Tag Archives: #memories

Frankenstein’s Purr

Posted on November 3, 2025 | Leave a comment

From the second I saw them

Your blue eyes stole my heart

And you purred

From the day you came home

Cat wars that lasted a decade ensued

And you purred

You would fight with your shadow if it had paws

Advancing age and a lack of teeth didn’t matter

And you purred

The last of “the old guard”

Still looking like two cats stitched together

And you purred

A tiny cat with a huge heart

Always a midnight “song” for all to hear

And you purred

Too weak to stand

The rainbow bridge beckoned

And you purred

I miss that purr.

Frankenstein    Feb 2010- 14 October 2025

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The Measly Jar of Motivation – Rosebud Sweets

Posted on September 9, 2025 | Leave a comment

As soon as I pulled this prompt from the Measly Jar of Motivation, I smiled as a childhood image came flooding back – rosebud sweets!

I haven’t tasted on of those sweets in almost forty years! (Lord, that makes me sound SO old! LOL)

When I was a wee girl, before I was old enough for school and then during the school holidays, I would go to the local post office on a Tuesday with my Wee Gran to collect her pension. The postmaster, Mr Stirling was a character. He was a lovely old man who always had time for a blether and a joke with his customers but equally important, he kept a dish of sweets beside him to give to the children who came into the post office.

The dish was actually the plastic lid off one of the big jars of traditional “old fashioned” sweets that shops used have lined up on shelves behind the counter.

Usually there was a lengthy queue in the post office on pension day. I would stand patiently with my gran as we edged closer to the counter. There were always two people serving – Mr Stirling and a lady called Agnes. She too had a dish of sweets beside her, but she didn’t always offer you one. I don’t think she liked children that much and to be honest, I was a little scared of her.

If Mr Stirling served my gran, before he’d stamp her pension book and count out the cash, he would offer me the dish and say to take a sweetie. Sometimes, when he was passing the pension book and pension back across the counter, he would say to take a second sweet.

Those small pink rose scented fondant sweets were delicious. To this day they are one of the scents and tastes of childhood.

A few years later, Mr Stirling retired, and another postmaster took over. The first time after that when I accompanied my gran to the post office, I was a little bit anxious. Would this new man know that he was supposed to give the children a sweet? Would he think I was too old to get a sweetie?

I needn’t have worried. The dish of rosebud sweets was still there.

Years went by and I grew up and became a teenager, while my wee gran simply grew older. Occasionally when I was in my late teens, I would be trusted to go and collect her pension for her. As I stood in the queue feeling both grown up at being trusted with such an important errand and about sixty or seventy years too young to be in the queue, another thought entered my mind. Was I now too old to be offered a rosebud sweet?

It turns out I wasn’t. I guess you’re never too old to enjoy a rosebud sweet.

Image sourced via Google- credits to the owner (no watermark)

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Fortune Telling

Posted on April 23, 2025 | Leave a comment

Recently I have been taking part in one of Beth Kempton’s #tinypoem challenges. I love these as they keep the creative juices flowing. You get a one-word prompt for the day and 10 minutes with no editing to come up with a poem. Simple, right?

A recent word prompt stirred nostalgic childhood memories. The word was FOLDED.

Immediately a picture formed in my mind’s eye.

Who else remembers making “fortune tellers” from a folded square of paper when they were a child?

Who can still remember how to make one?

Back then we didn’t need tarot cards or astrology charts to predict our future. All we needed was a piece of paper and our imagination.

Those were the days….

Folded

A square of paper

Folded on the diagonal twice

Opened out

Corners folded into the centre

1, 2, 3 and 4

Flip it over and repeat.

How many of these have I made?

What fortunes did they foretell?

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Ten years ago today……

Posted on April 15, 2025 | Leave a comment

Ten years… a whole decade… since my first book baby, Stronger Within was published for Kindle. (The paperback edition followed a few weeks later)

It feels truly surreal that ten years have passed since that day.

I chose the date carefully. (I’m a bit weird about dates) The 15th April would have been my Wee Gran’s birthday. It was also the date that The Big Green Gummi Bear proposed to me. It was a date that felt as if it augured well.

In all honesty, I was absolutely petrified about self-publishing my first-born book baby. Was I about to make myself a laughingstock? What if no one bought it? What if everyone who did then hated it? What if they all thought it was rubbish? What if….

Looking back, it took me more personal courage than I knew I had to release that book, but I also knew that by taking the plunge that I was making my lifelong dream come true.

Ever since I had been a little girl, I’d dreamed of being an author one day and seeing my name on the cover of a book. I made that dream come true.

Stronger Within’s story began almost two years earlier on 8 May 2013 when I bought a notebook and pen on the way home from work then after dinner that evening, sat down on my front doorstep in the early evening sunshine and began to write. As I wrote page after page over the coming weeks and months, I had no idea that this story that I was writing was destined to become my first book.

