Eight Feet High : Short Story for Adults written and narrated by Ian J. Sutherland UK

I trained as a scientist and then made a career delivering complex change in the City. Once I reached 50 I decided to challenge myself in new directions which have included standup comedy, photography and blacksmithing. I also started to blog professionally, before being tempted to try my hand at fiction.

Eight Feet High was one of my first attempts at competitive short story writing - no more than 2,500 words in 7 days. This was a personal challenge for me being someone who has always been happier with numbers and pictures than with words.

The format is entrants are given a genre, in this case romance, a location (an ER room) and an object (a mop) that have to be woven into the story.

I rather dreaded romance, but as usual I tried to pull some anchors from personal experience and create my story around them. The first was those silver nitrous oxide bottles that the kids sniff. I had found a few outside out house and it had set me thinking. I had also seen a girl with one of those sternum piercings on the train - needless to say it caught my eye. Lastly the location of the club was set broadly in a retail park not far from us.

As they say, the rest is history, or rather fiction. I did receive some encouraging feedback from the judges, but was not considered good enough to progress past the first round in this instance.