W in the A to Z challenge.
[V] is for Valentine
I know the 14th February is long gone but you can actually still celebrate all the others St. Valentines. July will be full of them. 6th, 25th and 30th July are all dedicated to St. Valentines as is 3rd November and 7th January. Valentine was a popular name back in the day.
I think it would be nice to have a special day not on 14th February, no? Don’t get me wrong, flowers, champagne, chocolates and great food make me happy but I cringe at the social obligation we are force into coming up to the date in the middle of the second month.
We should be celebrating love and tell people we love them. And not because the calendar say it is time to do so.
V in the A to Z challenge.
[U] is for Upper Crust
Upper Crust, the saviour when
the train door closes on your drunken face,
another half an hour
waiting in the dark and rain
Saviour when you really shouldn’t be outside
or by yourself
The feeding hand that will ease your hangover
the supplier of stodge that
makes the next day little bit prettier.
Upper Crust, we (the insolent idiots who always miss the point where one more pint is a pint too much)
applaude you.
U in the A to Z challenge.
[T] is for Tyranny
Joseph Andrew was born three weeks prematurely on a late summer day. The labour made Marika exhausted and exhilarated at the same time. The little bundle became the centre of her universe. Joe quietly suffered the change in hierarchy. He didn’t protest though and gave his son the privileges. They were a perfect happy family. Even Greta with her two sons visited few times, advising her, sharing secrets of parenting.
Their daughter Samantha Jane joined them less then a year later and Joe gradually stopped enduring her indifference towards him. She didn’t see the first slap coming. She felt alone and lost.
T in the A to Z challenge.
[S] is for Sacrifice
Marika took her parents to all the London attractions, Joe unhappily followed. They were not speaking English and he was left on the outskirts of their conversation. She tried to translate as much as was possible but Joe didn’t take the exclusion lightly and was turning grumpier every day. Towards the end, he spent most of his time in the office instead.
Their visit was over too soon she felt, but Joe was relieved to be back in the normal state of affairs. In retrospect he disapproved of the amount of time she spent with them and the lack of attention to him, rebuked the negligence for the flat and her chores. She had to agree that her parents’ visit was an intrusion and caused disruptions to their life. It must had been so hard for Joe. He needed his regularity, his routine to relax. He concentrated so hard on achieving continuous progress at work so they could afford a bigger place and their own family one day. She had jeopardized their future.
They got married next month in a small ceremony. She announced her marital status to her parents over the phone. When she was five months pregnant, they moved to a four bedroom house in Hampstead. She couldn’t be happier. She was starting her own family in a perfect house with a perfect husband.
S in the A to Z challenge.
[R] is for Reading, Rest and Robots
I have finally found some time to read (and I mean read, not skim) other posts in the A to Z challenge. There are so many! I have managed to go just through a minuscule fraction of them but I will persist, I promise.
Some of my favourite ones so far (but trust me it is difficult to choose):
http://chrismusgravewriter.com
http://wordsfromsonobe.wordpress.com
http://silviatomasvillalobos.wordpress.com
http://lynnelives.wordpress.com
http://damyantiwrites.wordpress.com
All of the above have a theme which I think is the reason that has made them so appealing. I think I might be theming next year too. As this is my first year, I don’t really know what I am doing. Literally I’m just going from A to Z jumping of random thoughts. On one hand this gives me freedom to do whatever I feel like in the moment but also leaves me without any resemblance of a structure which I think could be quite helpful. Well, I have learned something.
Majority of us are enjoying the last day of a very long weekend so I will leave you to it. Read, rest and have a friendly robot help you with your domestic duties.
R in the A to Z challenge.
[Q] is for Queues
I have come to the point where my drafts, ideas and notes are on so many different papers, in so many different places and in different forms that I am getting lost in them. For me to function, I need to stay organised however my strongly developed sense for neat piles and lists is being seriously challenged by this overflow of things that wants to be finished.
Pros: I have ideas.
Cons: The aforementioned ideas are in the queue waiting to be developed into meaningful or otherwise publishable pieces.
And queues are the thing I have a problem with. I am not patient. For me to join a queue means that whatever is at the end of the queue is life-and-death important. Otherwise I wouldn’t bother. Queues hinder progress. I live in the UK. The British citizens are very organised while queuing. I have never thought I will find a nation so immersed in the culture of queuing. Then I visited Brazil. Let’s just say that the conclusion of this trip in regards to the issue of queuing is that the United Kingdom has still a lot to learn.
My queues are based on tiredness, formed around lack of time, mixed with impatience and a dollop of laziness. They are flavoured with the fear of failure and soaked in the despair of self-doubt. No wonder I’m avoiding them. Please someone tell me to stop moaning and get over it. Please, I beg you.
Q in the A to Z challenge.
[P] is for P..a…l….m
I wish I could give you the full title. I wish the word was mine. However it is not. This word is playing a vital part in a short story that is being written by someone else. It is a made up word. And it is magnificent.
As I can’t really elaborate further on the magnificence of the p..a…l….m, I decided to explore some other equally wonderful made up words. I started a little research on this topic and got very quickly distracted by this website http://wordoid.com/ and got kind of lost there for few hours. Click on it. It is fun. But please come back.
