1959. A finger in every pie

Wendy and Ronald didn’t eat out that often. Now and again they might go to a fast-food chain and get something. Not to take home, but to simply have there and then on one of the outside, bird-crapped tables. But still, an outing is an outing. It’s a change of scene if not exactly dining at the Ritz.

They normally liked to eat healthy. They were not fuss-pots about food but I suppose they could be called “careful eaters”. Healthy eating meant that going to get an unhealthy meat pie or an unhealthy hamburger and French fries once in a while was an absolute treat!

It was while Ronald was tucking onto his kangaroo and double egg burger that he came across a finger; a human finger. Although he wasn’t sure because he had already bitten into it and therefore pulled the finger out of his mouth, he was ninety percent sure that the finger had been stuck in the kangaroo meat rissole.

“Look what I found in my hamburger!” exclaimed Ronald to Wendy. “Someone’s index finger!”

“It’s not an index finger,” said Wendy. “I think it’s a middle finger.”

“How would you know that?” said Ronald. “They’re both very much the same.”

A wee argument ensued, with both Wendy and Robert sticking to their guns; although Wendy reckoned it was from a right hand and Ronald from a left. In the end they were able to laugh about it.

“It’s an unresolved mystery,” said Ronald as he scrapped his leftover meal with the uneaten finger into the waste bin. “I guess it’s something we will never solve.”

Which just goes to show, if a moral is to be taken from this episode, that wee matrimonial disagreements can sometimes be solved with a little laughter.

1958. Apple-Song and Acorn-Rain

Phyllis had a fairy as a friend. No one believed her. In fact most people thought she was nuts. She would talk to her fairy and her fairy would talk back. They were inseparable. Phyllis’s fairy was called Apple-Song. So there you have it! If Apple-Song didn’t exist how come she had a name?

Phyllis didn’t have many friends apart from Apple-Song. I mean, who wants to be friendly with a girl who is nuts?

One day some naughty boys came along and they pretended to kill Apple-Song. Phyllis was very sad. Then people thought she was more nuts than ever. She still didn’t have any friends until Acorn-Rain came along. Acorn-Rain and Phyllis were inseparable. He was a boy fairy, whereas Apple-Song was a girl fairy.

These days Phyllis is a famous writer. She is a multimillionaire. Everyone else works their guts out achieving little in their humdrum jobs.

See? Who now doesn’t believe in fairies?

1936. A lovely award, and a story “Chop! Chop the head off!”

Herb of Prudentia Sit has given me the loveliest of awards! It is the Herb Thinks I’m Special Award. The award simply means that Herb “would like to have a cup of coffee with this blogger sometime”.

It does not require any questions to be answered or anything special to be done. It is simply an honor bestowed! Thank you, Herb. It is greatly greatly appreciated. Make sure you visit Herb’s blog. As a blogger he’s long in the tooth! I don’t mean he’s old – I simply mean he’s practised his blogging skills for many a year!

By way of thanks, I dedicate today’s story to Herb. Thanks Herb!

Battleaxe handed her stepson, Douglas, a machete and said “It’s all yours”.

“I’ve put up for long enough with your three pet turkeys,” said Battleaxe. “They make a terrible gobbling noise all the time, they poo everywhere, they eat too much, and worst of all you spend too much time with them when you should be doing extra school work – especially studying the History of Systemic Racism which you’re bad at. Chop off the turkeys’ heads.”

Douglas loved his turkeys. He had found the baby turkeys wandering around in the long grass on their own after their mother had been killed by a farmer’s dog. He took them home and cared for them. He called each one Gobble, Gobble, and Gobble because he couldn’t tell the difference one from the other.

How does a wicked stepmother expect an eight year old boy to chop off the heads of his three pet turkeys when they were his only friends? His father had died suddenly not long after he had rescued the baby turkeys and now he was looked after by his stepmother who was nasty and cruel and had featured in many a story by the Brothers Grimm.

“When you’ve chopped off their heads,” said spitefully foul stepmother Battleaxe, “you can cut up the firewood and sweep the yard. Then come back for more things to do on my list.”

Douglas went out and called the three turkeys. They recognized his voice. They came running. His stepmother appeared on the scene to make sure he did the job properly and didn’t cave in with scruples. Douglas raised the machete.

“One! Two! Three! Chop! Chop the head off!” screamed the wicked stepmother.

So he did.

1916. Why don’t you suck eggs?

I paid good money to a tree doctor to have the dead tree cut down and taken away that was disfiguring my garden lawn. And what happened? The idiot cut down the wrong tree. He’s not going to get paid.

