Words For Wednesday

I am hosting for the month of July 2019.

This meme was started by Delores a long time ago. Computer issues led her to bow out for a while. The meme was too much fun to let go, and now Words for Wednesday is provided by a number of people and has become a movable feast.

Essentially the aim is to encourage us to write. Each week we are given a choice of prompts: which can be words, phrases, music or an image. What we do with those prompts is up to us: a short story, prose, a song, a poem, what have you. We can use some or all of the prompts.

Some of us put our creations in comments on the post, and others post on their own blog - please provide the link to your blog in the comments. I would really like it if as many people as possible joined in this fun meme, which includes cheering on the other participants. If you are posting on your own blog - let me know so that I, and other participants, can come along and applaud.

Huge thanks to everyone who joins in the fun and/or comments.

First of all, a clip from one of the greatest Irish fiddlers.



And then two lists of 4 words each.

Subway*
Question*
Library*
Bench*

Voice*
Organize*
Fishmonger*
Horizon*
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Before I read anyone's story I post my own:
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THE DUET

Her head was down, already full of the pressures of the day as she stepped off the subway train. He stopped her in her tracks, what time was it, seven in the morning. And there he was, no question, playing the fiddle on the platform, sitting on the fancy wooden bench with the dedication plaque to some long dead commuter, his worn leather hat turned upside down to catch the coins.

She rooted in her purse, stirred by the melody, the voices of her grandparents coming back in such a rush that tears sprang to her eyes. On a sunny day, when business died down in mid afternoon at the fishmonger’s in Ballydehob, Granda would sit outside on his chair tuning up his old violin, his eyes fixed on the distant horizon in the harbour in front of the shop. Playing for all the emigrants in Americay, he’s say, all the ones that were starved out of here in The Great Hunger.

The fiddler stopped and smiled and thanked her for the couple of toonies she threw in the hat. Can I ask you a question, she said. He nodded. I’m organizing my ancient music portfolio for publication, she said, I have quite a library of these old Irish melodies, can you tell me the name of what you just played, I don’t think I have it in the collection.

Lord Mayo’s Lament, he said, it’s been in my family for generations. Do you play?

Oh yes, she said, I’m in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, we’ve got five hours of rehearsals starting early this morning. She hesitated. But..... and she stopped again and gulped and looked at him as he started to play. Carbery’s Reel

Without thinking, she laid her violin case on the bench beside him and withdrew her beautiful violin.

Carbery’s Reel tingled in her fingers. And she tuned up and played alongside him as her grandfather had taught her, the wild music of West Cork coming alive in her very bones.

The Call

I listen for it.

It happens unexpectedly.

Come try me!

The tiny voice, enticing, pulling me towards the source, a source of what? I need to find out.

I ignore the old voices telling me all the downsides clicking like rosary beads, so many beads. Sorrowful mysteries. Click click. Lie down, be quiet. Not for you. Never for you.

I answer with why not, so many times I lose track.

It's the why nots that set me on fire, answering the call willingly when it comes.

Then I say yes, like Molly in Ulysses. Many yeses, cancelling all those nos, all those fears, all those hesitations. Yes, Yes and then Yes some more.

In spite of. Because of. YOLO coming late to me.

They say you're funny and amazing and one of a kind.

And I finally believe them.

Free Floating Fridays

This pen and ink drawing hangs in my bedroom where I see it every morning.

In between stuff like a corporate tax return and rehearsals and the book launch of a friend and social gatherings and working on SOS, the Support Our Seniors mandate we are putting together (fact checking is a job unto itself), I am trying to find time to work on my new card. And design a new afghan (sofa blanket) for a niece who's getting married.

It's all quite wonderful, I feel confident in the stage work and we are having our first cast party tonight so we get to know each other a little better. I try and pay attention to the spoon theory which I wrote about before. When I do, I find my life balances out a lot better. Exceeding my spoons makes me cranky and exhausted and well, useless to myself and others.

