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. Sadly, Delores has now closed her blog forever due to other problems.

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 to read it and add a few encouraging words.

This month the words/prompts are supplied by Hilary Melton-Butcher and can be found here

This week's words/prompts are: 

1. wafer 

2. haggard 

3. procession 

4. juniper 

5. drips 

and/or: 

1. disdainful 

2. stream 

3. weed 

4. chalk 

5. treasure

Here is my story: ( a bit rushed, not well thought out, it's been a busy day, Lola to the vet and other stuffs)

In our small country town, home of an ice cream factory and a soft drink bottling plant, Julie had always been wafer thin, compared to the rest of us fizzy drink and ice cream guzzlers. She often looked down her disdainful nose at us "country bumpkins", she was from "the city" you see and didn't quite fit in. "It's the difference between chalk and cheese," she'd say, and was inordinately pleased when she won the title Juniper Queen and got to ride in the yearly procession through the town to the showgrounds when the fair was about to begin. "The rest of you drips could never measure up," she'd say scornfully. But we were never ashamed, none of us were fat, or even plump, in spite of all the ice cream and milkshakes. 

We were farm people you see, and burned off every calorie with exercises such as feeding the chickens, getting the goats in from the fields, digging our parents vegetable patches and picking the fruit from our orchards before spending many sweaty hours in our mother's kitchens, cooking and bottling, fruits, jams and pickles. Julie, on the other hand, rarely even put away her own cleaned and folded clothes. They had a maid who did all those things. 'Donna is such a treasure," said Julie, "I don't know how we'd manage without her."

But then something happened. Donna had entered a competition and won a trip to Italy. She was ecstatic! At long last, she could go back and see her family, her grandparents, her Nonno and Nonna were getting old, this would be her last chance. Off she went, without a care for Julie who now had to get her own clothes cleaned and folded and so much more besides. She had no idea how and neither did her mother. 

Our local comedian, Alan, told her she should fill all the pockets with soap powder, then slap the clothes around in the stream, but at the rocky end not the weedy end where the watercress grew. Julie began to cry at the very thought, so we all quickly shushed Alan and told Julie we would show her and her mother how to run the washing machine, then how to peg things out in the sunshine to dry. 

Julie learned quickly enough, sort of, but her mother refused to, saying surely Donna would soon return and take over those duties again. With neither of them knowing much about cooking, wafer-thin Julie and her equally slim  mother soon began looking rather haggard, things were not going well in the Clapton household. 

I wondered if we should help more, but my mother said they would take advantage and we would be doing all the work the Claptons should be doing, on top of our own duties, and called around to all her friends to announce a meeting. Mrs Clapton would be invited and lessons in housekeeping would commence. We hoped that Mrs Clapton would be amenable to learning, because we quite liked Julie in spite of her snootiness.