Conkers

[erastes]

I think I’ll have a go at the Saints and Sinners short story competition. they want something a bit longer (5k minimum) than I like to do, but I’ll give it a try – my short stories are happier at 2k than 5k. Too much learning my short story trade with fanfic, I think. 5k were like—novellas to me back then.

For a couple of years now I’d been noticing how the horse chestnut trees around here looked brown and dying around this time of year, long before anything else started to turn – and now I know why – it was on Autumnwatch last night that there’s a new parasite—a european leaf miner—which is eating the leaves out of sync with any natural predator, and if something isn’t contrived to control them, we are looking at horse chestnut extinction which—in light of the fact that we’ve only had them in England for a couple of hundred years (brought over by John Tradescant in seven conkers) would be a bloody disaster. No conkers for the future children of England? UNTHINKABLE.

A friend of Dad’s neighbour called today and mistook me for Dad’s wife, when I said “i’m his daughter,” he said “Oh, sorry – I have a younger wife, who’s 60.” Crap. Do I look ten years older than I am?  *keels self*

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