I wish I'd arrived at the stage sooner where I didn't give a rat's what anyone thought of me. What causes these insecurities do you think?

I remember being enormously self conscious starting at about 13. I was way taller than my parents and the comments of extended family would crush me. "Where did you get her?" "What are you feeding her?" "She'll be patting your heads soon!" And on. Then the breasts. Men would leer at me, a child, on the streets, so much so I would bind my breasts as these men frightened me in ways I couldn't articulate. I remember being singled out at rehearsal for a school play when I was 14 (I had a great voice and good articulation) when the director shouted at me in front of everyone "Stop walking around as if you're ashamed of your very existence!" My father said to me when I was about 16, with a heartbroken look on his face: "Your brains have been wasted on a girl."

Those words stick and damage and hurt and shame forever. I felt terribly lost, ugly, too intelligent, too introverted, too out of place, too everything.

I hit the age of 19 and suddenly I found the solution to all these insecurities. Alcohol. With a few drinks I could charm the pants off anyone, sing at the drop of a hat, pack up the guitar and throw down the self-consciousness, hang with intellectual friends, not be ashamed of all my reading, my questioning, my stage-work and not feel out of place anywhere.

Alcohol saved my life for about 10 years.

Then it slowly began to turn on me and for the next ten years it owned me, body and soul.

Words for Wednesday

I am hosting for the month of July 2019.

This meme was started by Delores a long time ago. Computer issues led her to bow out for a while. The meme was too much fun to let go, and now Words for Wednesday is provided by a number of people and has become a movable feast.

Essentially the aim is to encourage us to write. Each week we are given a choice of prompts: which can be words, phrases, music or an image. What we do with those prompts is up to us: a short story, prose, a song, a poem, what have you. We can use some or all of the prompts.

Some of us put our creations in comments on the post, and others post on their own blog - please provide the link to your blog in the comments. I would really like it if as many people as possible joined in this fun meme, which includes cheering on the other participants. If you are posting on your own blog - let me know so that I, and other participants, can come along and applaud.

Huge thanks to everyone who joins in the fun and/or comments.

I've stuck to the picture and eight words prompt format. I used a word generator for the second list and I think the results are pretty challenging, but have at it. It should be fun!!

(1)
Mountain
Scrabble
Traffic Lights
Insane

(2)
Arrival
Lasso
Wonder
Gadget
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Posted Later - my story.
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It was good to leave the traffic and lights and noise of the city behind. How long had it been since he had seen the clear night sky? Light pollution was everywhere.

He had his life packed into one over-sized duffel-bag. It had taken him a week of brooding. Stella had been insane with rage, her eyes blazing, her mouth spewing language he hadn’t heard since his stint in the marines. She demanded he leave. She shouted his PTSD was his problem and not hers and he needed help, why wasn’t he getting help? She couldn’t live with him anymore. She had packed his bags and tossed them onto the driveway.

He knew if he opened his mouth she would be in danger as he could feel the burning in his fists. He loved her. He would not hurt her. He turned and left, picking up his belongings from the driveway, throwing them in the jeep, screeching off, pounding his angry fists off the wheel.

He checked into a Super 8 after 100 miles of savage driving and phoned his employer and said he needed time off as he wasn’t well and he hung up before Jim could respond. He lay on the bed for a prepaid week, getting up to use the bathroom and eating rubbish purchased in two bags from the 7-11 next door following his arrival.

On day seven, he remembered Scott, his buddy from Afghanistan. Scott and his cabin up in the mountain. They would play Scrabble every chance they got in the safety of their tent in the desert. He smiled for the first time in what seemed liked years. He needed to lasso the remnants of his former life. Scott had extended an open invitation last month when he called from a payphone in his local village up in the Appalachians.

“The wonder of my mountain,” he said, “Is all yours, buddy. Come and be still. But leave the gadgets and devices. You need to spend time with my pet fox, Maggie.”

