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Draliman Through the Ages Part 4 – Sir Drali of Dralishire
For part 4 of our epic journey through time, we catch up with one of Draliman’s most famous ancestors – Sir Drali of Dralishire. Let’s see what he’s up to!
We can learn three important lessons from this:
- An awesome reputation is all very well, but you may need to back it up one day!
- Arrogance and over-confidence can be your downfall
- Out of all the things I can’t draw, horses have moved up near the top of the list!
Catch up with previous episodes here:
Part 1 – Dralamoeba
Part 2 – Dralisaurus
Part 3 – Dralug the CaveDrali
Sparkly Awesomesauce Ponies Away!
Awesomesauce Alice over at aliceatwonderland has started a new club! It’s called “Sparkleponies” and has quite a daunting list of prerequisites but once you’ve joined, you get this amazing badge!
Isn’t that the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen? Lamentably, I cannot join. I promised Alice I would chop off my left leg in lieu of one of the terms and conditions of joining (“watch Twilight 5,000 times” – that wasn’t ever gonna happen), but I remembered that my left leg operates the clutch in my car so I sort of need it attached.
Isn’t Alice over at aliceatwonderland amazing? I’ve been following her wonderful writing since June, around the time when I wrote this, this and this!
You may be wondering why I seem to be sucking up to Alice over at aliceatwonderland quite a lot. You may also be wondering why I keep linking across to her amazing and wonderful blog.
Alice has this friend, Sparky by name, and he’s the “Wonder Blogger”. He’s come up with a whole load of hints and tips for the new blogger-about-town. Two of these, as you may have guessed by now, are:
- Link drop
- Worship certain bloggers
Alice has also offered a prize – this is my entry to her competition! All we have to do is write a post that Sparky would be proud of, one which embodies all of his qualities and utilises his underhanded clever hints and tips.
I’ve certainly dropped a lot of links! I’ve also shown my worship of Alice. Sparky also says we should throw awards around like confetti! Now, Alice already has awards – of course she does, she’s awesome! She’s been featured on “Freshly Pressed”, for goodness sake.
However, Alice got her kids (“The Things”) to help out making the competition prize. How great is that? So I’ve done a new award, especially for awesome kids! Here it is.
That’s supposed to be a rainbow, the team over at DraliDoodles(TM) had a bit of bother getting the colours right. I’m no Alice! There are no rules for this award – if you are a kid and you are awesome, or if you have awesome kids, proudly display this award!
Hi ho Sparkleponies, away!
Puppetmaster
Here is my submission for this week’s 100 word Friday Fictioneers photo prompt! This week our host Rochelle has submitted one of her own photos. Here goes!
Copyright Rochelle Wisoff-Fields
Garvin stood back, admiring his collection. A toy car, a pram – he had spent years gathering these trinkets, though none held any meaning for him.
Anyone who had ever hurt him, anyone who’d treated him like dirt – he’d stolen something of great sentimental value to them. Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, none had known the power running through his veins.
The power to control others.
Where to start… yes! He fetched the photograph belonging to the boy who’d treated him like a slave at school and began to chant.
Now it was Garvin’s turn to be the Puppetmaster.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Sea
Weekly Photo Challenge: Sea – share a photo which means SEA to you.
The sea – wild, vast, untameable.
Perranporth, Cornwall, UK
Extending along the cliffs and to the horizon.
Promptarama!
Daily Prompt: A Little Sneaky – Are writing prompts a useful exercise, or do you find them to be too limiting and/or hokey?
Okay, it’s a terrible title for a post. It’s not even a word. However, fully 10 minutes of Private Practice Season 6 Episode 8 have been and gone and I can’t think of anything else.
I love prompts! Here’s some history.
This blog was always supposed to be “my life musings”. Things that happened to me, “bloggable incidents” if you will. Things that occurred to me. However, it didn’t take long to discover the flaw in my plan.
Nothing ever happens to me. Nothing ever occurs to me.
It didn’t take long to run out of ideas. I limped along for 18 months like this. I posted maybe three or four times a month. I had a couple of followers (you’re still with me, you know who you are and thank you!), a few likes and maybe a comment or two.
