Skip to main content

Short Attention Span Stories



Monday:
I can’t remember what happens on Monday; by Tuesday it has gone. I’m not sure how that happened. Evidence suggests overseeing the migration of cardboard boxes.
Tuesday:
A knock on the door is my neighbour, excitedly gesticulating, asking if we are missing a ferret. I think about it. No, we don’t have a ferret. Cat has learnt to use the cat flap, Dog compulsively flushes birds out of crop fields, Rabbit likes to sit in the under space of his hutch and watch the green lawn world. There is not a ferret missing from this scene. Later in the day, as I am waiting in the road while a breakdown flatbed winches a silver car to the curb, my neighbour passes. They took the ferret to the vet, I learn. It’s a baby. I update Mr on the story and he trumps me by suspecting a cuckoo, having found a fledgling dead upon the ground under the sparrow nest.
Wednesday:
Been working, while estranged from the www. All this house moving malarkey also interrupts my access to concentration. So, a short story is emerging. And, I am revisiting my 1,000 Miracles In One Day: an experiment in poetry. Line by line, verse by verse, slow work over the thesaurus, scratching my head with a biro, drinking espresso too close to midnight. 



Comments

YONKS said…
Good luck with the move! I don't envy you :-)
Di
X
Geo. said…
I must express amazement. My neighbors have asked me for many things, never a ferret. But chiefly I'm amazed by your photo of the moon as heart of a wraith dancing in the dark sky. My compliments!
Lisa Southard said…
Mr took the moon picture, I will pass the compliment along. He claims not to be creative, but has an eye for an image and wilts visibly without a project to work on. Currently he is producing some marvellous shelves from reclaimed wood. This move is dragging on. but once done, will prove a boon I'm sure :-)

Popular posts from this blog

Contact Pants Conundrum

There is weather today, I do note it: take a few moments to reckon the size of a cloud (big) and the frequency of rain (sporadic.) Centre of my interest though is a stack of magazines. Not the fashion kind. This is martial arts research. I'm not even sure what it is I'm looking for, but intuition calls loud. A range of old adverts skew some amusement. Contact pants, for example. Pants are not trousers where I come from. They are underwear. Professional contact pants: improved smirk value. But why would a person be likely to purchase a grappling hook and a lock pick set? For specialists and hobbyists only, the blurb assures. Guidance on the pheromone spray that attracts women against their better judgement? I doubt it works any more proficiently than the mysterious potion that defines your muscles while you sleep. But, then: I wonder is some sprayed on this paper? What was my intuition thinking, making this ghastly shout… Tea break time. There's a lot of words...

Back From The Future Blog Party

Another joint blog adventure- if you want to see who else said what the list of participants is here . The premise is this: 'You're up before dawn on a Saturday when the doorbell rings. You haven't brewed your coffee so you wonder if you imagined the sound. Plonking the half-filled carafe in the sink, you go to the front door and cautiously swing it open. No one there. As you cast your eyes to the ground, you see a parcel addressed to you ... from you. You scoop it up and haul it inside, sensing something legitimate despite the extreme oddness of the situation. Carefully, you pry it open. Inside is a shoebox -- sent from ten years in the future -- and it's filled with items you have sent yourself. What's in it?' Here's how I imagined it: Before dawn? Shadows outside, first forming. Sleep has gone, I don't know where. Coffee I can find. All the way from Machu Pichu, this fair-traded pack. Scissors are in the drawer, which ...

A Happy Kind Of Idiot

I am watching hazel leaves shimmy in a breeze, they are keeping time with the buzz of nettle stings that run from my fingertips to my elbows. It feels like I'm wearing gloves made of needles; why didn't I just wear gloves to clear the nettles from the raspberry hedge? But I like to know the plants, how they grow, how they smell, how they stain and sting, what bugs shelter in their leaves, what grubs and gastropods nestle at the roots. How the roots sneak under weedblocks, moon-pale, and over open ground where they are purplish, bullish.  I like the work to affect, I like interactive life.  It has a little pain and a lot of interest.  Not all the nettles are gone, of course, some must be left to house caterpillars, and they are a healthy vegetable for people too. Today’s crop is for compost though, to feed the soil, the miracle stuff from which this abundance grows. How could I not wish to be close to that?  At home I have a shower, scrub my sore hands- and still I sm...