#CCC039 | Forget-Me-Not #flash fiction #bluesky

hmmm… Forget-me-not. This week Crispina Kemp’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge takes us to Whitlingham Country Park, near Norwich. Right next to Norwich, really, I’m not sure if it is in the city boundary or whether it is the city boundary, if you see what I mean.The whole thing has taken me round in a circle.

I had memories of driving along the road by Whitlingham Broad that Crispina walked along. I eventually worked out why. The people who had been trained by the Cambridge Cavy Trust to do dental work on guinea pigs lived in a house in the woods hard by the ring road flyover. They had at least three guinea pigs, including Diesel, who got a part in book 5 of the Princelings. Why did I go there? To take sweet George, who had terrible tooth problems (malocclusion) to have his front teeth done. It helped keep his back teeth from overgrowing for a little while longer, but really, he needed to go to either Barry and Shirley in Ipswich, or CCT near Huntingdon. Both were a long way for Georgie, who got carsick! I’m still in touch with Barry, now in his 80s. Sadly Shirley passed on two years ago. I wish I still had someone close by who could do back teeth dentals the CCT way, but I’m afraid it’s a lost art.

George (and Fred) would have been 18 last Friday. Good thing they are never-ending in my books.

Forget-Me-Not

The yellow daffodils fade, the primroses die down, but the bluebells come, and the forget-me-nots. For a month or more the garden is a sea of blue. Forget-me-nots never leave, although they need pulling out once the flowers are over. They lift easily – no digging, no spadework, they have a light grasp of the soil, as if to say ‘it’s fine, we’re ready to leave, our time is over.’

But they never really leave. Those little seeds will stay and spring up next year. You will always have forget -me-nots.

And I will always have Fred and George, and the others; and Barry will always have Shirley, and I will always have both of them.

© J M Pett 2025