Shakespeare's Words version 3.0 launches today
8 years ago
JJC's Year Nine descriptive writing January 2011
This is a very evocative piece by Hugh Watkinson and is an example of a simple and direct style of writing which can conjure up something really interesting and ever-so-slightly unusual. More pieces from this group will follow in due course...... A Place
This is a very evocative piece by Hugh Watkinson and is an example of a simple and direct style of writing which can conjure up something really interesting and ever-so-slightly unusual. More pieces from this group will follow in due course......
A PlaceI watch her through the window. She sits there in quietness of the garden listening to, I don’t know what. The snow seems to have brought a silence which only the wind in the tree and the birds fight against. Only they are brave enough to defy the white sheet covering the supposedly green grassland.
Twigs and clumps of grass frosted in the morning dew stick up like skeletons that are unhappy with the confines of death and want to re-join life’s gentle swing, instead of the rot of the ground they have been buried in years ago.
The form of a dog scampers past, catching the woman’s eye and turning her head. The dog dives into a snow drift and vanishes like a drop in a puddle and appears with her prize, a spherical object which is so dear to her heart. She trots out of sight of the woman.
She takes laboured breaths in the ice-infested land, each one stabbing her with a mental pain in her tender lungs, each one an effort to draw in the cutting air and release the stale carbon dioxide saturated mixture.
The chickens labour long hours to uncover the ground only to discover it is frozen hard with no worms or slugs to swallow and digest. Instead with no artificial coat to wear, they waddle back to their house in a sign of distress and huddle up on the perch to purchase precious body heat from their equally disgruntled cohorts.
The leaves have all left the trees and left them bare and empty. Their nakedness makes them look like something off a Harry Potter set. The birds’ nests are uncovered and you think about how each one is intricately woven with scraps found on the white treacherous floor.
Then there is the smell of the car being started in the freeze. The carbon monoxide is un-breathable and indescribable. It flows in the little breeze that the weather can conjure up to make the environment colder than it should be. Even though it is minus who knows, the snow is decreasing and melting down drains and flowing into the ground.
Branches bend and buckle under the weight of the snow and ice crystals. She looks; thinking all it would take is one more flake … one more … and it would buckle under the hundreds of linked white particles. But somehow the branch holds on and keeps going.
Red berries hang off a holly tree like a fully formed natural Christmas decoration swinging in the light breeze. The same breeze caresses her face and she pulls her coat tight around her as she shivers.
Part of her wants to go into a nice warm kitchen but the bigger half wants to stay outside and enjoy the crystal paradise while it lasts.
A single ladder lies lazily against the side of the house and draws heat from it for comfort the same way a bee draws nectar from a tree. The rungs on its steel frame work glisten in the rising sun like diamonds on a silver chain.
She decides enough is enough, and walks inside to prepare lunch for her family.
