HENRY'S DAUGHTERS - 100 words of fiction for Friday

HENRY’S DAUGHTERS

Henry’s daughters couldn’t fit him into their busy lives – months could pass without a visit – but Madge, who cleaned his house, often stayed past her allotted hours to keep him company. Despite vastly different backgrounds, their friendship flourished.

When Henry fell ill, Madge telephoned, “Your Dad needs you,” but neither daughter came. Only Madge held his hand and wept as he died.

After his funeral the daughters descended on the house like a swarm of locusts, but Madge barred their way with her no-nonsense arms folded. “You two can bugger off. It’s mine now – we were married last month.”

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Thanks to Rochelle for hosting Friday Fictioneers on her blog. https://rochellewisoff.com/ and to Shaktiki Sharma for the photo that prompted this week's story. After looking it up on Google, I think this is a Large Painted Locust found only in the Galapagos Islands. A beautiful creature that wreaks havoc wherever it lands.

BURGERS & BUTTERFLIES - a 100 word story

Another 100 word story written in a rush between packing boxes. We are relocating to England from Tenerife next month and sorting out what to keep after fifteen years in one place is not easy!
This week's photo prompt comes, as always, from Rochelle
https://rochellewisofffields.wordpress.com/
Follow the Blue Frog trail from her blog to read how other writers interpreted it.

My version is more fact than fiction this week, but it's what came first to mind!

BURGERS & BUTTERFLIES

We would eat our burgers battling along Brighton seafront against a howling gale, salt spray crusting on our faces. Over an espresso coffee later I would lick my spectacles clean – I can still recall the taste, but it was the only way to avoid smears.

‘Men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses’ was so ingrained into my consciousness that his insistent wooing was a shock.

“Only virgins wear white,” my mother decreed, so I wasn’t even a beautiful bride.

But six months later my daughter was born, and the woman I was always meant to be emerged from her chrysalis to spread her butterfly wings.

SEARCHING - A 100 word story

This post is being done in a mad rush on Friday morning - I have to be at the airport in half an hour to catch a flight to England, where my daughter has just given birth to a beautiful baby girl after eleven years of trying. Here she is at an hour old.

Thanks to http://rochellewisofffields.wordpress.com/  for the photo that prompted the story, which I also wrote in a mad rush over my morning cuppa!

SEARCHING 

Frank  searched for years.

Every vacation he covered hundreds of miles - along freeways, up and down innumerable side roads, stopping in each town and city, enquiring at every gas station, always with the same question.

“Have you seen this girl?”

Marjorie took their remaining children and left, so Frank quit his job to join a trucking company.

He asked other drivers, questioned every cafe owner, showed her photograph everywhere.

“Do you know her?”

He was despairing until he saw the road-sign with the faded cards stuck on it.

Her name and a town.

“Dad. Forgive me. Here I am.”

HEDGEHOGS

This is so weird!

I checked traffic sources on my blog for the first time ever, and saw one Google site that had me puzzled. "Hedgehog eating" it said, so I clicked on it. Someone must have entered "Hedgehog eating worm" into Google Images and  been referred to my blog because I wrote a poem about Harris the Hedgehog and posted it on my Little Poems for Toys page, with a drawing.
Well bless my old boots! It just goes to show that, when writing a blog post, you should never forget that anyone might read it.






I might not blog quite so often over the next nine days - my younger daughter and her husband arrive later today for a much-needed holiday. The bed is made up, the apartment is sparkling, the terrace is swept, and I'm about to go shopping to fill the fridge.
We are looking forward to walks on the beach, drives up the mountain, a coach trip or two, and of course a few meals out.
Roll on this evening!

HOLIDAY-MAKERS & HAZARDS

HOW was your weekend? We had rain! Wonderful, life-giving, crop-saving rain after a year of drought. I did spare a thought for the visitors who thought they were escaping bad weather, but then it didn’t rain everywhere, or constantly, and it was warm rain.

HAVE you ever wondered what item is most often left at HOME by HOLIDAY-MAKERS? Passport? Essential medicines? HAIR-DRYER? Nope – what they usually forget to bring along is HALF AN OUNCE of common-sense.

