Cherry Potts, Writer

Tag: Cherry Potts

  • The Imposter

    Another Genealogy letter: My partner’s maternal Grandfather is a bit of an enigma: He vanished, apparently without trace, leaving his wife with three young children.  The children suffered a great deal as a result, their mother took them back to live with her parents, but as the progeny of a broken home, they were shunned…

  • Wintermiddle

    Wintermiddle is, as far as I know, an invention of Michael Rosen.  His alternative to Father Christmas is Aunty Wintermiddle, a cheerful rainbow-wearing bringer of good times and merriment.  When I was going through my ‘its all a patriarchal construct’ phase, I found Aunty very comforting.  These days I’ll go with any celebration on offer…

  • Haunted by Fairy Tales

    So I’m on a business trip in Germany, slightly reluctantly (too close to Christmas, weather turning bad) and I discover that Kassel, where I am at a meeting of a European Project is the home town of the Brothers Grimm.  Drawing a veil over the journey which was definitely in the Epic rather than F-T…

  • The Arsonist’s Demise

    National Short Story Week is coming to a close, and with it all my good intentions to do some writing in honour of the event.  Having a house full of builders isn’t conducive to creativity, even when they are charming, careful and considerate, which they are. I did however make it to Spread the Word’s…

  • Why Homer?

    I do not speak or read Greek, I have never been to Greece, but I have grown up with, and still read retellings of the 2,500 year old story of the Trojan War. From a picture book given me for Christmas when I was five, right through the Adele Geras’ excellent Troy, the Iliad has…

  • One Finger Typing

    Family history has a bit of a geeky image, and I won’t pretend it doesn’t have its fair share of anoraks, but it is also a deep and rich mine for good stories.  I first got interested when my partner’s father died and we came across his genealogy research, which infuriated me because it only…

  • Five Films in Eight Days

    Okay, I admit it, I’m a Cinema Enthusiast, a Film Buff, a Movie Geek … choose your epiphet; I’m one of those people who stay to watch the credits and not just for the Pixar ‘out-takes’. And if you are wondering why I’m going on about films skip to the final paragraph and find out.…

  • Dark and Stormy

    Dark & Stormy A Halloween piece … Winter, spicy gingerbread, slavery and marriage to an insanely jealous man … another exercise from WOOA, sparked off by not having got around to submitting anything on the Dark & Stormy theme to Liars’ League, and for once I didn’t come up with a story. I keep dark…

  • Many Merry Mermaids

    This is just a bit of nonsense, based on a writing exercise in which every word in a sentence must start with the same letter.  Stops you using ‘the’ and ‘and’ and ‘I’ unless you are very clever, which I’m not… perhaps with a bit of practice! Many Merry Mermaids Many merry mermaids making mischief…

  • The Memling Triptych, Sint Jans Hospitaal, Brugge.

    I wrote this in 2007 as part of an essay on silence for my coaching course. I am now completely hooked on Memling and have written a story based on his pictures; Portrait of The Artist’s Model as a Young Woman.   We’ve been walking around the museum for over 2 hours and now, this…