Papa having been a narrow-minded martinet, with a very heavy hand, nobody much mourned him when he died of ill-temper three days before his fiftieth birthday.
Grandmother seemed to shrink even further into her black clothes as the household that was once so quiet and regimented filled with noise and laughter.
She payed a famous necromancer to reanimate his portrait, and it mouthed platitudes and moralities daily.
When Buggy discovered this was computing rather than magic, it was the work of but an hour to reprogram the simulacrum so that it called grandmother ‘scrawny tits’ and swore sulphurously.

©️jj 2021

Introducing a new series of fun flash fiction from Jane Jago which will feature twice weekly in the month of May!

They called her Nanny Bee, although as far as anyone knew she had never been a wife or a mother, let alone a grandmother. But she was popularly believed to be a witch – so Nanny it was. She lived in a punk-walled thatched cottage that crouched between the village green and the vicarage. The Reverend Alphonso Scoggins (a person of peculiarly mixed heritage and a fondness for large dinners) joked that between him and Nanny they could see the villagers from birth to burial.
Nanny’s garden was the most verdant and productive little patch you could ever imagine, and she could be found pottering in its walled prettiness from dawn to dusk almost every day. People came to visit and were given advice, or medicine, or other potions in tiny bottles or scraps of paper – but they always had the sneaking suspicion they were getting in the way of the gardening.
But there again, digging is second nature to gnomes.

It was a sunny Sunday morning and Nanny was listening to the church choir while she pricked out some seedlings. She was idly wondering who possessed the piercing soprano that was permanently half a beat behind the rest when a shadow fell over the potting shed. She put down her dibber and went outside. A winged horse hovered over her tiny lawn.
“Ho sister,” it said, “there’s trouble at the castle and you wanted immediately.”
“If His Greediness has got himself indigestion again, I ain’t coming.”
“No. It isn’t that. There’s something happened to the lordling. His wife is in her chamber sobbing and he’s nowhere to be found.”
“Oh right. Hang on. I’ll just get my bag.”
“And maybe change your gardening boots?”
“Oh. Right. Okay. I’ll come out the front door.”
It’s not every day that you get to ride on the back of Fledge his own self, but Bee was a prosaic being and rather resented being pulled away from her petunias.
Fledge dropped neatly to earth in the stable yard and walked quietly to the mounting block. Nanny jumped down and bowed to the horse.
“I thanks you for my safe ride.”
“You are welcome.”
The castle functionary who awaited her sneered down from his great height. Nanny ignored him and stumped off towards the private apartments. To his chagrin, the tall clerk had to run to keep up with her. The door guard saluted her with his pike before winking broadly.
She walked sturdily int the formal presence chamber and chaos. There appeared to be upwards of a dozen people all shouting at the very tops of their voices. The only pool of silence centred around a slender figure cloaked in rose-pink velvet, who stood right in the centre of a patch of sunlight. She turned her perfect face and smirked at Nanny, who chose not to notice her.
“You’ll have to be polite to me when I have the young one’s ring on my finger,” beauty hissed.
“Oh. I doubt it,” Nanny spoke absentmindedly as most of her brain was taken up with assessing the situation around her.
As far as it was possible to make any sense, the Lord and his Heir were nose to nose and both were puce with rage. Her ladyship was alternately screaming like a banshee and having recourse to her Lacy kerchief. The other shouters appeared to be various staff members and functionaries who could safely be discounted.
Nanny ambled over to where father and son were having their ‘discussion’ and knocked politely on the younger man’s knee. He stopped yelling at his father and looked down.
“Ah, Nanny,” he said genially, “can you make this old fool see that I’m firm in my resolve.”
“Your resolve to do what, sir?”
“Why to divorce my unfaithful wife and marry my true love.”
Nanny looked into his fair and foolish face and sighed. She beckoned and when he bent down he was felled by a scientific blow from a knobbly little fist.
As soon as he hit the ground the air wavered about beauty and she began to look less beautiful. She looked at Nanny with loathing before she picked up her skirts and ran.
“When he wakes up he won’t remember any of this. But somebody needs to explain to his wife that she is NOT to withhold his conjugals if she don’t want this to happen again.”
Nanny went back to her petunias, deeply grateful that gnomes only consider sex in an abstract manner, and only as it pertains to other people.

Jane Jago

Advice on growing old disgracefully from an elderly delinquent with many years of expertise in the art – plus free optional snark…

If you’re old then the process is clear
You must give up on romance and beer
It’s no longer fashion
To have a high passion
Stop flirting in bars, do you hear?

E.M. Swift-Hook

You thought you knew what they meant? How wrong you were. Never fear, Jane Jago will set you straight!