One of my biggest fears, one that I have worked hard to conquer, is a crippling fear of letting people read what I write. It’s a terrible fear for an author to have! It was months before I told anyone about what I was attempting to do. Thanks to the belief that a few close friends had in me, I was persuaded to type the story up and share it with them. They loved it! Even the friend who on the face of things should have hated it, loved it. Their love and faith in my storytelling gave me the push I needed to venture into the world of self-publishing. It was a steep learning curve!

If you’d said to me on 15 April 2015 that ten years down the line, I’d have seven novels and a poetry anthology for sale worldwide via Amazon and that they’d all have multiple glowing reviews, I would never have believed you. I’d have thought you were insane to even think I could achieve that. Seven novels? Me? Never….

Yet here we are and that’s exactly what happened. My eighth novel is in the pipeline too. It still feels completely surreal…I am a published author who has sold books in several countries around the world!

Over the years people have asked me how I do it. I’ve been asked countless times about how I find the time to do it. I’ve been asked why I do it.

The how is that I sit down somewhere, whether that’s at my desk, or the picnic table or the doorstep with a notebook and a pen and I write the story one word after another.

The time I carve out to do something that I am passionate about. If you care enough about something you will always find time in your day to do it. Some days it’s a few hours and on others it’s a few minutes.

The why is a bit more complex to answer but the short version is that it gives me somewhere to escape to.

Writing to me is like oxygen. I can’t imagine a day without it in one form or other.

I’ve always said that if it ever begins to feel like work then that’s the day that I put the lid back on my pen, close over my notebook and put them down.

If you’ve spared some of your hard-earned pennies to purchase one of my books, I thank you.

If you’ve read it and then taken the time to leave me a review online, I thank you.

If you haven’t read any of them yet, then I’d encourage you to give one a try. You never know, you might enjoy it. Lots of other people have so far.

For me the end goal here isn’t to seek fame and fortune. (Ok a little bit of a fortune would be nice, I’ll not lie.) There are very few indie-authors who earn enough from their books to make a living. Without a word of a lie, at the time of writing this, my estimated royalties for the month are £1.56/$2.00 – not even enough to buy a cup of coffee. I write for the love of telling the story and if by telling that story I evoke an emotional reaction in my reader whether it be laughter or tears then my job is done.

They say everyone has a book in them so if you fancy finding the book in you, buy a notebook and a pen, find a sunny spot, sit down and begin to write. You never know where that dream will take you.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you to each and every one of you who has supported my creative journey over the last ten years, especially to my Infamous Five.  I couldn’t do it without your love and support and belief in me.

Love n hugs

Coral

PS If you’ve not checked out any of my book babies yet, here’s the links-

Silver Lake series

Amazon.com links –

Stronger Within – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00VXDSC1M  FREE TO DOWNLOAD TODAY

Impossible Depths – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01C0GS30K

Bonded Souls – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XSQHG71

Shattered Hearts – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZY8ZSDM

Long Shadows – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08RR1FGLG

Amazon.co.uk links  –

Stronger Within – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00VXDSC1M  FREE TO DOWNLOAD TODAY

Impossible Depths – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01C0GS30K

Bonded Souls – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B06XSQHG71

Shattered Hearts – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07ZY8ZSDM

Long Shadows – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08RR1FGLG

Riley

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B9SWP6K3

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0B9SWP6K3

Ellen

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FYHKR44

http s://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07FYHKR44

Beginnings – poetry anthology

Beginnings – a collection of poems – Kindle edition by McCallum, Coral. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

Beginnings – a collection of poems eBook : McCallum, Coral: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

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A Midnight Musical Moment (flash fiction)

Posted on April 7, 2025 | Leave a comment

It was late, almost midnight, and the house was quiet…too quiet. All around her the kitchen lay in chaos after the earlier visit from her kids and their partners. It had been wonderful to have everyone over for dinner, but it was nice to wave them off at the front door too and have the house to herself again.

“Alexa, play my soundtrack,” she instructed as she began to load the dishwasher.

The first song that the “sometimes-not-so-smart” speaker began to play stirred up emotional ghosts from the past.

“Skip,” she stated sharply as she added the cutlery to the basket in the dishwasher.

Soon the kitchen was filled with music. She sang quietly and tunelessly to herself while she worked, content to lose herself in the songs. Music had always been her safe place, her sanctuary, and her playlist held so many precious memories for her.

Still singing, she filled the sink with hot soapy water and began to wash the wine glasses, stacking them carefully on the draining rack. The speaker began to play a song she hadn’t heard for a long, long time. It always reminded her of him. It was the song that had been playing the only time that they had danced together, slightly drunkenly, at a mutual friend’s wedding. That dance was one of her most precious memories of him. They’d trodden on each other’s toes repeatedly as they’d slowly made their way round the dancefloor that night.