Downalong - Part 3 of 3

See Part 1 here
See Part 2 here

Downalong

All were invited back to the house where Lorca had arranged for caterers to provide a light lunch and a river of booze. George stayed very much in the background, surprisingly unmoved by his new status of widower, wandering around the grounds with his two orphaned teenagers and his own stray, now a sullen young man riddled with facial hardware and tattoos.

The rest of us partied long and hard, the tide-pool of her friends sharing more deeply as the night descended and the garden lights came on. The talk always circling back to the monks. Speculation and conjecture running rampant across our conversation, dipping and swooping and catching and holding. She never. I wouldn't put it past her. Remember how, well, sexual, her solos were? Those old hymns given a new husky spin? The monks were lapping it up. Yes, they were. And to bury her. Brazen. In their very own cemetery. What kind of statement was that? I mean another fifty years and more monks would be interred. Poppy surrounded by over a hundred monks.

And that was when we all fell apart. George and Liam, together, coming in to Poppy's vast living room, stopping, thunderstruck, finding all of us heaped in various positions on the furniture and floor, loosened by countless glasses, howling in helpless laughter.

Poppy's final outrageous finger to the universe.

Downalong - Part 2 of 3

Downalong

See Part 1 here

She was comparatively young when diagnosed with the cancer that would eventually take her. Her smoking had always lent her voice a Nina Simone type flavour. Her vibratos alone were felt in one's very marrow. But of course the smoking got her and she was only sixty.

She lingered, as only Poppy could, for about six months from diagnosis to expiration and entertained from the temporary death bed she had set up in the conservatory overlooking the water. It was a fairly nerve wracking visit for her guests, as she continued to smoke with her oxygen tank and its paraphernalia surrounding her. One wondered, at such times, if she intended taking a goodly percentage of her friends with her in her final exit, similar to her first husband Seamus, dead from his massive cardiac infarction, crashing his car into a brand new Ford, killing the elderly couple out on their Sunday drive.

There had been other rumours of course. The resident nine monks in the little Franciscan Abbey up the Lisheen Road from her house had always been frequent visitors to Downalong. Never to the parties or barbecues or soirees, understandably. But always to private sessions, sometimes late at night. She would always joke when asked about this, assuring all in her smoky sinful voice that her brothers in Christ knew all about her misdeeds. She confessed long and frequently to them, she said, for they were sedated with good food and wine into forgiving all her transgressions. She would throw her head back and toss her black hair and laugh and laugh, winding it all up with one of those coughing fits that were just, well, exotic on Poppy but would appear consumptive on anyone else.

So when the death notice appeared in the Irish Examiner all of Cork was agog to see that Mrs. George Wentworth, Poppy Dowling, was to be requiemed, eulogized and buried at the Lisheen Franciscan Abbey. Neither saint nor sinner outside of the monks themselves had ever had a funeral inside the abbey before. The little church could only hold a hundred of her friends but the crowds numbered four times that along with the media. The Lisheen Road, thankfully not a thoroughfare, was crammed with cars and the church doors were left open for those who couldn't get into the church. The monks didn't speak at all, except as celebrants of the mass itself. She was eulogized by Liam O'Dowda, her erstwhile lover, another surprise, and by her eldest child Lorca O'Dowda, now a striking actress of forty, who both wept as they spoke of her.

The service was brief, the internment even briefer. It was noted that she was buried beside Brother Marcus who had died the previous year and was rumoured to be her primary confessor.

Downalong (Being a 3 part true story)

Daughter was in for most of the weekend and we jam-packed a lot of activity into it. We took a workshop together on Women's Work which was fantastic as we all told yarns of crafting and creating and then dyed fabrics and laundered over washtubs as we told stories. Loved it.

Then we underwear shopped. Then we had lamb curry. Then we took in a musical at a local theatre.

Over brunch today. we talked of old friends' lives, how they morph and change over the years from grade school to marriages, to careers and the rare few who break off out of convention, dancing to the beat of their own drums. I had caught up with an old friend both from school and from my theatre days way back at my 50th High School Reunion in 2011. And told Daughter about her outrageousness.

