Saturday 22nd November

Wishing you all a great weekend, starting of course with this, your writing prompt for today:

22

He said I was an egg. That meant naivety, a lack of development, but also strength. I said he was a turnip. He said, I don’t want to play anymore.

32 comments:

  1. How to decorate eggs, our teacher showed us, first you blow out the insides. Back home, I blew six eggs and tipped their insides down the drain. Mum wasn’t pleased.

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  2. Let’s play House. Here is a baby. I will be Mum. You have to be Dad and go out to work. Okay, I’ll play on my own with the baby.

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  3. The wordy duel between them
    which came first,
    chicken or egg,
    or the egg or chicken,
    the debate took drastic turn,
    no more eggs in the house,
    only radishes ,turnips.

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  4. I said he was a merman, water his element. He said he needed protection, stepped into his coracle and pushed it onto the surface of the river, away from me.

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  5. In the beginning, things happened unbelievably fast. He hadn't really thought about anything at all, had just been swimming along minding his own business when he met up with this girl. It was hard to get to know her at first but he just knew that inside that tough exterior, was something quite magical. That old cliché of 'two become one' and a number of irritating love songs swam around in his head. It was time to settle down.

    They were the perfect match. Darwinian theory had never meant anything to him before; out of all the others, he was the one luckiest to have made it into her heart and things had never looked so good. Sometimes, it was hard to see where she ended and he began, such was the intensity of their bond. Remembering his singular past and the freedom he had enjoyed, he would try to look at her, to get some perspective on the situation, but he began to doubt whether he was capable of distancing himself from her body long enough to capture such a view. And so he gave up. They became inseparable.

    By the time he noticed that she had begun to resemble a walnut it was too late. Soon, other fruit and vegetables came to mind every time he looked at her in the mirror; a satsuma, a pear, a swede and finally a watermelon.

    One day, she told him that she needed to get out. He hadn't seen this coming. They say that before a tsunami, the tide suddenly disappears from the shoreline before the massive surge on to the land. There had probably been a trickle that he hadn't noticed. All that was left of their home was a bare, tattered shell. She even took the afterbirth with her.

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  6. The chef scratched his stubbly head with fingers shining from fresh scaldings. He muttered to himself. “Egg and Turnip compote? Turnip with an oeuf glaze? Puree of turnipy egg?. Tricky.”

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  7. this really made me laugh this morning, thank you. I've been tuning in and reading all the work, haven't submitted anything really, sorry, November is passing me by, but what a wonderful project again, thanks Sarah and Lynne
    Annie Clarkson

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  8. If an egg is symbolic of the universe, with creation surrounded by a yellow sun, I’ve just dripped a few galaxies down my shirt. Pass me a napkin, would you?

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  9. Turnips she called
    out,staring at
    the cardboard box,
    I kissed her cheek-
    'let's have them
    for breakfast'
    perfectly scrambled
    we shared a feast-
    tuned in
    to mum's
    new dictionary.

    echulme@hotmail.com

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  10. OK, he fell. Yeah, and he was raw, but you can’t blame the king’s horses for trampling him and for making a mess. Somebody pushed him. Didn’t you, Your Majesty?

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  11. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  12. The artichoke boiled in the pan like a fizzling grenade: he prodded it with a knife, peeled off its armour, battled towards its heart. He said I was an artichoke.

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  13. Hi Lynne and Sarah
    Just wondering if we can post more than once each day?
    Thanks for taking the brrrrr out of November
    Sarah.

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  14. Have you seen a turnip? Forget the unsubtle symmetry of eggs, turnips are lusciously multicoloured, smooth and shapely. Who, biting into an egg, could say ‘I have a cunning plan’?

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  15. He said I was an egg. That meant naivety, a lack of development, but also strength. I said he was a turnip. He said, I don’t want to play anymore.

    My mother wonders why I’m not married. I tell her the story.

