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 |  All the GoT stuff, 2024. |
| Apparently this is going to be a load of writing of various types - stories, poems, reviews and, no doubt, just about anything else you can think of. I'll probably update this when I know more. |
| Nine to Five Another day, another damsel, another call to go and save, puff out the chest and feel manful, buff the armour, have a shave. Saddle Dobbin and hit the road, wend the way to dragon’s nest, stab the brute and prod and goad, eternal round, he knows you’re best. Free the gentle charming lady, set her on your tired steed, lead the way to Castle Brady, drop her off and home to feed. Line count: 12, Word count: 72 Rhymed abab For "Game of Thrones"  , His Story Prompt 4 PoetryPrompt: 4. You are a knight on the way to save a princess, which is something you do on a weekly basis. Unfortunately, no princess has been interested in marrying you, even after witnessing your heroic acts. |
| Leaving Left the city on a cold day in November took the car and filled the tank flipped a coin for the road to take headed north when it landed heads Parked in a side road in the mountains left the car and breathed the air climbed a slope and drank the vista scrambled down and kept on going. Line count: 8 Free verse For "Game of Thrones" The North Remembers, His Story Prompt 1Prompt: He packed up and walked out the door to never return. |
| The Family Albert Freen loved yard sales. Especially the really big ones that spread out across the lawn and then offered entrance to rooms in the house where the stuff was piled on every horizontal surface. These were the ones where a diligent searcher could find things of magic and mystery and romance, items that spoke of times and places far away, the stuff of dreams indeed. In time, Albert became a well known face at these more professional sales, the ones where the owners had their own collections and did their own searching and accumulating before selling what no longer fitted with their current obsessions. Both sellers and buyers would see him coming and call out a cheery greeting, with suggestions of good areas to begin his hunt and news of something really special being considered by a competitor. And Albert would smile and follow the tips, always ready to take advantage of another’s special knowledge and taste. For Albert would buy anything, it seemed. So broad was his interest that those who watched him never managed to discern a particular propensity for a type or class of collection, some fine specialisation that preferred one style or period or type over another. Speculation was rife over what drove his eclectic collection of just about everything under the sun. They figured that the collection must be enormous, although no one had ever seen it. For Albert never sold anything. Not for him, this matter of spreading out his unwanted goods upon the lawn for the world to gawk at. He just kept adding to his hoard, buying new houses when the existing ones became full. People guessed that each house held items that, together, constituted museum class collections of period and style and use, but no one was ever allowed entrance to see for themselves. Albert just smiled and said nothing to the neighbours as he came and went from each house in turn, living for a while with one collection and then moving on to live with the next. In this way he became well known throughout the various neighbourhoods of the city and yard sellers felt honoured when his battered old pickup pulled up at the kerb outside their sales. So it was that, when Albert arrived at Ken James’ annual sale, he was welcomed profusely and led immediately inside the house to view “the good stuff.” And Albert smiled and began to sift through everything in sight and much that was not, while the little pile of things he was going to buy grew taller and taller. Albert worked meticulously through the rooms, even digging into containers of assorted junk, on the off chance that some disregarded gem was secreted under the rest. And he came at last to something large and black, rectangular and heavy. He could see that it was a book, obviously old and worn, but with the potential of being worth a lot of money. He cleared away the trash pinning it to the table, produced a rag to wipe away the dust, and opened it carefully. It was a family photo album. He guessed that the first photos might be from the mid 19th Century, which would make them very valuable. They showed serious faces looking out from dark and severe backgrounds, assembled into grim family groupings or single portraits just as forbidding. Albert knew that this was caused by the necessity of their holding a pose for several minutes while the camera did its magic, but he still thanked his stars that he had not been raised in so dolorous a family. He turned a few pages and marvelled at the continuing line of serious faces peering from the photos into his eyes. The album was valuable, yes, but a bit depressing. And besides, he had other stuff to inspect and add to his haul that day. He closed the book, hefted it into his arms and took it down to the first room where his pile awaited further acquisitions. In the late afternoon, Albert paid the asking price for his items and piled them into the back of his truck. The sun had set by the time he arrived back at the Wensford house and he unloaded in the dark, with only the porch light to assist. When he came to the photo album, he took it into the house, set it on the kitchen table, pulled up a chair and opened it. It was time to make a first assessment of its worth. He ploughed through the first pages fairly quickly. These he’d seen before. Then he was into the mid section and he slowed down to examine each photo more carefully. They were now late Victorian by the dress, but the expressions on the faces remained as unremittingly miserable as the earlier examples. He did notice that the people seemed uglier now, that the family resemblance had degenerated into a common reversion into coarse and unattractive features. He turned the pages with growing revulsion at the faces. It was as if the family were turning into a race of evil, misshapen goblins and demons. Still he kept turning the pages until he was close to the end. It was the Edwardian period now and the faces were indescribably and unbelievably ugly. The last photo was of a woman, with eyes like saucers in a face from which the flesh sagged like drapes from the underlying bone structure. Her ears poked out, huge and flapping, from her wiry and unkempt hair, her large mouth fell slack and open, dribble issuing from both corners and her pallor sickly unto death. Albert stared at her transfixed. And then he felt the weight of a heavy hand placed on his shoulder. In his ear, so close that he could feel the cold, unnatural breath, he heard the words, “Ah, so you’ve found me at last, have you? Feast your eyes on my prettiness, little one, for we’ll spend many years in hell together.” House Martell Word count: 999 For "Game of Thrones" The North Remembers, His Story Prompt 23Prompt: 23. Start your story with a character looking through an old family photo album. |
