A man called Ted, bought a badge
To give to his girl called Madge.
The badge was a work of beauty
All shiny, sparkly just like his little cutey.
Madge was so impressed,
She wore it every time she dressed
Pinned it to her voluptuous breast
Only removed it twas time to rest.
On her wedding day she held it against her heart
For she craved the day their life would start.
Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2020/12/17/tale-weaver-badges-december-17th/
There was every reason to believe it was nothing but a sure thing. Indications before the day led us to think it was merely a matter of going through the motions and victory would be ours.
In fact, with the close of the polls in some places celebrations had begun. To say our candidate was feeling cocky was understating our expectation of success.
Initial results pointed to a clear and decisive win.
Our vote count illustrated what we knew was the obvious. Our man was on the path to victory.
An hour into the count, the first indication that things were not going as expected began to emerge.
Our opponent in the election, a slimy big talking used car salesman, whom we didn’t think anyone in their right mind would vote for, was gathering votes faster than we ever anticipated.
Three hours into the count, and it was neck and neck. Celebrations came to a shuddering halt. Supporters gathering around television sets, whispering to each other, “what’s going on”, “how could this be happening”, “everything pointed to a win for our man.”
By midnight it became clear that the count was not going in our favour. Our opponent had leaped ahead by a margin that made it clear this was not going to be our night.
Our confidence was shattered.
Our man was a shell of his former self.
People gathered in the streets, in the town square, to celebrate. To us, it was unfathomable.
We had to endure the smug winning candidate, and his victory speech, the wild cheering of his supporters as we made our way home.
It was galling that so many people had voted for a candidate we knew was only in it for the glory that would be bestowed upon him and that all his claims of what he’d do in office were nothing but his way of pandering to the section of society he needed to appeal to.
Once home I turned off the news, I couldn’t bear hearing of a result we thought was a sure thing.
When it happened, he felt a great sense of relief and an overwhelming sense of grief.
Investing time and energy into something you believed in was taxing at the best of times.
It had been many months of campaigning, handing out flyers, attending rallies, believing in a cause you thought was right and the proper way for the country to move forward.
Added to that was the realization that the vote was sure to go in their favour. After all, the cause was just, the policies well thought out and constructive and sure to benefit everyone.
In the back of his mind was the thought that with victory would come some relief for the working class, no more working two jobs to make ends meet.
Their leader was charismatic, he and other hung off his every word, believed what he said he meant.
But now he wondered if it had all been a ruse.
Initially, it did feel as thought his entire world was burning up in front of him. It was over, the votes had been counted, his side had come up short.
Devastated by the result, he descended into a grief he didn’t know was possible. The bottom had fallen out of his world, their opponent, the most dislikeable and obnoxious of characters had succeeded, the thought of him as leader was sickening to him.
But life he knew didn’t always go the way you wanted. His grief and anger would subside. In a few years, there would be another vote. By then, people would have realised what a mistake they had made when they came to see the man they elected as nothing more than a charlatan.
So as much as seeing the jubilation of the elected party, he planned to support the opposition and work to having them elected the next time around.
For the moment it was a matter of turning off the TV news and not allowing himself to feel he was having his nose rubbed in it by the media coverage.
Written for: https://reinventionsreena.wordpress.com/2020/12/03/reenas-exploration-challenge-164/
It had been a particularly hot day. I spent most of it inside, the air-con blowing.
In the afternoon I ventured out and that’s when I saw them.
They were sitting along the back fence. Their backs to me, facing the setting sun and they looked agitated.
This wasn’t the first time I’d seen them. They lived in the quiet recesses of my back yard, they minded their own business and tolerated me though when I mowed the lawn I could tell they weren’t happy, especially with the noise.
But today they were sitting on the fence. They were in serious discussion, their wings flapping the with the flapping came a buzz that I found irritating. None of my neighbours ever made comment about the buzzing so I wasn’t sure if I heard it or not.
They saw me coming, and turned their unhappy faces towards me, I knew I was in for a right old rollicking.
“You!” shouted Buzzweed, the fairy leader, “you’ve got a lot to answer for.”
“What have I done?” I asked.
“You’ve upset the fairy queen and as you know, having been told so many times, Her Majesty does not like being upset. If she’s upset so are we.”
“So what are you going to do about?” asked Drogmet, the second in charge fairy, “her ire is keeping up all up at night.”
“But I haven’t done anything,” I protested.