AFK – After (I) Finish Knitting or Ah’m From Kentucky
ASAP – As Stupid As Pi**
BRB – Burping Refried Beans
BTW – Bugger The Weather
DM – Disoriented (by) Music
FAQ – Friend Ate (all the) Quality street
FTFY – For Treats Frozen Yogurt
FYI – Feet (with) Yellow Infestation
G2G – Gesticulating to Grandma
IMHO – In Movies Hopeful Orphans
IRL – Indoor Reared Lettuce
LOL – Lizards On Lockdown
MFW – Mowing Flowers Wilfully
OMDB – Oh Mother Dat’s Bad
OMG – Overly Malicious Grandmothers
OTL – Obvious Treacle Latitude
PITA – Place Inside The Ambulance
PITR – Pig In The Road
RT – Reduced Telemetry
TBH – Terrific Blonde Hairdo
TLDR – The Laundry Didn’t Rinse
TTFN – Terribly Tiny Fork (and) kNife
TNTL – Translation Not Terribly Likely
TTYL – The Tradesmen Yodel Loudly

Throughout memory the two-legs had sought to predict the weather, but instead of paying attention to what Mother whispered, they built complicated algorithms and drew highly coloured charts. However, they missed the soughing of the wind and the lie of the hairs on the backs of certain leaves.
So it was that when the great storm came we were tucked away inside the cave system while those few of them with eyes to see floated on the ocean in a tiny boat.
Mother shrugged her shoulders but they prevailed.
Our oldest spoke.
“I wonder if they remembered the dove…”

©️jj 2021

Being a wizard in a world where magic wasn’t supposed to exist wasn’t easy. His studies took all his time and left little for earning the money he needed to support himself. So home for Brandon Grey was a rented bedsit on the second floor of a converted suburban house. He was very tired having been up since dawn to practice a new incantation and then an afternoon stint as an Uber driver had tested his goodwill to humanity to its limit.
“Mr. Grey?”
Brandon hesitated between steps and resisted the impulse to swear. Instead, as he turned, his face was already wallpapered with a polite smile.
“Mrs. Howard!” His tone made of the name an answer to her question.
Mrs. Howard was his landlady. She lived on the ground floor. A big-boned thirty-something divorcee with a pack of rude children and a permanent short temper. From the open door behind her he could hear sounds of youthful discontent.
“It’s mine!”
“Gerroff me!” Then an ear-piercing shriek of protest.
“Mum – Shane’s taken the controller again!”
Despite the title being given three distinct syllables of intonation, ‘Mum’ seemed not to hear.
“You put out your rubbish Mr. Grey? It’s bin day tomorrow.”
Brandon maintained the smile and broadened it.
“I’ll do that as soon as I have got myself in,” he assured her. 
“Great and can you wheel the bin ‘round the front when you’re done?”
His smile still fixed Brandon assented. But his thoughts were traitors to the smile. He was getting fed up of being used as an odd-job man for the Howards. Seemed not a day went by and he was asked to do one job or another. Another yell of protest from behind Mrs. Howard decided him.
“But you know, your Shane is a big lad now. He could do with that kind of responsibility. Why don’t you get him to do it?”
As he spoke he added a small push of willpower. But Mrs. Howard had seen off two husbands and the bailiffs. She stared back nonplussed.
“I don’t think so. It is a heavy job.”
Brandon held her gaze and tried harder. No words were spoken. For a moment the woman looked perplexed, then her expression cleared. She half turned her head towards the open door and called out.
“Shane, you stop playing that video game and go do the rubbish!”
“But mum you said you’d get the poxy old lodger to do it!”
It was a red rag to a bull and Brandon was forgotten as she stormed back into the lower apartment yelling loudly and apparently adding to the chaos rather than resolving it in any measure at all.
Allowing himself a moment of satisfaction, Brandon opened his front door, dropped his jacket on the couch and made a coffee.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Advice on growing old disgracefully from an elderly delinquent with many years of expertise in the art – plus free optional snark…

If you’re old then the rule really is
You have to like cribbage and bridge
Your idea of fun
Should be tea and a bun
Not neat vodka straight out of your fridge

E.M. Swift-Hook

Tallis Steelyard. A Fear of Heights by Jim Webster

Tallis Steelyard Takes Off!

When I pick up a Tallis Steelyard book I know I am going to have the most enjoyable of rides start to finish. There will be social comment and cynicism, there will be intriguing concepts and fascinating settings, there will be battles of wit and cunning plans, but two things above all will stand out – the incredibly interesting characters and the wonderful moments of both subtle and laugh-out-loud humour.
The author has an eye for personality quirks and the humorous possibilities in just about every occasion, and seldom leaves either unexploited to the full.
This book was, however, something I embarked upon with a little more trepidation that usual when approaching a Tallis Steelyard book, because unlike the collections of vividly imagined and portrayed cameos which I have come to know and love, this is an entire novel.
Yes, there are still those wonderful cameos, but there is also a rare opportunity to follow Tallis through an unwitting adventure, all thanks to the indomitable Maljie of course. The way Jim Webster writes, I was sitting in the hot air balloon along with them.
If you enjoy Tallis Steelyard in shorts, you will enjoy as much in long form. If you have yet to make his acquaintance, then dive right in and do so, but hang onto your hat it’ll be a very wild ride!

