Out of nowhere Josh asked me, “Jessica, would you do me the honour of wearing my posy at the harvest festival dance?” I was stunned. An invitation to go as a partner to the dance was one thing, but a request to wear a man’s posy at the dance was a proposal of marriage.

I can settle for a draw. For a bloke, I’m not overly competitive.
&
Elle with her knickers down screaming ‘It’s a bloody snake.’

To win at anything you have to know the rules and out play the opposition using the same rules. Though cheating from time to time can pay dividends. Now, there’re little ones needing bedtime stories. Off you go. I’ll bring you a cocoa.

The carrion crew aren’t the nicest of folk. They’re all vultures from the wrong side of the tracks and I’m not much better. I’m a bit brighter and can actually read, and I do, but that’s about the limit of our differences.

I usually keep a pet for six weeks before returning them to the wild, after that they start to lose muscle tone. Sex a dozen times a day does that to humans no matter how well you feed them.

Most of my mates still can’t believe that I’d managed to pull a drop dead gorgeous, university educated girl from an upper middle class family who spoke with a veritable bag full of plums in her oh so entirely kissable mouth and she actually married me. I get on with her family though her parents don’t totally understand the way their daughter chooses to live, permanently pregnant and surrounded by kids, even if she is living in more affluence than they are. Hey don’t look at me. I just do what I’m told and earn the money.

Yeah, yeah! I know Alf. Your granddaughter rides a motor cycle for plod down Devon way, and I’m sure she’s a wonderful girl. She probably gives pennies to the poor too, but I’m talking generalisations here. I’m not having a go at Sylvia. Get him another pint to settle his nerves, Stan.

Jessica Harkness had knowingly said, “It was to be expected. An old maid’s last desperate fling. She’ll settle down to a couple of cats and a bitter looking expression permanently glued on her face in a few years, like Felicity Herbert. Nothing surer. Seen it all before I have, Alice. Lord knows what she’ll do when Miss Sophie marries Clara’s boy, for she can’t look after the place. It’s Miss Sophie that does all the woman’s work and no one will send a man round to help Miss Abi, it’s so sour and unpleasant as she is. A fool to herself that one’s been. She should have had half a dozen children by now, but I guess she couldn’t even be pleasant enough to a man to get him into and keep him in her bed. And Lord knows that’s not a difficult thing to do. A well fed and well bed man is like milk loaf dough in even a plain woman’s hands, and plain she is not. And besides it’s no chore, for a woman does need to be kept comfortable or in child so she can go about her work undistracted.”

When I had been promoted of course my father was proud of me, but he couldn’t tell a daughter he was proud of her! So he masked his pride and said, “I have instructed your mother to make enquiries about a husband for you.”

Agnes, an attractive woman who appeared to be about thirty, had dressed carefully but conservatively for her interview. The job was working in a children’s day care centre managed by a twenty-eight year old woman who introduced herself as Sharon. She didn’t provide a surname, but Agnes already knew who she was and a lot about Sharon because she’d done her homework for the job. Agnes considered it incongruous that the manageress of a large nursery looked ill kempt and like she could do with a good meal.

Back in the Discovery, Amy asked, “Why are you doing this for me? I can tell you’re no paedo, scumbag social worker, nor a bloody do-gooder, so what’s in it for you?”

“I had a poor childhood. I’m regarded as a bit weird. I can earn big money, but most of the time don’t because I don’t want a boss. Money doesn’t mean much to me, and right now I’ve got some and don’t need it, but you’ve got none and need it. I’ve no friends and often go weeks without talking to any one, so maybe I just want some one to talk to.”

Margaret Towers, personal aid to and long time friend of the President was as always shewn in to his office without him being warned she was coming. The President's bodyguards didn’t like it, but it was on his orders, and the only person who’d made her wait had been fired on the spot.

I hate turkey, it’s drier than an undertaker’s eyes at a funeral.

Singing for her supper, Morag wandered a long way and for a long time, but always she walked like a neep. She suffered a lot of indignity and not a small amount of grievous hurt from those who had a need to find someone, anyone, to hurt to make their small insignificant selves feel bigger. But still she held her head high and walked like a neep, for she opined only oneself could inflict humiliation, others could inflict many things but humiliation no.

My thanks go to SamanthaMD whose comment caused me to dream up this delicious piece of complete nonsense. As I remarked in my reply 'If one can't laugh at oneself then life is much harder than it needs to be.' and I'm still laughing. Standing?

Her fiancé long dead in Flanders, she never married, and childless she outlived all the others.

I am Integrator, of dragon kind. My siblings are Interpretor, Concatenator, Extractor, Comparator and Analyser.

Hannah said “It is for the baby.”

Every now and again memories from the distant past intrude on the present, especially those with no closure.
It happens to us all and leaves an incomplete hollow feeling of helplessness and inadequacy.

It doesn't take much to amuse me though the bleaker the better

“You look shell shocked, Jamie. Glass of Talisker to help you over it?”

“Please.”

Not all seduction is in your face if you’ll pardon the expression, but this is a tale of a gentle seduction that was and still is literally in his face.
Now stop it and keep it clean girls because I know you know what I mean and will understand where I’m coming from, again if you’ll pardon the expression.

A sink school and a broken Britain, symptoms of a dis-functional democracy. Can a dying teacher with a vision, a recently released armed robber with nothing and a twenty-five year old widowered musician walking a tightrope with the abyss of insanity on one side and the temptations of suicide on the other do anything to help…?

The Fields of Identity have no Monocultures just Endless Varieties of Wild Flowers

LGBT+ themes running through a tale in which DNA resequencing and mental repsyching are the norm for a secretive hightech group that hides in plain view.

Jenny hesitated before saying, “For the first time, I actually think I might be able to do this, Mum. Go to college as a girl I mean.”