Saturday Sample: 140 x 140 by Gill James, weak tea

 

Introduction

I wrote these stories on the days when I was mainly editing. They offered a chance to do some writing on days that were full of rewriting.  There are 140 stories, each 140 words long.   

Each story was inspired by the first picture I saw when I opened my Twitter feed. They originally had the Twitter handle of the person tweeting as part of the title but I decided I needed to make it all more anonymous, a little vaguer. I've preserved the dates, however. Just in case someone thinks that writing flash is quick and easy. You will see how long it has taken to produce this volume and if you look at the end date and the date this collection is released, you'll realise that it takes a finite amount of time to produce a book, even with all the technology available to us.

I hope you enjoy this collection and will find it varied, thought-provoking, laughter-producing and tear-jerking. I have certainly enjoyed putting it together.

What's up next in terms of flash? Why, 280 x 70, naturally.                       

The Birds and the Bees? 7 May 2014

What? Somebody had gifted him a flowering sponge plant? What was a sponge plant anyway?  Somebody else had poked him. There were three friend requests and somebody called Alicia had changed her status. What was the point of this facewhatyoumathingy? It didn’t make sense to him.

Then they’d said he should go on Twitter as well and tweet. That was for the birds wasn’t it? How would he find that?

“Just start typing it, in Dad,” said Rex. “The computer knows.”

That’s what scared him most of the time. How much the darned machine seemed to know without him having told it. 

“I set up your account, Dad.” Rex leant over and typed something. 

George’s face appeared on the screen. Three followers. And there on the right. Who to follow. Gloria Davies. Who’d have thought it?

Damn machine!

Bless it.