I’m sick to death of clichés

I’m sick to death of clichés

Whatever happened to coining a phrase for yourself, eh?

I know it’s an uphill struggle but if you play your cards right, it must be doable.

Now, we all know that a picture is worth a thousand words, so let me set the scene…

I am sitting here at my desk, struggling for inspiration when, out of the blue, an idea strikes me! Right between the eyes!

I could tell a tale about a man who spends his days sitting reading by an old railway branch line that had been closed by Dr Beeching in the 1960’s. He has very catholic tastes and reads almost anything he can get his hands on, but he likes to sit on the bank across the old line from his house in the long grass under an old apple tree, or sometimes in the sunshine on one of the old wooden sleepers between the tracks. He always was a cautious soul and still looks both ways before crossing the line, even though he has been living in the old station building for more than fifty years without seeing hide nor hair of a train. 

It will only be a short story, but here’s a brief introductory summary…

This is a story about a cautious man who knew he lived on the wrong side of the tracks, because the grass was always greener on the other side.  It was sunnier there too. He spent much of his waking hours reading and had found out over the years that you couldn’t judge a book by its cover, particularly as paperback covers seem to deliberately flatter to deceive. 

He was a bit of an optimist and really liked to sit and look on the sunny side, with its apple tree and low hanging fruit which he enjoyed picking and bringing back to put on the table.  He was usually careful crossing the tracks as he knew it was better to be safe than sorry, but one fine day he sat down on a railway sleeper and started to read between the lines.  True to form, his mind wandered, and he nodded off.

He saw himself on the sunlit uplands of a snow-capped hillside when, out of the blue, disaster struck!

There was a huge crack! The earth moved beneath his feet and he was caught in an avalanche of alliteration, a maelstrom of metaphors (what is a meta for, by the way – any ideas?), a tsunami of similes and, worst of all, a cataract of clichés.  What will he do to save the world?   

So that’s how it kicks off. Looks like a nice clean bit of writing to me, but just to be on the safe side, I think I’ll run it through a cliché checker.

It’s always better to be safe than sorry isn’t it?

Oh bugger!

Maybe ignorance is bliss.