Endings are beginnings are endings

It struck me that, if you were to write a novel on a blog, you should start at the end and work back. Readers would hit it at whatever point the story had got to, and then read on, which is of course backwards.

But anyway, endings and beginnings are indistiguishable. How about:

Japonica closed the door behind her and stepped out into the early morning. No-one was around and every single early bird was boasting loudly about the worm it had caught.

Japonica had finally got rid of hers. She pushed the house keys back through the letterbox.

She walked towards the station. The first train, she told herself, wherever.


Or:

Kelvin dusted the loose earth from his trousers as he stood up. He looked down into his father's grave, looked at the little brass name plate, the pale, cheap coffin, the scattering of loose earth across it. His soul was cold inside him.

He looked around. His aunt was hovering. He hadn't asked her to look after him. He was fifteeen. He was the man now.

Two grave diggers loitered just in sight, waiting for them to leave. As though they could undo their morning's work.

Two of her friends were comforting his mother. Her knees seemed bent, as though about to buckle. She needed her friends to hold her up. She was weak, he thought savagely. Weak.

At that point, as water turns to ice, his future was determined. All his uncertainty coalesced into clear, sharp purpose. He knew what he had to do. He would find the people who did this to his father and he would kill them.

Funeral story

And a couple of stories today:

The funeral director told me they'd been at a cemetery doing a burial when someone jumped into the funeral car (keys left in because they were swapping drivers) and drove off in it at high speed, leaving the mourners open mouthed and stranded.

And a story from the life of the lady buried today. She was born in 1907 and grew up on a farm. As a child her father had taken her to the market to help him sell produce. They took a new pony on this occasion, recently bought from a circus. They happened to leave it outside a shop which started to play loud music - whereupon the horse broke into a dance as it had been trained - the cart still on its back dancing with it.