Having had an unintentional break from blogging for a month or so, I am back with this week's Write on Wednesdays challenge.
This week, the task was to..."Write the words of Margaret Atwood at the top of your page "We are learning to make fire". Set your timer to 5 minutes. Write the first words that come into your head after the prompt. Stop when the buzzer rings."
So here I go!...
"We are learning to make fire!"
She looked at him blankly as he began scrabbling around on the floor looking for "rocks" and scraping them together with a look of intense concentration.
Glancing around surreptitiously and realising she was in the minority, she hesitantly crouched down and began half-heartedly searching the tiled floor for imaginary flint along with everyone else, simultaneously cursing her friend Laurie.
"Yes well done, that's good! Now imagine you have made your fire! You have produced it from your bare hands for the very first time! You look at it in wonder!"
As everyone else started staring at the tiles with wide eyes and open mouths, Poppy slumped onto the floor in a state somewhere in between despair and hysterical laughter.
She had been moaning to her friend Laurie that there were no places to meet decent and interesting men any more when her friend had informed her of what she'd done just before she met her ideal-in-every-way husband to be. And who can argue with the advice of a woman who has the perfect man? So Poppy had gone home and written a list of all the qualities, traits and interests she desired in her ideal match. Adding 'interested in theatre' had been an afterthought. She'd only put it down because the 'interests' column had looked a little bare with just 'likes to shop' written underneath the heading. She'd once gone to watch Grease the musical and thought it was pretty good so she thought why not? It wouldn't be horrible to go to watch a feel-good show every now and then!
However, upon showing her list to Laurie, her friend had pounced on this particular item, much to Poppy's dismay, and signed her up to amateur dramatics classes, saying that she was sure to meet her perfect man there as they would have theatre in common.
Getting carried away with Laurie's excitement, Poppy had gone along with this sure-fire plan and had even got her hopes up thinking that there would be some handsome banker-come-musical-superstar just waiting for her in community theatre.
However, as she stood there watching the males she had had such high hopes for pretend to pick fleas off their fellow cavemen, she resolved to give up trying to meet a man. Grabbing her bag and heading out the door, she made a mental note to put on some lipstick and play the damsel in distress in the DIY store on her way home.
That was some very speedy typing and definitely one of my less successful attempts but I'm going to put that down to being out of practise :) Next week's will surely be an improvement.
Zx
