Random Story Generator.

Each of the stories in the Made in the South project consists of 4 parts - beginning, exposition, unravelling, and end. This page chooses each section at random to create new stories.

Click on the text below to see where each section came from, or click here to make another random story.

Random Story

New stallholders and shoppers arrive at the Tuesday and Saturday market, washed in by tides of fate and the recession. One woman near stands beside Vietnamese lacquerware. The colours are dyed in 20 layers: sky- turquoise, ruby, temple gold.

Imagine war-time, he sighs, think what went on! Once, my mother was cycling home and saw the bottom half of a woman’s body dangling from the telegraph wires. The shoes were still on. Meeting a black guy, dancing, jitterbugging – it was different for her.

He told of the swan in a poem. The group heard its beauty and the ache of the irresolvable. He wanted to finish it off. But the poem was already alive in the air; the dead swan had the breath of his words. Poetry doesn’t need answers. It just is.

We can't afford to do very much, she says. But it's a different way of being busy; a relaxing way. We walk in the countryside. My husband goes fishing on the beach. Life is up and down. But you wouldn't have it on an even keel; it’d be boring.