Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge #147 – The Trip Home

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Michael

The kids were getting more and more restless. No amount of preparation in the form of getting them to understand the need for patience and perseverance on the long trip home at Christmas made the slightest difference to their growing impatience and irritability.

Any threats to their wellbeing, like no Santa, Grandpa will be so disappointed in you for making mummy and daddy’s trip so difficult resulted in anything but more whinging from the back seat.

There was a long way to go and temperature was climbing towards 40C. Not pleasant for any of us.

A fancy-looking Mercedes zoomed past us, and my wife remarked that she bet they had air-conditioning. We could only dream of such a luxury.

We knew that not far down the road was a servo where cold drinks and ice cream could be bought. I hoped to reach that point on the trip before I totally lost my cool.

Each child had a demand of its own as we pulled into the parking area.

Toilet, fresh air, chips and a coke.

At this stage of the trip, all talk of healthy eating went out the window as each child had its respective wishes granted.

It was too hot to stay long, we back into the car we climbed and off we went.

As parents, most trips are about making it from A to B with as little fuss as possible.

The kids settled with their food and drink and away we went, me thinking there would now be some peace and quiet. And there was.

Until the fizzy cordial kicked in. The rowdy children I travelled with previously suddenly turned into raving lunatics and I realised too late that long trips and fizzy cordial were not a good mix.

I did my best to zone out, lick my ice cream and hope that they might eventually fall asleep or kill each other.

Grandpa’s was another four hours away, I crossed my fingers.

Written for: https://fivedotoh.com/2021/12/13/fandangos-flash-fiction-challenge-147/

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Reena’s Xploration Challenge #211 – Santa’s Christmas

Posted on December 10, 2021 by Michael

It was quite the dilemma when you consider that here was a guy who had everything and if he didn’t have it he could conjure it up or have the elves put in the long hours required to pull off the impossible.

It was a good thing that Santa was not all that materialistic. He was more your giving type of person so when, as happened each year, he was asked what do YOU want for Christmas he would always feel tongue-tied trying to think of what he might like.

It occurred to him that his needs were not what he got but rather what he gave.

There were so many people out there doing it tough. It had been a hard year for everyone what with the pandemic and the worry of climate change. Even the North Pole was a different place these days, with less snow, more rain and the summer humidity was a killer when you wore a heavy red suit.

Santa decided that making peoples lives a bit better this Christmas would be the best gift he could ask for.

So he set about to bring love and good cheer to all he could reach out to.

By the end of Christmas Day, he felt a sense of inner satisfaction, a job well done he said to himself as he surveyed the world rejoicing in the glow of his wake.

“This might make things a little better,” he thought as he packed his sleigh away.

Written for: https://reinventionsreena.wordpress.com/2021/12/09/reenas-xploration-challenge-211/

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Crimson’s Creative Challenge #161 – The Future

Posted on December 10, 2021 by Michael

Do you remember when we could look into the future?

When the prospect of turning 47 in the year 2000 seemed such a long way away?

Now it’s well been and gone and here we are twenty-one years later looking ragged and getting more so as each year passes.

It was all about the adventure of life. Long walks of discovery, meeting new and exciting people who shared with you their particular take on life which you either took on board or rejected as some crazy perspective.

When you are a child the future seems so far away. It’s hard to comprehend that you would get old, that you’d live longer than your parents.

I look out now at the view in front of me and I take in the beauty of it and I marvel that despite the years rolling by the view is still as magnificent as always.

Written for: https://crispinakemp.com/2021/12/08/crimsons-creative-challenge-161/

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Photo Challenge #393 – Sitting by the Window

Posted on December 1, 2021 by Michael

It’s what she did most days. Sit by the window.

Outside the sun shone or it rained, didn’t matter much to her, as she liked to watch. Life was happening out there. Birds fluttered about, sang loudly in the mornings, and on some cloudy evenings, she’d hear the frogs croaking suggesting there was rain on the way.

Last week the grandkids came round and she watched them playing in the yard while her daughter complained about her husband. ‘Why did she stay with him when he made her life a misery?’

She was disappointed when they went home, not for her daughter but for the grandkids. The youthful exuberance of them invaded her and she remembered playing in the yard just like them, with her brother and sister.

Where did all that go?

Now she was confined to a room, thank goodness for the window and her memories.

Tomorrow was Friday and the shower nurse would round early, to help her shower, change the bed, and most importantly share a cuppa with her.

Life was so much routine nowadays. Her life was ordered. She didn’t go much for the health nurse who came in the check her legs and spent the whole time giving advice as to what she should be doing, how often and when. The woman was always too busy to have a cuppa, in and out, as quick as she could. She had no heart, just doing a job.

Spring brought out the blossoms on the apple tree in the yard. Mr Parkinson came round every few weeks to mow and prune the shrubs, which meant her yard; looked okay much of the time and that pleased her. Gave the grandkids a tidy place in which to play.

Looking out she remembered when it snowed; the blossoms took a sheen she’d never seen before. It had only happened once.

She sighed recalling that magic day. They said it was climate change.

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2021/12/01/photo-challenge-393/

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Crimson’s Creative Challenge #160 – The Way Home

Posted on December 1, 2021 by Michael

“Do you know the way?” she asked?

“It’s the same way as every other time,” I replied trying not to get frustrated. I was asked this question every time we got to the crossroad.

“I’m never sure, I feel as though I should know but my mind is a fog and I’m unsure of which way to go.”

“Take my hand and trust me that I know the way,” I said taking her wrinkled old hand in mine.

“I’m glad you are here, I feel safe with you.”

“It’s all okay, just a few more steps and we’ll be home.”

“Home? We’re home? But what about the shopping, we were supposed to go to the shops. There’s things I need to buy, soap, wash-up, pegs.”

