The Written Word Group

   Ken looked as if he’d forgotten she was coming.   “Hey Uncle Ken.  I’ve come for the curtains” “ Um, you’re a bit early. Never mind, come in.” “So how have you been Uncle? We haven't seen you around for ages.” “Oh, you know. Busy.”  “I met Nancy, she said you stopped going dancing. That's not like you, you love your dancing.” “Yes well I’ve been rather preoccupied.”  It was then she noticed he was wearing a long kaftan. “What’s with the Demis Roussos look Uncle Ken?” He looked down,  smoothing the material.   “ I rather like wearing this, it’s so comfortable, really you ought to get yourself one. Follow me, the curtains are in here.” They walked into the lounge, Lisa noticed everything had been pushed back.  “Are you having a change around? The room looks huge with the sofa and everything up against the wall.” “I’ve been practising.” He let out an uncomfortable cough.  “Here they are. They’ve been washed. I know how funny yo...

 The cops had handcuffed him and thrown him into the back of their patrol car. He had a black eye where the sergeant had accidently elbowed him in the face. His friends surrounded the car and were demanding answers from the stone-faced cops. I thought, this was not how my trip to, ‘The Rose of Tralee Festival,’ was supposed to end. Last night was a blur. I did remember dancing on top of those parked cars. It must be that. Someone had seen me and complained. Fair cop. I remembered I was trying to impress a girl I had hooked up with. She was a stunner. And I could not believe my luck. Mary or was it, Emma. It was all very vague. We’d gone to a pub and drank far too much booze. And we smoked some dope. Then I’d gone to the toilet and fallen asleep. When I came too, everybody was gone. The party had upped stakes and moved on. I had staggered back to my Air BnB and was out of it until the next morning. I was at the bar enjoying the hair of the dog when the cops came in and manhandled me...

       She sat on the bench watching the children playing on the swings, slides, carrousel, and in the sand pit.   She kept glancing up at the block of flats to her right, she was day dreaming and didn’t notice at first that the playground had gone quiet.   She looked around and saw that all the children and their parents had left, she was on her own with only her memories to keep her company.   She looked up at the block of flats once more and saw that a light had come on in the second floor window she had been watching, then she noticed that the street lights had come on. The rain started to fall and she was feeling cold now , how long have I sat here, she thought, most of the afternoon , she answered herself, she shivered and pulled her coat collar up, snuggling down into the warm wool of the long coat.   Rain dripped from her nose as she rose and walked towards the entrance to the flats, her hair sticking to her forehead as she quickened he...

           Germany calling.   Germany calling.           So England now stands alone in the great big world, she has no friends anymore to help her out, all she has is someone who smokes a big cigar and drinks copious quantities of alcohol every day.   She is a damsel in distress in a sea of trouble and words cannot pull her out, cannot stop her from sinking into the abyss.   The only way is for her to look to the future and see that there is hope on the horizon, to ignore her leaders and come to the people who are offering her a life raft.   A life raft of hope and freedom from your politicians who only care about themselves.           We are ready and willing to save you brave England, to free you from the tyranny you are under.   We, the people of Germany can set you free.   Rise up and put the self-serving ones in Westminster down....

       She could see it well; the road; it was straight; straight as an arrow for two to three miles.  Old oak trees overhung it, they were there before it was ever thought of.  They’d been planted to build ships out of, but by the time they’d grown large enough; the ships were being built of steel.  Planted before the car became the only form of transport in this part of the world.  The trees were so old that they met forming a tunnel; with the road running down the centre, but it wasn’t a dark tunnel because, although the trees met over the top; light flooded in through the leaves and branches, rain filtered down through the tunnel roof, but the mist, when there was any, clung to the trees.           There were times, after heavy rain, and it became sunny and warm, that you could get a thick mist which you couldn’t see through if you were driving, but if you stopped and exit...

  If the old Colonel used his binoculars he could look across the airfield to the hangers and watch them pushing the planes in and out; could watch the men as they worked on the planes when they left the hanger doors open.   He knew that he might get into trouble for watching what they were doing, that they might think that he was a spy or something, but he was just interested and it gave him something to do; I mean what else can you do when you are in your eighties and stuck in the house.           During the night he couldn’t see anything, oh they might wheel a plane out, but the hanger doors would open, the plane pulled out, then the doors shut quickly so that they kept it so that the lights showed as little as possible just in case an enemy bomber was in the area and saw it.   Everyone in the village was worried sick about being next to an active airfield, but they couldn’t evacuate an entire village; I mean where would y...

  The shock wave of a star going Super Nova can expel material at speeds up to several percent of the speed of light. This shudder sends an expanding X-ray death wave into its surrounding interstellar surroundings. The Wyse, the branch of science and war that had planned the exit from our dying sun, had found some suitable planets we could colonize. We were the last remains of our cephalopod's civilization. Uprooted and launched on a perilous diaspora journey across the vastness of time and space. Were they aquatic beings like us out there? Will they resist our coming to take up residence, in their Solar System. And if life had evolved, as it should with aquatics, they could not be, other than intelligent, and therefore open to an intelligent negotiation.   724 light-years away, Ubururu had hung like a shining welcoming beacon in the black emptiness of space. They said it was a rare wonder, a complete water world. Would they share their planet with another al...

            Tom lived quietly on his own in the ground floor flat, he didn’t bother anyone, in fact very few people in the block knew of his existence he was so quiet.   Mable, who lived directly above Tom knew of him though and visited him once a week just to make sure he was all right.   She didn’t know how old he was, but guessed at around eighty.   She thought that he must have been in the Navy because there were pictures of war ships on the walls and models of war ships on the sideboard and windowsills.           She never asked, and he never told, what he had done before he retired, but he was always well dressed and polite when Mable saw him in the street, and his flat was always clean and tidy.   She used to say that he was a proper gentleman of the ‘old school’.   Other people in the flats might see him going out and about, catching the bus into town, or com...

 The Ambulance waited patiently, calm without complaint. Funny to think of an object with no human characteristics to think and have feelings, but this object, Ambulance had more than just feelings, it had a soul. Well several souls really. All the lives lost, loved, gone all in that small box. The fast actions of the paramedics, the speed of the Ambulance dashing through the streets, racing against time and against the traffic to get to the big bright city hospital where life can be saved. But sometimes souls don’t move forward. Sometimes they stick, stick to the last thing, the feel, see, touch. Ambulance had lots of this, lost, stuck souls, clinging to its shell. The little old man who fell in Waitrose and banged his head he never made it to the hospital he just sits in the corner, the young boy who was knocked off his bike just floats up by the lights, the woman who while out on her lunch break on a windy day was hit on the head by falling masonry from a gust of wind, she comes...

          “Well that went better than expected.   We have the money and we are well on our way to disappearing.”           “Don’t you think that they’ll be waiting at the airport for us?”           “If they are then they are going to be very disappointed because we are not going to any airport.   Put this on.”           “What is it?”           “It’s a parachute silly, what did you think it was?”           “You mean that we are going to jump out of a perfectly serviceable plane and fall to the ground with these things.”           “I do!   Now put it on and stop being so awkward.   Have I let you down once since we started this?”   ...