Not-a-Going-out-Day

Four Prompts

Four prompts given with the instruction to write between one hundred and two hundred words about each.

1
The truth is…
…plain to see they say, although some say that it is stranger than fiction. But there are some truths that are so strange that if they were written as fiction they would not be believed. The truth is the truth, it cannot be denied. Although there are those who will seek to ignore it, to twist it to another purpose – but it remains the truth. There is only one version of the truth, anything else is a facsimile, a lie, an incorrect version of events. The truth is the truth, and the consequences for those who vainly attempt to break it, or twist it to fit an alternative reality, can, and should, be dire.

2
It surprised me when…
…I first went to school. I didn’t know what to expect. I suppose that I was expecting school to be just like home – it wasn’t I was further surprised that primary school gave me a taste for learning. This, in some ways, has never left me – that is except for the years at secondary school. Let me explain. It was back in the days of the eleven plus, and the first time that I discovered that I am crap at exams. Somehow, I managed to haul myself to the borderline – a minor miracle. I had an interview and was offered a place at the Grammar School. For whatever reason my parents decided that I would be better going to a Secondary Modern. Yet again it surprised me when I got there. On arrival, and within a very few days, I came to the conclusion that I was surrounded by losers, and that included most of the teachers.

3
I wish I had said…
…no when she suggested that we get married. But, I was young and foolish. My parents liked the idea – well, they were getting rid of me. The problem was that I was naïve, had no life experience, let alone any clue about reading people. Hell, at the tender age of nineteen how was I supposed to know that she was not only barking mad, but also didn’t have a faithful bone in her body. I should have spotted that her concept of morality was non-existent from the start. But I didn’t. Thus followed several years of constantly letting her get away with various affairs. The last one was the straw that broke the camel’s back (but that’s a long story), the one where I upped and left – as I should have done many years before.

4
It was no use pretending…
…that it wasn’t him there in the corner of the pub, the nemesis of my school years. Who’s him? I hear you ask. The school bully, that’s who, Kim Upton (not his real name). I say nemesis, but I wasn’t one of his victims. He was simply more of an all-round pain in the arse. In many ways I was more his nemesis than he mine. Whenever I saw him bullying another kid, he was also not above bullying girls as well, I intervened and stopped him. This led me to many visits to the headmaster – because the only way of stopping him was to take him down. I had to prove that there was at least one kid that he couldn’t bully, one who could soundly thrash him. Fuck! He’s seen me. I suppose that I am going to have to talk to him after all. Well, I suppose that it's going on for forty years now.