Blues Buster: Eminence Front

© Lisa Shambrook

The crowd’s roar and applause made her cringe, the noise, so loud, so big, and so cloying. Sarah gazed through the colours, through the bobbing heads, and saw only frontrunners sprinting across the finish line.

Silver foil flashed, the sun catching it and blinding Sarah momentarily. She blinked and eased back. Trumpets bugled and hooters hooted, cheers and cries of congratulations rose over the onlookers, and Sarah glanced up at the big screen on the building opposite. She squeezed herself into a small spot on the wall and pulled her legs in close.

The winners, the frontrunners, smiled on the screen. Teeth and twinkling eyes pixelated and jumped as the competitors caught their breath and accepted adulation. Sponsors raced forward to position themselves, banners rising with winners, and products placed in advantageous sites. Cameramen arced down to legs attached to pistons and blades, shiny carbon-fibre appendages in racing black decorated with beads of sweat.

The winners had the best equipment, the biggest sponsors, the most money, and Sarah sighed.

Even pixelated the racing blades, the prosthetics, and the artificial limbs shone as state of the art. Money bought winners, and winners bought sponsors, and from the crowd’s clamour about her, that bought adoration and fame. She bit her lip and climbed into a standing position to stare down the road, but only shiny blades continued to catch the light and glare back at her.

She steeled herself, pushed the encroaching crowd away, and settled back down on the wall.

For a couple of hours she listened as the crowds cheered the marathon runners, and watched as they dwindled as the prosthetic tech became less impressive, and the sponsors less memorable.

Finally, light faded, the tech reverted, and the hum of the crowd declined.

Sarah scrambled to her feet, and clung to the lamppost beside her. She stared down the road, but the low light made it difficult to see. Floodlights suddenly devoured the dusk and Sarah blinked again, shielding her eyes from the dazzling brilliance. Black spots danced before her vision, as the big screen suddenly snapped back on and focussed on the empty road.

Sarah’s stomach lurched, and her heart rose with hope and anticipation. She pushed through the muddle of people still left, those who’d lost interest hours ago, but hung around with the hope of a last minute story. And here it was.

Sarah’s eyes glazed as a dot on the horizon grew steadily bigger. She glanced up at the screen as it pixelated and focussed. Far down the road her son approached, a lone walker, a figure shuffling forward with determination and grit. Sarah didn’t even try to stop the tears that rolled down her face. Every fibre of her heart reached out to the boy, every ounce of strength, of resolve and stamina poured down the road to her boy.

The TV screen adjusted and the image sharpened, and the remaining crowd visibly held their breath.

Sarah’s heart swelled to proportions she’d never before encountered and she thought she’d burst. Tears glistened in every eye as her son limped, and dragged his foot, his leg-brace no longer holding him steady. The buckles broken, the metal, bent, but the lad still walked with his head led high, and his brow shimmering with diamonds of perspiration.

Gasps trickled through the audience as barriers broke, and suddenly athletes, runners and racers who’d finished the marathon hours before, surrounded the boy. Carbon fibre blades, and modern artificial appendages, accompanied the teenager with the broken brace and twisted leg, and silence suddenly blossomed into cheers.

Applause echoed throughout the darkening streets, and Sarah wept as her son’s smile filled the big screen, as his shuffle moved him forward and the pain on his face diminished with pride.

He crossed the line, with as many onlookers as the frontrunners, and Sarah caught him in her arms. They both knew you didn’t need money, or sponsors, or anything more than love and belief, to win.

(663 Words)
@LastKrystallos

My story for Jeff at The Tsuruoka Files Blues Buster. The song prompt is The Who’s Eminence Front. Check out the other stories!

Burn with the Brightest Flame and Believe in Yourself…

Dream big, and you can be anything…

Driving home last week, through the most beautiful welsh countryside, I felt on top of the world, truly amazing! I was thinking how blessed I and my family are living our dreams. What a great feeling…and then The Script and Will I Am came on with ‘Hall of Fame’, and I realised just how true the lyrics read.

