Two Women and Some Books
Whatever the fashion I’d tell my mum
And she’d get out her trusty machine
She’d run something up at the speed of a gun
Make a dress that she never had seen
But mum’s been gone a long old time
Her empty chair is cold
Her sewing machine no longer shines
And her little girl is old
Join Piglock Homes and his sidekick Doctor Bearson as they investigate the strange affair of the Dartymuir Dog…
It was a dull day in August and the heat was of such an oppressive character that even the normally sanguine Doctor Bearson was a little inclined to snap. Homes, of course, was fretted beyond measure – both by the lack of intellectual stimulation and by the disappearance of the kazoo with which he was wont to while away the hours of boredom.
In an effort to cheer his porcine chum, Bearson challenged him to a game of Bar Billiards, which Homes promptly lost – setting in motion a foetid sulk and the ignition of a pipe whose effulgences were so noxious as to render him almost invisible as he hunched in his wing chair swearing sulphurously in Serbo-Croat.
Bearson himself was close to despair when an urgent rap upon the oaken panels of the front door heralded the arrival of the telegraph rabbit with a buff envelope in one paw.
By the time Bearson had paid the rabbit his carrot, Homes had so far exerted himself as to knock the dottle from his pipe and scramble out of a chair that had been constructed for a person of a much larger stature.
Bearson handed him the envelope, which he slit with a grimy and nicotine blemished trotter. He read the contents and his countenance shifted from self-pitying childishness to acute intelligence.
“I say, Bearson,” he ejaculated, “this is a bit more like it. Cast your eyes over this communication and see what it reveals to you.”
Bearson picked up the single sheet of flimsy paper.
Piglock Homes and his sidekick Doctor Bearson will continue their investigation into The Affair of the Dartymuir Dog 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.
Saddle up your ears Yummies and Daddies. Granny has wisdom to impart.
And before you pull your mouth into the shape of a cat’s arsehole you might just take a moment to think about which of us has grandsons who come and take her to the pub most Saturday nights.
So then, given that somewhere in the back of that cesspool of middle-class inspirational quotes that you laughingly call a brain you want to raise reasonable human beings who actually like you, shut up and listen.
Number one. The name. Do. Not. Saddle. The. Poor. Little. Git. With. A. Stupid. Name. Nobody deserves to be called Avocado, Pinot Grigio, Venice, Perpendicular, or any other meaningless collection of syllables you think may be ‘different’. Kids don’t want to be different. It’s bad enough that you bring them to school on a tandem without labelling them as wankers as well. Give the poor little sod a sensible name and stop being precious.
Number two. Social media. Stop posting pictures of your kids. It’s unkind. It’s boring. And those pictures will follow them throughout their lives. What may be cute when you are three is just fucking embarrassing when you’re forty.
Number three. The birthday party. Do not make strange brown poo-textured food. Do not think it would be cute to lead an expedition into the woods to find the Bear (a poorly disguised Daddy). And do not put rice cakes and miso in the party bags. Take them to MaccyD’s (other fast food outlets are available) and buy party bags from your local cheapo shop.
And if your little treasure is invited to a party Do Not, send him or her with a list of the things they are not allowed to eat. Accept that they will chow down on something foully synthetic. It isn’t every day so get over it.
Number four. Friends. You cannot choose your children’s mates for them. They don’t want to be friends with four vegetarians and a refugee. The want to be best mates with the big bully so he don’t bully them, and they really, really like the kid with nits who swears like a stormtrooper. Get used to it.
And finally. If their little friend comes to tea (or supper if you are a poncey bitch), do sausages and chips with tomato ketchup. No. Not quinoa and tofu salad with brown pitta (aka warm cardboard). Sausages (can be veggie at a pinch), and chips. Bury your prejudices for the sake of your kid not getting the crap kicked out of them tomorrow at school…
There you have it. Attempt not to embarrass your brats any more than you can help. After all you’ll be old and incontinent one day and you really don’t want your ass wiped with a pan scourer.
Things are not quite how you might remember them in the 100 Acre Wood for Christopher Robin, Pooh Bear and their friends…
***** ***** *****
This was not a pregnant pause. The sense of expectation was something altogether more profound and powerful. For most watching, it was like the moment when a giant firework screams upwards into the midnight sky at New Year, drawing every eye and inspiring the mind to speculate upon what exciting and marvellous spectacle of explosive beauty could follow in the moments to come.
