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- Story Listed as: True Life For Adults
- Theme: Family & Friends
- Subject: Character Based
- Published: 07/12/2015
Down in the vast meadows, in the countryside of Trumpington, one hours drive from London, there is a small community named after their village name, Highbury Meadows. The town lived in total and utter seclusion from the rest of the country. The public school there was likewise as it was the best school in the entire county of Cambridgeshire. The community contained about five hundred people and nearly all the children were sent to that local institution. This town, though it didn't often interact with the neighbouring townspeople, could boast many of Cambridge Universities's highest achievers. Every year, since 1987, about twenty children would join the great British university, situated just north of the meadow. This community, as one can tell, is a society with little room for failure. The town could also be proud of their agricultural outputs with being the town, in the past forty five years in the south of England (up till the great stone harbours of Liverpool), to have grown the most strawberries, each year.
In the form of this year's school graduating class, there's a group of intelligent, capable thinkers with vivid imaginations, who all have great potentials and have made the most of their school time opportunities. The school is the heart of the community and every year, the graduating class is paraded around town. One boy in the class, however, was quite the opposite of his classmates, he was always quiet in class and ever since anyone could remember, he would never fail to turn down an opportunity. His name was Croffin Butler and he was also the brother of perhaps Highbury's greatest graduate, who is now a head engineer who three years back was sent to London and is now working on several new products at Vauxhall, the world wide car manufacturers. His prestigious family tale didn't stop there as his father was a professor at Cambridge university, his mother was a conservative politician and his great grand mother was the head of the science department at Cambridge for thirty four years. However, Croffin shared none of his families' outgoing attributes and ways. This was evident all through his life. Throughout his early life, he was always restrained from helpful experiences and possible potential by his way of life.
Our story begins in an emergency room in the rosy ward, in Addenbrookes hospital, Cambridge. This ward may have been specific for childbirth but it was not, however, the birth of Croffin, but instead the birth of his younger sister, Clarence. Clarence was born when Croffin was two years old, at the time. Croffin would join school next year and as that first year of school progressed, he became more and more interested in football. At that grade, he couldn't play in a team but as day passed, he grew more and more excited about the prospect of, one day, going to a club.
Meanwhile, on domestic levels, his parents had left to Newcastle, for politics, for two years, so Croffin and his two siblings stayed in their uncle's house, a few streets down from their own home. Their uncle was a surgeon at Addenbrookes and that job kept him quite busy so, on the weekends, the three siblings would be home, alone.
Meanwhile, in school, his pre-school life had been largely uneventful until the last month of the year, when there was a class dance competition, in his class. Over the past year, he had become interested in dancing and had developed a great taste in music. Once the leaflets had finally been handed out, he couldn't contain his excitement and, for the first time in a long time, was happy, going home from school. However, that excitement would all die down on that walk home where he overheard a cluster of classmates worrying and complaining about the upcoming exams and how they wished they'd studied for a longer time. This made Croffin feel bad and this would forever scar him. Out of the cluster's sight, he paused in his tracks and thought about it. A hard epiphany hit him as he wondered if he was wasting his time and if he should sit out the dance competition and focus on studies. He would experience a tedious night of his mind going back and forth on the issue. In the end, he'd done nothing else that night but he could, at least, feel like he'd achieved a lot, After all, he had overcome his early demons and had decided to be firm to his cause and follow in his great family's footsteps.
That feeling of strength would soon fade, though, as he would feel a lot more sadness when he had to turn down the competition and had to look onwards as his classmates got awards handed to them, while he sat, feeling empty, as he missed the thing he was best at. From that point forward, he would feel like an outsider in nearly all aspects of his life and would see the beginning of a long, frustrating series of events. In missing that event, he had felt like he had nothing going for him. after a while, he seemed to be the only child at school who wished school was just classes, after all, what did someone like him have to do at school. He couldn't even seem to remember the last time he had a full conversation with anyone, at school.
