2013. Don’t count your chickens

Maree was trying to instil into nine-year old Vincent a sense of the value of money. He must learn to work and save and spend. Since they lived on a small life-style block Maree came up with an idea based on their living conditions: if Vincent fed and looked after their poultry she would buy the eggs off him. It was quite simple: Maree and Vincent’s father would continue to buy the feed for the poultry, but the rest was over to Vincent. She would pay him thirty cents an egg. There were only three hens, but with careful saving money over a reasonably short space of time things could build up into a handy little nest egg.

Three eggs a day! Not quite a dollar a day! Almost seven dollars a week! Roughly 27 dollars a month!

For two months Vincent acted as a faithful chicken farmer.

“Have you spent anything of your savings yet?” asked proud Maree.

“Nothing yet,” said Vincent. But he had learnt and done a few things. He had gone to a local poultry farm and they had given him an old rooster.

“Is that crowing I hear coming from the hen house?” asked Maree.

“When there’s no rooster,” said Vincent knowledgeably, “sometimes a hen will start crowing like a rooster.”

After several weeks Vincent started going to the grocery store and buying a carton of eggs. He would sell his mother three eggs a day. In the meantime his three broody hens were sitting on a dozen eggs each!

When his money ran out, Vincent announced that his hens were moulting and not producing eggs, so Maree began to buy eggs from the shop.

Within a few months there were more than thirty hens and roosters scampering around the life-style block.

“What’s all this chicken food I’m having to buy?” asked Vincent’s father.

Within a few weeks more Vincent was able to sell his mother a dozen eggs a day. Not that she needed that many eggs, but she passed some to her sister and some to her mother. Now and again Vincent would get a bonus – five dollars for a freshly killed and plucked rooster.

“Well,” said Vincent’s father to Maree, “I think your little money education plan worked. From now on he can buy his own chicken feed.”

By the age of eleven, Vincent was selling fresh eggs to fifteen different households.

2011. Visiting an aunt

Let me tell you about my aunt. Her name is April. One day I decided to visit her, so I went to the train station to buy a ticket.

When I was lining up to buy a ticket a plumpish lady pushed past me in the line and said, “Get out of my way, you wheezy little wimp.”

To be honest, I saw red and retorted with, “Who the hell do you think you are?”

The man in the line behind me said “That’s no way to talk to a lady” and I said “Zip it, Sweet Pea”, whereupon he punched me on the jaw. I wasn’t taking that sitting down so I punched back. We got into a huge fight; in fact the whole queue of people got into a huge fight; in fact the whole railway station got into a huge fight. And half the people fighting didn’t even know what they were fighting about.

After a few minutes the police came, and I got arrested and taken away, so I don’t know how the incident ended. I got put in a room (I suppose it was a cell – I’m not sure what the inside of a cell looks like) and told to wait. I reckon I waited about two hours. When this woman eventually appeared I said, “Look, I think I lost my wallet in the scuffle,” and she said “Who cares? It’s your own fault. Shut up and show us some ID.”

I said “All my ID is in my wallet, you dumb cow,” and she stormed out saying “Wait here.”

Well I reckon I waited two more hours and then a policeman turned up and I said I needed to go to the bathroom, and he said “You’ll have a place to pee soon enough” and asked for my ID. I told him about my wallet and he said the same as the woman: “Who cares? It’s your own fault.”

He then asked if I could phone someone who could verify who I was and I said I lived alone and didn’t know anyone in town because I was relatively new here. So he said, well where did you used to live? And I said that I used to live with my Aunt April. The policeman said, “What is your Aunt April’s name,” and I said “It’s April you nincompoop. I just told you. You don’t know diddlysquat. ” And he said well he couldn’t contact everyone in the world called April. She must have another name, and I told him it was none of his business. I don’t have a right to be handing out people’s names willy-nilly.

The policeman said, “Wait here” and left. I tried all the doors and they were all locked except one and that was a toilet thank goodness. The policeman reappeared again and said the same thing, “Wait here.” And that’s what I’ve been doing these last two or more hours; waiting. I guess I won’t be visiting my aunt today.

2009. Tortino di riso alla valdostana

“Don’t bother calling this number again,” shouted Belinda, throwing her phone vehemently on the floor.

It had been a bad day. First she had discovered at breakfast that there was no orange juice left. She had darted out to the nearby shop and the time wasted meant she missed her regular bus. She was therefore late for work. When the boss reprimanded her for lateness, Belinda replied “You can stick the job where the sun don’t shine, you toffee-nosed chimpanzee.” That kind of ended her employment, and rather suddenly. Anyway, job termination had been on Belinda’s mind for some time. This merely gave things a push.

