Wednesday's Words on a Friday

 The original Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and eventually taken over by a moveable feast of participants when Delores had computer troubles.

The aim of the words is to encourage us to write, a story, a poem, whatever comes to mind.
If you are posting an entry on your own blog, please let us know so we can come along and read it.

This month the words are supplied by Granny Annie and can be found here.

This week's words are:

1. news
2. countries
3. follow
4. stream
5. snuff
6. hair

and/or:

1. mushroom
2. print
3. roll
4. dust
5. warm
6. family

Here is my story:

 We sat on sun-warmed rocks at the edge of the stream, cooling our feet in the water, idly discussing this and that. All ten of us had stayed in town over summer, none of us could afford holidays at fancy resorts or even a jaunt in a caravan to a beachside caravan park. We'd hear all about those types of holidays from friends when school started again next week. For now, we'd enjoy the last week of holidays.

Charlie had brought along an old snuff box he'd found in the attic of his grandpa's house; his parents were busy cleaning it out after the old man had died a couple of months ago. Charlie, Brenda and Vanessa had all been roped in to help and Charlie had chosen the attic as most things up there were already packed in boxes. The snuff box had been sitting on top of an old writing desk, made from some sort of silky feeling wood, but empty of all writing implements. The snuff box itself was also silky wood, but fragrant and heavily carved. 

"I don't know what you want that old thing for." said Brenda. "Looks useless to me."
"That's because you want it for yourself," said Vanessa. "I heard you saying it would be a nice place to keep hair clips or earrings."

Brenda scowled and kicked at the water. "I wish I'd chosen the attic. I didn't find anything I could keep in Grandpa's kitchen." 

Janet leaned forward to see her better. "Really? Nothing? What about all the old fashioned baking stuff and the big soup pots, the wooden rolling pins and all that? I heard your mum telling my mum there'd be a treasure trove in that old kitchen."

Vanessa said, "there was lots of stuff, but grandpa hasn't looked after any of it. The baking pans grandma used for all those yummy cakes are all rusted now and the soup pot got burned when grandpa fell asleep waiting for the soup to be ready. No one knows what happened to most of the other stuff, it's all in terrible condition. Mum's glad she took grandma's recipe book after gram's funeral."

"It's really old though and the print is small so the recipes are hard to follow," said Brenda. 
"She did make Gram's mushroom soup though, it was nice."

"Get a magnifying glass," said Janet. "Make it easier to see."

"That's a good idea," said Mary-Anne. "Is it just home recipes or recipes from other countries too? I heard your grandparents were from Europe, from Poland or somewhere."
"I heard that too." said Gordon. "Leo's dad is from Germany, that's close to Poland, maybe he could help read the recipes."

"Never mind all that now", said Colin. "I want to know if anyone has heard any news from Brighton. Maggie and Suzanne went there for the holidays and promised to write postcards but I haven't had a single one."
"Me neither," said Ron. "Suze promised to bring back some seashells too, but nobody has heard a single word from that whole family since the day they left."

Patrick had been silent the whole time and now spoke up. "I have. That's why I asked you all to meet here. Remember hearing about the dust storm? They got caught in it and Mr Johnson couldn't see of course, so they ran off the road and the car rolled into a ditch. They've all spent the holidays in the hospital down there, with scrapes and bruises and Suze got her arm broken and Mrs Johnson had a concussion. Their caravan is a wreck."

"But they're all okay, right? said Ron anxiously. 

"Yeah, they're fine," said Patrick. "My mum was on the phone most of last night hearing all about it, they stayed at their Aunty's place when they weren't going back and forth to the hospital and now the doctors say they are good enough to come home, so they're coming next Monday. But they never got to the beach, not even once."