Simon's adventures with the washing.

 So, having got the washing out of the machine, Simon took it out to the washing line, no longer shaded by the  tree that is gone. He was helped by Toddles dashing about underfoot, enjoying the warm weather. 

And then, the attack of the duvet cover.

Men and duvet covers are always dangerous in combination, but this one, in the machine, had turned into some kind of amorphous Lovecraftian monster, which tried to engulf him whilst he sought, fruitlessly, for an edge or corner. At this point, he was torn between crying, "Ariadne! the edge! the edge!" or "Ai Ai Ftagn Cthulu!" to propitiate the thing.

Fortunately for my poor husband's sanity, he found a corner, and wrestled the struggling monster onto the line, held firmly with pegs, where now it hangs, sullenly, waiting for a chance to escape its wooden manacles and go on the rampage of wetly aggressive polycotton fury.

some pics and some starters

these are the other pics and some starters posted on Heather's writing support page.  In case it inspires anyone!

 The mists that play in Farsea Brake
Are cool and clammy to the touch
Beware and do not linger late
Or brave the mists to see too much

Being the daughter of Professor Mayall, said by so many to be mad, could be trying. Imogen Mayall had found it hard at times. She was laughed at by society girls for her learning, and not taken seriously by the scholars of Oxford for her support for her father.
When her father's endeavours paid off, and his steam yacht flew over the skies of Oxford, everything changed ....

New Shenzen was a bustling city, and being in an environment controlled dome on the moon of a gas giant did not alter that. But wherever humanity goes in the stars, two things follow. Rats; and criminals.

Phoebe loved the house where she grew up, especially the lands. As summer turned to autumn, she would rise with the sun, just to enjoy the peace of the beautiful natural landscape, unspoilt by the likes of 'Capability' Brown.
And then, as her eighteenth birthday approached, her father shattered her peace and happiness with careless words at breakfast.

As an unloved niece with no prospects, the best that Miss Elizabeth Sutton could hope for was a genteel position as a governess. She could never hope to aspire to the hand of someone like the handsome young man in the regimentals of the Lilywhite Seventh, who passed daily down the street. But she could manage to be engaged in a task like dusting the windowsills in order to see him.

And on the exercise of picking up two points of view of one scene, here's another:
Captain Felix Philby, of the Seventh Hussars, wondered who the lovely, but pale, girl was, whom he saw every day. She was always gazing out of the window as he walked by, and sometimes jerked away, hurriedly, as though turning to speak to someone.

White horses and black, a poem

I belong to a facebook group where those of us who are founder members post pictures or sentences to help other writers and each other to take inspiration, and just write what is inspired by the imagery for 15 minutes - which can always be expanded later.  This grew from a throwaway line in a discussion of the seaside over Heather, the true founder, riding her horse on the beach.  I had a vision of a black horse on the shore, and the so-called white horses of the breakers, which became an anapestic balladic poem. It is not a happy ever after, so be warned!  

 White Horses and Black

White horses crashing and rolling, white horses that rise on the sea

A single black horse gallops onwards,  it carries my sweetheart to me

Galloping on through the shallows, galloping over the sand

White horses fret at the edge of the shore where the water is met by the land

The waves shatter hard on the shoreline, the waves being horses no more

But my lover will ride on regardless, riding onwards across the dark shore

He will gallop across the dark causeway, racing the tide as it floods

And when he has reached my lone island his kisses will sing in my blood.

He will gallop across the dark causeway, revealed by the ebb of the tide

And will gather me into his arms once again, and will ne’er more be reft from my side

Together upon my lone island we will hear all the sounds of the sea

And the white horses race o’er the causeway which carries my lover to me

Oh my lover! Please hurry, please hurry, the waves are encroaching too fast

And the white horses play on the causeway, and the safe time for riding is past

I look out from my lonely island, and in the dark waves I can see

Amidst the white horses one black horse’s head, swept away by the herd from the sea.

In the morning the shoreline is quiet, an exhausted black horse on the sand,

And the white horses born of the ocean just shake their soft manes at the land

But the man who was recklessly riding is gone now forever below

For defying the horses of Neptune far under the waters that flow

The man from Somewhen

Some of you know I do book covers and sell the rights and one of the pictures I had created set me thinking.  So this is a piece of flash fiction. This one also arises from the writer's group which holds challenges; this was part of one of the challenges I set

The man from somewhen

Emily woke with a start.  She had fallen asleep over her book again, and the lazy summer’s afternoon had darkened into crepuscular gloom. Her parents would be worried. She jumped up, but something in the woods caught her attention.

It was a spark of light, rapidly growing, until it formed a big glowing disk made of purple and white flames.  Nothing seemed to be catching on fire, however, and Emily stared as a man stepped out of the disk. He was wearing clothes which Emily would describe best as Victorian, including a top hat.  And Emily was pretty sure he had not been behind the spark before it formed.

He looked around, and stared at her.

“What are you doing here?  There should be nobody here,” he said.  He sounded rattled.  “And your clothes ...”

“There’s nothing wrong with my clothes,” retorted Emily. “I’m not the one looking as though he’s going to a costume party.  Are you from the past or something?  I’ve read HG Wells’ ‘The Time Machine’, you know.”

“Hell,” said the man.  “What year is it?”

“2006,” said Emily.  “What year should it be?”

“I was aiming for 1906,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Emily Ward, though I’m not sure I should be telling a complete stranger,” said Emily.

“Emily Ward? You are named after an ancestress?”

“Yes, my great-great-great-grandmother,” said Emily, counting on her fingers to check the number of greats.

Behind him, the glowing disk wobbled, flickered, and disappeared.

“You shouldn’t even exist,” said the man.

“Well, tough shit, mate,” said Emily.  “And you shouldn’t exist now either, but I fancy you are stuck with it; unless you have another time machine or whatever.”

He whirled around.

His language was not Victorian, or Edwardian, or whatever.

“And now, perhaps, as you can’t get at my great-great-great-grandmother you can tell me what you intended to do,” said Emily.

“There was an opportunity on the timeline to make sure she did not meet your great-great-great grandfather,” he said. “And it would have prevented your line being born.  I would not have killed her.”

“You would have killed me,” said Emily. “Why on earth would you want to kill my whole family line?”

“Because one of you invented the first look-back machine, which led to the temporal entropic portal,” he said.  “Which is what I came through.  Have you any idea how much crime can be committed when a criminal can pop back in time, pull a heist, and then nip back into the future, beyond the time of the statute of limitations?”

“How come yours went pear shaped then?” asked Emily.  “To pull a heist like that, you need to get back to your own future.”

“It’s not supposed to operate if there are any other people inside 200m of it,” he explained.  “And you were not expected to be here.  You have a time by which you are supposed to be home.”

“Yes, and I fell asleep,” said Emily.  “I should have been home ages ago.  And by the way, you haven’t told me your name.”

“David Ward, great-great-great grandmother,” he said, mockingly.