With apologies to anyone with an unusually spelt name! Poor Dayve – one of those kids born to parents determined to bring up their child to be different and they thought giving him a name with spelling unlike any other was a good start. Unfortunately, like most kids in this situation, he was destined to have to spell it for the rest of his life. Maybe he’d come up with a novel way of describing it. It’s “Day” with the German version of “we” on the end – “ve”. Ah, maybe too co

What a nice day for a mango smoothie, exclaimed Dayve, as he slurped his way through his liquid breakfast. I was the same thing he ordered from the local café at Bar Beach every morning. This is just the beginning of our story. About a 6 minute walk from the beach, Dayve had a petite but homely house where he resided with his 9 pigeons. It was located in the middle of ‘Peculiar Street’, a street named after the historical event whereby Captain Cook pondered over the chicken

The crows were sitting in their usual tree. Ah Ahhhing as usual. It was a usual day. There were normally three crows but today there were only two. I wonder what they are thinking, I thought to myself, as I sipped my cup of Earl Grey, sans milk, sans sugar. I am a purist after all. I wonder if birds can be purists? I mean will some of them only ever eat a particular type of seed they won't add other seeds to it…or milk or sugar I suspect. They seem to be chatting to each othe

At early morn, about once a month (homeworld time), the night sky would be almost dark. The trillion stars meet the BlueBow Butterflies as they rise from the grasses to blend like stars joining the celestial paradise. The air is a bit crisp, even chilly, and the translucent animals and birds meld into Bonn’s visuals. He normally couldn’t see them in daylight but at this precious time they blend and move like a slow trickle throughout the grasslands below their camp. Bonn

At waking time when all the suns were lowest on the horizon, Bonn would hear a musical note floating in his range as if flying by. It was always slightly flat then disappear like being tuned in and out. Puter said it was from a native bird with gracious wings, long tail and iridescent blue-purple-silver then invisible to Bonn’s visuals as the musical notes hit a higher octave. It wasn’t like a high-pitched squeak or siren but slightly flat warbling notes. Bonn rarely saw b

The mist crept into the valley. But not like it usually did. A young woman was sitting in her favourite tree house, looking out down the valley, into the gorge and across the escarpment. She usually felt like she was in the clouds, but not today. The mist was there. It usually felt ethereal, and she usually felt like she had summoned it, and that she was the Enchanter. But not today. Today it was a dark green mist and that wasn’t normal she thought to herself. Parts of th

Since crashing on this planet, Mother has designed and implemented regulated daily resistive strength-based training to ward off atrophy. Since space-travel began, off-homeworld muscles shift from slow-twitch to fast-twitch reducing overall endurance and causing weakness. The ‘soft-suit’ has been used for centuries to help simulate homeworld gravity and Mother has been designing nutritional supplements to help reduce the catabolic processes that degrade muscle mass. By usi

Listed by closing date. 1 April: The Nature And Place Poetry Competition 2026 UK based competition. Poems that deal with any aspect of nature and place, up to 40 lines. Blind judging. Entry fees start at £7. Prizes £1,000, £500, and £250. 3 April: Allen & Unwin Crime Fiction Prize Open residents of Australia and New Zealand. Unpublished full-length crime or thriller manuscripts, 70,000 - 100,000 words. Prize: publishing contract with an advance against royalties of $25

Welcome back! We’ve been quiet in the public eye but much has been happening. The February meeting effectively became an AGM, where we focused on the following key issues: Funding for the website We don’t charge membership fees, and this year our web hosting costs reached prohibitive levels. An initial decision was made to retire our current website and move to a free platform. Options explored included Google Sites and Blogger, but the results proved…underwhelming. Fin

‘Are you losing it?’ ‘Excuse me?’ ‘We had a whole conversation about this last night.’ ‘DID we?’ ‘Yes, you had this whole thing about how you really don’t like trifle, and you’ve been eating it just to keep me company, and truth be told you’d rather never see another bowl of trifle as long as you live.’ ‘DID I?’ Her eyes pop wide. She silently considers that the truth of this statement is undeniable. ‘I have absolutely no recollection.’ ‘Anyway, that’s fine. Never mind about

