McCaw Media

Author: Carol

  • Memoir: Bikes

    Sometimes parents have to disappoint their children. And the younger you are when you are disappointed, the longer you have to brood about it and chew it over at family reunions. Take bikes. Dad would not let my brother and me have two-wheelers. Our terraced street which was a favourite haunt of driving instructors and…

  • Carol Carman’s Writing Club Prompt: Free week

    This week – it’s a free week. We’ve reached the end of the alphabet and before we start again, this is your chance to write about whatever you like. Absolutely anything. Go on – give it a go.

  • Carol Carman’s Writing Club Prompt: Z is for Zoo

    This week – the prompt is Z is for Zoo or zoology or zoological. A zoo is a place full of animals – and staff, and visitors. Your piece doesn’t have to take place in the zoo – it could be outside the zoo, next door to it, across the street. It could be about…

  • Short Fiction: The Dealer

    Before he’s even opened his mouth I know what he wants. ‘Vinnie,’ I says to him. ‘I’ve told you before – it’s no good keep coming back, I ain’t got any and I can’t get me hands on any.’ ‘Have you tried—’ he starts. ‘I’ve tried everybody I knows and they’ve tried everybody they knows.…

  • Carol Carman’s Writing Club Prompt: Y is for Yellow

    The yellow can be incidental to your story, the springboard for it or a major part of it. Loads of things can be yellow: Clothing – including hi-vis clothing, but also have a think about clothing that’s not normally yellow – like a suit or a raincoat. Unusual things intrigue us both as people and…

  • Memoir poem: The Silence Of Saturday Teatime

    Every week my dad would write His Xs in the column: A ritual time-honoured, Almost sacred, always solemn. He diligently worked out – well, I say ‘worked out’, he guessed Which teams would win or lose or draw, Whose score would be the best. On Friday evening at the door The coupon man would be;…

  • Carol Carman’s Writing Club Prompt: X is for… X

    Have a think about how we use the letter X.  If you’re marking something, it’s ticks for correct and crosses – or Xs – for incorrect. Putting an X in the box is how we vote. X is used to denote an unknown quantity, which you’ll remember from trying to solve equations at school or…

  • Memoir: Windows

    The window I looked up to the sky through had a cracked pane, the result of my dad flailing a cardigan at an irritating bluebottle. The cardigan had a penny in the pocket – one of those big old heavy pre-decimalisation pennies, blackened and worn smooth through countless transactions in tills and endless jostling against…

  • Carol Carman’s Writing Club Prompt: W is for Window

    Despite Louise Hulland suggesting that after last week’s foreshadowing of car trouble, this week’s prompt should be ‘Winning the lottery’, it is, in fact, W for window. There’s plenty of scope for stories involving a window. Are you on the outside looking in, or inside looking out? Either way, what’s going on on the other…

  • Poem: Something Amiss in My Engine

    There was something amiss in my engine: a new water pump needed, I thought; I booked my car into the garage – for a service, a see-to and sort. The message came back from the garage: your water pump’s fine – working well – And your motor now waits on our forecourt, it’s running as…