For my mum, Sunday mornings were always
reserved for reading the paper. She would sit either in bed (winter) or out the
back of the house (every other season), with a coffee in hand, and our cat,
Isabella, who would lurk at the edge and lie down over the articles that my mum
honed in on. You could always tell when it happened too, because my mum would
sigh, exasperated, and then shift Isabella just enough to keep reading and,
depending, would either give up, or start lifting the pages around the cat who’d
make a point of stretching out as much as possible.
From when I was ten or so, I’d meet her
in the mornings in time to pull out the kids pages (Factor X) and then she’d read me my horoscope from the health
section, which always involved something cryptic about work or romance of which
at the time I had neither.
I’m twenty-one now, and I don’t live with
my mum who has a new set of routines surrounding paper readership, her days now less occupied as her house is minus a husband and two of her three kids, but there’s something about reading
on lazy Sunday mornings that never really left my routine. I post a lot of
scattered sentiments on this blog, but I aim for a focus on narrative, character,
place and other story based thoughts and links (however abstract that connection is sometimes). So, keeping in tune with that, I’m
pleased to introduce my Sunday Shorts series. Every Sunday morning, in lieu of
reading the paper, I’ll be posting a piece of short fiction or a short essay,
usually other awesome writers, but sometimes my own too. If you have any recommendations (I'm always keen for new stories!), you should comment, or email me at anowlishgirl at gmail dot com.
To break it in, The Faery Handbag by Kelly Link, a genuine and awesome story about
love, loss, myth, reality and, most of all, about telling stories. (You should also buy the collection, Magic for Beginners which is a hundred shades of wonderful).
