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

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

Jane Jago

“Louwina, I – I can’t live without you,” Woul stuttered, his eyes holding an acre of desolation and his sharp fangs glinting in the moonlight as his six-pack flexed in his distress.

She backed away from the head of the shifter clan, eyes wide in disbelief. Why was he being so mean to her? She knew at sixteen she was nothing special with her stick like body and bulgy breasts. Her hair was never exactly fashionable as it set her distressingly even featured face in a halo of golden curls.

She backed into the tall, muscular figure of Girald, the new boy in town who all the popular girls yearned to date.

“No, Louwina, your secret heritage calls to me. We are meant for each other,” he said, looking down lovingly into her eyes, sprinkles of fairydust falling like dandruff from his hair.

“My – what?”

“Well, you know how your parents both vanished mysteriously on the day of the eclipse and how your granny has that weird book engraved with the words ‘My Family’s Book of Ultra-Secret Witchcraft’?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean anything, she never lets me read it.”

The gorgeous hunks looked at her with longing and desire, adoration clear on both faces.

“You are the Chosen One and my chosen one,” Woul murmured, smirking.

“You are my chosen one too,” Girald echoed, his eyes sparkling in the starlight.

Louwina stood stunned by the revelation. She was the Chosen One? So that explained why everyone at school hated her and why her life had been so miserable so far. And now she had to choose between these two, equally gorgeous, half-naked eighteen year olds, who made her feel all warm and tingly in places she had never thought much about before.

But which one?

Louwina rolled her eyes.

How was she meant to choose between a Vampire Weresheep and a Fae Weregiraffe?

E.M. Swift-Hook

Telling an entire story in just one hundred words…

The forest path was crosshatched with shadows and sunlight. Lithe trees clad in pied silver, stretched up, twig-fingers touching above me, leaves dazzling peridot in the sunlight. Patterned foliage against the sky, dappling the ground in muted emeralds, and faded jade where shadows fell.
Bird song, from many feathered throats, was music for my passage.
Then came a low buzzing, like a million bees swarming in anger, lifting in pitch and adding a whine, finishing with a biting choke.
I arrived as, with a cracking cry, another tree fell and the roar of the chainsaw started on a fresh victim.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Ponies and Progeny or the graceless art of equine management as envisaged by the pen of Jane Jago and inspired by the genius of Norman Thelwell (1923-2004)

Today we consider cross country events…

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

April wears a bright green dress
Embroidered oe’r with flowers
She never fails to impress
With sunshine and with showers.

And although sunny days do come
Within her weeks’ purview
The cold and blustery showery ones
Are often with her too.

But April carries all the hope
And all the dreams of spring
And as the days through April lope
The thoughts of summer bring.

Then when April passes by
You’ll hear the old folk say
The April rains that made us sigh
Will bring a blooming May.

Elanor Swift-Hook

Sometimes we walk the edges of reality…

CHAPTER FIVE: JESSICA

It still did not seem real. How could it. This was not any kind of real world. But it was not a dream either. Somewhere between the two was an intersection of experience where none of the verities of reality could be assumed, but the utter chaos of dream was somehow still held at bay.
It  happened as she walked to the throne. She felt the rightness of it as if some deep part of herself was nodding agreement with her actions. It was as if a flow of wisdom welled up in her psyche.
“I can do this,” she thought, mouthing the words as she took her seat on the throne. The strange sense of self-and-yet-other, intensified and she realised it was almost as if two of her was seated on the throne. One herself, wearing the flared jeans and purple polo-neck and the other wearing long skirts, a mantle and a cloak, the fabric pooling at her feet. 
There was no sense of separation or dissonance, just the flowing of one into the other, like two tributaries of a river joining to flow on together to the sea. But Jessica had no time to consider the significance of it, or even to question what she felt about it. As her hands curled over the serpent heads of the throne, the serpents writhed beneath her touch and cast coils around her arms, acknowledging her right to be there, embracing her not restraining her.
From where she sat it was as if every part of this strange catacombic underworld was visible to her. She could cast her thoughts up and see Annis, arms round her cats, watching and wondering. She could reach out and sense the shifting depths of darkness where the Old Ones moved beneath the earth. She saw the pinioned vampire and as if at her unspoken command, the creatures around him slithered back into gloom.
No longer restrained Roald, pushed himself up from the slab of dark stone and stood staring at her, something of both yearning and desperation in his eyes. Jessica watched as he seemed to flicker between the handsome human form and the bone-grey near skeletal one she had seen in the fair. She realised then that was why Annis had taken her from the safety of the Sanctuary. In the midst of the fair he could not hold his human form against the powers of life and death which met there. She had needed to see it, see him as he really was, if she had not then she would still see him only in his gorgeous human form.
The other part of her knew only the viking Roald, clad in fine furs and wool, his braided beard and golden, on bended knee. Beguiling and beautiful. Telling her how the gulls themselves saluted her  as they wheeled over the headland. The high headland where he tried to…
The sunken cheeks and cold-burning eyes filled her vision. He was impossibly fast, impossibly strong, impossibly no longer on the other side of the cavern, but there infront of her, black withered lips pulled back from the row of shark teeth, jaw impossibly wide to close on her throat.
The shots sounded like thunder, booming across a charged summer night and the grotesque head flung back and away, old blood, dark and slow as if in part congealed, fell in liquid clots onto the stone and deep within the core of the earth itself, something sighed in delight.