As time passed. he slowly progressed in terms of academics but, sadly, his inability to make clear decisions grew much more. With that, he missed many school science fairs, football team try outs and didn't attend any debates. Three years later, Croffin would find himself a sad, indecisive boy who wasn't even that special at studies. Also, at that time, he found no refuge at home as he was overshadowed by his brother who had received a scholarship at Cambridge and his sister whom had won the same dance competition he had missed out on.
As time went on, everyone around him grew more disappointed in him and so did he. The only refuge he had and the only one that truly understood him was his younger sister, who was a high achiever herself but still maintained her human touch. Croffin's situation would, however, soon go from bad to worse as his parents were reported dead, during one of their annual trips abroad. Croffin just stood there, his eyes filling with tears and his heart hurting with a new kind of pain that he'd never really experienced before. That wednesday, the whole family would be there, at the church graveyard, in the meadows, dressed in black, in the pouring rain to say one final goodbye. Croffin was young himself but now had to take on the role of looking out a lot more for Clarence. In fact, Clarence was the reason for a lot of the pain Croffin felt. This was because he knew of how well she understood emotion and could feel emotion and how hard she had been hit by this. A week later, under their aunt's strong supervision, the two went back to school and, with that, Croffin started the hardest year of his life as he would come close to failing subjects and somewhere in January, he overheard other students imitating him and making fun of him. It may have seemed as though every school day was set out to be a failure, but that didn't matter when he was with one person; he, now, finally had a refuge in the form of his sister whom he could actually experience joy with and did.
Life got tougher and, with that, he got more depressed as he lost focus and, some days, would go out simply to get by.
However, even though life was remorseless, he did feel that he had been gifted with great weapon in arsenal, in the form of his immaculate imagination and mind. Even though he didn't show his greatly accumulated knowledge, in his tests and school work, he probably knew more, off his heart, than anyone in his class or family. He could give a large amount of credit, for this, to his love for reading. Over time, it even managed to fill the once great gap of a second refuge in his life. He would, however, show this love of reading in the form of winning two English convocations in a row. Those also happened to be the only two competitions he'd taken part in since pre school, but that didn't stop him from showing his imagination through other mediums as he would win many awards for art and cultivated a strong friendship with his art teacher, through his knack of creating very creative pieces of art that his teacher was very fond of. Sadly, as many great things did in his life, that honeymoon period came to an end with a change of art teachers. The new teacher was strict and would allow no room for creativity or variations. With this teacher, he couldn't adjust and found himself failing one of the things he loved. I suppose it's just the irony of life that the most un-innovative people get picked for a job that's meant to encourage and enhance creativity.
That summer, he would glow in the light of a double promotion, straight to the eighth grade before he once again would go dim when he had to miss the school trip to Venice while his sister would go. He had to spend that summer with the unfavourable company of his aunt and his books while communication with his sister was only allowed for one hour a day, during an off hour. Croffin would feel like there was a gaping wound in his heart and an empty hole that had gone to Venice for a twenty four day trip that would seem much more like an eternity, for Croffin. He found himself starved for good company with his books turning out to be nothing more than pieces of paper, when it came to real connection and real care. On the night of the arrival, Croffin rushed his aunt to the airport, three hours early and after an extra one hour delay, that truthful moment finally came as Clarence walked through those "arrival" doors. At that time, Croffin was happy to see his sister back but he would have no idea of what those arrival doors would really mean. What those doors did symbolize was a start to a new year that would be the best year of his life, so far. He found himself coming as close as he’d ever been to taking part in many extra curricular activities. At the heart of his great year was the drive given by his sister who, for the first time, brought his joy into the outside world, as well. Croffin’s indecisive nature would, however, slip back into place and when he graduated from school, he found that he was the one person with the least memories and the least goodbyes to say.
