What happens when your past finally catches up with you?
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Christmas is just around the corner, a time to be with family. For Will Mason, an orphan since he was fourteen, it is a time for reflection on what his life could have been, and what it could be.
Until a chance encounter brings back to life the reasons for his twenty years of self-imposed exile from a life only normal people could have. From that moment Will’s life slowly starts to unravel and it’s obvious to him it’s time to move on.
This time, however, there is more at stake.
Will has broken his number one rule, don’t get involved.
With his nemesis, Eddie Jamieson, suddenly within reach, and a blossoming relationship with an office colleague, Maria, about to change everything, Will has to make a choice. Quietly leave, or finally, make a stand.
But as Will soon discovers, when other people are involved there is going to be terrible consequences no matter what choice he makes.
I have been working on the story, the editor is asking for a second draft after making suggested changes – and I’m now working on it
…
So what do you do when you start having doubts about everything to do with your life? It starts with a sleepless night agonising over why you were lied to.
Then, in the cold dark hours of early morning, you turn to the only thing that can possibly give you answers.
The internet.
It’s time to delve into the prior life of the woman you are beginning to think is completely strange to you, and what do you find.
Previous relationships with a man before she was married to the man she said was Jack’s father. And yes, the man in the old photos is very easily recognisable as his father.
What’s more, he is a criminal himself, and supposedly in jail. There’s more to that story.
Then Jack gets a cryptic message from his mother, who tells him she’s left a package for him at the travel agency, and that she is going away.
Seems everyone knows what’s going on but him!
Today’s effort amounts to 1,609 words, for a total, so far, of 32,514.
50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.
They all start with –
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A picture paints … well, as many words as you like. For instance:
And, the story:
Have you ever watched your hopes and dreams simply just fly away?
Everything I thought I wanted and needed had just left in an aeroplane, and although I said I was not going to, I came to the airport to see the plane leave. Not the person on it, that would have been far too difficult and emotional, but perhaps it was symbolic, the end of one life and the start of another.
But no matter what I thought or felt, we had both come to the right decision. She needed the opportunity to spread her wings. It was probably not the best idea for her to apply for the job without telling me, but I understood her reasons.
She was in a rut. Though her job was a very good one, it was not as demanding as she had expected, particularly after the last promotion, but with it came resentment from others on her level, that she, the youngest of the group would get the position.
It was something that had been weighing down on her for the last three months, and if noticed it, the late nights, the moodiness, and sometimes a flash of temper. I knew she had one, no one could have such red hair and not, but she had always kept it in check.
And, then there was us, together, and after seven years, it felt like we were going nowhere. Perhaps that was down to my lack of ambition, and though she never said it, lack of sophistication. It hadn’t been an issue, well, not until her last promotion, and the fact she had to entertain more, and frankly I felt like an embarrassment to her.
So, there it was, three days ago, the beginning of the weekend, and we had planned to go away for a few days and take stock. We both acknowledged we needed to talk, but it never seemed like the right time.
It was then she said she had quit her job and found a new one. Starting the following Monday.
Ok, that took me by surprise, not so much that it was something I sort of guessed might happen, but that she would just blurt it out.
I think that right then, at that moment, I could feel her frustration with everything around her.
What surprised her was my reaction. None.
I simply asked where who, and when.
A world-class newspaper, in New York, and she had to be there in a week.
A week.
It was all the time I had left with her.
I remember I just shrugged and asked if the planned weekend away was off.
She stood on the other side of the kitchen counter, hands around a cup of coffee she had just poured, and that one thing I remembered was the lone tear that ran down her cheek.
Is that all you want to know?
I did, yes, but we had lost that intimacy we used to have when she would have told me what was happening, and we would have brainstormed solutions. I might be a cabinet maker but I still had a brain, which was what I overheard her tell a friend once.
There’s not much to ask, I said. You’ve been desperately unhappy and haven’t been able to hide it all that well, you have been under a lot of pressure trying to deal with a group of troglodytes, and you’ve been leaning on Bentley’s shoulder instead of mine, and I get it, he’s got more experience in that place, and the politics that go with it, and is still an ally.
Her immediate superior and instrumental in her getting the position, but unlike some men in his position he had not taken advantage of a situation like some men would. And even if she had made a move, which I doubted, was not the sort of woman she was, he would have politely declined.
One of the very few happily married men in that organisation, so I heard.
So, she said, you’re not just a pretty face.
Par for the course for a cabinet maker whose university degree is in psychology. It doesn’t take rocket science to see what was happening to you. I just didn’t think it was my place to jump in unless you asked me, and when you didn’t, well, that told me everything I needed to know.
Yes, our relationship had a use-by date, and it was in the next few days.
