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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Nov, 2024
Submitted to Contest #332
For Reedsy Competition“Under the weather” phrase to include. The Passport Pages by Graham Bathgate “They’ll turn you back at Heathrow,” she said like a judge pronouncing a sentence. A mixture of emotions welled up in me: incredulity, impatience, even getting a tad upset. Here we go again, I thought, another brush with bureaucracy but this time really bad. I had a feeling that I was dealing with a dangerously deranged official, someone more than a bit under the weather in her job. Still, there was something that gave me cause for pause – s...
Submitted to Contest #329
Prompt: Write a story that includes the phrase “It was a dark and stormy night,” “Skeletons in the closet,” or “Digging up the past.” Two Past Diggings I have the good fortune to be able to recall pleasant work and events from over 50 years ago. I can easily dig up the past both literally and metaphorically. I often think how enjoyable my life has been, so it could be said that I really dig (sic) my past. There are a few other kinds of memory here along with the good times. I hope from reading this “story” you can appreciate them, too. ...
Submitted to Contest #328
Reedsy StoryInclude the line: “I remember… ” Title: I Aye Mind My Life I remember (or in Scots, “I aye mind”) a long life of many events, most of them happy, some regretful. For this story I’ll try to keep to the happy side of my memories. I recall quite sharply a lot of my long life, even from very early on. For example, I oft mind as a baby some moments of being on an aeroplane going from my birthplace in the Orkney Islands to the big infirmary in Edinburgh for an operation to fix an abscess in my ear. I survived that but a year later I ma...
Submitted to Contest #327
One roasting Saturday morning in July, 2001 in Takadanobaba, Tokyo, I was rescued by a couple of New Zealanders who heard me, a kitten, give a pitiful meow in a nearby park. From their third floor balcony they saw me weak and struggling. They came out and found me all alone in the intense heat, trying to climb up some steps, as if to find some shelter or succour. They picked me up and took me home to the safety and security of their apartment. This rescue would prove to be successful, very happy for me, but costly for them. They called me “J...
Submitted to Contest #325
Pick-up on a Paris Street? On a four-day stay in Paris in July, 2010, I was prepared for a little adventure, not the French kind of “aventure” but just a little happening out of the ordinary. I am always on the lookout for something or someone beyond simple sightseeing as I walk strange streets, and that’s all I do really, because all the usual wonderful sights have been seen, so now I just wander or “flâner” as the French say. I delight in encountering things out of the ordinary, a little unusual incident perhaps, something a trifle outré, ...
Submitted to Contest #285
The Rock ’n’ Roll DoctorI remember well the visit to the doctor in the foreign land although it was over 20 years ago, etched on my memory because the doctor was, putting it mildly, quite a character. He was also a Rock’n’Roll afficionado which put us on a solid footing. I also remember that rightly or wrongly I decided not to tell him I was also a doctor, causing me to recall ruefully that it would have been easier if I had owned up to a similar background. But then it was the South of France and I didn’t wish to declare a contrast between ...
Submitted to Contest #276
“You should be in prison!” I told him straight, no regrets for the ill-will which he totally deserved. I knew I could condemn with impunity, as I was the President. He deserved incarceration for negligence! At the very least dismissal from the union. Gordon Gooding, the Treasurer of our English language school union … my Treasurer wasn’t complying with my demands for access to the financial records. Seized by the conviction he was botching the books, I deftly concluded that he was fleecing our teachers’ union fund. As President of the...
Submitted to Contest #275
The “Corpse” The following is full of real events and people. Of course, a lot of it is wildly imagined, such as the kirk, the minister, the coffin and the remembrance service – some of this will be activated in future! “Thank you, thank you, now please leave the lid off,” I said to the kirk minister, Mr McTaggart. His tiny rural kirk was in north-east Scotland in whose heathery hills I had run about as a child, very fitting for my farewell. He had kindly provided wobbly wooden steps for me to go up and drop down into the fine sh...
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