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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is a tale about a an ordinary man who buys a boat.
The boat is odd and holds secrets which make it the target for others, who want to take it from him.
It is set mainly on the West Coast of Scotland and the Irish Sea, centred on Ardrossan, Largs and Ayr.
Give it a try, why don’t you?
This story was scribed while in Gran Canaria, while people-watching, in a local restaurant.
Beside us at the next table, a lovely American couple ordered a bottle of expensive wine. (You can read about this in the final few paragraphs.)
The chap looked to me as if he was an ‘academic’.
He and his lady companion, both in their fifties, were ‘too friendly and polite to each other’ to be married, was my take.
I was intrigued.
Read on....
This story was written in response to a Writers’ Circus challenge on the topic of ‘dreaming’.
It was largely tapped out on my iPad while we were on holiday at Siverdyke Caravan Park at Cellardyke, one of a string of coastal villages which form the East Nuke of Fife and a short walk from the village of Kilrenny which features in the story.
Kilrenny (with nearby Anstruther and Cellardyke) is ‘twinned’ with Bapaume, a small industrial town in North-East France.
The story is about a spinster lady who lives in Kilrenny. She is down on her luck but still struggling to keep up appearances.
Read on.
This is a story about two young people who become close friends at university.
Then, after a long separation, they meet again.
It is set in Glasgow and the Isle of Barra.
The tale was sparked by a Writers’ Circus topic: “Harvest”.