It has been a busy week. No denying it.
Publishing five stories on the site as is our custom plus preparing to launch Literally Stories — The Anthology: it could be said we gave Ground Control a run for its money.
I am not Major Tom. Neither am I sitting in a tin can but I am feeling a little odd today.
Strained.
Nothing that a breeze through this week’s literary line-up won’t put right.
Scrolling down our Twitter feed for Week 44, witnessing the variety of images that help ‘sell’ Literally Stories short stories it is impossible to ignore the diverse nature of our site.
Tumbleweed in an arid New Mexico landscape (we cheated, it’s Kansas), a church in the north of England (a church in the north of England), a few billion galaxies (yep — we bring you real galaxies folks), a landscape with crows in flight courtesy of Van Gogh and finally, my favourite beach in the whole of Hawaii, Waialua.
Not all of the above statements are entirely true and accurate.
The joy of writing eh? Lying with style. Though it might be disputed that I know all the angles it is irrefutable I have mastered none of them!
~
The last time Friday began the week Monday staged a walk-out and Midweek came out in solidarity with Monday whilst the weekend said it couldn’t give a $!£* when the week started.
On that archaic note I deliver you something fresher. Well, LS newcomer, James C Clar’s does.
Scouting locations for the 2015 Literally Stories Editors team-building weekend — or jolly as the vernacular would have it, is as you would imagine a thankless task, especially when the phrase ‘shoestring budget’ overstates the resources at your disposal.
A three-man ridge tent (for five) with en-suite latrine in the second week in December is hardly Glamping but should at least concentrate the literary mind.
Abii. Vidi. Unde digressus sum.
I went. I saw. I digressed.
The last week has thrown up all manner of political oddities from around the world – and I’m not just referring to Donald Trump’s combover which must be standing on end at the news that Arnold Schwarzenegger (an immigrant no less) has stolen his old job on The Apprentice. The Labour Party in the UK has a new leader several light years left of centre. Australia is going through Prime Ministers faster than a stuttering sports team changes managers, and just this afternoon in Burkina Faso a very large chap in an army uniform locked up the President.
At Literally Stories we try and steer clear of politics. No military coups for us. No bloc voting. Just an oasis of calm, storytelling quality in a world of turmoil.
For someone who does not know a DSL from a WLAN Week 41 ended somewhat chaotically. I am talking routers of course and some would say what’s new?
Solutions to a faulty on/off button came both high and low-tech.
Cape Town (Nik) provided the know-how. The high-end geek-speak.
Sheffield (me) the low-brow pass me a roll of gaffer tape and I’ll fix mentality.
It really is amazing what you can keep running with an ounce of ingenuity and a paper-clip.
Week 40.
Four-Oh blind forty.
Those of you like me who regularly visit the local Bingo Hall in search of friendship, weak coffee, numbers no greater than two digits and dayglo marker pens, will undoubtedly not have the foggiest idea what the origins of ‘blind forty’ are. Blind forty, one of many colourful phrases bingo callers cry out, such as three and seven, thirty-seven.
Those of you who do know what ‘blind forty’ means will no doubt glow with pride when name-called a nerd, anorak or some other pejorative that implies they possess a vast general knowledge.
Uncertain whether or not I should round off my momentary lapse into all things numerical by declaring ‘That’s Numberwang’, or were I in Wiesbaden, ‘Das ist Nummerwang’ I opted to consult a search engine and was greatly reassured this utterance was not such a foolish notion after all.
Even the German translation of the spoof game show Numberwang yielded 160 hits in 0.57 seconds.
Question:
What do you get if you combine a sagacious Swede with a wayfaring Welshman then add a mercurial Massachusettian to a canny Croat and for good measure finish by blending in a bold Brit?
Simples!
Week 39 at Literally Stories of course!
When I visited the back door portal to Literally Stories Friday morning charged with the task of ordering random words into something a little less random my first thought on typing Week 38 was; Is there any significance to the number 38?
In short. No significance.
The best ‘fact’ I came up with was it is the probable year of the marriage of Claudius and Messalina.
Fascinating.
However if you add ‘th’ to 38 and then parallel, too, the plot thickens into something almost but not quite significant, as you now have the 38th parallel. The demarcation between North and South Korea. An imaginary line that also passes just north of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan, all of which makes one wonder how newspaper columnists survived before the advent of the internet search engine? None of which leads me to this week’s litany of literary marvels that began with The Aviator.
Last Sunday Literally Stories Editor, Tobias Haglund, chose his three favourite stories published on the site in the regular weekend feature, ‘Editor Picks’.
If you would like a turn at Editor Picks email us at: literallystories2014@gmail.com and tell us in less than a 1000 words why you think your three selections are special.
There is a well-known truism you can take a horse to water but a pencil must be lead. I have waited an aeon to find a suitable juncture to slot this witticism into a profound piece of writing, but alas, had to stick it in here instead.
Whilst this observation might seem bizarre, regular readers will know instantly it is merely a shameless contrivance by which to segue seamlessly into the first of this week’s homages to the short story.
literally stories 