“You’re not getting paid,” I told him. “You’ve cut down the wrong tree.”

“You’ll pay me or else,” he said. “I cut down the tree you pointed out.”

“You’re not getting paid, and that’s that,” I said.

“Lady, why don’t you suck eggs?”

Well, that settled that. I’m not going to have a bigoted lumberjack cut down my wrong tree and tell me to suck eggs. Who does he think he is? Does he think he’s Lord Muck of Egypt or what? He can put his chainsaw in his pipe and smoke it.

All that was seven years ago. I still can’t mow my lawn. Sometimes I wish I’d never married him.

1915. How to pick up guys

Bridgette was having none of it. This was the third time she had told her new boyfriend that she didn’t take sugar in her coffee and the third time he’d sugared it. Didn’t he listen?

He said it was no big deal. When he moved in he said he wanted to sleep on the side of the bed nearest the door – “Because guys end up going to the bathroom in the night more often” – but did she listen? No. She was in the bed and nearest the door before he could undo his shirt buttons.

Anyway, said Bridgette, it really annoyed her the way he drove the car – and it was her car. He drove along glancing at the rear vision mirror like it was an obsession. Glance glance glance. He said he was looking out for cops. There might be a cop following. So Bridgette asked what have you got to hide from cops? And he said the only thing hidden around here is your brains. He meant it as a joke, but Bridgette flung her sugared coffee (by now it was thankfully cold) all over her new boyfriend and he said things that shall go here unrecorded.

Everything grew into a momentous argument and Bridgette said she would show him around and said “I’ll start by showing you the door”. He told her to jump in the lake, he was going nowhere, but she was welcome to get in her car and go off to where he didn’t care. He repeated that he was going nowhere, and Bridgette said “It’s obvious you’re going nowhere and never will.”

Bridgette said she was sorry, and he said “Try telling that to someone who gives a shit.”

He’s gone now. Thankfully. Bridgette realized she had made a mistake with him initially. It was her fault for inviting him into her life in the first place. One day the right guy will come along. You never know from one minute to the next what exciting person Fate is going to throw in your path. Tonight she’s going down to the pub to see if Mister Right is in fact waiting just around the corner.

1911. How wonderful to be beautiful!

I am a butterfly. Not just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill butterfly. I am gorgeous! I am dazzling! I am one of those things when humans see me they exclaim, “How could such a thing of beauty evolve out of a mere pile of sludge?”

It’s quite extraordinary how all I have to do is flaunt my beauty on a flower and cameras start to click. I’m sure if I was epileptic the flashing would cause a seizure. All I need do is gently flap my wings to attract attention. I have heard, at least I have been told, that to flap my wings too quickly would cause many a photograph to become blurred. So I flap my wings in a slow and stylish manner. Of course nothing disappoints me more if a photograph captures the moment when my wings are closed. It is a waste of exquisiteness.

One other thing about wing flapping that I have learned over the summer is to be careful not to flap the wings in too seductive a manner. Once I did that and clearly it blinded Mr. Butterfly who accidently landed on top of me. What a kafuffle!

So as you can see, I am exceedingly content with my lot in life. I have only one unfulfilled desire. I suspect it is the desire of many a butterfly – even ones not as beautiful as me – and that is to have a pin stuck through my abdomen and be put in a glass cabinet. Such a wondrous fate happens to a few chosen. How brilliant it would be to have my beauty preserved for an eternity!

Here comes yet another admiring fan up the garden path. I shall gently flap.

Ouch!

1902. Elegy

Gwyneth’s career was about to take off. For maybe a decade she had spent hours a day honing her writing skills, polishing her poetry, proof-reading her novel and proof-reading again and again. And now! A publisher had accepted a collection of her poetry for publication.

It was so rare to get a collection of poetry accepted by a publisher. Volumes of poetry simply do not sell well these days. Every publisher and his mother avoided publishing poetry anthologies like the plague. So to get it accepted was exciting!

Things don’t come automatically however. Things have to be revised and rewritten. Gwyneth was assigned an editor. She was determined to humbly follow every suggestion made; perhaps a change of word, perhaps a different title for this poem or that. The process lasted for two years. It was a tiresome task. Somehow Gwyneth made it through. And then at last! at last! the day arrived! She held her book of poetry in her hands.

Over the next three years two copies sold. The publishing company has now folded.

1867. The life of a grasshopper sucks

(Note to faithful followers: After 7 years I’ve fiddled around with the “About” section, so it’s different in places. Some of you over the years have kindly given likes and some have kindly commented. If you want to change your comment or like because of the changes in the page please feel free. I’m happy (though sad) to delete your comment if you would want that. P.S. There’s no nudity on the page.)

