Now lookee here, girl, what do you call that mess on the wall?
Dunno.
It’s a scribble, isn’t it? And a scribble don’t belong on the wall, it belongs on paper. Am I right or am I wrong?
Yep, s’pose so.
Right or wrong I asked, girl.
Right.
Right, thank you.
Granddad Pete was always shooting off about something and his granddaughter, Sophie, was normally in his firing line. She peered out from her lofty vantage point and endured it all with the cold stare of teenage oblivion.
You doing anything later, girl?
Dunno.
What about playing a sport. Tennis? Table tennis? Football?
Table football?
Don’t get fresh now, Sophie. But table football would be a start, wouldn’t it?
Yeah.
Go on then, here’s a pound. And a smile would be nice.
Sophie managed a smile, pecked her Granddad lightly on the cheek, and slouched off.
You will use the money for a game, won’t you?
Sophie mimed the bent over flick wrist motion of the game as she walked away.
Fat chance thought granddad, but she’d be good if she did play; the girl has the right attitude.
picture by Jonny Voss
About Alan McCormick Writing
Alan McCormick lives with his family in Wicklow. He’s a Trustee and former writer in residence for InterAct Stroke Support, a charity employing actors to read fiction and poetry to stroke patients.
His writing has won prizes and been widely performed and published, including recently in The Stinging Fly, Banshee, The Lonely Crowd, Southword, Sonder and Exacting Clam magazines, and previously in Salt’s Best British Short Stories, A Wild and Precious Life – A Recovery Anthology, Modern Nature Anthology – Responses to Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature, The Poetry Bus, The Sunday Express Magazine, The Bridport and Fish Prize Anthologies, Popshot, Litro and Confingo; and online at Epoque Press, Words for the Wild, 3:AM Magazine, Culture Matters, Dead Drunk Dublin, Mono, Fictive Dream, The Quietus and Found Polaroids.
His story ‘Firestarter’ came second in the 2022 Francis MacManus RTE Short Story Competition and ‘Boys on Film’ came second in The 2023 Plaza Prizes Sudden Fiction competition.
DOGSBODIES and SCUMSTERS , his collection of short stories with flash shorts inspired by Jonny Voss’s pictures, was published by Roast Books and long-listed for the Edge Hill Prize.
Alan and Jonny also collaborate on illustrated shorts known as Scumsters – see more at Deaddrunkdublin.com and Scumsters.blogspot
Alan McCormick Writing 