"Austerity"...Sunday's Short Story.

I read today that the ruling party is abandoning the thought of austerity. Hmm. Not their style I'm thinking. But I'm sure many will take a deep breath and sigh...Thanks!

Margaret H. gave us the prompt a few weeks ago. This could be read with a Belfast accent...

Austerity!!

“What have you done with my pills?  I need them. I know you’ve moved them mother. You’re a blooming nuisance with your tidying up all the blessed time. Let the dust lie, it’ll be like that when you’re dead and gone. And I’ll be dead and gone if I can’t find my pills. I can feel myself coming over all faint already. I’m gonna sit down a wee while and collect my thoughts, pull myself together.

Sorry.

And what the hec  has happened to that cushion? You know I have to have thon there cushion at my back otherwise, I will end up crippled with pain. I’ll be laid up in bed for a while and then you’ll know all about it. You’ll be traipsin’ up and down yon stairs. I can’t be sitting in that chair with that cushion there, even if it does match the chair better than mine. I know how your mind works. I really do.

Sorry.

Has the paper arrived? I haven’t seen it anywhere. Don’t tell me that paper boy has given up again. Waste of space. I can’t stand lazy people like him, no get up and go, no loyalty to his customers. Well mum you’ll just have to pop across to the newsagent and get it. And while you’re at it, tear a strip of of that woman over there for not making sure her best  customer gets his daily on time. What’s the point of getting the paper at ten in the morning? Sure it’s old news by then. I’d go myself but I’m feeling a bit woosey, I need to get those wee red pills. What have you done with them you old fool?

Sorry

While you’re over at the shop, get me some ciggies. I’d give you the money but sure me wallet’s up the stairs in the other jacket pocket and I couldn’t make it up there at the moment.  Sure I’ll pay you later when I get over this wee bout of dizziness. Oh and a cuppa tea would see me through ‘til you’re back. Oh and make sure you put three sugars in the way I like. Last time I’ll swear there was none. The tea was flipping bitter. I’ll just have a bit of shut eye then ‘til you’re back.

Sorry

Have you gone yet mother? Mother do you hear me? You’re deaf you auld biddy. Deaf as a doorpost. I could be dying here and you’d not give two hoots. Do you hear me? I’m not going to shout, sure I don’t have the energy. I would have the energy if I could get hold of those bloody pills. Are they down the side of the couch where you sit? Why would you move them, I said why would you move them? I may as well talk to the wall for all you care. Is that cup of tea coming? Three sugars mind. And the paper would be grand before lunch for crying out loud. If that’s you by the front door, I’ll do without the tea if you’re on your way across. Ciggies, remember ciggies! Mind like a sieve mother , mind like a sieve. God I feel lousy, where the hec are those wee red devils? If I were a fit man I’d be up looking for them. I would. I know I would. That’s the kind of man I am. Aye, That’s the kind of fellow…fellow…fell…

Sorry.

[Slams door and gets into a taxi with suitcase]

Eileen is Missing....Sunday's Short Stories

I love the Bold Street Writers group that I go to here in Warrington. We are a mixed lot of women writing out of life experiences, writing out of imagination….just writing because we have to!

Eileen is one of the oldest who write each week. But never let it be said that she writes anything boring…ah no. Her wonderful stories could have your toes curling one moment and your sides splitting with laughter another!

So when it was Eileen’s prompt on Thursday and she wasn’t there…we worried.

 So we took as our new prompt…”Eileen is missing”!

Eileen is missing. People are worried. Eileen is always there prompt at ten, ordering her coffee, chatting about her week,

No, Eileen is always here.

As sure as eggs are eggs we could set our watches on her appearance. Always know if we had the right day, the right place, prepared the right prompt. For if Eileen said she would be there, she was…and Eileen is missing.

Every week we look forward to hearing some gritty news that no one else has heard, because Eileen doesn’t waste a minute of her life moping around. No, she is out and about with a cheery hello to her neighbours. Out and about at her coffee and tea gatherings with old friends from her professional life. Meeting up at bus stations and train stations and catching transport to theatres and concert halls and taking in the history of some local grand house. And then passing on her nuggets of golden information to us all. And making us think that we needed to be there, go there, hear that, see that. Instead of moping around and moaning about. Well you know how it is!!!

