So. Who the feck invented holidays or vacations as the French and our colonial cousins call them?

And to what purpose?

I mean. Pack a suitcase with your most impractical clothing, load up your kindle with romantic novels (pauses to evacuate the bit of sick in the back of throat), leave your best mate in kennels, sit in a tin can in the sky, then spend two weeks beside a pool crammed alongside half a thousand red, sweaty people.

Why?

Can somebody just tell me why?

• My house is nice, so why would I want to leave it?
• Gyp is excellent company, so why would I want to leave him?
• I can cook. I have a dishwasher and a hoover and a washing machine. Sometimes I even use them.
• I hate hot sun. I hate sangria. I hate swimming pools. And I’m not too fond of the human race.

So please why?

Maybe I can just about get it if you are a working person.  Some time away from the grindstone I can understand. Though you could have that in the comfort of your own home, you know. Also, the allure of having somebody do your chores for two weeks must be enormous. But with what you spend on a holiday you could probably afford to have somebody come and do your chores every week. (Just saying.) 

What I can find no justification for whatsoever is the likes of my neighbour – who we will call Mabel to protect the innocent – who regularly packs her roll-along and gets on a coach with fifty or so other crumblies and heads off to the delights of Skegness, or Blackpool, or Weymouth, or… 

What the heck is that all about? Hours and hours in a tin box that smells of breath mints, mothballs and haemorrhoid cream – with the added delight of a courier in an ill-fitting blazer (with mismatched dentures and a very sketchy idea of the holiday itinerary and any places of interest en route). Hotel rooms with brushed nylon sheets. All-you-can eat lunchtime buffets. Cream teas with stale scones. Three-course ‘evening meals’ with canned soup and arctic roll. Not in this life.

Two years ago a well-meaning (but stupid) granddaughter-in-law bought yours truly a ticket for a coach trip up the Rhine valley. I have since forgiven her. Just. And, as it was Mabel’s eightieth, the ticket didn’t go to waste.

In essence then. Holidays are the province of the bored, the feckless, and those whose lives don’t suit them.

 My advice? Forget the costas. Spend your money on booze, fags and good food – and sort your frigging life out.

I’m now off to the wine bar where it’s grab a granny night…

Bottoms up!

Writing made easy – if you don’t mind the bumps!

The wit, wisdom, joy and frustration of a writer’s life summed up in limericks…

When you write you are no longer you
Not constrained by the things you can’t do
With no limitation
But imagination
And no longer imprisoned by true

Jane Jago

“It is entirely in your own hands archbishop,” the slender red-haired woman in the huge gilded chair spoke coldly and deliberately, “but you and your confederates have ensured that the majority of the populace believes in one virgin birth so I fail to see your problem.”
The ancient, and cadaverously thin, prelate stared at her for a long moment while the muscles in his jaw worked. He obviously wanted to say something but in the end he lacked the courage and subsided into fulminating silence.
“And you Master Cecil. Do you have nothing to say?”
The richly clad figure of Her Majesty’s spymaster in chief bowed floridly.
“This, your Majesty, is either a master stroke or the biggest mistake a reigning monarch ever made. With the greatest respect, we will not know which it is for many months yet.”
“Agreed, there is an element of risk but I would know whether you are with us in our great endeavour.”
Cecil dropped his world-weary pose and bowed his head.
“To death and beyond, Majesty. To death and beyond.”
“You can serve us best by remaining alive,” the Queen spoke with some asperity although her narrow dark eyes warmed a little as they rested on Cecil’s beaky face.
The third man came forward and bent the knee before his sovereign.
“Parliament will uphold whatever your majesty chooses to do.”
“My lord Essex was ever the gentleman,” the Queen laughed although it was a mirthless sound. “The lords temporal range themselves alongside us, as does Master Cecil’s organisation, which just leaves the lords spiritual to declare.”
Essex looked at the cleric with something akin to loathing.
“You are either with us, my lord archbishop, or you are against us. We have no time for you to mull over your decision.”
The stubborn old man in the cope and mitre stared at his queen.
“Do you even begin to know what you are asking?”
She regarded him for a long moment.
“We are perfectly well aware. But what would you have us do? Marry England to some foreign prince? Elevate one of our noble families above the others?”
The archbishop looked at her marble pale features with dawning respect.
“No, Majesty, I would have you do neither of those.”
“Then give me an alternative.”
The old man bowed his head.
“There is none. I stand corrected. The church ranges itself beside you.”
“Good.You may all leave us now.”
The three men bowed themselves out of the room and as soon as they had closed the door behind them the figure in the huge chair allowed her shoulders to sag just a little. A large sandy-haired man, dressed plainly in leather and homespun, stepped out from behind the rich hangings and came to kneel at her feet. She smiled down at him.
“It appears,” she said carefully, “that our plan has the support it needs. Now it is for you to do your part.”
He lifted one small foot in his large, calloused hand and brought it to his lips.

In due time Gloriana, the virgin queen, gave birth to a strapping red-haired son. She called him Henry after her great father, and he ruled wisely and well as did his own son and the son of his son, and the son of the son of his son….

© jane jago

They had lived in the shadow of the castle all their lives.

In more ways than one.

Lord Rancard was their protector and their employer and the brothers never forgot it. There had been the day their mother lay close to death and Lord Rancard had sent his own physician. And the day Glebit wed Gelis, Lord Rancard sent them a purse of silver.