Although I’m not writing this blog for comment-fuelled validation, everybody likes comments and “likes”, right? It shows us that people are reading our posts and are moved to say something”.
I’d seen the Daily Post but didn’t know much about it. I didn’t know if I wanted to get involved in writing posts to prompts, but in January of this year I gave it a go and did my first Daily Prompt. I really enjoyed it, and better, not only did a bunch of new people stop by to say hello, I discovered loads of great new blogs to follow!
I don’t find prompts limiting. I do the ones I want to do, I feel no obligation to do them all. They give me ideas and sometimes I can expand on them, or maybe find a different angle. I can see other peoples’ takes on the same starting point and discover great new writers to follow. And the more we write, the better we get (theoretically).
It gave my seriously flagging blog a new lease of life. It now contains musings, poems, flash fiction, doodles and cartoons. Armed with my little fifty quid point and click camera I’ve even participated in a couple of weekly photo prompts!
I know people say that a “focussed” blog is the way to gather thousands of followers, but I’m not interested in that. I hope that my blog contains something for everyone lots of people. Ignore the fiction and enjoy the cartoons. Read the fiction but ignore the dodgy poetry.
I’ve participated in Rarasaur/Queen Creative‘s Prompts for the Promptless. I (very) recently started writing to the Friday Fictioneers photo writing prompts, and I’m really enjoying that (I’ve done two so far) – I hadn’t written any fiction for years and I’m rediscovering my love for it and it’s amazing to read all the other great entries.
So in conclusion, it’s a big thumbs up to prompts from draliman!
Denied
Here is my entry for this week’s Friday Fictioneers, hosted by Rochelle! This week the photo was taken by Dawn M. Miller.
Copyright Dawn M. Miller
With barely a sound the skylight slid open and a dark figure slipped down on a harness to hover just above the display cases. A bead of sweat escaped from underneath his balaclava to drop with a splash on the toughened glass covering the priceless jewellery.
The rope jerked, making the figure look up to see his associates gesticulating – “Hurry up”! He reached down tentatively, carefully, when suddenly…
… the scene changed to a cartoon rabbit.
“Hey, I was watching that!”
“You’ve seen it before, love.”
“No, this is Jewellery Heist Seven – One Last Job!”
“WATCH THE CARTOON!”
“Yes dear.”
You can check out other entries for this week’s Friday Fictioneers here.
Amphigory – The Nightmare Coach
An amphigory is a piece of nonsensical writing in verse or, less commonly, prose. It often parodies a serious piece of writing.
This week’s Prompts for the Promptless, hosted by Rara and The Queen Creative, is all about nonsense! “Yay!” I thought. However, writing nonsense is harder than I thought :-(.
“The Nightmare Coach” starring Jeff and Nigel
A nightmare bound in sparkling lights
A coach trip, off to see the sights!
We’ll drive it here, we’ll drive it there
We’ll burn up gas without a care.
Not this nightmare coach again!
Jeff, old chap, this has to end!
It’s just not good, you need some aid
Your mind, old son, it starts to fade!
And as we go from town to town
I’ll kiss the girls, I’ll shoot the clowns
‘Cos clowns are creepy, don’t you think?
The plastic smiles, the fairground stink.
You’re talking nonsense, Jeff old chap
You’re spouting tripe, what’s up with that?
I think I’ll give the Doc a call
This isn’t right, not right at all.
We’ll drive the country far and wide
As endless as the lapping tide
I’ll eat some shrimp, I’ll drink a keg
Jump off a wall and break my leg.
Doctor? Hi, it’s Nigel here.
There’s something wrong with Jeff, I fear.
Please say you’ll come, and make it fast
I just don’t know how long he’ll last.
And when the trip comes to an end
My teeth begin to gnash and rend
I hate it when the coach is gone
The journey’s end. Here ends my song.
Jeff my friend, please calm you down
The Doctor’s here, no need to frown.
Be at peace, no more to say
Just close your eyes. You’ll be okay.
Well, it was supposed to be funny but it turned out being a little bit sad. Poor Jeff.
I used to be able to write “funny”. On the plus side, this is one of my few fiction pieces in which no-one’s died. Yay me :-).
