Life fluttering by.

Written for the Jan 7 99-word Flash Fiction challenge with the prompt words of 'butterfly' and 'stone'. When you were small, you used to call butterflies ‘flutterbys’ and you’d chase them through my veg patch and I’d pretend to be angry but you’d just laugh and keep running. When you got older, you’d stone the …

Me and you and DSU, unhappy together.

When James woke up, the first thing he saw was Helen sitting in a stiff-backed faux leather hospital armchair and the first thing he heard was her reading a passage from ‘The Grapes of Wrath’, in a passable American accent. He grunted to get her attention. She barely raised her eyes at the noise but …

The final siren

‘Jo’, he said, as they sat, in their ancient re-cycled armchairs on the back verandah, watching dusk descend upon on ‘The Farm’, aka the backyard patch they had labored long and hard to rescue from suburban desertification. Knowing she was listening, he continued, ‘When did you first decide that you loved me?’. She knew this …

Mervyn Martian and Edgar Earthling discuss jobs

Mervyn: Edgar, what is a ‘job’? Edgar: It’s task or a set of tasks that an employer pays you to complete. The money you receive pays for your food, housing, clothing etc. M: But I keep hearing that there aren’t enough jobs, so people have no money. E: Well, they get some money from the …

Paradise on Earth

This piece was written for the 6 sentence story challenge with the prompt word of 'Distance' For Gerald, the plague represented a blessing from on high, rather than a sign of God’s punishment of a sinful, unrepentant world, as posited by some parishioners at his local church (at least the ones who weren’t positing that …

In celebration of women who make my heart sing

Apologies to those that may have read this in another (now defunct) blog life of mine but worth reviving I think. I've always been a sucker for women singers across a wide range of genres in a way that their male colleagues have never quite achieved. Of course I have my favorite male singers and …

Black is the colour where none is the number

In these more enlightened days, appearing in blackface is quite rightly considered offensive and unacceptable. I can only plead ignorance and the thoughtlessness of youth in my defence and seek the forgiveness of people of colour. In my callow youth, I was a thespian, albeit an amateur of the species. (No, Doris, I said ‘thespian’. …

Occasional Ravings – Charities and the cycle of funder abuse

This is a bit seriousy so you might want to skip it if you only like my funny bits. 😉 For many years I worked in the charitable/not-for-profit sector, including periods on both the funder and fundee side of the negotiation table. Despite all the funding appeals you see, it is now extremely rare for …

Steady Eddie

Aeons ago, in 1960’s Australia, the post WWII baby boom hit the high schools and technical schools like a freight train. Now, visually-impaired Freddie could have predicted this but it seemed to take education authorities by complete surprise. Jerry-built schools began to pop up like mushrooms across the suburbs. These ‘temporary’ structures were around for …

Remember not and remember

I have just re-discovered this piece I wrote for my wife, Sue, when her beloved younger brother was facing his final days with us. Remember not his lostness in space, his days, numbered and unnumbered, annihilated through ingestion, his false stairways climbed in hope of heaven his roads travelled to others’ horizons; he knew the …