Many writers have shared their thoughts with the public:

"There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you." - Beatrix Potter

"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say." - Anaïs Nin

"Sharing your writing, being enlarged by others' writing, is what makes you feel famous." - Gretchen Bernabei

"Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth." - Edna Ferber

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." - Ben Franklin

"One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones to form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment." - Hart Crane

"There are three rules for writing. Unfortunately, no one can agree what they are." - W. Somerset Maugham

Betwixt Buttock and Blue Sky

“I forbid you to marry a poltergeist.”

“But Papa, I love him,” wailed Adelaide, her bright blue eyes filling with tears.

“Stop calling it a him. It’s an it,” growled Papa. “It has no gender and no manners. When someone asks for your hand in marriage, I expect good breeding, wealth and respect, not a smelly gust of wind which breaks a wine glass and topples a chair. More of a fart than a man. No daughter of mine shall marry a fart.”

“He was nervous, give him a chance, please, Papa,” pleaded Adelaide. “He doesn’t understand about manners, hasn’t had your advantages, an education, clothes, money, visible parents. His mother was a tornado, she created havoc wherever she went, it wasn’t a stable childhood. He blows hot and cold when he meets a stranger, finds it difficult to trust people.”

“It bit me! If one of the dogs bit me I would shoot it,” Papa said angrily. “It could have infected me with foul poisons. And I have to take your word that it was asking for your hand, given that it is incapable of speech. The wine glass was one of our good ones, too, left to us by Aunt Prudence, God rest her soul. Your suitor doesn’t have a face or a body, it has nothing to offer but rabies, and it is not an appropriate choice for a woman of your standing.”

“You don’t like him because he has no money.”

“I will not argue with you, child. You will marry Lord Staines next week.”

“But Papa …”

“Go to your room, Adelaide, I’ll hear no more of this. If you don’t make a good match, the estate must be sold to cover our debts and we will be penniless. How do you feel about begging on the streets, girl? You will do as I say and marry Lord Staines.”

Adelaide dragged her satin-slippered feet up the curling staircase. Life was so unfair. Her sister Emmaline had been allowed to marry a vampire, although admittedly, he was an extremely wealthy vampire. Or rather he had been wealthy, until Papa drained him of funds, as the vampire drained Emmaline every night.

She threw herself onto the four-poster bed and wept. When she had calmed down to hiccupping and sobbing, she heard a key turn in the lock. It would not be beyond Papa to keep her under lock and key until the wedding to ugly old Staines, with the long yellow teeth, hanging jowls, silly velvet breeches and gold-buckled shoes. He looked like a horse in fancy dress, but the horse would look much nicer.

Adelaide had met her poltergeist, or PG, as she called him, on the moors. She’d been stomping around, furious because Papa had sold her favourite pony. For the hundredth time, she wished Mama was here to take her side. But alas, Papa had placed her in the lunatic asylum when she became 'gloomy, dispirited and unable to fulfil her wifely obligations'.

A persistent light drizzle gradually worked its way through Adelaide’s layers of clothing. Then suddenly a mighty gust of wind flipped her skirt and petticoats over her head, exposing her bloomers and darned woollen stockings. It was a meaningful wind, if that were possible, not meandering, nor even wuthering, this air had purpose, it was aiming at her.

“Ooh,” exclaimed Adelaide, as it pushed into her bloomers and rose under her clothing to tickle her pert breasts. There was pressure at her shoulder and she was blown along as if pulled by a huge hand. She became an out-of-control ballerina on pointe, feet dangling. Whirring over the moors at speed, she forgot her rage and gave in to the experience. When dusk fell, she was blown to the house. At the imposing front door, her cheek was caressed lightly, breezily, then she found herself alone. “Golly!” she said, her cheeks flushed with excitement.

