Reminiscing...

This morning I have been on a virtual walk...wandering through the once familiar lanes and alleyways of the internet...stumbling upon long forgotten but one time regular haunts.

It's too easy to be distracted by the very present, shiny, social media stuff. Twitter and Facebook dangle baubles that catch the light and sparkle brightly but oh-so-fleetingly. But of course as one glittering tweet fades the light bounces off to light  up another. They are like fairground candy floss...satisfying for a second but with no substance. Blog posts and writers websites on the other hand glow with a constant, gentle luminescence that can be overlooked as we dash from shiny to shiny. So today I have revisited and indulged in a few old favourites. 

One in particular I stayed at for a while - it kindleakindle a little spark which brought me back here to my own stagnant blog, searching for a piece of my own writing...I didn't find it and so I am posting here today, six years after it appeared on Richard Hearn's Geowriting site as part of the Brighton Digital Festival. 

If I remember rightly, the prompt was a boy in a yellow T-Shirt ...

This is what I wrote: 

I made my way from the station. Keeping to the narrow back lanes and side streets. Off the beaten tracks, away from prying eyes. I couldn't risk being spotted. That would raise too many questions, too many puzzled looks, the risk of discovery and repatriation. The last thing I wanted!

A movement at the end of the alley caught my attention.

A sudden breeze lifted the rubbish causing a mini maelstrom of old newspapers and Pizza Place fliers. I squinted against the tornado of dust and grit and saw beyond it, a small human crouching by the bins. He seemed as keen as I not to be spotted, and I couldn't help feeling that a less glaring choice of shirt might have helped him.

We looked at each other, warily.

Separated for an instant by the storm of paper until, as suddenly as it had begun, the wind dropped and the papers fluttered to the ground. One sheet came to rest in front of me. I looked down and saw my own face staring back. And underneath, the hideous human name.

I shuddered in disgust and shame. By the bins the boy stared at me. His eyes flickered to the paper at my feet and back up to meet my gaze. He nodded, the slightest, barely perceptable movement of his head and then stood and jogged quietly past.

Thankful of his understanding, I continued my journey leaving behind the poster offering a reward for my safe return. I hoped the human boy was as successful in his own bid for freedom.

You can find out about the project and read the other contributions from writers across the country here 

http://www.brightondigitalfestival.co.uk/

February is the worst month...

I know. January is usually my worst month, and it was pretty dire, but February is giving it a run for it's money this year. Maybe it's just another of those age things, you know? The older you get the creakier your bones, the worse your eyesight, the longer it takes to get up out of a chair, for wounds to heal, and maybe for the January blues to clear.
Maybe it's because we haven't had a proper winter this year...hardly any frost, no snow to speak of, just lots of greyness and rain. Or maybe it's because this year, more than any other, I simply fail to see a light at the end of the tunnel, no silver linings, no brightside. I always see a brightside, even - or maybe especially - when others can't. Don't get me wrong, I am sure there is one, I just can't see it yet. Maybe March will be my month. That's a lot of maybes.

February is Post-It Note Poetry Month. I have been looking forward to it for a while - it always cheers me up and gets me writing - usually badly but that doesn't matter. The important thing is to be writing. Plus it is good for my succinct style. It is perhaps a testament to my state of mind this February that in 11 days I have posted just 3 poems. Massive fail. Something must be done - not sure what yet, but for sure it must.

For now, I leave you with today's post-it poem. It's not great but I quite like it and writing and posting it made me feel better.

I hadn't intended such an introspective post to break the block, sorry about that. Onwards and upwards, as they say.

Water #developingyoureye 3

Day 3 - you'll notice I am running a little behind!
Our day in Arundel started sunny but with the promise of rain - by the end of the day we had seen more water than we would have liked.

#developingyoureye

Photo Challenges

A couple of weeks ago I came across a photo challenge blog on wordpress. I've been doing quite a few daily challenges that call for nothing more than to post a picture on a theme each day - which is fun. But this weekly challenge posed a problem. It required a pingback to the original post...which would have been fine if a photo challenge fitted in with my wordpress blog. Dabblewords is all about the words. It has poetry and flash fiction...made up stuff. It does not have the introverted meanderings from the mind of a social network addict. So if I wanted to join in I either posted on blogger and shared it unofficially in the comments...which means not many people will even see it let alone read it...or I found a means to make it about words as well as pictures. And I think I may have cracked it. Taking the weekly theme, I choose a photograph and then I use that as the prompt for a piece of fiction. Presto...Not sure why I didn't think of it sooner! Perfect way to combine my two interests! My first two are up already on https://guerillawriting.wordpress.com/ . Feel free to mosey on over and have a look, leave a comment, or even join in with your own weekly photo...
You can find the link to the Weekly challenge in my previous post... (that's my sneaky way of getting you to read another post...lol!)

