The writing challenge was to combine four phrases into a piece of writing under 250 words. My phrases were: 1) BONFIRES AND BARBECUES 2) SAUSAGES AND FIREWORKS
3) ICE TINKLING IN A GLASS 4) FULL OF PROMISE
The bonfire is stacked and the guy, which they spent all last evening making out of straw stuffed into an old pair of trousers and a ragged shirt, sits atop the lattice of wooden spars and branches awaiting his fate. At a hopefully safe distance, the fireworks also await their fate. The barbecue has been lit for half an hour, the charcoal turning nicely grey and the pink sausages piled up on a table at its side. It will be a night of fire and explosion, colour and noise, smells and sizzles. The children are beyond excited. At the end of the garden, the washing line has been hung with apples on strings, dripping with black treacle, and the old baby bath has more apples bobbing in deep water. Hallowe’en meets Guy Fawkes every year in our garden because everyone else’s is well-tended with manicured lawns whereas ours is what a kind visitor once described as ‘semi-wild’. Mercifully, on the 5th November, the early darkness hides overgrown, weedy flowerbeds, vegetables optimistically planted in spring and left to go to seed, a corner thicket of trees and bushes which the children use for playing Sleeping Beauty. Guy’s hour of doom approaches as the cars start to arrive, disgorging
het-up children, mother bearing tray-bakes and fathers bearing six –packs. The
garden fills up, the fire is lit, someone hands me a gin and tonic, the ice
tinkling in the glass, full of promise. I can do this. One last time.
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