Funny Pearls Competition: How My Parents Met

I'm so happy to be joint winner of the Funny Pearls 100 word "Winter" competition:  https://funnypearls.com/2019/12/kath-whiting-how-my-parents-met/ . Excited to be part of a great website promoting humour by women!

Festive Story: Dancing with Death

Call 1: EB & SC

EB: Just confirming we’re all good for the 25th. I hadn’t heard from you, so wanted to check.

SC: Ah, yeah, sorry, I’m not feeling that festive this year so I’ve decided I’m not doing Christmas.

EB: What d’you mean? You make Christmas; you are Christmas.

SC: It’s come around too fast and I’m exhausted from work. I’m not getting any younger you know.

EB: None of us are getting any younger.

SC: I’ve been thinking for a while I don’t want to host. Maybe you could do it?

EB: I do Easter!

SC: Would it be so bad if we skipped a year? I’ll obviously still get some presents over to you.

EB: It’s not about the presents.

SC: Says the king of chocolate eggs!

EB: It’s more than that. It’s you and us and being together and celebrating and dancing and playing games and –

SC: I’m always knackered from work.

EB: You’re always brilliant.

SC: I’ve got to go, one of the reindeers has just swallowed a Buzz Lightyear.

Call 2: EB & TF

TF: Hi Bun, good to hear from you. Sorry I haven’t been in touch, I’ve been meaning to thank you. All that chocolate’s keeping me in trade. Been turning a tidy profit in teeth since Easter. Got you a great Christmas present.

EB: Tiff, I’m ringing about Christmas. Santa’s not himself. He doesn’t want to host this year. Says he’s tired of it.

TF: Well, we do take the piss slightly, I mean he always has us over.

EB: He said, and I quote, ‘I’m not feeling festive’.

TF: Oh, shit got serious, we can’t have him saying things like that. And Christmas at his is the only time I see my sister, weird fir tree fetishist that she is. Mad cow could have been a tooth dealer. So, Santa sounds down?

EB: Yeah, very down, and old, and demotivated.

TF: Have you spoken to Death? That sounds like his area.

EB: No, I didn’t want to bother him, he kind of spooks me. God, you don’t think…?TF: Death’s someone people listen to. Bloody hell, I’ll call him.

Call 3: TF and D

TF: Big D!
D: May I ask who this is?

TF: It’s your toothsomely favourite fairy, long time no see.

D: Last Christmas Day, wasn’t it?

TF: Well, let’s face it, mate, nobody wants you showing up uninvited, do they?

D: I suppose.

TF: Sorry, never thought about that. Do you get lonely?

D: (Laughs) No, my dear, I’m never lonely. To what do I owe this pleasure?

TF: It’s Santa, he’s not doing well.

D: Tiff, I don’t take commissions.

TF: I’m not talking to you professionally. He’s really miserable, doesn’t want to do Christmas. Could you talk to him?

D: You know how most of my conversations end, don’t you? I’m not exactly a merry-maker.

TF: No but you’re a bloody sight wiser than a bunny, and a lot more sensitive than a tooth-puller.

D: Very self-aware.TF: I know my limitations. Please D, I wouldn’t ask unless it was serious.

Call 4: D and SC

SC: Bunny, if that’s you I’m not interested. Half my elves are off sick and the other half are threatening to strike. And I’ve got flying reindeer foals who think it’s fun to use me as poopy target practice.

D: It’s not Bunny

SC: Death?

D: Hello old friend, I hear Christmas is off.

SC: Er yes, I don’t want to host this year. I’ll obviously fulfil my work obligations.

D: Our existence can feel relentless can’t it?

SC: Yes, talk about work-related stress. Billions of children to deliver presents to.

D: A tall order. And a blink of an eye later I’m escorting those same children to their ends. You know, when people talk to me about their lives, their happiest memories are often of Christmas. You bring so much joy­.

SC: But it can feel like there’s no room for anything else. I’m not allowed to be sad; it’s tiring.

D: If you’re tired I could take you on a journey.

SC: Oh, no thanks, I mean, not yet.

D: What about…would you like to do a job swap?

SC: What?

D: I bring peace sometimes, but I create a lot of fear. I’d like to give joy for a change. And you’d be able to be sad.

(Trying not to laugh) You, um, look a bit scary. And a bit thin.

D: I could wear a false beard. Listen to this; (monotonous) ho ho ho!

SC: (Laughing) It’s probably best not, sorry. And the reindeer are a bit of a handful. To be honest I don’t think I could do your job, all that fear and finality. Maybe being Santa isn’t so bad, a hell of a lot more fun than being Death.

D: Yes, mine is a melancholic job satisfaction. You know, your dos are the only time I let my hair down. And dance.

SC: Well, for you then, my friend, it’s back on. Let’s make it fancy dress, you can come as me!

Learning to Create

We are learning to make fire. Matches and flint and lighter fuel. Or two sticks. Whatever it takes.

We are learning words and grammar and cursive flowing. Numbers creep in 2. Whatever it takes.

We are making fire. Burning down the unpainted stairs. Throwing handfuls of popcorn to add to the explosive wonder of flames.

We are learning fire. Hot glow faces. Keeping hands warm but not burnt, jumping back at snaps. Feeding sticks and watched them snaffled up.