| Appointment It had been many years since I last looked up at the massive wall of the enclosure at Great Zimbabwe. That had been over fifty years before and I a callow youth only lately arrived in my teens. Nothing had changed in the ruins over the years when I moved from place to place and continent to continent. These ancient stone buildings endured the years in stolid immovability, only the lichen creeping year by year over the faces of the rocks and changing the colours as they did so. And now I was back again, briefly, to make good a promise made a few years after my visit. It had been a ghoulish idea really, a romantic hippy notion to meet in this place on one hearing of the death of the other. I do not recall ever discussing with Garth the existence or otherwise of ghosts, but I suppose the mists of Mary Jane dismissed from our minds any thoughts that such matters might impede the post mortem meeting we envisaged. Far from our minds, too, must have been the possibility that we would both travel so far in the intervening years that the choice of venue might be an obstacle. Garth and his wife, Sharon, with baby daughter Genevieve, did indeed move to Cape Town a few years later, and set up a shop selling trendy trinkets made by other hippies in the area. Some time later, I heard that the couple had divorced and Garth emigrated to Australia. That was the last I heard of him until a mutual friend advised me of his death, thereby sparking memories of the promise we had made so many years before. My own travels and settlings had left me a considerable distance from Zimbabwe, too. The journey back there took me over an ocean and across the equator, a long way to go in the hope of so unlikely a reunion. But I made the trip without expectation of success. It would be good to see Africa again, anyway. So here I was, wandering amongst the ruins of Great Zimbabwe, reflecting on old times and waiting for midnight, the appointed time for the meeting. In the late afternoon, I climbed the steep track up the hillside to the Acropolis, that fortress built into the top of the hill that towered above the main ruins in the valley. It was more difficult than I remembered, age having drained much of my enthusiasm for exercise, and I arrived at the top later than I expected, with the star-scattered African night sky already spread like a canopy over my head. I rested a while, then made my way around the edge of the escarpment to the whispering cave. This was a shallow indentation in the side of the hill, protected from the weather by an overhanging rock, with a marvellous view of the ruins far below. It was said that the acoustics of the cave meant that messages whispered there could be heard in the great enclosure and this had been used by the inhabitants to maintain contact between the two sections of the city. I sat down with my back against the rock and waited for midnight. It came eventually and, with it, a dark figure that walked along the path leading to the cave. I stood up, not believing that it might be Garth. But it was him alright, instantly recognisable with his shock of dark hair and voluminous beard, his glasses and confident swagger. Even his clothing was much as it had been in the old days. I greeted him as though the years had fallen away and we were young again. “Garth, you old bastard, you remembered.” He smiled that well remembered grin, revealing his top teeth resting upon his lower lip like some really bushy rodent. “There are some things that are never forgotten,” he said. “I heard you were dead,” I continued. “Such reports are wildly exaggerated.” He was always quick with the witty reply. But I knew that he was being economical with the truth. No one at our age looks exactly as they did in their early twenties. And Garth had not changed in the slightest. There was no doubt in my mind that I was looking at a ghost but, somehow, it did not matter. We fell into conversation as animated as it had always been, swiftly reverting to the hippy slang of those bright days in the height of the sixties cultural explosion. “Man, Garth, it’s really good to see you. What the hell have you been up to all this time?” “Oh, this and that, man. I’m an Ozzie now, you know? Just like Zim but drier.” “Still writing poetry, are you?” “Nah,” said. “Gave that up when I discovered I could make more money selling gear other cats made.” “Cool enough,” I replied. “And writing’s about all I do these days. Funny how things turn out.” “It’s all good, man. Cosmo has spoken!” And so it went, two old hippies living again their golden age, carried away in the nostalgia of a time that was gone forever. The night flew by as the memories were swapped in quickfire bursts. The dawn was breaking when Garth prepared to leave. “Gotta go, man. They only gave me the night. The powers that be, I mean. And that rumour you heard, about my death. I lied, man. Sorry.” “I know, Garth. It’s the same for me.” He looked at me with eyes wide in surprise. “What? I never heard anything about you dying.” I shrugged. “Word of mouth’s not a reliable news medium. But being dead sure made getting here a lot easier.” House Martell Word count: 949 For "Game of Thrones" The North Remembers, Travel Marvel Prompt 34Prompt: 34. You arrive at a destination you promised an old friend you’d visit after they passed, only to find them there too. |
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