An everyday tale of village life and vampires…

Agnes and Petunia looked Ginny over carefully as she slept. Finally, Agnes grinned.
“Looks as if we got away with that one. Aside from the fact the hair on her head seems a bit less wispy and her front teeth are a bit prominent, she’s just the way she was.”
Em was bitterly tired but she managed a smile, and when Arnold offered her a cup of something steaming she took it gratefully. It was soup, and it helped. However, what she really needed was blood tea, and a lot of sleep. It shouldn’t have been a surprise when a puffed-out Agnes handed her a tall mug from her own kitchen. She drank deeply and felt a measure of strength seeping back through her bones.
“Now what?” 
Agnes indicated the trussed-up were with a lift of one of her chins.
“Good question.”
The voice was unfeasibly deep and came from the doorway. Em smiled a weary smile.
“Come in Leodigrace. Come and tell us how the heck that one got away from you.”
The shadows readjusted and a tall man came quietly into the church.
“He didn’t get away, Emmeline. He slipped under the radar. I can find no trace of anybody knowing anything about him. Although someone did. And we will find out who.”
Agnes gave the big lycanthrope a dirty look. “Not wishing to be thought unwelcoming, or anything like that, just how did you happen to be in the area?”
“I didn’t happen to be here. I was having a meeting with the bishop – about yon bunny rabbit – when I suddenly knew something was happening here. I hurried…”
“Now you are here,” Em managed to sound severe even in the face of gnawing fatigue, “can we leave the disposal of that poor mad creature to you?”
“You can.”
Leodigrace bent over and lifted Doug Turner as easily as if he was a tiny child. Then he was gone.
Arnold looked at the three women. “I don’t suppose anybody is going to tell me who or what.”
Em shrugged. “You’ve seen too much already, so why not. Leodigrace is the big cheese when it comes to weres. And he’s the biggest effing wolf you have never seen in your life. He might eat bunnies for all I know. And now I have had about enough. Will you carry Mzzz Cropper over to my house please?”
Arnold swallowed, then pulled himself together. “I will. Then I will come back and scrub the floor.”

By the time her unwanted guest had been installed in the guest bedroom, Em was feeling the full effects of a very trying day. For once the age she felt reflected the age she looked and it was not entirely down to the drain of creating a new Sister. Agnes had sensed it, of course, and insisted on organising everything, making Em sit in the lounge with her feet up whilst she sorted the settling in of the Cropper woman.
“Do you think I’ve made a mistake?” Em asked when Agnes placed a brandy in her hand and sat down with one herself.
“Not like you to second-guess yourself, Em.”
The brandy helped. It tasted of fire and nostalgia.
“No. It isn’t. I think I am still trying to work out how I missed all the signs about Doug Turner. How could there be a were – or any kind of supe – wandering around the village and I just didn’t notice?”
“None of us noticed, not just you. So stop blaming yourself. You’re tired and a good rest will see you right as rain.” She finished her brandy and stood up. “Now I’ll leave you to it. Do you want me round tomorrow to help out with explaining things to our new Sister? It’ll be a bit of a shock for her as we didn’t have a chance to do the pre-chat and all that.”
Em groaned.
“And I can just imagine how she’ll take it. This is one I’m really not looking forward to.”
“She can’t be worse than Petunia was can she?”
“Maybe. After all, according to Angela Pendle-Burton she’s a committed vegetarian.”
Agnes’ mouth formed an exaggerated O shape. Then she laughed.
“Well that will be one for the books.”
“Exactly,” Em said. “What the hell do we do with a vegan vampire?”

Part 16 of Much Dithering in Little Botheringham by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook, will be here next week.

Rupert booked them a holiday. 
It sounded romantic, until Laura found out that the Camel Trail has nothing to do with camels and everything to do with cycling. Seventeen bloody miles of cycling.

There was worse to come. She learned that the next day they were to pedal thirty miles from Padstow to Fowey. 