So when the army of peasants arrived declaring the town free and Lord Rancard a traitor, the brothers acted.

No one would have suspected the nightsoil team that left the town that day included noble blood.

E.M. Swift-Hook

… or ‘How To Speak Typo’ by Jane Jago

askhole (noun) – mouth

beliveable (adjective) – of a fixer-up house, the state it will attain in about five years

brois (noun) – compulsive liar

canservative (adjective) – self-serving (see brois)

carrit (noun) – measure of orangeness 

delsion (noun) – unsatisfactory explanation 

drafth (adverb) – to drag out unnecessarily as in his accusation was both drafth and probably baseless

freght (noun) – someone else’s luggage found where you expected your own to be

hadnsome (adjective) – a man who may have been good looking in his youth, who is now rather jaded and ragged at the edges

lotal (adjective) – humourless and with a leaning towards religious obsession (Example: The Lotal Singing Nuns of Saint Crumplesham)

otherircumstances (noun) – puzzling twist in a fantasy story usually heralded by the arrival of a mysterious wizard

plitics (noun) – the shenanigans in government that surprise the electorate so much they can’t even say ‘oh’

pointsome (adjective) – handsome, but only in small areas of the body (eg navel, or the baby toe on the left foot)

prinisple (noun) – one of a number of redundant nipples

politcal (adjective) of cake, heavy and tasteless

qween (noun) – very old woman who likes a nip of gin

reep (noun) – the cry of the lesser-spotted blabberbird

somaething (verb) – trying to smoke a damp cigarette

trcik (noun) – a special karate move

uwswall (verb) – the rinsing of one’s mouth at the dentist

Disclaimer: all these words are genuine typos defined by Jane Jago. The source of each is withheld to protect the guilty.

Writing made easy – if you don’t mind the bumps!

The wit, wisdom, joy and frustration of a writer’s life summed up in limericks…

To write is a struggle they opine
And if that’s how they do it, that’s fine
But that’s not my way
As I write every day
When under the auspice of wine.

Jane Jago

Like a shy creature of the wild, sleep eluded her. Jaelya’s thoughts drifted, against her will, until those time-worn ghosts that hovered about her, led her gently along the paths of unwilling memory to the beginning of everything.
It was, of course, Alize who had been there then.
Her first awareness of life had been of holding Alize’s hand on that day as if she had been flung into the world fully-formed at the age of three. Even now she could still see clearly the high beamed roof, with its painted and vaulted ceiling, arching over the huge black and white slabs of stone which paved the floor. She had stood in the doorway, as if looking into the universe from outside, one hand holding onto a small bundle of clothes and the other gripping Alize’s as hand tightly as if her life depended upon it.
She conjured the scene easily, untarnished by the passage of years. The long table, taller than herself then, the chairs which had seemed made for giants, the fireplace which looked large enough to roast a good-sized ox and the faint, musty, smell of cold ashes and old books. Seated at the table, a heavy bound book open before him and a remote screen set up to one side, sat a boy with a mop of curly hair who had looked up as they entered. To the Jaelya in the memory, he had seemed so grown up himself but he cannot have been much more than five summers her senior.
Feeling confused, she had looked up at the figure of Alize towering beside her and the face that had looked down at her contained blue eyes that seemed to embrace the world and all the stars beyond. Jaelya felt as though she might be swallowed up in their depths, but somehow the thought made her feel safe rather than frightened. Then Alize’s gaze moved from herself to the boy, who got to his feet and was standing quietly behind the table, his square face framed by unruly golden curls.
“Child, this is your sister. Her name is Jaelya and I want you to take care of her.”
The boy had been staring at her with open curiosity as if wondering what manner of creature she might be, but at Alize’s words a miracle happened and his face broke into the most gentle and wonderful smile.
“My sister,” he breathed the words as a triumphal declaration rather than as any kind of question and then the boy had come across to her, his hands held out in welcome, his honey-coloured eyes lit up by the brilliant smile that was for her alone. “Hello, Jae. I am your brother and I’m always going to keep you safe.”
And in that moment Jaelya loved him with a fierce devotion, a devotion which all the years between and all the tests and burdens of those years had done nothing to diminish. So why was it, as she lay now in the dreamless darkness, that the thought of his returning to Harkera filled her heart with nothing but apprehension?

From Transgressor 2: Times of Change a Fortune’s Fools book by E.M. Swift-Hook

The wooden bedstead had been in the family for more generations than anyone knew. Almost as long as the rambling farmhouse which each generation had rebuilt and extended to suit its needs.

The bedstead had been the place where family members had been conceived, come into this world and eventually left it. The old stained oak headboard bore the marks of usage like proud scars.

But all things change eventually.

The latest generation thought the old bedstead too chunky, dark and unfashionable. So they replaced it with a stylish pine bed from Ikea – and had a bonfire in the garden.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Things are not quite how you might remember them in the 100 Acre Wood for Christopher Robin, Pooh Bear and their friends…

***** ***** *****

Jane Jago

Writing made easy – if you don’t mind the bumps!

The wit, wisdom, joy and frustration of a writer’s life summed up in limericks…

If you write for yourself you will find
At least one person of a like mind
One who will get the jokes
And the politics pokes
And a reader who might just be kind.

Jane Jago