Poppy was an amazing ground breaking woman who spat at convention. We were all in awe, and admittedly quite envious of her forging her own path despite the condemnation of the society in which we all lived then.

I dug out the story today as I had written it immediately after the reunion. Names are changed, of course, to protect her.
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Downalong

She named the house for her grandfather. He had left her the worst quarter of his land which he contemptuously called 'downalong' on the edge of the Blackrock woods right where the Lisheen stream pours into Cork harbour. She wasn't insulted, given that his other three grandchildren were treated much more favourably in the inheritance department and given the choicest three of the four acres. It was a useless piece of land, seeing that it was rocky and a traditional garden was an impossibility, even with the many truckloads of topsoil she had thrown on top of it over the years. It had all subsequently washed away.

So she made a rockery out of it. Smuggled in some alpine plants over the years. Managed to grow some heather and some controlled furze. All that yellow and purple would take your breath away on summer days. And then you would discover all the non-native species crouching among the stones. With the insurance policy from Seamus, her first husband who died at thirty nine of a heart attack while driving on the Glanmire Road, she put in a large slate patio and a fountain fed by the stream and a number of huge terra cotta pots that lent the property a carefree Italian air.

She was a total scandal both within her family of origin and its wider circles for no one could ever sort out all her children. It seems there was one out of a relationship she had with Liam O'Dowda the RTE actor who happened to be married to another at the time and stayed that way. Then there was the little dark one who came back with her from Africa in 1969 and after that there were the three by Seamus, though one had the looks of neither of them being red haired and green eyed, and then there were the couple by George Wentworth, the architect who was with her for the last fifteen years of her life.

There was a rumour that the eldest of her children, Lorca, gave birth also, but that was difficult to confirm as the baby was the same age as the youngest of her own and she reared them as twins. A right hodgepodge of a household they all sniffed. And George brought in a stray of his too, a sullen young boy by the name of Farquhar, known as Q.

When you met Poppy Dowling you felt you had made an instant friend. Everyone knew her by her birth name even though she traded as Penelope Wentworth when out and about in the more prestigious genteel social circles George ran in. But she acted and sang under Poppy Dowling and her old loud self was more in evidence at cast parties and when she solo'd in church. That was the big surprise to everyone. How Poppy, in spite of her bohemian life style still went to church every Sunday and used her great voice to belt out the old hymns.

It might seem like her friendships were light and easy but they were the most complicated part of Poppy. If you were sensitive it would just about kill you to be her friend. It would always go something like this: you'd fall in love with Poppy after meeting her. You'd be welcomed into her chaotic household that always ran with children and associates of George and scattered artists and free spirits. After a while you'd feel compelled to introduce an interesting friend of your own to Poppy and a few months later you'd find out that there were certain dinner parties where you were excluded and your friend included. From hurt to pissed off didn't quite cover the gamut of emotions. Until you discovered that other friends had been treated the exact same way.

Even her old pals, the ones who ran with her in childhood were treated in this cavalier and disloyal fashion. Then a year or two later, there'd be her voice on the phone inviting you to a barbecue and of course you'd cast the hurt aside and show up. For even to see and be seen at one of Poppy's events lent one an enviable cachet to be included at all, even when she would link arms with a friend she had met through you and parade him or her around, where once she had paraded you. Your turn might come again in a few years. Or she might get bored by you. You were always on such uneasy tenterhooks and you hated to admit but that they added to the excitement of running in her crowd.

See Part 2 here

See Part 3 here

Words for Wednesday

I am hosting for the month of July 2019.

This meme was started by Delores a long time ago. Computer issues led her to bow out for a while. The meme was too much fun to let go, and now Words for Wednesday is provided by a number of people and has become a movable feast.