Even though he left that school with nothing much, that summer he had all he needed in the form of an amazing companion and a piece of great news that would come on one fine Sunday morning. At the breakfast table. Clarence rushed to Croffin and announced the news, she’d gotten tickets for them to attend a big East End weeklong theatre show. Croffin couldn’t wait, excitement rushed through him at the prospect of spending a lovely week with his little sister as they watch a series of shows that both of them were quite fond of for a while. Clarence, herself, had grown up on a passion for theatre and drama so there were multiple reasons for why Clarence, on the night before the big play, called that week in London, the best week of her life.
The next morning, Croffin received his results, from his exams, and a few weeks later, received another letter saying he’d been admitted in Cambridge. For the first time, he felt as though he belonged and he felt as though people thought he belonged. His family were overjoyed and he could finally say he was the ornament of the family. That night, Clarence and Croffin would go out to the theatre to have what they thought would be the best night of their lives and it seemed like it was all set up perfectly. When the hours got late and the night was tying up, Clarence went out to a bar to meet a friend of hers, in London. The clock struck 1:30am and he got worried, he just couldn’t sleep in their great London hotel room with Clarence gone. He knew he had to finish an almost perfect day, correctly.
He decided to drive down, using a hired car, to see if Clarence was doing fine, but what he’d see then would change his life. When making a cross into bakers street, he came by a car that looked like blue BMW she had taken, parked in a slanted position on the side of the road. There were people surrounding it, policemen at the site and another car in another unusual position. He, then, realised what had happened. his car stopped in it’s tracks and just stood there, with no care for road blocks or anything along the lines of social norms. He would just stand there, after walking over to the site he continued to stand there, paused in the moment, a moment that would go on until the sun came up and started to descend again.
That entire day, he didn’t go back to the hotel, it was just too painful and he was in too much shock, his emotions were just too strong to make any directed motion. He came to the east bank of the Thames and sat there, seeing the colours of a Friday sunset change and disappear as the clock expired on the most miserable day of his life. He came back to the meadows, straight after, and when he had arrived home, he would just stay at home for the next week, reflecting on his life, on how he and Clarence would've had so many more great memories and would've enjoyed London so much more with his sister whom he loved more than any other thing he knew of. He reflected on how he had nobody other than her and how he still has nobody outside of her, he thought about how she was his cornerstone and about how she nearly defeated his demons when he wasn't strong enough and when nobody else would help or even understand him. He thought about how he was back to square one and had no comfort zone left, how he was once again an outsider in a cold world.
Three weeks later, once Croffin was entering the more mobile stages of grief, he received an invitation and for many hours his need to come and his hesitation and his feeling of just not being ready battled like two different clashing lines of thought. On the morning of the funeral, he was intending on going and in fact had a suit on and was nearly out the door, but as he approached the outside, that long forgotten burden that had taunted throughout his childhood but had banished by the influence of a shining beam of beautiful light that had lately gone dim, came back to him as he felt something that he hadn't felt in a long time. It was that other pestering line of thought, one that was the cause of his tiresome depression and one that saw him into his darkest days. This drastic pressure acting upon him did not stop him from stepping outside and getting into his car, but it did stop him from going as he stepped into his car to go to the post office, to pick up that newspaper instead. He, himself, felt that he needed time to visit the final resting place of the one thing he loved the most but he thought to himself, he could just visit in a few weeks time.
The nearest post office was a ten minutes drive from his house. He was about to arrive at the post office when he was approaching the final crossing. Just for a moment, he turned his attention to lowering the radio's suddenly roaring volume but before he could take another breath, he found that last breath knocked out of his lungs as he lied limp and lifeless on the street, dead, and his car with a massive crater on it's side filled with the destruction of another car, smashed sideways to his.
So in the end, he saw, clearly, that he had followed the final path of his most loved ones and was leaving behind him a life with one shining light that ended in the most gloomy of ways. He also left a life occupied by a constant battle which would, in the end, cost him the final penalty as well as not being able to see his one true friend and sister, Clarence, for the last time. So in the end, through everything which happened in his hectic yet short life, the thing which most kept him in those dreaded shackles of hesitation and regret was his ongoing line of two thoughts.