#AmWriting

I have been trying to get on top of this writing lark lately. Not very successfully, I might add. As always I have ideas but they never seem to transform themselves into words on a page...and I know!! the words won't actually write themselves, I do have to put some effort in myself. So I have taken myself in hand and am currently submitting to a number of regular challenges. As well as my old favourite Paragraph Planet, I am trying my hand at Three Line Thursday and Ad Hoc Fiction.


PP is a 75 word flash challenge. You can submit to it anytime, on any subject, as the

muse moves you, but your story must be precisely 75 words - no more, no less.

TLT is a weekly picture challenge. You have one day to submit three lines of no more than 10 words per line, inspired by the

featured image. Winners are announced the following Saturday. It's quite a challenge and the standard of entries is high. It is however a very supportive community of writers.

Adhoc is another weekly challenge. This one gives you a generous 150 word maximum, and the only requirement is that you must include the prompt word in your tale. Winning stories for Adhoc Fiction recieve a free chance to enter the longer Bath Flash Fiction Award.




In addition to all these I am also trying to write a poem inspired by science. That's not going so well just yet but it may get there. I have found my friendly scientist (I didn't have to look far to be fair, he's on my friends list!)and we have had a chat about why he thinks science is fab. Now I have a week to kick it into touch and string together some half decent words and ideas. It might happen. Watch this space!

Bank Holiday Blues

I really don't like Bank Holidays. They sweep in with promises of activity and days out and good times but they never live up to expectation. In fact I can't remember the last time a Bank Holiday (Christmas not included - that's a whole other ball game) included a fun day out. I am therefore, as usual, home alone doing desultry housework, and trying to write something.
And I do have a project to write for...Crossing The Tees Festival mini project on breaking barriers and crossing boundaries. I have a story half written. It needs some work to beat it into shape.
I also have a poem to work on. That's a much more slippery piece. Tricksy. So it has been relegated to the "Look At Later" pile.

In the meantime, between loading the washer and washing the pots, I have drunk way to much coffee and written a six word story about waiting...
 ...and a Last Line First story about noise.
I'm now considering 75 words for Paragraph Planet.
Oh...and I've written a blog post...So. There you go. Productive Bank Holiday fun. Hope you're enjoying yours.

Gudbye t'Jayne

Today is the start of NaPoWriMo. The early prompt for today  was  to write a poem in the vernacular beginning with 'I guess it's too late...'
In the great tradition of the Hartlepool Writers group I obviously ignored that and posted a Too Late haiku. This morning on Twitter, reading the other posts and thinking about the evening before, I tried it again. Obviously being English I can't start it 'I guess...' and being a member of Hartlepool Writers group I couldn't make it a 'too late' poem but I think I got the 'in the vernacular' ...just about. I definitely got the sentiment right.

Gudbye t'Jayne

I s'pose I should be grateful
For the good times we have had
But today tbh
Jayne's Leaving just
Leaves me
Sad.

#NaPoWriMo

Murder, muses and mayhem; just another week of culture...

This week has been a bit of a cultural marathon.

Tuesday took me to The Royalty Theatre in Sunderland to see their production of Amanda Whittington's "The Thrill of Love" - the story of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the UK.

Wednesday was Writers' Group at the library -  this week using signs as prompts. Since most of the signs I had hurriedly printed off were the Danger! Warning! type, it's perhaps hardly surprising that they inspired a surfeit of dead bodies...It's fair to say the bloodthirsty members of the group were in their element! Hopefully they will tidy up the blood and limbs and send me some samples for the group blog. (hint, hint writing group people!) Prompts are strange beasts. Sometimes they lead you to the
obvious, and other times they lead you a dance bringing you out somewhere unexpected. I thought I was writing a story about high jinx in the chemistry lab but ended up going in a completely different direction with a poem inspired by the growth in a petrie dish.