Upon returning home she quickly scanned the Net for job vacancies and it seemed that every suitable job stipulated: “Reference from previous employer required.” It was hardly something she could ask from a toffee-nosed chimpanzee.

And now her mother had phoned. “Would you like to come to dinner because the Caltabiano’s, nearby neighbours on Brookland Avenue, are coming and bringing their son, a nice young man that I think you’d like. I thought we would dine poolside.” That’s when Belinda shouted “Don’t bother calling this number again,” and threw her phone vehemently on the floor.

Jobless or not, Belinda decided she would spend a little on herself and go out to lunch at a semi-fancy restaurant. She selected an Italian restaurant, dressed herself nicely (just a little bit to get out of her work clothes) and set out. The waiter was very nice; in fact adorable; in fact quite the most stunning man Belinda had spied in a long time; in fact Belinda was so stricken that she almost couldn’t eat her tortino di riso alla valdostana. “I shouldn’t be saying this,” he said, “but would you like to go dancing this evening?”

Indeed she would! And indeed they did!

“I was meant to go out with my parents this evening,” he said, “to some fuddy-duddy’s place on Brookland Avenue to have dinner poolside because they reckoned they had a lovely daughter. My mother’s always trying to set me up with someone. But honestly, I prefer this.”

2006. Online business meeting

Well! What an unbelievable mess! Olga, who lived in New York, had been asked by Hector, who lived in South Africa, to organize a meeting online. The two of them were to discuss an important business deal with Jack, who lived in Scotland.

The meeting was to seal a multimillion dollar transaction. Jack in Scotland had the money, Hector in South Africa had the imagination, and Olga in New York had the drive. It was easy-peasy! All three knew it. A deal could be struck so effortlessly that possibly a deal could be struck even before a deal could be struck!

The business of different time zones was easily solved; as was taking into account Summer Time and all other unnecessary foibles of modern time-foolery. Such a thing was simple arithmetic. All three came online at the same time. That was when the confusion began.

Not a single one of the three had the slightest inkling as to what the other was saying. The accents caused total muddlement. It was all Double Dutch. Olga, Hector, and Jack might as well have spoken in turn in Njerep, Kaixana and Paakantyi.

The meeting was worse than a waste of time; it was a disaster. Afterwards, Olga jumped off a bridge (in fact it held up traffic for quite some time). Hector took his elephant-hunting gun and went for a walk (he has never been seen since). Jack went and dined as usual in a fancy restaurant. (He had so much money he didn’t give a hoot about some silly failed transaction).

And that is why the antidote for the common cold has never been made available.

2005. Ornamental argument

Christine disliked garden ornaments immensely; ugly gnomes and pink flamingos, plastic things that spun in the wind, little tinkling bamboo and metal wind chimes… The unfortunate thing was that Joanne, Christine’s next door neighbour, loved garden ornaments.

“Her place,” said Christine of Joanne’s garden next door, “looks like a junk yard.”

“Her place,” said Joanne of Christine’s garden next door, “looks so bare and sterile.”

The time came at last when their differences could be decided officially. The city was organizing a street by street competition: which house in each street has the best garden? And then all those selected would go into the final part of the competition: who has the best garden in the whole city?

Joanne went all out. She purchased ceramic lizards and butterflies, outside wall mirrors that made the garden look more spacious than it was, little battery driven water fountains… On the other hand, Christine maintained her garden to perfection – the perfect lawn, not a weed in sight, the recycling bin in a hidden corner…

The garden judges came. The garden judges left. A winner was announced. Congratulations Cassandra.

1968. Planet of Flowers

(This is the seventh and final Science Faction story in Science Faction Weak).

Floranarcissus was known on earth as “The Planet of the Flowers”. Space travellers had landed on Floranarcissus and taken photographs. Of course no one was permitted to take seeds or cuttings as it was forbidden by interplanetary law. Introduced flora could create problems for the host planet. It was best to keep flora on the planet where it had evolved. But Floranarcissus! Oh goodness me! The flowers were unbelievable.

“Seeing them in the real is nothing like the photographs,” said Barbara Cheesebrick, one of the last astronauts to have visited Floranarcissus. “The flowers are a million times more spectacular. That is because Floranarcissus is an unspoilt planet. There are no intelligent beings to mess things up. The flowers simply evolved lovelier and lovelier over tens of thousands of years.”

