Magenta Monster

Yep it’s that time of year again!

I’ve been working heavily on my kid lit stuff (probably due to having a baby this year!) so haven’t done as much as I had hoped with my flash fiction this year boo hiss though I have been going a long to an open mic spoken word thing which has been useful as it has meant that I get to hear what the stories actually sound like!

We are currently in the disruption of moving so that is likely to impinge on writing time for a while boo hiss 🙁

Still Merry Christmas Everyone!

‘Daddy?’ said the little girl with her already pink nose and wisps of honey hair escaping from bobble hat and coat hood. In some places the snow was deeper than she was.

‘Yes?’ said the tall man with blue eyes and an easy smile. His hand made thick by thinsulate glove held her tiny hand in it’s home knitted one.

‘Why are the cows out in the field?’

‘Because that is where they live,’ he replied.

‘But Daddy, they must be cold, shouldn’t they come in?’

‘I think the farmer moves them to a barn at night, they are fine.’

‘Daddy should we make them cocoa?’

‘Erm… I don’t think so, I don’t think cows drink it. Why?’

‘Mummy always makes us cocoa when we’ve been out exploring,’

‘Yes she does but cows are different,’

‘Really?’

‘Yes’

‘How?’

‘Some people eat cows.’

‘Do you?’

‘No I’m a vegetarian’

‘Does Mummy?’

‘Yes,’

‘Do I?’

‘You have done yes’

‘I haven’t! I’ve not eaten anything like a cow it would moo when you stuck your fork in!’

‘They are dead and cooked and stuff so they don’t look like animals.’

‘What about sheep?’

‘Yes’

‘And pigs?’

‘Yes’

‘Chickens?’

‘Yes’

‘And dead people?’

The father paused for a moment, ‘not in most countries as it is considered not nice.’

‘Why?’

He sighed and realised they had reached that phase of childhood, still everyone would laugh at the retelling. They trudged through the snow back to the warm house with Mummy the meat eater in it discussing the merits of death rituals like burial and burning. It was a good walk.

The Winter Depths (First published on Blue Monster)

The cold freezes the air to solid form, coating the branches of the trees, starting from the smallest twig which become heavy under the white crystals. The night draws on and the day seems murky and insincere and then sometimes to have happened not at all.

The winter is a depth into which most modern people do not delve, but as the ice inches its way onto the roads and into the water pipes, even the most sheltered cannot but notice the icy pall that covers the land.

Shivering on the way to work, shivering within the home, heating insufficient and the shops running out of heaters. The darkness of white covers the ground, rendering all sterile and forlorn.

I have made these booklets of The Little Book of Festive Poetry which is a collection of poems about winter and Christmas I have written and illustrated for my kids. We are giving limited editions to friends and family and selling the others for £3.

Two more of my photos to be used in creating stories 🙂

Guilt (Frist published on Blue Monster)

Guilt of the survivors of that place, tainted by war and the desire to purge others of what they percieved as failings – those deadly characteristics which formed those that had ridiculed them almost to extinction. Cleansing did not work, and they became the oppressors, the dealers of raw and inaccurate justice, and they saw blood.

It was only as the blood leached into the ground and soddened the crops that the despair and realisation that it had indeed been the guilt of thier own survival that had lead them to perpetuate the cicle.

Some could cope, and made a new quiet life; some took their own and others went on, more zealous than ever, in a task that became worse with each circle of doing. Guilt consumed them and made the pain shine brighter. The war atrocities would mar the pages of history, though few would see it for what it was.

Tea (first published on Blue Monster)

I really love tea, I awake in the morning and think I could just murder a cuppa, I think sometimes it is more of an addiction than a love affair. When I say tea I do not just mean the bog standard tar in a cup, with milk that’s been left of the fridge too long and brown scum circles in a badly stained mug with chips and paint all over it. No I mean all teas – fruit teas that smell enticing and taste more inside than I would like but somehow convince me it is healthy for me. Mint tea first thing is great for pepping me up and calming any fear of the day ahead. Then there are teas made from the red berries which are sweet and I like to have instead of cake. Strawberry and elderflower and rose petal are delicate and send me thinking of Turkish delight and my grandmothers. Then there are the blackcurrant and nettle teas which sort of invigorate you but do taste medicinal.

I love fennel tea, which tastes of liquorice but alas and alack it gives me the most painful of mouth ulcers and so is really savoured and saved for celebrations. The Roobu tea is ghastly, though, and along with dandelion tea I have consigned to the “I need to feel I am doing something healthy” set.

Spicy apple is good for a blocked noise and the citric ones good for sour thoughts.

Then back to Earl grey and Lady grey and Assam and Darjeeling.

Then to green tea which I will drink all day just adding more water making it weaker and weaker. My favourite for a calorific hit though is a Chi Latte, which is the lushest drink you can imagine.

So as you can see I really do love Tea.

Negative tea

Tea!

Why do people drink it – really? Are they masochists? It is the devils brew and make no mistakes; it is teeth staining; gut rotting, insipid and foul. Why waste hot water on the stuff? Never mind milk and lemon, what are people thinking when they left the beverage to their lips?

Neutral Tea

Hot beverage containing stimulants such as caffeine and carcinogens such as tannin. Many people drink it made by infusing leaves or berries of various plants. Herbal teas can be beneficial to health but tend to contain a lot of sugar.

The Blue Rose (First published on Blue Monster)

The young man had a dream and that dream was to breed the most exquisite rose on the surface of the Earth. He was fortunate in that he was a young man of means in a large house, in a time when such horticultural exploits were seen as a constructive thing for young men to do, like becoming a vicar or sailing to foreign parts.

He had always found religion wishy washy and he became seasick in a horse and cart so the other two options were out. His Aunt Pieter happened to be an award winning flower breeder and he had sat avidly at her knee through his otherwise uneventful and neglected childhood.

