A Change of Mind

Some years ago, I was chatting with a colleague who’d had over a month off work. I knew she’d been in hospital and didn’t think she’d mind me asking why. She pointed to her not-insignificant sized breasts, for one so small, and smiled. “These little buggers,” she said. “Wouldn’t have bothered if I’d known I’d get Pleurisy and nearly die but,” her glass was always half full, “at least they managed to save them, cost me five grand.”

It upset me that this gutsy lady had spent all her savings, and some more, on a ‘boob job’. It wasn’t on a personal level, I have no interest in what people do and don’t do with their own money. But as a society, I wondered how we’d managed to become a country where this was so important?

 Then I read that the most requested birthday present for American 18 year olds that year had been breast augmentation and my story, A Change of Mind, was the result.

I stashed the story away, it was only ever something I wanted to, ahem, get off my chest but when I was skulking around my old directories recently, searching for inspiration, I decided to dust it off and enter it into the monthly Writers’ Billboard Short Story Competition. You don’t need me to say how excited I was to hear that it had won the June competition, its prize being a two month airing on the host’s website. My eight weeks of ‘fame’ are drawing to a close so I wondered if I could intrigue you enough to fly over to the Writers’ Billboard site to read the story before it’s released into that place in the webosphere for old stories no longer required. You can find it here: *Updated: please now access through this link to my website

Many thanks to the Writers’ Billboard for the opportunity. They host monthly competitions all year round and I’m sure they’d love you to have a go yourselves! The Writers' Billboard website