There came a time when Planet Earth began preparing to celebrate the two thousandth anniversary of that systemic racist, Captain James Cook, getting stabbed to death in the neck in Hawaii. It was a special occasion. Could Planet Earth perhaps gather some particularly special flowers from Planet Floranarcissus? The cosmic committee decided it could. The committee was after all, in that particular year, chaired by an Earthling. But no plants must be taken.

A special craft visited Floranarcissus. Tens of millions of flowers were gathered, hastily shoved into vases, and speeded back to Earth. Not a flower was left. But the plants on Floranarcissus would rejuvenate. Flower plants do that. Every country on Earth, especially the country once known as Hawaii, were festooned with blooms.

By morning all flowers were dead; dead, dowdy, and frizzled up. It was so disappointing.

It was years later that Earthlings learnt the bitter truth: they had exterminated all forms of intelligent life on Floranarcissus. The planet’s extinct intelligent life had evolved as flowers.

1967. Introduced species

(This is the sixth of seven days of Science Faction. Like most photographs of alien things the above photograph is decidedly fuzzy).

When the pair of polluxes escaped from the zoo no one minded too much. After all, they were harmless creatures. What people missed of course was being able to see them. They were the only creatures so far that the government had allowed into Planet Earth from Planet Alioth. Planet Earth was doing its bit to save species endangered throughout the Milky Way – of which there were many. There were a mere seven polluxes known to exist. When Earth was asked if they could take part in a breeding program – Earth seems to have the ideal conditions for polluxes – Earth said “Yes!” No one could deny that Earth wasn’t carrying its weight in the cosmic preservation process.

And now the pair of polluxes had escaped. Advertisements appeared everywhere, with both photographs and descriptions. They were small creatures, no bigger than an average cat. They had feathers. (Actually, they weren’t feathers, but they looked like feathers). They had a bright blue chest and the rest was shocking purple-pink. If you saw one you couldn’t mistake it. And no tail – I forgot to mention that.

Over time there were no reports of sightings. Then suddenly, there was a Pollux plague. Polluxes appeared everywhere. They had bred like flies. They were in trees, under houses, infesting drains. One of the worst problems was that they would crawl underneath a car and climb up to nest on the engine. It was believed to be the warmth that attracted them. Such a thing meant that the polluxes spread quickly where ever there was a road. Sometimes they would chew through the wiring in a vehicle.

They most definitively had to be exterminated. Earth’s government shipped seventeen breeding pairs back to Planet Alioth. Earth had done its bit for the environment. Now was the time to get out the traps and shotguns and poison. The whole world joined in on the extermination process – except for three or four mad people who thought the polluxes were cute.

No matter how hard they tried, the polluxes could not be wiped out. They ate the same as many Earth creatures. Dozens of species became extinct when it came to competition with the pollux.

It was a salient lesson. But… too little too late. Not even the introduction of Burmese pythons throughout the world could rid the environment of polluxes. But the pythons tended to take over every environment. They could breed like billy-O, and in fact did, with a guaranteed diet of ever-multiplying polluxes. Now there were two world pests: polluxes and pythons.

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.

1941. Helmut’s special birthday

Well I wouldn’t call it a big party; just a dozen friends or so invited around for a few drinks. Helmut was invited. It was his birthday. He kind of knew the party was to celebrate his twenty-first birthday but no one was saying much.

Maree was at the party too. Helmut thought she was pretty sweet, and perhaps something might come of it. She was very friendly towards him at the party and Helmut wondered if he should invite her out on a date. In fact, Helmut knew most of the people at the party, or at least had a passing acquaintance with them. Roger wasn’t his favourite person there. He was always raucous and belligerent. At least Helmut thought so.

Over in the corner of the room, Helmut spotted a huge bouquet of flowers. In fact they were mainly sunflowers. Helmut liked sunflowers. Clearly they were intended for him when they made a speech and they handed over some little gift for his birthday.

The evening wore on. Then Roger tapped an empty beer bottle with a spoon. It was like a clarion call for everyone to shut-up. A speech was to be made.

“Thanks everyone for coming,” said Roger. “I hear that it is Helmut’s twenty-first birthday. Congratulations, Helmut. Maree and I just want to take this occasion to announce our engagement.”

Everyone applauded. Camilla, who clearly was already in the know, gathered the bunch of sunflowers and presented them to Maree.

Everyone went all goo-gar over the engaged couple. No one sang happy birthday.

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.