So that’s how it is now. Eileen is missing and unless I’m very much mistaken or missing the point…someone is keeping something back from us all. And I at least intend to find out what, winkle the information from them, ply them with flattery and even seccumb to a bribe or a spot of alcohol as it’s so important to find out why Eileen is missing.

There’s a space in this that only Eileen can fill. That’s not to say she’s a big woman, no, not big in size.  But yes big.  Big in heart, big in enthusiasm, big in ideas. Yes now I come to think of it, Eileen is a big woman. Someone like Eileen can fill a room, let alone a chair. So when Eileen is missing the empty space is vast. The room may be full yet it seems strangely empty.

My, my!… I’m getting rather metaphysical here!

 But no, it’s a fact and anyone who knows her knows it’s a fact. No getting away from it. I’m putting it down here on the page and it gets plainer with every mark.

 Eileen is missing and so we are missing out.

But hang on, wait a minute, there must be someone who knows why Eileen is missing. Someone always knows. In my experience of life, though I acknowledge that’s not vast, not international, not particularly academic, yes in my experience there is always someone who knows. And very often the knowing person and their knowingness is right under your nose. Not like a bad smell under your nose. No ? I wouldn’t say that. More like a feather tickling or a bit of fluff that won’t go away until you sneeze and your eyes water and you reach for a tissue.

But I digress.

 Yes someone always knows something. Well just think of all the media stories appearing at the moment.  Someone knew.  Knew about the pay packets of those nice men on the radio, on the TV news, on the BBC. And what about those coloured roads that are due to appear locally, all over the banks of the Mersey…someone knew. Yes but did someone else have to winkle out the information and post it up for us to see….even if it was all a bit too late for us to do anything?

As for Eileen, she is still missing. Though I’ve heard that the electrician knows where she is….

But he’s not telling.

Sunday's Short Story...Dan's Breakfast

Out he marched.

Out of the stuffy house and

Away out into his garden.

Off he went with his belly full.

Off with a lightness of step.

It was a good feeling to take into the new day.

Now Dan was no spring chicken.

Well to tell the truth, he was closer to ninety than eighty.

But a wee bit of a creak in the joints would surely only be improved with a jaunt out into the fresh air. 

Out into his beloved veggie patch.

And there he would stand, arms crossed over his chest and lovingly survey his domain 

with the pride of a king,

 an emperor, 

a ruler of nations.

O.k....that might be a bit over the top that last thought.

But nevertheless his pride in his garden abounded.

Mags, in the home, was a great cook.

There were no two ways about it.

She could take a few wee ingredients, throw them in a pot, add a spot of water and a smidgen of a stock cube and produce a soup to knock your socks off!

And when it came to breakfasts, well there was noone, not man nor beast could beat her breakfasts.

So on this morning she had truly excelled herself.... and Dan's expectations... and had presented him with the breakfast to beat all breakfasts.

Here's a taste of what lay glistening on his plate.

Two slices of best back bacon, crisped on the edges where a spot of fat lingered smelling of heaven.

Two fried eggs winking at him from eggy paradise with whites firm and yolks soft and runny enough to dip a toasty soldier in and bring it up to his mouth with the delicious chance that a golden drop might roll gently down his chin ...to be savoured at a later time.

A plump red tomato, halved and left sizzling in the pan 'til the edges browned with the crustiness left in the bottom of the frying pan from the cooked bacon.

And succulent sliced mushrooms sauted in butter and placed gleaming on the side of the plate.

But....creme de la creme, there on his plate a fat slice of his favourite black pudding, peppery and salted.

That was surely to replace the iron in his system.....just call me "Ironman", he thought.

So with a belly content with a full Irish breakfast and a pot of strong tea heavily laced with a spoonful...make that two or three spoonfuls...of sugar....

Out he marched.

Out into the sharpness of the January air.

Frost had left the grass with a grey green hue.

It reminded him of the colour of the classroom walls in the old school where he had been caretaker for fifty years.

It made him stop and consider how lucky he had been in life.

Well ...except for the times the school toilets had blocked, or that time the lab had been set on fire by the mad scientist of a teacher or....

Ah, that's what he would do this fine morning.

He would take all the dead wood and the autumn gatherings of dried bean stalks, dead asparagus grass and the sweetcorn stooks and have a fire.

A really big, glorious, joyous bonfire.

He would take two of the old wooden garden chairs and set them together upwind away from the smoke.

He would pop back down to the kitchen and bring Mags up and together they would sit and watch the sparks make their way up into the grey January sky.

