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.tracts  2.lego  3.satirical  4.covered  5.breakup  

and/or: 

1.violin  2.wheels  3.informer  4.bee  5.mountains

Here is my story:

Simon *Caffrey put the last of the cleaned frames back into hive number six and gently closed the lid. Turning on the dripper system as he walked through the wildflower field, he noticed many more new flower buds and felt happy that his bees would have plenty of food this year. Fifty years ago he had chosen this spot carefully, for the mix of flowers and trees, the sunshine and the inaccessibility of roads.

Over time, surveyors had come and gone, discovering for themselves that Simon’s hillside was not suitable, their roads would have to go elsewhere. He thought back to his first hive, the first time he lifted a frame dripping with honey, the peace and quiet of the hillside. He had been able to sit on his porch and look over vast tracts of land down below, fields in varying shades of green and yellow, depending on what was growing. A farmhouse there a small church further along, brown cows ambling back to the milking sheds as the sun went down.

The mountains backing his hill gave fresh spring water, some of which he directed into the huge stone well to feed the drippers that watered the flowers. He sat on his porch now and looked over those vast tracts, no longer green and growing, but covered in rooftops with barely enough space between for air let alone gardens and lawns. The two-storey houses were tall and narrow, each one butted up against the next and stretching far back into the block.

He had gone down one day to have a look at them, and was disappointed with what he saw. They were all the same, looking like so many giant Lego blocks stacked up above their individual garages; he wondered how on earth anyone could recognize their own home. The town newspaper “The Informer”, in its usual satirical fashion, spruiked the convenience of “community living”, with all roads leading to the city for workers and a “hub” with a small lawned area for “community events.”

Simon had sat on his porch many times over the months since the first families had moved in and had not once noticed anything at all related to “community living”. People left early to get to work or school and came home late, wheels crunching on gravelled driveways, doors slamming as they carried in pizzas or bags of Indian or Chinese foods, too tired from the daily commute to actually cook.

He had seen the breakup of more than one family over the years and thought sobbing violins would be used if they ever made a movie based on that community. He watched the sun go down and the house lights below turn on, then went inside, thankful yet again that his hillside would not hold heavy roads and the weight of buildings.

* name borrowed from the tv series I am currently watching, "White Collar"