Your new prompt word is
BANK
I thought about this week’s word when I had a look at my bank account. It got me thinking about all the other uses we have for this word – we might talk about certainty – you can bank on that, for example. Then, there’s the riverbank. We also have blood banks and sperm banks. It can be used to describe a row of something similar – a bank of computers, for example. What does this week’s prompt word mean to you?
Fact or fiction, prose or poetry, I would love to read your thoughts on this week’s prompt, but there’s no obligation to share your writing. Here is the work you shared on the last prompt BLOCK.
A spin around the block
With my favorite fella
Does the heart good
Unblocks the creative flow…
Waiting For The Opened Door To Open
For some it is a welcomed door.
For some it is a block
that keeps them searching more and more
though it is there, an opened door,
and no one needs to knock.
All that springs to mind is: emails, FB, Instagram, TikTok, Strands, YouTube, and people who stand in shop doorways.
I had some ideas right at the start
Block is easy and I’m so smart
Then reading further a mental block?
I dressed, put on my shoes and socks.
Hmm, it simmered up there under my mane
That small place
Lots of empty space…my brain
I started walking, you guessed it…
Down the block
Hoping a new idea came from old stock
But realized quickly I had to succumb
Mental block! Brain flashes “empty!”
I’m afraid it’s numb!
“Type to choose a block.” What manner of craziness is this? Classic is my jam but I’ll bet not for long.
A block can build.
A child can take a handful of colourful building blocks and create castles, bridges, or entire imaginary worlds. One small block at a time, something new appears.
But a block can also stop us.
A roadblock.
A writer’s block.
A mental block that keeps us doubting ourselves even when we know the way forward.
I’ve met both kinds.
There have been days when the words refused to come, when every sentence felt trapped behind an invisible wall.
Then, almost without warning, the block crumbled, and the words flowed faster than I could write them down.
Life has taught me that not every block is an enemy.
Some are there to slow us down. To make us pause. To ask whether we’re climbing the right wall or walking the right path.
Even a block of ice eventually melts.
Even a stone block can become the foundation of a home.
Perhaps the real question isn’t whether we will encounter blocks.
We all will.
The question is what we choose to do with them.
Will we let them become barriers?
Or will we use them as stepping stones toward something stronger?
Sometimes the very thing that seems to stop us today…
becomes the foundation we stand on tomorrow.
Free Play Toys
Boxes
Less contents
Over each other
Sealed together; build and
Knock!
Yes, Lego ™, those multi coloured blocks of plastic that hurt like hell if you tread on them.
For years I received nothing but Lego ™ for my birthday and Christmas, so much so that I could probably have built a house for real rather than the umpteen money boxes of various designs I ended up making. No surprise then that I worked in banking for over 20 years, and accounts of one description or another for the years I didn’t. No-one realised I’d wanted Meccano ™ .
Desperate Measures
There was a tough guy, Desperate Dan,
Who dealt with a blocked toilet pan,
He plunged with great might,
From morning till night,
Blaming cow pies - of which he's a fan.
He roared, 'I've faced outlaws galore,
But never this porcelain war!'
With one final big shove,
He sent the blockage soaring above -
Now the ceiling's far worse than the floor!
Fandango:
The Block Editor
Do you remember about six or seven years ago when WordPress started to discuss migrating to the Gutenberg editor, now referred to as the Block editor?
I vigorously resisted this whole migration to the Block editor. I didn’t see why, if the developers at WordPress were so thrilled with the new Block editor, they couldn’t offer it as a “new and better” option, while continuing to support the (mostly) beloved Classic editor.
In the iOS app for iPhones, WordPress gave us the choice to write using either the Classic editor or the Block editor. I continued to use the Classic editor because I found using the Block editor on my iPhone be very difficult. It was not designed for use on the relatively small screen of a mobile device. Maybe it worked well on a laptop, but it was shit on an iPhone.
I resented feeling that if I wanted to continue to blog on WordPress, I’d have to do so on a laptop because the Block editor was close to impossible to use on an iPhone. I figured that if the day ever came when WordPress no longer offered the Classic editor on iOS, that would be the day I would either find a different platform for my blog or I would just stop blogging.
That day arrived when WordPress removed the option on the iOS app to compose using the Classic editor. It was the Block editor or the highway. I chose the highway.
