Jane Jago's Blog, page 9

How To Be Old – A Beginner’s Guide! (9)

Advice on growing old disgracefully from an elderly delinquent with many years of expertise in the art – plus free optional snark…

I am old as you rightly suggest
And often I don’t look at my best
But I just think sod that 
And shove on a hat
And stick out my oversized chest

© jane jago

The Nightingale

Oh what can ail thee, nightingale
Alone and with no song to sing
When moonlight strikes the underpass
And iron rails do ring

Oh what has made thee weep and cry
And huddle in thy threadbare coat
Why do salt tears seep from thine eyes
And clog thy long white throat

I see a faded summer rose
Entangled in thy midnight hair
And though the light shines in thy face
I see no spark of moonlight there

I met a man the maiden sighed
Full fat and fair was he
Who brought me from my garden green
And promisèd his ...

Roguing Thieves: Part Eight

A sci-fi story of love, betrayal and Space Pirates!

It was another cycle before Dekker made good on his offer. A cycle during which Pan kept herself focused on being what they wanted her to be. She realised that the pirates were not so very different from the freetraders they prayed upon. They lurched from payday to payday making enough to get by and always dreaming of the big one that would let them retire. But unlike most freetraders they didn’t mind killing to get there.
By half way through...

The Chronicles of Nanny Bee – Rustic Humour

They called her Nanny Bee, although as far as anyone knew she had never been a wife or a mother, let alone a grandmother. But she was popularly believed to be a witch – so Nanny it was. She lived in a pink-walled thatched cottage that crouched between the village green and the vicarage. The Reverend Alphonso Scoggins (a person of peculiarly mixed heritage and a fondness for large dinners) joked that between him and Nanny they could see the villagers from birth to burial.
Nanny’s garden was the mo...

Jane Jago’s Summer Stories – Dangerous Hobby

Leisure vehicle users were dying.
They were going to sleep in their shiny ‘vans and just not waking up. Various theories were advanced for this phenomenon, including foul play by person or persons unknown, but nobody could actually put their finger on a cause. After some months of speculation. a government-sponsored study was set up. It discovered that people did indeed die in leisure vehicles far more frequently than was statistically explainable – even given the average age of the people concer...

Dog Days – Puppy Dog

The Dog Days are the high days of summer and a perfect time to celebrate our canine companions in verse and prose.

Puppy dog, puppy dog
Where have you been?
I’ve been in the garden
To keep the house clean.

Puppy dog, puppy dog,
What did you there?
I pooped under the rose bush
Then peed up the chair

Puppy dog, puppy dog
Why did you do that?
I couldn’t quite make it
When chasing the cat.

Puppy dog, puppy dog
That is so bad!
I know I’ve been naughty
But please don’t be mad.

Puppy dog, puppy dog,...

Dai and Julia – On the Beach

In a modern-day Britain where the Roman Empire never left, Dai and Julia solve murder mysteries, whilst still having to manage family, friendship and domestic crises…

There were, Dai decided as his two children buried him in the sand on the beach at Traeth Abermaw for the third time that day, far worse times of year to be placed on gardening leave from his job as Submagistratus of Demetae and Cornovii.
It was not that he was under real suspicion, that had been made clear several times by the M...

How To Be Old – A Beginner’s Guide! (8)

Advice on growing old disgracefully from an elderly delinquent with many years of expertise in the art – plus free optional snark…

You are old, and you are a disgrace
Should be modest and downcast of face
It is so deeply wrong 
That you’re wearing a thong
And a peephole in black silk and lace

© jane jago

Sorry Mr Shakespeare!

Where the beer flows, there go I
In the pub snug bar I lie
Drinking beer until the cry:
‘Last orders, please’ when I sigh.
Until summer merrily.
Verily, merrily
Shall I go then
Into the beer garden, to drink with friends!

Eleanor Swift-Hook

One of the poems you can find in In Verse

Roguing Thieves: Part Seven

A sci-fi story of love, betrayal and Space Pirates!

So home was now an underground lair on a nameless, tempest ravaged dust world.
And although she knew that all she touched was soaked with the blood of freetraders, Pan found it surprisingly easy to push that away and focus on the work she was expected to do.
The hard part, the really hard part, was sleeping with her betrayer as if nothing had changed between them.
At first someone shadowed her all the time, checking what she had been doing. The...