A Line Of Two Thoughts(Ibrahim Hoti)
Down in the vast meadows, in the countryside of Trumpington, one hours drive from London, there is a small community named after their village name, Highbury Meadows. The town lived in total and utter seclusion from the rest of the country. The public school there was likewise as it was the best school in the entire county of Cambridgeshire. The community contained about five hundred people and nearly all the children were sent to that local institution. This town, though it didn't often interact with the neighbouring townspeople, could boast many of Cambridge Universities's highest achievers. Every year, since 1987, about twenty children would join the great British university, situated just north of the meadow. This community, as one can tell, is a society with little room for failure. The town could also be proud of their agricultural outputs with being the town, in the past forty five years in the south of England (up till the great stone harbours of Liverpool), to have grown the most strawberries, each year.
In the form of this year's school graduating class, there's a group of intelligent, capable thinkers with vivid imaginations, who all have great potentials and have made the most of their school time opportunities. The school is the heart of the community and every year, the graduating class is paraded around town. One boy in the class, however, was quite the opposite of his classmates, he was always quiet in class and ever since anyone could remember, he would never fail to turn down an opportunity. His name was Croffin Butler and he was also the brother of perhaps Highbury's greatest graduate, who is now a head engineer who three years back was sent to London and is now working on several new products at Vauxhall, the world wide car manufacturers. His prestigious family tale didn't stop there as his father was a professor at Cambridge university, his mother was a conservative politician and his great grand mother was the head of the science department at Cambridge for thirty four years. However, Croffin shared none of his families' outgoing attributes and ways. This was evident all through his life. Throughout his early life, he was always restrained from helpful experiences and possible potential by his way of life.
Our story begins in an emergency room in the rosy ward, in Addenbrookes hospital, Cambridge. This ward may have been specific for childbirth but it was not, however, the birth of Croffin, but instead the birth of his younger sister, Clarence. Clarence was born when Croffin was two years old, at the time. Croffin would join school next year and as that first year of school progressed, he became more and more interested in football. At that grade, he couldn't play in a team but as day passed, he grew more and more excited about the prospect of, one day, going to a club.
Meanwhile, on domestic levels, his parents had left to Newcastle, for politics, for two years, so Croffin and his two siblings stayed in their uncle's house, a few streets down from their own home. Their uncle was a surgeon at Addenbrookes and that job kept him quite busy so, on the weekends, the three siblings would be home, alone.
Meanwhile, in school, his pre-school life had been largely uneventful until the last month of the year, when there was a class dance competition, in his class. Over the past year, he had become interested in dancing and had developed a great taste in music. Once the leaflets had finally been handed out, he couldn't contain his excitement and, for the first time in a long time, was happy, going home from school. However, that excitement would all die down on that walk home where he overheard a cluster of classmates worrying and complaining about the upcoming exams and how they wished they'd studied for a longer time. This made Croffin feel bad and this would forever scar him. Out of the cluster's sight, he paused in his tracks and thought about it. A hard epiphany hit him as he wondered if he was wasting his time and if he should sit out the dance competition and focus on studies. He would experience a tedious night of his mind going back and forth on the issue. In the end, he'd done nothing else that night but he could, at least, feel like he'd achieved a lot, After all, he had overcome his early demons and had decided to be firm to his cause and follow in his great family's footsteps.
That feeling of strength would soon fade, though, as he would feel a lot more sadness when he had to turn down the competition and had to look onwards as his classmates got awards handed to them, while he sat, feeling empty, as he missed the thing he was best at. From that point forward, he would feel like an outsider in nearly all aspects of his life and would see the beginning of a long, frustrating series of events. In missing that event, he had felt like he had nothing going for him. after a while, he seemed to be the only child at school who wished school was just classes, after all, what did someone like him have to do at school. He couldn't even seem to remember the last time he had a full conversation with anyone, at school.