Behind her, something in the air stirred. A familiar scent wafted by. She felt hands at her waist, pulling her round and into the all too familiar embrace of her past. Allowing herself to be held, she the arms around her encouraging her to sway in time to the music. Swept up in the moment, she danced slowly round the kitchen, savouring the seconds right through to the dying notes of the song.

From his perch on the breakfast bar, her cat watched the scene, wondering who this man was that was dancing in the kitchen at midnight with his mistress.

(credits to the owner of the image The Heart Speaks via Facebook)

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Five years ago today…..

Posted on March 23, 2025 | Leave a comment

23 March 2020…the day the UK entered its first Covid 19 Lockdown.

How on earth is that five years ago already?

It all seems surreal…

I remember sitting having a coffee in the office canteen with a friend three days before the announcement. We pondered if this virus would come to anything and if we were told that we had to work from home, how long would that last. Little did we realise…

Five years down the line and we’ve not sat together in the office canteen with a coffee since.

That first lockdown for me marks the start of the world changing forever. I appreciate that in my family’s case our lockdown suffered a dark cruel twist of fate when The Big Green Gummi Bear received a terminal cancer diagnosis in September 2020. In so many ways we lived in semi-lockdown conditions for three years.

In years to come, when our children’s children are in school, they’ll come home and ask us, “What did you do during the Covid 19 Lockdowns?” It’ll become one of those questions like “where were you when 9/11 happened?” and “where were you when Kennedy was shot?”

Will our grandchildren really believe that overnight all schools and offices and non-essential shops closed, that you were only allowed out for an hour a day, that the supermarket shelves were half empty and that you had to queue to be allowed into the store to follow a one-way system marked out on the floor? (I still recall being yelled at by a member of our local supermarket staff for going the wrong way down an aisle only to witness her cooing over a customer’s baby in a pram a few moments later and not obeying the 2m social distancing rule….) Will our grandchildren believe that folk were stockpiling toilet rolls and that you couldn’t get any in the shops for love nor money? Will they believe that for months on end people would stand on their doorsteps at 8pm on a Thursday to clap in support of the NHS workers? Will they be able to comprehend having to wear a mask in shops/schools/offices and on public transport?  Will they even be able to comprehend not being able to see our loved ones for weeks on end and then when we could mix socially again you had to stay 2m apart and only meet up outdoors? Will they believe that everyone’s general knowledge dramatically improved as everyone was keeping morale up by doing quizzes on Zoom or Teams?

How do you explain the covid testing rituals we all went through to prove that you didn’t have the virus? Or how to describe the initial panic when the test was actually positive? Would “it” kill me?

I could go on, but you get the gist…. after all you lived through it and have your own memories of the challenges lockdown brought but does it really truly feel like it was five years ago?

It all seems surreal.

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The Measly Jar of Motivation – Snowfall

Posted on February 3, 2025 | Leave a comment

Most days I walk by the house I grew up in…well, grew up in from the age of nine to seventeen. I look fondly at its steep driveway and smile.

I have many memories associated with that driveway by my favourites are of playing on it in winter in the snow. As an adult, I hate snow. I hate being cold. But as a child, that driveway was the best place for sledging and for sliding.

After one memorable snowfall, I recall playing for hours with my childhood friend. I didn’t own a sledge, but she did. The best I had was an old metal tea tray that I waxed with a candle to make it run faster.

We spent ages that day smoothing out our “run” down the driveway. I should explain that at this point in time, under the several inches of snow, the driveway itself was unsurfaced. Blaze had been spread over it to provide a surface for future tarmac and at the bottom there was still a pile of several tons of blaze. With a bit of work and some snow packing, it made the perfect ramp at the bottom of our “run”

With clumps of ice clinging to our woolly gloves and filling our wellie boots, we spent hours sledging on the driveway, getting closer and closer to becoming airborne off the top of that ramp.

If memory serves me right, my friend managed it at least once on her sledge before we realised it was better fun sliding down on the metal tray as it went faster.

The closest to the luge as I’ll ever get!

Precious childhood memories that were rewarded at the end of the day with red icy cold fingers wrapped round a mug of hot chocolate.

Happy carefree days….

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The Measly Jar of Motivation – the ocean- have you seen it?

Posted on May 27, 2024 | 1 comment

Have you ever seen the ocean? I don’t mean on TV or in films or on social media. Have you actually stood on the beach and gazed out over the ocean?

I have. Two of them to be precise but let’s stick with one for the purposes of this blog.

I first saw the ocean fifty years ago this August on a family holiday to the USA. (Lord that makes me sound ancient!) I was four years old but still have some vivid memories of that trip. Among the clearest are those of visiting Ocean City NJ, playing in the icy cold sand under the boardwalk, paddling in the ocean itself and watching my cousin build “drizzle” sandcastles. Some of that sand and ocean seeped into my soul that summer.