Essentially the aim is to encourage us to write. Each week we are given a choice of prompts: which can be words, phrases, music or an image. What we do with those prompts is up to us: a short story, prose, a song, a poem, what have you. We can use some or all of the prompts.

Some of us put our creations in comments on the post, and others post on their own blog - please provide the link to your blog in the comments. I would really like it if as many people as possible joined in this fun meme, which includes cheering on the other participants. If you are posting on your own blog - let me know so that I, and other participants, can come along and applaud.

Huge thanks to everyone who joins in the fun and/or comments.

This week's prompts are a photo followed by 2 lists of 4 words each:

(1)
School
Highway
Redhead
Crow

(2)
Yarn
Spider
Knife
Beer

Have fun!

Posted later - my story using the picture and all the words.
__________________________________________________________________________

Mrs. Martin, widow woman, had run the private school there. A faded redhead, she would have been in her late fifties then, Caroline reflected. The curriculum had been excellent with the emphasis on the arts. The tower had been a well stocked library, another room was an art studio, yet another was for needle crafts, the colourful yarns seemed to dance on the walls in the morning sun. All so long ago, now Caroline was the same age as Mrs. Martin was way back then. Nearly fifty years ago.

Mrs. Martin would have been horrified at the new bypass from the highway that ran across the house grounds, obliterating all that had been there, the trees where the morning crows would gather, the lavender bushes and the spring bulbs and those intricate pathways. And the fountain!

On impulse, Caroline stopped the car and pulled over. She knew she shouldn't but she grabbed a can of light beer from the six pack on the floor beside her and cracked it open and made a toast to long gone Mrs. Martin and her encouragement of her students. She let the warm liquid slide down her throat and feeling fortified, exited the car and went up to the house. Gosh, sadly, it looked fated for demolition.

She took a pocket knife from her purse and brushing a spider and its web off the door, twisted the blade into the old lock and popped the door open.

This is where it all began, her successful life as a sculptor. Perhaps there was some way of saving this building and making it an art gallery?

Mrs. Martin would be pleased.

Sunday Smatterings

Thanks to a post from Elephant's Child on her Sunday Selections, I thought to post some of my knitting art on here. All items have left me as gifts to Ireland or Canada.

This shawl was sent to a dear artist friend in Ontario, it features her art work and her love of stars and 9 wee hearts for her grandchildren, etc. She wears it all the time. She says it always feels like a hug from me.

Close up of the above piece:

A dear friend in Ireland received this:

I covered this bench in Daughter's house.

And this is a blanket I designed and knitted for Grandgirl showing my house and our ferry rides and the lighthouses we love and coffee, we love our dark roast. And books and music. Of course.

Free Floating Fridays

A darling neighbour from my old life, 92, is currently in hospice. She became world renowned when she disclosed her love of receiving Christmas cards several years ago and was featured in some newspapers and local television shows as a meme surged its way around the world as such things do. Thousands of cards would pour in to her from every corner of the world. To our tiny village in Newfoundland.

She lived in her own home until she was moved into hospice having stayed with her son for a week.

Her son put out word last week she was in hospice so the cards started pouring in to her, including mine. I always sent her one. Today, the load was over 500 and in a message from her son to me, he told me he had read them all to her including mine. And her smile was big and wide.

She was a life long smoker. Seriously. The big joke at hospice was that she finally quit at the age of 92 and was on the patch which made her laugh until she cried. That was the kind of woman she was.

I had her cut the ribbon when we had the grand opening of our community library a few years back. And she was my partner at cards in the community hall many, many times. She was extraordinarily sprightly and if I ever drove her anywhere she would leap out of my car and wait for me, laughing as I unfolded myself.

She lost a daughter to cancer about 3 years ago and it was the only time I saw her cry and cry. And I cried too as I held her.

She told me Ansa was the happiest dog she had ever seen in her life as she always had a smile on her face when she was with me. As if she knew I'd saved her. I told her it was a two way street as Ansa had saved me too. And she nodded. She knew.