I HAVE waited for my own visitors in Airport Arrivals often enough to be able to distinguish between the two-week-tourist and the returning resident – the tourists are HAULING the biggest suitcases. When you see them going home a fortnight later, burnt a painful red and peeling like gum-trees in autumn, you can tell that the women spent their entire holiday in bikinis or strappy dresses, and the men never wore shirts. So why did they HUMP along 20 kilos of luggage each?

HEALTH INSURANCE is something else they don’t think about. Accidents do HAPPEN, and even if they’re not fit to fly home, they can’t stay in their HOTEL room – it’s been let to someone else. HOW will they pay for their extended stay? And who pays the HOSPITAL bills?

HAZARDOUS sports are another thing. People who wouldn’t dream of HANG-GLIDING over the gently rolling HILLS of Sussex leap HEEDLESSLY off the precipitous cliff-faces of Tenerife. I have watched, HEART in mouth, from a roof-top in Arona while a HELICOPTER searched for a glider who had misjudged the wind.

Then there were the two young men who HIRED a HARLEY and rode off on this powerful motorbike to explore while their girl-friends shopped. When the boys failed to appear that night a search was started, but it took two days to find them. The bike had left the road and fallen into a barranco. It ploughed a path through some shrubs which closed behind it, HIDING the young men. Two days, lying badly injured and without water, in this climate – they didn’t stand a chance.

And to add to this warning – the local papers are reporting that such foolhardiness is going to be costly – anyone who undertakes a dangerous sport without due precautions is going to have to pay for being rescued.

HALF-ARSED PARENTING

My daughter and son-in-law both work in the tourist industry. HE is a resort manager, and has so many HAIR-RAISING tales that they deserve their own book – maybe he’ll write it after he’s retired! She is a sun-care advisor and visits hotels on a rota, giving a brief chat by the pools and selling Aloe Vera products. One day the pool guy brought her a screaming toddler and she used her microphone to ask for its parents. No response, so Reception checked passports and located the room. The door was wide open, Security found the child’s dummy which quietened it down, but no-one was there. TWO HOURS LATER the parents came back. They’d left their baby asleep in the hotel room and GONE SHOPPING. Beggars belief, doesn’t it?

HURSTPIERPOINT is the village in West Sussex where we used to live, and where many of my family still do. When I win the lottery I am going back there to be a round-the-corner Nan!

BOTHER!

I should have asked my daughter!
Wrote a short story and sent it off before I'd shown it to my daughter - my best and most honest critic. And guess what? She spotted a silly mistake! Too late, of course, but I should have known better.
There was no rush - another few days wouldn't have hurt - but I was so pleased with it I couldn't wait.
Bother!

Jumper for a tree!

Photograph of a tree in New Mills, High Peaks, Derbyshire. Christmas 2011.
Dressed by a group called "Phantom Knitters".
Totally mad, of course, and no-one but an Englishwoman would contemplate it - or would they?

My stepdaughter organized a "Railing Wrap" where anyone could weave strips of cloth through the iron railings around the town. Some people wrote messages on strips of sheeting, others used scarves or fabric torn from garments. Some wraps were done publicly, some clandestinely, and my SD photographed them all.

See her website "Unmade in England" which concentrates on recycling fabric for art.

Phone a friend!

Had coffee with a friend yesterday to show each other our 500 word stories.
She'd written a really good story but there were three errors, and she'd already sent it off.
Goes to show we can't trust our own eyes when it comes to editing because we see what we expect to see.
Like I said two days ago - thank God for a willing daughter to wield that red pen!

A real critic

I wrote a short story over the weekend.
On Monday I gave it to the OH asking him to tell me what he suspected as he read it, and whether he was surprised by the denouement. His only comment when he gave it back was "Very good." Pressed further, he added "The man was a prat." True but not what I was after.
Next step - show it to M, my daughter and best critic.
She read it carefully and said halfway through the first page, "I think she's OCD."
I was afraid I'd overdone that sentence - made a note to change it.
Two pages later she guessed the outcome too soon.
A discussion ensued, during which it became clear that I had made my hints too subtle.One of my failings is to be so bound up in my story that I forget my reader is coming to it fresh, without my insight into the plot.
After a re-write, M's opinion was that I had succeeded in making my character sound more sinister, and the hints would now lead the reader up one or two blind alleys. Great - just what I'd been aiming for.
Sorted, sent off with fingers crossed.
Every writer should have a daughter like M.