300 for 1. Tranquil.

Where I come from, storms often start and finish within ten minutes. The sky fills with dark clouds, the light dims and the wind strengthens. There is a clap of thunder, a strobe of lightning and it pours with rain for a few minutes. Then it departs, taking the high temperatures and humidity with it. Ten minutes later, ten degrees cooler; all business concluded.

Where I live now, the storms which roll in are raw and humbling. They swallow the sky above our heads and last for hours; chain lightning spitting across the night, thunderclap upon thunderclap shaking the house. I will stand on my porch, watch the rain fall in sheets of white nails and there will be no respite from the heat, the humidity; just an opportunity to marvel at this perfect example of nature’s ferocity in its most pure form. The lights will flicker, the dogs will whine and I will think back to those first white settlers; those convicts, soldiers, officials who came to this land as the eighteenth century came to a close. Sheltering in their timber shacks, all hell raging overhead - I can only wonder how terrifying and alien it would have been.

We extinguish the lights, crawl to the safety of our beds. The constant din of hard rain on a hard tin roof is strangely comforting as we fall asleep to the lullaby raging beyond our windows. Later I will wake in the dark hours before dawn to find the storm gone. I will walk through the house, immerse myself in the quiet resonance of this calm after the storm and there will be just one sound; the quiet dripping of water from the night outside as the world slowly dries; washed clean, ready to sparkle under a new day’s sun.


Thank you to Tracie for this suggestion - and for inspiring this whole idea in the first place. If you would like to suggest an adverb or adjective and see what 300 words it generates, please feel free to get in touch. My email address is listed on my profile.

To those of you who have emailed words and are waiting to see them, thank-you and please bear with me. Your patience will eventually be rewarded, promise.

300 for 1. Homesick.

In the end I dealt with it the way most men would; I battered every emotional response into submission with a relentless barrage of rationalisation and logic.

Picking up my life of thirty three years and carrying it across the globe to Australia would have ramifications. It could not be denied that things would change and it seemed pointless to cry about it or wish it could be different. I would not be able to spend long evenings with my friends any more, nor would I be able to take my place at the table for family birthday celebrations. For most of my adult life there had been little more than forty miles between my family members - but now that was to change. Now that distance was to be multiplied three hundredfold, countless borders and entire continents placed between us - and only a fool would allow that truth to take him by surprise, detract from his days.

My philosophy worked; any risk of homesickness eradicated by the future waiting for me on the other side of the world. After an age of planning I finally packed my life into bags, spent a week saying goodbye to everybody I knew. With all farewells distributed, I left the UK in January 2005 and landed in Sydney some twenty four hours later. My wife was waiting for me, armed only with a smile and a bunch of flowers and I was too excited and happy to feel anything other than elation. Life was good, better than good, amazing – it just took place in another country now.

Sometimes I dream that I am back in Britain, can never return to Australia. I am always relieved to wake and find myself back in this reality. This is where I live, where I belong.


Thank you to Kristin for this suggestion. If you would like to suggest an adverb or adjective and see what 300 words it generates, please feel free to get in touch. My email address is listed on my profile.

300 for 1. Rich.

It is the perfect fit for those Sundays which arrive once summer has departed - those quieter weekends which sit under contemplative, cloud-laden grey skies. Motivation is absent on these days, all the time in the world available to do nothing in particular - and it fits best, meshes seamlessly into days like these.

This is when I will meander to the supermarket, pore over the meat and select plump red cuts scored with a healthy marbling of white fat. I will circle the fresh produce countless times until my bag is full with a variety of winter vegetables. Finally will I buy wine - something heavy and heady. I will dream of finding a Rioja or Barolo, resign myself to leaving with a Merlot or Burgundy

Returning home, the meat will be fried brown, sealed tight. Onions will be sliced and fried with garlic; mushrooms, parsnips and carrots chopped coarsely. Herbs added by the handful, stock by the pour and finished with glug upon glug of wine. Into the oven and now we wait for time to pass, for the scent of meat and wine to fill the house. It will simmer, reduce, intensify until sunset – and the longer it is given, the better it becomes.

It will be served that night; an indulgent dish to blast the mists from this nothing day. The meat will be tender, the vegetables soft but the crowning glory will be the sauce: thick and dark, a perfectly glazed fusion of stock, herbs, wine. My family will like it but call it too rich; intense, overwhelming. They will say it’s too much and I will disagree; say that there can be no ‘too much’ when something is this good.

