Creative Writing

LINKS:
Online flash fiction publications:

The Great Pero (see below)
featured on BBC Radio Upload with Adam Crowther Feb 2024
Peace Girl
Peace Girl - by Amanda Saint - WestWord (substack.com)
The Testimony of Clodagh's Shoes
The Testimony of Clodagh's Shoes | Phare (thephare.com)

Competitions, prizes and awards:
Salome's Bracelet - Longlisted, Stroud Short Stories, Nov 2023
Variety Stroud Short Stories Selected May 2024

Woolgathering,Or The Indulgence of Idle

Fancies Bridport Literary Prize for flash fiction, shortlisted 2024

The Great Pero

by Jess Blatchley

Mastering the balloon gag to its perfect punchline takes artistry.

Enter via ring door curtains, holding enormous balloon;
Chase balloon;
Throw it into audience;
Catch balloon, hand it to child in audience;
Pop balloon. Child covered in red confetti.

You don’t leave room for mistakes. You have exactly 45 seconds to get across the ring, enough time for the band to swing the dots of your rubbery theme tune, enough time for the balloon to bounce into the audience precisely 3 times. You make sure you don’t throw it too far back where the teenage boys are perched, where some spotty idiot might decide to try and burst it. For the denouement of the joke, you pick a child who seems least likely to explode into tears, but who will be sufficiently crestfallen to get you a cheap laugh.

It's a decent joke. They don’t call you The Great Pero for nothing (meaning feather in Russian even though you’re from a village near Bolton). You chose Pero because of the pheasants that roamed the woods when you were a boy. The male birds, the ones with cobalt and rust plumage, would dart across the road aimlessly, then turn back on themselves before attempting another flailing dash, sometimes narrowly escaping death, but more often than not, not. Pheasants are the stupidest of creatures. But watching them through those lonely hours as you waited on the stone bridge mimicking every movement of their physicality, was your ticket into the circus. All that darting and scurrying and head jutting made you famous in Lancashire and eventually all over the world. You floated from city to city, and unlike the pheasants, managed to escape getting squashed under some woman’s wheel.

Now, seasoned in your skill you’re a headliner. Everyone flocks to see you, to cackle at your huge luminous nose, the plumes of rainbow hair protruding from just above your ears, the comical oversized feet. You trip and slide and backward-bicycle, you flick-flack and throw yourself onto the ground as fountains of fake tears cascade in triangular spurts from your eyes.

But today, you can’t bring yourself to finish the balloon joke. You spotted him across the ring, a peculiar child, with features like a scrunched-up piece of paper, eyes like two shiny currants and wispy goose-down hair. He can’t sit still, his bony, chicken wing arms flapping, while his mother thumb-taps on her mobile, her face lit up by Black Friday bargains. He’s perfect for the gag, except this kid looks like he watches pheasants for hours on end. You hold the balloon out to him. He stares up at you, breathless, a huge Pero badge shining on his lapel. Your cartoon self shakes his head at you.

“Is it really for me?” the boy lisps and your eyes well up with tears that aren’t fake.

You give the boy the balloon and you exit without tripping, as the large dressmaker pin in your pocket stabs you in the thigh.