Breakfast time, bright and early, and Laura was nowhere to be seen. Rupert went to wake her, with an indulgent smile on his big red face.

The note read ‘Camel Trail gave me Camel Toe. Gone home…’

As far as I know they never spoke again.

©️Jane Jago

Admirable advice from Madame Pendulica’s mystic moggy!

So today she (that’s Madame Pendulica to you or Dotty Doris to me) was doing this thing where she grabs a handful of polished stones (she calls them crystals) and throws them on a black cloth divided up into the houses of the zodiac and then proceeds to give her client a ‘reading’ based on which of the stones land where (“You have jasper in your first house and that is bringing optimism in your immediate future.”)Please note that he’s not the one to be optimistic, Dotty Doris is – she’s making a wad from this consultation.
Anyway, I digress, she was doing this reading for a client who was trying to decide whether or not to accept a proposal of marriage. We’d been through the background already:
“She’s perfect in every way and we are madly in love. But should I marry her?”
Madame purred in her throat (I swear she takes lessons from me).
“You are wise to seek my guidance and I shall consult the stars through their union with the earth by the power of the crystals.”
Translation; “I can see we have a gullible one here who’ll pay for at least three sessions and keep me in prosecco and the cat in tuna for a week.”
He nodded and looked grave.
“You see I know the economic and legal commitment of marriage is a serious undertaking and if I am besotted I am not going to be able to think things through clearly. So please, tell me, should I marry her?”
Oh ye gods and little fishes, what a complete asshole!
I’d had enough so put my paw in and told him that if I was his girlfriend I’d be telling him to take a hike. If he’s the sort who can’t even know his own heart and mind over whether he should marry then he’s better left on the shelf with that open packet of dried kibble that’s sat there the last six months since I refused to eat it anymore.
Unfortunately, the mad bat went on to convince him that his answer was obscured by the moon being occluded by onyx and his having obsidian falling in Scorpio so he should come back the next week to get clarification.
I really do have to admire her.
And I thought of him almost fondly when I ate my tuna that evening.

Ailuros the Mystic’s Mog predicts she will be offering more advice sometime in the future!

I had been told the sand has no smell – but it does: a brittle and flaking scent which assaults the nostrils at the same time as the over-bright shimmer dazzles the eyes. My ship-of-the-desert was making me feel sea-sick and watching the ease with which Kerry was taking to it, chatting so casually to Drew, one of the better-looking of our companions, and the main reason I had been persuaded out here in the first place, only made me feel worse. Then there was the grainy residue which seemed to invade even the most intimate places, plus my hair felt like straw and I was sure it looked like it too. But worst of all was the heat – the relentless, oven-baked sensation which made me fantasise incessantly about the swimming pools and cool shower I had left back at the hotel.

Perhaps if I had been day-dreaming a bit less I would have caught the scarf, worked loose by my continual brushing away of sand, before it lifted off my head, startling my noble steed. One moment I was flying through the air and the next I made an interesting discovery: sand is not as soft as it looks when you land in it from camel-height. I lay there in an undignified heap, feeling bruised in the ego and painfully aware everyone was laughing at me. The head of my camel loomed large, looking down with an expression that was clearly condescending, as it reluctantly knelt itself in the sand beside me.

When our guide’s strong arms almost literally lifted me to my feet, I was so startled I didn’t even stutter thanks. The dark eyes that held my gaze were not laughing, if anything they were angry – probably at me for falling off so stupidly! His secure hands boosted me onto the deep saddle with a surprising gentleness and then urged my camel back to its feet. My misery was now complete.

I was only two hours into my ‘Genuine Saharan Overnight Adventure’, the supposed highlight of this Tunisian package tour, and already I wanted out.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Take this exclusive opportunity to consult the wisdom of the mysteriously enigmatic Madam Pendulica…

Aries. 

The mythical ram with his thick woolly coat and his sharpened horns is the father of this house. His children are simple folk, and as sheep to those they love – following without thought or complaint. But make an enemy of one and the whole flock will turn upon you stamping you into the mire of their ordure with little hard hooves and spearing your very breast with the weapons on their foreheads. 

