Children's
The Pycost
The Pycost. October brought the shorter days and the colder nights. "Winter draws on, laughed my Nanna and all the kids joined in with her laughter, most not knowing why. It was Sunday and the whole family were at Nanna's for dinner. The plate sized Yorkshire with onion gravy, the potatoes mashed up with the turnip so you could not refuse the one without the other and roast beef that oozed fat that ran like a greasy stream down your chin as you bit into it; the fat peas fresh from the garden and then the rice pudding peppered with hot succulent raisins. All kept hot on the brass fender that kept us a safe distance from the roaring coal fire but that didn't stop your face and legs from going bright red if you sat too close. The meal was finished and all the women were in the kitchen washing up the mountain of plates, dishes and tureens while the men had gone with Granddad to the Colliers Arms across the road for a quick pint. Funny thing was that the quick pint took all of an hour to drink. Dad had let me have a sip of his Newcastle Brown once, he called it Maniacs Broth or Journey into Space because he said too much of it and you became crippled and fell over. I tasted awful and I pulled a wry face, much to the amusement of my Mam and younger sister.
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- 2498 reads
Our House
Our House It was nearly the end of May and the days were getting longer and brighter. The sun smiled through the tiny window of my attic bedroom, lighting a rectangle of polished oilcloth on the floor at the foot of my bed. How I loved that oilcloth so lovingly polished with lavender wax so that the room always smelled of spring, even in the middle of winter. Helping Mam to polish that floor every week was one chore I never moaned about, I was real proud of the shine on my bedroom floor. Indeed I was proud of this quaint little room up in the roof of the small colliery cottage that Mam, Dad and my sister called home. The village, which comprised of two streets of similar terraced cottages and a collection of larger houses across the main road, sat neatly outside the railings and gates of the coalmine that gave the village its name; but to all who lived there the village was simply the "Colliery. In fact it wasn't until I began school that I realised that the two terraces had real names, we knew them as Front Street and Back Street. Apart from the houses of the managers and officials across the road all the terraced cottages were identical, typical two up, two down houses. That is to say there were two main rooms downstairs, the kitchen was our main living room where we lived, cooked and ate, the front room was reserved for entertaining and special occasions although in our case it was also Mam and Dad's bedroom so that me and our kid could have our own bedrooms upstairs. My little sisters bedroom was the biggest, she had bigger toys, but it had no window. Instead there was a skylight in the roof which made it a bit darker. I had the front room which did have a window but the sloping roof came so low that my window was only about two feet high and almost at floor level. The sloping roof was a bit of a nuisance as I had to stoop to get round the bed when I remade it every morning. There was no electricity, we had gaslights downstairs but had to use candles or paraffin lamps upstairs. The house did not have a bathroom either; hanging from a nail on the outside wall of the house was a big tin bathtub which had to be filled with hot water from the copper next to the coal fire by hand. As we got older this was used hardly at all, we went to Aunty Annie's for a bath as she lived in a council house in town and had a proper bathroom, failing that we could always go to the showers used by the miners at the pithead baths between shifts at weekends, men on Saturdays and Women on Sundays but Mam did not like it because there was no privacy and she was a bit prudish, was my Mam ,and said she didn't like the idea of neighbours gawping at her'. What they thought or said always seemed very important to her. She always insisted that we should never look scruffy or untidy and that we should remember our manners.
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- 695 reads
Religious Poems for Children
A Good Son King David had a good son Solomon was his name As king he built a great temple One of his claims to fame. Favorite Son Jacob was a rich man Who had a favourite son His brothers each
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Abrakadeebra: A Celebration of Children's Verse No. 1
More little poems/verses for those special readers of mine. I hope you enjoy them. Should you have a suggestion, please let me know. Cheers.
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- 1452 reads
A Light In The Closet
A Light in the Closet I could see the narrow band of light gleaming from across the open space at the top of the hall closet door, which was slightly ajar. My childhood memories immediately conjured up a visage of something that you might see in those 1950's science fiction movies. You just knew then when you saw it, that something evil was waiting just beyond the door, waiting for you to be dumb enough to go and open it.
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- 2114 reads
The Little Future Man
'I saw Mom dead in my dream last night,' he told with sorrow. The kids were disturbed. They knew Philip's dreams always came true soon.
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- 785 reads
Katie's Box Chapter 3. Silence is Golden.
Jane hurtled into the classroom slamming the door behind her and trying to keep Belinda on the other side. Her heart pounded hard in her chest as she put her full weight against the door to try and stop it from opening. She didn't want to be hit again and her whole body shook with fear at the thought. The door began to open slowly, inch by inch, as the brute on the other side pushed on it. Jane tried with all her might to keep it shut, but slowly her feet began to slip.
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Katies Box. Chapter 2. Just Deserts.
Looking through the large rectangular containers in the storeroom, she found a pot full of cold tapioca. Stirring it around with the large wooden spoon, she smiled childishly as she held the poison above it, but just as she was about to tip the first lot into the pot, the tapioca began to bubble and swirl. Small, blue-lightening flashes leapt out from around the edges of the pot......
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The Maltese Marble
THE MALTESE MARBLE It didn't seem like a special marble when I first looked it over, at old Mr. Warner's place. True, it was larger than the other cats eyes and steelies in my collection. And the smoky green eye, in the middle of the glass orb, did seem to pulse and glow, when you looked at it for a while. But, when you are eight years old, everything seems special and by logical extension, nothing is ever too extraordinary. It was just another piece of glass, or so I thought at the time.
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Abrakadoobra: 100 Short Poems For Children
Sometimes I enjoy writing or trying to write pieces for children more than I do writing for "adults". I hope that's neither good nor bad. Please let me know which ones you like or do not like(or that your kid likes).
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- 6847 reads