers’ Circus then became mired in the fallout from Covid lockdowns.
The version offered here was revamped over a two month spell and self-edited using the ‘Read Aloud’ tool in Word.
Please try to forgive typos and when you find a glitch, use you best judgement and read on.
Click here to download the PDF.
This is a lighthearted tale about an group of friends who are members of the Brillo Investment Club.
The piece was written in response to a Writers’ Circus challenge, “it’s only a suggestion”.
The Brillo Investment Club is in the doldrums and Mrs Slyvi Newlands decides its time for a shake-up.
I sent a link to a friend and then decided to ‘tidy it up.
This is the revised version which I think is easier to comprehend.
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This is a story which started out on my iPad many years ago, during a holiday to Blackwaterfoot on the Isle of Arran, in the Firth of Clyde. While we were in Tenerife recently, I rediscovered it and decided it should be completed.
This tale is set in 1853. The Irish Potato Blight is rampant. There are no antibiotics to counter tuberculosis and similar diseases, often fatal.
From Blackwaterfoot a lone fisherman sets sail across the notorious North Channel to one of his favourite fishing grounds, twenty-five miles away off the northernmost coast of Ireland. Very soon he is engulfed by a huge storm.. . ..
With a few twists, this is a tale of romance and survival.
Why not give it a try? It might ‘hook’ you.
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This is a confection generated by a 10 minute flash fiction exercise at our November 2023 Writers’ Circus meeting.
The Topic/Title given was “What I can hear”.
Under pressure of this time limit, this is what came to mind.
Takes about two minutes to read.
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This story came from a Writers’ Circus challenge on the theme ‘Harvest Festival’.
In the 1960s when I lived in Govanhill near the Synagogue in Bellisle Street (a tiny sanctuary now long closed), my Mum was the cleaning lady cum ‘manager’. This entailed the duty of opening the Synagogue for morning and evening prayers and quite often I would be delegated to perform the evening duty. At this time I was a late teenager with dark Beatle’s hair and a straggly beard.
The worshipers, mostly elderly men wearing long coats and felt hats, would arrive on foot in drabs and drabs hoping for a minimum of TEN men (a ‘Minyan’ (meen-yon)) to enable prayers and scripture readings to be performed at their evening ritual. Those who did not know me would scold my bare head with:
“YARMULKE! YARMULKE!”
In the autumn, in a tiny garden beside the Synagogue, they would build a (deliberately) flimsy structure, a shack-like tent where the worshipers crowded say prayers and sing unaccompanied to celebrate the Festival of Tents (Sukkot).
Armed with this memory, this story wrote itself.
More info at: https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/4784/jewish/What-Is-Sukkot.htm.
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This tale came from a Writers’ Circus challenge.
We were sent a copy of a photograph of a statue which stands at the entrance to Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA).
In this snap, the Duke of Wellington is Wellington astride his warhorse Copenhagen. On Wellington’s head he has a red and white traffic cone. Glasgow humour.
This image rattled around in my head until we arrived at Scone, Stirling in our caravan for a few days. We had hoped to go to Blair Atholl Caravan park but it was FULL due the the Blair Castle Horse Trials.
The story wrote itself.
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This story comes from a Writers’ Circus challenge entitled - ‘The Day After’.
Indeed for most of the time I was crafting this, I called it ‘The Day After the Night Before’ until a different title suggested itself from the dialogue.
It is set in 1955, in the West of Scotland, in Motherwell which at that time was a thriving steel town.
The characters are middle-class, twin sisters competing for the best of two brothers.
In true Peoples’ Friend style it is full of twists and turns and flew easily from my noddle onto the screen, keeping me amused as the story told itself.
I hope this fun comes across and that you enjoy it too.
Click here to download the PDF.