Charnwood Chronicles
Charnwood Chronicles is an online platform for writers to share stories created in - and sometimes about - the Charnwood area of Leicestershire. It's curated by Alison Mott, a writer based in Loughborough. See www.alisonmott.com.
Monday, September 2, 2024
Kate
Thursday, April 11, 2024
Hello child, welcome to life!
This will seem a strange and fearful place to you, no doubt, a jumble of shapes and colours at this stage which you won't have the knowledge or vocabulary to put a name to, nor the ocular capacity even to see clearly.
And to be truthful, you're not actually seeing things anyway, but imagining, the black box we call the brain in the darkness of your skull making up stories of what it thinks it sees from messages sent by your eyes, your ears, the surface of your skin, the tips of your fingers.
These tales aren't always correct. If you are wise you will learn, at some point, to stop a moment and question their veracity before accepting them.
But that skill is years away in your future. For now, you just need to breathe, stick as close to the person who feeds and gives you shelter as you can, relax and take it all in. It feels a scary place, true, but believe me you have arrived at a point in the planet's journey that is safer for humankind than it has ever been.
You should know that you are the product of several thousand years of the struggle, graft and tears of your ancestors. Some will have lived very short lives, enough only to procreate before they expired; others to have had lives that were long and eventful. Some of those ancestors will have been lucky, with plentiful food in their bellies and a sound roof over their heads; others not so fortunate, scrabbling day-to-day to find or grow or earn enough money to buy the nourishment needed to sustain themselves and raise their young, at least to an age when their young could look after themselves.
For the most part you're not likely to experience the level
of struggle they endured. Be thankful for that, use the time this gives you to
experience joy. It’s your duty, almost, to make the most of such happiness - if
not for yourself, then in their stead. They worked hard to survive so you could
be born; celebrate that hard work by living the best life you can possibly
manage.
Alison Mott
(In the style of Kurt Vonnegut's 'Hello babies. Welcome to Earth', shared by Humanists UK on the anniversary of his birthday).
Photo by Omar Lopez on Unsplash |
Friday, February 16, 2024
Compassion (in the style of A Nail by Anon)
For want of compassion, proper funding was lost;
For want of proper funding, a doctor was lost;
For want of a doctor, an appointment was lost;
For want of an appointment, a prescription was lost;
For want of a prescription, medication was lost;
For want of medication, good health was lost;
For want of good health, a life was lost;
And all for the want of a little compassion.
Alison Mott
Photo by Hush Naidoo Jade Photography on Unsplash |
The Doctor, 2023 - An Ode
Let me to the
doctor go,
My pain gets
worse, ‘should not be so,
I will a quick
appointment make
by telephone, my
hands now shake!
Am I in luck?
It’s down to fate,
ten seconds past
the hour of eight.
I’m in a queue,
I’m put on hold,
The minutes pass,
I’m growing old!
After what seems
to be an hour
the phone goes
dead, I have no power
to recover my
urgent call;
My patience now,
begins to pall.
The second time,
a lady’s voice
intones a sort of
‘multi choice.’
Press button one,
or two, or three,
there is no
charge, the call is free;
We’re pleased to
tell you while you wait
‘Your call is valued!’;
(I’m number 8).
I’ll listen to
the choice again,
wrestling with
increasing pain.
I’m tempted now,
by option six,
let’s see what a
human voice can fix!
I’ll tell some
person all the facts -
Computer, you can
now relax.
‘Hello, and
welcome to the surgery,
How can I help? My
name is Marjorie.’
‘A doctor I would
like to see’,
And Marj’ is
saying, ‘Get past Me!
Are you calling
about yourself?’
(No, it’s about
an aging elf!)
‘A few small
checks before we start;
have you a
problem with your Heart?
We ask our
patients to ‘book on line’
It saves you
money, and also time.
The doctor has a
lot to do ...
Did you say blood
clots in your poo?'
David Taylor, June 2023
Photo by Miryam León on Unsplash |
Wednesday, January 10, 2024
Evita, or not Evita - that is the question!
Anybody could see that the understudy was making a right hash of the role of Evita, her requirement to learn and practice the words to the main role as well as her own clearly having been bypassed.
‘What is that strange song you keep singing?’ the
director bellowed in the interval. ‘It’s not at all what you’re supposed to
sing!’
