2661. An accidental death

Errol explained to the policeman that the shooting of his wife had been an accident. He had simply taken his handgun to clean, and before he could even check to ensure it was bullet-less he accidentally pulled the trigger. The bullet hit his wife who slumped dead over the dining table. She had been placing a freshly washed table cloth.

The body was still slumped there in a pool of blood. Errol had immediately phoned for the police.

The local policeman arrived. Errol was still holding the handgun, he was so shocked. Even though he knew that Errol wasn’t dangerous, the policeman called for backup. That was when Errol accidentally shot the policeman. He slumped over Errol’s wife’s corpse.

That’ll teach them both from having an affair.

2588. Daily hamburger

Melanie was fat. She was overweight. She was gross. Her diet could be ascertained to be unhealthy. The highlight of each day was to drive to the takeaway and get a hamburger with French fries. Today, for some reason, the drive-through was closed but things were getting ordered and sold inside the takeaway. Melanie parked the car, got out, crossed the road, and waddled into the building to order.

Little did she realize that this would be the last hamburger she would ever order. It wasn’t to be the last hamburger she would ever eat because she was hit by a truck while crossing the road to return to her car and that was that.

2563. Roads gather memories

Well of course Madeline you haven’t lived in these parts for long so you don’t have many memories of the place. I’ve lived here for over twenty years, and each little section of the road as we drive along has gathered a memory or two over the years.

For example, see this little bridge? Just ten seconds over the bridge, right here in fact, my car over heated. I had to call for a tow truck and ask for my car to be taken away to get fixed. And while I was waiting for the tow truck the dog jumped out the car window and wandered aimlessly over the highway.

And look! Just over here is where I sat in the car once for over an hour while they cleared the road after an accident. I can still just about picture every weed growing on the side of the road at that time. The wait was interminable and I was desperate to go to the bathroom.

How the road has changed! This used to be nothing much more than a county lane, but look at it now! The land has been divided into housing and the road is overrun with vehicles and street lamps. If I didn’t watch what I was doing it would be so easy to run into a power pole or street lamp or oncoming driver.

And here, right here, just over there was where I once saw a barn burning down. It was spectacular.

Where? You don’t see it? Just directly to my right. See? Just where I’m pointing. Just beyond those trees was the

2509. Phone Grandma

“So how you doing, Gran?” I asked on the phone.

“I’m good, dear,” said Grandma. “And how you doing?”

I hated having to do this. Grandma wasn’t my grandmother at all. Her grandson had been killed in a car accident and people had said she was on her last legs so why make her final few weeks miserable. So they volunteered me to phone up and pretend to be the grandson. I’ve phoned three times now.

“You sound a bit different,” said Grandma.

“I’ve had a bit of a cold,” I said.

“When am I going to see you again?” asked Grandma.

“We are so busy with assignments at university, Gran, that I hardly get a spare moment.”

“Well, you’re a good boy,” said Grandma. “No other grandchild phones or gives a hoot. So I’m leaving you my entire fortune when I go; the house, the car, the bank account. I don’t want anyone else to get a dime.”

“Don’t you think it would be better to share it around?” I asked.

“It’s all arranged,” said Grandma. “It’s all signed and sealed. Anyway, I’ve got to run dear. There’s a knock on the door and it’ll be a friend. We’re off to our weekly evening of roller skating.”

2492: A disappointing day

Griselda stood at her kitchen window and watched. It was eight in the morning and workers had arrived with their trucks and cranes to replace the old power pole that fed electricity to her house.

The electricity was cut but it was a winter’s day and the log burner was boiling water for coffee and for a soup for lunch.

Ten o’clock came. It was time for a coffee.

Two hours after coffee it was lunch time. Luckily Griselda watched from her kitchen window so she could prepare something to eat without leaving the scene.

Three o’clock came. It was time for yet another coffee. She could hardly drag herself away from the scene even for a quick visit to the bathroom.

Come five o’clock and it began to get dark. Suddenly the electricity came back on. The workers packed up and left.

It was the most uneventful nine hours Griselda had spent in ages. It was a great disappointment.

She had waited, camera in hand, all this time, and there was no accident; no man plummeting to the ground from a high cherry-picker; no crane collapsing and squashing the cab of a vehicle. The news media would’ve paid extravagantly for such snap shots.

Griselda had been transfixed for hours and all for nothing.

2451. An accidental murder

Charlene hadn’t meant to murder her husband in quite such a spectacular way. She had intended to shoot him with a gun, but the bayonet attached to the end of the rifle got in the way and she accidentally stabbed him in the chest. In the long run it turned out a lot better than the original plan.

It wasn’t an intended stabbing as such, but as she was coming along the passageway towards the bedroom with the loaded rifle, she tripped on the cat at the very moment her husband appeared at the bedroom door to find out what all the noise was about. The action of Charlene falling over the cat created enough impact to stab and kill her husband.

The rifle with the attached bayonet was part of a collection of Charlene’s husband’s war paraphernalia. I presumed your Honour, said Charlene at the trial, that the gun was not loaded.

The thing the judge couldn’t understand was why she should have been walking down the passageway with a bayonetted rifle if she hadn’t intended to use it.

