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.

She had never liked roses.
As a child, her grandfather had grown them in his garden and once when she tried to pull a rich red bloom closer to smell the scent, its thorns had ripped her fingers, drawing blood as red as the rose petals.
Then she met Griff.
That first date he arrived with a bouquet of hated roses. She had put them in the bin before leaving the house.
When she got home. A smile still lingering on her lips, she rescued the roses, carefully arranged them in a vase and spent a moment enjoying their scent.

E.M. Swift-Hook

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…

Bratwurst

1. (noun – pronunciation note: brat first) Child-centric lifestyle wherein the offspring are consulted on every aspect of life. Example: Simon and Niobe’s bratwurst extended to family decisions about where to shop and who slept in which bed on any night. 

2. (noun – pronunciation note: bought worst) Those examples of kitchen appliance, white goods, vehicle etc where the eye for a ‘bargain’ was permitted to outweigh the fitness of the item for its intended use. Example: the stand mixer very quickly proved itself to be a bratwurst as it emitted a deep throated roar before ejecting its load of expensive ingredients across the kitchen ceiling.

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.

The wind today is a hooligan child
Rip roaring up and down town
Driving the manicured gardens wild
And pulling the prim sunshades down
He chuckles at hats and brollies aleap
And clutches his belly in mirth
Rudely wakens old men from their walking sleep
To run now for all they are worth
The raindrops it carries are plumptious and bold
And they bounce on the gutters and roofs
Turning a warm summer’s day dark and cold
Rocking trees like an old rotten tooth
The wind today is a tantruming brat
Throwing teddies and toys from his pram
Whose bellowing breath pushes garden gates flat
As he shouts ‘Look at me. Here I am.’
The wind today is a mad politician
Abusing his power just for fun
Arousing dislike and inserting suspicion
Leaves chaos behind when he’s done

Jane Jago