“You can go the distance. You can run the mile. You can walk straight through hell with a smile. You can be the hero. You can get the gold. Breaking all the records they thought never could be broke.
Yeah, do it for your people, do it for your pride. How are you ever gonna know if you never even try?
Do it for your country, do it for your name, ’cause there’s gonna be a day…
When you’re standing in the hall of fame, and the world’s gonna know your name, cause you burn with the brightest flame, and the world’s gonna know your name, and you’ll be on the walls of the hall of fame…”

It’s what I’ve always believed…you can do anything, be anything…
but, you’ve got to live your dreams…

Dreaming of the castle on a cloud © Lisa Shambrook

There was a time, many years ago, when I was a shy little thing and I let my dreams escape. I didn’t believe my dreams were worth dreaming. My default was to put aside my own feelings but be sure to fix everyone else. This continued from early childhood into my teens, where I allowed someone else’s preference push me to a different path than the one I wanted, and then on into adulthood.

I became the mother with holes in my boots for a decade because I refused to buy myself a new pair, deeming everyone else more important. There’s a time and a place for others to take priority, but that should never be a permanent condition!

My family © Lisa Shambrook

As I hit a breakdown and emerged, still snow blinded, the other side, I began to be coaxed by my wonderful husband and children into believing in myself. Now I know that I’m important too, that my dreams are worth dreaming, and more than that, they’re worth putting into action!

There’s nothing I want more for my children than for them to live their dreams…

My oldest is extremely talented and enthusiastic, and always threw caution to the wind when embracing her dreams! She lacked direction, but as she’s matured, her direction evolves and her plans are coming to fruition. We’ve been able to instil self-belief and a confidence I only wish I’d had thirty years ago! She’s recently had the strength to do something my younger version would have cowered from, which is to close some of her enterprises and head towards a new ambition. She stands with assurance and ability and dreams. My soul bursts with pride as I see my child grow and plan and act towards her new horizon…

My son is moving into an exceptional period of his life. He struggled greatly at school, and had some real soul searching to discover what he wanted to do once he left. He has since excelled in the work he’s done, to the point that his employer would love him to stay on at work, but he’s made a decision to explore life. He has, of his own volition, decided to serve a ministering mission for the church which we belong to. This means accepting a call to preach in a place he’s never been. He’s been called to serve in Halifax, Canada for the period of two years, and he is bursting with excitement and opportunity, and so am I…

My youngest is still at school and of an age where I struggled to be anything but a shy little bird. Exams and subjects she’s not keen on bury her, and I see her heart trying to decide where it lies. Those middle teens are years I’d not choose to return to, but they are the years where you grow, where you begin to learn who you are and where you want to go. These are the years where my daughter will begin to grow wings, to emerge from within and to want to fly. These are the years when I will refuse to stand in her way, and I will encourage with everything that I have, just as I have with her siblings, to be just who she will be. ..

© Lisa Shambrook

My husband and I both waited years to begin to achieve. I lived with clipped and broken wings for many years, but I want my children to believe in themselves, to spread their wings and fly.

To do that they, and we, need to dream, and dream big!

To quote The Script again “Be students, be teachers, be politicians, be preachers, be believers, be leaders, be astronauts, be champions, be truth seekers…” and we can, we can be all of those, if we just dream and believe!

Did you get encouragement to believe in yourself?

Have you achieved what you set out to do, or is it an ongoing goal?

Share your dreams and encouragement…

Live Your Dream and follow that Rainbow…

Life is meant to be lived…with passion!

I write about dreams – those dreams people have that define who they are, and what they want to achieve – and that’s how we should live. We should have a bucket list, a heart and soul full of wild expectations, and a desire to achieve great things.

I know that most of us are ordinary, we live day-to-day, working to provide, but that doesn’t mean we have to be ordinary… So, do it – live your dreams!

Take time out to think about your dreams…

Yes, most of the time we have to let our heads lead us, but every now and then,
let your heart take over and lead you on an adventure!

