2494. Shortcut

About once a week Maureen would visit her elderly aunt who lived a good hour away. Having travelled the road so many times Maureen got to know the short cuts. For example, if she took a back-country road she could knock maybe ten minutes off the time. It was a lonely road, and Maureen wondered why more people didn’t use it. She wasn’t going to announce it too loudly; such things are best kept unpopular.

Last Thursday Maureen took the country short-cut as usual. She must have been on that road for maybe fifteen minutes. Rather suddenly her car stopped. She was in the middle of nowhere. Should she lock the car and start walking, or should she wait and hope perchance a kind person might come along. She decided to wait.

Fairly soon a car approached but it didn’t stop. About an hour and a half later another vehicle approached. It stopped. Did she need help? Can we take you to the nearest town?

What a lovely couple! Quite young, maybe in their early thirties. Almost instantly Maureen felt as if she had known them all her life. Delightful!

“How do you find the electric car? they asked.

“Never again!” exclaimed Maureen. “Look at me now! I shall never get another electric car in my life!”

And indeed she didn’t ever get another electric car. In fact, this was the last time Maureen was ever seen alive.

2245. Numbers count

Lorna wasn’t unintelligent but she was no good at remembering numbers. Her telephone number most of the time remained a mystery to her, as did her street number and zip code. In fact, she lived in one of those towns that simplified things by calling streets by numbers. Lorna never knew which way round things went. Did she live at Number 46 on 81^st Street or Number 81 on 46^th Street?

Usually she kept such details on her phone, but today was a day when she purposely left the phone at home to recharge.

When Lorna went to the supermarket she discovered that the supermarket chain was having a special nationwide promotion. All she need do was write her address on the back of the receipt and place it in a box. The prize was an electric car! Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Lorna went home and in the ensuing weeks dreamt the impossible: what if I should win the electric car?

Anyway, she didn’t win it. It was won by an Unnamed Woman who lived at Number 46 on 81^st Street.

2192. Jet pack

I’m a little bit out of touch, so I can’t instantly recall what those things are called. You put them on your back like a weed-spraying pack and take off into the air. It’s sort of jet propulsion or something. I remember when one was used during an Olympic Games Opening Ceremony years ago. These days they’re so common that a loaf of bread at an Olympic Games Opening Ceremony would be more spectacular. Everyone, just everyone, has got one.

The air can get quite cluttered. It always amuses me to see a parent taking their kids to school. It’s like a parental duck and the babies – except ducklings can’t fly.

Anyway, I wanted to tell you about my great-aunt Sylvia and what happened to her when she donned one of those things. She had been harping for years about wanting to try flying. Are they called jet packs? I don’t have one. Everyone calls me old-fashioned; I still drive an electric car. And I must admit that the state of the roads these days is atrocious.

“You’re too old to fly alone in the air,” we told Aunt Sylvia. But she wouldn’t listen. She made a heap of dough with that pretend money they have so she’s not short a pretty penny, and before you knew it she’d gone and bought one of those contraptions.

“Look Aunt Sylvia,” we said. “If you must try it let’s go to the park and try it where there’s space.”

But Aunt Sylvia would have none of it. She put the thing on at home and went out to the back yard. I swear I never knew those things could take off so fast. Aunt Sylvia shot into the air like a catapult out of a cannon. She hit the top of a tall maple tree and got hooked up there.

“Just use the machine to come down,” we all shouted. But she said she didn’t trust the thing. So we had to call the Fire Brigade to come and rescue her. These days, of course, they don’t use ladders; they simply put a couple of those packs onto a couple of Fire Brigade people and they do the rest. So Aunt Sylvia was rescued.

She said that never again would she touch the dangerous things. But she must’ve because we found her with a broken neck about a month later when she’d flown crash-bang into the concrete wall of an outside handball court.