Thursday brought more drama with a visit to Arts Centre Washington for "Odyssey" - Theatre Ad Infinitum's fabulous dramatic re-telling of the legend. It had seductive nymphs, blinded cyclops, jealous gods and, of course, a great hall filled with blood and dead bodies... Quite a week so far.
Saturday will hopefully see me at The Blacklight Engine Room in Middlesbrough. I have no idea whether there will be dead bodies involved in that, but it is compered by a guy called Morbid...


You can read my review of The Thrill of Love here.

Find out what else is on at Arts Centre Washington .

Read more from the Hartlepool Writers' Group at The forms of things unknown .

Comments always welcome.

Challenges

I've neglected my blog again.
Well, not quite true. I have been visiting it, like a sick Auntie in a hospital, and peering at the stats, and feeling slightly amazed that it is still breathing. People are still coming in and looking at bits of it. So I've been scrolling through the old posts to see what they looked at, and thinking I really should add something new. I have even opened the "new post" tab. And I have stared at the big white space and that blinking little cursor. "Go on!" it blinked, "Type something...I dare you! Type, type, type..." A flickering black line whispering its mockery. And my words dried up. My thoughts disappeared. It's like magic. Really, it is. Stage magicians can make a woman disappear. A blinking cursor and a blank screen can make a brain disappear. But this magic is not real. It's just a trick. A sleight of hand. The brain is still there and it is still full of words. All it needs is for some rogue child to pull back the curtain and reveal all to the audience.

My rogue children currently come in the form of two challengers. They have crept in and twitched back the curtain.
First and most public is Natalie Bowers who started "Last Line First". A weekly flash writing challenge that I am trying to keep up with. I am failing miserably at it, but it's fun! I was fortunate enough to have a last line intriguing enough to be chosen for the challenge in week 4. Hence my lovely badge of honour which you can see on the right (Unless you're on a mobile device, in which case take my word for it, it's lovely!). We're on week eight now and I have just submitted again. (Told you I was failing at it!)
My second challenger is not quite so public, a personal challenge from a friend who pokes me, tuts at me, scolds me and makes me write. He fires random challenges to make me think, make me seek out the words and thoughts and find a way to get them onto the blank page. I don't always do what he tells me, but I do listen. He might not realise that, so hopefully this will serve to let him know his scolding is doing some good!
You can read the fruit of his four word challenge here, if you're so inclined and feel free to leave a comment.

The hardest part is often just daring to put a word - any word - onto the white page. Once a word is on there the page is not so white, not so blank, and not so scary. And if it turns out to be not quite the right word, I can always replace it with another...and another and another...and before I know it I've written something and there's a new post on my blog. Watch this space. The words are flowing again and Auntie Blog is feeling better.

Shell Shock

Last week I went to my first poetry reading.

Hang on, you say, Denise has finally lost her marbles. We all know she has been to poetry readings before, in fact we know she's organised a fair few of them herself!
You're right, I have. But this was different! This was a reading for the launch of a new poetry pamphlet that includes me. I stood up - well, sat up - and read words written by me, to complete strangers.

I know!
Steps back in amazement!

Me - the "I am not a writer" person. I have poems (plural) in a book (published!). And what's more I'm in there with proper poets. People who do write, and call themselves writers.
I am, to put it mildly (and not too poetically) a bit gobsmacked. And it is perfectly okay if you all are too!

How on earth has this astonishing thing come about, you cry? And well you might.
For the past year I have been part of a project set up and run by Martin Malone, writing poetry to commemorate the centenary of the Bombardment of Hartlepool in 1914. I have spent a Saturday afternoon once a month holed up in the Heugh Battery on the Headland, Hartlepool, learning about war (and people's reaction to it), and poetry (and people's reactions to that, too). I have in fact spent not much of that time actually producing poetry, much to the consternation of Mr Malone. (If his hair had been long enough to get hold of he'd have torn it out by now).

Martin's idea was to produce a pamphlet of poetry that went to the hearts and minds of the people affected by the Bombardment. Not to glorify the fighting or lambast the politicians, but to document the emotions and reactions of ordinary people caught up in an extraordinary event.
At the time Martin was trying to get the group up and running a few people had said one or two nice things about the scraps of writing I had done and I was looking for a way to develop myself and my writing. Writing about people and feelings was something I was pretty sure I could do, I thought.
But, oh my word it was hard! Coming from a base of inexperience and very shaky self confidence, and discovering such a wealth of talent in that little cafe in the Heugh, I wondered what on earth I was doing there. I felt a complete fraud, sitting among people who could pull words together and create such expressive and poignant pieces. Surely I had no right to be there? But I gritted my teeth, girded my loins and I held the line.