Quite frankly the life of a grasshopper sucks. I’ve spend all summer hopping from dahlia flower to dahlia flower. I can eke out a living by sipping a bit of the scant amount of nectar in each bloom. Apparently that process helps with the fertilization of the seed head as well, but the lady who thinks she owns the garden keeps coming out of the house with secateurs and cutting the dead seed heads off. I feel redundant and useless.

And now look at me. Everything is dead and shrivelled up. There’s hardly a sip of anything left to survive on. I know I’ll die before winter is over, simply because of cold and starvation. Here’s a photo of me on a dead branch of Jerusalem artichoke.

As I said, it’s no fun being a grasshopper. There were three of us in this garden at the start of last summer and then there were two – just me and Mrs. Grasshopper. We had a clutch of eggs and out popped a multitude of offspring. One by one they seemed to disappear. There was a lot of competition for food, and sometimes I wondered if Mrs. Grasshopper wasn’t eating her own babies. But in the end I decided that was not the case. We’re not humans. We act responsibly. And then suddenly Mrs. Grasshopper herself disappeared.

The problem is our colour. We’re bright green and stick out like a sore thumb once the foliage dies off. Some insects change colour and survive, but we have not been blessed with that know-how. I suspect the local song thrush may have got Mrs. Grasshopper. That wretched thrush has been hanging around for months. It might be responsible for the missing children as well. There’s no warning. The thrush’s appetite seems to be voracious. It’s rapacious and vociferous. One minute you’re there looking for nectar and the next minute you’re

1861. Strange goings-on

Una was one of a kind! She worked as a professional photographer. Well, sort of. That’s what she had posted on the sign on her office door: Una Devereux, Professional Photographer. If the truth be known, she didn’t even own a camera. The sign on the door was a cover-up for what was really going on in her office.

If anyone knocked on her door to make an enquiry about getting a photo taken, Una would say, “Dear me, I’d love to, but I’m utterly swamped with work at present.” Of course, if they knocked on the door to enquire about other matters that would be a different thing altogether.

Una always arrived at her work place late; it was usually mid-morning. She was gone by mid-afternoon. Occasionally, and it was very rare, she would return for a few minutes in the evening.

For all of these comings and goings we have a fairly reliable witness; Zita Pfahlert had an office in the same building right opposite to Una’s door, and Zita worked long hours as a dressmaker. She couldn’t help but notice Una’s movements.

Zita was pretty sure that Una didn’t work as a professional photographer, so she got her cousin, Milly (who was unknown to Una), to knock on Una’s door and ask about having a photo taken. “Dear me, I’d love to,” said Una, “but I’m utterly swamped with work at present.”

So with that, Zita was none the wiser. Zita thought of breaking into Una’s office to sniff things out. She thought better of it, although she did try her own key once in Una’s door. All with no luck.

Then one day, Una didn’t turn up at her office at all. There was nothing unusual in that. Her absence lasted a week. Zita at first presumed that Una was away on vacation. Things stretched out to two weeks; then three; then four. Una never came back.

Zita never did find out what really happened behind Una’s office door. And nor shall we. It’s a good lesson to us in minding our own business.

1860. An obsession with porn

Neville knew all the online addresses of porn sites. At least he thought he did; only the free ones, mind you. He wasn’t going to pay for all that rubbish.

His wife of course had no idea. She thought he was engrossed in a computer game, or maybe some intelligent reading. After all, he was interested in animals, and when he could drag himself away from the internet he would watch National Geographic on the television, especially if it was about animals that weren’t so common. Every second animal program was about lions or elephants or giraffes. He wasn’t that interested in that sort of program. Those programs were so common they had become boring. His interest lay in the less common fauna on the planet. The program on the Australian Gulbaru Gecko for example was fascinating.

“You’re addicted to the animal in you,” his wife joked.

For a while Neville thought his wife had caught him watching the porn on his computer, but thankfully she was talking about his choice of television watching.

As time went on, things began to creep up on Neville. Was that a touch of Alzheimer’s? Was senility starting to set in? Indeed it was, and in the end rather quickly. It wasn’t long before his wife was at the end of her tether. He had to go into an environment that was both safe and secure.

In the Care Centre Neville’s lifetime obsession with porn became apparent. Looking at porn sites was all he did. Everyone could see it. It’s all he would talk about. His wife tried to get him to take some interest in the Australian Gulbaru Gecko, and other skinks, lizards, and geckos. All to no avail. For Neville it was porn or nothing.

Until the day he died.