LAVINIA HAMMOND COMPETITION 2016

We are proud to announce the winner of the 2016 Lavinia Hammond Competition for Creative Writing is Morag Kerry.

Morag now holds the silver Lavinia Hammond cup for a year and has her name engraved upon it for posterity.  Congratulations Morag!

Read Morag’s winning story below…

 

A Face in the Crowd

 

 

 Everything in England is vast and busy. I couldn’t believe my luck when I was picked for the under 15’s in the Tennis Tournament. Roseanna, our team leader is pretty strict, but she seems pleased with my game- so far! This afternoon she said,

“That was your best play yet Mariana!”

 I am so proud. I suppose I am a good build for Tennis, tall and thin. In fact I am quite unlike the usual Portuguese build. I have very pale skin and long sandy hair. My Mum and Dad used to say that I must be a throwback to some early settlers. Mum had lots of trouble arranging for my trip. She had to go off to the Embassy or somewhere to have my passport issued. I’d never been abroad before and so it was very tricky to arrange.

This afternoon Marta falls on her elbow during practice with me. There is a pretty big graze and a lot of swelling. Roseanna is over on the far court and a woman from the English squad comes over to help. She has long pale fingers and fair hair. She is very calm and reassuring. She tells us she is a doctor.  Roseanna joins us and the doctor feels Marta’s arm carefully, using items from her first aid box to clean and dress the wound. She says that she doesn’t think it is serious but if we want a lift to the hospital she will take us.  Marta feels all right though and goes off to the sideline. Just before she leaves us the doctor looks directly at me and goes pale. She recoils as if in horror and then shakes her head. She scrabbles her items together and goes off in a hurry. Roseanna shrugs and pulls a face.

“What on earth was that about?” I ask her.

“Who knows?” she smiles, “She probably forgot something important.”

 I keep thinking that I see the doctor a lot. When we go out for a meal in Wimbledon, I notice her on the other side of the restaurant. I feel she is looking at me.  I mention it to Roseanna. She says,

“Why would she look at you? She’s just having dinner with her husband.”

 We all go off to the toilets before going on the train to central London. Funnily enough when we come out I notice that they must have started to clear away the table but only my dishes have been cleared so far. We go on the London Eye and walk along the South Bank of the River Thames. We look round the market and admire the majestic old buildings. We all have a lovely time.

 

We are settling in to our routine and the tournament is properly under way. My opponent is pretty tricky though and I am quite tired. I am annoyed when I return to my chair and my water flask and cup have disappeared.  I mean who would want something I had already drunk from? Still someone gets me more water and it is a successful day. We rest in the evening and watch a funny film at our lodgings. We wash our hair and play around with our make up, laughing and being silly. Marta is giving me blue eye liner when she notices the different coloured flecks in my eye,

 “Your eye has two colours!”

I wish she hadn’t noticed. It makes me feel as though I’m odd. I suppose I should be used to it by now. We are tired at the end of the day and go to bed early.

I wish I could tell you that I am the Ace player of my team, but I get knocked out in the third round. Roseanna says that I have done well though and my Mum is thrilled when I ring. I wish Papa could have been alive to hear it. I miss him every day.

We are taken to see some more tourist sights. We go on a river boat and see Hampton Court Palace where King Henry Vlll lived. It is superb. There are hordes of people, so we cross the road to Bushy Park for our picnic lunch. Only a few more days until we go home and I can’t wait to tell my friends all about it.

 

Marta is in the final! It is wonderful. We are so wound up. She plays a great game but her opponent is so tall that she can reach any ball that Marta sends her. She is defeated in two straight sets. Marta is distraught but Roseanna is comforting her. I call and let Mum know.

“It is just a quick call.” I say “. I’ll see you tomorrow night. Kisses. I love you.”

We are taken in a minibus to London Heathrow. The airport is heaving with people. Roseanna books us in. We are sent through to go to departures. When I approach the customs desk I am asked to come through to a room. Roseanna asks,

“What is happening? Why do you want to speak to Mariana?”

The customs lady speaks to Roseanna in Portuguese.

“It is just a formality Madam. We need to ask some questions about the passport.” Roseanna is allowed to come with us and the coach stays with the girls. I am asked strange questions, like where did I get my passport? Have I ever seen my birth certificate?  What is going on? My legs feel wobbly.

“I want to speak to Mum!”

I am allowed to ring her.