Be observant; see what beauty thrives around you

Write down your goals, and do all you can to achieve them!

Reach for the stars

Make time to have fun, and to do the things you love!

Aim high, set your sights…if you have nothing in your viewfinder,
there’ll be nothing to see, nothing to spur you on

Believe in yourself; believe that you can do it…

Most of all – never give up – giving up is a waste,
a waste of all the precious potential that resides inside you!

And, lastly,
‘If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.’
– Albert Einstein

Bluebells © Lisa Shambrook

TELL ME YOUR DREAMS…AND HOW DO YOU LIVE THEM?

“It’s those silly dreams that keep us alive…”

Old Thomas has a dream…one that seems way out of his reach. When he talks about it, it’s with a wry smile and a sigh. Others live his dream while he watches on the side-lines. Will he achieve his last dream, the one that keeps him alive?

Find out in ‘Beneath the Rainbow’

Available at Amazon in Paperback and eBook

The Future belongs to Those who Believe in the Beauty of their Dreams

Eleanor Roosevelt had it exactly right…the future really does belong to those who believe in their dreams…

How many of us started out with huge dreams…the kind that stretched far, far beyond what we can see? How many of us played in the woods building forts and defending them from intruders and dragons, or by the ocean building sand castles and trenches? Were you so lost in books that you felt the Famous Five were your best friends? Did you skirt the local park with dark glasses searching for villains and opportunities to spy or use your magic super powers? Did you build Lego towns and fill them with adventure? Did you play ‘Pooh Sticks’ or race paper boats down the river? Did you draw fantastical pictures and wait at night for them to come alive? Were your stories so magical you slipped into them when you dreamed at night? Did you make mud pies and feed a family of dolls and teddy bears? Did you dream? Did you have dreams so strong you were sure you would achieve them?

I did…I knew exactly what I wanted as a child… I wanted to own horses, to spend my days galloping across mountains and valleys… I wanted to live by the ocean and swim in the sea every day… I wanted to write and see my stories published… I wanted to draw and paint and illustrate… Yes, I had dreams…

To be truthful, some were just childhood imaginings, fun, playtime. I was never going to live in the forest and defend my homestead from dragons…
I had ambition, as a child I wanted to write and draw, and I did, making books from A5 paper…I devoured Cicely Mary Barker’s ‘Flower Fairies’ and made up my own, stapling pages together and inventing rhymes to go with them. I bought tiny A6 notepads and wrote stories, lost in a world of my own. I drew, sitting on my bed with a sketch pad, my tongue protruding as I concentrated on my art, sketching for hours.

My dreams grew with aspirations and ideas as I got older, just as my art did. From the crude pencil drawings of a ten-year-old, to more sophistication at thirteen and more mature at nineteen. My dreams grew up…but not always in a good way. I became cynical and reserved in my dreams, trying to think of things that could actually happen, things that weren’t too lofty for me to achieve…and perhaps that’s just where I began to lose them…

I began to doubt myself, my ability and question the reality of the things I once wanted. Was I good enough to illustrate, or to write something that people, real people, would actually want to read? That doubt, along with the realities of life, leaving school, getting a job, getting married and having children, stopped me from pursuing those things I’d dreamed of all my childhood.

I don’t blame anyone, I just let life take over and my dreams faded like an old masterpiece hung on a wall that no one does more than glance at, left to saturate in the glare of every day sun.
I could have been more than the sum of what I am right now…that does make me sad…there is so much more I could have achieved. It was when I was thirty that I decided I could become more, that those old buried dreams deserved a second look. And I began to write.

Self-belief has taken a lot longer…however, slowly over the years those shattered dreams have come alive, my writing has fed my aspirations and words that I thought would never interest anyone have become the tool for rebuilding those dreams.

So, yes, it’s true I have never found myself dwelling in the woods defending my little wooden fort from all things evil, but those dragons I used to chase off in my imagination, now live on paper. I believe in them, I believe in me…and that’s where it all starts…the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams…I intend to believe in mine!