This week – the prompt is P is for Pot, plant or prism.
This is in honour of our late friend Sue in Beeston Regis, a valued member of Writing Club. Sue left some wishes for ways to remember her: one was to buy a nice autumnal pot plant for the windowsill, and another was to enjoy the colours produced by a prism refracting light.
So, your prompt choices are pot, or plant or prism.
Prism is self-explanatory. But the other two words – pot and plant – can have quite a few meanings.
Pot – a plaster cast, ceramic pots for garden or kitchen, as in pots and pans, and of course you can pot a ball in snooker… we say people have pots of money… and to pot something is to cut it short, which is where we get ‘a potted history’ of something. There’s chamber pots, pot shots, chimney pots, a pot of gold… I’m sure you can think of others.
Plant – a thing growing in your garden, and to plant something is to put it in the ground, but also you can plant your feet on the ground to steady yourself. There’s plant as in heavy machinery or a plant such as a factory – as in the British Leyland plant, or a nuclear processing plant. Or, there’s a plant in the sense of somebody being a spy, and criminals of claim that evidence has been planted. And, of course, it can be a surname.
So there’s plenty to go at.
As usual – who, what, where, when, how and why?
Let’s hear your stories, poems, pieces of descriptive writing – don’t forget it doesn’t have to be the complete story – prompted by the word ‘pot’, ‘plant’ or ‘prism’. But it is only a prompt. If you’ve got something else that you’re burning to write about, then write about that.
Send them to louise.hulland@bbc.co.uk and we’ll review them when we next meet in 2026. In the meantime, I’d like to wish you all a very happy festive season. I hope it’s all that you’d like it to be – and more.