“Mum, Mum. I’m with customs officers in London and they want to know about my passport and my birth certificate and everything. Mum are you there?  Mum. Can you speak to them?”

“Darling girl. I love you so much. Always remember that.” I hear a sob. I can’t breathe.

The phone clicks and the room whirls.

trophy

A double for Patsy

Patsy has a story in the current (April) issues of both Woman's Weekly Fiction Special and Take a Break's Fiction Feast. Both of these stories started of as Solent Writer's Circle preps!

Find out more in the 'news' section on her website.

Papering over the cracks

Each month we have a 500 (approx.) word prep which we read out.  This autobiographical piece was my effort for May 2015.  The picture in my first post shows our house in France.

 

PAPERING OVER THE CRACKS 

“Never mind papering over the cracks in the walls!” Geoff said to me, “It’s the holes in the floor we need to try and disguise!”

Geoff swore, not for the first time that day. Trying to match up different thicknesses of wood was driving him crazy.

We hadn’t been able to agree on what to do about the floorboards in the attic.  They were solid oak. Well some of them were solid; others had holes you could put your fist through, but I wanted to salvage the decent ones.  Hadn’t we planned to preserve as much of the original French farmhouse as possible?

“Yes, but we can’t just leave these; we’ll fall through!” He took a hammer and banged it against a dodgy-looking plank.  A piece broke away.

“But most of its ok”, I protested.  “We can cut off the end and join on another piece”.

Geoff had had enough of ‘joining on another piece’.  We were running out of decent lengths of oak board; the last 10 foot section had had to be covered in three pieces, and those of slightly varying thicknesses.  To make matters worse, the beams were not of a consistent width, so where they narrowed there was insufficient space to join two pieces together.

The attic had only been made to store hay and animal feed; there had been no requirement to have a level floor in 1850.  Still, like this it did have character and we couldn’t afford a new hardwood floor anyway; it was a case of make do with higgledy-piggledy boards or put down a new pine floor from the French equivalent of B and Q.

I went back down the steep stairs to open some tins for dinner.  We needed time to think.

Over the Telegraph crossword (which we usually try to do over dinner), we considered the options:

Firstly the floor had to be safe; we agreed on that! It was looking increasingly unlikely that we could get away without spending some money on new wood, and pine was the most practical.  Perhaps we could stain the pine to a similar colour to the oak?

The next time we were in France, having thought some more about our position, we decided to buy some pine boards in Brico Depot. We were lucky: they had some new stock in and it was on special offer.  We looked at each of the bundles carefully, as some we had bought previously turned out to be full of knots and holes.

The next week we cut and drilled and screwed down several square metres of the attic floor and at the end of our ‘holiday’ we had a complete, safe area on which to build our bedrooms and bathroom.  Each bedroom will have a mixture of pine and oak floor and we hope that strategically-placed rugs and furniture will minimise the impact on the eye.  More of ‘carpet over the joins’ than ‘paper over the cracks’.

Hopefully no-one will notice!

Testing Times

Hello.

This is my first blog.

Reports from the January meeting.

Morag says, "Barbara collected in the Time entries for Patsy's 100 word competition. Tina sent apologies but will come to next meeting. Frank has moved to Marine ParadeEast.

We admired Barry's trophy and he has agreed with Barbara that he will judge the next competition. We read our preps on "I never said that". They were very good. We heard the next chapter of Anthony's novel about the missing man and then wrote a five minute piece using some random words. Again, the results were very good and inventive. It was great fun. The church was rather chilly, so we adjourned on the dot."

Barbara says, " The room at church didn’t get very warm, unfortunately.  Nevertheless, we had a good meeting with lots of laughs and did some speed writing to finish.

We each chose a word: popcorn, coffee, heather, cinema, shoe, bus, gratitude, rainbow, and rabbit, and had 7 minutes to write the ‘story’."

 Here’s Barbara's story - 

“No gratitude – that’s the attitude of youngsters today!”

George was on his high horse today as he kicked his shoe at the clump of heather on the Scottish hillside.

“Oh, com’on!” urged his mate, Bill, “Let’s quit this rabbit shooting and go to the cinema. We can get the bus back.  A cup of coffee and a bag of popcorn and you’ll soon be feeling on top of the world. There’s always a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!”

Happy new year!

Happy new year to all circle members!

Do any of you have any writing related new year's resolutions?