The Tangled Branch Discussion Forums

Thanks for the comments, Folks.  Sorry it took me a while to get back here. Wren, I see what you mean about the first stanza.  I was going for the fact that sometimes it's the smallest things that send the call.  Obviously didn't quite work. "Don't forget me."  Items of kit, or tools which haven't b...

NAPO 30 - 2019 I could take a bus ride I could take a bus ride, travel to the place she lived, and roam the streets. Maybe pass her in the crowd, each of us unrecognised, unaware, and never knowing. I could visit her last known address and maybe knock on the door, possibly finding an echo of her li...

Restless  Sometimes it's just a scent on the breeze, or warm tendrils of summer wind reaching through midnight's cool. The sharp tang of petrol, the rasp of a raised boot against a kickstart. Or the soft slow creak of harness, settling against a wooden peg,  whispering "Don't forget me." The call c...

AJ, I was reliving , not just recalling.  As I read it aloud I was back in the middle of that 'cavalry charge'.  The girl marching next to me, Felicity, was tall for her age, built like a beanpole, and normally cursed with a stutter which made her very self-effacing.  But she  strode out like a conq...

I stumbled across a military march in You Tube earlier today, and it unlocked the time machine ;-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuVYS4uw0as ===== Marching Out After Infant School assembly, all lined up in neat rows, boys on one side, in shorts and shirt, girls on the other in blouse and skirt, we...

Sometimes I get taken by a poetry passage. Here is a morsel from Eliza Rotterman: . . . . if I have a body it is rarified as air at thirty thousand feet if I have a moon it bears the cold fresh of snow I left at midnight and heading west it stayed midnight a long time As someone who mainly writes p...

Dave makes a very good point about the cross-pollination of ideas in the sprawling big thread.  Several of my offerings this year were triggered by an odd phrase or line in someone else's work.  The rest came from roaming the streets or looking out of the window, or overhearing conversations.  A few...

Thinking about next year: In previous years I've rather enjoyed the somewhat 'shambolic' nature of the NAPO thread.  It's a bit like wandering a beach and finding stray starfish or pretty coloured glass pebbles when you least expect them.  But this year, with more players, it was definitely a bit c...

Deb, Stuff touches a chord ;-)  I still have some stuff from my caravan childhood.  A clockwork train sits on the very top of my bookshelves, away from casually grabbing fingers. But I find that memories come back without  something to hold.  Sometimes it's a similar physical action which triggers r...

You never know, Colm.  Anyone in here could be suffering from PTSD. P oets T raumatic S hutdown D isorder.  Brought about by a sudden cessation of extreme poetic activity.  A few days of cheap doggerel can ease the symptoms, but does anyone listen? As for the bearded one.  How does he drink that stu...