“Then what do you call that abomination?” they chorused pointing to a new plant I’d recently planted.
I turned to gaze upon my newest garden plant, a blueberry bush, growing happily not far from the fairy corner.
“It’s a blueberry bush,” I replied.
“We hate it, its got to go,” announced Buzzweed.
“But its lovely, it produces fruit, and I like it,” I said in reply.
“Well the queen hates it, it gives her hives and it has to go,” said a chorus of fairy voices, which collectively made quite a din.
“Well, I’ll dig it up and move it,” I said feeling offended by their reaction.
“Good, otherwise it might have suffered a terrible fate.”
I looked at them and noticed there was now a sense of agreement and satisfaction that the matter had been resolved.
I knew from experience it wasn’t the best of ideas to disagree with the fairies as they had some rather devious ways of getting their wishes heard. Plants were known to wilt and die, for example, or disappear altogether.
I left them looking much happier and went off to fetch my shovel.
Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2020/12/10/tale-weaver-fairy-tale-fairies-10th-december/
When I rounded the beachhead I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.
I had longed to see and feel the beach.
Not those European ones with pebbles but one with sand and rolling waves.
But this beach was in one way what I sought, but in other ways it represented all that I disliked about the modern age.
Rubbish!
Abandoned cars, refuse, not the sort of thing the ocean deposited but man made by people who cared little for the environment only that it served their selfish purposes.
You can’t have everything, I thought to myself.
We live in a disposable world, we dump things we no longer need, we don’t repair anything, as it’s often cheaper to buy a new one.
I moved away from the offending garbage and found a spot where there was just me and the vast expanse of the ocean.
Written for: https://crispinakemp.com/2020/12/09/crimsons-creative-challenge-109/
Hitchcock was right.
The anticipation of what is to come or what might come can be terrifying or in my case, just plain worrying.
With Christmas just a few weeks away there is always the anticipation of the weather we will probably expect over the Christmas period.
Living in the southern hemisphere, we are in summer. We describe as being stinking hot or just pleasant.
We would like it to be pleasant, a southerly breeze, overcast, maybe rain even but more likely it will be hot, maybe oppressively hot (stinking hot), humid and a good recipe for raised tempers.
Thankfully these days we have air conditioning, but that wasn’t always the case. When I was a kid, it was a matter of accepting the weather as ‘this is what its like at Christmas’.
We were influenced greatly by the British traditions of Christmas. Our Christmas cards all had snow, Christmas trees and a rotund, jovial Santa.
Our mothers cooked a hot baked dinner, and we thought nothing of the ordeal they went through to maintain the ‘tradition’ of Christmas.
Nowadays it’s different, at least for me. The anticipation of Christmas Day is one of the gathering of family, eating as many cold cuts as we can afford and no one doing any cooking, for that only heats up the house.
Even so, everyone anticipates Christmas being a hot day, so much of our festivity is done indoors. There is a great sense of relief when it turns out much.
I liked this quote from Hitchcock, as we collectively watch the weather to see what the forecast will be. But no matter if it’s a stinker or not, we still celebrate, we still come together we put up with what the weather brings us, after all, it is Christmas, and that event is always greater than what the weather might throw at us.
Written for: https://tchistorygal.net/2020/12/09/writers-quotes-wednesday-writing-challenge-2-anticipation/
I was reminded of the dog down the lane.
I could never say we were on good terms. He gave me the courtesy of acknowledging me by not barking when I went by and the few times we came face to face he wagged his tail, which I took as his way of tolerating me.
He wasn’t what you’d call a handsome dog; nature had dealt him a blow in the looks department. He was more your ‘Heinz’ variety.
One day I heard a terrible row and came out to find him on the path, his throat bleeding.
I picked him up, he didn’t object, just glad someone came to his aid.
His owner was beside herself. The dog was her life. We rushed him to the vet. Somehow he survived.
Nowadays he is doing well. Wags his tail at me, even let’s me give him a pat.
Written for: https://crispinakemp.com/2020/12/02/crimsons-creative-challenge-108/
The path to understanding is there; it was just a matter of seeing it.
The light to awareness was shining, staring him in the face, but it wasn’t always easy to see the one thing that shone a light on the issues before him.
You know that time you went looking for something in the pantry, looked high and low, asked every household member for help, and still, you didn’t find what you wanted. Then the next day, you open the pantry, and there is the product sitting there looking at you.
Well, that’s one example of even when the light’s bright we don’t always see it.
