The widely talented John-Paul Flintoff came this month to discuss his delightful writing and encouraged members to combine their talents for their writing. The agreed brief for this month’s competition was:
Challenge your creativity and mastery of language by crafting a single, long periodic sentence that holds the reader in suspense until the last word. Inspired by the intricate styles of Virginia Woolf and Jonathan Swift, this competition invites you to weave a narrative that captivates and surprises.
And the winners were…
First place: ‘Suspended Sentence’ by Catherine Griffin
Summoned by a bell, the girl wipes ash from her hands and climbs the twisted stair that leads from the dungeon depths of cellar-kitchen to the realms of light which to her are only a larger prison, and with every step her legs stiffen with dread of the punishment which must await her, for the summons can only mean her mistress has learned of her disobedience, of last night’s escape through the unlatched window, of the mysterious carriage which bore her to the palace, and since she has been beaten before for spilling a cup of tea, or falling asleep over her work, or for no reason at all, she can only imagine her mistress ’rage at this true rebellion, yet as she climbs, she hears again the music, the rustle of swirling silk, his voice, and the fear drops away, for those few hours of magic were worth every lash of the whip, every stroke of the cane, and at the top of the stair her head is high and she enters the room like a queen, to see, among all the familiar faces rapt in astonishment and dismay, him waiting for her — her prince.
Second Place: ‘1944 Who Goes There’ by Val Harris
I never dared to ask you if, in the hail and blitz of flying bombs when the earth blew up in brick and bone, and fires rose where you used to play, now seventeen years old, on guard, on top of a factory roof giving plane-spotting a whole new meaning, as all hell – searchlights, sirens, guns – were let loose to intercept the terror in the sky – the whine, the silence the plummet – a heartbeat waiting for the explosion and a twisting plume of smoke rising from the ruins that could have been the factory, your own home gone forever, I never dared to ask you, Dad, if you were so scared that you cried and wanted your mum?
Third Place: ‘There’s A Cat Hiding In The Long Grass’ by Syd Meats
There’s a cat hiding in the long grass silently meditating, its three-legged body stays still while its mind waltzes constantly with the questions that philosophers can’t answer, with a memory like an elephant with a notebook and a pencil, its eyes like binoculars track your every movement with the novels of Dostoevsky and a Walkman, smoking a cigarette with a devil-may-care attitude to the traffic on the bypass, it questions your morals with a compass and some Sellotape, tests Newton’s theories with an eggcup and a tennis ball and a map of Nicaragua and the works of Karl Marx, stalking rodents with a crossbow and a shopping list, inventing new uses for beeswax and a metronome from behind a Road Closed sign and a traffic cone, draped from head to toe in camouflage, but I know it’s there.
And a huge well down to our highly commended entries:
‘Into The Cave’ by Charmian Steven
‘Deer’ by Julian Richardson
‘Having Arrived’ by Philip Evans
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