It was a whirlwind romance. PG blew roses through the window, created localised storms in Adelaide’s bedroom and levitated her hairbrush. He circled a handful of fungus gnats over her head for five minutes, which was particularly impressive, as fungus gnats are known to be feisty and resist circular motion. One morning Adelaide woke to find a locket which had belonged to her mother, and which had recently gone missing from her dressing table, wedged betwixt her buttocks. Adelaide realised she was in love. Papa’s objections to PG rolled off her like water from a feverish brow, which she developed whenever she thought of her beloved. Poor PG was just misunderstood. Adelaide knew how it felt to be invisible, she’d grown up with four brothers, a bunch of apples in their father’s eye. She and her sister Emmaline were expected to be quiet, biddable and marry well. Papa also preferred the women in his life to be locked up. However, while locking Adelaide’s door kept her in, there was no way of keeping PG out. He could fit betwixt custard and its skin, could slip into the gap betwixt night and day, could squeeze his way into a grain of sand, set up residence and still have enough room for visitors. A bedroom with a window was no challenge.

So Papa consulted a medium. The bescarfed hag charged him an exorbitant amount for her services. Once in Adelaide’s room, she burned a substance which smelled suspiciously like cow manure and threw herself around chanting and screeching. PG wasn’t deterred by the smoke or the deranged rantings. He was in love with Adelaide, and too attached to leave.

PG hadn’t known love before Adelaide. His mother had taught him only destruction, attack, how to instil fear and how to harm. When he saw Adelaide on the drizzly moors, her anger called to him and the attraction was instant. He fed on her anger at first, but learned to appreciate her company whichever mood or emotion she displayed. The power of anger wasn’t as strong as the power of love. However, PG occasionally reverted to his harmful, destructive self when he was under pressure, or in the presence of people he didn’t know, or knew to be fools.

Papa was determined to ruin the relationship, so next he hired a parapsycholospiritualist, who explained to Adelaide that the poltergeist was actually a manifestation of her emotions, it was her energy, her own energy, not a separate entity. Therefore, she couldn’t marry it, this would be akin to marrying herself, which would make a mockery of the sacred institution of marriage. Adelaide sighed. He was wrong, she hadn’t blown roses through her own window or pressed the locket betwixt her own buttocks. PG sighed too, sending a small puff of hot eyre into the parapsycholospiritualist’s face. The man would never understand how different kinds of fulfilling couplings could exist while he continued to believe in a tiny, human-based parapsycholospiritualist world. PG summoned a teaspoon from the kitchen and rapped him on the bald head twice. It sounded as though he were tapping a boiled egg. Adelaide dissolved into giggles as the teaspoon rolled down his broad forehead and poked the parapsycholospiritualist sharply in his judgemental eyeball.

The lovestruck couple planned their elopement. PG would fashion himself into a cloud and they would fly away together. The power of love had given him such strength that he felt he could manage something more than a stiff wind.

The day of Adelaide’s arranged marriage dawned, Lord Staines fair salivating at the thought of getting his wrinkled, liver-spotted hands on his fresh, young bride. Papa unlocked Adelaide’s bedroom door. The room was empty. He saw, floating from the window, a small white cloud topped with his daughter. He raced downstairs and advised Lord Staines of the situation. The elderly stinker immediately shouldered his hunting rifle, aimed at the happy pair and blasted the cloud to pieces. Adelaide tumbled into his arms, her voluminous white gown askew. With a lecherous grin, showing his foul teeth, he held his bride-prize aloft, fingers digging into her peachy bottom.

PG was enraged. He pulled himself together, engulfed the rifle in his updraught and dealt Lord Staines a whopping smack on the head, before re-fashioning himself into the cloud.

Adelaide felt a quickening in her stomach and placed her hands over the tiny swelling. Although it might just be bloating, and may only result in a loud fart, she hoped for more.

As Papa fussed over the prostrate Lord Staines, Adelaide rose into the cornflower blue sky on the back of her beloved, air filling her bloomers until they became as full as her heart.