The principle applies to our selves and where we find ourselves in life.
Emerson’s quote, above, is true for all of us. Within us, we have enormous potential. We live our lives participating in our respective workplaces, doing our job, some of us exceeding to the point of promotion and high honours but most of us dreaming of what we might achieve and never having the fortitude to realise our dreams.
We play the game to progress through life, we obey the rules and play by them, we become team players doing our bit to get by and create very few if any waves.
It’s a big question to ask yourself what you think is your hidden potential. It’s a risk being noticed.
We all fear failure, its tastes horrible, it shrinks us and puts us in our place, it extinguishes so often any light we might have believed we could keep burning.
The difference comes when we believe in ourselves.
Setting goals, when you believe what you are about to do will be a good thing.
I was a teacher for a lot of years, my light, if you like, was believing that education was about experiences. Textbooks had their place, but hands-on experience was always a winner.
I wrote plays and musicals for my students. Within my burned a light, a light that motivated me to provide my students, often from socio challenged backgrounds, with experiences they would not get sitting in a classroom.
I was lucky I had other staff who supported me and who offered great support to what I envisaged.
You might say that when the lights went on, my dream of what I could achieve was realised.
Written for: https://tchistorygal.net/2020/12/02/wqwwc-1-light-or-lights/
When Ned woke each morning, he was confronted by the same issue as had confronted him most of his life.
It was staring him in the face, and as happened each morning, he didn’t know what to do about it.
Could he step over it, crawl under it, run around it or do what he did most of the time, ignore it?
It had been there so long he’d become an expert denying its existence.
He did know he was stuck. Caught in the rut he’d forged for himself dealing with the day to day.
He found himself in a job he enjoyed, but the ambitions he had to progress from the bottom up had long alluded him.
It was all about confidence, you see.
Ned lacked it.
He lacked confidence in himself and his abilities and the enduring internal battle to see himself the equal of others.
He’d been in his current job for some years now. He was competent, did what was asked, got everything done on time though he was painfully aware his reporting was nowhere near as colourful as his co-workers who seemed to have the ability to compose a ‘novel’ when his best efforts resembled more a pamphlet. His Supervisor would often note of his reports that there appeared something “missing” from what he had submitted.
In the tiny world of his work area, he felt content. Within the workplace as a whole, he felt very inadequate.
He was sure most of his colleagues tolerated him, knew he would not be let go or sacked and so acknowledged him as a member of the workforce, but in reality, he knew he would never be one of “them”.
He did have successes. Best sales figures every so often. They placed him in the role of workplace safety, and he took to the role with a degree of enthusiasm. He thought he made the workplace a safer place, but in reality, he guessed the role was given to him, as no one else wanted it.
And so the internal barrier that was his life he had come to accept.
As he aged, Ned, took to evaluating his life and understanding he was where he was because basically, it was what he had chosen. It was then he felt contentment.
He knew he had erected the barriers, he knew he was happy to hide behind them, so it came as no surprise to him when he did finally retire from the workplace, that contact with his colleagues pretty much ceased to exist.
He stepped out of the workplace, his position was filled, life went on, and most likely, he felt the workplace gave a sigh of relief that he was gone.
So each morning, Ned, confronted by the issues that plagued him through life, the barriers that prevented him from ever getting anywhere professionally, would rise from his bed, have breakfast and feel free to do what he pleased. The pressures of work were gone, he had no reports to write, no need to feel that sense of professional inadequacy, which he tucked away in the recesses of his mind, for now, he was master of his own domain with no one to please but himself.
Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2020/12/03/tale-weaver-304-barriers-december-3rd/
It had been a particularly hot day and we were glad to reach the hotel. More pleasing was the fact the hotel had a pool and soon our kids were down there cooling off.
Our eldest daughter, aged four at the time, found a playmate and the two girls seemed to be happy to splash about and engage in four-year-old conversation.
I think it was the first time my daughter had encountered a child of colour.
I was fascinated to watch them play and it was a beautiful sight to watch them playing as if old friends.
It was after when I asked her if she enjoyed the pool time that she said it had been great and could she go there again tomorrow.
I asked her about her friend and if she noticed anything different about her.
Yes she said, her friend had a heap of ribbons in her hair and could she ask mummy to do the same to her hair.
Written for: https://lifeafter50forwomen.com/2020/11/30/what-do-you-see-58-30th-november-2020/
Morpethroad 