I was thinking, she said, that you might come with me, you can make cabinets anywhere.
I could, but I think the real problem wasn’t just the job. It was everything around her and going with her, that would just be a constant reminder of what had been holding her back. I didn’t want that for her and said so.
Then the only question left was, what do we do now?
Go shopping for suitcases. Bags to pack, and places to go.
Getting on the roller coaster is easy. In the beginning, it’s a slow easy ride, followed by a slow climb to the top. It’s much like some relationships, they start out easy, but they require a little work to get to the next level, follows by the adrenaline rush when it all comes together.
What most people forget is that what comes down must go back up, and life is pretty much a roller coaster with highs and lows.
Our roller coaster had just come or of the final turn and we were braking so that it stops at the station.
There was no question of going with her to New York. Yes, I promised I’d come over and visit her, but that was a promise with crossed fingers behind my back. After a few months in the new job, the last thing she want was a reminder of what she left behind. New friends new life.
We packed her bags, threw out everything she didn’t want, a few trips to the op shop with stuff she knew others would like to have, and basically, by the time she was ready to go, there was nothing left of her in the apartment, or anywhere.
Her friends would be seeing her off at the airport, and that’s when I told her I was not coming, that moment the taxi arrived to take her away forever. I remember standing there, watching the taxi go. It was going to be, and was, as hard as it was to watch the plane leave.
So, there I was, finally staring at the blank sky, around me were a dozen other plane spotters, a rather motley crew of plane enthusiasts.
Already that morning there’s been 6 different types of planes departing, and I could hear another winding up its engines for take-off.
People coming, people going.
Maybe I would go to New York in a couple of months, not to see her, but just to see what the attraction was. Or maybe I would drop in, just to see how she was.
As one of my friends told me when I gave him the news, the future is never written in stone, and it’s about time you broadened your horizons.
But right means generally to be correct, but the word itself can be used, like many others in a variety of ways
Such as, do we have any rights any more, since the government is slowly shutting down our freedoms, and, you guessed it, allegedly taking away our rights.
What about a right angle, we know this as being an angle of 90 degrees
How about I right a wrong, returning a bad situation to a good one?
Are you left-handed or right-handed?
Are you one of those people who can’t tell their left from their right?
And who was it that decided what was your left or your right, ever thought about that? I didn’t until just now. Good luck finding an answer on Google.
And how many times have you wished you were in the right place at the right time???
Then, of course, if English is a second language, how about confusing right with write.
Means something quite different, doesn’t it?
How about rite? Yes, I guess if we were in the habit of chopping chicken heads off and dancing around a fire, that might be its meaning,
It could be said that of all the women one could meet, whether contrived or by sheer luck, what are the odds it would turn out to be the woman who was being paid a very large sum to kill you.
John Pennington is a man who may be lucky in business, but not so lucky in love. He has just broken up with Phillipa Sternhaven, the woman he thought was the one, but relatives and circumstances, and perhaps because she was a ‘princess’, may also have contributed to the end result.
So, what do you do when you are heartbroken?
That is a story that slowly unfolds, from the first meeting with his nemesis on Lake Geneva, all the way to a hotel room in Sorrento, where he learns the shattering truth.
What should have been solace after disappointment, turns out to be something else entirely, and from that point, everything goes to hell in a handbasket.
He suddenly realizes his so-called friend Sebastian has not exactly told him the truth about a small job he asked him to do, the woman he is falling in love with is not quite who she says she is, and he is caught in the middle of a war between two men who consider people becoming collateral damage as part of their business.
The story paints the characters cleverly displaying all their flaws and weaknesses. The locations add to the story at times taking me back down memory lane, especially to Venice where, in those back streets I confess it’s not all that hard to get lost.
All in all a thoroughly entertaining story with, for once, a satisfying end.
I have reworked the first part of the story with a few new elements about the characters and changed a few of the details of how the characters finish up in the shop before the policewoman makes her entrance.
This is part of the new first section that involves Jack:
Jack was staring down the barrel of a gun.
He had gone down to the corner shop to get a pack of cigarettes.
He had to hustle because he knew the shopkeeper, Alphonse, liked to close at 11:00 pm sharp. His momentum propelled him through the door, causing the customer warning bell to ring loudly as the door bashed into it, and before the sound had died away, he knew he was in trouble.
It took a second, perhaps three, to sum up the situation.
A young girl, about 16 or 17, scared, looking sideways at a man on the ground, then Alphonse, and then Jack. He recognized the gun, a Luger, German, relic of WW2, perhaps her father’s souvenir, or more likely a stolen weapon, now pointing at him then Alphonse, then back to him.
