Want a new writing challenge? Here are some for you:
OPTION ONE: Write a six-word story with the word FLABBERGASTED in it somewhere.
OPTION TWO: Write a poem or limerick on the theme of DAYDREAMS.
OPTION THREE: Your word is SPORT. With the Olympics starting tomorrow, I thought I’d be topical. What does sport mean to you? Being part of a team? Drive? Ambition? Or does the word make you break out in a cold sweat if you even think about running/cycling/exercising? Your piece of writing can be fiction or truth, or a mixture of the two; it’s up to you.
Now, here are the results of last week’s challenges:
OPTION ONE was for you to write a six-word story with the word CARAVAN in it somewhere. Your entries were all brilliant:
BabyBlack’s first sleepover’s in a caravan.
Caravan her goal … his nightmare penalty!
A caravan or me? … you’re thinking!
Up tight behind caravan to rear.
Ellington’s Caravan wafts o’er the desert.
Bank Holiday Monday. A Caravan Nightmare.
She cleaned the caravan. Now where?
Caravan love? Linked with the car.
Caravan? No…..car AND a van!!!
Bindu:
A people group. Priests! A caravan.
Holiday! Caravan. Time for relaxing fun.
We ride a caravan to Hell.
–
OPTION TWO asked you to write a poem or limerick on the theme of the FUTURE.
Graeme Sandford always offers something a bit different:
I’m looking forward to the furniture!
The furniture? Don’t you mean the future?
Okay. I’m looking forward to the furniture of the future.
Wow, but ironically; like an open wound needs a suture.
How? Apart from phonically, does that expression suit your face?
Being ‘wrong rhyme, wrong place?’
No. Just being wrong in the very first place!
A perfect rhyme, you clever goose;
Pray tell how ‘you’ did avoid the noose.
They sought me here
They sought me there
You wished you’d worn clean underwear?
Haha, you fool, you loon, you win
I must leave off when you-
Begin?
I shall. Is there no future in the future?
Now, there is a question
That hinders digestion.
Geoff Le Pard brings us a sweet little ditty:
Verb Love
Her past was tense, poor Sally McGraw
Perched on that fence, neither either nor or,
Plucking a flower, he loves me or not
Driving her crazy, forget-him-the clot.
Bur Harold McGee’s, principle weakness
Is plain, you see – a crippling shyness;
Harold loves Sally, and that awful defect
Will not stop them marry-ing, their future is perfect.
Paul wrote an amusing limerick:
There was a learned man from Crimson Dene,
Who invented the world’s first amazing time machine!
With it he flew through time and space
To see what future humans would face,
Only to find a race of aliens whose colour was green!
OPTION THREE gave you the word RIVALRY. Here is Rajiv Chopra‘s take on it:
Disclaimer: The following story, Dear Reader, is entirely a work of fiction. Any resemblance, Dear Reader, to the living, the dead, the real or virtual is entirely the result of the workings of your mind.
We all thought Don and Hillary were rivals, and in many ways they were. They fought and gnawed at each other all the time, coming (as they were) from different view points. He bit, and she scratched, and soon they were both bloody from their battles.
He could not believe that a woman could put up such a fight. He was a boorish man, misogynist, obnoxious and intolerant of others. That a woman could challenge him had never even crossed his wildest imagination.
She, neither, could believe how fierce the battle would be. She had a formidable war chest at her disposal. Included in her arsenal was money; the rich, conservative and powerful establishment of which she was the centre piece. We must not forget to include her charming but faithless husband. He too had tasted power, and it lingered. She as a dour, sneaky and ruthless woman. Her tactics were those that others deemed unfair, but she did not care. There was a surprising strength behind his bombastic exterior and she had under-estimated this.
Their rivalry had spawned a whole army of men and women dedicated to fighting each other, and defending the cause of their Chosen One. Whole industries had been spawned to feed this rivalry. Advertisers, cartoonists, writers, memorabilia makers and newscasters all rose to the challenge and the opportunity. The fighters changed camp at the blink of an eye.New mercenary armies were born and old ones resuscitated.
For Don and Hillary, however, beneath the rivalry, shared a mutual, grudging respect for each other. They shared a camaraderie for each other, and a realisation that each would trade principles for power.
In lust, they were one.
Whoever would win the bloody war was – at the time of writing – unknown. Yet, the protagonists knew one thing, that they would share the booty. The ‘victor’ and the ‘loser’, each would get a fair share of the spoils. They would have each others back in the end, and each would be a keeper of the others darkest secrets.
Where scoundrels play at war, there is reality and there is Maya – illusion. The Great Game is played out, and a curtain pulled over the real machinations behind. Like the magician, a spell is cast, and the world is pulled into illusion.
The blood is spilled in the arena, but is it real? Do we feel the pain that the rivals feel, or are we made to believe in the pain.
The play of war is often more important than war itself. Today one wins, and the other loses. Trades are made, and pleasantries exchanged. The winnings are divided between the two.
We, the spectators, follow their moves, but do we know the minds of the chess player? Are we the pawns who are moved on the board, for the merriment of those like Don and Hillary?
When the bell finally tolls and the game is done, is it for us that the bells have tolled?
Does Maya then, remove the veil?
***
Esther Chilton 
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