And so for his 21st he had requested the correct set-up and he was away. That young man strove and produced many beautiful blooms which adorned the gardens throughout Europe but the elusive blue remained stubbornly out of his reach and he grew older and older.

At some point he had given thought to family and had sought out young ladies but they never seemed to engage him and he had withered under their blank stares. One or two had exclaimed over the roses in the greenhouses and he had almost married one frail thing who had pronounced a desire to have a garden festooned with different roses but alas consumption had carried her away and his roses had covered her grave instead of the garden she had coveted.

Thoughts of family and that sort of thing died with her and his only passion had remained the roses and so he grew even older. And now the young man had become ancient, 87 to be precise and he pottered, watering the last experiment, his hands too gnarled to do any of the delicate work. It had not yet bloomed and he felt his life drawing to a close. There was one small bud covered in green. He noticed it and gingerly touched it, sighed, coughed and went back into the house.

And so he never saw his blue bloom, though it was placed upon his own grave several weeks later after a swift pneumonia had taken him.

More of my photos to help writers write…

Jane awake her throat was soar, ‘Mummy,’ she tried to say but couldn’t.

‘It’s ok baby your in hospital remember, you’ve just had your tonsils out so your throat will be a bit swollen.’ Her Mother’s hand stroked her gently she was safe.

‘Herby,’ she whispered.

‘Here’s Herby darling, who’s a little Herby hedgehog,’ her mother sang gentle, Jane felt the soft pricklies reassured, she fell back into a warm cotton wool sleep. When she opened her eyes again, she looked around and tried to sit up, Herby was still clutched in her hand. It was night time, it shouldn’t have been night time! The doctor had said she would be awake in time for dinner, she had been looking forward to it, it was going to be pizza and rice pudding – two of her favourites.

‘The operation took longer than the doctors originally thought dear, ’cause guess what they had to give you some extra blood, that’s what all the tubes are about its nothing to be scared about.’ Jane saw the reassuring smile and settled down – she still felt so tired. She looked at the tubes, ‘I’m a cyborg robort thing,’ she was happy, she couldn’t wait ’till she told Mal he would be so jealous that she got to be a cyborg and he didn’t. He’d been jealous enough when she had told him about the blue robot butterfly the doctors where going to put on her hand.

She loved butterflies, she had pictures of them all over her bedroom, not this one in the hospital but the one at home and her and Mal were always designing robots together, some with gun attachments, some with hovers and some were surgeons with big knives like that man in that film with all the ice and haircuts, she couldn’t remember what it was called.

She felt herself drifting back into sleep, ‘Daddy can I watch a film?’ she asked horsly.

‘What tonignht?’

She nodded.

‘There isn’t a TV dear,’ he said.

Jane shock her head, ‘no, one that happens inside my head.’ She liked the films that happened at night inside her head, they where great.

‘Yes off course you can darling they’re called dreams, and you can whatch as many of them as you like.’ She felt the reassuring strokes on ber hand. The film started, there were teddy bears and space ships.

Next time she opened her eyes it was daylight, full daylight, ‘Ah awake at last miss, well here’s your lunch.’ Said the nice nurse. Jane opened her eyes wide a big bowl of ice cream with crisps stuck in the top was put down in front of her.

‘Wow,’ she exclaimed in her scratch whisper, ‘is it someones birthday?’

The nice nurse smiled at her, ‘no this is special food for brave girls who have had there tonsils out.’

Jane tried to drink some of the water the nurse had also left but her throat hurt so much. Oh how her throat was soar! She would never be able to eat the ice cream and crisps, she put the spoon in anyway scooped out some ice cream and stuffed it very unlady like into her mouth after having checked that no grandmothers was around to tell her off. Creamy vinilla filled her mouth, a bit colder than she liked, it hurt her head, she swallowed, it was a bit painful but mainly it was cold, each mouth full was less painful and it was delicious. She was very hungry, perhaps she had been in desert for days and days with no food and little water and this was sweet water from an oasis and this was all just a mirror or something, ‘What do you think Herby?’ she asked a little less horsly than before. Herby obviously agreed with her. Looking around Jane saw the tube going into her hand under a bandage, I’m still a cyborge she thought but it was throbbing slightly.

Ut oh, she needed the toilet, really desperately she nedded the toilet, she began to squirm, she realised that she was in a single room not like before the operation where she had been in with lots of other children, where was the loo?

She’d just have to mount an expedition, she went to get out of bed pain shot through both hands, making her cry. The pipes hurt if she moved, she couldn’t move without pain, ‘Mummy!’ she began to wail. ‘Daddy!’ she was going to wet herself as well and only baby brothers did that, that’s why they wore nappies. She was hugging Herby fiercely, ‘Herby I need a weewee,’ she sobbed.

A nurse came in, ‘Oh honey whats wrong?’ she asked as she sat on the chair at the side of the bed. ‘I need a weewee!’ she sobbed, ‘and I tried to go by myself but my hands hurt, I don’t wont the tubes anymore, take them away, please!’

‘Ok honey listen calm down, now come on, the tubes have to stay but,’ and she held up a hand, with one finger pointing to the ceiling, ‘I can wheel you in a special chair to the toilet, how about that?’

Jane stopped crying, ‘will I be a telepathic mutant with a bald head?’

The nurse smiled, ‘if you want to be.’ Jane smiled back.

After an exciting experdition to the toilet Jane settled down to a butterfly jigsaw puzzle with her daddy.

‘I’m a ‘ittle ‘erby ‘edgehog,’ come the soft country voice, ‘does this piece go here? Ir asked.’

‘No Herby that goes over here, silly headghog.’ She smiled Herby could be so silly sometimes, she patted him on the head.