Igenlode Wordsmith

The midnight moon rode full and clear
Above the sleeping hills; and bright
It laid its cloak of gleaming light
Upon the country far and near.

At dawn the birds began to sing;
And growing glory in the East
Shone golden through a pearly mist
To gladden every living thing.

Now day is fine and fair to see,
A sun-drenched spring-like Easter morn;
But after such a night and dawn
How could this beauty fail to be?

Judging by the Russian composition on the back of the page, I was busy programming a more literary form of dice-roll combat description in the first year of my A-levels! I'm not sure it ever got beyond the flowchart stage (although I have lists of reserved line number allocations for 'good failure', 'poor success' etc), but I clearly had great fun devising varied snippets of text that could fit into such outcomes as if ytot high then if (ytot-tot negative and rr high) print "but" good failure otherwise print "but" poor failure. (rr appears to be the opponent's attack roll and ytot your attack roll -- sadly I can't work out what the vital tot to which it is relative refers to!)

The rails are humming:
A train is coming.
The rails are singing:
Another train's bringing
Thousands of people
All out for some fun
And back they'll come again
When the day's done.

Walking in the country lanes
In between the hedgerows
Strolling through the flowery woods
'Mong lots of lovely flowers.

Hear the skylark singing
High up in the heavens
See the sheep all running
With the tails swinging behind.

The kitten scampered a few paces, pounced, bounded away stiff-legged, and pounced again. Helen crouched on the dusty flagstones of the terrace, feverishly trying to sketch the little creature with the stick of charcoal in her hand. She began outline after outline, abandoning each after a few seconds until the stones around her were filled with sketches, smudged where she had leaned on them or scrubbed them out, or, once or twice, by the kitten herself. The kitten would not stay still, and so the game went on, until even the kitten began to look tired, and Helen was laughing in frustration, hot and sweating in the mid-day sun. ( Read more... )

Were we really in that noisome den? It did not seem like that other true Issac[sic] Newton type. Real eggs flowed down the drainpipe, while elephants destroyed other dwellings. No death should tear us away from this place, until our joints turned to glue, and our meat to bones. No longer should we remain here, forsooth, while no animal dwelt in the inhabited places. How could we find our own wits again? never can I see what made us come here, to this desolate, inhabited spot. Not even Clearasil would wipe it off. What a watery area this is! a girl wasted paper with nonsense. Nicholas! Could even you enjoy yourself? We are mad, and so say all of us. But I am mad, to type such utter rubbish.

Der Kriegsmond