A writing walk

I have started doing some writing exercises from the book Writing Your Way by Manjushvara.An early exercise involves writing a description of a recent journey in as much detail as possible, but with the addition of one invented detail. It asks you to see if a friend can spot the invented detail.

What I wrote is below. It makes no pretence of being good writing, just a bit of journal. Can you spot the invented detail?

I pulled into the Binks car park. Through a narrow alley, the small car park rested in the centre of the panorama which spread from the Forth Road Bridge on the left to the commanding mass of the Rail Bridge on the right. I guided the car into one of the few remaining spaces, my attention taken by a tourist family reading a guide plaque fixed to a lamppost. The man was intent on the plaque, while the woman divided her attention between the view of the river and the children, skipping and darting between bushes and rocks at the water’s edge. The man wore red trousers and teeshirt and an orange hooded jacket; I immediately thought of the followers of Osho, formerly Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh, and I sought and spotted proof in the form of the distinctive necklace of beads that hung to his chest. An earring caught the sun in a glint deeper and browner than metal, evidently some sort of jewel – a cairngorm?

With a gesture to the metallic blue car that never fails to give me a feeling of masculine mastery, I locked it and walked toward the street, feeling the first warmth of spring on my face and breathing the scent of mown grass. A man sat on a balcony overlooking the river, taking it all in. A sense that the winter was over and enjoyment could once again begin.