We returned six years later for another family reunion. That trip marked the start of another ocean related love affair. We spent a few days staying in Rehoboth Beach DE. (If you’ve read my Silver Lake series, you’ll be familiar with Rehoboth Beach) That small town stole a piece of my heart there and then.

It was another twenty-four years before I returned to the USA for a family trip. This time it was me taking my own young family to experience the ocean’s magic.  We spent a few days in Ocean City MD but on the way back to my aunt’s house, my cousin took the kids and I to Rehoboth Beach. I was a little anxious in case the magic had faded. I needn’t have worries. That ocean magic was still there even if the Weather Gods weren’t being kind that day. We got soaked to the skin in a downpour!

I returned several times over the next eight years and a highlight of each trip was a day at Rehoboth Beach.

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I’ve been able to enjoy the ocean and the beach from afar. In fact, watching the sunrise via FB live videos shared by wonderful local photographers and the webcam on one of the oceanfront hotels helped keep me going through the three years of the Big Green Gummi Bear’s illness.

That ocean kept whispering to me.

As I watched those virtual sunrises, I made a promise to myself to return to Rehoboth Beach and sit on that sand and watch it for myself.

I’m honouring that promise at the end of next month.

My world has changed since my last visit to Rehoboth Beach and my last view of the Atlantic Ocean. My kids have grown up and have lives of their own to lead. I’m now a widow (still not too sure about that word) and I’m returning on my own this time.

I hope that magic is still there….

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The Measly Jar of Motivation – The Tin (flash fiction)

Posted on October 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

So many years had passed since she had last seen “the tin”. When had it even last been opened? The old shortbread tin was beginning to show its age. The tartan sides and border on the lid were faded. The image of snowcapped Scottish mountains on the lid was growing faint with age, almost as though a veil of mist was hanging over their peaks. The tin was older than she was. In fact, it might even be older than her mother.

Holding it in her hands, memories of playing with it as a little girl came rushing back. She had spent many hours sorting through the contents, plaguing her gran to tell her the stories that went with them. Her gran had happily gone wandering down memory lane as she reminisced about where each item had come from.

When she had been a child, the tin had seemed huge and heavy. Now, as she held it in her hands, it was the weight of the memories within that she felt.

Taking great care, she eased off the lid. As she glimpsed inside it, everything looked exactly the same as it had done over forty years before.

The tin was filled with buttons.

There were buttons in all shapes and sizes; there were buttons of every colour.

Lost in her memories, she ran her fingers through the buttons.

She spotted the large dark green buttons that had belonged to her grandfather’s army coat from during the war. There were small round pearl buttons from one of her mother’s summer cardigans from the 1950’s. Big round purple buttons caught her eye. Those came from the wool coat her aunt had bought with her first wage packet. She could see some bone toggles that had been snipped from her father’s duffel coat. One still had its leather loop attached. Several small pearly white buttons with a star in the centre made her smile. They were from her own handknitted baby cardigans. In one of the corners, she saw four or five grey buttons clustered together that had come from one of her primary school cardigans.

Reaching into her jeans pocket, she pulled out four navy blue buttons about the size of a two pence piece. With a wistful smile, she added the buttons from her gran’s favourite cardigan to the tin.

Her whole family history could be told using the buttons from the tin. In her hands, she held several lifetimes of memories. If only those buttons could talk. The tales they would tell!

She was now the custodian of “the tin”. Silently, she promised her gran that she would keep up the family tradition and add her buttons and her children’s buttons to the tin. In time, the tin would pass down to the next generation but for now it was hers to cherish.

A teardrop fell, landing on a red button in the heart of the tin.

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Broken Crayons…

Posted on April 5, 2022 | Leave a comment

It’s funny the things you remember from your childhood. Memories of this box of crayons popped back into my head yesterday when I was in Paperchase deliberating over which journals and pens to treat myself to. I love fancy pens and notebooks!

I remember saving up to buy this box of crayons when I was about 10 years old. I eventually bought my box, complete with sharpener, at the ACME on holiday in America in 1980. No idea what I paid for it but $5 rings a vague bell (it was a long time ago even for my crazy memory).

Even back then I loved colourful pens and pencils and crayons. That box of crayons was my treasured possession at the time. I took great care not to overuse any of the colours in case I had to tear the paper down. (Anyone else remember doing that or is it just me?) The built-in sharpener was used sparingly but I loved the wee colourful curls it spat out. Sad but true! LOL

Oh, happy days….

Now life’s busy. Life’s stressful. Those innocent childhood days when the biggest decision was whether to use Indigo or Violet or Purple are long gone but   one of my favourite sayings still harks back to those days.

We’re all a little broken but last time I checked broken crayons still colour.

(images sourced via Google – credits to the owners)

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