The Dickens Twist

Quite a few pieces of my writing have been inspired by people I met through my work. My piece 'A Girl Can Dream' published in Yours magazine was fiction but inspired by two real people whose names I chose to keep. The title was not of my choosing! The real Cathy would probably have laughed, and - providing she'd had a vodka and orange which she rightly maintained helped her speech become clearer - agreed the original title was better.

Another recently published flash, 'A Rose Petal Falls' was not inspired by an actual person but the fact that occasionally elderly people in our care, died with no-one to mourn them. Our unit manager would attend their funerals and often be the only mourner. 

'27th January 1995' is a part fiction / part truth flash as a tribute to a modest man who, on the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, quiety mentioned he had been held there. 

There is also a piece about an actor who filmed part of an episode of a long running police drama series on the farm where I lived when I was twelve. Fifty years later we met again when he presented at my clinic with a minor voice problem. At the end of our second session, I felt he would not mind my mentioning our first meeting and described the scene he'd filmed as an undercover cop. 

'Good lord,' he said. 'I was dressed as a hippie wearing a yellow shirt, wasn't I.'  He certainly was - my twelve year old self had thought he looked rather wonderful (I didn't tell him that bit.) I was amazed that he could remember part of a single episode when he'd filmed goodness knows how many in his long career.

The latest piece soon to be published is from two separate and very different patients both of whom stood out in my memory. I spotted a callout for pieces about working life for an anthology and dusted off a piece my writing group had read, spruced it up and sent it off, with no real expectation of it being selected. To my delight it was and this time the editor's suggested title, 'The Dickens Twist' is much better than mine! Is This Working will be launched in Brisbane on September 21st 2024.