As time passed. he slowly progressed in terms of academics but, sadly, his inability to make clear decisions grew much more. With that, he missed many school science fairs, football team try outs and didn't attend any debates. Three years later, Croffin would find himself a sad, indecisive boy who wasn't even that special at studies. Also, at that time, he found no refuge at home as he was overshadowed by his brother who had received a scholarship at Cambridge and his sister whom had won the same dance competition he had missed out on.
As time went on, everyone around him grew more disappointed in him and so did he. The only refuge he had and the only one that truly understood him was his younger sister, who was a high achiever herself but still maintained her human touch. Croffin's situation would, however, soon go from bad to worse as his parents were reported dead, during one of their annual trips abroad. Croffin just stood there, his eyes filling with tears and his heart hurting with a new kind of pain that he'd never really experienced before. That wednesday, the whole family would be there, at the church graveyard, in the meadows, dressed in black, in the pouring rain to say one final goodbye. Croffin was young himself but now had to take on the role of looking out a lot more for Clarence. In fact, Clarence was the reason for a lot of the pain Croffin felt. This was because he knew of how well she understood emotion and could feel emotion and how hard she had been hit by this. A week later, under their aunt's strong supervision, the two went back to school and, with that, Croffin started the hardest year of his life as he would come close to failing subjects and somewhere in January, he overheard other students imitating him and making fun of him. It may have seemed as though every school day was set out to be a failure, but that didn't matter when he was with one person; he, now, finally had a refuge in the form of his sister whom he could actually experience joy with and did.
Life got tougher and, with that, he got more depressed as he lost focus and, some days, would go out simply to get by.
However, even though life was remorseless, he did feel that he had been gifted with great weapon in arsenal, in the form of his immaculate imagination and mind. Even though he didn't show his greatly accumulated knowledge, in his tests and school work, he probably knew more, off his heart, than anyone in his class or family. He could give a large amount of credit, for this, to his love for reading. Over time, it even managed to fill the once great gap of a second refuge in his life. He would, however, show this love of reading in the form of winning two English convocations in a row. Those also happened to be the only two competitions he'd taken part in since pre school, but that didn't stop him from showing his imagination through other mediums as he would win many awards for art and cultivated a strong friendship with his art teacher, through his knack of creating very creative pieces of art that his teacher was very fond of. Sadly, as many great things did in his life, that honeymoon period came to an end with a change of art teachers. The new teacher was strict and would allow no room for creativity or variations. With this teacher, he couldn't adjust and found himself failing one of the things he loved. I suppose it's just the irony of life that the most un-innovative people get picked for a job that's meant to encourage and enhance creativity.
That summer, he would glow in the light of a double promotion, straight to the eighth grade before he once again would go dim when he had to miss the school trip to Venice while his sister would go. He had to spend that summer with the unfavourable company of his aunt and his books while communication with his sister was only allowed for one hour a day, during an off hour. Croffin would feel like there was a gaping wound in his heart and an empty hole that had gone to Venice for a twenty four day trip that would seem much more like an eternity, for Croffin. He found himself starved for good company with his books turning out to be nothing more than pieces of paper, when it came to real connection and real care. On the night of the arrival, Croffin rushed his aunt to the airport, three hours early and after an extra one hour delay, that truthful moment finally came as Clarence walked through those "arrival" doors. At that time, Croffin was happy to see his sister back but he would have no idea of what those arrival doors would really mean. What those doors did symbolize was a start to a new year that would be the best year of his life, so far. He found himself coming as close as he’d ever been to taking part in many extra curricular activities. At the heart of his great year was the drive given by his sister who, for the first time, brought his joy into the outside world, as well. Croffin’s indecisive nature would, however, slip back into place and when he graduated from school, he found that he was the one person with the least memories and the least goodbyes to say.
