Microfiction Monday #68

Stony River's prompt this week sees two Old Salts discussing flotsam in fewer than 140 characters . . .

“See!  Haven’t I always said?  This proves it! That white frothy stuff on the crests o’ the waves?  Soapsuds!”

Poetry On Wednesday (26th. January)

POW has emerged from the shadows! Rallentanda asks for poems about what the poet "is a goose at"

The Perils of Courtship

I am a goose(*) at goosing(**)
At the tender age of four
I sought to goose my sister.
She hurled me to the floor.

I next attempted goosing -
Expelled from my co-ed
for slinking round the Girls' End
and trying to goose their Head.

Another go at goosing
led to my first job-loss -
I popped into her office
and goosed my red-haired boss.

I lost my first fiancee.
She thought that I was queer
(Reader - finish this yourself!
This last line ends with "rear")

There's never a right moment
or that's the way it seems
to creep up close behind her
and goose "She Of My Dreams."

The lesson for would-be goosers
it seems to me, is this.
Don't poke them in their hinderparts.
They'd much prefer a kiss.


(*)   Goose (n) (slang) A person not proficient, nay utterly hopeless, at some specified activity
(**) Goose (v.trans.) (UK slang)To sharply poke or pinch someone's buttocks. Derived from a goose's inclination to bite a retreating intruder's hindquarters.  (Oh, how middle clarss! if you mean "bum" FGS say "bum")

There's a blog out there . .

. . . called Sepia Saturday. It's delightful! No, truly! Bloggers post photo-memorabilia of themselves when young, their parents, grandparents and so on and it is heartwarming to see and read how people treasure their old photographs, very often of people they never saw, cannot remember, know only from family lore and anecdote.  

All based on an assumption, which may or may not be valid, but bearing in mind most of human history, probably isn't.  Viz . .  that your blood-line is the same as your "paper-line" which Genes Reunited or Ancestry.com turns up for you, or, to put the point in less circumlocutory langauge -  yer forebears always behaved themselves.  (In case you don't get it yet . .  is that photo of yer Great Grandaddy actually yer Great Grandaddy or is it a photo of someone who was out playing golf while yer real Great Grandaddy was . . er . . .er . . . entertaining yer Great Grandma!) 

I think that the single most thought-provoking thing about who we are is this. For evolutionists, that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOUR ANCESTORS back to amoeba writhing in the primordial soup SURVIVED TO ITS REPRODUCTIVE AGE, or for Creationists, back to ADAM AND EVE writhing in the Garden of Eden.  Your ancestors, whoever they were, survived mass extinctions, wars, famines, plagues and pestilence. They avoided the attentions of tyrants, torturers, serial killers, press-gangs, King Herod, Lord Kitchener, homicidal parents, uncles, siblings and wild animals.  They missed out on fatal falls from horses, Blackpool pier, the Eiger Norwand etc, at least until they had handed their genes on to the next generation.  They didn't commit suicide, contract a fatal illness, drink themselves to an early death etc etc until the gene-line that leads to YOU had moved on a generation.

How down to chance it is that we are here at all and that we are who we are!  My father (at 18 yrs) survived dreadful injuries at Arras on the Western Front in WW1 in 1916, injuries that would have killed him had the shrapnel struck an inch nearer his heart.  He lived. Married my mother.  Their first child died only a few months old. A "cot-death" or "sudden infant death syndrome." Who knows whether they would have been happy with their one little daughter, had she but survived? But they went on to "make" me.  A "replacement" for their tragic loss?  See what I mean?

As Topol says . . . "Is a puzzle!"

Friday Flash Fiction 21st.January 2011

Mister KnowItAll encouraged participants this week with some fetching fotos of young ladies on or almost on their bicycles. You can see them here.  I stick to the bcycle theme, and the continuing cold weather . . . for this 55 worder.

BREAKING NEWS:  Police were notified early today of an abandoned bicycle in Whitefield (no joke, honest!) Greater Manchester, UK. Fearing the owner might be lost / hypothermic / deranged, they taped the area off and investigated. They found a note fixed to the handlebar. "Spotted distressed Brass Monkey back there. Back soon. Please send for brazing torch."

Magpie#49

Willow's Trio of Snow Maidens is her delightful prompt this week

FALSE STARTS

Three Sisters (they’re straight out of Chekov!)

went forth in long coats and the wreck of

their once handsome bonnets.

