An invention of collective nouns, by Brian Bilson

Who's crazy? by Pauline Fisk

 We found the hand on the cliff-path at four o clock in the morning. We’d been up all night looking for Abe. The sky had turned from black to blue. Stars had melted, taking with them the night shadows. The sun had risen - and there it was.   

      We knew it was Abe’s because of the ring. Julia had the other half.  They were, in all senses, the perfect pair.  We found Abe’s other hand on the beach, and a foot on the shoreline as if thrown out to sea but washed back in.  Other bits appeared. We even found blood.  You don’t expect to encounter blood on a beach as beautiful as that one, the sea a strip of silver, not a sound but breaking waves.  As in all detective fiction, there were coincidences. Huw happened to be a forensic scientist, able to date Abe’s death from fingernails and gums [yes, we found his head]. Pete was a retired detective inspector.  Bluntly he announced what we all knew – that the evidence pointed to one of us.  This beach was private, he said, impossible to access except by boat.  The entrance through rocks was known only to the beach’s owner, and his special friends. 

  Well, it couldn’t have been Pete. He was the one who’d raised the alarm. Besides, policemen are upholders of the law - and you can’t dismember your own brother without breaking the law.  But it couldn’t have been Huw.  Noble Huw, whose life was built around the truth - the dedicated scientist people trusted to a fault. Life was his subject. He’d too much respect to ever take it away [though according to rumour he had a thing for Julia]. 

   And that brings us to the gorgeous Julia. It couldn’t have been .  Not Abe’s wife.  His right hand gal, he always called her, and she’d always mock-sigh and answer, ‘Yup, that’s me.’ 

So that leaves yours truly.  Could it have been me? Stalking through the night, cleaver in hand, chopping up and disposing of my best friend? We’d been through school together, everything. He knew my secrets and I knew his.  Could I once have sworn to get him, and now I had? 

  As it turned out, police work solved the crime in record time.  The murderer was a man of foreign accent discovered sleeping rough down the beach.  He protested his innocence, but Huw said forensic evidence pointed to him, Pete said that murderers always gave themselves away and Julia said she’d disturbed him shortly before the first hand. There’d been a moment when their eyes had met. ‘I thought then that he was crazy,’ she said.    

   And what do I say? What do I care? Abe was a beast. We three know that. One of us killed him. One of us lied – and to expect murder to be solved in just five hundred words makes this author crazy too.  The truth lies unrevealed, and I've just hit five-one-two. Which means it’s over to you.

Puss in boots: a fairy tale retold, by Peter Shilston

The miller's youngest son set out to seek his fortune, accompanied only by his cat, Puss. After they had walked for several days, they noticed a royal cortege approaching, and Puss told the young man to undress and jump into a nearby river.
   Puss then ran up to the King's coach, calling, "Help! Help! My master, the Marquis of Carabas, was bathing in the river, and robbers have stolen his clothes!"
   The royal carriage stopped, and the King motioned to the young man to stand up in the water, which fortunately was deep enough to come up to his waist.
   "Goodness!" exclaimed the princess,who was accompanying her father, "What a handsome young man!"
   "That's as maybe", said the King, "But I don't think I've ever met the Marquis of Carabas. Do any of you know him?" he asked the courtiers. But it turned out that none of them had ever met such a person either.
   "I must say", mused the Lord Chamberlain, "He doesn't strike me as being a nobleman. Look at his hair! Look at his hands! Now then", he said to the young man, "Can you name any nobleman who will vouch for you?"
   But of course the miller's youngest son couldn't.
   "He doesn't talk like a Marquis either!" was the Lord Chamberlain's verdict. "And if he is a Marquis, why does he choose to bathe in this muddy river? Hasn't he any lakes or streams on his estates?"
   The King considered. "Now look here, my man", he pronounced eventually, "I've no idea who you are. We'll give you some clothes to make you decent, then you'd better be on your way. If you really are the Marquis of Carabas, then I apologise, but you surely understand that we can't be too careful with strangers in these dangerous times".
   So the Lord Chamberlain gave the miller's youngest son a set of clothes and a few coins, and warned him not to come near the King again. 
   "The cat, however, is a different matter", said the King. "Just fancy: a cat that talks! Would you like him as a pet, my dear?" he asked the princess.
   "Oh, yes please daddy!" she exclaimed.
   So the miller's youngest son walked disconsolately away, but Puss was taken to the palace, where he lived happily ever after.

