Tiny Play Challenge

Fishamble are running a tiny play challenge.
 Each week they issue a theme and the competition runs from Friday to the following Thursday.
 The challenge is to write a play in 600 words or less!
The theme this week is Trade. 
Have a look at the link below and have a go....
Tiny Play Challenge

Covid Talk

Well I’m going down the road anyway! I want to smell grass, feed ducks in the park.

Me too!

You know it’s not allowed now. It’s illegal.

Since when? Says who?

The government, and if we’re caught there'll be consequences. Fines. Maybe jail, and there are hundreds of people there, all sneezing and coughing and spitting on top of each other.

I spat on twenty people last week. Before the lock down.

I spat on a hundred.

I went out as a bin bag and hopped along the whole length of the road.

You saw that on a video.

Didn’t.

Did.

Who says we’re unfit? Obese?

Non essential.

Shouldn’t be allowed in shops.

I bought twenty packets of toilet roll, forty cans of pears, six boxes of ice-cream and rubber gloves.Dozens of them.

I bought hundreds of hand wipes and Easter eggs and pasta and hand sanitisers

You can’t get those anywhere.

I have loads of them. Thousands.

I want to go to the park. I need fresh air.

We could borrow Rover, next door.

Hates us.

Doesn’t

Does so. Remember that time you nearly killed him.

Thought those pellets were treats.

Did not

Did.

More like rat poison. He remembers that. Mutts never forget.

That’s elephants.

You’re allowed  brief exercise within 2 metres of home.

You mean kilometres.

Not us.

Unfair.

Ageist.

I want to cut the heads off daffodils in the park.

With a sword

Or a stick.

A walking stick.

Berate dog walkers with dogs off leads.

Or on leads.

Throw sticks in the spokes of cyclists.

Trip up joggers

Get justice!

Voice from the side: Are you two playing two metres apart?

We are.

Well come in and wash your hands and you can have ice cream and pears and then we’ll go to the shops but you know you’ll have to –

Stay outside. We know, Ma. We will.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2020

Whatsapp during Lockdown

Since Rosy joined the Whatsapp group…

There have been alerts about thousands of euro

Flying out of customers’ accounts, mostly Danske customers,

But maybe you too…

Preventative cures for Covid 19: like lemon in hot water

Imbibed in the evening with a teaspoon of baking powder…

Images of a Scarlett O’Hara eat-your-heart-out ball gown replete with petticoat hoop-

The latest seasonal-social-distancing outfit from Amazon…

O Corona sung to the tune of Rodgers’ and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma…

Bored lockdown victim cutting the grass with scissors (I do that anyway betimes)…

Dog on strike in protest on top of kitchen cupboard

Refusing to go for yet another inessential outing…

A hundred admonitions to stay safe, wash hands, cough/sneeze into tissue,

Keep two metres apart…

Rotterdam’s Philharmonic Orchestra performing

separately-together from different locations…

Good jokes, bad jokes, wine jokes

Did I tell you the one about….

Eight Things Happy People Do…

A clip from the Bee Gees video Stayin’ Alive…

And a quote from Seamus Heaney:

“if we winter this one out

we can summer anywhere”

Thanks Rosy!!

Copyright 2020 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved

Covid in the Park

Ribbons flutter on the path up ahead. Another doomed tree?

Or a wishing-tree, a fairy-tree, a rag-tree?

Repository of our prayers, our requests for intervention,

for blessing in these new Covid days?

Pink and striped, the ribbons look like crystal sugar sticks

Their hydraulic action excavating and demolishing milk teeth

Souvenir rock wrapped in plastic that creaks and cracks and cuts like glass

I smell salt on the air, hear the flow and backflow of waves shingling across stone

But these are Exercise Stations, not trees,

Their candy-striped-pink supplications

Asking you not to embrace

Warning you not to engage

Reminding you that taste and touch

Can be fatal these days.

Copyright 2020 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved

 

For Eoin

We didn’t candle-bless your birthday this month

And Mother’s Day has slipped-by unkissed and unhugged

And no-one’s buying Easter eggs. And when I see them there

Stocked and shelved in empty aisles I think of you-

Giant Dairy Milk panic-bought early, and often

At half price after the event. And you

Cracking eggs well into the summer

And this year you ask has Easter been cancelled?

And where are we on the graph?

And can we flatten out the curve?

And when will it peak?

And when can you come home?

Copyright 2020 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved