Marty

Here I shall post my short stories (1,000 words up to around 10,000) and my flash stories (under 1,000 words). Make of them what you will.

Most stories about homelessness are told from the point of view of the homeless themselves. This story, however, is from the point of view of one who is simply doing what he can to try to help the homeless, making it perhaps unusual for the genre. It is, as Backwoods Boy has already said, an excellently crafted story, which draws the reader in from the very first opening sentences. It is well worth the read, and I would recommend it wholeheartedly. I look forward to reading more of Mancunian's writing.

The same happens with Chrome on my Samsung A5 2015 Android phone.

I suppose that depends on how someone actually pronounces a word. Some might pronounce batallions as bat-tal-i-ons (4 syllables) whereas others might say it more like bat-tal-yons (only 3). Not that it really matters, but it may have relevance to how westerners (non-Japanese speakers) view the writing of haiku.... The five-seven-five rule comes from the fact that Japanese haiku is traditionally written in three parts, the first with five sounds, then seven sounds, and finally another five sounds. Bear in mind, however, that a sound in Japanese is not the same as a syllable in English. For example, the English word “sign” only consists of one syllable, but I understand that to the Japanese ear it would actually be heard as three sounds (roughly: “se-eye-en”). Because of this, a seventeen syllable Western haiku would normally be longer than a seventeen sound Japanese haiku. Also, because of this distinction between Japanese sounds and Western syllables, some western haiku writers argue that the 5-7-5 rule should not be taken literally. More important, they reckon, would be short-longer-short format. I suppose the decision is ultimately up to the poet...

Love them! They all have a Zen like quality to me. I particularly like the flower baskets one - although I might have used something like bringing glorious colour as its second line... (some haiku warriors might complain that this one has no seasonal reference to it - but, as the father of haiku himself, Matsuo Basho, reportedly once said "Learn the rules, so that you can break the rules.") I really like the snowdrops one as well. And I don't give a toss about the fact that the final line may have one more syllable than it should have. But they're all good. You're doing what Basho himself did. His haikus were about what he was observing during his life. It doesn't matter that you are surrounded by "concrete and glass, wind and rain, traffic and honking horns...with a little green thrown in"- you've just shown there's still a lot in your everyday surroundings to speak to your inner poet.

Thanks for the kind words, Gary. And yes, life outside the closet is usually much more pleasant than inside it. But everyone should only come out when they are ready to.

I must admit that I have almost stopped using Facebook over the past three months. The amount of fake news that I was seeing on there just got too much for me, and I found I was simply wasting too much time trying to point out to many of my Facebook 'friends' that much of the so-called news that they were insisting on sharing had no basis in fact, if not deliberately false. I still have my Facebook account, and I do check in once in a while, but I am no longer wasting hours of my life trying to respond to all the nonsense that I see on there. (Maybe that's why I'm being seen on GA again...) The Internet is a wonderful thing, and Social Media can definitely be put to good use. I do sometimes think, however, that the modern younger generation have been somewhat seduced by it. They have become seduced by the idea that news should be available immediately. What does it matter if we sometimes have to wait 'longer than 3 minutes' for a piece of news? What does it matter (unless it's really serious news) if we don't even hear about it until the next day for that matter? I can sometimes go days without even listening to (or reading) the news. It doesn't mean the world is going to end, just because I haven't heard the news. Mostly I catch the news nowadays on the car radio when I am travelling - or someone I meet will tell me about a certain bit of news they found interesting. Maybe I'll even find it interesting myself, in which case I'll look it up when I am next online. Great piece, though, Jason! And yes, I agree with your comments about how mainstream news channels and papers have become commercialised and/or polarised into differing viewpoints or party ideologies. Although the same was true when I first started reading newspapers in the UK nigh on 60 years ago. Even then most newspapers were known to have an editorial team that leaned either heavily to the right or the left. Few of them were genuinely unbiased.

Thanks for your kind words, Foster

Thanks for commenting, @joann414. I can understand you feeling tearful at the melancholy near the end of the piece but, when I was writing it, I never considered that Sam was the narrator's actual counterpart. More that he was just a good friend for a few years. I'm glad you thought the story was beautiful and touching. It makes me feel that writing is worthwhile.

Thanks for the link, @drpaladin and yes, as @Geron Kees said, it's sad to think that 'educational' films like that should have been thought necessary to show to schoolchildren... I cannot find a YouTube link to the full BBC's TV drama The War Game, but a copy is available at the Internet Archive here.