E.M. Swift-Hook

Wit, wisdom and a deeply unreliable narrator

Tallis Steelyard, Maljie and a balloon. What could possibly go wrong?
Of course the answer to that should more properly be what couldn’t. Our guide is a poet, fixer, sometime conman and prolific fibber and his companion on the journey is a larger than life lady of strict if eccentric morals and definite ideas on every subject. Cue fireworks.
As we fall headfirst into this madcap adventure the only thing that is truly guaranteed is an enjoyable ride.
Jim Webster’s writing is quintessentially English in its sensibilities, being dryly humorous and sparely undecorated. He excels at the quick pen sketch of even the least important character, without ever pushing judgement down our throats.
I particularly liked the guard who felt queasy having to sit on a trapdoor to prevent our heroes escape – of such little gems are happiness made.
I will admit to having wondered if Tallis Steelyard could sustain a full-length novel, but my doubts were completely unfounded. This book is a delight.
Of you have never visited Port Nairn and never encountered the lives of a certain poet and his acquaintances may I suggest you remedy this lack tout suite.
Five stars and a big fat recommendation.

Jane Jago

The biggers remodelled the pond so a naked figure looked as if she was emerging from the water.
Big Bertha was scandalised.
“Ain’t you cold.”
“I’m freezing.”
“Come here and we’ll find you some moss or something.”
“I can’t move. They cemented my feet to this rock.”
Nardo and his little boat left the stream and he rowed the pond with a cold chisel grasped in his plaster lips.
When he had freed the maiden she walked along the bottom of the pond and just kept walking.
They never knew where she went. But wherever it was Nardo went too.

©️jj 2021

The adventures of Piglock Homes and his sidekick Doctor Bearson.

At the inn, Bearson was glad just to roll into bed, as was Yore, but Homes waved away their concerns.
“I shall smoke a pipe with our genial host before I make my way between the sheets,” he declared.
It felt like only minutes later, when Bearson was shaken from his sleep by an impatient trotter.
“Up. Old chap. Up. And be quiet about it. There’s evil afoot on the muir, and it’s up to us to stop it.”
Bearson groaned and looked at his watch. It was four in the morning. He groaned again, but knowing the futility of arguing with a determined Homes, he dressed quickly and crept out onto the landing. Homes waited impatiently.
“Bring the bag of breakfast,” he instructed, before going back into the room where Yore still snored.
Bearson fetched the linen bag and was back on the landing in time to hear a muffled scream from Yore’s chamber.
“I warned you,” Homes was adamantine. “Now get up and stop being a bigger fool than you can help.”
Bearson sincerely hoped Homes hadn’t actually bitten the inspector, although the probabilities leaned that way.
However he had been persuaded, Yore followed Homes onto the landing, and the great detective led the way downstairs. At the back of the inn, there was a small stable where a sleepy lad was busy harnessing a grumpy looking donkey to a small cart. Homes flicked the lad a shilling and Yore led the donkey out into the morning darkness. Once out of the stable, the donkey seemed to become angry and it put a good deal of force and determination into trapping Yore against the stones of the stable wall. The inspector pulled the animal’s ear down to his mouth and whispered something.
The donkey stepped back, and Yore smiled toothily – his good humour having been wholly restored by the exchange.
“Horseman’s Word,” he said and jumped onto the driving seat. “Where too Mister Homes?”
Homes and Bearson climbed aboard.
“We need to be where we stopped last night.”
Yore nodded. “I took note of the place.” He shook the reins and they were off.
If it had been strange to drive across the muir in moonlight, this ride in a creaking little cart, with Yore profanely deciding their route, was surreal. The weird light of false dawn lit a pearlescent mist and the donkey’s unshod hooves made very little sound as it plodded along.
Bearson would have been hard put to say where he was, but both Homes and Yore seemed satisfied when the cart drew to a halt. Yore set the brake, before hobbling the donkey and providing it with a nose bag of sweet-smelling hay.
In the half light Bearson saw Homes bare his sharp, yellow teeth in a feral grin.
“Break out the breakfast, old man, we’ve naught to do for a while but wait.”
Nothing loath, Bearson passed around thick ham sandwiches, slices of crumbly cheese and hunks of richly spiced fruit cake. They had all but finished their repast when Yore’s large ears twitched.
“Company coming,” he growled.
“I hope so.” Homes was at his most demurely irritating.

Piglock Homes and his sidekick Doctor Bearson will continue their investigation into The Affair of the Dartymuir Dog next week…

Jane Jago