“There is a totally logical explanation,” declared Charlene. (She had had a month or two to reflect upon the incident). “The roller blind in the bedroom was jammed and I needed a long pointy stick to reach up to loosen the stuck blind. The rifle with the bayonet was all I could find.”

The jury found Charlene not guilty. It was a fortuitous thing indeed, in which Charlene not only got rid of her husband, but got off scot-free as well. Charlene’s husband’s brother knew Charlene had lied and accidentally blew her head off.

2440. Piano was her forte

Sheila von Clavichord was a fabulous concert pianist. She was also a fabulous violinist, although piano was her forte. Her concert tickets always sold out within hours of the booking office opening. The catch was that no one knew when they bought a ticket which of the two instruments she would play. She never played both at the same concert; it was either piano or violin for the whole evening.

Mr. Grant Officer was fortunate enough to lay his hands on a ticket. He turned up to the concert venue with a great deal of anticipation. Would she play violin or piano? The venue filled. The doors were shut. The concert began.

Sheila von Clavichord had barely intoned the second chord of Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C Sharp Minor when the piano lid crashed down onto her fingers. As the review in the paper the next morning said: She can put the lid on her career. That’ll teach the silly person not to have chosen to play the violin.

2423. A memorable performance

Bronwyn hired a bubble machine for her class’s stage performance. It was “Grandparents’ Day” at school. The children were to stage a little play to entertain the grandparents. When the performance was over they would have a cup of coffee made of course by the class.

One of the exciting things Bronwyn had done with the class was to make stilts. During the play all the children had mastered stilt walking and would do a little dance. It was quite safe as the stilts weren’t very high.

The curtains opened! The play began! The bubble machine began to shower the stage with glorious bubbles. There wasn’t a grandparent who didn’t ooh and aah. It was time for the stilt dancers to enter.

Oh dear! The soapy bubbles had made the floor very slippery. Three stilt walkers slipped and broke legs. Grandpa Ned went up on stage to rescue them. He slipped and did his hip in. Bronwyn rushed on stage to turn the bubble machine off. She slipped and broke her wrist.

All in all it was a very memorable performance. Coffee was cancelled.

2420. Grateful for small mercies

When Chloe lost her head it was terribly dramatic. She lost her head not in a figurative way, but literally – when she crashed her car into a power pole. At the same time she also lost both arms and everything from her belly button up.

“Thank goodness she still has two legs,” said her mother, “else she wouldn’t be able to get around. I’m more than aware of the sacrifice I have to make to feed her through tubes in her knees. It takes up a lot of my time. But how lucky can one get? One has to admit that when the specialists sewed her two legs onto a wooden plank so she could walk again she was lucky to survive the operation. It was touch and go for a while. One must be grateful for small mercies.”

“Of course,” continued Chloe’s mother, “she costs me a small fortune in shoes, but it is balanced by her not needing anything else to wear. And if she’s feeling creative – mothers know these things – I decorate her legs with removable tattoo thingies and sometimes with ribbons.”

“When her legs are all dolled up what a pretty picture she presents. Everyone who passes in the street stares mouth agape in obvious admiration.”

2391. The marvels of technology

It was indeed a marvel of modern technology that so many people were able to capture on phone the falling of Avery Brown from 400 feet up in the Ferris wheel. He hit a few steel bars on the way down. It was a pretty bumpy flight. Neville Noonan reckoned, watching his video frame by frame, that the kid must have bounced around eleven times on the way down.

There were thirty-one recordings of the fall handed in to police. “This is an overwhelming help to discover exactly what happened,” said Police Officer Barney Meldrum. “Unfortunately there are five or six videos that are practically worthless, having recorded not the fall but simply the mess on the ground. We all know what that looked like. But generally speaking the public support has been amazing.”

Nana Vilovsky is an investigative journalist. She read about the incident online. She was able to get a snapshot of the fall from one of the witnesses to put on the front-page. Facebook is fortunately a veritable gold mine of what people are saying. It always produces information that is newsworthy, although Nana Vilovsky had to make a bit up because Avery Brown’s mother refused to be interviewed and was apparently distraught. “At least she has a video to remember her son’s last moments,” wrote Nana Vilovsky.

Someone called Kerry Johns or Jones was able to point out that the tragedy of Avery Brown’s flight had little to do with anything serious. “If you want to get serious just think how many people will be tempted to jump off the Ferris wheel once global warming takes effect,” commented Kerry on Twitter.

Ngaire Pinkum said it was a shame. She had the sound turned on to record but the screams of onlookers in the fairground, drowned out the loud splat he made when he landed.  “I can still hear it in my head;” she said, “the splat. If the sound had been clearer a lot more people would’ve downloaded it.”

Noddy Barberon, a sixteen year old visiting from North Dakota, spoke for everyone when he said, “I hope they are not going to shut down the Ferris wheel for an hour or two. I’m only here for a short stay.”

Finally, Elsie Styvenberg was able to point out that because of the hub-bub over the kid on the Ferris wheel, hardly anyone took any notice of the toddler later who got run over by the bumper cars.