    “What’s that got to do with anything? Stop analyzing things so much and just get on with it. You’re 35! I had you three by the age of 31. What’s anything got to do with breaking up over a turnip? Stop calling men vegetables and put some effort into it!”

    On the way home I mentally ran through the last key moments in each of the breakups over the past few years.

    It all went wrong with Alan when we went on holiday together and he insisted on bringing his sister with us.

    Then there’s Sacha. I lived with him for two years. He grew a beard and I just couldn’t get over how much he reminded me of Sinn Fein President, Gerry Adams. I just went off him.

    My university years were wasted on a long distance relationship with a German exchange student. Bizarrely, this is the longest of my relationships. Yet, in all I doubt if we ever spent more than six months actually in each other’s company.

    With Greg, the turnip thing didn’t cause the break up but was an example of a long line of awkward moments. You can’t have awkward moments with a man who may see you give birth. Marriage is a series of moments that could potentially be cripplingly awkward.

    Later I phoned my Mum and told her that I was going to concentrate on making the most of what’s been offered to you.

    “Like you and Dad,” I said, absent-mindedly.

    “Good,"she said. "Life’s not a Jane Austen, you know.”

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  16. He knows I hate turnip.
    I might be an egg, a good egg even, but he is a turnip, a turnip head like the old England football manager.
    I won.

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  17. She’s a pear-shaped, carrot-topped beanpole,
    with tits like turnips
    and knees like knobbly artichokes.

    Everything she says is
    rhubarb, so why, oh why

    is she the apple of his eye?


    freya_scott@yahoo.com

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  18. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  19. It started as a bit of fun, a game to wile away the time, but when she chose the dare instead of the truth, he wished he'd never suggested it.

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  20. I used to wish that I was a girl. That meant I would be pure, that I would finally be beautiful. I would finally be popular, not shunned into darkness.

    Jamieson Wolf
    jamiesonwolf@gmail.com

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  21. He fell off the wall, yellow seeping out.
    You always were an egghead
    I said, leaving him.
    The King’s men and horses were otherwise engaged,
    so the game was over.

    Mary Rose.

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  22. They're egging me on. They don’t know how it feels when your mouth goes dry so you can’t say a word and the girl stares at you like you’re insane.

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  23. Boiled
    Chocolate
    Fried
    Poached
    Fertilised
    Soldiers
    Omlette
    Pickled
    Cracked
    Empty
    Rotten
    Blessed
    Scrambled
    Lightly
    Raw
    Cooked
    Hard-boiled
    Lost
    Hidden
    Benedict
    Curried
    Sushied
    Divine
    Slippery
    Broken
    Dropped
    Buried
    Released
    Secretive
    Round.

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  24. The turnip didn't want to play either after that, so it was just me and the egg. The egg said 'Want to roll down the lawn?' I smiled and nodded.

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  25. He blows the egg
    Through a microfissure in its side.
    It does not hurt
    The unformed life. This is no
    Eulogy. Nothing to praise.
    All that is left: a shell.

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  26. Mum said a tomato was a fruit not a vegetable. I said, why don’t you keep your tomatoes in the fruit bowl then? Mum didn’t have an answer to that.

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  27. He kept bullying her to come out of her shell, so she did; then life pinned her down with a big claw, and bit her head off with sharp teeth.

    Martin

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  28. My wife doesn't understand me. It was just a little yolk with the girl next door. Nothing serious, just baking a sponge cake. But all she thought was root vegetables.

    redjim99

    jimbarron@walkauvergne.co.uk

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  29. Seems it’s always the one who lives in the glass house that feels the need to throw stones. Me? I’m just trying to keep from getting caught in the crossfire.

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  30. In Great Britain the British Egg Information Service stamp all chicken eggs with a little lion. It is a mark of good quality. Why can't they do that to people?

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  31. Gerry said

    My new friend ran indoors.
    Don't YOU EVER tell tales, they said.
    It impressed me.
    When they missed the board, I drew the dart
    from my leg, without a word.

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  32. This comment has been removed by the author.

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