Jack took another second or two to consider if he could disarm her. No, the distance was too great. He put his hands out where she could see them. No sudden movements, try to remain calm, his heart rate up to the point of cardiac arrest. No point making a bad situation worse.
Pointing with the gun, she said, “Move closer to the counter where I can see you better.”
Everything but her hand steady as a rock. Only telltale sign of stress, the bead of perspiration on her brow. It was 40 degrees Fahrenheit in the shop.
Jack shivered and then did as he was told.
A few seconds more for him to decide she was in an unpredictable category.
“What’s wrong with your friend?” Jack tried the friendly approach after he’d taken the three steps sideways necessary to reach the counter.
The shopkeeper, Alphonse, who, Jack noted seemed to have aged another ten years in the last few months, spoke instead; “I suspect he’s an addict, looking for a score. At the end of his tether, my guess, and her to get some money.”
A simple hold up that had gone wrong. Wrong time, wrong place, in more ways than one Jack thought, now realizing he had walked into a very dangerous situation. She didn’t look like a user. The boy on the ground, he did, and he looked like he was going through the beginnings of withdrawal.
Oddly, though, Jack had noticed a look pass between the shopkeeper and the girl.
“All you had to go was give us the money, and we wouldn’t be here, now.” She was glaring back at Alphonse. “You can still make this right.”
A flicker of memory jumped out of the depths on Jack’s mind, something discussed at the dinner table with their neighbors, something about the shop as a pick-up point for drugs.
The boy on the floor, he was not here for the money.
Jack thought he’d try another approach. “Look, I don’t want trouble, and you don’t want trouble. I’ll go, forget this ever happened. You might want to do the same.”
The girl looked like she was thinking. The gun, though, still moved between him and the shopkeeper.
Another assessment of the girl; this was not her real home. She was from a better class of people, a different part of town. Caught up in a downward spiral because of her friend on the floor.
Caught in a situation she was not equipped to deal with.
That didn’t bode well for his, or anyone else in that shop right then, health.
I’ve been reading the latest headlines and picked out a few:
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The seems to be a currency war,
Oil prices are set to rise in line with a cut in production,
Some tankers will not be plying the Hormuz Strait,
There was a massive power outage in the UK,
Gold prices are rising,
North Korea is shooting missiles into the sea
The USA needs more missiles,
There are Chinese survey vessels in the South China Sea,
In Russia there is an explosion on a secret base with nuclear implications, and,
There might be a global recession coming
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What do all these events mean? Nothing really when taken individually, but when you start combining them, then the thriller writer in me starts to see all sorts of conspiracies and plotlines for stories.
…
What if….
Take that explosion in Russia, and the fact the word nuclear is attached to it, and then look at the massive power outage in the UK. What if that site was a laboratory, working on small, powerful bombs that can easily be carried, installed, in or around vital infrastructure, and in that quest for smaller and more powerful something goes wrong.
After all, isn’t that what testing is for?
And the fact there’s been one major event involving vital infrastructure, should we be looking for more? Then there are a few problems with bombs being attached to tankers in the Hormuz Strait. Does anyone see the potential for an apocalyptic event coming on?
Then the North Koreans are firing test missiles, and the US calling for more missiles to add to their arsenal. Are they using North Korea as an excuse? Or is there something more sinister going on with Chinese survey vessels in the South China Sea? What if they’re not survey vessels?
Then there’s a small matter of rising oil prices. Whilst the same report might say that the rise is due to OPEC cutting output, there could be other reasons, such as the currency war that’s about to erupt, and will this pre-emp a global recession. A good indicator of impending disaster, wars, and other maladies is the rising price of gold.
The gold market goes into overdrive when currency starts to lose value, recessions are coming or have arrived, or there is about to be a war, or there is one. The US and China are facing off, the US and half the middle east are a disaster waiting to happen, and, hang on, North Korea is being provocative, and in late development, India and Pakistan are facing off over Kashmir.
Are we surprised people are turning to gold?
Maybe I should go back to doing the crossword and ignoring the news.
For a story that was conceived during those long boring hours flying in a steel cocoon, striving to keep away the thoughts that the plane and everyone in it could just simply disappear as planes have in the past, it has come a long way.
Whilst I have always had a fascination in what happened during the second world war, not the battles or fighting, but in the more obscure events that took place, I decided to pen my own little sidebar to what was a long and bitter war.
And, so, it continues…
Wallace was furious, and despite his attempts to stay clear of his commanding officer, Thompson discovered he couldn’t hide forever.
“Where is Atherton?” Wallace asked the moment Johannsson walked into the room.
It was a question he couldn’t answer and had been equally as furious as Wallace when he learned of what had happened. It was not supposed to go the way it did. Atherton was to lead them to the remnants of the Resistance, and then Burke and Richardson had orders to kill them all.
