Creative Writing Competition: The Winning Entries

Thank you to everyone who took part in our 1st ever Creative Writing Competition!

We are excited to announce the winners and showcase their stories:

1st Place - Fair Weather by Raphael Uddin

This is it, I thought, stepping out of school and into the future that lay ahead of me. This was the last day I would wear my school uniform, there was no going back. Tomorrow was also the Edinburgh Canal Festival, a day I’d been preparing for for many months. In less than 24 hours, Fountainbridge would be packed with people coming to see the many events on offer, including my own Summer Fair. The air felt charged with an intense mix of excitement and pressure, for what had been and what was to come.

This wasn’t just a reflection of my feelings – the thick June air truly felt strange and unpredictable, it had been like this for many days. I pondered rushing home as fast as I could, changing into my ordinary clothes and casting off my school uniform for good. I paused, and instead decided to get just a little more use out of my clothes and take a trip to Sainsbury’s for a tablecloth. It was the finishing touch that the bake sale needed for tomorrow’s fair. I walked past the lawn, that had just the other day been cut

for the first time this year. Neil had taken No Mow May even further, and it was a great success for wildlife. The cuttings had already dried out completely, the entire lawn now one big, flat hay bale. Starlings were happily rummaging through the stuff, making sure it didn’t go to waste. I looked up at the sky, back down to the lawn, and quickly back up again. A group of clouds, not too far off in the distance, were completely black. Neil had also said he had faith that the weather would be alright tomorrow, though looking up at those clouds I wasn’t so certain. I quickened my pace and headed to Sainsbury’s.

The other customers and I were all blissfully unaware, happily buying things inside, when one fellow shopper stopped to look out the window. They said something expressing shock at the rain’s sudden appearance, and everyone was reluctant to leave. I wasn’t too surprised, I thought it might’ve held off for a little longer, but it was alright.

I’ve never minded a bit of rain.

As I left the store and headed home, the rain became one of the more intense showers that you sometimes get in the summertime, that can soak you through. The temptation to head back to school flickered briefly in my mind, but this was batted away quickly. No going back, I told myself, the dramatic weather only adds to this milestone occasion, and it’s not like I’m going to need this outfit on Monday morning.

I tried to maintain the perspective that the rain was refreshing, but this became harder and harder. Just when I thought that it couldn’t get any wetter, the raindrops seemed to beat down on me twice as fast. A laugh of astonishment escaped my lips, I’d never seen rain like this before. It just wouldn’t stop, the noise was becoming deafening. I looked around me – when I was little this street was lined with trees, but over the years there had been felling after felling. Now, in my time of need, I could see no escape from the relentless shower. I looked behind me, at how far I’d come, at how home was now the same distance forwards as school would be heading back, and I had a sinking feeling that I had, in fact, made a terribly silly mistake. I had now stopped, and began to look around desperately in search of shelter. The street was empty of people, apart from one man ahead of me who had found what looked and felt like the final tree in existance, providing him with a tiny piece of psuedo-dryness in this unforgiving weather. I spotted a bush growing over a wall, and though I had to crouch a little, I was surprised at how much relief I felt under the leafy canopy.

Usually, I loved a walk in the rain, but on this day I had completely underestimated it’s strength. I reached for my phone, and yet even when bent over to shelter it, the amount of water attacking the screen from all other directions made it almost impossible to check the time. All the while, it felt like a bottomess jug was being poured out onto my back. I had a decision to make – wait for it to subside or make a run for it.

Though a little sheltered, I couldn’t take it any longer, and so I ran. As I passed the man under the tree, I could hear him above the ceaseless shh,shh,shh. He was laughing – laughing at the sight of me, soaked through, frantically running towards the warmth and dryness of home. On any other day it might’ve been mortifying, but I too started to laugh uncontrollably as I ran past, looking at the others on the opposite side of the street, also trying to bury themselves in the bushes. Formality dissolved in such an absurd situation; we all seemed to be a part of the same unbelievable anecdote, and so were brought together just a little bit. Had we not all been scurrying about in the rain like it was the end of the world, we might’ve had the time to stop and have a laugh about it.

I reached the corner of my street, and there was a woman guiding two children across the road, now a river, and over what had previously been a puddle caused by a slightly clogged drain, which had now become a small lake. The children were screaming – with terror or glee, I’m not sure. Most likely a bit of both, I think everyone felt that way. I was certainly reminded of the fun rainy days of my childhood, as the weather began to border on the fantastical. The raindrops started to feel so large and fast, there seemed to be no beginning or end to them, as if you were swimming in the air! That was fun for a split-second, then the paranoia about it being possible to drown in raindrops invaded my thoughts for a brief moment, and so I too would continue to oscillate between glee and terror as I ran down the street to my door. I admit that the terror had the upper hand as I searched for my keys, but once I found them it was relief that became the overwhelming emotion that washed over me as I climbed the stairs.

