Caroline Jane
Bio
CJ lost the plot a long time ago. Now, she writes to explore where all paths lead, collecting crumbs of perspective as her pen travels. One day, she may have enough for a cake, which will, no doubt, be fruity.
Achievements (20)
Stories (174)
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Cosmic Constipation. Honorable Mention in Absurdist Awakening Challenge. Top Story - March 2025.
These days, the route up to Abra Doon's small stone cottage on Bridestones Moor is heavily militarised. Where once there was a winding, pot-holed country lane navigable only by sheep and the good-tempered, there now lies a broad, slick black tarmac expanse to enable the manoeuvres of tanks, missiles, and personnel. Driving up there, I lost count of how many checkpoints I had to pass through just for one fifteen-minute interview.
By Caroline Jane10 months ago in Humor
My Love-Hate Cake. Runner-Up in A Taste of Home Challenge.
I love eating this cake, and I hate that it makes me cry. Why does it do that? Because... At the age of five, I was prohibited from eating it. For a brief moment, my Mum believed it was making me fat, and from that moment on, my relationship with this ubiquitously British, traditional children's sweet-treat cake, made famous by a Queen, was to become achingly bittersweet.
By Caroline Jane11 months ago in Feast
The Best EVER Chippy Chips
A few years ago, at the start of the Ukraine war, when the price of vegetable oil and electricity went through the roof, the culinary world of the North of England quaked with fear. Community social media groups lit up, cosy weekend-in marital conversations soured, and parents mournfully lamented the tragic possibility that the price of a chippy tea might go up.
By Caroline Jane11 months ago in Feast
The Old Banyan Tree of Jallainwala Bagh
Why are you here? Death is not a spectre to be visited, and here, Death is all there is. If you wish to grieve, I suggest you visit the Golden Temple, where you will find a well-tended, gracious, and welcoming Jujube tree. My boughs can barely offer shade, and that won’t last much longer.
By Caroline Jane12 months ago in Fiction
The Splashback. Top Story - December 2024.
A Sandwich Short of a Picnic My ears ring. Alarm in perpetuity. The hammer and pluck of too many questions. A fighting chime of chords made from clashing notes of doom and discombobulation. They flow along staves of shady tidal waves, scouring open wounds with salt as they bite down to chew on the rot of my grey matter. Above and below, the moon swims limp and flat, leached of purpose and offering no destination. I howl into its mirror as my gilt- edged tears slosh down my cheeks in rivers of orange. Ironclad life rusting out of me in heavy metal groans—a tinman of brittle bones and weight. My mouth is dumb, filled with a pink marshmallow tongue that has spent too long licking saccharine walls, ceilings, and floors. Searching for doors. My teeth have melted in the constancy of the candyfloss storm clouds that spin, unending, in my lipstick-stained walk of shame sky. Once, I was one note in the dark beating a solitary and expectant rhythm—an incubated womb dweller dreaming of life—reverberating with diastolic and systolic ebb and flow. Harmony, my primal beat, my yin and yang. Then, the orchestra of joy and fear began. As the conductor tapped the baton, I screamed. Will humanity ever fill its void? The auditorium has grown so big, globalised and homogenised. It hums with white noise and hankers for syncopated beats. I cannot find my feet. The light fantastic has tripped out, and I keep falling over in the dark. It has a lot to do with this beige straight jacket of civility. It isn't me. I may drown in the sweat that pours as I try to wriggle free. It's either that, or I will throttle myself trying. Choke holds where blood should flow. Pedal to the metal. A hyperventilated state. Hope has anarchised into a four-letter word. I have tattooed it on my head because no matter how much I pack it with ice into my heart, it thaws its way out of me. A dose of salts seeping from my pores, leaking from my eyes, crusting on my lips. Bittersweet and antiseptic. My heartstrings are soggy. They play loopy tunes that nobody can sing along to, and my picnics are always one sandwich short. I used to know how to make a meal of it. One day, I will have a gathering where everyone laughs at themselves. I shall attend, and I shall arrive naked.
By Caroline Janeabout a year ago in Beat
Food of the Gods
Sorry to disappoint. Over Halloween, I did not go all H G Wells, don a demented scientist persona and go a toil-and-troubling to create a foodstuff that accelerates the growth of children. No. All I did was drag my fifty-year-old bones out of the house for a wild night on the town with my pals.
By Caroline Janeabout a year ago in Feast