The first part of the plan had worked as Burke had said it would. It was his idea to ‘break’ Atherton out and then he would lead them to the resistance. London would know where they were, and Atherton would also know, nay not exactly where they were, but how to contact them. There were only about six left, according to Leonardo.
But he had been wrong before. He’d labelled the remnants of the resistance as useless but to his chagrin discovered they were anything but. He had three dead men to prove it. And given the restraints on his current mission, he couldn’t go into the village and execute a like number of villagers for those men.
That would give away the fact they were not British, but Germans in disguise. Best, he had been told, to let the matter be until their current mission was completed. Then, Wallace told him, he could do what he liked with the villagers.
But like all plans, this one had gone awry. Burke had lost Atherton approaching the village, and a thorough search of every building hadn’t found him. Atherton, according to Burke, had completely disappeared.
Now Wallace was on the warpath because he didn’t like loose ends and not one as dangerous as Atherton.
“My men lost him by the time they reached the village. They did a thorough search but he wasn’t there.”
“And you believe that?”
“I trust my men. Atherton is a fully trained soldier with a few extra tricks up his sleeve, otherwise, London would not have sent him out. There is a positive in this if he’s out of the way he can’t stir up any trouble.”
“But those so
Called remnants of the resistance can, and I assure you, will. And more so now they know that we’re not exactly the British liberators they were hoping for.”
“You can’t believe that he found them. We’ve seen none of them since Leonardo defected. He told us he killed them all.”
“Well, he’s a liar. Here’s an idea, get him and tell him to take his men down the hill and find them. Promise him anything, as long he brings back Atherton and the rest of them dead or alive, preferably dead. Unless you think you can do a better job.”
“Sir…”
A soldier came running in, then stood to attention until Wallace addressed him. “What is it?”
“Carmichael hasn’t returned.”
“What do you mean, hasn’t returned. I thought everyone was confined to the castle?’ He turned around to look at Johannsson. “What the devil is going on?”
“Some men don’t exactly respond well to curfews. Carmichael was one of them.”
“Carmichael? Isn’t he the one who knows the Reich Marshall by sight?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And now he’s missing. You still don’t think there is resistance out there, and making us look like monkeys? This has Atherton written all over it. How much did he find out? I thought you had that situation covered.”
“I couldn’t exactly put him under house arrest, could I, not unless you wanted to hand out a sign that said German outpost.”
“Don’t get snippy with me Johannsson. Just get a team of five or six and find the bastard. And while you’re at it, find this Carmichael. Take those two fools that lost him, and if you accidentally shoot them, we’ll call them casualties of war.”
“Yes, sir.” And how long before I share their fate, he thought. Blame was transferable, so he’d kick it down the line. “Jackerby,” he yelled out. I’ve got a job for you.”
I have been working on the story, the editor is asking for a second draft after making suggested changes – and I’m now working on it
…
So what do you do when you start having doubts about everything to do with your life? It starts with a sleepless night agonising over why you were lied to.
Then, in the cold dark hours of early morning, you turn to the only thing that can possibly give you answers.
The internet.
It’s time to delve into the prior life of the woman you are beginning to think is completely strange to you, and what do you find.
Previous relationships with a man before she was married to the man she said was Jack’s father. And yes, the man in the old photos is very easily recognisable as his father.
What’s more, he is a criminal himself, and supposedly in jail. There’s more to that story.
Then Jack gets a cryptic message from his mother, who tells him she’s left a package for him at the travel agency, and that she is going away.
Seems everyone knows what’s going on but him!
Today’s effort amounts to 1,609 words, for a total, so far, of 32,514.
We have stayed in two different types of accommodation in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, Australia, as a timeshare owner who can trade their week for a week anywhere in the world.
Both are resorts, but different sorts of resorts. The first was a typical RCI resort, where everything is laid back and relaxing, with all the amenities one can expect from a resort.
The other, this one, the Wyndham in Coffs Harbour, is very different, and you notice it when you walk in the front door. You are virtually assaulted by hard-nosed timeshare sales staff who really don’t take no for an answer, and then when you finally escape, ring you every day to make an appointment.
I left the phone off the hook.
Aside from that, the place is excellent, the accommodation very good, and the situation one of the best with what could be called a private beach. There are also a number of bushwalks that cater to old people like me.
As you can see, lakes and greenery, and even a putting green.
And in places, they try very hard to hide the ugly multi-story buildings in amongst the trees
It is only a short walk to the ‘private beach’ and it is sufficiently long enough for a morning walk before breakfast. You could even try to catch some fish for breakfast, though I’m not sure if anyone actually caught anything
Or you can just stare out to sea
And, back in the room, this is the view we had from our verandah
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 