Though it took many hours, my clothes dried out, as did I. I had seen that the power of the weather was clearly not to be underestimated,particularly regarding my plans for the Fair the following day, though I had faith that we were prepared for every eventuality, and I had the highest hopes for sunshine. Early that Saturday morning, the clouds were grey and I thought I’d felt one uneasy drop of rain, but then nothing more. The clouds parted, the sun came out, and the crowds gathered to hear the music, enjoy good food and drink, give second-hand books and clothes a new life, and hear about the school’s eco-committee (to mention just a few of the amazing things going on that day). I looked around at the work of so many people taking part that truly made this idea I’d had come together, and knew that whatever the weather, it would’ve all worked out. I thought back to the events of the day before, still fresh – and damp – in my mind, as they still are today. I had had my uniform, and that whole phase of my life, washed off of me in a way that I could never have imagined, and would certainly never forget.

2nd Place - Winter Roses by Joana Avi-Lorie

On a Saturday morning at the end of November, I woke up to snow quietly falling outside my street. Perhaps a bit too soon for snow, but here is Winter, I thought. A piece of normality, of the expected, a moment of peace in a year marked by violence and turmoil.

Last year, my son was too small to clearly express his wonder about the beautiful weather events of our home planet. But on that morning, he gave some clear and excited ‘wows!’, watching the snowflakes dance towards the ground, the street, and the back garden covered by a white cloak.

‘Ball!’ he shouted, proudly identifying his football half-sunken in the snow.

We wrapped up warm enough and braved the white morning towards his swimming lesson. It was a difficult walk. Struggling to push the pram in the snow, I was reminded of the power of nature and the elements. Gratefully sheltered in an urban area that has been enjoying a time of peace and technological advancements, I haven’t been often confronted by the raw force of the elements.

I walked carefully not to slip on the ice, holding to the buildings’ fences with one hand, and pulling the pram closer to me with the other hand. By this point in our walk down Viewforth towards the frozen canal, my son, under the equally frozen rain cover, had been cocooned in snow. I scrapped the snow and created a little window through which I could see his face, smiling, comfortable with his blankets. Some people passing by asked if I needed help which was so wonderfully kind.

The struggle with the snow and frozen pavement stones also gave me a feeling of smallness and perspective. Of connection, not just to the elements but to our ancestors in the city of Edinburgh. I begin to muse about the weather-related struggles they faced, and how they coped, in a city that celebrates nine centuries this year. Then I think, well in fact Edinburgh is much older than that. I remember learning that Edinburgh Old Town can be traced to the seventh century AD, when the Gododdin established the hillfort of Din Eidyn close to Castle Rock.

Half-lost in the myths, the ghosts, and stories of Edinburgh and remembering those who have told me about them, half focused on not slipping on the ice and keeping my son safe, we arrive at our destination. I pull out the snow cocoon and my son coos at the snow again, clapping for it.

But later that day the snow was gone. No trace of it, like it had been a dream. And the next day was warm. As I rushed down Leith Walk to meet a friend for her birthday celebration, I wondered if I had made such a strenuous effort that I felt like taking off not only my jacket but my sweater as well when thirty hours ago I had been slipping on ice and pushing a pram in the snow. I looked at my weather app which said there had been a 15-degree temperature rise in a day.

Across the sea, roses had bloomed in Portugal. My father sent me pictures of our orchard in

the south.

The roses that live in our orchard, like most roses of the world, begin their first bloom cycle after the last winter frost. But now they seem confused by the temperature fluctuations.

And their erratic blooming will only create a chaotic situation for the ecosystem that is co-dependent on them, from the pollinator insects to birds. But the roses bloomed at the wrong time, they still looked so beautiful.

I too felt confused. I felt sad. When I got home, on a warm night after the snow, I put my son to bed and I sat in the dark for a while, listening to him breathing and then snoring.

A poem I read recently came to my mind, or rather a piece of it. It is called Dead Stars by Ada Limón.

“(...) Look, we are not unspectacular things. We’ve come this far, survived this much. What

would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?”

3rd Place - Cascade by Bee Stuart

In the wake of the storm,

walking up Grange Loan,

you wouldn’t have known.

All was now calm.

Sun shaping the memory of last night’s tempest into

just another Spring morning.

For some.

And I was one,

obliviously blissful until

I crossed the threshold of Blackford Road.

A great tree had been felled by the wind

bringing down the garden wall that fenced it in,

debris leaking

onto the street.

Wood on brick on metal.

And at the end of this chain reaction

sat three women stranded,

staring sadly at a vehicle squashed and

stuck in the wreck.

The cascade of cause and effect

Symbolic of our Ecosystem’s interconnectedness.

We cannot shelter, segmented behind walls.

We cannot pretend

or act in isolation.Who will be trapped as the last domino falls?

Be drowned in the outermost ripples?

Buried when the avalanche arrives?

What happens in the Natural world will spill

over into ours – since the dawn of time and ever increasingly – because

We are one

And the same.

All this I felt

as I witnessed and tried to help.

For alone

we are helpless

But together We can.

Rebuild, Community.

Strength and Resilience.

Just as all will be affected,

so too all must play their part.

Remember this

She says,

again and again

And yet, still now you would not know.

Damage patched; smoothed destruction.

Did it even happen?

At least not one street up

on Hope Terrace.

(Morningside Ward during Storm Kathleen, April 2024)