There was a preternatural hush. The unsound of every breath held in anticipation, and for a few scant seconds, time was suspended into tableau. From forth movement, activity and life there was birthed a stillness which transformed the instant to a photograph captured by the camera of every eye present. Something wonderful was about to happen, a culmination and catharsis which was both long expected and yet in the moment surprising.
Standing alone in the middle of this captivated audience I felt only clammy nausea. The cold, sickening churning of dread in my stomach, seemed to drop like lead as if I was in a high-speed lift going down fast. This was akin to standing before the darkened radar screen of an air traffic control room and watching two points of light merge into one, flaring more brilliant, the second before it blinked out forever.
But, as everyone else there present, in that moment I only had eyes for Roxanne.
She looked ethereal in profile, like an antique watercolour. Her hair the living copper shades that Titian craved, her face damask, skin with the softened radiance of fine porcelain or bone china. I could not see her eyes, they were not fixed on me, but I knew they would be as compelling as the sea, the colour of the Mediterranean, neither blue nor green but some special tone that ascended beyond those both and was all her own.
She wore white, a symbol of purity, innocence – and sacrifice. For a moment, when the red fell against it in a liquid splash of violent colour, I felt as if a blade had slid into my own throat and I couldn’t breathe from the pain.
Then she spoke and time returned.
Roxanne was smiling. People sighed, words broke the mirror of silence and there was even clapping as she lifted her hand to show the ring and cup the ruby pendant her fiance had just slipped around her neck, so she could see it better. In seconds she was surrounded by a thicket of family – mostly female – and friends – exclusively female.
The sea of well-wishers, oblivious to my presence, washed around me like an incoming tide and my isolation deepened. It took me a while to realise that I was still breathing, that the world was still turning and that the painful constriction in my throat and the cold knot in my stomach were invisible to everyone. I became aware that for someone in that moment the centre of the universe was not Roxanne. Someone was watching me.
I did not need to shift my vision very far. He was close, very close, to where Roxanne was holding her impromptu court. Her fiance. His lips were addressing words to her fawning father whose broad back was towards me, but his chilling blue gaze rested on me.
They held no trace of triumph, no gloating superiority – in fact, no real emotion at all. All they contained was the cold dispassion of menace – a statement not a threat. This was not a battle lost, a campaign defeated. This was the end of the war. I had lost everything and had no hope. Life itself was without meaning. I was nothing now and despair settled into me, it’s vulture’s beak ripping the soul-flesh from my heart. Then, abruptly, the ice blue eyes shifted away from me and, dismissed, I turned, left the room and walked out of my own life.
Telling an entire story in just one hundred words…
He’d been planning it for weeks, deciding what to cook and choosing a day she would be visiting anyway. It was their regular Friday evening wind down for the weekend, chilling with a box set and a bottle of wine. Usually, it was ‘order in pizza’ day, but today it’d be special – his meal, candles, flowers and the ring, of course.
He was just discovering that flower arranging was a lot harder than it looked, when the phone rang.
“I need to tell you I’m seeing someone else…”
He put a ready meal in the microwave and ate it alone.
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 the talented rider…
***** ***** *****
Agnes had been the Easter Bunny for so many years now that even the teeth didn’t bother her. Way she looked at it one day of frantic egg hiding beat three hundred plus in any other job.
Okay, maybe the belly and the ears weren’t exactly attractive. But hey, she coulda been a flower fairy condemned to droop around dressed in bits of colour and freezing cold for most of her life. Or, even worse, the tooth fairy. The very thought made her gag. Picking up rotten bits of children’s mouths every night.
No. All in all chocolate was best….
Sometimes we walk the edges of reality…
A scream went up which penetrated soul-deep, the sound shaking the very foundations of the underworld and the roof of the cavern began to fall. Stones, dropping around her and the low rumble that presaged its final collapse. Then Annis was there, gripping her wrist..
“How did you know?”
Something was gone from her, as if a horror had passed and she looked more child again than feral being. Jessica pulled her close into an embrace, as if her own weak flesh could protect the child from the collapsing cavern. Eyes closed they clung together.
