Year: 2012

Travel Theme: Street Markets

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Ailsa has set a challenge this week that I couldn’t resist. I love street markets, well any market really 😉 this is taken at Rahba Kedima in Marrakech. It’s a wide square with little shops around the edge selling spices, caged birds, turtles and Argan oil – my main purchase. You can also find all you need for black magic should you so desire! Herbs, leeches, dried scorpions and other bizarre unmentionables, its all here. The centre of the square is occupied by Berber women selling their crafts, baskets of all shapes and sizes and knitted hats, sitting on the ground. I bought several warm, brightly coloured hats, with the intention of wearing them in winter but haven’t so far, there’s a surprise. The women are there until very late at night and are quite pushy with tourists, I imagine they have it pretty tough. These are the spice girls.

For more travel market photos and to join in visit http://wheresmybackpack.com/2012/05/25/street-markets/

Friday Fictioneers, Beautiful and Grey

Posted on Posted in Creative writing, flash fiction, short story, WritingTagged , , , , 25 Comments

http://madisonwoods.wordpress.com/ has a weekly challenge with a photo this time,

This is my 100 words, maybe you would like to pop across and join in?

‘Look, there’s a lovely green butterfly and an ugly grey moth’ Beth tugged on her grandmother’s sleeve and led her along the path.

‘I can’t see no ugly moth honey, only a pretty butterfly and a beautiful moth.’

‘It’s dull Grandma’

‘Look real close; see the lovely patterns and different shades of grey?’

‘Uh huh,’ Beth screwed up her eyes.

‘See honey, God made lots of creatures that are beautiful in different ways, green, red,  grey, in all shapes and sizes.’

‘Grandma, your hair is all sorts of pretty grey,’ she reached to feel a curl, ‘did God make it?’

 

 

100 Word Challenge for Grown Ups Week# 43

Posted on Posted in Creative writing, flash fiction, short story, WritingTagged , , , 37 Comments

Pop over to Julia’s if you would like to try the weekly 100 word challenge http://jfb57.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/100-word-challenge-for-grown-ups-week43/

The prompt this week is ‘The flame flickered before . . .’ and here are my 100 words,

A Cautionary Tale

‘The Flame Flickered Before Her Eyes and Other Stories’ by Randy Walton, ‘What? That’s weird Sal, look. I’m going in.’

‘It’s just a coincidence honey.’

‘But it looks like my photo as well.’

The bell above the door made the shopkeeper briefly raise his head from his own reading, then he tutted when Margi stood over him.

‘This book, it’s self published right?’

‘Yeah and it’s very successful, been at the top of the short fiction charts for weeks. Everyone’s reading short stuff these days.’

Margi turned to the contents page. Twelve short stories. Her short stories, all of them.

Porchester, Ruins Of An English Castle

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Porchester castle is on the complex coast around the edge of Hampshire. Built around the 11th century on a site that earlier housed a Roman fort. I visited with my daughter and we couldn’t help wondering about the lives of the many people who had lived there. It had a definite feel, a loud whispering of voices  in the total silence. Click on an image for a larger view.

#Friday Fictioneers

Posted on Posted in Creative writing, flash fiction, short story, WritingTagged , , , 23 Comments

I know it isn’t Friday now, I’ve been away so I’m late.

But, Madison’s  http://madisonwoods.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/photo-prompt-for-100-word-flash-fridayfictioneers-30/  photo kept popping into my head so I wrote this.

Going home is copacetic but the journey from my daughter lacks the joy of the one towards. In the bus someone plays a line from the carnival is over on a tinny echoing phone.

I recline and check the double deck view, a twin chakra of rainbows, moments from the M27 with its pylons and industrial units, on a bench that feels like bone on bone to my spine. Hawthorn next and cemetery birds in a corridor called Wellow.

Disgorge at Salisbury, grateful for a wait uninterrupted by a questioning Mancunian, grasping for minutiae from a trapped, hungover, hen party goer.

Puffins, Lottery Tickets and the Crazy Polish Woman

Posted on Posted in Creative writing, Humour, WritingTagged , , , , 11 Comments

Lucid Gypsy and the Crazy Polish Woman went for a lunchtime stroll and as usual we tried to put the world to rights, quite a task in half an hour and we soon got bored with trying! We moved on to the lottery, her desire to win, combined with the impossibility of that, when she doesn’t buy a ticket. She has bought a little globe and wants to go to as many places as possible in the world. Nothing unusual about that is there? Except that when she wins, she will spend the first £5000 visiting Iceland. Again not particularly unusual, I wouldn’t mind myself as long as it was in midsummer. She has a mission though. Puffins. She loves them, and has come across a fact that I for one did not know.

So she wants to travel to Iceland to warn them to leave. Ideally she will speak to each of them individually. Of course we debated whether these conversations should be carried out in English, Polish or Squawk (something she does when she gets excited, angry or just plain Crazy). It has to be Squawk, I don’t think there are many Puffins in Poland – but will be happy to be proved wrong – and they tend to avoid people in England, choosing instead to hang around on Lundy or the Scilly’s.

Aside from getting close enough in Iceland to have a conversation with them, of course there is the problem of recognising which ones you have warned already. Unless you are a Puffin they all look pretty much the same. So if they aren’t prepared to leave immediately, then some sort of label would be needed. Perhaps the ones that CPW has enlightened can be persuaded to spread the word in Puffin speak, and then she may be able to see some geysers and glaciers, in the day long day with the left over money.

She really is very worried about them and a world without Puffins would of course be terrible. If you are a follower of some of the celebrity chefs, you may already know what her fears are. If not, well please stop reading if you are of a sensitive disposition. You see it’s because they are eaten. Icelanders consider raw Puffin heart to be a delicacy.

I am going to buy CPW a lottery ticket.

One Year and Twenty Five Thousand for Lucid Gypsy

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A year ago today I very tentatively started a blog and Lucid Gypsy was born. I had no idea where we were taking each other and if anyone would visit, just a vague plan to write travel and short fiction. It was a very slow start; I had to learn the techy stuff and kept it very simple for the first few days. Then I kind of worked out how to post photos and published Nest of Primates my first travel piece, which I still think is one of my best posts, but hasn’t had that many reads. (Interestingly, I’ve wondered for ages how to change the words on a link and have finally done it – WordPress has forced me to learn!) I posted five times last May and then disappeared for a while to Turkey, returning with a head stuffed with stories and a couple thousand photos.

I was stumbling though with no clue what to write or how to be seen. A turning point came when I discovered the Weekly Photo Challenge and was able to indulge my other passion, photography. Finding out how to tag and categorise well, made all the difference and eventually in November I had more than a thousand views. You may wonder why it took me so long; instructions are there to be read of course. Trouble is I can’t do instructions books for anything. I try to read how, but don’t get it and have to muddle my way through.

Slowly a following came and I began to meet some interesting people around the world. Does anyone remember having a pen friend as a child? Usually one foisted on you by school? Well the blogosphere is like having hundreds of pen friends, a fascinating way of learning about other cultures, and seeing photos of places taken by real people in everyday places as well as the grand tourist destinations.

Being a Gemini and a writer I have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and each time I look at someone’s blog I am transported to another person’s world, be it in the next county or a garden in the southern hemisphere. Lovely people I can’t thank you enough for your support, inspiration, laughter and tears.

At some point in the remaining four hours of today one of my five hundred plus followers will become the twenty five thousandth hit on Lucid Gypsy, how amazing that I should reach that number today!

Thank you so much.