‘It’s from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,’ the girl
replied, blushing. ‘I thought if I sang it to the Evita tune, no-one would
notice the difference.’
Alison Mott, 4th Jan 2024
Evita, staged at Curve, Leicester in January 2024 (where in fact an understudy drove 150 miles on the last weekend to cover the role and gave a fantastic performance!). Photo: A Mott |
See an article about the real understudy saving the day here.
Thursday, January 4, 2024
To be, or not to be, a Viking …
Looking at it, I guess that ‘Viking Me’ would be in her twenties, too - the prime of her life. Google tells me that 35% of women in Viking England didn't survive beyond thirty years of age, with thirty-one to forty-year-olds considered middle-aged and anyone over fifty classed as old. At my age – sixty - I would probably have been dead.
Quite interesting, when you consider the British government now expect me to work until I'm sixty-seven!
It was, ‘Nothing's come through, yet,’ yesterday, but, thankfully, a ‘Yes’ today. I've never worried about not taking them on the odd day here and there before but hadn't felt a hundred percent on my walk into town earlier, and after my elder brother’s heart attack a few weeks ago, have begun to worry the medication’s more vital to keeping me alive than I'd previously assumed. Indeed, it could well be the reason I've even made it to the age of sixty, when my Viking ancestor-esses generally didn't.
So I was grateful when the assistant said, ‘yes, they’re here!’, adding, ‘do you pay for your prescriptions?’
‘No,’ I beamed, ‘I'm sixty!’, the fact that I get them for free a relatively new and pleasant experience, and still something of a surprise, given my retirement age having been extended.
‘My apologies,’ she said, and ‘no problem,’ I replied cheerfully, and I left the shop with a big smile on my face. Because while I may not look like a twenty-year-old Viking warrioress, it's good to know I don't look like a twenty-first century old crone, yet, either!
Alison Mott
Thursday, December 14, 2023
'To hear the angels sing'
In the annual pre-Christmas meeting in heaven God sat at the head of the table, with the angels gathered round. It was, as you might expect, quite a big table.
‘There’s
only one item on the agenda today,’ said Gabriel, Chief Angel and secretary to
the meeting, ‘and that’s what is happening to Christmas on earth these days.’
‘Well,’
God remarked after a moment’s reflection, ‘we have to agree it has changed
somewhat since the events in Bethlehem all those years ago. Then it was Mary,
Joseph, and the lad himself, some shepherds - representing the poor and
outcasts of the world, three wise men – showing we don’t mind the wealthy being
involved, as long as they are generous, and several animals – to show the whole
created world matters. What was happening was a quiet celebration of a
birthday.’
One of
the angels raised a hand. ‘Excuse me God, but isn’t that birthday what we see
being celebrated in churches at this time of year?’
‘It is,
and I have to say it is a very pleasant surprise to see them still, some two
thousand years since the first. But they are now very much a minority.’
‘What do
the majority do then?’ It should be said she was a very new angel and this
would be only her second Christmas.
‘Some,
on the days before, celebrate with pub lunches with people from work, others,
on the night before Christmas have rather a lot to drink, and many wake up on
the day after Boxing Day unable to remember much about the previous two or
three days. Oh, and many folk, of course, don’t celebrate Christmas at all as it
is not part of their religion.’
‘Is
there anything we could do to change things?’
God
smiled rather sadly. ‘There is one thing I wondered about, given how awful
things are in parts of the world at the moment. There is a hymn written almost
two hundred years ago by a chap called E. H. Sears, an American Unitarian
parish minister, and known as, “It came
upon the midnight clear.” There are two lines from the third verse I’d like
to write across earth’s sky, near to where the star shone all those years ago;
O
hush the noise, you men of strife,
To
hear the angels sing.”
'These
seem to me to be words the world needs to hear.’
The meeting ended and the angels quietly went to rehearse their singing.
David Parkin
Kate
Who do I most miss of late? ‘Would have to be my Aunty Kate. Younger than my much loved mother, neither one could claim a brother. Sister...
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In the annual pre-Christmas meeting in heaven God sat at the head of the table, with the angels gathered round. It was, as you might expect,...
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I had a go with an app, yesterday, which shows what you would’ve looked like as a Viking. I uploaded a photo to it, taken in the park last S...
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Our second home had a railway track running directly behind the back garden. We had decided to move with our young baby son and toddler daug...