She'd look for my light at night and I would look for hers and send a kiss across the meadows to her as she did to me even though we couldn't see each other due to the distance. A nightly ritual for years. Makes me teary now thinking of it.

Here is a picture of her collecting donations on the day we opened the community library. She always had a big smile and a great heart that included everyone. And who could resist donating to her? Look at that face!

Go to the stars, dear Theresa, you were adored by all who knew you.

Words for Wednesday

I am hosting for the month of July 2019.

This meme was started by Delores a long time ago. Computer issues led her to bow out for a while. The meme was too much fun to let go, and now Words for Wednesday is provided by a number of people and has become a movable feast.

Essentially the aim is to encourage us to write. Each week we are given a choice of prompts: which can be words, phrases, music or an image. What we do with those prompts is up to us: a short story, prose, a song, a poem, what have you. We can use some or all of the prompts.

Some of us put our creations in comments on the post, and others post on their own blog - please provide the link to your blog in the comments. I would really like it if as many people as possible joined in this fun meme, which includes cheering on the other participants. If you are posting on your own blog - let me know so that I, and other participants, can come along and applaud.

Huge thanks to everyone who joins in the fun and/or comments.

This week's prompts are a photo followed by 2 lists of 4 words each:

(1)
Iceberg
Gas Pump
Cellar
Painting

(2)
Blackboard
Carrot
Doorbell
Cheese

Good luck!

Posted later - my story. All words used and the picture.

They managed to get a fire lit from the driftwood on the beach. A complicated process involving shaving some of the wood off the larger bits. Boy, but it was cold. Through the broken door, the small town outside looked forlorn and deserted.

But they were lucky in their survival, the iceberg had been small but the boat had taken a beating alright with a small hole in her side and water gushing in. It wasn’t time to make Titanic jokes, thought Cindy as she warmed her hands on the measly flames. They had barely tacked into the small harbour, an old settlement off the northern coast and all five of them jumping on to the shore. She looked out the broken window and saw their boat now crashing to pieces off the rocks.

It’s an old schoolhouse! said Kevin, there’s the remains of an old blackboard of the wall! And he brushed off the cobwebs from the flaking black painting.

Peter just then emerged from the cellar holding a few dusty jars of food and an old school bell, displaying his cheesy, fearless smile. They all rolled their eyes at him.

There are some really ancient carrots down there too, he grinned, if we get desperate. But the good news guys?

They all looked at him, in a mixture of shivering despair and overwhelming gratitude, yes they were alive.

He pumped his fist: There’s gas in our sat phone! Search and rescue is on the way!

Sunday Smatterings

Remember those stories you heard about old women stashing money in odd places?

I've arrived there.

I don't know why I do it.

But view this as a tale from the trenches of old age.

It happens. Eventually.

I received cash for multiple reasons in the last few months and I don't know what to do with it so I hide it. There's quite a bit there (I think - I don't stroke and count it). It just lies there quietly. Waiting for death or dismemberment or fire and flood.

There's an odd comfort to it. I remember Granny digging deep in her underwear drawer and handing me a few notes back in the day with strict instructions to "spend it on myself mind you, not on the childer and not on the husband." I know, she fed me a lot of crazy notions about independence and not having too many children to tie me down. At 32 she faked breast cancer (it was a large painful cyst) to stop the nonsense of adding another twenty babies to her existing six children as her doctor said it would kill her to have more. She lied. But I digress.

Here she is with me on her lap as a baby ( I was her first grandchild and her favourite), my mother on the left of her and my darling Granda at the back. A proud O'Sullivan, his clan originally was from The Beara.

She was originally a Sliney, but word had it very much later on that her mother was the kept woman of the local lord of the manor and her children (or some of them) were in actual fact Abernethys. This bomb was dropped by an aunt at one of the family gatherings.

I need to get my DNA done.

Free Floating Fridays

It's great to write this when I have so much else screaming for my attention but here goes. A breath of relief in the midst of so many demands on my time today.

