Guitar Practice

 

1) Write a short story (500 words or less) using the photo and five mandatory words.

2) Stay with the 500-word limit. 

3) Craft and link your post by next Tuesday evening (10:00 p.m. PST).

4)  Link up your story using our hostesses’ websites Leanne's, Debb's, or Tena's who will help you 

This week we have a photo and five mandatory words:

Here is your photo and five words:

Mandatory words:

tar

puppy

decoy

steering wheel

concierge

Here is my story:

Guitar Practice

Amelia’s mum was very cross with Rufus, a small bundle of fur that was now matted with tar from the pile of gravel workmen had left on the road he managed to roll in before she caught him.  She persuaded him to come back to the car using a decoy of rattling his puppy dog biscuits.   

Amelia sat in the back of the car waiting for her mum to drive them home.   Her mum spoke harshly to Rufus telling him what a naughty boy he was.  He looked up at her with his soulful eyes and a cautious wag of his tail, her mum relented and patted and stroked his fur cringing as she felt the black stick substance on his golden fur.   The radio in the car began to pip the four o’clock time signal as Amelia’s mum turned the engine on, placed her hands on the steering wheel and started to edge out of the car park and on to the main road.

Twenty minutes later they were home.  As Amelia clambered out of the car, satchel, lunch bag and her big guitar case dragging behind her, she noticed Mr. Jenkins watching from his ground floor window of their apartment block.  She waved and he waved back, he was always very nice to them, mum said he had another name as well which she didn't really know how to say properly.  He was also called a concierge which is why he was nice to them because he looked after the building. 

Amelia listened to the sounds coming from the bathroom.  Her mum was getting soaked trying to wash Rufus using the shower head. The yelps and splashes coming from upstairs reminded her of a piece of music she was supposed to practice for the school band. She carefully lifted the lid of the guitar case and managed to sit on the floor with the guitar in her lap without banging the instrument on the floor. 

Carefully balancing the guitar on her knee as she knelt on the carpeted floor, leaning slightly against the foot stool, Amelia strummed the first notes of what they had been learning earlier today in their music lesson. 

She became so engrossed in trying to get the notes just right she didn't realise the noises from upstairs and stopped.  As she glanced up she saw her mum standing in the living room doorway, Rufus wrapped in a towel in her arms, smiling at her.

‘That is a beautiful song, sweetheart.  I can’t wait until next week and hear you play it at the school concert.’

‘Will Dad come as well?’  Amelia always asked the same question every time there was a school event on.  She knew her mum would promise her that he would do his very best to attend but she also knew that her Dad wouldn’t be able to make it and he would telephone the next day to say how sorry he was that he missed it. 

Word count: 496