{"id":1339,"date":"2008-08-13T11:17:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-13T11:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=1339"},"modified":"2008-08-13T11:17:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-13T11:17:00","slug":"bill-west-finds-that-every-little-helps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/bill-west-finds-that-every-little-helps\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill West finds that every little helps"},"content":{"rendered":"
Little Helps<\/font><\/div>\n

<\/font><\/div>\n
 <\/font><\/div>\n
The
\nhouse wept. Inconsolable sobbing woke them. The lights flickered on,
\nglared with klaxon grief then dimmed to a pallid glow. The house
\ncomputer whimpered. Tina spoke kindly to it and started to ask it
\nquestions but Jim cut the power and rebooted the operating system.<\/p>\n

The diagnostic screen said, \u201cOut of love.\u201d<\/p>\n

They looked at each other. Then got dressed and drove to Tesco's. <\/p>\n

The
\ncar park was nearly empty. Inside cheerless assistants drifted up and
\ndown the aisles. Some stacked shelves. Jim thought he knew where he
\ncould find love but this was a new store and everything had changed. So
\nmany new products — cheaper bargains had elbowed out the commodities
\nthey had grown up with.<\/p>\n

They found the familiar blue and white branding of the
\nvalue range and carefully selected and purchased two Third World
\norphans and an elderly Ghanaian lady to work as a Nanny.<\/p>\n

Every little helps.<\/p>\n

* <\/font>Bill West lives in rural Shropshire. He is a
\nmember of the Shrewsbury Scribblers Writers Group and member of a
\nnumber of online writers communities. He is group host for the
\nWriteWords Flash Fiction One Group. His work has appeared in Right Hand
\nPointing, Boston Literary Magazine, FlashQuake, Mytholog, Heavy Glow,
\n21 Stars Review, Foliate Oak <\/span>and other places. See his web page at http:\/\/www.writewords.org.uk\/bill_west\/<\/a><\/font>
<\/font><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Little Helps   The house wept. Inconsolable sobbing woke them. The lights flickered on, glared with klaxon grief then dimmed to a pallid glow. The house computer whimpered. Tina spoke kindly to it and started to ask it questions but Jim cut the power and rebooted the operating system. The diagnostic screen said, \u201cOut of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}