Even though he left that school with nothing much, that summer he had all he needed in the form of an amazing companion and a piece of great news that would come on one fine Sunday morning. At the breakfast table. Clarence rushed to Croffin and announced the news, she’d gotten tickets for them to attend a big East End weeklong theatre show. Croffin couldn’t wait, excitement rushed through him at the prospect of spending a lovely week with his little sister as they watch a series of shows that both of them were quite fond of for a while. Clarence, herself, had grown up on a passion for theatre and drama so there were multiple reasons for why Clarence, on the night before the big play, called that week in London, the best week of her life.
The next morning, Croffin received his results, from his exams, and a few weeks later, received another letter saying he’d been admitted in Cambridge. For the first time, he felt as though he belonged and he felt as though people thought he belonged. His family were overjoyed and he could finally say he was the ornament of the family. That night, Clarence and Croffin would go out to the theatre to have what they thought would be the best night of their lives and it seemed like it was all set up perfectly. When the hours got late and the night was tying up, Clarence went out to a bar to meet a friend of hers, in London. The clock struck 1:30am and he got worried, he just couldn’t sleep in their great London hotel room with Clarence gone. He knew he had to finish an almost perfect day, correctly.
He decided to drive down, using a hired car, to see if Clarence was doing fine, but what he’d see then would change his life. When making a cross into bakers street, he came by a car that looked like blue BMW she had taken, parked in a slanted position on the side of the road. There were people surrounding it, policemen at the site and another car in another unusual position. He, then, realised what had happened. his car stopped in it’s tracks and just stood there, with no care for road blocks or anything along the lines of social norms. He would just stand there, after walking over to the site he continued to stand there, paused in the moment, a moment that would go on until the sun came up and started to descend again.
That entire day, he didn’t go back to the hotel, it was just too painful and he was in too much shock, his emotions were just too strong to make any directed motion. He came to the east bank of the Thames and sat there, seeing the colours of a Friday sunset change and disappear as the clock expired on the most miserable day of his life. He came back to the meadows, straight after, and when he had arrived home, he would just stay at home for the next week, reflecting on his life, on how he and Clarence would've had so many more great memories and would've enjoyed London so much more with his sister whom he loved more than any other thing he knew of. He reflected on how he had nobody other than her and how he still has nobody outside of her, he thought about how she was his cornerstone and about how she nearly defeated his demons when he wasn't strong enough and when nobody else would help or even understand him. He thought about how he was back to square one and had no comfort zone left, how he was once again an outsider in a cold world.
Three weeks later, once Croffin was entering the more mobile stages of grief, he received an invitation and for many hours his need to come and his hesitation and his feeling of just not being ready battled like two different clashing lines of thought. On the morning of the funeral, he was intending on going and in fact had a suit on and was nearly out the door, but as he approached the outside, that long forgotten burden that had taunted throughout his childhood but had banished by the influence of a shining beam of beautiful light that had lately gone dim, came back to him as he felt something that he hadn't felt in a long time. It was that other pestering line of thought, one that was the cause of his tiresome depression and one that saw him into his darkest days. This drastic pressure acting upon him did not stop him from stepping outside and getting into his car, but it did stop him from going as he stepped into his car to go to the post office, to pick up that newspaper instead. He, himself, felt that he needed time to visit the final resting place of the one thing he loved the most but he thought to himself, he could just visit in a few weeks time.
The nearest post office was a ten minutes drive from his house. He was about to arrive at the post office when he was approaching the final crossing. Just for a moment, he turned his attention to lowering the radio's suddenly roaring volume but before he could take another breath, he found that last breath knocked out of his lungs as he lied limp and lifeless on the street, dead, and his car with a massive crater on it's side filled with the destruction of another car, smashed sideways to his.
So in the end, he saw, clearly, that he had followed the final path of his most loved ones and was leaving behind him a life with one shining light that ended in the most gloomy of ways. He also left a life occupied by a constant battle which would, in the end, cost him the final penalty as well as not being able to see his one true friend and sister, Clarence, for the last time. So in the end, through everything which happened in his hectic yet short life, the thing which most kept him in those dreaded shackles of hesitation and regret was his ongoing line of two thoughts.
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