(I've abandoned my sonnet

and quite lost the point of this heck of . . .

Er. . . er . .  a wonderful limerick?)

“No, no, Doctor.  Something's gone seriously wrong with that one!    No ‘AWESOMES’ for you this week.”

Microfiction Monday January 17th.

The prompt from Stony River this week offers terrifying possibilities -

"Share parachute, you fat freak! My turn to skydive!"

"Freak yourself! Is parasail not parachute!  For honorable Japanese gents going UP!"

(138 chars. including spaces.)

Monday's Child#24

This week, bkm asks for our interpretation on this illustration of a well known story -

Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat, What Did You There . . . ?

Gatekeeper:    Halt! Who goes there?

Puss:               Out of the way, My Good Man!

Gatekeeper:    Password?

Puss:               Password!  I need no password!  Have you any idea who I am?

Gatekeeper:    (on Entryphone to Castle)  Eric?  Eric, got a real fancy dude here doesn't know who he is.  Asked me if I'd and idea who he is? How should I know who he is? Who's on the Visitor List today?  Got any cats on the Visitor List?


Entryphone     (incomprehensible squawks)


Gatekeeper:    Not that kind of cat, Eric! Hepcats. Rockers. Friggin' jazz musicians. Just an ordinary . .


Puss:               I am NOT an ordinary cat, My Good Man.  I am the revered and universally acclaimed PUSS IN BOOTS, the Queen's Familiar, no less. And I demand entry and if you don't hurry up and be about your miserable gatekeeper business of entering me I.WILL.HAVE.YOUR.GUTS.FOR.GARTERS.


Gatekeeper:   (still on Entryphone) Dude says he's familiar with the Queen. No way! The corgis would eat him alive and We Would Not Be Amused, innit? 


Entryphone:  (squawks)


Gatekeeper:   What's he look like?  He looks like he ran amok in a Charity Shop and came out wearing whatever was sticking to him.  Needs guts for garters to stop his friggin' boots falling off by the look of things. Got a four-foot feather  . . .


Puss:              I'll have you know this feather . .


Gatekeeper:   . . . isn't going anywhere near the Queen. Not a tickler like that, mate.  Get all sorts of Weirdos galumphing about in floppy boots and mysterious four-foot feathers. Never know what you'll get up to.  There's sheep in the Castle Grounds, mate. Probably why you got those friggin' boots on.  So you take your feather and stick it where the Summer Sun never penetrates the gloom . . or . .


Puss:              Or?


Gatekeeper:   Or just enunciate in a loud, clear voice . . today's PASSWORD!


Puss:             (hissing) Try . . Dick Whittington!


Gatekeeper:  OMG!  Ohhhhhhh! Myyyyyyyy! Gawwwwwd! 


Puss:             (seizing Entryphone)  Eric? Is that you, luvvie?  Anyone in Dungeon One? 


Entryphone: (squawk) 


Puss:            POW? Prisoner of War?  Are we at war again? 


Entryphone: (squawk)


Puss:            Oh . . right . .  Prince Of Whassname?  Been trying to persuade Mumsie to abdicate again, has he?  Now listen, Eric . . send a detachment of Guards down to the Main Gate, there's a dear.  Got a Ghastly Gatekeeper here who needs to learn that a Cat May Look at a Queen.  
     

Microfiction Monday #65

Writers have no more than 140 characters including spaces, to respond to this picture prompt from the always inventive Stony River.

"Please! I implore you! Put your yellow raincoat back on. It's going to pour with rain. You'll go all rusty, and then I won't love you anymore."

Magpie Tales#47

Another piece of food-for-thought from Willow this week . . .

Animal, Vegetable or Mineral?

OMG! What is it? Sheesh!
Gorblimey!  What a piece!
Crumbs! Cor! And whadya know!
Blimey!  Way to go!

Look at this another way . . .

There!  Are things clearer now?
Oh goodness gracious! Wow!
I'm beginning to see the light.
(It's not a pretty sight  . . .  )

Look from another angle . . .

Bits of wood all in a tangle.

It's a thing for holding things,
your wrist watch, flowers or bling.
Do those little knobs unscrew
to make a sort of shoe?

Let's turn it just once more . . .

                                                 

and set it on the floor.

Oh, now I see!  It's AWESOME

A symbolic writhing FOURSOME

with arms and legs akimbo,

man, maiden, gent and bimbo
in the style of Henry Moore!