Good as winter clothing.

Bad side? Often having hairy bottoms that can be crusted with faeces.

Taurus.

After the ram comes the bull. Slow of intellect and lumbering in movement, the children of the bull are known for tenacity and a certain ponderous determination. The bull is a reliable, if boring, friend, but as an enemy he is implacable and deadly. He will get you however long it takes. Beware the horns of Taurus

Good on the barbecue.

Bad in that Taureans stick to one as if attached by Velcro, and they know stuff like train timetables by heart. Befriend one at your peril.

Gemini.

The twins have two faces and look both ways. They see both the future and the past with equal clarity making their offspring both difficult to lie to and impossible to believe. Those outside their coterie will never know which face they are looking at. Beware the obfuscation of Gemini.

Good as observers at obtuse junctions and busy interchanges

Bad – unimaginably untrustworthy and two-faced. Remember this: while one twin is fornicating with your beloved the other is available to keep watch.

Cancer.

As the crab scuttles sideways about his work so do his children approach life from the side. No scion of Cancer will be straightforward or clear in any action, and they possess a nasty nip too. On the upside they are rather tasty. Beware the claws of Cancer.

Good in a sandwich.

Bad on a country ramble as the silly bastards keep sidling off into the undergrowth.

Leo.

The king of the savannah spends twenty hours of each day asleep, and his children are similarly unlikely to put themselves to too much trouble. They tend to be large, handsome, golden people whose physical attractiveness cannot be overstated. They like sex, but they also like raw meat. Beware the appetites of Leo.

Good as a soft toy or fictional hero.

Bad as a friend, partner, or workmate as they are unbelievably lazy but so persuasive that somebody else does the work and they get the credit. And they make a lot of pointless noise

Virgo.

The ‘virgin’ smiles primly self-satisfied by her own virtue. She ignores her offspring as they make liars of her virgin state, preferring to cut them loose, armed only with rigid moralistic views of life and very little charm. Beware the dogma of Virgo.

Good in nunneries.

Bad anywhere people are living normal lives.

Madame Pendulica predicts she will return…

Season of mists and mellow
The return of the school master’s bellow
And the post-summer holidays ‘Hello!’
As now life resumes again.

Time to start wearing a sweater
Time to feel cooler and wetter
September’s climate is better
Than summer’s hard blazing heat.

Apples on trees ripen brightly
Brambles grow blackberries rightly
Beech nuts and cobnuts fall nightly
September’s own proffered feast.

The sense of well-being is assuring
With this month the year is maturing
And winter we’re not yet enduring
Indian summer may come.

