short stories
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OCTOBER- the season of Acorns, Cobnuts and Conkers
With the autumn sun now at a lower angle in the sky, Maverick and I lead our longer shadows over harvest fields now ploughed and forsaken. The sky began to break like an ice cap, where cracks in the laden clouds widen to crevices of weightless blue. All around the leaves of the hazel amongst the hedgerows took on the golden-green of spring in the beams of the low autumn sun.
Every Footstep
I began my journey following a little path which took me to an old churchyard. As I opened the old wooden gate my eyes beheld the most verdant green hedgerows bursting with wildflowers, a rush of fresh country air laced with the aroma of the evening primrose saluted my nose. This place was beyond compare.
Let The Moments Linger
A youthful looking man with a look of intelligence and sensibility approaches me, “Why bother” he bristles, “Why tell your stories, no-one will listen? This is what you should be talking about, this is what people want”. He thrust his phone into my vision with images of space and science fiction; “This is the future” he said. This came as a thunderbolt to me and I listen intensely to what he has to say.
The Nature of Flight
Being fully awake and with the soft magic of the half-light dissolved like mist, I stare in slack mouthed silence as squirrels hurriedly ripple across my path, their spines undulating like waves along a skipping rope. They have become startled by the rooks alighting in the great oak tree. Rooks have a more discerning scent and lead a flock of starlings to an area rich in food. They have a more delicate feel in their beaks enabling them to detect food from a greater distance so have formed a beneficial relationship with the starlings, the rooks also acting as a ‘look out’ for predators on open ground which can be readily observed.
Blue’s Countryside Adventures
As Blue and I enter a narrow country lane where finger posts and forgotten milestones are half hidden amongst the wild grasses and where dandelions are blowing abound with seed, Blue relishes the incomparable pleasure of discovery. As I look up at the watery sky I watch the blue arrows team of swallows swerving and swooping picking off insects as they go. I can hear in the distance the sound of ‘Great Tom’ the famous church bell of St. Thomas and The Holy Rood, what a wonderful sound he makes with a head, shoulder, a waist, a lip and a mouth but also a wonderful voice.