This week’s writing prompt is:
FILMS
What’s your favourite film? Perhaps it’s something modern, or is it an iconic movie that’s stood the test of time? My earliest memory of going to see a film is when my mother took me to see Bambi. She soon wished she hadn’t as I cried through most of the film and all the way home (it was a long walk – for a three-year-old anyway!) because Bambi’s mother died. I’ve cried at many a film, including ET and Les Misérables. And I’ve laughed at a good few too.
You don’t have to share your work, but I always enjoy seeing what you come up with if the prompt gives you inspiration. Your last prompt was BEST DAY. Here are the pieces you shared:
I felt the baby move. It wasn’t a kick. It was simply a movement to let me know they were there. The baby moved all the time now, and except for the kicks, which could be quite painful, I found the moving to bring a profound sense of wonder to me. It is still quite a moment of bonding between us. I know others find feeling it from the outside wonderful, but feeling it inside of you is amazing and only something a mother can experience.
The day I gave birth to my first child was the best day of my life. It is a grand feeling to know that you, as a mother, are the only one who can bond with this child in this unique fashion. You are the only one who could bring this child into the world. Your body was its home for nine months. This was a privilege.
I cannot pick a best day because I’ve had many. I’m old! But this year finding my oldest son is cancer free is the very best day I could ever hope to have!
The Red BMX (Tanka Prose)
When I was a tween, I wanted a red bicycle. Not just any bicycle. I wanted a red BMX bicycle. BMXs were hugely popular at the time and the boys who rode them participated in all sorts of exciting events at the BMX racetrack on the outskirts of the town where we lived. One of my classmates, Craig, had a BMX and he did all sorts of brave tricks on it. I admired Craig who was thirteen and seemed very much older and more sophisticated than eleven-year-old me. I was the youngest in my class by more than a year. I was accepted into school early because I could read and had started writing. In the small and sleepy town of George in the Western Cape, most of the children started school a year late. This was the reason for the two-year age gap between me and many of my peer group.
My father agreed to purchase me a bicycle. When he brought it home, it wasn’t a red BMX. It was a silver ladies bicycle imported from France. It had a basket on the front. I never expressed my disappointment and in time, I grew to love this bicycle. The basket turned out to be useful as I could fit seven books into it when I visited the local library.
Ladies bicycle
Provided independence
Basket full of books
Four plus three equaled seven
Sister’s card put to good use
Lucky Fall (shadorma prose)
When I was a tween and my sister, Catherine, was a little girl, we used to cycle to school. I was a rather reckless girl, and I would go as fast as possible down the slopping, main road that passed the busy Afrikaans school. At the bottom, I would stop and wait for my little sister to catch up.
One day, I was cycling like a maniac down the road with my school satchel on my back. I hadn’t notice that my shoelace had come undone, and it caught in the gears of my fancy French ladies bicycle. Crash! Over went the bicycle. I was flung out into the road right in front of a car.
Screech! The car jammed on breaks and stopped just in front of me. The driver, a mother who had just dropped off her children at the school, was livid. She shouted at me in Afrikaans. I jumped up, remounted my bicycle, and tore off down the hill away from the angry woman.
I’m flying
Mischievous shoelace
Plays a trick
I wobble
Fall sideways in front of car
Driver jams on breaks
***
Esther Chilton 
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