Aye AI It’s the latest addition to the frightening list soon, they say, we wordsmiths will be unnecessary machines will vomit everything they need to get our messages across. Across where? Who knows? Giant buckets of dictionaries, heated, agitated until, with a burp of punctuation, a sentence escapes. A grammatically correct construction: born to be […]
Disproportionate response – 100 words
Disproportionate response To the boulderer I met in the wood, I said I’m sorry my dog startled you, and I know some people find animals scary. What more could I say? I wasn’t ignoring you when I walked away – the opposite – I’d heard every word and when you got to the bit where […]
To-do list items – 100 words
To-do list items Friday and ‘what have you got planned today?’ Did you ask in the hope of surprise? Instead: ‘Oh, you know, the usual. All the jobs.’ Jobs that bookend my week – cleaning, tidying, dull administration tending the health of animals and people, houses and machines. When did this dreary dutiful to-doing take […]
Lost and found – 100 words
Lost and found Around 50 babies are abandoned every year in the UK – left in hospitals, doorways, bins, bushes and shopping bags. It’s criminal. Not just because a human will grow up rootless, believing mum didn’t want them, but because abandoning an infant is against the law – usually resulting in a custodial sentence. […]
March – 100 words
March A yellow month daffodils, dandelion, gorse and the eyes of new-born daisies little lambkins, blossom gutters and premature chocolate eggs holly and Rudolph slip over the horizon behind and it’s spring forward into long shadows and the smell of burning meat in next door’s garden the buzz of distant mowers but we aren’t there […]
Wishing – 100 words
Wishing I saw the first lamb of the year trotting, cute in the field. It makes me want to gambol too. And daffodils poking yellow noses past half-dead weeds from last year. I scan the scrubby edges for evidence that my civilising bulbs are growing to paint grubby verges with vermillion and a deep ecclesiastical […]
Mood – 100 words
Mood I felt a little gloomy yesterday flat, meh and a little bit, well, pointless. Joy was down the back of the sofa or underneath a half-finished project Was it the moon phase or an unexpressed emotion – my inner child needing a cuddle or a lollypop? Perhaps it was something I ate. […]
Optimism – 100 words
Optimism Walking through town as the sun sneaks up glinting tiles feeling the buzz of streets waking up of newspapers unbundled coffee machines primed smell wakes the air tuna mayo cement and baguette bricks ready for construction How do? Morning, much brighter today… Lights on weekend leftovers swilled pavement signs propped Good weekend? Lovely thanks […]