Talky Tin

On yesterday's drive to Arundel to the Wetland Centre Gift Shop to buy a pressie for Rob and Cat's imminent baby, I noticed that Lobbs Wood is once again full of daffodils, and I found a photo from a previous spring in the Captain's blog gallery.

I am hoping to have one more book published - a collection of short stories. IF my young publisher will do it. Times are hard in the publishing industry and they have to concentrate on what will sell and I am so very far from a best-seller. On the other hand, readers have been asking when my next book will be coming out, so I hope I will soon be able to give them an answer.

And I had some very good news on Monday. I got this email message: Your entry to our 2021 Flash Fiction competition, TALKY TIN, has been shortlisted and will appear in the anthology we aim to publish in the autumn. The competition procedure was delayed by the covid pandemic and the final judging is yet to take place. We will announce the winners as soon as the process is completed.

I had forgotten I had entered it, so it was a lovely surprise. The bio is done, and it has to be very short as the story is very short indeed. It was inspired by our fierce Arabian cat, Whites. He was a character and a half.

He is buried in one of our Saudi gardens, with some flowers, so if anyone ever finds him, they will know he was loved. Will I ever see him again? I don't know, but Jesus did assure us that his Father, Jehovah, sees the fall of even the smallest bird. So his Creator knew and loved Whites - and therefore who knows?

I hope to be there to find out.

It is many years since I appeared in an anthology. And then it was with a poem. I would love to write a Haiku about the grey sky, the calm grey sea, with one little fishing boat making a wake across it - just capture the whole thing in a few words. But... sea/grey/still/boat/green... something about the boat leaving a white trail across the water would suggest the calm of the Monday sea. But that is as far as I have got.

Talking of weather, the North of England is now blanketed in snow. But it has not reached us here on the South Coast.

There was an attack, with fatalities on a Kingdom Hall in Germany last night - sounds like it came just at the end of the mid-week meeting.  As yet very little is known about what happened, beyond that it seems that the attacker is also dead, and by his own hand.

So yet more families are faced with tragedy.  But I know my German brothers and sisters will continue to trust in Jehovah with all their hearts and to believe that they will see their lost loved ones again when the time comes for the resurrection.  But this is such a sad morning for them.