Deep Deep Winter by Paul Jennings

Bond trudged on, head down. The snow was getting deeper here, blown into waist high drifts which he had to pick his way around. It had stopped snowing about 30 minutes before, but now the going became harder as the incline steepened to at least a 1 in 5, he estimated. In front of him, in the distance, he could just make out the roof of a building, the outline becoming more indistinct against the mountain in the fading light. This was his rendezvous with a person he did not yet know, save for a sparse few lines in an intelligence report with an accompanying and frustratingly grainy photograph and the code name “Thalab”, the Arabic for fox. 

The road was deserted, impassable to vehicles as he crunched his way forward and upward, thankful for his Canada Goose arctic jacket, a veteran of many a mission and lifesaver in some of the most extreme destinations throughout his long and eventful career. A gentle breeze stirred up the loose snow into little swirling flurries like miniature twisters that danced across his path and for which Bond was sure the Sami peoples of Northern Scandinavia would have a word. The trees were sparse here, scrubby high altitude Mountain Ash, their upright branches scratchy against the roof slate grey sky, bringing to mind his two lino cut prints of winter trees bought for a song in Montmartre a few years before and which now adorned the lounge of his Chelsea apartment, just off the Kings Road. 

Breathing heavily now, his mind wandered back to another mission in similar conditions; to a time when he was much fitter and stronger.

I Found it on the Doorstep by Paul Jennings

 I thought I’d heard something thud against the door. Opening it, I saw it lying there, stunned.

“What is it Daddy?”, shouted the children as they clattered along the hallway. The poor thing appeared quite badly injured, so I blocked their view using my body.

“It’s OK my lovelies” I said, “Just some snow sliding off the roof. I’ll just get a shovel”, closing the door behind me.

Picking the Barn Owl off the floor I heard the “crackle, crackle” sound of its left wing and noted the gurgling sound as the injured bird struggled to breathe; its heart beat no more than a murmur. I couldn’t bear to do the “decent thing” because, in spite of its injuries, it was still the most beautiful of creatures.

“Come on my darling” I said, walking across the yard to my workshop-cum- barn, “Let’s make you comfortable”, my feet squelching in the mud and slush. A box of straw, some peace and quiet and “Who knows?”, I thought. 

A small act of kindness. 

Doesn’t take much eh?

(written in response to November 2021 HTW 10 minute 'warm-up' challenge)

Dunk Dunk Dunk by Paul Jennings

 under the water reflections

He lay in the bath, his head under the surface, tapping his fingers on the bottom down by the side of his knees, listening to the sound distorted by the water; his refuge Swallowing the air in his lungs as if gulping with his mouth tightly shut, a technique he’d discovered for himself and which he believed allowed his head to remain submerged for longer. This was his world, hardly Jacques Cousteau, but cheaper than a flight to Bermuda and much warmer than a flooded quarry in England.

Ever since he could remember he’d been doing this. At first as a small boy in his childhood home, his happy home before it all went wrong. Even the bath was better there, a metal enamelled bath that made a “Clank” sound when he’d tapped his fingers. Yes, it had all been much better then. He remembered his mum, no need for memory tricks, the “every day the sun shone” type of tricks. His mum had been a talcum powder, Vapo rub, kiss it better mum. Gentle, kind and loving; he’d always felt loved then; it was just, well … it just was; a normal state of being. He remembered the Sunday mornings in his parents’ bed, he would read to her from one of his books, while dad made breakfast downstairs. “It’s my turn to read to you today mum” as she fluffed up both their pillows and made a great play of settling down to listen. And then breakfast in bed whilst all three made plans for the day ahead.

He remembered family holidays, “Enid Blyton Holidays” his dad called them, where the countryside went straight down to the sea. Not for them the endless streets of boarding houses, games arcades and hot dog stands. Theirs was a holiday world of rock pools, crab lines and games on the beach. Once dad found a wooden pallet, scrubbed clean by the action of the sea and which he placed over a low-lying rock so that it mimicked the action of a boat. All that afternoon they pretended to be pirates, making up dastardly pirate songs and battling with the Royal Navy.

The beginning of their holiday was always the same, he recalled. Once in the car, all packed and ready to go, with his parents in the front his dad would look over his shoulder at him. “ARE. WE. READYYYYY!!!???” YEEEES!!!! would be the equally loud and gleeful reply from the back “LETS GO THEN” as his dad inserted the CD and the unmistakable opening bars of ELO’s “Mr Blue Sky” would thump from the car’s speakers; both his parents and he laughing at this ritual as off they’d go…

He came up both for air and because he found it impossible to cry underwater; hadn’t quite mastered that yet.