Every month I brought along a scrap of writing, and every month I skulked away with it unread in my notebook. Mr Malone, I am sure, despaired of me. It became a something of a standing joke that I came to a writing group but never wrote anything. In actual fact I was writing, I just wasn't confident enough to share it (imagine that!). In eleven months I handed him three poems and each time I felt sick with trepidation, because surely to god, this four or five lines couldn't count as a poem? And even if it did, it was not likely to be any good...but apparently (to quote another proper poet*), "it was good enough".
In the end, I managed four scraps, handed in at the 11th hour (but not of the 11th day) and probably surprised everyone, but frankly, no-one more so than me.

It's been an experience - a scary one, and a challenging one but a good one. The reading was unbelievably daunting, but the work, read in sequence as it appears in the book, sounded amazing and incredibly moving. I am immensly proud to have been part of it and to have my words included in the pamphlet alongside some right proper poets.

If you are interested in the pamphlet, get in touch with Martin via his website or Twitter, or pop into Hartlepool Central Library where they will be on sale shortly.

http://www.hartlepoolmail.co.uk/news/local/memorial-day-to-commemorate-the-bombardment-of-hartlepool-1-6944087

*John Hegley - another proper poet who has considered my words good enough.

Creepy Crawlies

The past week I seem to have developed a magnetic personality for creatures with more than four legs. It began with a spider clinging to my car, looking as if it had been caught in a room with David Banner and some gamma rays. I am reliably informed this is a female green (no,really?) orb weaver spider. Quite common, actually.




 Next up, no more than two days later, this chap...who was cheeky enough to be inside the car! Yikes! Fortunately I didn't spot him until the end of the journey as I was parking the car, so no spider induced traffic calamity. This one is a harvester spider, apparently. He wasn't too keen on being ushered to the outside of the car. Perhaps for this reason he made a re-appearence a day later...crawling up my jeans leg. It may not have been the same one...perhaps he sent his big brother round to sort me out? Either way, this one was also encouraged to take a turn in the fresh air!


In the meantime at work, I have been keeping a spidery weather eye on two large black spider legs that are currently protruding out of a crack in the window frame near my desk. They have been there for a week, unmoving. Past experience has taught me not to be complacent. Just because they haven't moved doesn't mean they won't. I know one morning I will come to work and the legs will have disappeared and somwhere a rather large black spider will be lurking...

This is not the end of the creepy crawlie saga - I have also had a shield bug incident - but it was at this point that I felt inspired to pen a spidery flash...herewith shared!

Spider Humour
Spiders have a fiendish sense of humour. They lay in wait and jump out, "Boo!" Or creep up, unawares, as you watch TV in the dark. A sudden RAWR!!" in the flickering light of "Aliens III". But the best ones play the long game, hiding in a crevice in the window sill, just the tip of a black leg in view. There for days, unmoving. You convince yourself it is no threat. Then, one day, gone.

A Quiet Thought

I have been catching up with posts from National Flash Fiction Day. It's taking me a while, because there was such a lot going on and so many good stories to read. I was busy with a poetry project so we didn't celebrate the day in Hartlepool this year, and as time was tight I didn't manage to join in any of the online activities either. While I was rummaging about in the many blog entries my name surpisingly popped up with a story I submitted back in 2012. I had completely forgotten about it. The prompt was the phrase "Just say yes". It's not bad, even if I say so myself. Makes me wish even more that I had managed to write something for this year.
Anyway, for your delight and delectation, I thought I would share it again here. (Spotted a typo in the original would you believe!)
If you'd like to read more flash from this year's #nffd then look here:  http://thewrite-in.blogspot.co.uk/?m=0

Just Say Yes!
She heard the question. The words were clear, the meaning quite plain. It didn’t seem to be a trick question. She hesitated, wondering. What if he didn’t really mean it? What if he was just being polite. People did that. Asked things because they felt they ought, not because they really wanted to. Or what if he wasn’t really who he seemed? He seemed nice, polite, interested. What if it was all just a front, a cover for a darker, less polite, dangerous person? Someone interested for the wrong reason. What if she said no? Would the darker person she feared reveal himself or would he just walk away? Would she regret it? Was it really worth the risk? It would be so much safer to simply say no: to walk away from him.
Inside her head one thought fought its way to the top, pushing aside all the doubts, all the “what ifs?”. A quiet thought.
Just say yes, it said.