My philosophy and lifelong Achilles heel complement each other perfectly. It explains so much.


Thank you to Kitty for this suggestion. If you would like to suggest an adverb or adjective and see what 300 words it generates, please feel free to get in touch. My email address is listed on my profile.

300 for 1. Quirky.

Oh God, here he comes.

I shouldn’t be surprised to see him. After all, he attends the opening of every art exhibition occurring in this city. He is our own version of a bona-fide patron of the arts – but unfortunately he is also our own version of a weird uncle.

Even in a crowd of colourfully dressed artists, funky students and eccentric art aficionados, it is impossible not to spot him. An older man of average height, he could easily blend into the crowd, goes to great effort to ensure this will never occur. His messily parted hair is dyed a brassy hue which makes no attempt to pass itself off as natural and his eyes are hidden behind oversized tinted sunglasses. Draped from his sinewy frame is a garish Hawaiian shirt, three buttons gaping to reveal a multitude of sparkling medallions, oversized crucifixes, bulky chains. His wrists hang thick with bracelets and his fingers are studded with rings; gold and silver bands clasping stones which are surely too big to be genuine? With him though, you just can’t be sure.

What you can be sure of is that he is usually responsible for at least one red dot alongside a painting at most openings. His house is said to be crammed full, paintings stacked in piles and all walls groaning with the weight of canvas and board. Despite this he still comes to openings, still acquires work. He drinks the free wine, holds court and critiques the exhibition with whichever poor souls he can corner. He is self-absorbed and rather painful - yet he bought one of my wife’s paintings at her last exhibition, raves about it whenever we see him and so I force myself to smile warmly as he approaches. Love comes at a price some days……


Thank you to the marvellously bohemian Stephen for this suggestion. If you would like to suggest an adverb or adjective and see what 300 words it generates, please feel free to get in touch. My email address is listed on my profile.

The catalyst question.

The application form had been simple up to that particular question. Name, address, age, date of birth – and even at the age of nineteen, I was already used to answering these questions. The next question was different though. I read it and words failed me.

Why do you want to do this?

Underneath the question was a line; one blank line to hold one neat answer, but there was nothing neat or concise in my head - just a nebulous boiling mass of emotions and reactions.

Because.
Because maybe I can.
Because maybe this is a chance to be good at something again.

When I was nine I had been good at swimming. I had entered my school swimming gala at the local baths and had won every race despite being unable to dive, despite everyone else being able to dive. I had even won the freestyle competition swimming breast stroke whilst everybody else swam front crawl. The bus which took us back to school afterwards went past my house and I had agreed with my mother that she would watch out for us. She would look out of the window as we passed and I would hold up a hand, signal to her if I had won. The reality was that the coach was moving too fast and I could not signal to her in time, could not count off the number of races I had won because there were just too many wins. Because I had won them all.

It had been many years since that bus ride past my house, many years since I had been good at anything other than disappointing, falling short, underachieving. In a family of two children, my brother had grown into the role of the A grade student and I had become the C- child - the 'could do better' child, the 'has potential' child. I had potential but lacked anything resembling motivation and I watched from the side as my brother excelled at school; watched him realise his young potential and make our parents proud. I watched as he made the niche marked 'success' his own, all the time knowing that I could not compete or keep pace with him academically. Eventually I gave up even trying and I forfeited, dropping out of his race and finding other competitions to enter, darker niches to occupy. Finally I was good at something again but this new success was nowhere near as celebrated or accepted as its predecessors. This new success won me no accolades, no admirers and it came at a price. It culminated in my leaving school to avoid being kicked out and I went out to work, clung to a dead-end job in a dead-end department by the skin of my teeth and drank my salary and overdraft every month without fail. I had no plan, no prospects, nobody to answer to - and for a while it was fine but at some stage it stopped being good, stopped being okay. At some stage it began to bother me, make me question myself, my decisions.

Somehow I found myself talking to my mother, a woman I had neglected and generally mistreated for the past two years. She was doing volunteer work with a crisis organisation in her spare time; an organisation designed to accept rather than judge and listen rather than advise. Despite the fact that I had was a master at listening to absolutely nobody, she asked if I had thought about applying to volunteer with that same crisis organisation. For some reason she thought I may be able to do it and bolstered by her support, I had called them one evening. Now I found myself with their application form in front of me and it all came down to that question, to that one concise line onto which my life and intentions had to be condensed.

