.

It’s not easy being a monster. Do you really think I want to be this way? Everybody complaining about you, telling you, you’re too big and you don’t do your job properly because of your size.

It’s not nice. I try my best and yes my size doesn’t help but I do get most of the tasks done and come on, look at the amount of people I see and the amount of different problems they have.

I know you all reckon I get given too much of your money, but I am a huge monster and all the stuff I need to do my task is very expensive and lets face it you don’t get a bad service out of me (and nearly all of it free).

I must admit some times you have a right to complain about the length of time you have wait to get what you want. My boss (an even bigger monster) says I am getting better at this and the list of people waiting has got less. That’s got to be a positive hasn’t it?

This huge undertaking isn’t helped by people getting sick and clogging up my work spaces with their coughing and spluttering. I put useful information and guidelines on my (and my bosses) website to help you get well but there are so many of you ‘not well’ at the moment (9000 cases in the last week according to my web site) that I am struggling to do my job properly.

 All of this is made so much harder by all the guidelines and charters I have to follow and the targets, goals and budgets to meet (not met due to the cost of all these flashy websites). It gives my boss and me such a headache.

Look I may be a monster but I’m only human and not a robot, so some times little errors creep in now and again and somebody ends up at the wrong place or gets the wrong    part /extra bits. I can only apologise for these and promise to keep within the problem ratio guidelines (upper limit).

 I do get very upset when I’m made out in the media to be a bottomless money pit that will forever suck away your hard earned money. I am not a money grabbing villain who just wastes all the money I’m given. I do try my best and will always have your best interests at heart.

Not all the monster relatives have done that great since Mrs Thatcher sold them to you. My cousin BT’s prices and services are always being moaned about and that he is too much of a faceless monster.

My second cousin British Railways fared no better. You chopped her up and turned her into several regional monsters and look where that got you.

There are lots of monsters (public and private) out there, but they are all trying their best, so please be patient with my family and me.

I must finish now as I have several cost cutting incentives to implement and have to write a letter justifying myself to the public.

Regards

NHS

I settle in the wooded glade and watch the early morning autumn sunshine consume the lingering mist, caught in the warming assault. The shady hollows amongst the trees cling to their white veil and I anxiously peer into the shadowy thickets, seeking any hint of peril. As I watch they appear out of the misty mantel with knives drawn.

The russet and brown leaves hide me in their embrace from their questing eyes and as I peek through my leafy cover I discern that they have no interest in me, but are searching the leaf litter around their feet. Suddenly one of the group calls out and the rest advance towards him, knives glinting in the sunlight. Am I about to see some sort of autumn human sacrifice to the Old Man of the Forest?

There are no screams or pleas for mercy in the morning air. Only noises of contentment as they add a fine collection of Fairy-ring Champignon to their collection baskets. Oh well it looks as if I will be lodging with the wood sprites again.

I sit in my garden in the evening sunshine, watching the lengthening shadows of the beech trees creep up the lawn. An old friend appears in the evening sky.

I see the visitor and watch him soar over the treetops, his russet coloured feathers intense in the evening sunshine. With barely a flap of his wings he glides overhead, his head turning left and right scanning the ground in the hope of food.

I gaze up at him amazed at his mastery of the air currents. Suddenly with just a tilt of his tail and a dip of his wing tips, he banks round and passes over me again. We begin our visual dance. Me, fixed to the earth, him, in the wide blue sky. He banks and turns and I have trouble keeping him in view as he disappears behind the neighbour’s roof tops. He suddenly reappears behind me and much lower. As he flies over I notice he is not just red but his head and the underneath of his wing tips are white.

After several minutes of aerial ballet around my head he disappears over the trees in the hunt for easier food.

The Goodbye

The ridge of the wooded hillside is bathed in evening sunshine and dapples the garden in advancing shadows. As the last rays of the sun strike the canopy of the taller beech trees at the bottom of his garden, Alf sits and watches the shadows advance towards him

He remembers how she always loved this time of day. They would sit together on the patio with a mug of tea, waiting for the sun to disappear behind the tops of the beeches and as the sky darkened they would search out the first star to make a wish on.