Signs of Life - a flash fiction and a little reflection.

Signs of Life

He bumbled and grumped through his morning routine. Bedroom drawers rumbled open with no clack of closure. Water spattered from taps. Downstairs, doors clumped shut, cutlery crackled against crockery. The kettle clicked into rumbling action. She waited, quiet, listening. How loud it all was. These noises intruded, silencing her thoughts, quashing her dreams, tethering her to this life. Their life? His life. Later, she would make noises of her own.

I've not been doing too well with my writing lately. This blog has languished for weeks. And yet it is not for want of ideas. My head is filled with half formed ideas that never seem to develop, or refuse to develop the way I wish they would. I'm not quite sure why this is. My initial lack of confidence about my writing has waned somewhat, entirely due to the encouragement of some very talented people. They are still telling me that what I write is worth something, and they ought to know about stuff like that, right? After all, for some of them it's what they do everyday.
Life is full of noise at the moment. Lots of banging and clattering, some of it is good noise, but quite a lot is just clatter. And it's hard to put that aside and find the quiet calm that enables the half formed ideas and thoughts to grow into something real.
Signs of Life was written a little while ago. Now seemed like a good time to bring it out into the world.

Exams - Flash Fiction

Zoe sat shredding the serviette, the coffee forgotten, cold in its polystyrene cup. All around other students swarmed in and out. Their chatter a rising crescendo, fading away as the swarm departed. She thought she might die from the noise, it seemed so alien to her. So much chattering and laughter. The remains of the serviette twisted tight in her fingers. She clung to it as if it alone could stop her from falling apart.
A buzzer sounded. The harsh claxon drawing the swarm suddenly away. Alone, Zoe slumped into her seat. And the tears came. 

Curiosity killed the cat.

People said it was the black dog that killed him. But in truth it was curiosity. The sign said, in letters big and red,

Do Not Enter
Guard dog

Curiosity and prohibition, the cat's siren call, painted in letters as red as the matador's rag. He knew the score. There could be no excuse, and no defence.
He opened the gate.

Inspired by poetry.

They sat in the inglenook, talking quietly. All around them customers arrived, sat, ordered, drank tea, left. Delicate china tea cups rattled in saucers, silver teaspoons tinkled. Sugar was spooned, cream was poured, cakes were eaten. Waitresses scurried to and fro, serving tea and cake, presenting bills, clearing tables.
And all the while the couple in the inglenook sat and talked. Safe in a world of their own making,  enveloped in a calmness, a togetherness that excluded everyone else in the room. The noise and bustle didn't impinge on their world. They felt no need to raise their voices, as the noise in the tea shop rose, they simply inclined towards each other, unconsciously, as if breathing in the other's words.
Time ticked by. The tea room filled. People waited to be seated. No-one approached the couple to suggest they might care to abandon their nook to another couple.
At 3.30 she glanced at the clock and laid a hand gently on his arm. He briefly covered her hand with his and then waved for the bill. The first and only touch.
The bill was presented and paid, with a generous tip for the smiling waitress.
He held the door, and then they were gone.





"Let us not speak, for the love we bear one another -
  let us hold hands and look'
She, such a very ordinary little woman;
  He, such a thumping crook;
But both, for a moment, little lower than angels
  In the teashop's inglenook.

A short short reprieve.

I was clearing out files and emails today and came across this very short short. I think it was a National Short Story Day Twitter challenge.  A story in a tweet. I kind of like it (I'm starting to say that a lot, lately), so I thought I'd share it before it was consigned to the recycle bin. Who knows maybe one of these days I'll develop the idea behind it. I'm pretty sure there was one...

She entered the room, a silence fell.
The kind of silence that screams through your soul.
That says 'From this moment, life changes".

Comments and suggestions welcome. Feel free to develop the idea if you have any inkling as to what happens next, or indeed what has gone before...

James

Written for the final exercise at the Shepherd's Dene writing workshop I attended last week.
We were given a photograph as a prompt and asked to write something about the person in the picture. The photograph I was given was of a man/woman sitting on a bench in the grounds of the house, looking out across the autumn gardens. The picture was slightly out of focus and taken from behind, so the face could not be seen, the person could have been male or female. I decided on male, and called him James.
This is my piece. Feel free to comment.