If you clicked on the link, you know it is a website that creates words. So yes, this post will be about my made up words. I have tried to stay true to the A to Z challenge, so I invented (with a little help) 26 words each starting with different letter of the alphabet. Here they are:
Androcia – a plant in a shape of a dragon, when mature it coughs fire
Brandard – a person obsessed with no longer existing brands
Certing – a process of being certified (slang)
Dimense – adj. something/someone trying to be intense and failing miserably
Equalid – equality that actually means equality, validated equality
Fourders – worshipers of number four, often walking in a square formation
Gryphallis – a less known relative of a griffin, a creature of smaller proportions with a head and wings of a sparrow and body of a cat, often a kept as a pet for its beautiful voice
Homewhat – a place close to the home but not exactly home, especially used by teenagers
Irritory – a place in the house where for no apparent reason, one becomes irritated
Jaminery – type of a factory or an engineering plant that is purposely producing faulty goods
Kochange – a change that will result in a disaster
Louised – adj. being in a company of too many women called Louise
Meeties – short unplanned meetings, usually on the street going about your own business
Nerdatory – adj. mandatory of the highest level, something so mandatory that no one has found an argument against it
Ougal – very ugly bird that no one is able to see twice as the bird is so incredibly ugly that the visual cortex shuts down immediately upon spotting the ougal. This condition is called Visual Shock Syndrome and is very often irreversible.
Princide – act of suicide committed by a prince, often confused with pringlecide which means committing suicide by eating too many crisps.
Quandard – unit of measurement measuring the standards of quality, it has not been agreed yet on the exact size, volume or length of this unit
Readway – type of a road where you are allowed to read a book while driving
Sotone – type of a beach stone shaped in a perfect sphere considered to have healing properties
Taxatile – adj. being able to tax anything and anyone under any circumstance
Uzzer – type of a loser so ill-equipped to life on Earth he spends most of his time sleeping
Voidier – a creature thriving in an environment often described as void
Wrapiction – an addiction to wrapping, seasonal disorder most evident in December
Xinsula – peninsula in a shape of x, not present on planet Earth
Yesture – any type of gesture expressing positive response
Zebrate – to stand too close to a zebra in order to synchronize breathing
P in the A to Z challenge.
[O] is for Obedience
Marika made sure the flat stayed in pristine state, food she cooked was worth a Michelin star, and Joe’s shirts were ironed and crispy white. Day by day. It filled her with pride that her man was so perfect. Her days were spent doing chores or shopping for necessities. She rarely bought anythings for herself, and if only sensible things; she didn’t want to take advantage of Joe’s money. It was December and she was living with him for four months now.
December was different though. Festive. This time she allowed herself to look for something special, a dress. The office Christmas party was in two weeks and she was going to be Joe’s plus one. She needed to look presentable, worthy of him. The dress was long, strapless and blood red. She felt beautiful and sexy, excited to see Joe’s reaction. She prepared his favourite dinner, lit candles and waited at the door wrapped in silk.
She returned the dress the next day and exchanged it for a black gown with full sleeves. Joe was right, the red dress was too provocative, it was after all still a business occasion. The party was success. It was the first time she experienced the exclusivity of City life, the elegant people, classy hotel reception, gourmet meals, expensive champagne. She even made a new friend. Mrs Goodman, Greta, the wife of the department director. They had two sons and Greta had never returned back to work from her maternity leave. They agreed to meet once a week for a coffee or a walk in a park. Marika thought she would like to have a child too.
Christmas was knocking on the door and she was thrilled as her parents were spending the holiday with them. It was the first time she would see them since she left home. Joe was uneasy and worried about their visit. His mother died and he had a difficult relationship with his father. Marika felt sorry for him.
Her family was to become his.
O in the A to Z challenge.
[N] is for Nickelback and/or Nuts
[Rant alert] Yes. Nickelback…and get over it. I am too old to be told what I should like and what I should hate and I am quite capable of forming my own opinion, thank you very much. [Rant over]
Don’t worry, I am not going to start a war with you. I will not try to persuade you about my musical tastes. I will not make you listen to music you are not fond of either. There are plenty of musicians I am not a fan of myself. But it doesn’t give me the right to spread hate.
Recently, I have read an article on internet (one that will seduce you with twenty fantastical titles at the end and you find yourself spending hours reading totally irrelevant mash of information you forget the second you move onto the next one) and it was called something similar to ’10 signs that your girlfriend is nuts’. One of those signs according to the article was listening to Nickelback. Which I guess makes me nuts. I am not arguing with the result. I think I am nuts. I am nuts because I walked 100km nonstop with a stress fracture of tibia. I am nuts because I will walk 100km nonstop this year again (hopefully without acquiring a broken leg). My mental state is something of a question, I am reading internet articles of dubious nature after all. HoweverI don’t consider myself crazy for listening to rock music.
Like what you like as long as it makes you happy and no one else miserable.
N in the A to Z challenge.
Eva Marasca 