He wakes up with a start and finds that twilight has crept up on him and the stars they use to search for are beginning to show. As he picks up a blanket he’d brought out with him, the memories of other cool spring evenings not long ago come flooding back and the image of him and Betty, with the blanket over their shoulders nestled together to keep out the chilly air, brings a tear to his eye.

‘My eyes are rheumy again, dear. I’ll have to take another trip to the docs to see if I can get some ointment for it.’

No answer comes from the surrounding gloom, but he knows she’s heard and would have called him an old fool for being so maudlin and told him to get on with his life.

‘But I miss you so much’ he shouts as if to answer her.

There is no one there to give him the response he craves and the tears he had moments before become free flowing. A breeze flutters his thinning hair and he’s sure he can smell her perfume on its delicate touch, but the imagined fragrance only brings a sob to his lips.

‘Come on Alf pull yourself together. She wouldn’t want you sat in the garden blubbing your eyes out. Remember she’s written in her will that you’ve got to try an do all things she’d wanted to do in her lifetime and never did’

He sighs and wipes his eyes and for few moments watches the bats flitting around in the dusky sky.

‘Think I’m a bit old for some of the things you want me to do Betty sweetheart. Not sure at my age I’m going to be able to do a sky dive or bunjy jump off that bridge in Bristol,’ he utters to the empty seat next to him.

‘And I don’t think I can visit those places without you. Though you’ll be there in my heart, they won’t be the same.’ Another sob escapes his lips.

He sits quietly for a while and only the shuddering movement of his shoulders gives away his grief. He pulls the blanket tighter around his shoulders and murmurs.

‘Well Betty, I think before it gets to dark, we ought to get you settled.’

From the seat next him he picks up an urn and slowly revolves it in his hands.

‘Bet you don’t like it in there. I’ll find you a better spot down by the trees.’

He stands up and crosses the lawn, making his way down to the small beech copse at the bottom of the garden. He pauses among the trunks, unscrews the lid of the urn and begins to scatter the ashes.

‘There you go dear that should be nice and peaceful. Once I’ve done this, I’ll just popping down the club and see if Lavina wants to play a few hands of whist.’

A sudden strong gust of wind blows through the trees and he finds himself choking in a dust cloud of ashes.

She hasn’t gone yet Alf!

St Swithin’s day if thou dost rain

For forty days it will remain

St Swithin’s day if thou be fair

For forty days ‘twil rain na mair

I blame the recent rubbish weather on an 8^th century Saxon bishop. St Swithin (died in 862). He requested to be buried humbly and was buried outside the west door (so the rain would fall on his grave) of the Old Minster in Winchester.

On the 15^th July 971 his remains were dug up and moved to a shrine in the cathedral to celebrate what would become St Swithin’s day. Legend has it that St Swithin was displeased with his new burial plot and sent ferocious and violent storms that lasted 40 days and nights

There is much to be said for some of the old weather law and so far the old bish has kept us under grey and wet skies. I’m sat here while writing this, hoping that cricket fans have watered his tomb stone and the soggy saint will keep the rain away and the English batsmen can build a commanding innings!

The beginning 

About a year ago I began a creative writing course (one night a week for fifteen weeks), to see if I was capable of writing anything that people would want to read. This was something I have been meaning to do for some years and after some nagging from my wife, I enrolled at the local adult learning. 
    The first fifteen evenings shot by and I found people did like the scribblings and I got back some positive feed back and because of the fun I was having I enrolled for the second half. It did help that the tutor was very enthusiastic and a published authour herself (Sara Ridgley She has pages on Myspace and Facebook). I entered several competitions and b***er  me, but my first entry into a comp won first prize.( only £100 but boy did my confidence soar).
    Next step was for me to go to a writers event, held by the publisher of one of the reference books that all writers can't do without. A very useful day and much was crammed into it. One thing that came through from all the workshops I went to, was to get your name out there.(blogs, Myspace and Facebook). So here is the beginning.