Forging Ahead is this month’s prompt for the Fiction in Fifty words meme that Rebecca and I continue to plug on with, in hope that some other people will join us. It’s really good to have to craft a fifty word story each month. It’s also a good antidote to NaNoWriMo!
You can join in any time, by signing up at Rebecca’s blog here, or just joining in on her master post, usually around the last Sunday of the month (unless it’s right at the end of the month!)
This month’s prompt made me think of many things, and numerous interpretations. One of the things I’ve amused myself with while in Norfolk is noticing the number of place names ending in -ing. Having moved up from Epping to here, I felt I should have tried harder to pick one of them! Blickling, Bittering, Docking, Great (and Little) Snoring, Horning, Kelling, Scarning, Sea Palling, Thurning, Woodrising, Wood Dalling, and more. There are also as many with -ingham or -ington.
Placenames ending in -ing
The localhistories.org website sheds some light on this:
At the end of a place name ‘ing’ is usually derived from ‘ingas’, which meant the people of e.g. Kettering was Ketter ingas, the people of Ketter. However in the middle of a name ing usually comes from ‘inga’, which meant belonging to e.g. Nottingham was Snotta inga ham, the village belonging to Snotta. Tim Lambert
So these Norfolk -ing villages probably date from the Iceni people (Buddicca’s tribe), small groups of dwellings. The -ingham would be the village belonging to…, and -ington the farm (tun) belonging to…
Enough of my rabbiting (people of rabbit)… Here’s the story.
Forging Ahead
She tramped on along the grass verge.
She’d driven through Docking and Epping before running out of fuel. She’d considered pulling into their ancient filling stations.
Stupid.
Now, after nearly an hour of walking, a sign of hope.
‘Forging Ahead 500 yds’.
She broke down completely on reaching the smithy.
© J M Pett 2019
Forging Ahead - the prompt for this month's Fiction in 50 words #Fi50. Read Jemima's interpretation now! Click To Tweet
You are early this month! Or… yes… it’s later than I think. I always sit down and write my story when I see you’ve posted, before I read yours. Looks like we both had puns on our minds 😀 MIne’s due out Nov. 29.
Yes… it’s later than you think 🙁
Great job with 50 words. Although, I do have one question: What’s a smithy? I’ve heard the word, but not sure what it is. I suppose I should just go google it.
I sometimes ask when I realise I could Google… but then, if we keep doing that we’ll forget how to talk to each other!
A smithy is a blacksmith’s workshop. There used to be a smithy on the way to my library when I was a kid. I’d stop and watch the ponies and horses being shod – people would ride a couple of miles to him, but now the blacksmiths are mobile and go round the riding establishments to give the horses personal service in their own homes! A blacksmith that dealt with shoeing horses was also a farrier, or foot doctor for horses. The mobile ones these days are generally called farriers.
Although smithy was the word for a blacksmith’s establishment, blacksmiths do all other sorts of ironwork too – in or at a forge.
Nice work with the prompt.
I’m just parking a reminder to myself here: Sue Vincent’s #writephoto prompt, Thursday of every week.
Tell me more about that! (I can ask off-line, too 🙂 )
sent you a link to Sue Vincent’s page 🙂