Trains and Boats and Planes. Prompt. Bold Street Writers.

Today at the Bold Street writers the prompt was 

Trains and Boats and Planes

They come from China

Where storage sheds fill acres of land

And high rise homes house workers

Who sleep the sleep of the exhausted

Before rising early to catch the next

Shift. They come from South America

Colourful and handmade. Combed alpaca

Mexican laced and Frida Kahloed

On cushions and fridge magnets

For teenage girls to plump up

Their bedrooms as they string

The Chinese LED lanterns around

The windows. They come from

India smelling of spices. Turmeric

Myrrh, frankincense and the East

Silks and satins and toiled over

Hand woven rugs to warm the

Feet of the teenagers’ mothers

Slumped in the rattan armchair

Exclusive to Habitat or Ikea or

Harrods. They come, they come.

And the warehouses fill with boxes

And crates and wooden carts and the

Strong arms of the Polish, Czech, Hungarian

Workers, lift and lay , lift and lay.

And the distribution points keep busy

Every moment of every day to satisfy

The people. And the roads fill up

With Stobart trucks and their wives

Names gaily painted on the bonnets

Keeping bonnets on the wives.

And in a room high in a glass castle

Grey costumed people with

Grey faces and grey hair, rub their

Hands and smile with satisfaction

At yet another Black Friday

G.Snape 28^th Nov. 2019

Writer's Workshop Warrington

My prompt today was a photograph taken out of a weekend magazine and one of many offered by Margaret K.

...and this was the result...

"Hopes and Dreams"

I might go to China this year.

Go and see the great wall of China.

I'm told that one of mum's relatives walked it in the 1800s.

She was a sturdy woman called Isabelle.

Isabelles are sturdy I think.

Maybe that's why one of the grandgirls is so feisty ....well part of the reason!

I tell her that the Queen of Spain was an Isabelle, Isabella actually to be correct.

So, a lot to live up to there, not that she is'nt quite capable enough.

She'll probably end up leading some political party in the future, then walking the length of the Wall of China before becoming the next Queen Isabelle of Spain.

The other Isabelle waas Scottish.

That says it all really

Determined, sturdy, feisty....all my Scottish female relatives in a nutshell.

So...China this year?

Sooner pigs might fly.

There was a lottery rollover yesterday.

I hear it was the largest ever...£50m!

I said, what a responsibility if you win.

The daughter said, I think I could find ways of using it.

We bought tickets and had a meal together while we waited for the result.

We had game pie made by another grandgirl.

She put the rest of the goose and duck from the freezer into a bechamel sauce in a dish and slapped a nice golden crust on the top.

Great girl.

I tell her she's a queen too.

Esther

The one who took a year out in finishing school before she wooed King Xerxes with her beauty.

Of course I don't think that they had anything like the Great British Bake Off then,

Or even the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme.

That's Esther's motivation at the moment.

The Duke of Edinburgh Award Cooking Badge.

Anyway we benefit from all that.

So all good there then,.

I heard nothing back from the daughter.

So I don't think we won the £50m.

Haven't seen any pigs flying either today.

I've stopped looking in the mirror much these days.

There's something happening with my face.

The skin has acquired a lot of unnecessary lines.

They started around my eyes a few years ago.

I bought the right skin cream.

The advert said that it stopped any aging which might occur....completely.

It promised a peach soft glowing complexion.

I followed the instructions for years.

Not one to give in at the first sign of failure. 

My mouth area was next to "line up".

Someone said that the top lip gets thinnner as you get older, they were right...

 ..noone said it disappears altogether. 

And what's that trick that lipstick plays.

A creeping red line from the lips to the nose?

Nasty.

Anyway, I think they were lying, that company selling the face cream.

So I just stopped looking in the mirror.

It lies too.

Peach soft skin?

Pigs might fly!