Thank God, indeed, drpaladin. And many thanks for your comment. In 1980 the British Government issued a leaflet entitled Protect And Survive, which was supposedly advice to the public as to what to do in the event of a nuclear attack. Much of its advice was laughable really. So, in an attempt to bring home just how absurd it was, myself and several other members of the Eco Party (a precursor to the Green Party) spent one Saturday afternoon in the then Manchester Peace Garden in St. Peter's Square, sheltering under a kitchen table (that being one of the pieces of advice in the Government leaflet) in an attempt to show the public just how stupid it was for Mrs Thatcher's government to assume that they could protect or placate us with such nonsense.

Thanks for the comments, Geron! I've never even heard of 'Duck and Cover' - but back in 1965 the BBC produced a television drama called The War Game, a documentary style drama depicting the prelude and after-effects of a Soviet nuclear attack on Britain. Under pressure from the UK Government, the BBC scrapped its planned 7th October broadcast, giving the reason that it was "too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting" - even though it was publicly screened abroad (where it won several awards). The BBC did finally show it on 31 July 1985, as part of a series of programmes remembering the 40th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Around 1980 I was a member of the "Eco" Party (a precursor to the Green Party) in Manchester. One of our members had managed to get hold of a copy of The War Game on cine-film, and one evening we gave a free public showing of it in a Church Hall on Deansgate in the centre of Manchester. The organisation of that showing was a bit chaotic, to say the least. We had no projector, so I borrowed the one that belonged to the school I was teaching in at the time. When I say 'borrowed' what I really mean is that I simply took it without asking, as I knew that the headmaster would not have given me permission had I asked. Around one hundred people turned up on the night, and afterwards we opened the floor to members of the audience. One of my most vivid memories of the night is a Japanese guy who stood up and told us that he was a survivor of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima, and went on to describe his memories of that awful event...

Thanks for your kind comment, AC.

Thanks for taking the time to comment, Parker. I'm not sure whether the threat of all out nuclear war is as real now as it was when I wrote the poem, but I am still worried that the world may be slipping closer to a third world war. But I think the biggest concern these days is whether governments have the will to tackle global warming... 😟

And thank you, Tim. Both for reading it and for commenting.

Exquisitely done, CT!

Reading that put me in mind of Leonard Cohen's poem "There Are Some Men" from his 1961 collection entitled "The Spice-Box of Earth"... There are some men who should have mountains to bear their names to time. Grave-markers are not high enough or green, and sons go far away to lose the fist their father’s hand will always seem. I had a friend: he lived and died in mighty silence and with dignity, left no book, son, or lover to mourn. Nor is this a mourning-song but only a naming of this mountain on which I walk, fragrant, dark, and softly white under the pale of mist. I name this mountain after him.

Thanks, Thorn! I'll try the 'code' in the editor next time I try posting a link to a video.

This was always my favourite song from Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell II album, but when I saw the video to it it made my appreciation of it all that much more intense. Some of the imagery still leaves me reaching for the tissues. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37GrbCUvZEM Edit: Maybe some kind soul could explain how to insert a YouTube link properly to me...

I think this recent blog entry by @Jason Rimbaud must rank as one of the best replies ever to what I was talking about above. https://gayauthors.org/blogs/entry/17904-on-writing-blocks-and-how-to-avoid-them/ Thanks, Jason! You just made my day. 😊

Brilliant, Jason! Thanks for answering my three questions, and making me laugh out loud more than just a few times. You have certainly given me a lot to think about there. Not that it really matters, but I think we did sort of know each other on another site ten years or so back...

Oblivion No sirens warned of the approaching doom. No notice given of what was to come. As I looked from the window out of my room, completely oblivious to the incoming bomb. Maybe in London the sirens wailed, made people aware of what was in store. That attempt at reason had finally failed. And someone had started the Third World War. Or perhaps they were silent even there, as the government realised that all was lost. That no final deed, no speech, no prayer, could avert t

Oops, my mistake completely!! For some inexplicable reason I misinterpreted the word narration there. Now I understand what you mean. I suppose that's my style of writing. I do tend to put a lot of "introspection" in to my writing.

Awh..... That was luverly!

That, sadly, is often the case. And it's not just a recent thing, the case of the famous actor and comedian (and British Army war veteran) Spike Milligan maybe being a good example. I've a nephew in England who has taken out an Irish passport as a result Brexit. He often works in Europe, and is concerned that he may lose the right to work there after Brexit. He was able to use the grandparent rule to get Irish citizenship.