More on short story metaphors

A couple I missed, having only just caught up with a Helen Simpson interview earlier this week. Helen says they're like 'speed boats or soft-top sports cars' - you can get away in them quickly! I like these better than the elderly aunts. Looking forward to The Tipping Point, out this week.

Short Story Metaphors

For some time now I've been collecting short story metaphors. I've heard 'the short story' described as everything from a seagull to a garden shed. The latest was in a piece by Alison Flood in the Guardian about an app for short stories, launched this week by Ether Books. I don't know if it was in the press release or if she thought it up herself, but here we go: 'The short story is the elderly aunt of the literary world: almost impossible to marry off to a publisher'. Some one has been reading too much Jane Austen.

Handy words and phrases

Certain expressions lodge in the mind, and my mother thinks, I like this, I'll keep it. After my dad died, she wanted to be 'left to grieve in private'. Another one - 'enjoy good health'. So-and-so 'doesn't enjoy very good health '. In fact, no one 'enjoys' good health. It's a phrase to be used in the negative only. If I were on Thought for the Day I'd expound on the lessons to be learnt from this, perhaps reading it as a gentle reproach to the rest of us. Like most of us, I learnt to speak from my mother, and after learning to speak I learnt first of all to read and then to write.