I hope you’ve settled down into 2017 well. If you’re looking for a fresh challenge, here’s one for you:

Write a story or poem on any of the following themes:

• Disaster
• Love
• Silence

Your themes from last week were:

• A fresh start
• The dark place
• Monsters

Robert Griffiths has sent in a super true-life story on the theme ‘a fresh start’:

It’s a new year but I, an old handicapped man, must still go to have my therapy. With only one leg and one arm working and both rigid and spastic, I waited in the hallway for my taxi.

This morning, as my always chatty and happy Algerian driver arrived, we walked outside together on the pavement facing the unforgiving freezing misty air, towards the taxi she had parked several hundred yards away. Opposite the taxi are steps up to a pathway leading into a green floral park. A well-fed…