Sunday Photo Fiction is a weekly challenge presented by my old friend Al Forbes.
The idea is to write a short story (200 word max) inspired by what you see in the picture (below).
This week Al shows us a curious photo by Sascha Darlington.
I have to apologise for being some 30 words over the count this week.
Having already been to Nice airport today, and having a pressing engagement with a rugby match, France v Scotland, a little over an hour from now, I have had insufficient time to fine tune.
Sorry, everyone.
Click on this link to enter your tale, and to see what others have written.
© Sascha Darlington
Click here to hear me read the story:The Loch Ness
What was the name of that film?
An old Hollywood movie, a light musical, set in Scotland.
Well, in what Hollywood considers to be Scotland, at any rate.
About a village that appears every hundred years, with a pretty girl who wins the heart of an unfortunate Yank.
Gene Kelly, maybe.
No matter.
This café, called The Loch Ness, reminds me of it.
It is, somewhat bizarrely, an Irish themed café/bar, with this most Scottish of names.
It is also, equally strangely, almost never open, despite sitting in a prime position on the picturesque port.
I notice it often on my wanderings, and wonder how it survives.
Then, apparently, it closes down.
The signage disappears, the doors have a more permanently shut look.
I am totally unsurprised.
Then, to my astonishment, it reappears just two or three doors along the quayside, in an equally prime spot.
The doors, of course, are not open.
Then, as I pass by late one afternoon, the door is thrown wide, and a charming young lady smiles at me.
You are a Scot, aren’t you, she asks, beckoning me inside.
Baffled, I enter.
The interior is bedecked in tartan and shamrocks.
I laugh, ask about the mixed theme.
She smiles again, says that in another hundred years they will be the same country.
I see that she has closed the door.
And the smoke is swirling.
