December #BlogBattle: Provoke

/ Gary

December 2023 Blog Battle

Right-click & ‘Save As’ one or both of these images to share on social media!

Our word this month is:

Provoke

You can start writing at any time, but make sure you post your story by the

22nd of December

to have a link shared here and on social media.

Once you’ve posted your story to your blog, put a link to it in the comments section, and we’ll add your story to the Battle Stories Line-up post that goes live the 3rd Friday of the month (the same as the post-by date).

Make sure to check back and read some of the stories of your fellow battlers. Leave comments to encourage these writers. And go a step further in supporting one another by sharing each other’s stories on your own blog or social media, whatever you’re most comfortable with!

Basic Rules:

The Prompt Word will be given the First FRIDAY of every month.

Post your story by the 3rd Friday of the same month (this is the same date as the Stories post goes live).

RULES

  1. up to 2000 words max (give or take a few)
  2. fictional tale (or true if you really want)
  3. Any genre that fits within PG-13 (or less)-type Content – let’s keep this family friendly!
  4. Your story must contain the randomly chosen word(s) and/or be centered around the word meaning in a way that shows it is clearly related.
  5. Go for the entertainment value!
  6. Put a link back to your #BlogBattle Short Story in the comments section
  7. Please tweet and otherwise share your battler buddies’ stories across social media.
    1. Use the hashtag #BlogBattle when tweeting all the stories so we can cross-share.
  8. Have fun!
Any photos included with the prompt are only for your benefit as a pinch of inspiration. They don’t need to dictate your theme or story genre. Only the Word of the Month counts! Photos are thanks to public domain photo sharing sites like Unsplash and Pixabay.

38 thoughts on “December #BlogBattle: Provoke”

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    • Ah yes war… who provoked whom in order to blame the other side for starting it. Nothing changes there Roger. Escalation seems the way forwards for those with no other worth apart from fighting.

      New word for you. Portmanteau. What can you come up with that beats Nymphetamine? That’s a classic track by Cradle of Filth and having revisited it is now on my playlists after a very long time along with Ghost in the Fog. Oddly that lyric sits under my work point in Prison of Ice 🧐

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      • This one, luckily is whimsical. My war ones tend to end up grim. This was just plain satire.

        Now Portmanteau. There’s one with potential. The first thing that came to my mind was a location. Port Manteau and a story around the potential confusion that could cause 😃 .

        Well, when it comes to songs of that nature, I’d come back with the old 1969-er ‘Heroin’ by Velvet Underground, or the raw Garage Rocker ‘Strychnine’ by The Sonics; 1966 (ah now there was a raw band…still going in some format I believe)😊

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        • Nothing wrong with satire.

          re portmanteau I’m collecting a whole heap of odd words on Pinterest in a board called Unusual Words. The location thing you mention makes it sound Welsh lol.

          Thing is its quite hard to assemble a true portmanteau. Knowing Nymphetamine is one is fine. Nymphomaniac and Amphetamine. To actually construct your own is pretty tricky.

          Although the songs you mention are classics. Have you heard Father and Son by Cat Stevens? That’s another underrated performer.

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          • It’s interesting how a word Portmanteau – originally a stiff leather bag, morphed into a meaning for a blend of words- sort of the opposite in concepts. Maybe it’s because the original was a bag / case of two equal sections???

            I grew from mid-teens to early twenties during the era when Cat Stevens was often in the charts. Father and Son is a lovely one isn’t it? Shows a maturity of outlook.

            Liked by 1 person

          • It also has the feel of some mysterious sea creature. Words often morph these days. More by youth using them incorrectly until the new phrase gets accepted. Have you heard of the Gaiety Engine? That would now be considered politically incorrect and yet it was big in the Victorian era and nothing to do with the new wave altered meaning.

            I find that song quite sobering. It condenses life down to old sitting before young. The question is who’s going away? Oldster passing away or youngster moving on to find his own life. It could be either I guess.

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          • Sorry for the delay in replying Gary. Time is fluid isn’t it, sometimes meandering, sometimes fast.
            (I’m using it again in my latest project- experimenting with a concept with a current working title of ‘afterfore’ as opposed to ‘before’- going to be tricky)

            I agree, words change. And the process is not uniform, some holding to an older meaning, some not aware there was another meaning.

            Once folk could have a good and productive intercourse in public on a park bench. Which meant they had been having a convivial chat. ‘Sexual’ was added to make the meaning precise. Then somewhere in the mid 20th folk got fed up or chary about using ‘sexual’. And here we are.
            We now seem to be in an age of First Letters to reduce a phrase to a simple 4 or 5 letter abbreviation, with an meme to add inference.

            And then you get the unconsciously hapless thirty- going on forty somethings, who have short attention spans and if they can’t comprehend something eloquent but complex by an older person squawk ‘boomer’ and keep repeating it like a Dalek saying ‘exterminate’ at the fade out of an episode.
            I suppose it was ever thus.

            Yes I think that was the message of Father and Son

            Liked by 1 person

          • No worries, time of year always seems to claim hours until its over then it drags again awaiting the onset of spring.