The Hesitant Stonemason
I thought I’d have a go at “Friday Fictioneers”. This is hosted by Rochelle and is a photo prompt. The kicker – it has to be as close to 100 words as possible! I started writing and after the opening paragraph it was already over 50 words! Some rewriting was required.
I had to do something similar when I was at school. My mini-story made perfect sense – to me. And no-one else! So I’m having another go after all these years. The prompt this week is a beautiful picture of a church, supplied by Claire Fuller.
Copyright Claire Fuller
Edelric walked hesitantly up to the church’s door. A stonemason, he appreciated the workmanship of the Norman invaders, even as he hated them for their recently enforced rule.
“Don’t go into the church! You’re evil, son! You’ll be struck down!” his Mother had said.
Was that true? He was mean when drunk, but every man beat his wife, didn’t he? He’d once enjoyed torturing the village cat, but surely that didn’t count?
His hand hovered over the latch. He began to sweat.
Edelric trusted his Mother. He turned and walked back to the village.
“Not today,” he decided. “Not today.”
We Don’t Need No Education
Daily Prompt: Fifteen Credits – Another school semester will soon begin. If you’re in school, are you looking forward to starting classes? If you’re out of school, what do you miss about it — or are you glad those days are over?
I would like to start by making it clear that I don’t agree with Pink Floyd’s cleverly ironic assertion “We don’t need no education” – I just thought it was a cool title.
However, that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t complain if I had to go back and do it all over again. I’ve often heard it quoted that “school days are the best day of your life.”
Excuse me? I don’t often use swear words on this blog, but I’m afraid that this quote earns a bit fat “bollocks”. For anyone who has heard this quote and is still at school, please don’t panic – it’s not true!
Kids go back to school in around 3 weeks or so and I am so glad I’m not one of them.
Just to clear up any misunderstandings here between various countries, here are the UK definitions:
“School” – ages 5-16 (compulsory age range), occasionally also 16-18 if the school has a “Sixth Form”
“College” – ages 16-18, also adult education (“Further Education”)
“University” – ages 18 up (“Higher Education”)
I believe that some countries use the word “school” for more than just your compulsory education – this post is about the standard 5-16 year old education. I wanted to make this clear because university was awesome (I never went to college so I can’t speak for that).
My very first day at school, they rang the bell after playtime and I went to the wrong class. When I got to mine, I couldn’t open the heavy sliding door so I stood outside looking in until someone noticed me. Obviously this wasn’t the best of omens for the next 11 years of my life.
At senior school (age 12-16) I was fat, in all the top classes and wore big thick government-issue glasses. I was also the spitting image of a loser in a very popular kids’ TV programme. I’m not posting the photo again, it’s too embarrassing. You can find it here.
This combination does not bode well. I was bullied a bit, but not in the way that “bullying” seems to be these days. Nobody stole my lunch money and I was only ever punched once (right in front of a teacher, ha ha), and I must admit I was passive-aggressively winding the guy up all through the lesson. So possibly I was “asking for it”.
I hated maths lessons. I couldn’t do maths then and I can’t do it now.
Yoinks – what can this mean?
Don’t get me started on Latin. Wednesday afternoon – “Triple Latin”. Triple Latin? That’s illegal, surely.
Triple yoinks!
We were treated like kids because we were kids, but that didn’t make it any easier to take.
University, now that’s a different kettle of fish. The ideal middle ground between freedom and responsibility. Bills to pay, looking after yourself but with the freedom to live your own life all within the safe university environment, with plenty of people to help you out. A sort of training ground to life. I loved it!
I wouldn’t mind living my university days again, but school – never.
Draliman Through the Ages Part 3 – Dralug the CaveDrali
For the third part of our series tracing the ancestry of Draliman, we move forward from prehistoric times to an age when man first walked the Earth!
We join Dralug, a member of the CaveDrali tribe, on an auspicious day, a day which changes the tribe forever.
Catch up with “Draliman Through the Ages”!
Part 1 – Dralamoeba
Part 2 – Dralisaurus
Thanks go to Arthur C. Clarke for the loan of his monolith.
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