Saturday Centus #53

Jenny Matlock hosts this weekly meme. Thank you! J

Her challenge to participants is to use the prompt and up to 100 more words to produce a piece of writing in any style. Click here to read more and perhaps be inspired to join in! The prompt is in red italics.

Miss Morrison, the singing teacher at Mabberley School, was overwhelmed when the school came first in the choir festival. All her hard work, the hours of practising, the tears, the tantrums – the children’s, too – had garnered recognition but now she faced her biggest challenge – a live interview on national television. 

Her hands were clammy, her knees knocked together, a huge lump in her throat threatened to stifle her but she must be brave. She thought of the late Diana, a heroine of hers, and wondered what she might have said. She smiled, drew in a deep breath and said, ‘I'd like to teach the world to sing . . .'

(99 words, excluding the prompt)

April A to Z blogging challenge Olive

My mother’s name was Olive. My father used to call her Ollie - my eldest niece thought her name was Holly!

Olive was born in 1904 in Hampshire. This photograph was taken before the outbreak of the First World War. 

She and my father married in 1927. They had three children, of whom I am the youngest and the only one still living. The three children presented them with eight grandchildren and, by the time my mother died in 2001, thirteen years after my father, there were thirteen great-grandchildren.

Olive was good with children – calm and kind and fun. Children relaxed on her lap or in her arms. She taught us card games and dots and boxes, shove ha’penny and Ludo, Scrabble and Monopoly. She and my father encouraged us to be observant and to look beyond the obvious. She was an accomplished needlewoman and had a sweet, true singing voice. I remember growing up and singing with her in the kitchen.

I think about her on most days but particularly on this day, my birthday. I was a late and unplanned addition to the family and Olive always said, ‘Children bring their own love’. I learnt a lot from her. I miss her.

Camera Critters #83, Pet Pride, Halfway down the stairs . . .

Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair where I sit:
There isn't any other stair quite like it.

I'm not at the bottom,

I'm not at the top:

So this is the stair where I always stop.

Halfway up the stairs

Isn't up, and isn't down.

It isn't in the nursery, it isn't in the town:

And all sorts of funny thoughts

Run round my head:

'It isn't really anywhere! It's somewhere else instead!'

A A Milne 1882 - 1956

Recently I seem to have thoughts of stairs running through my head. The poem by A. A. Milne was set to music and was a song I enjoyed teaching to various classes of young children who passed through my singing lessons. I must confess that I liked singing it too and playing the delicate piano accompaniment. The photo, around 20 years old, is of Biddy, the founder of our Jack Russell pack, who often sat half-way down the stairs. Frodo does the same in his capacity as my guardian so that he can keep a close eye on the door into the front porch. Biddy was just busy and nosy and great fun.

The song was sung by 'Robin the Frog' in episode 110 of The Muppet Show.

Thank you to the hosts of Camera Critters and Pet Pride. Please visit them to see more.