We are making. Pictures out of words, meaning out of scribbles. Headaches, jewels, sense and nonsense.

We are. A community of creatives. And that is just about enough.

- Inspired by Habitation by Margaret Atwood

Running Away

The darkness in the shadows that always seems to follow you has woken up. Cold and rain and danger and never ever being safe. Until, coming up for air, an oasis of calm, or was that just the cusp, the forgetting, the false security. Yes, because there is the gnawing, soaring sensation again and all will never be well. 

Others deliberately turn their backs, glad it is not them singled out. So you run, down the rain-soaked streets. Relentless running and a stitch and then in breathless exhaustion, you are forced to slow, even though you know that might well be the end.

Inevitably, we are all running from something; a visceral, indescribable evil that is the other side of ourselves. Maybe that is the creature pounding after you, just your shadow reflection. Just everything you don’t like about yourself.

Silence follows your revelation, you stop and turn slowly, ready to confront. The other sadder, angrier, more dangerous you stands there, an unfriendly mirror. There is only one possibility, only one way out. You walk forwards with outstretched arms. It is time to accept, to forgive, to be whole.

Novelists, Go Back to School!

Writing a novel can be lonely, if you don’t count the made-up people walking around your head and clamouring for attention.

After three terms off, I’ve gone back to my creative writing evening class and it’s like coming home. Over the years the group have unwittingly become good friends. We bond over our common drive/love/sickness to write. We get excited about and share books. We go to the pub afterwards. The class are an eclectic lot, from romance-writing accountants to Daoist bus drivers to dystopian opal miners. Yes, I know, less plausible than the characters in your novel but that’s reality for you.

Nicky, the charismatic and endlessly inventive teacher leads us through exercises, discussion and homeworks. She helps us hone our writing skills and stretches us in different directions. Poetry, flash fiction and reviews refocus my novelist approach to rhythm, cutting surplus words and integrity.

With the homeworks, I complete, I finesse, I finish and as they’re only a page long, it’s almost instant gratification. What an antidote to scaling 80,000 words! When sharing writing, any praise, of course, is lovely but more crucially, the constructive feedback is gold. For example, on my own, there was nobody to point out my blind spots. In class, somebody will ask, ‘Are your characters floating in space?’ and I’ll remind myself to include an indication the story is set in a coffee shop.

The class is also a wonderful distraction from my current phase of researching and sending out to agents. The waiting and hoping game might have been eating me alive right now, but it’s not because I’m considering how to interpret my next homework. I’m also reading a borrowed book many miles out of my comfort zone.

Most of all the class is fun. And isn’t that why we pick up our pens in the first place? It’s easy to forget that when you're on the third draft of your novel and discover a gaping plot hole. The class helps me get back to those simple motivations; to create, to entertain, to connect.

So, novelist, don’t sit in your garret with only your protagonist for company; remember the real world! I wish I’d come back sooner. In class, I’m always learning, and it’s always fun!

Thirteen Seconds Before the Story Starts

A dark side street. An orange streetlamp from twenty metres away turns the trees grey but doesn’t give enough light for clarity. There is undergrowth, there are lurking places, there are puddles and cracks on the ground. What light there is, picks out imprecise diamonds of smashed glass and a sad rainbow of oil where a car has leaked. No honest person would stop here long. It is a place that causes the hairs on your neck to prickle, it is a place that makes you wish you were home. And now a gust of harsh wind brings litter with it and the start of smattering rain.  

Lost Yesterdays

‘It was just stuff, after all, just things. Belongings don’t make a home, people do,’ she told him, gripping his hand.

‘In a strange way, it’s liberating, cleansing,’ he said, wiping tears from his eyes.

They moved back from the heat and she thought about her melting memory sticks. She looked up at the sky and wished she’d saved to the “Cloud”.

He sniffed wood smoke and wondered if he was inhaling his piano.

The fire engine came and doused their shared history.

When the building was declared safe they went back in. They argued about what was salvageable. He said nothing was but she kept picking up blackened twisted remnants as keepsakes.

They were insured, their house was remade and they could buy everything new.

He got a more expensive piano that didn’t stick on B flat, but somehow lacked the personality of his old one.

She started saving to the “Cloud”. She missed her dress with the pink spots she’d worn for their wedding day.

‘I didn’t think I was materialistic,’ she told him, sitting on their garden bench, the only thing that had escaped the blaze.

‘We have each other,’ he said.

‘That stuff was part of my heart,’ she replied.

The doctor came and told her she had to go away.

He looked around the empty house. Things didn’t matter, people did, he told himself. But now the only important person had gone too.

He knew what he had to do. He hunted car boot sales and charity shops and Ebay to find exact copies of what they’d owned. When he couldn’t find items he drew pictures of them and hung them up. He wasn’t a very talented artist, nor did he have great visual recollection but he drew with determination and passion. He drew each ornament on the mantelpiece, he drew the rickety armchair she loved, he drew their wedding photos, he drew everything that was missing except her.

After a month she returned, thinner and tired-looking. He took her hand and guided her into their illustrated home.

‘What do you think?’ he asked.

A breeze ran through the house and all the drawings on the walls rustled and shivered. ‘I love it,’ she said, then looked up at him with glistening eyes, ‘No more matches?’ she asked.

‘No more matches,’ he agreed.