Stories for quiet moments

  Mum and Dad are busy-busy-busy. Then they tell us about the new house on the block of land, where Earl lives.   “Will it have a pool?” I ask. “Can Earl sleep in my room?” says Paige. “No,” say Mum and Dad, very quickly.   You should see me, Paige, Mum and Dad building. Our new house is going to be made out of straw. Just like the three little pigs. I don’t know how many people have made jokes about wolves… So we’ve got a truck-load of bales of straw. Dad already built the shed. Well, he went to the shed display place in the next big town and chose one, and later Stan from the gravel place came and helped him put it up. We have a house frame with a tin roof, too. Mum, and Dad, and Paige and I move the bales in wheelbarrows. We line them up in the frame. Dad and Mum tie them down with wire. At lunchtime on the first bale day, we sit under the big gum tree, and I can’t stop laughing. It really does look like a house from “The Three Little Pigs.” “What are you...

Ducks jumping. Not much to do with the story. Just a nice picture The Straw Bale House Part 1  What do you say when your parents suddenly tell you that you’re moving to the country? I don’t mean the country like a place you go for holidays. Not the beach with ice cream shops and fish and chips. I mean a town with ten shops, one school, and fifty million cows and sheep. As there are also horses, my little sister thinks it’s fine. I don’t. My parents like to decide things for themselves. They don’t ask us until it’s too late. One day they said, “How would you like to move to the country?” Out of nothing, just like that. I said, “You’re kidding. No way.” Paige said, “Yeah, if there are horses.” Mum said, “We’re looking at the block of land this weekend.” Dad said, “We’ve found a nice place to rent until we’ve built our new house.” I didn’t say one thing, all the way there. It took four hours. Mum and Dad smiled and laughed with the man showing us the land. Paig...

  First Post! The Beginning of the Story This blog is for adding stories! I'm going to run a workshop for the Alpine School in November 2023, and I thought it would be fun to start a blog of stories so the students can see how easy it is to Get Published. Just do it! This blog is made using Google Blogger, which you can access through Google Apps if you have an account. I'm using Helvetica font at Normal size for this text and Helvetica Major Heading Purple for the heading.  Now I'm going to add a random picture from my files and start adding stories, also from my files... Boy at Balmoral

 The Heroic Pig I wrote this story after hearing the story of the wreck of the Kameruka and rescue of survivors facilitated by a large pig swimming ashore pulling a lifeline in 1897 at Congo , on the coast near Moruya. It was an item on my local ABC radio station, Southeast NSW in 2004. Once upon a time, more than a hundred years ago, there was a pig. He began his life, as all pigs do, a sweet, squealing piglet, shoving at his mother’s teats with his brothers and sisters. However, unlike the rest of the litter, this pig was destined for a life of adventure. When the pig was weaned from his mother and running in the blackberries with the other young ones, a strange man came. The man bought the pig because he was a fine pig. The pig was herded along a road for a long way by the man and his dog. He reached a place where he lived in a pig pen which had dirt, food and a shed. The pig missed his mother and his sisters and brothers. He missed the blackberry bushes and bracken. Stil...

 The Man who Walked into the Sky Note: This is a sad story for older readers It must have been a man, because they were men’s shoes. He must have gone up into the sky, because why else would the shoes be left hanging from the power lines above the road?   Mr. Koehler was walking home. In his hand was an attaché case full of fruit for his dinner. He was wearing his new tie, a blue one of glowing silk, a gift from his sister Annaliese. As he walked, Mr. Koehler’s thoughts flitted like butterflies over many things. He thought of his dinner of apples, mandarins and tomatoes. He thought of his diet, and how he hoped to regain his former lithe figure. He thought of his friend Elsie and her garden of birds.   He thought of his home, a miniature house of two rooms, with a bathroom tacked onto one end of the verandah. He thought of his dreams. The road along which Mr. Koehler walked was straight and led along the side of a hill toward the sunset. It was the end of a fine, co...

  The DandeLions In the garden, against the fence, was the largest dandelion Francesca had ever seen. She stared at it, enchanted. Francesca took Mummy to see the dandelion. “Blow,” said Mummy, “Find out what time it is.” “No, I want to leave it like that forever.” “It won’t stay like this forever,” said Mummy. Francesca wanted to keep the dandelion.  She brought Daddy to see it. “Why are they called dandelions? They don’t look like lions.” “I don’t know,” said Daddy. “I suppose their fluff does look a little bit like lions’ manes,” said Francesca. “The seeds will make new flowers,” said Mummy. “What kind of flowers?” “Dandelions, of course, my darling, the same as this.” It was windy that night.  Francesca couldn’t sleep.  The wind blew through leaves and around sharp corners of the house with an unfriendly roar.  Moonlight shone in through a crack between the curtains. “Mummy!” she called, but Mummy didn’t hear. “Daddy!” she called....

The Where-is-She Wolf Once there was a family. A n ordinary family… mo stly. Except that  every full moon  when conditions were right; when the wind was in the north and the trees waved their branches across the stars…  Mum turned into a wolf.  A tall, thin, shaggy wolf with yellow eyes, sharp fangs and huge dirty paws.  This was a problem.  Mum’s howling woke Christopher and it took Dad hours to settle him.  It gave Matthew bad dreams and Dad had to get him a glass of milk and hold his hand until he fell asleep. The neighbours complained, and sometimes called the police.  It was embarrassing when Mum bit Constable Granville, who was Matthew’s best friend’s father, and even worse when she chased dear old Mrs Lee across the road and up the slippery dip in the park. Mum pulled the washing off the line and tore it; her own clothes were not safe, nor Dad’s nor Matthew’s; even Christopher’s nappies were ripped and muddy. She frightened the ca...