Look out the window, no focus….just fog. Brain wonders, drifts. Memories, pictures, dance across, twist into one another. The carpet blends swayingly. “Oh, a button. How did it get there? What did it fall off?” Turning it over in his hand. The colour, the shape, but not what it fell off. “I wonder, know this button, it's off??….Ohhh, I can see it, I know this, I know its feel. Where from? I’ll have to check all my shirts and jumpers and, you know, stuff that has b

I’m bored. I’m bored. Ohhhh. What can I do now? I’m so bored I could mow the lawns. No I could clean the bins out. No. I could go through my mail. No. God, what can I do? I’ve got so much that I could be doing, but none of it really inspires me. Ooo. I could write a story. Nah. Bloody hell, I’m just so bored. Oh my god...I have some chocolate slice in the fridge. I could eat that. Yayyyy! How could I be so forgetful?

It was by way of return that I stumbled on my old school enemy at the train station. I had been travelling and working for 10yrs. It was time to come home and settle in to running my parent’s cattle station. They had been so kind to allow me the freedom to have a life of my own and now that they were getting on I wanted to be there for them. They had never implied that I had to run the station but I wanted to do it and do it well. There she was Karen What’s Her Name. I coul

I decided to switch my style and write nice happy pieces. I thought about kittens and puppies and sunshine and roses. They just didn’t do it for me. That’s not to say I don’t like them…I just couldn’t get inspired. Hmmmm. Hmmmm some more. Difficult. I thought about the old lady who lived next door. Maybe I’ll get some inspiration. I didn’t know much about her and hardly saw her. I decided to find out more, but it wasn’t the sort of thing you look up on LinkedIn…well I

I have a cold, and I’m coughing. The apothecary’s daughter suggested her father’s syrup, but I’ve had too close a view of his workshop to take that up. Meanwhile the weeks go past and Mary complains she can’t sleep for the noise I make. Harry from the blacksmith’s, little Harry with the smutty nose, says his uncle in the country swears by a pickled pigeon’s egg, mashed with honey and ash. Where does one find a pigeon egg in November, let alone a pickled one? And why am I pa

‘Waiter!’ ‘Yes sir.’ ‘Bring me a large cold coffee please… my taste-buds are on fire… Wicked.’ The waiter left…with the name bored look on his face that he wore all evening. ‘That usually gets a laugh or two…’ spoke this young man… who was actually chuckling… . Chuckling for three really, as his companion simply looked embarrassed. For a first date, this was starting off ‘not good’. She sighed inwardly, considered her predicament. ‘How do I get out of this evening wit

“Whatcha mean cold coffee?? My mother and great grandmother, and her girlfriend (yes, she finally came out), hate cold coffee. Personally, I’ll drink coffee through a shitty rag. We useta have races at the factory on who could leave their coffee the longest to see who’s was the coldest. One bloke left his coffee for 3 weeks. – We then found out he’d died 2 weeks before from bad coffee. Supposedly he won.” “But I’ll drink coffee at any temperature. Even make coffee ice cubes

Snow Snow slush Snow slush plus coffee Cold coffee Mit milch und sucre It’s winter in the lands of the midnight sun and it is what we drink after a robust cross-country ski to the outdoor sauna – in the dark… The coffee hardens us for the plunge. Toby would dunk himself in the Bondi Ice Bergs annual ice float, ‘just to keep his toes’ in he said. But, truly, his spirit missed the Northern Lights and those never-ending days. He claimed it gave him back all the hours he’d slep

‘What the fuck.’ ‘What?’ ‘Every time.’ ‘What?’ ‘This fucking coffee is cold.’ ‘Oh dear.’ ‘I'm going to tell them.’ ‘Ohhhh.’ ‘Excuse me girly.’ ‘Oh no.’ ‘Yes.’ says the eighteen-year-old, astounded at the address. ‘My fucking coffee is cold AGAIN,’ says my 89 year old mother. To say the girlie was astounded is an understatement. ‘Go to get the manager!’ With this girlie slinks off and talks to the manager. A very well dressed lady strides over, jaw set, looking more like she h

Living on a planet in the habitable zone of a three-sun system creates sunsets that blend different colours across the horizon. The suns are Bright Yellow, Red Dwarf and distant Blue Sun. They appear to be dancing, switching around each other in the sky, rarely standing in the same relative position and creating a perpetually shifting and switching dramatic sky. The planet acts as a buffered world where the large inertia of the oceans keep the climate safe and suitable for