Tag: bp_docs_comment_access_anyone

Tom’s old newspapers are scattered around his flat. He has been scanning them for news of O’Mally. Could he have survived the fall? The escarpment was steep but the train travelled very slowly. I froze I couldn’t reach outMaybe he was back home in Kampala. He has rung the Kampala contact number Bishop Raith had given him for O’Mally but there is no reply.  He has been putting off ringing the Bishop for as long as possible.  ‘I just can’t do it— I just can’t Bishop Raith will ring soon enough.  I just hope I can keep my voice normal.’  Tom has sent a slew of pictures of the orphanage choir in their new choir regalia and emailed a short report to Bishop Raith about what the choir sang as they prepared for the Good Friday event. A picture of the Kampala busses from a number of congregations lined up outside the orphanage gates and the press of people attending was also sent. *** It...

Road map Scedule Lines of Blood on The Lunatic Line Preface  Research the creation of the  Lunatic line Body and blood of Christ is in both religions  - walking from one service at castle Gendalpho  to another the similarity was a revelation The service words were the same the  2 differences transmutation and the Pope These were the lines of blood of the two religions like train tracks  O’Mally’s chicken train track game when he was eleven  - one of his friends died  List of chapters Finish road trip Orphanage girl rescue Story strands  Ch 60 Uziel brings the orphanage order up personally and meets the girl again and decides he must rescue her 42 O’Mally jumps when the phone rings wants to go to Nairobi on the old style train on The Lunatic Line train festival also sees the priest and the young nuns in petticoats and plans to ride back to Mombassa on the Lunatic line festival train. 43 Uziel whispers his name to her again and tells something of his traumatised past.He ran away partly because he...

Miss Havershams Daughter  Cook said I was the spit and image of her.  There are no mirrors clear ever in the house so I could see if it were true.  ‘My face is ruination’ she would mumble in her sleep as I lit the morning fire by blowing embers into life. She slept in the chair by the fire. My job to clean the grate.  ‘No noise girl. Mind. No noise when you’re up there,’ said cook Hard to do, it was, with in the silence of the house. I jumped at every sound except for birds outside. I liked to hear the freshness of the dawn birds.  Cook said she birthed me in her chamber pot holding the fourposter curtain with her screams of rage. Still in her rucked up wedding dress tearing tatters at the seam. ‘Take her from my sight’ she whispered afore she fainted quite away thereafter, cook said. Cook didn’t see it coming nor did she.  ‘My stomach pains me sore’ she summoned cook. ’Must...

The Challenge that set by Mslexia is to write 500 words as wife mother daughter a real or fictional person. This was a far more interesting proposition than the one set for my small Suffolk writers group. I was halfway through it anyway so I decided to run with what I was already writing. It seemed to me like cutting class - which I had never done in school. So maybe it was about time to break the mould of a lifetime of trying to conform. It was this class that had got me to source a magazine to write to get work out there after all. So it was in someways legitimate not to follow the set piece but to go it alone. Deep Breath stride into the new! Meta title    The World’s Wife  Cleopatras Mistress Julius did not excite my hatred. He was, of course, a wonderfully strategic choice but fairly soon despite Cleopatra’s charms he became easily distracted from her bed....

I don’t say a word now - not a word - but I know everyone hates me I can see the hatred streaming at me like a river of darkness on my social media pages. Sharp words scream silently into my silent online world. The only world I live in. Every now and then I post a picture of my favourite tree. It is a low branched spreading oak that I sometimes walk to from my gate. It starts at my new school. I don’t know any of the girls that pitch and toss around me in the swirling sea of new faces. The first thing that happens is a girl says ‘We’re sending you to Coventry!’ I don’t really pay attention but as my day unfolds get it. A whole week where no one in my year speaks to me. If I ask if I can play with them I get no reply. They just turn away as if I don’t exist. I am shunned by...

