I was 28. I was between jobs. I was homeless. The breaks with my parents were final. My girlfriend had just dumped me. My best friend from high school had only barely failed to kill me. I needed a break!

"Okay then," Luke said confidently as he looked up at his twin sister. "You ready?"

"Ready as I'll ever be," Lucy replied. "We do this together, right?"

"Aye, always," Luke said, giving his sister a gentle pat on the back as the two of them walked toward the imposing main gate of Durham University...

----------

NB Although all of the great houses and historical figures are real, current period characters are purely from my imagination and have no link with anyone living or dead.

Part 2 The New Born

They put the boy on a gurney and then in the ambulance, draped a blanket on my shoulders and sat me in a seat in the back. My mother got in the front with the driver and we were off to the hospital in Colchester where I had been born. It looks as if the same venue would be the confirmation of my re-birth.

Is there something wrong with Tommy? Struggling with thoughts and urges seems like something normal for a teenager, but it feels like it’s all leading to a choice he’ll have to make… A choice that will decide who he is, and whether he even is a “he”.

What just happened? Ursula is among many who struggle to understand the events of earlier that day. At a safe fishing port the combined crews gather to try and make sense of the pirate attack. In the following days the sail is repaired and Ursula finds some of her needed herbs. Then everything changes again...

The Voyage of the Visund

A tale of Anmar by Penny Lane

55 - Debriefings

Link: Every Day Is Your Last Title Page and Description

--

That established the pattern. Jack and Erica would go out with me when I had Liberty and I'd trawl for Ms. Right. Never really got anywhere, but the three of us sure had fun trying! We got together with Rich and Heather a few times for dinner, but it was becoming clear that the guys started getting too busy with their own things to spend any real time together.

NB Although all of the great houses and historical figures are real, current period characters are purely from my imagination and have no link with anyone living or dead.

Chapter 1 - The Fish-kisser of Coggeshall

Equality has finally come to the UQ. Now Peter may get to meet his father.

The next few months we a frenzy of hard work for the new parliament. The first task was to make sure the mistake of the past could never happen again. A law was passed that was enshrined in the new constitution that made it impossible to disenfranchise anyone, no matter gender, race or religion from voting.

I’ve only ever had one friend; a woman twenty-odd years older than myself who definitely was a woman who appreciated a little male company from time to time, even overnight occasionally.

I Write Sins . . .

Just an amusing conceit

My parents are Jewelers. Dad is a wholesaler, while Mom has a Jewelry store that's been in her family for ages. That being said, we are fairly well off, and I guess Mom and Dad were feeling a bit eccentric when naming us.

This is a poem I wrote the day after Christmas. I am alone on Christmas and found this one hard. If you are looking for bright and cheerful, this is not it. Sorry.

Gakkou no Kaiden

To Curse Someone Visit the Shrine at the Hour of the Ox

Not too long ago there were two friends, their names were Ichika Nakamura and Sakura Suzuki both attended Satoyama High School. Now Ichika Nakamura and Sakura Sakura Suzuki had been friends since childhood. By all accounts the two should have been very close, almost best friends. Because the Nakamura family lived right across the road from the Suzuki Family and both families had served Oda Nobunaga when he had taken control of Mino Province during the Sengoku period.

As the virus spread around the world, Maxine and Hayley made plans for when they'd have to go into isolation or as everyone in the media was calling it, lockdown. All the businesses that were part of the Lorelei Investments portfolio were given updates on what Maxine was expecting from them. Mostly it was a complete freeze on both payments to Lorelei and investment in the companies with a few exceptions if a government mandate forced the business to completely close or severely restrict their operations.

*****
During the years after WWII the Raven family, while in many ways typical for the era, was anything but normal. The backstory began in the early spring of 1944. Then 20 year old Chuck Raven’s unit had just completed paratrooper training, allowing him to come home on leave before shipping out to Britain. Lorraine Rees, a stubborn and feisty 17 year old high school junior, had been forbidden to go out with a grown man. After arguing and sent to her bedroom, she locked her door and climbed from her bedroom window to the front porch roof, then eased over the edge to shimmy down a porch column to go out with him. Lorraine dropped out of school at the start of her senior year, giving birth to a son, Leroy, in January 1945. Since Chuck had been sent to Europe, a shotgun wedding had been impossible. Chuck’s parents lived on a farm a mile outside the town of Grantsport, 8 2/3 miles north of Reading, where Lorraine lived. When the weather turned warmer in the spring, she’d bundle her baby and walk the mile long dirt road out to the farm so the infant could meet his grandparents, 2 uncles, and a great grandmother.