He gathered the thinnings of autumn.. 

Stuffed paper into the empty spaces, laid the wood in a pattern as he had learnt as a boy from his dad, and who had in turn learnt from his dad.

So history progresses.

So skills are passed on.

So he took his lighter, the redundant lighter since he had given up smoking, and lit the paper.

Watched with anticipation as the dried vegetation caught fire and listened as it talked to him of times gone by, as it crackled and popped .

Mags looked out of

the kitchen window and sighed.

Another bloody bonfire!

So no washing hanging on the line again today!

Sunday's Short Story....."The Rustle of Silk"

Thursday morning writers group and Liz gave the prompt....

"A rustle of Silk"

I was going to write about my first silk dress when a memory from my early days as a teacher came to me...and after the first sentence the story arrived...... 

We lived on the top floor of an Edwardian house. A window looked out over the park opposite with it’s treelined  walkways. It was a good district in the southern coastal town.

We were three girls, young women, professional workers.

Val the theatre nurse in the local hospital, Jill the fashion buyer for the big store in the middle of the town and me, teacher of a reception class of little ones in the old school up in the village on the top of the white cliffs.

Always laughter and friends, that’s my memory of the flat. Maybe at times too much laughter and too many friends marching up and down the stairs at all times of the day …and often the night.

Madame Durant lived below us. We were young and not inclined to tenderness in our observations. She was, at least to us, old and squat and rather hairy in places we women are not suppposed to be hairy.

She regularly complained bitterly about us to the landlord, probably the owner of the property. He came to see us to plead for mercy for Madame. He invited us to his home to chat to us about thoughtfulness. We had tea and cake and he smiled at us. We were young.

Madame Durant was a writer of love stories. Passionate, lustful, full blown love on every page. We wondered if there had ever been a Monsieur Durant. We gave him a title….Mr. D.O.Durant! Such is the cruelty of the young.

We had a friend who was basing much of his life on the philosophies written within the book by A..A.Milne….”Winnie the Pooh”

Often in an evening we gathered in the lounge, sprawling on sofas, prone on cushions laid out on the floor, chins tucked on to knees, balanced on the edge of chairs and listened while he read. He read the escapades of Pooh and Eyore, Ro and Kanga, and most of all Christopher Robin. Each character’s voice was matched to it’s personality. Squeak of Ro, depression of Eyore, sensibility of Christopher Robin. We laughed and cried with the wonderful renditions and stomped our delight on the floor. Poor Madame Durant. I cannot read it now without hearing Eyore’s mournful tones.

I was given the task of organising the décor in the flat. I embroidered seat covers, bought furniture from the local junk shops, made curtains for windows from best Robinson and Cleavers fabrics mum had brought over on one of her visits. It was my contribution to the general feel  of the place.  I looked for ways to decorate, but we had little money left over once the rent was paid. And we each had our weekly bus fare and lunches to think about,  as well as all those little extras in a girl’s life. At twentyone my teacher's salary was £40 a month. It stretched quite nicely and there was always a bit there for Saturday morning coffee and cake in the southern coastal town .

I was in a finding-out mood when I decided to have a look into the little dark cupboard under the eaves. I went in headfirst,then body and then pulled in my long legs. No light switch in the cubby-hole, no torch in the flat, just feeling around with my hands to try and find anything interesting . As I think back I’m sure there could have been dead birds, mice or at the very least big hairy spiders!

But I found none of these. However tightly packed into the fartherest corner where roof and floor met was a roll of something soft. I grabbed it as best I could.

Without wanting to damage the contents, I eased my way back to the opening holding the roll of fabric carefully in my free hand. It was covered in dust and grime as was I. My knees were raw with crawling on the bare boards.

The roll of silk in my hands had writing on it and more than that it also had some design printed there.  I laid it out flat on the hall rug and examined what I had found. A map of part of Europe. A square of silk as large as a man’s handkerchief, with the map of Germany printed on it. An airman’s escape map with escape routes marked clearly. Thin enough to be able to screw it up tight or fold it flat. Small enough to be hidden in the lining of a jacket or cached in the hollow heel of a boot. Still perfect, still usable. But who had been the owner of it?

Was it Madame Durant’s lover? Had he been a Frenchman in the resistance? Maybe an airman based in the airfield up on the cliffs where the school was. History hidden in a dark cupboard in an attic in an old house in a town on the south coast of England. A town looking over the Channel to France. On a fine day in good weather you felt you could almost throw a beach pebble and hit the far shore.

