I love reading and writing, and I instinctively prefer reading non-fiction — from delving into the history of different cultures to getting under the skin of people’s journeys across the world to recipes! All of my blogs are non-fiction too. At the same time, I love learning creative ways to do things, to stretch my imagination, so I’ve been on a creative writing course at London Met and this is my first attempt at the start of a fictional story…
Sunday afternoon, 18th of December, 4.06 precisely. A bead of sweat slowly navigated its way down Laia’s crisp flushed, but still tanned face. A flicker in her memory reminding her of that “thing” she was meant to do for work?
A look up on her Advent calendar, she realised that she’s still not bought anyone any presents. The serene aftermath of an afternoon under the covers with Leo?
In fact, it should have been all of those things and certainly used to be. But this was 1974 and while every other Laia across the world was complaining about gas prices, Laia was living Chile. A country that had just succumbed to a coup, that was sleepwalking into a military dictatorship, that had sent a democratically elected prime minster to prison. A prime minister who had promised a socialist utopia that was more than motherhood and apple pie. Two things that as a young women, Laia didnt want to be forced to engage in. Especially not apple pie, an American dessert with cardboard pastry and scalding green sludge.