Blessing from Brigid, by Bethany Rivers

 

Blessing from Brigid –

 

“May your voice unfold like a velvet robe,

like foxglove leaves or heartsease.  May your song

colour the hushing sunsets off your favourite coast;

feathering away the edges of the horizon.

 

May your ink-well be oak rooted: let your brush

dip and fly; susurrate in the swooping tail-flow

of red kites.  May the wooden flute play

high luting melodies to cleanse your mind,

 

let the double bass vibrate, gyrate your hips

into figure of eights.  May rainbows waterfall

through your thirsty heart, drink the cocktail

of sun and rain.  May your mind be ignited

 

with lightning sparks.  Come join the dance

of moonbeams and fire-fairies; daisy link your ancestors

to your new born in the dark: this is the thread

from which we weave our songs of hope, of pain and of poetry."

To be Pacific, by Brian Bilston

 

Conjugations, by Peter Shilston

My father used to enjoy conjugating certain ideas in the manner of the Latin verbs we had to learn at school (Amo - amas - amat: I love, you (singular) love, he loves, etc). This one sounds particularly apposite to certain current disputes:-

I am firm
You are obstinate
He (or she!) is a pig-headed idiot
We stick to our principles
You are doctrinaire
They are utterly blind to the true state of affairs

Here's one about going on holiday:-

I am a traveller
You are a tourist
He goes on coach trips
We have discovered a marvellous little Greek island
You have pushed the prices up alarmingly
They have ruined the place completely

This one, about racist feelings, is best done back to front:-

They are Nazis
You are bigots
We only want to stay with the sort of society we're used to
He is a racist
You are prejudiced
I have plenty of black friends, but ....

Matthew Parris recently produced a new one in the "Times", concerning freedom of speech:-

I am fearlessly outspoken
You had better watch what you say
He should be no-platformed

he didn't suggest a plural.

No doubt you could supply more examples

Seamus Heany vaguely, by Barry Tench

 I only ever close my kitchen window when it’s really windy. The frame is so ill-fitting there seems little point, so it rests at ninety percent rattling on its metal arm. Occasionally a pigeon will land on the sill and look in over the ceramic white sink. I live in the centre of town, so garden birds are rare. This morning I come face to beak with a crow sheltering from the 8.00am drizzle. It doesn’t fly off or even flinch as I enter the kitchen barefoot. It tilts its head and shifts its weight leg to leg.

Mid-morning I’m sitting on the 41 as it rumbles up the Wyle Cop over the cobbles. The November grey is dense enough for the shop lights to be on. The 41 comes to a halt on the High Street and lit and quivering it waits as passengers alight. The bus pulls away leaving a man standing in front of HSBC in a crumpled grey suit; he looks like Seamus Heaney, vaguely.  I cross the road to the coffee shop, order tea and think about a young Chinese woman I met at an interview for catering college in 1974. There is an advert for willow pattern china in the glossy newspaper supplement. I project her onto the blue bridge that arced across a plate. I want to fall in love with her all over again, even though I only knew her for three minutes thirty years ago. 

I wipe the case of a CD I had just bought – Otis Span, just for the track “Country Boy Blues”. I flick through the pages of a translation of the poems of Sappho that I’d bought at a second hand book shop as I sip my Earl Grey.

The doors of the coffee shop bang open. In flows a pink mother and a buggy steered by an enthusiastic five year old, his sister clutching the sides of the buggy as he hits the door frame for the third time. The father follows, bearded, directing the traffic. The Heaney-man has bought breakfast tea and sits puffing a macaroon on the table in the window.

I think about bridges, bridges over rivers, over roads, over valleys. We constantly cross over bridges. I plot a route from home into town avoiding crossing a single bridge.

Afternoon I’m looking through an anthology of Greek verse. I listen for the rhythm, dig for half remembered lines from grammar school days. The washing up seems to wobble having reached its limit of haphazard stacking. The Greek poets parade across my brown and beige linoleum. I search the classics for love but find only academic dust. One hour is linked to another. The clock ticks on. Is there a bridge between the minutes? Time is continuous but each second separate from the next. The phone rings in the flat above.

As the sun sets behind the multi-storey car park I perch precariously on my window seat.