My mind was a maelstrom as I picked up my pen and wrote just four words along that line. The four words I plucked from the air were more of a plea than they were an answer and I completed the rest of the form, mailed it back, got on with my life as I waited for the response. That is how it all began. It was no miracle cure, no divine conversion and no overnight fix, but it began there - with that question and those four words on that one line.

In total I spent ten years as a volunteer with that organisation. It was a ten year period which taught me tolerance and patience; a decade which gave me a sense of perspective and, eventually, a sense of self-worth. Of all the things I could have been good at, this was certainly the most unexpected. It was serious and sobering and certainly not what I envisaged doing for fun at the age of nineteen. Nevertheless it gave me an insight into the frailty of humanity, a glimpse into the society in which I lived and the lives of those who lived around me. It taught me what I could accept and what I was not prepared to accept, tested my physical and emotional thresholds week in, week out. It was rarely easy but it was always fulfilling and it shaped who I am today more than any other experience. With no word of exaggeration, I cannot imagine whose words you would be reading now if I had not picked up my pen and completed that application form back in 1991.

What began with a struggle to answer a question quickly grew, evolving and mutating into more than was ever expected. It became something new, something which offered me redemption and the strength and confidence around which I could eventually build a life. Finally I was good at something which did not get me into trouble; something which brought calm to my head and my life and something which eventually brought me here, to this moment, to this page.

And it is good to be here - good to look ahead to the days, challenges and questions to come and not to fear their arrival.

300 for 1. Happy.

In a house of three people, I am the only morning person.

Our two dogs are more like me. They greet every morning with wagging tails, bound through the house and the garden with unbridled excitement. My wife and stepson are different though - they stumble from their beds to eye the new day with sleepy distrust, see mornings as a necessary evil which must be eased into, endured. Not for me, this easing and enduring - the way I see it, mornings are exciting times laden with potential. They are the pad from which we launch ourselves heavenwards into a brand new day and if I had a tail, I would be wagging along with the dogs.

Most mornings I wake immediately and hit the ground singing. Whether in the shower, getting dressed, making coffee or packing my bag for the coming day; all activities are usually accompanied by a song. From the moment I wake there is a track simmering in my head, straining to escape my lips and flit into this brand new day. Whether blasted loud and proud into the room or held close as a breathed melody, these songs are the soundtrack to my morning – and if ever there is something wrong, my silence will inform you long before my words will. Only on the rare occasion that I am unhappy, sad or preoccupied will there be no songs accompanying my footsteps as I go from room to room starting my day.

My wife likes that I sing. She likes that my mood is light, even if she struggles to understand why. Time again she asks how I can be so happy in the mornings and time again I give her the same answer: This is life - glorious, breathtaking life. What’s not to like?


Thank you to JennyMac for this suggestion. If you would like to suggest an adverb or adjective and see what 300 words it generates, please feel free to get in touch. My email address is listed on my profile.

300 for 1. Colourful.

It was the latest trend, the current fad and the essential accessory of 1983. It swept through Staple Hill Primary School separating the wheat from the chaff, the boys from the men. If you did not embrace this fad you risked being labelled a baby and that was a stigma I would do anything to avoid. I was nine, I was in the third year and I was popular and reasonably cool. I thought I had it all, knew it all – and if there was a choice to be made, a decision which marked you as either all-grown-up or still growing up, there was only one choice I was making.

The trend which swept my school in 1983 was swearing - and I did not so such much embrace it as hug it to death.

Lunch time began with the ringing of a bell and we would spill out of our class, go to the prefab building to eat our packed lunches. We would talk as usual but our vocabulary was altered now. We included a quiet ‘fuck’ to test the waters and when God failed to strike us down, we grew in confidence. We added a ‘piss’ here, a ‘bastard’ there and it grew from there. Before long, swear words accounted for 50% of every sentence, every conversation. We were big fucking kahunas as we strode across the playground tarmac effing and blinding our heads off. We had arrived - we were officially cool kids.

And eventually we were officially busted. A teacher heard our colourful language and reported us to the head, who called our parents. My parents sat me down and read me the riot act and made me promise that I would never ever swear again.

Did I keep my promise? Of course I fucking didn’t.


Thank you to Veronica for this suggestion. If you would like to suggest an adverb or adjective and see what 300 words it generates, please feel free to get in touch. My email address is listed on my profile.