I set up a blog on Blogger. I didn’t like it. I tried Medium. I tried Substack. I didn’t like them either. So ultimately I capitulated. I figured I had to either embrace the Block editor on my iPhone or stop blogging altogether.
Once I made that decision and forced myself to learn the Block editor, I found that it wasn’t so bad after all. In fact, I quickly began to appreciate the Block editor and now I can’t imagine going back to the Classic editor again.
Who knew?
Richmond Road:
Running round and round the block?
– Wearing panties, bra and frock
Is this some strange attempt to shock?
– Just a sad attempt to rock
No running gear? No shoe? No sock?
– Just pantyhose and Birkenstock
No care in ladies underwear?
– Dancing like there’s no one there
At least you’re not completely bare!
– Do you really think I’d care?
Might give the little kids a scare!
– I’d still do it for a dare
You’d be arrested! Tried in the dock
– I don’t care. Take that in stock
Don’t do it! Or your path I’ll block
– In your mouth please put a sock
In a cell, it’s you they’ll lock
– Well, that may cure my writer’s block
Lou by the Sea:
One, Two, Three o’clock, Four o’clock BLOCK
Five, Six, Seven O’clock, Eight o’clock BLOCK
Nine, Ten, Eleven O’clock, Twelve o’clock BLOCK
I’ve got that writers block alright
Ugh…another earworm to test my sanity…
Blind Wilderness:
There once was a refrigerator
That needed a legislator
It formed blocks of ice
That weren’t very nice
They needed a knife
To end all the strife
But they flew on the floor
And over the door
The floor was an
ice rink so slippery
There was no time for frippery
The dog drank the water
Cos he thought that he oughter
Then he peed all night long
And made such a pong
And all from that ice
That wasn’t so nice
I think I’ll throw out that refrigerator
And I won’t wait while later
Goodbye my friend
This is your end
Teleportingweena:
One thing I thought of was the Peanuts cartoons. I think Lucy was always calling Charlie Brown a ‘ blockhead’ I always liked those cartoons.
***
We used to go to yard sales a lot, and sometimes there were ‘block’ sales. Mostly neighbors on one block in an area would get together, and each house would have things for the sale. It was a fun thing to do.
***
I can’t think of anything else for block. I’m sure I stacked blocks when I was a kid, but don’t really remember it. My kids did that, too.
***
If you say the word ‘block’ a bunch of times it gets to sounding like a chicken! Try it~ or try singing a song tune using only ‘blocks’ hahaha … block block block, over and over like happy birthday song, so funny
Cathy Cade:
After the Bird has Flown
My next task today is to block a gap.
I have a lean-to shed built on to my ground floor maisonette, where I keep a freezer and tumble drier and a lot of old rubbish tools that there isn’t space for in the shed at the end of the garden.
I don’t go out there often in the winter. Trips for frozen supplies or to collect clothes from the drier tend to be delayed until I can do both in one trip. Early this spring when I went into this roofed-over sideway a small bird would often flutter up from somewhere and out of a gap in the corner. Because the light switch for this area is in my conservatory and I usually forget to turn them on before I go out there, it’s gloomy even in daytime, and I didn’t see where the bird had been before it took flight.
I was keen to discourage it because I didn’t want it nesting in there and producing chicks which my dogs would no doubt find when they left the nest. So I started going out there more often to shoo the bird away and it soon decided it wasn’t a safe place to raise a family.
But it seems I was too late. When I brought out a stack of boxes this week to search for something, I found her abandoned nest with six unhatched eggs. I’m sure I would have seen it had I ever remembered to turn on the lights before going out there.
I comfort myself with the thought that it was probably too early for bringing up chicks (after a warm start we had more frost). But I’ll block that gap now, in case she decides to try again next year.
michnavs:
Block and Delete
i don’t mourn
what was never meant to stay.
lost things.
broken relationships.
missed opportunities.
doors that slammed shut
before i could walk through them.
if life chooses to take them,
i let them go.
one thing this age of technology
has given us
that i will never apologize for
is the power to block,
delete,
and disappear.
not everyone deserves
continued access to you.
especially the energy vampires—
the ones who feed on your light
until your laughter sounds foreign,
your peace feels borrowed,
and your soul is left
gasping for air.
they don’t simply drain you.
they leave you emotionally hemorrhaging,
bleeding invisible wounds
while pretending they were the cure.
i’ve learned
that protecting my peace
isn’t cruelty.
it’s survival.
so i won’t chase,
beg,
or reopen doors
i fought so hard to close.
some people belong
exactly where they are—
blocked,
deleted,
and buried
in the silence
they created.