The rehearsals for the play are being scheduled, first one on Sunday night and I can't tell you how thrilling it all is to be looking forward to being back on the boards again. Grandgirl put a comment on my page on FB: "coolest grandma ever." High praise indeed but I think she's felt that way for a while, judging by her bragging to her friends when they compare grandparents. I think being open-minded and non-geezerish is the route to a successful grandparent-grandchild relationship. Plus seizing the opportunity to be a child again with a sense of wonder and joy. And avoiding phrases like "in my time" unless asked.

We are getting ready for press release event for the media for launching our Seniors Advocacy Group. Advocacy is a nice word. We are actually demanding rectification to the injustices and forcing accountability from these wealthy out of touch politicians. Such events are all about the "stories" and that's the part we are working on.

Obituaries: I've seen so many "sweet" ones here when it comes to women. How giving and uncomplaining and loving everyone they ever met and devoting themselves to family and baking. I'd rather die outrageous, unconventional and opinionated, thanks. I often think it's a matter of exposure to more choices as children, more opportunities to explore all aspects of ourselves rather than being confined to a narrow box of service to families. But if they're happy (are they, truly?) so be it. I know I chafe against "normal."

Now that I have physical challenges I find one of the hidden mental "jobs" I perform is accessing every place new for accessibility from the parking to the walking once I get there. I am astonished at how many places are off limits due to distance. Something one never notices when galloping around in optimum health.

I bought a lovely handmade cane when I was away recently, I think it adds a bit of class to the meandering me. I don't use it all the time but there are occasions when I've used up all my spoons in the previous 2 days and need it.

Words for Wednesday

I am hosting for the month of July 2019.

This meme was started by Delores a long time ago. Computer issues led her to bow out for a while. The meme was too much fun to let go, and now Words for Wednesday is provided by a number of people and has become a movable feast.

Essentially the aim is to encourage us to write. Each week we are given a choice of prompts: which can be words, phrases, music or an image. What we do with those prompts is up to us: a short story, prose, a song, a poem, or treating them with ignore... We can use some or all of the prompts.

Some of us put our creation in comments on the post, and others post on their own blog. I would really like it if as many people as possible joined into this fun meme, which includes cheering on the other participants. If you are posting on your own blog - let me know so that I, and other participants, can come along and applaud.

The prompts are here this month. Huge thanks to everyone who joins in the fun and/or comments.

This week's prompts are 2 lists of 4 words each:

Paddock
Bridge
Cane
Moss

and/or

Lilac
Espresso
Fountain Pen
Peroxide

You can use some or all of them.

Thanks and good luck and above all have fun!

Added later~

This is mine.

She hated it but Mother still demanded she dress in the old lady colour of lilac and purple and mauve. Fighting with Mother was distressing as she invariably cried. So she put up with wearing these awful colours. The doctor (and how lovely was he?) had said not to challenge her, just to roll with her desires, the dementia would soon take a further toll.

Twice a week she'd leave the horses after their morning gallop in the paddock, drain the full espresso pot of coffee in the kitchen to fortify herself for the long journey to Mossville where mother resided in her lilac room at the expensive Sunset Lodge. The home for those with dementia was luxurious. Mother was fixated on the colour and had been for some years. In the early days she sometimes forgot to wear it in her rush to make the long trek from the country and then Mother would refuse to see her or cry incessantly. With her Mont Blanc fountain pen she left a note for Paddy the horse trainer as she normally did when she left on errands and then took her cane from the hallstand as the dampness in the air was boring into her arthritic knee and climbed into her car, her mauve silk dress cool on her body.

She drove over the rustic bridge by the road, glancing at herself in the rear view mirror. H'm, not a great shade of blonde there, girlie, she told herself, the peroxide treatment was a little too harsh yesterday. She'd have to speak firmly to Maxine at the salon at her next weekly root touch-up. She sincerely hoped Doctor Cameron thought her hair was naturally blonde and wouldn't look too closely at it today.