            Personally I find modern crippling of words almost an abomination. Most are lazy or illiterate changes where the folk doing it have no clue about meaning and have limited vocabulary. Some lost words are splendid to revisit and I have a mind to use them as 12 prompts haha.

            And don’t get me onto memes. From limited vocab they have to now put it in pictures with some asinine image. If any read this reply I can see dictionary thumbing already!

            You make a good point about generation variation too. I have watched a few older tv shows (e.g. Vicar of Dibley) recently and marvelled at the fine use of language for a gag rather than the cut down expletives that folk now seem to find hilarious. Odd old world and fits right into my collapse of civilisation hypothesis.

            Liked by 1 person

          • By all means use them as prompts Gary. You have my backing there.

            Talking gags without the boring limited use of obscenities , I would cite the classic BBC Radio series ‘Round the Horne’, Frankie Howard’s ‘Up Pompei’ and Morecambe and Wise where many things were ‘implicated’ and if you were outraged it was because you knew what was being implied not shoved down your throat.
            And back a generation there was Max Miller
            Well known for leaving the last word out of a rhyme and when the audience laughed shouting ‘Ere!’ or ‘It’s folk like you that give me a bad name,’

            Liked by 1 person

          • Maybe 2025 then lol.

            Its quite a collection now.

            I’m so with you on those.. Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got in for me. Where is that stuff nowadays?

            Morecambe and Wise, now there is a blast from the past. Remember the Pravin sketch? Then there was the Two Ronnies and four candles… not a single expletive in sight.

            You could roll them off from that era. Mind you the Goodies has dated a bit now! Still like the western mind, where they fired tomato juice.

            And Monty Python… I’m a Lumberjack.. although my favourite is “Can I have a little bit of peril.” I think that’s from the Holy Grail. aka ’tis but a scratch, along with “I’ll have your arm off” and “Is that an African or European Swallow?”

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          • Classic indeed, but like Tony Hancock, Pete and Dudd, the Three Stooges, Harold Lloyd and not forgetting Laurel and Hardy. Immense era topped with Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes. Or Christopher Lee and the Hammer House of Horror. Lists go on and on!

            Liked by 1 person

    • I added it, Marian, and commented, but it never appeared, so it might be in the spam folder. If not this is what I put.

      The routines of work often leave many things behind as they become a daily ritual. I think many get roughly to Paul’s age before realising life is actually more than just the routine and going through the motions with your eyes closed. Obviously, you leave this with questions unanswered, Marian. Was it him over imagining the possibility through a tired mind or did he pick up on what he really wanted? Someone to share life with, whether it really is Trudy or just an unfulfilled need that an epiphany woke up when he saw her and the possibility. That said, he’s very young to be jaded, so hopefully, it does lead somewhere!

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    • Got that ‘Nonce verification failed’ again when I tried to comment, so I’ll post it here:

      The unanswered questions leave a bit of intrigue. Is Judy playing something of a matchmaker? Will Paul’s interest be requited? The only thing he is sure about is that his life is about to change, a given, but that can happen in a myriad of ways. Sounds like a story line that can be explored further!

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  5. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, everyone! I wish I could’ve been here more often, but I got a few stories done here and there. Maybe I’ll get my act together and be more organised in 2024!

    Anyway, here’s mine for December. I’ve returned to that place where it’s forever October (my happy place):

    Only Pretending

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        • Congrats on the job! Time management can be tricky. Key is not to have side distractions and focus on what you really want to do. If you’re like me my mind flips in too many places and that costs time rather than doing if you see what I mean.

          I’m pub cellar consulting. If you have crap beer and kit that doesn’t work I get called in by area managers now!

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          • I think you and I are alike in that regard, Gary! Excellent advice, by the way. Strip down distractions and focus on what you want to do. I’ve been acting on that in the last week or so, and I’ve gotten a few short stories done!

            Ha, so you’re literally a beer expert now! I know many lads who dreamed of that profession. How did you end up in that line of work?

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          • Long story. It started when a new landlady took over my local. Prior to that the beer was so crap two pints was making people ill. We discussed it with her knowing I knew what a good cask ale should look and taste like. I saw the cellar and it was so bad I walked away to ponder what to do about it. After that I went back, condemned the lines and the brewery replace the lot cellar to bar. I did a few courses and started line cleaning there. Over time I learnt about all he kit, including glass washers and beer clean glasses. The BDM was so impressed he kept calling me to sort other pubs out.

            Back at mine I ended up refurbing the whole cellar. Stripping paint off that trapped moisture in the walls, replastering parts in lime, treating it and putting on a breathable mold resistant paint. Not to mention helping the brewery guys refurd the pub entire.

            Now I can identify anything from gas leaks to chiller failures. Which at one is every other week it seems as the numpty doesn’t spot when flow rates drop. Red rag to a bull, it’s because the keg cooler is iced up. A month ago the thing was solid and took 8 hours to defrost.

            My phone has several cellars services numbers, Coke and Guiness. Most who cone out know me now and tend to call me when a landlord can’t explain the fault properly.

            Science thing I guess, problem solving haha.

            Been practicing that strip down technique ever since I dropped off the radar here a few years back now. Really improved my MH no end.

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