And Madame?.....is that why she wrote her stories of love and lust? I will never know after all these years later…

But the prompt…prompted me to go back there in my memories, into that cupboard and find treasure.

So much unknown in a rolled up map of rustling silk. 

Sunday's Short Story.

I know it's Monday...but we left the house on the Bay...Sunday evening, and scudded down the old M6 to catch The Durrell's on the box...so no time to post as we cope very nicely without WiFi in the Bay house.

(...an aside...
...the bay sunset, which is renowned anyway, was especially beautiful on Saturday because of the stormy weather....I just had to run out and catch the end of it before the sun went down.)

Prompt

The prompt from Pat F.on Thursday at The Writer's Workshop was a challenge. Not that it isn't always a challenge for me...but this one stumped me for a while. But the only thing to do in that situation is to go with the first idea that comes .. and run with it. We only have a bit over an hour to write before we read the results to each other....so here it is...

Albert was not yet ready to share his age with Ivy. She had been told that his birthday was coming up, But as his secretary she needed to be careful about broadcasting it around the office. After all Albert was the boss.The company had been good to her. Life was difficult enough since Syd died. She was still coming to terms with an empty house every evening.Ivy felt angry about it all although she knew that his family had a history of heart attacks. Nevertheless, being who she was, one who copes, it was just a few weeks after Syd's funeral that she determined to get herself a job, and get back into a daily routine.To have Albert as her boss was more that she had dared to hope for.She did have a lot of experience noted down on her c.v. But with so many people applying for so few positions, she realised that in this she had fallen on her feet.....or to be more precise...on the office chair!

Her office wall abutted Albert's office wall. And regularly she would either be in his room taking notes or receiving lists of jobs to be achieved, Or Albert would breeze into her office. No knock of course, just striding in and sitting on the edge of her desk with a file or USB to peruse But recently often it had often been with a mug of coffee at the start of the business day. That was quite a thing! In her last job she had always been expected to be both office worker and tea girl for the whole  floor. 

He was no Adonis, Albert P. Shingle. Sometimes when she thought about it she had a giggle over the name...Shingle! Was it an illness or a beach? She preferred to think it was a beach.And what did the P stand for if anything? Some people put a middle letter into their signature to make it more memorable. Of course it might just be Peter or Paul or maybe Phillip. But she liked to think it was exotic...maybe Peregrine to counteract the blandness of Albert.! Oh dear as the months had gone by that she was thinking more and more about his life outside of the office, And today she knew that he would celebrate his fiftieth. Surely it couldn't pass by unmentioned?

Someone elsewhere in the company must be planning a surprise. No word of this forthcoming...at least none that she had heard of. Her job was precious. She loved the work. She was good at it she discovered. Better than she ever imagined she would be She would let the day pass by.

Every day Ivy made sure that all she did and even what she wore was as professional and efficient as she could make it. She was taking much more thought over her appearance than she had done for many years. Was that her being professional, or did she feel at forty three she still had a lot of living ahead of her? With no children from her marriage to care for life was starting anew .So there would be no way she was going to throw a spanner in the works and step forward now to plan something for Albert's birthday.

But there were little things she could do without making an issue of it. She put a bunch of spring flowers in a pretty jug on the side of the desk - not too ostentatious just enough to sweeten the often stale office air. She bought a packet of triple chocolate biscuits to offer when he arrived  with her coffee. She wore a new blouse she had bought at the weekend. Still a crisp white cotton but with a little pie crust collar on it. And in these small ways she hoped her boss would know that she recognized both the day and also the position she held in the company.

At nine fifteen as usual Albert stepped into her office. Coffee in hand, he smiled. She offered him a cookie. He took one and hesitated. 

"It's my birthday Ivy. I was wondering if you would join me this evening for dinner? I've taken a chance that you might say yes and booked a table at a local restaurant...what do you say?"

The flowers bloomed and shared their perfume in the room, out through the door and into the rest of the building!

Oh dear...cheesy end...but what to do when Pat says.."Five more minutes and then we shall read!"

Well you bring it all to conclusion...and who doesn't love a happy ending anyway!!

By the way you could see more of my pics on my Instagram site...if you were of such a mind!!

geraldinesnape...documenting the mundane