Showcase
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Biggar Writers on Days Like This
Read short stories by Biggar Writers on the Scottish Book Trust/Radio Scotland 'Days Like This' website.
Anne Armstrong - Silence
Tom Bryan - Incident on Manhattan Avenue
Andrew McCallum - My Father Brought Me There When I Was a Child
Café Terrace
by Vic Broadbent
Seagulls glide and mew on the salt laden air
casting long shadows
over stainless steel tables and chairs.
The sea, a liquid mosaic,
glints behind the white trellised windbreak
and awaits the first visitor to venture the day.
No Deauville or Riviera this.
It’s just a Whitby café starting to face
another bracing North Sea, fish-and-chip day.
Autumn Leaves
by Elizabeth Brunt
Driving home in stormy weather
with a new dress
in colours of red brown and gold
matching the autumn leaves
round a corner into a skid
lose control on a hill
all appeal of autumn – gone
on wet autumn leaves
sliding into oncoming traffic
pulling back towards the barrier
seeing the drop below
a bed of autumn leaves
glide back towards the traffic
shaking with cold and fear
as autumn weather
meets autumn leaves
Summer
by Elizabeth Brunt
I walk barefoot along the beach
footprints melting into the soft
wet butter fudge sand
lapping waves and summer heat
hypnotise my senses
drawing me into the dazzling light
algae clad rocks slip from the sea
exposing colours of blue and green
fluorescent like beached seals
enjoying a spell in the sun
Strawberry Yield
by Alex Laird
We went that sunny day, us grandchildren
With collecting jars.
Bees droned from flower to flower,
Moths flushed from disturbed grasses.
Rail tracks glistened as the smell of
Tar-oil oozed from driven key blocks.
A war torn world boomed its weariness
While we filled jar after jar
With plump wild strawberries.
We never knew of danger
Though the world floundered in it.
Look we cried, showing him our gathered treasure
Having picked the fruit all along the cutting
Fanning out over the soft wide grass banks
Where, looking back, saw her there waiting
Knowing we would return to her with bounty.
Grandfather claimed miracle,
That such sweetness prevailed
From cinder and crushed slag.
Under his feet timber sleepers
In the heat, sweated their creosote.
We stood by as wagon loads of coal
Clicked their way along the straining tracks
Shepherded by the common shunting pug.
The great mouth of an iron works waited.
Walk to the Reservoir
by Alex Laird
We walked the road
Mile after mile, rising.
Every moment he, darting up the flanks
Louped runnels, scanned rivulets for gold.
We raised a hare.
It went like surging air against the hill,
Stroking grass easy as the wind.
We lost him when he stopped
And became a turf.
As we climbed the burn’s chattering fell silent.
Its gravelled base skinkled through the crystal
Like a sliver whang strewn and traikit.
Seeing the reservoir he ran to its edge.
I saw the brown trout’s back
Ripple a colour change as he pitched those stones.
Before we left, looking back,
We saw it mirror the sky.
Two birds swam there.
a strinkle o snaa
bi Andrew McCallum
there’s a strinkle o snaa
owre the lip o the toun
the mill burn rins fou
the sun throu trees
wizzent bi the snar o winter
a lea o scabbit hirst
twa three dugs
a brucken shed
a wean pleuterin i the ryme
a new-howkit lair
lik a lassie’s breist
cled in a strinkle o snaa
on the stane Here lies . . .
a foreign name
a migrant worker
lown she lies
rowed in a sark o glaur
the souch o er braith
deavin the silence