The Recipe Box Conclusion

Carrie crossed the hall and opened the far door. Still occasionally muttering to herself, she pottered around, filling the kettle and placing it on the hob before taking time to study the surroundings. They'd changed little, other than in colour scheme. The same honey coloured pine wood dresser stood against one wall, but a scarlet box file on one of its shelves arrested her attention. 'That's something new', said Carrie under her breath. The bright colour stood out like holly berries in the snow, standing as it did among the pastel tones of this white and eau-de-nil room.

She sat down at the kitchen table and placed the box before her. The spine bore the label 'Recipes', and it became increasingly obvious how great her Aunt's enthusiasm had been, as Carrie leafed through them. There were pages torn from magazines, pieces of paper with scribbled pencil notes and some sheets of paper with typed recipes that her Aunt had copied out from some long forgotten source.

After several minutes spent delving into them, Carrie promised herself an even closer study one day soon. Eventually, she came to the last card in the box. It was a proper, printed post card with a snapshot of her Aunt's house on the left and an inset picture of her little sitting room table, laid for tea, at the bottom right hand corner. Two delicate, china place settings stood on either side of an ornate cake stand, on which a delicious looking cake had already been sliced ready to serve.
On the reverse, in her Aunt's spidery handwriting, was written 'My Dorset Apple Cake', with a tight packed list of ingredients. Carrie smiled. Now she knew exactly which cake she would bake for Bill and Ted.

The End

Now the explanation, folks, as to how this tale came to be. I'd signed up for a short, creative writing course in our local library, and for our first week's homework the lecturer had passed round a postcard - yes, the one described - and packed us off to write a short story of no more than 2000 words by the following Saturday. I'd been hoping the course would cover something on the poetic front, but I was out of luck. The rest of the class were were avid novelists or short story buffs, and my interest in poetry stuck out like a sore thumb. 'Poetry isn't my thing', said our very nice, but somewhat un-inspiring tutor, as she managed to pretty well quash me from the start.

There was much talk of writing for magazines, and of 'showing' not 'telling' a story. That just about wiped me off the map all together, as I guess I identify with being a story teller, after years of doing just that for my kids! So, I'm totally clueless on the short story front, and can only apologise if you thought this Recipe Box was going to turn out to be a chef's Table d'Hote instead of a plain old Soup du Jour.

(If I could have got ^ this over the top of the o in Hote, I would!)