E.M. Swift-Hook

The door of the staff dining room banged open and the handsome figure of Launcelot Gribble stood in the doorway with his romantically tousled head held high.
    “I think I’ve just broken my geek,” he announced.
    The Bursar sighed and looked up from the column of figures she was conning. “Again? And what makes you think this one is broken?”
    “He’s just sitting staring into the middle distance and making strange sheep-like noises.”
    Matron gave the dramatic figure in the doorway a look of deep dislike before grinding out her evil-smelling cheroot and heaving herself to her feet. She headed for the door, and as she passed Gribble she smacked him solidly across the back of the head with one large red hand.
    “Ouch. That hurt.”
    She didn’t even bother to answer him, just stalked along the dusty corridor like a vengeful leviathan.
    Gribble dropped his pose of romantic ennui and ruefully rubbed his head.
    “Why’d old iron tits decide to smack me around the head?”
    Democratic Runes looked up from the volume of arcane verse he was studying and regarded his colleague in disbelief.
    “Why wouldn’t she? You break geeks and she gets to fix them. How many is it this year?”
    Gribble studied his feet and muttered something unintelligible.
    “Come again?”
    “This one is number thirteen.”
    “Who else is egotistical enough to break geeks at that rate. Thirteen down and it’s only the ninth moon. You are a fucking liability, my friend.”
    Gribble hunched a shoulder and turned his startlingly green gaze on the sturdy figure of the Bursar.
    “I’ll just go choose another geek then, shall I?”
    “No. Indeed you will not. There have been complaints. The University has generated a memo. Allow me to read it to you. ‘It has come to our attention that the Chair of Ancient Scrolls is somewhat careless of the technicians who assist him in his work. This is unsatisfactory. Should any more instances occur, the choice of assistant is to be removed from his remit’.”
    “What are you saying?”
    “I’m saying that you don’t get to choose. You will be assigned a geek. And proper contracts will be signed.”
    Gribble bridled. “I don’t sign contracts. It’s an honour to be chosen to help me.”
    “As of now you do sign contracts. Because if you don’t, you don’t get a geek. And shut your mouth – you look stupid with it half open.” The Bursar got up and jerked a thumb at the gaping professor. “My office. Now.”
    In the skinny, cluttered office, Gribble looked around for a seat. He found no surface that wasn’t covered with paper.
    “Why do you have so much paperwork? Surely most of your accounts and stuff could be done on the computer.”
    “It could, if the University was not averse to The Motherboard knowing all our business. But we aren’t here to discuss my conditions of employment, it’s the conditions under which you employ your geeks that are in dispute.”
    “Dispute?” Gribble pushed out his lip in a show of boyish petulance, before he remembered that the Bursar was not of an ilk to be cajoled or seduced by the likes of him. Instead he hunched a shoulder. “Where do I sign?”
    “I thought you might see sense,” her smile was just on the acceptable side of smug. But only just.
    Scrabbling about in the teetering pile of paper on the windowsill, she dragged out a sizeable parchment and unfolded it.
    “You sign here, here, here and here.”
    Gribble pulled a pen out of his pocket and signed as indicated. The Bursar inserted the signed document in a slot in the wall and after a few seconds a disembodied voice filled the air.
    “Contract duly witnessed.”
    The unwieldy parchment slowly reversed out of the slot to fall unnoticed to the floor.
    Gribble eyed the Bursar.
    “Right. When do I get my geek?”
    “Tomorrow morning.”
    He opened his mouth to argue, then his face caught up with his brain and he snapped his teeth together.
    “Good thinking. Now cut along. I’ve got work to do.” The Bursar waved a wrinkled hand in dismissal.
    Even an ego as colossal as Gribble’s recognised the pointlessness of arguing with a tetchy female colleague who was not only senior to him in the University hierarchy, but who also disliked him quite a lot. He left the dusty confines of the office, shutting the door behind him with exaggerated care before stomping along the disorienting curve of the corridor cursing and kicking random pieces of furniture.
    Behind him, the Bursar listened to muffled swearing and assorted crashes. The smile that spread across her face made her look like a crocodile that smells fresh meat.
    “You, my temperamental young colleague, ain’t seen nothing yet.”
    She returned to her figures, obscurely comforted by the hard lesson Gribble was about to be taught.