Rall:
never
had writers block
never lost for words she
was a tall poppy ready for
the chop
60 Million Lego Blocks
This post is about Lego blocks and Legoland. Lego blocks in their current interlocking form were invented in Billund, Denmark, in 1949. However, the history of Lego blocks started already in 1932 (in Denmark). You can read more about it here.
When I was a kid, growing up in northern Sweden, I loved building with Lego blocks, or if you call them Lego bricks (either way is fine). I’ve always wanted to visit Lego land in Denmark, but I never got the opportunity to do so. However, about 20 years ago me and my daughter (she was a young child at the time) visited Legoland in Carlsbad, California, a 128 acre theme park. Do you know how many Lego blocks there are in Legoland California? There are 60 million Lego blocks. Below are some photos from that trip. I should add that since this was 20 years ago, a lot has been added to Legoland.
For some amazing pictures, click here.
Serve
moving nostalgia
a city block’s lilting chords serve
palpable sweetness
Susan Batten:
You just take a big block of kaolin
and work it with slip from the bin.
Then with patience and skill
you can raise it until
You’ve Majolica fit for a king.
***
And writers – remember!
The master Michelangelo carved his “David” from one block of marble 17 ft long, over four years, from 1501 to 1504.
So if you’re stuck in your great project, remember him and keep chipping away!
Contemplating My Next Move
It is super hot here today! I am roasting.
All I want to do is get out a block of ice cream out of the fridge, and press it to my head.
I’m sweating like a pig!
I’m currently sitting on my bed like a block, too lazy to move.
It Is safe to say I won’t be walking around the block today then!
Nope! It is just too hot to walk!
I’d rather stay inside, in the cool.
I’ll drink lemonade, eat my block of ice cream, and contemplate my next move!
The Last Prayer
The Tower held its breath before dawn, mist curling low across the green, like something shameful to witness was coming. Anne walked the short distance with her ladies, her steps measured, her spine straight as the sword that waited for her …. not the axe, a small mercy Henry had granted, as though mercy could still mean anything now.
The block was low, almost humble, which did nothing to soften what it was. Anne had expected fear to consume her, but instead felt strangely light, as if she were already halfway departed from her own body.
She spoke briefly to the small crowd …. careful words, chosen for those she left behind, for a daughter who would grow up motherless and misunderstood. Then she knelt, and someone tied a blindfold over her eyes, and the world narrowed to breath and cold air and the distant call of a bird that did not know or care what it was witnessing.
She prayed, her supplication muffled in her mouth as the blade found its mark.
Below the scaffold, the crowd began to fall away, already forgetting its queen.
Brighton
Junie’d never been this far from her block before. Not properly.
Seated across from her on the train, a boy slouched low in his seat, black boots planted wide, wearing a scuffed leather jacket. His hair wasn’t styled like the Mod boys- it was black and fell where it pleased. Some of it hung forward almost covering his eyes.
A Rocker.
June glanced at him once, then away, dismissing him. Not her scene. Not what she’d come for.
She shifted her attention to her own reflection in the window instead- she lifted a stray pill from her sweater, checked her hair. She’d done it just right this morning. Not quite Carnaby Street, but close enough to blend in with the Mods.
At the far end of the car, someone turned up a transistor radio- a burst of American soul filled the train car, and it was impossible not to feel it.
“Brighton?” she heard a voice from across the isle.
Junie turned to make sure the voice was addressing her. “Yes.”
“Bank holiday’ll be a mess.”
She let out a small breath, almost a laugh. “That’s the point, innit?”
That got the faintest shift out of him- not quite a smile, a smirk maybe.
“Suit yourself,” he said.
The train shrieked as it slowed. The pier came into view- it was crowded. Packed.
On one side, a line of scooters gleamed- mirrors flashing, boys in slim suits laughing like they owned the place. Exactly as she’d imagined.
On the other, motorbikes idled low and heavy, chrome catching the light. Cigarettes. Leather jackets. Lots of them. All the black leather made her think oddly of vampires.
As the doors opened and the noise rushed in- engines, shouting, music- Junie stepped out into it without looking back. The crowd swallowed her whole..
