This week’s writing prompt is:
SPORT
The Olympics is now over, but what wonderful, talented sportsmen and women we witnessed. I loved the gymnastics, rowing, cycling, swimming and diving, but the athletics was my favourite. I used to run myself, but stopped many years ago. I don’t think I’d have ever reached the speeds these athletes achieved, but it made me wish I’d continued. Do you take part in a sport? What do you enjoy about it? Or are you more of an armchair athlete?
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 THE FUTURE. Here’s the writing you shared:
In future when people look back at the first quarter of the twenty first century what will be remembered? A first black American president, increasing global temperatures? Will the remember the global financial crash with Lehmann brothers? Bird flu and Sars then a global pandemic of Covid 19. Massive forest fires, huge hurricanes, tremendous tornados? The deaths of famous people including Queen Elizabeth the Second. Madness of global leaders? Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen, Sudan, so many wars.
Will our future selves see a disintegrated world, a dystopia bought on by the lack of interest in pollution or global warming. Big business using its powers to continue to push oil and gas and plastic use? Will our seas fill with more pollution or the pollenating insects die off so crops fail.
Will they see this part of the century as depressing, or will we take the future into our hands and pass on a cleaner and greener future to our children and their descendants?
Frozen in Time
The hands of the clock and the sun in the sky moved slowly during those long, warm days of summer holidays. Other than limited household chores, Cath and I had little to do other than visit the nearby beach, splashing about in the waves and getting sunburned. All summer long our noses and shoulders blistered and peeled. There was no respect for the might of the sun in those days and sun screens were still a twinkle in the inventors eyes. I remember the stinging pain.
Our skin itched from the salt and our feet and toes roughened and sometimes bled from the abrasive sand. As we jumped over, and dived through, the frothy seahorses, the sand collected in the gussets of our swimming costumes. We would leave the water with our costumes hanging down to our mid thighs from the weight of the sandy collection.
We had no thoughts of the future or of the past. We lived in the moment. Sea shells were gathered in plastic buckets and carted home. I would scrambled up onto the roof of the garden shed, dragging Cath behind me. We would sit together with our buckets of shells and home made glue, creating shell people. Hours were passed in this pleasant task with the gentle wind ruffling our hair and the floury smell of the glue in the air. Our childish eyes saw these artworks as masterpieces. They remained on the roof until the rain dissolved the glue. Then, we started again.
Burning sun
Blisters exposed flesh
Reddens skin
Prevention
A concept of the future
Now, I pay the price
Please click though to The Bag Lady blog as there’s a great picture to accompany the words:
https://rugby843.blog/2024/08/08/future/
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Esther Chilton 
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