From Gribble’s Geek by Jane Jago 

An everyday tale of village life and vampires…

Em was half a churchyard in front of Agnes, and she heard Virginia Cropper making a brave attempt to save the bats. The woman might be a fool, Em thought, but at least her heart was in the right place. 
As she wrestled with the church door Erasmus landed on her shoulder and they burst in together, just in time to see a nightmare figure that didn’t seem to know whether it was a man or a rabbit point a gun at the unconscious woman on the flagstones. Why, Em wondered, would anybody point a rifle at an incapacitated foe. Then she found out why, as the mad creature laughed and shot Ginny in the neck. He seemed to be intent on filling his enemy’s body with lead, so Em took the only available option. She let forth a bloodcurdling scream and leapt onto the back of the out of control were.
Screwing up her face in distaste she bit hard, right about where the human jugular was to be found. Doug Turner dropped his gun and began clawing at her face. Em had never appreciated how sharp rabbit claws are until they were raking at her cheeks and eyes, but she held on for dear life and hoped for help.
Fortunately, it wasn’t too long arriving, and Agnes rugby tackled the man/rabbit to the floor. With them both sitting on him, he was finding it harder to move and his shifting from form to form became even more erratic. He jerked and twisted and foamed at the mouth alternately swearing and making high-pitched screeing noises that hurt Em’s head. Being a were, he was preternaturally strong and keeping him down on the ground was an uphill struggle. Just as Em was wondering whether or not two of them could manage to keep a hold, the cavalry charged in. Petunia leapt onto the flailing legs while Arnold gently elbowed Em aside and tidily rabbit punched the struggling were on the back of his neck. 
There was, Em thought, an irony there if one had time to think about it. But there was no time. While Arnold and Agnes trussed up the now limp form of the half-shifted wererabbit she turned her attention to the unconscious woman with the neck wound. Petunia was two steps in front of Em, and the face that normally heedless female lifted from the body was white with shock. She spoke with none of her usual girlish silliness, and Em was reminded that Petunia was a veterinary nurse by trade and the silliness was mostly a pose.
“Em. She’s nearly dead.”
“Don’t be silly. She can’t be. She’s bleeding. But not enough to cause permanent damage.”
“The reason she isn’t bleeding much is that her heart has just stopped. The pellet sliced her carotid artery. It should be pumping.”
“Why did her heart stop?”
“I don’t have the first idea. But it has. And as of right now she’s dead if we don’t do something.”
Em felt her own heart sink, and Agnes kicked the wererabbit in the genitals. Petunia looked Em steadily in the face. 
“It’s up to you. But the last thing we need is a murder investigation in the village and we are a Sister short.”
“So we are. And she couldn’t be much more trouble than the last occupant of her cottage. Hold her steady, Petunia. Agnes can you pry open her mouth.”
With her Sisters doing their part it only remained for Em to take the final step. She bit her own wrist and concentrated on the blood flow directing a scarlet stream into Ginny’s slack mouth. For a few seconds more nothing happened then Ginny’s throat worked and she began to swallow. The wound in her neck pumped briefly before the pellet was ejected with a pop and the wound closed over.
“Enough now,” Agnes said briskly and Em allowed the wound in her own wrist to close over. 
She laid one hand on either side of Ginny’s head and willed her to sleep while she healed.
“That went well, didn’t it,” she said a bit snappily and Agnes laughed.
“Let me clean your face before the scratches heal over. Rabbit claws are dirty things.”
An awful thought hit Em right between the eyes. “Petunia,” she said, “can you just have a look at Mzzz Cropper and make sure she isn’t growing any unwanted hair?”
“What? Why?”
Em sat down with a weary bump. “Because I just Fed her. And not five minutes before that I Bit a wererabbit.”
“Oh, bugger. So you did.”

Part 15 of Much Dithering in Little Botheringham by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook, will be here next week.

When all you have to hold on to is pride, people may think you cold and unyielding but you can’t allow yourself to care.

The day Owen rode away to war, Melandreth put her emotions in a box and hid the key.

Had she known he would be away for five years maybe she would have been more careful to remember the hiding place.

The day he rode back into the farmyard she should have felt joy, but she couldn’t. The key was lost.

She cried, and as he held her she found the key – in his strong, brown hands.

Jane Jago

In an effort to educate the nominally literate and inform those with sufficient humility to understand their own lack of comprehension, Esme offers the correct definition of misunderstood words…

Egocentric 

1. (adjective – pronunciation note: ego centre ic) Describes a person who seeks to place themselves at the centre of any situation. Example: Being egocentric, Chloe Chatterton managed to get herself indicted for a murder that happened when she was in a completely different country.

2. (noun – pronunciation note: eggy centre ice) Ice cream with a runny yellow centre. Example: The egocentric yolk made Hugo vomit.

If you have any words whose meaning escapes you, Esme Crockford is always happy to share her lexicographical knowledge and penetrating insight into the English language.