It felt like whatever she did in the next few seconds was sure to decide her future.
She didn’t see the man with the bottle until it was already mid-flight. She ducked- and there they were- his boots. Scuffed. Familiar.
He didn’t say anything. He just shot an arm across her. The bottle caught him- and then his hand was closed hard around her wrist and they were moving, fast, away from the noise cracking off behind them.
“You’re bleeding,” she said, when the sea of bodies thinned to a trickle.
“Not much.” He said it like it wasn’t a thing. Like being hit by flying bottles was just what happened sometimes.
She looked at him properly for the first time. “Why’d you do that?”
He shrugged.
“I’m Junie.”
He looked her over- torn stocking, hair coming loose.
“Terry.” He said with a hint of that same smirk she had seen earlier. “Go on, then. Tell me it doesn’t suit a Rocker.”
“It suits a Rocker- who’s also a very unlikely good samaritan.”
“Occupational hazard.” He flipped his hair back and nodded away from the shouting. “Music’s that way. Unless you’d rather go find your scooter boys.”
Junie glanced back once- at the scooters, the slim suits, the whole bright life she’d thought she’d wanted when she got on the train.
“Lead on, then.”
The Room – Previous Episode
She went looking for him on the fifth day.
The guard waved her through without the log. The corridor was the same corridor it had always been and the lights were the same lights and she walked it the way she had walked it before and it felt nothing like before.
She found him in the interrogation room.
He was seated at the table with his hands flat on the surface and his eyes open and the eyes were wrong in a way she did not yet have language for. The sockets too large. The tissue around them drawn back as if the flesh had decided to stop defending whatever it was that lived behind it. His posture was the posture of a man who had been waiting and had finally stopped waiting.
His mouth was closed.
She stood in the doorway and did not move. The fluorescent light above the table buzzed its single note. She knew what to do. The procedure was a known sequence of steps and she had done them before and the doing of them had always been automatic. A reflex. Like breathing.
She could not do them.
She crossed the room because crossing the room was something her legs did without thought and she put two fingers to his neck the way they had taught her and the neck was cold and the cold went up through her fingers and into her wrist and did not stop there. She pulled her hand back. She looked at her fingers. They looked the same.
She should call it in.
She stood beside him and she looked at his mouth. The lips sealed. The jaw set. She thought about the photographs in the file. The cellar. The bodies whole and emptied. She had looked at those photographs and felt the appropriate professional grief and filed it where such things were filed and moved on.
She could not move.
Something was blocking her. Not a wall. Not a locked door. Nothing so solid or locatable as that. It was more like standing at the edge of a familiar road and finding the road had become something else. The steps were still there in the correct order. Call it in. Secure the room. Wait for the others. She could recite them. She recited them silently in the fluorescent hum of the room and they meant nothing. Between knowing the steps and taking them was a distance she could not cross and the distance had no name.
She looked at the chair across the table. The chair where the other one sat. The man who fed them words. She had seen him in it once. She had passed the door and glanced through the narrow window and seen the back of his head and the quality of his stillness and she had not stopped because she had not needed to stop.
She sat down.
The table between her and the dead man was bolted to the floor. Scarred along one edge where something had been dragged across it years ago. She put her hands flat on the surface the way his hands were flat and the surface was cold, the kind of cold that settled in bone and stayed there.
The room held a silence she had not encountered before. Not the silence of an empty room. Not the silence of night or distance or the held breath before bad news. It was a silence with mass. With appetite. It pressed against her eardrums and it pressed against the roof of her mouth and she became aware of her mouth in a way she had not been aware of it before. The tongue. The teeth. The dark corridor of the throat leading down to somewhere she had never thought to examine.
She sat in the room with the dead man and the silence ate.
She did not know how long she sat. Long enough for the fluorescent light to flicker once and recover. Long enough for her hands to go cold against the table. Long enough for something to settle into her the way cold settles into a house when the heat goes off. Not all at once. By degrees. Finding the gaps.
She stood. She straightened her jacket. She took her phone from her pocket and she looked at it and the numbers on the screen were the right numbers and she pressed them and put the phone to her ear.
It rang twice.
She reported it. She said the correct things in the correct order and her voice was steady and the person on the other end asked her to confirm and she confirmed and they told her to secure the room and wait and she said she would.
She ended the call.