James sat, hunched, on the bench. He stared out across the gardens, but he didn't see the trees bathed in their autumn reds and golds. He saw a different scene. A different red.
To the casual observer he could just have been someone enjoying a moment of calm in a busy day, but his calm, still exterior belied the turmoil of his thoughts. Images from earlier in the day crowded in on him. He struggled to make some kind of sense of the events, to find some hint of what he should do next.
How had he gotten involved in it all? He tried to pinpoint the moment when things began to go wrong. Had he done somethingto cause it all? Was it all his fault again?
In his mind he replayed the events of the day. Minute by minute, turning this way and that, trying to see all the angles, every point of view. But he couldn't see it. However he viewed it, it all just seemed inexplicable. He couldn't see that anything he had said or done could have caused the chaos that had errupted.
This time, he was sure. It had not been his fault. This time, someone else was to blame.

A new year resolution thingy...

I realise that this comes a little late - everyone else was doing the obligatory "see out the old, ring in the new" blog post back in January. The really eager beavers were doing it in December. I've never really been one to follow the herd, I wave a token placard now and then just to keep people happy (I have noticed people get a bit edgy if you appear to be deliberately wandering in a different direction to everyone else). But although I didn't choose to wave my New Year Resolution placard at new year, I had actually made one, a resolution I mean, not a placard! And not just my usual "I will put on half a stone and keep it" or "I will clean my windows more than twice in 2014". I made a proper, serious New Year Resolution. And aye, there's the rub. It was a serious one. And it was important to me. So I didn't sing and shout about it. But I did get on and do it and what's more, I got on and did it like the eager beavers, way back in December.  I had been dithering about joining a new writing project. I was not sure I was either A. good enough or B. Hartlepuddlian enough, to take part.  As I dithered, checking up on Facebook and Twitter (as you do) just in case some great event was errupting that needed my immediate and close attention, one of those auspicicious things happened. A tweet about a Creative Writing Workshop popped up in my Twitter stream. And then it popped up on Google. It was local too. I got the distinct feeling someone was trying to tell me something. I mentioned it to a friend who quite simply said, go for it. (He did have to say it quite simply several times, for which steadfast commitment to curing my ditheriness I am very grateful.) And so my NYR was formed. I would do something for me in 2014, and that something would be to take this writing lark seriously. I booked the workshop and I resolved to go to the first meeting of The Heugh Battery Writers Group. 
There'll be more on the Heugh later I'm sure, but first Shepherd's Dene!



Last Sunday I had a whole day of writing. Me. The tea maker. The not really a writer who was bullied coerced persuaded to join in by the guys in the library writing group. Imagine that. To say I was daunted would be putting it mildly, but I found myself in a beautiful setting with a bunch of lovely, and equally daunted people, plus two of the friendliest, most undaunting workshop leaders I have ever come across - Rachel Cochrane and Helene Dolder . 
Plus, it all began with coffee and cookies so, you know it was bound to be fine.

The day was all about the senses and observation. I was slightly hindered by a hideous headcold - held in check with max strength flu capsules (shop's own brand though other well known makes are available) and by the fact that I rarely seem to notice anything much. I actually do find the kind of exercise where you have to look at things minutely really difficult. Self-conscious at the best of times the intensity of such observation almost paralyses me. I look at an object and see only that - it's a chair, it has legs, I can sit on it... I marvelled at the imagery that others in the group created from their various observances throughout the day. I found myself writing pagefuls of words, with maybe a phrase or a line here and there that stuck a chord. I was not put off by this, and that is perhaps the measure of the small progress I have made in three years, because I have learned that three good words can be the trigger for something more, so I have gathered my words like fallen leaves and will spread them out later and smooth their crumples and see what I can make of them. 

Seventy five words!

She waited.

There was nothing she could do. She knew that.

But still her mind raced, full of "what ifs?" and "maybes?". Futile ideas, straws to be grasped and crushed and discarded, instantly replaced by yet another desperate idea. 

The clock ticked, slow and deliberate, mocking her pretence at patience.

This was madness!

She should not have come. Not today, probably not ever.

Still the clock ticked on.

Dear God! How she hated the waiting.

I wrote this as a submission for Paragraph Planet which asks for a 75 word story. Have just realised it had 76 words (now edited)! Curse my dodgy maths skills!  Hopefully my English skills are a bit better?