“They’re in the bag you’re carrying.”

“Oh! They are? You’re such a help. Where would I be without you?”

Written for: https://crispinakemp.com/2021/12/01/crimsons-creative-challenge-160/

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Reena’s Xploration Challenge #209 – Not Enough Tabs.

Posted on November 26, 2021 by Michael

My brain has too many tabs open.

I like this topic for no other reason than what if the opposite applied, in that, I didn’t have enough tabs open?

I don’t think I have overload, more so it’s underload for me.

I think it’s always been that way for me, look for the easiest way to solve a problem rather than spend hours trying to nut it out.

Somehow or other I have managed to get myself through life, fumbling my way along, more often than not conning people into believing I know what I am doing.

Right from the word go I recall my teachers telling me I was lazy. That I had to make a bigger effort, apply myself to the tasks given but what they didn’t know was that for the most part, I was working to my capacity, as inquisitive as I was, there were limitations as to what I could achieve and so in many ways, I suffered through childhood weighed down by expectation.

We didn’t know about tabs in those days, when you didn’t live up to it then you were thought of as not having a go, in other words, bone lazy.

So my brain has worked on minimal tabs open at any one time, I mean why overtax it when it’s limited anyway.

And so I have come to this stage in life where I am happy with an inquiring mind, I can make my own decision as to what to do, what to believe and what to say.

If I opened too many tabs then I know my brain would hurt and I wouldn’t want that.

Written for: https://reinventionsreena.wordpress.com/2021/11/25/reenas-xploration-challenge-209/

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Crimson’s Creative Challenge #159 – The Long and Difficult Path.

Posted on November 26, 2021 by Michael

It has been getting worse. My aged companion Crisp is not herself these days. It seems like a long straight path we are going on from which there is no reprieve, no designated rest stops and so we keep going on.

We trudge, through each day taking what lands in our way, deciding to challenge it or simply step past.

Its difficult for her as she knows there is something not right but whether it’s denial or her stubbornness she seems relentless in pressing on.

It means at times she is a cranky old cow, as I tell her when I’m feeling exasperated, other times she can be her normal self but then something triggers her and the fires of hell rush through her and shower me with accusation and blame I never knew she was capable of.

Always on settling down she is remorseful, “Did I say that? Doesn’t sound like me at all?”

Written for: https://crispinakemp.com/2021/11/24/crimsons-creative-challenge-159/

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#Writephoto – Shopping

Posted on November 18, 2021 by Michael

Off I go list in hand, I’ve checked it twice, underlined the really important items and still I know there is something I have forgotten.

That’s how it is.

You get into the shop and there is so much that greets your eye. We are spoiled I tell myself as I wander through the fruit and veg, so many varieties, so much choice but I put it down to a necessary evil.

We have to eat, we like to be clothed in what we think is acceptable and what makes us look our best.

I know I have become somewhat institutionalised to wandering the aisles each Saturday morning picking up the things we need for the next week.

When Covid restrictions were in place I tried home delivery and click and collect. But it just wasn’t the same as meandering around the shop looking at stuff you either would never buy or at stuff for your own health you’d never put in your trolley.

I think in the end I preferred to risk it during Covid, mask on, phone at the ready to use the QR code, hand sanitiser and off I’d go.

Going to the shop in person meant there was always the possibility of finding bargain you’d miss if you weren’t there.

Written for: https://new2writing.wordpress.com/2021/11/18/writephoto-shopping/

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Crimson’s Creative Challenge #158 – The Seat of All Wisdom

Posted on November 17, 2021 by Michael

“It’s the seat of all wisdom.”

“Are you sure?”

“You know I am always right. Just look at it. Many a bottom has perched upon it and many a splinter has inserted itself in said bottom. That act alone is the source of wisdom, is it not?”

“It’s a painful way to acquire wisdom.”

“That is the point, wisdom comes from experience. A splinter in the bottom is enough to remind you the next time you sit on such a seat that a splinter could be a stinging outcome. So you are now wise to the fact and circumspect when you contemplate sitting on one such seat.”

“I’d still like one. It would look good in the garden. All that ornate carving and what have you.”

“Isn’t it enough that you hate splinters and that I would delight in extracting one from your sorry bottom?”

“Yes, good point.”

Written for: https://crispinakemp.com/2021/11/17/crimsons-creative-challenge-158/

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Photo Challenge #391 – Spirals

Posted on November 17, 2021 by Michael

My life has been a series of spirals.

In the beginning, it was full of promise,

The whole world was there for the taking.

As I look back I wish I had taken more of it.

I lived in a small community,

My town was my life.

Very little interest happened outside of it.

In fact, the outside world was more held in fear than awe.

As a result, my life went in circles. Around I went oblivious to the fact that’s what I was doing, never noticing it was my tail I was chasing.

In between childhood and adolescence, I gravitated in a dream world where so much of what I took in was a mystery.

In my teenage years, I began to fanaticise, mostly about girls whom I found puzzling and so far above me as human beings, not subject to the same urgings of the flesh.

Later in life I discovered they were subject to urgings of the flesh, just different ones to me.

After school I went back home. Lived with mum and dad until forced out by employment in a distant town.

Employment took me to places new and situations different.

But eventually, it was back home I went.

Aging parents, sudden deaths, growing children, and so I was once again back where I started.

Then marriage became unbearable so to my family home I went. And stayed.

It’s odd when you think of life in such a way. You stumble from one dream to another but each one is rooted in one spot.

The spirals are shrinking,

Narrowing,

Soon there will be little wiggle room, you might say.

But I’m still fascinated when I reach the apex of each spiral as to where it might plunge me to next.

It’s about learning, isn’t it?

Like writing this little piece!

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2021/11/17/photo-challenge-391/https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2021/11/17/photo-challenge-391/

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