She stood in the doorway and looked back at him one last time. The hands flat. The eyes open. The mouth closed. She could not shake the sense that the mouth had been closed by something that was still in the room. Something that had finished with him and was now looking for a chair.
She walked out into the corridor. The lights were the same lights. The floor was the same floor. She walked toward the exit and her footsteps were the same footsteps and she felt it then. Settling behind her sternum like a stone dropped into deep water. Something that had not been there when she arrived. Something that had not asked permission.
Something that was patient.
Something that was already learning the structure of her.
To be continued…
Block by Block
Life, when you really think about it, is a series of blocks.
We begin with toy blocks, usually brightly coloured and covered in someone else’s drool. As children, we stack them with the confidence of master architects, creating towers that defy both gravity and common sense.
The inevitable collapse is met with either delighted laughter or a dramatic meltdown worthy of an award-winning actor.
Years later, not much changes.
The blocks simply get bigger.
We move into tower blocks, work in office blocks, drive around city blocks, and occasionally feel as though a concrete block has been permanently attached to our shoulders. Somewhere along the way, adulthood becomes the art of carrying blocks while pretending everything is perfectly under control.
A block can be the beginning of something magnificent. Every cathedral, skyscraper, castle and home starts with one. A single block is unimpressive. A thousand blocks become a landmark. There is a lesson hidden there: greatness rarely arrives fully formed. It usually begins as one small piece laid carefully upon another.
Of course, blocks are not always helpful.
Ask any writer facing a blank page.
Writer’s block is a curious phenomenon. Your brain contains thousands of ideas, millions of words, countless memories and opinions, yet when required to produce a paragraph, it suddenly resembles an abandoned warehouse. The harder you try to think, the faster the thoughts flee. It is as though your imagination has gone on strike and forgotten to inform management.
Mental blocks are equally strange. We convince ourselves we cannot do something, and the belief itself becomes the obstacle. The wall is imaginary, yet we walk into it repeatedly. Human beings are remarkably talented at constructing prisons from thoughts and then complaining about the lack of freedom.
Technology has kindly offered solutions. We can now block spam callers, block nuisance emails, block unwanted advertisements and block people on social media. Entire relationships can disappear with the tap of a finger. Medieval kings needed armies to silence critics. We merely need good Wi-Fi.
Then there are the competitive blocks.
In sport, blocking is a skill. In life, it is practically a profession. Someone blocks your promotion. Someone blocks your parking space. Someone inevitably stops in the middle of a supermarket aisle with a trolley positioned at precisely ninety degrees, effectively blocking civilisation itself.
There should be an Olympic event for that.
Then there are roadblocks, those universal reminders that life enjoys testing our patience. Nothing inspires philosophical reflection quite like being five minutes from home and discovering that a bright orange barrier has decided otherwise. Suddenly, every shortcut becomes a scenic route, and every journey becomes an adventure nobody asked for.
Every generation has its own blocks. For children, they are toys. For adults, they are passwords. Nothing creates a more immediate mental block than confidently typing the same password for the fifth time while insisting the computer must be wrong. The computer, unfortunately, usually disagrees.
Even nature enjoys blocks. A block of ice can preserve something for centuries. Entire worlds remain frozen beneath glaciers. Time itself seems blocked, paused and suspended until the thaw arrives.
Perhaps that is why the word fascinates me. A block is never merely an object. It is a contradiction. It can stop progress, yet it can also create it. It can imprison, yet it can protect.
It can end a journey, yet it can form the very road beneath our feet.
The Lego block that sparks imagination, the building block that creates a city, the mental block that challenges our confidence, the digital block that preserves our peace – each reveals a different side of the same idea. And maybe that mirrors life itself.
The obstacles we curse today often become the foundations we thank tomorrow. The very thing blocking our path may be teaching us to find another route, a better route, or even a completely different destination.
So when I hear the word “block”, I don’t think of a barrier.
I think of potential.
After all, every masterpiece begins as a block of something. Stone before sculpture. Land before a city. An idea before a book. A child before an adult.
The trick is knowing whether the block in front of us is meant to be climbed over, knocked down, walked around, or carefully placed beneath our feet as the next step forward.
And if all else fails, there is always the option of blocking the spam caller who insists that our car warranty has expired on a vehicle we have never owned.
***
Photo credit: Pinterest
Esther Chilton 
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