“It’s alright,” Annis was saying, her voice almost happy.
The rumble faded like summer thunder and Jessica became aware of a slight breeze on her face. She was standing with Annis and the two huge cats in an empty field, under the fading stars as dawn was breaking. Her car was pulled up nearby, beside an open gate. Jessica’s phone played a few bars from Dvorak’s ‘New World’ and she reached to answer it without thinking.
“Jess, I’ve been worried about you.” Uncle David’s voice sounded as if it belonged to another life, in another galaxy.
“It’s – it’s alright. I’m alright,”
“Your Aunt was sure you were in trouble, you know how she is. Ever since that Roald didn’t show up for dinner.”
“Yes, Look, I’m coming home. I had engine trouble. I’ll be back soon.”
“Long as you’re alright, lass.”
She put the phone away and looked back at Annis. The girl was bending down, grabbing at something gleaming in the grass.
“I think you should keep this,” she said, holding out the necklace of silver ammonites.
Jessica took it and for a moment she had the fleeting sense of Hild, smiling and she realised she felt whole again at last, more fully herself than she had done for a long, long time. She undid the catch and slipped the necklace around her neck to lie on her breasts, Then she turned her attention back to Annis, her indomitable young friend.
“Thank you, I don’t know how you got us out of there.”
Annis shook her head.
“You not understand, we not there. Never. It never happen. You – unmade it.” She reached out and kissed Jessica quickly on the cheek.
“I thank you. You take demon from me – free me. Make it never happen.”
“I – I am not sure I understand,” Jessica said, but then she was not sure she understood any of it. “What happens to you now?”
Annis smiled and it was the saddest thing Jessica had ever seen,
“Nothing happens to us Jess. We died before we were born. Only we never knew we was dead…I am just a dream of hope in the darkness.”
As Jessica watched, Annis and her cats grew more and more insubstantial until she could see them no longer. She thought she felt small fingers and a rough tongue on her cheek until the morning breeze blew even that away.
Maybe by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook is available from Amazon.
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.
Right, before we go any further the obligatory sensitivity warning – this is about sex. You know the activity – where some version of Tab A being shoved into Slot B occurs. That having been said I make no effort to pretty up the subject. So those of a virginal, celibate, or easily offended nature, or those under the age of consent, should stop reading now and go away. You Will Be Offended if you read on.
And now to consider the pros and cons of rude things under the sky….
Given that most people between the ages of sixteen and, say, sixty will harbour a secret desire for alfresco nookie, I feel it is incumbent on me to dispel a few myths.
Romance – It always sounds kind of romantic when some country singer is mooing on about making love in the moonlight. And I guess it may be okay in the Ozarks – they have plenty of room. In Clapham it’s less delicate delight and more amateur dogging.
Sensation – Dirt between the cheeks of your arse is abrasive. Stinging nettles sting. (As a female I can attest to the fact you have never laughed until you have seen a naked man prancing about a moonlit field clutching his knob and screaming for a dockleaf. But I digress.) And whatever kind of a prick does it for you, thistles up your nethers won’t help.
Oh and. On no account allow yourself to be tempted onto a moonlit beach. If dirt is abrasive just think what sand can do. Sand forced into your delicate places by something resembling a piston wrapped in glass paper. Ouch. (Apparently A&E departments in seaside areas have special fanny douching nurses.)
Temperature – Unless you are lucky enough to live in some balmy tropical paradise it will be cold. Cold enough to ensure that the male half of the equation will have to be about his work quickly before Mr Willy decides its cold enough so he needs to go home.
Privacy – That secluded forest glade. How secluded is it? Will you be making love in the tender grass watched over only by the moon? Or. And this is the most likely scenario. Will you open your eyes to see you have collected: two joggers, three Boy Scouts, one man with a bicycle and a head torch, one man in a greasy macintosh whose hands are suspiciously hidden, and your brother and four of his mates? You are never going to live that one down.
In conclusion alfresco hide-the-sausage is most definitely not what it is cracked up to be. Besides which, if you are a yummy mummy to be, how the feck will you explain calling the fruit of your loins ‘Dogging Area to the Rear of Sainsbury’s Car Park’. It doesn’t quite have the ring of Brooklyn does it?
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