Part 15 of Maybe by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook will be here next week…

Things that make us go poop…

Granny and the ‘ladies’ darts team of The Dog and Trumpet alphabetically collate their collective contempt for the inhabitants of the twenty-first century.

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!

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

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

Jane Jago

If ever a woman was between two unwanted destinies…

I was sitting astride one of the sturdy roof supports of the smithy with my back against the warm stone of the forge chimney, listening to two men discussing my future.

One was William Smith, a brawny giant of a man who was making nails as he spoke. The other was the Puritan gentleman who now owned my family home.
“Nobody,” the dark-clad man was saying, “is able, or willing, to tell me where I might find the daughter of the house.”
“I shouldn’t think they know,” William’s bass rumble held a thread of amusement.
“And you, master Smith, would you tell me if you knew?”
“That would depend.”
The man rounded on him angrily. “I could turn you out in the streets and have you whipped from the village for your insolence.”
“You could try, but I own this smithy free and clear, and I’m not a man easy to intimidate.”
They stared each other in the eyes for a long moment, and it was the Parliamentarian who looked away first.
“No harm will come to the girl of my doing. I would marry the chit, or, if she will not, her father is alive in the Low Countries with others of his party.”
William made a deep humming noise. “So, the girl must either marry a man she has never set eyes on before, or she must leave her home to follow a father who is as like as not to lose her in a game of cards. Not a lot of choice.”
The dark gent ground his teeth. “Do I not know that? But it is the best I can offer.”
There was a long moment of silence broken only by the musical ring of hammer on anvil as William beat iron into nails.
“And what if there was another way?”
“I am listening.”
“The girl is as wild as one of her father’s hawks. She is not one to be tamed by any man. Marry her against her will and you would spend your life looking behind you. Let her be. It may be that you could come to know her that way and in time.”
“She doesn’t have time. The family of her father’s second wife has designs on her person.”
“Why?”
“For the same reason her father wants her. Money.”
“Money?”
“Aye. The girl is wealthy in her own right and there are many who would use that wealth.”
“Including yourself,” William’s voice was full of contempt.
“Yes. But at least I would use it to address the neglect of her home and it’s acreage. And I would be kind.”
William studied him then shrugged his massive shoulders. He threw the last nail into the bucket and shifted his head to look up to my perch.
“What do you think, Miss Henrietta? Will you marry? Or will you go to your father? Or…”
He held up his arms and I jumped into them before turning to look into the narrow, dark face of the man I was to spend the next fifty years married to.

© jane jago

Things that make us go poop…

Granny and the ‘ladies’ darts team of The Dog and Trumpet alphabetically collate their collective contempt for the inhabitants of the twenty-first century.

The first day of April, that day of all days when making bloody silly jokes is all right.
Only it isn’t. It isn’t funny to send your sister a photoshopped image of her boyfriend in bed with a blonde. It isn’t funny to put an announcement of your mother’s death in the local paper. It isn’t funny to befriend somebody online only to make them the but of your annual ‘humour’ fest.
Just stop it.
It’s not funny. You’re not funny. Leave humour to those who don’t equate being funny with making people cry. Stop being an asshat for ten minutes and consider how you would enjoy being the but of one of your own ‘jokes’.
For those of you who find themselves on the receiving end of one of these gems of sparkling ‘wit’ I have the following advice.
If the perpetrator is an online acquaintance, by all means retweet or reblog the offensive item adding one or more of the following hashtags:

#sentbytheguywiththegherkindick
#sentbyadiscardedlover
#sentbythebitchwhohasnofriends
#thanksasshole

I think you get the idea.
However, should the ‘joker’ be known to you outside cyberspace, vengeance is perfectly acceptable. Consider one of the following:

Itching powder in the underwear.
Chilli in the wine
Pepper in the chocolates
And the classic – A kipper wired to the exhaust pipe of their car

Soooooo. To recap. Don’t do personal April Fools jokes. They are seldom kindly and never funny. 
But.
If you do. Expect vengeance…

Have fun until the next thing pisses me off.