I dont say a word now - not a word -but I know everyone hates me I can see the hatred streaming at me like a river of darkness on my social Media pages. The first thing that happened was a girl said - we’re sending you to Coventry. I didn’t really pay attention but as the day went on I got it then a whole week where noone in my year spoke to me - if I said something I got no reply they just turned away as if I didnt exist — 70 girls - there were two other classes in my year-no one spoke — so I stopped speak One girl from another class said as looked over my head - you suck up to teachers and walked away. Then there was the hall The teachers left us on our own and everyone on my side of the hall moved to the other side - so I moved over too At which point...

Reconning Thierry stands beside a small fire he has made in the gathering shadows behind the church.  He seems hunched over completely unaware of us as we approach. ‘Thierry!’ The headmasters voice makes him jump.  ‘Sorry Headmaster,’ he straightens up replying in an unsteady voice ’These empire maths books are completely out of date. I’ve put some new ones in the library about African mathematics by Thierry Zomerhund.’ Thierry catches his breath with an almost silent sob. The buttons of a small priests cassock are beginning to melt and shrivel up in the flames. The head indicates the burning robe ‘Was that yours?’ Thierry nods his head ‘It was made for me to wear as father O’Mallys curate’ ‘Mbabzi interjects. ’But you are only thirteen.’ ‘Yes. I only wore it in the other churches in Nansana. I’m tall for my age so nobody over there realised. I even wore it when we went to the border. I wore it on the trai…..!’ ‘On the train?’ Mbabzi was now standing...

JB turns up a bit late in his rather battered truck. He always sleeps with his truck when he travels with a consignment. ‘Precious cargo man!’ beats his chest and readjusts his drooping khaki shorts with a wide smile.  ‘Hi JB I’ve been up to the border by car but never all the way to Kampala. It’ll be quite a trip!’ ‘It’ll be a few days over roads that are rough in places and rather precipitous in others’ he warns me. ‘But I’ve made it every time. I’ve not been to the orphanage though but its not too far off the Kampala road. We’ll get there with St Christopher’s help!’ He taps the medallion around his neck.  ‘He’s never let me down. Yet!’  He laughs. ‘Not trouble at the docks. The pick up went through smooth as butter this time! It’s not always that easy.’ I throw my bag onto the wide front seat and pull myself into the truck. It smells of of hot...

The journey by road JB turns up a bit late in his rather battered truck. He always sleeps with his truck when he travels with a consignment. ‘Precious cargo man!’ beats his chest and readjusts his drooping khaki shorts with a wide smile.  ‘Hi JB I’ve been up to the border by car but never all the way to Kampala. It’ll be quite a trip!’ ‘It’ll be a few days over roads that are rough in places and rather precipitous in others’ he warns me. ‘But I’ve made it every time. I’ve not been to the orphanage though but its not too far off the Kampala road. We’ll get there with St Christopher’s help!’ He taps the medallion around his neck.  ‘He’s never let me down. Yet!’  He laughs. ‘Not trouble at the docks. The pick up went through smooth as butter this time! It’s not always that easy.’ I throw my bag onto the wide front seat and pull myself into the truck. It smells...

As we pull away from the station forty-five minutes late the huge blue diesel engine slowly picks up speed. Kampalas flimsy houses begin to crowd in close to the Line. Corrugated-roof slums with ragged children wave. Everyone we see turns towards the train and smiles. I return the smiles and waves, but the scene passed as quickly With the briefest glance back and a twinge of privilege-induced guilt, I return to my own personal reality - a bell-boy summoning First and Second Class passengers to the dining car. Local passengers are few and there are only a few passionate train enthusiasts. I hadn’t quite realised that riding on the Lunatic line would be a five hundred-mile trip.  The narrow-gauge track journey is twenty-three hours long. The scene is something from a 1940's black and white movie. Waiters hovered around the tables in starched almost-white uniforms and serve luncheon from once-gleaming silver platters. With a great sweep of his huge hands and a broad...