Putative Purple .....

I have read the other entries on the blog this week with great interest.  I had never heard of the term "Purple Prose" before and, as ever, I am finding the process of writing on the blog extremely educational. It made me realise that I am guilty of writing great swathes of purple in to my poetry from time to time, but now that I am aware of it I can remedy it. If I choose to of course. Call me perverse if you will, but I kind of like it!

There is little that I could add to the subject of Purple Prose when it has already been covered so comprehensively thus far, but I though I would post a little something from some years ago when I attempted to start writing a story. Stupidly, I started writing it without any real idea of where I was going with it.  No particular idea of plot, characters, anything really. I thought I would just sit down in front of the computer and type, see where it took me.  Not far, trust me. It amounted to the cheesiest single side of A4 in history:


Darkness.  All enveloping like a blanket, feeling smothered beneath its inky black folds.  Where was she?  In a darkened room without windows, or was it just night time on a cloudy moonless night?  The only thing she could be certain of was that she was inside.  But what?  Senses heightened due to her lack of visibility, she strained to listen for any sounds that might permeate the gloom.  Nothing.  Perfect stillness greeted her, not even the sounds of passing traffic in the distance.  She racked her brain to think where on earth she could possibly be that would be so dark and silent, but even she couldn’t imagine where she was or what was to befall her ……..


As Melanie left her flat that morning after agreeing to go with her friends on a “trip”, she couldn’t help but feel that she shouldn’t have said she would.  Her heart sank as she remembered the conversation:  “So there’ll be Charlotte, Amy, Siobhan, Me and you, if you’ll come along”, wheedled her friend Katie.  “Please say you’ll come, Mel, I don’t think I can put up with the other three if you’re not there, especially under the circumstances!”.

“Katie, that’s not a nice thing to say about your friends.  I dread to think what you say about me when I’m not there!”  Mel replied.

Katie sighed and said:“You know what I mean, Mel.  I just feel like the odd one out sometimes what with Amy and Siobhan being twins and Charlotte wanting to be their triplet!!”

“Ok, Ok, I’ll come.  I just don’t see the appeal of trouping around some old house like international tourists because it’s ‘historical‘!” Melanie retorted.  She had never appreciated architecture or history much, and failed to see why they all had to go with Siobhan and Amy to their fusty old relic of an Uncle’s.  “Alright”, she thought, “it may be the reading of his Will, be we don’t need to go en-mass surely?” 

With a strange look in her eyes, Katie came back with: “Come on Mel, you know fine well that everyone who has been summoned has to ’view’ his property before anything will be read out.  Their Uncle Henry was very particular and proud of his heritage, you can‘t blame a man for wanting to show off a little, even after his death!”.

So that evening, when they arrived at Uncle Henry’s, Melanie’s sour expression spoke volumes.  It was just as she imagined it would be, big rusty gates, oversized Manor house which was far too large for just one inhabitant, and overgrown and unloved gardens.  She knew the old man hadn’t been able to keep up with the gardening in his twilight years and had also let the elements ravage the house itself.  Many years earlier, due to an over fondness for the horses, Uncle Henry had been forced to let his two remaining ‘staff’ go, leaving the place to fall in to rack and ruin.  Thankfully, he managed to hang on to his house, although everything else was sold to pay off his debts.  Big beautiful furniture, carved and ornate, which had been in the family for generations had been auctioned off, along with all but one of his cars, having been sold to collectors.  Left with only enough basic furniture to live in three rooms of the house, the remainder, with the exception of a few decades of dust, was empty.


So there you go, some lovely examples of purple patches in a failed attempt to write a story. To this day, I still haven't figured out the rest of it. Hee hee.

Thanks for reading. x

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Keep The Hill

The end of the world does not mean the end of all things. I pretty sure you have all experienced an “end of my world” event. When something happens that changes everything and the world you once lived in now looks very different.

This short story is a test piece I wrote a fair few years ago now. I wanted to write about the end of worlds, how one life can stop and other come into existence only for the life to also change.

I tried to get that into a very short war story where the war itself could also be considered to be the lead up to the end of the world.

Please feel free to leave comments and criticisms. I do hope you enjoy it.

Keep the Hill

“No Simon!”

It was too late. Simon took that extra step and with a loud deafening bang, was transformed into body parts and red mist. I've been watching these fields for months, seen many people and animals come off second best to the mines. Some manage to pull back quickly enough so that only their legs gets removed in the blast, but these are the unlucky ones. The inevitable end comes to them as well, only it takes a few days. I've watched these fields for so long, I know there's no path through, yet the madness takes hold of some and they reckon they can make it.

Simon had just got that madness; the constant shelling and the knowledge that we were trapped took its toll on his sanity and, like so many before him, thought he knew the route out.

Silence followed the explosion. This was their tactic, throw shells and bullets at us for hours then give us a ten minute break before starting it all over again. This was our life now. A small troop of sixty men who, through the mines and the occasional direct hits, had been reduced to just seven; sorry with Simon that makes us six.

