There's No Place Like Home - Creative Writing

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Victoria Holland 11BM        English Coursework         Mrs Dukes

There's No Place Like Home

Amelia Brooke slowly awoke, opening one eye, then the other and then both.  She sat up painfully from her pillows and stretched her old arthritic limbs.  Outside she could hear children laughing and playing on their way to school across the village green.  She smiled thinking of the days when it had been her scurrying around playing with her schoolfellows, but that was long ago now and her memories of her childhood were faded and blurred – just like her vision.  Still, her life was a reasonably happy one, full of bake sales and fundraisers for the local WI.

Now, at length she swung her legs round and slipped her veined feet into her worn-out slippers.  She heaved herself up and shuffled around getting dressed and hobbled down the stairs.

 The sun shone through the foggy window panes and into her familiar little cottage.  It cast light into the gloomy, cobwebbed corners where she couldn’t reach and lit up the little picture frames containing the pictures of her late husband and of their son Thomas who was away in France, which stood on her mantelpiece above the fire.  Last night’s dinner plates sat unwashed in the sink and gave off a not entirely unpleasant odour, which reminded her of visits to her grandmother’s when she was a child.    She slowly made herself a pot of tea and settled herself in her favourite tatty old armchair which had once belonged to her father who had long since departed.  She put her head back, closed her eyes and began to dream.  As she dozed, she dreamt of her family, of her brothers and sisters most of whom were no more. She slipped gently in and out of consciousness when she became aware of a siren going off somewhere in the distance.

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A host of Heinkels flew overhead, dropping bombs on the village and the other neighbouring villages as it went.  She woke with a sudden start and, after listening for a minute to the chaos from the skies, gave a cry of horror.  She hauled herself up painfully from the chair and started as fast as she could towards the back door, but stopped after less than a metre clutching her side in unbearable pain.  She turned and looked at the mantelpiece, locking eyes with her beaming son in his crisp uniform, shining grey eyes and neat, brill-creamed hair.  With renewed ...

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