Bite size memoir is designed to help anyone record some personal memoir in small manageable bites. There’s a prompt every week and some constraints to keep it small (with full details at the bottom of this post). To catch up on how it started, please read here. If you have your own blog and want to participate, please feel free to incorporate links to and from your post to encourage readers to blog hop.

This week’s prompt is Jinks and Japes. (This closed now, but you can read the compilation of responses here)

I’m sure I’d promised something lighter to somebody, after sharing tricky times of School at Seven last week. I can’t find it but no matter. Having set off on my own trail of high jinks, I can’t get these particular stories out of my head, so confessional it is! I’m giggling away as I recall some of these, but also wondering at how wicked I was!

Just incase there are any cultural or age differences in our interpretation of words, here are some definitions encouraging you to remember those naughty, but mostly harmless pranks, when you were still quite young. I’m hoping we’ll come back to more mischief later on.

Fingers crossed you weren’t always at the receiving end..

Jinks: Childish, playful, often noisy and rowdy activities, usually involving mischievous pranks.

Japes: Tricks or practical jokes or even perhaps, gags or shenanigans.

Once again, I’ve tackled it in two ways to illustrate how you could approach it (and cheat by having double helpings.)

10 x “I remember ” statements

I remember being sent to the corner shop for ‘elbow grease’.
I remember learning not to fall for the ‘what’s that over there?!’ question when there was still something tasty left on my plate.
I remember convincing my best friend, marmite sandwiches were chocolate spread, so she would swap.
I remember putting pretend spiders in Mum’s bed and plastic cat-poos on the carpet.
I remember fart powder didn’t work, no matter how much you ate.
I remember pretending to see a tombstone lid move and my friend bursting into tears.
I remember dare, dare, double-dare.
I remember running down long drives and ringing bells.
I remember scrumping apples and belly ache.
I remember jumping barbed-wire fences onto bullocks backs and riding round the field.

150 Words of Prose

It was a small village with a handful of boys and even less girls my age. I climbed or played hide and seek with the boys but got annoyed when things turned football, instead of bare-backing bullocks or scrumping in the orchard, where the doberman sometimes caught us.

I lined them up outside the bullock paddock, near the white kissing gate – promising to show them mine, if they went first. Not sure why, other than I knew I’d get them! It wasn’t even curiosity, except maybe to see some variation on my brother. There was some persuading, but down came the shorts. They were looking at each other to check timing.

I looked so quick, I didn’t see! And faster still, took off through the bullocks, long legs pumping. I knew they couldn’t catch me! Up went the shout and the shorts – I had to lie low for ages!

 What do you remember?!

 

Here’s how you join in:

A REMINDER OF HOW THE BITE-SIZE MEMOIR CHALLENGE WORKS

  1. Each Friday I’ll suggest a topic by 2pm UK time (BST) via my blog and Twitter (using the hashtag  #BiteSizeMemoir  – You don’t need to be on Twitter to participate.)

2. The challenge will be to write about the topic using

either

10 x “I remember statements”

  or

150 x words (prose, or poem if you want to stretch yourself)

Either will make you pick and choose your words carefully whilst keeping a tight focus for time’s sake. You might want to write more, to keep at home, but please only submit one option within the limits for sharing (i.e. 10 statements or 150 word prose/poem)

3. The Deadline for sharing your ‘Bite’ will be 2pm (BST) the following Thursday. You can share in either of two ways:

a) Post your response in the comments section of the current topic – I will find it and cut and paste to the compilation of responses. (You may not see your comment appear immediately but don’t worry – I will find and share it)

or

b) If you have a blog you can post your response on your own blog with a link back to this post, and then also provide the link to me in the comments section. I will then link your contribution back to your post, in the compilation of responses.

4. It would be great if you felt able to include the year you were born and the country the events took place in – I won’t enforce this but I think it provides a significant context for other readers. As an example look at the compilation for “School at Seven”

5. I will aim to compile responses and share them via another post before the next challenge is issued.

 

A few rules:

    1. If you need or want to be anonymous that’s fine – When you post a comment just put ‘Anon’ or a nickname in the name field. It does ask for an email address as part of spam filtering but only I will see it.
    2. Please keep others anonymous to protect their privacy and dignity – change names or use initials etc.
    3. If you’ve got an axe to grind, please do it somewhere else.
    4. If you stumble across this after the deadline, do feel free to contribute and include your blog link in the comments section of the compilation, so others can read it.

Please remember to submit your Bite Size Memoir by 2pm (BST) Thursday 15th May 2014. Have fun !