And why were we here? Why did they send a bunch of teenagers out with guns and bombs to dig trenches and shoot at an enemy who was out of sight? It's because some general in some office back home decided that this line was not to be crossed, that this hill behind us, that we couldn't even reach because of our own mines, had to be kept safe.

It was one of our mines that had scattered Simon to the winds. They lay under the earth behind us. The enemy mines are buried to our forward line while a mixture of the two sides devises blocked our flanks.

Now only six of us were left, the final resistance for the sake of the hill. We would have called for reinforcements but our radio was knocked out within the first few days. The powers that be don't seem to care, otherwise they would have sent more troops when they realized we couldn't be contacted, or maybe they thought we had lost the fight and just decided that more troops would just be wasteful.

The distant sounds of heavy artillery started again followed seconds later by the explosions of the shells making contact with the ground; here we go again.

I sometimes think of what life would have been like if we weren't at war. I was sixteen when I was drafted. I didn't mind, seemed like a laugh and I was doing my bit to help rid the world of this evil, protect my family and get the chance to be a hero instead of the layabout I was bound to become. I'm nineteen now, I was eighteen when I was deployed to these trenches six months ago. The lads tried their best to celebrate my birthday, we’d been reduced to thirty by then so it wasn't a bad bash.

In a twisted way I felt as if all the mushroomed flames of the falling shells were some kind of fireworks display. It helped for a moment, but the next day we all felt the same crash of reality. Back to shooting at nothing and watching others die wondering when it would be your turn.

Sometimes I forget who were fighting, and why? Christ there's only six of us left. This is madness, I've got to get out, get out, gotta get out!

Hang on I've got to get a grip, that's what happen to Simon, he counted how many were left then made a run for it. Though in a way I think he is better off now. Six privates against an army, yeah he's better off. I wonder who'll be next?

Steve has always been the strongest of us. When the captain bought it he was the one who took charge. We had three sergeants and six corporals but it was Steve who seemed to have his wits about him. I think he'll end up here on his own and when the war machine comes in to take their prize he'll be here yelling abuse at them.

Ian on the other hand amazes me that he's still alive. From day one he was always throwing out negative comments. I thought he'd be the first one killed, by our troops. Now he sits silent most of the time only screaming out the word "why" every so often in the midst of the shelling.

Dave always has a joke to tell, usually bad ones but I'll give him credit, when it comes to trying to keep the spirits up he does his best. I don't know how he manages to keep such a positive note on things. He knows as well as the rest of us that we are going to die here yet he still carries on smiling and joking.

Chris keeps himself to himself. He'll join in with the conversations but doesn't give anything away. He says the less we know about him the less we can say if captured. Though being captured is a hopeful thought. I think he loves this, like he was born for it. He's the only one that still fires the bombs off.

Sammy I think will be the next to try and run, he has that look in his eye that says he'd rather die trying to get out of here than die just sitting on his arse. I give him two days before he goes for it.

Then there's me, a layabout teenager turned into a man by the army. Sold on the idea of freedom and righteousness and now I sit watching the fields and listening to the bombs. This is my lot and this is where it will end, I kissed the book, took the shilling and packed my bag for my place in history. I only hope that something will be learned from this and in the future others won't have to endure this lonely life of getting used to death.

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Who turned the light off?

I’m a little overwhelmed at the moment by the amount of work that I need to do for my MA... And the perfectionist in me isn’t making it any easier.

Anyway, I sat down last night with no idea about what I was going to write for this week’s theme. I started four posts and abandoned them all – and then, surprisingly, I started to write the beginning of (what I think might be) a short story. I don’t know if I’ll ever get round to finishing it – but I’ll share what I have so far...

Who turned the light off?

Light is what they tell you to believe in. They tell you that things will get lighter, brighter, that it won’t last forever. They say that someone has just switched the light off, and that someone will be around shortly to switch it back on. They try to convince us that there is hope, that we each have futures, but we don’t believe them.

We sit in our own private darkness every day. Some sit in the dayroom, chain smoking in front of a flickering TV, others pace up and down the corridors counting the number of stains on the carpet and a few don’t even manage to rise from their dormitory beds. But the new girl is different; for a start, she’s younger than the rest of us. Sixteen, I think they said.

You can tell she’s met the darkness. She has that same look that we all have – like you’re balancing massive invisible crates on your back, or like you’re about to fracture into a thousand pieces.

It’s not long before the whispers start – people guess: pills? blade? rope?

When we get our first proper look at her, we all glance, firstly, at her neck – clear – and then her wrists – also clear. Firefly, whose real name is Amber (but only they us it), is the first to talk to the new girl.

“So was it pills, like, paracetamol?” she says

The new girl is sat cross-legged in a corner – writing something in a small grey-covered notebook. She doesn’t react to Firefly’s question, she just continues writing. These are the second and third things that make her different to the rest of us: she writes, sometimes for hours, and she never talks. We decide to nickname her Shush.

Thank you for reading,

Lara 

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