Two Women and Some Books
A selection of rhymes by Jane Jago, made age appropriate for those for whom their second childhood is just around the corner…
Old Grandma Muffet
Sat on a tuffet
One sunny Saturday
There came a truck driver
Who sat down beside her
She groped him and he ran away.
You can find this, and other whimsical takes of life in On The Throne? a little book of contemplation from Jane Jago.
The queen of shadows
Clad in mist
As cool as malice
Never kissed
Moves like silence
Bleeding cold
Her icy fingers
Chill the soul
Sometimes we walk the edges of realty…
Half an hour later Jess was driving away, to somewhere. Anywhere. Just away. She stopped to eat the sandwich when it was starting to get dark and hunger bit, pulling off the road and into the carpark of what looked like a run-down, sea-side amusement park. Which was when she found it in the glove box. The gift from Roald. Part of her wanted to hurl it, unopened, away from the car. But instead she took it out of the colourful paper bag and lifted the lid. A necklace of silver beads, carved to resemble ammonite shells.
Throwing it out of the window, Jess swore violently and turned the key. Nothing happened. The car sat there. She tried several times, giving up only when she realised it was not going to happen. She picked up her phone to call roadside recovery, and was somehow not surprised to find there was no signal. With an odd sense of inevitability, she picked up her magnalight from the map pocket beside her. Its weight, as much as its light, gave her a sense of security, it could be a weapon at need. She pulled her walking coat on over her fleece jacket and left the car to see if there anyone around in the amusement park.
There was stiff sea breeze coming in from across the bleak scrub that lay between this place and the sea. A moon, nearly full, gave enough light that she did not need to turn on the torch, and slid it into the inside pocket of her coat. There were no other cars parked up outside what must once have been a bustling attraction. But who wanted a seaside holiday when you could go to Costa del Sunburn for not much more? There was a high wall which ran across the end of the car park and as Jess walked towards it, she could see it stretched away on either side.
The entrance was through a turnstile gate, or should have been. Someone had broken the spokes of the turning part, so anyone could walk through, past the shattered and blinded glass eye of the pay booth, boarded-up on the inside. Jess did so and something moved beside the booth. She turned fast, her hand gripping the magnalight as a slapping sound send a sudden pulse of unwanted adrenaline into her system. She pulled the torch free and shone its powerful beam at the source of the sound.
A sign hung down, still half attached to the top of the pay-booth, its broken back clapping against the heavy door set in the side of the small brick cabin. The words were barely visible:
…COME TO ….HELL…
Somewhere an owl shrieked and, despite herself, Jess drew a sharp breath. She took a step towards the broken, flapping sign and played the torch beam over it from end to end:
WELCOME TO SHELLEY’S FUNPARK
The owl screeched again and Jess smiled. You had to love it when the atmospherics played up to the occasion. It would only take a sea mist rolling in to turn this place into something out of an old-school Hammer Horror production. The really chilling thing was not any kind of supernatural danger here, it was the realisation that this was indeed an abandoned and empty place, with no one around who might have a phone she could use to call the roadside recovery and this place was a very long walk from anywhere. Only a year ago that would have meant very little. She might even have enjoyed the bracing breeze and the countryside at night. But not now. Now she would not make it more than a mile before she was crippled with pain.
The laughter carried on the night air, coming from behind the low roofed building immediately in front of her. At a guess it had once been some kind of cafe, but now it was heavily boarded up, metal shutters pulled over the windows, like a creature retreated into its shell.
Shelley’s Funpark? Why did that sound so familiar? Jess would have given it some more thought but the laughter came again, masculine, plural and loud. It was not from someone with any thought of trying to avoid attention. Still gripping the magnalight, its beam dimmed, Jessica made her way past the cafe-building and into the open area beyond.
The shadowy figures moving vaguely on the far side, close by the enclosing wall, sprang suddenly into stark relief and were revealed, as as an orange glow flared behind them. Jess froze, hearing drunken cheers as the fire took hold and watched as, like the ritual of some strange coven of witches, the group of youths all started throwing things into the flames.
Part 4 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.
K is for Kitchen Knives and this all started when Loopy Laura of the darts team started telling us about her in-laws’ collection of them.
How many kitchen knives does anyone actually need?
Hands up all you daft buggers who own sets of ‘chef’s knives’.
In wooden blocks or hanging on magnets.
Are you like Loopy Laura’s in-laws with twenty-three of them?
Twenty-three mild steel knives they have to sharpen if they so much as look at them…
Twenty-three silent testaments to their gullibility.
Twenty-three knives of which they use probably none.
My late unlamented was a chef by profession (his cooking being one of the reasons I put up with his presence for so long). He used three knives – and one of them was solely for threatening people who wandered into the kitchen.
You need a big knife and a little one.
That’s it.
Things are not quite how you might remember them in the 100 Acre Wood for Christopher Robin, Pooh Bear and their friends…
***** ***** *****
Namaste you wonderful, desirable and aspiring individual! This bijou blog is here to help you achieve your best ever ‘you’ in this new year. Here, I offer my help and assistance in reshaping your shape and doctoring your decor internally and externally, to bring your lifestyle into line with your aspirations.
Eating is a profound experience. It is about bringing the nourishment from the outside world and drawing it deep within your own body to provide yourself with the nutrients and energy that enable you to live as your best ever you.
There will be many places you can read about what you should and should not eat and why, but this blog is not concerned with the basics of nutrition. it is not for me to tell you what you should and should not allow to pass down the sacred descent into the temple of your digestive system.
But there is much need to consider and very little ever spoken about the best way to consume your chosen food.
For most of us, any adventure away from the standard stainless steel cutlery sets of our youth, might begin by mastering – or failing to master – the use of chopsticks. This is, indeed, a step in the right direction.
Why?
Because you are not putting metal in your mouth.
Metal is a wonderful substance for making external items such as rings and pendants, anklets and bangles – but it is not something that should ever be introduced within the body except under extreme medical necessity. The healthy body should be, and remain, metal free at all times.
And that means avoiding metal in all your food preparation as well as the eating of it. The metal will not resonate well with the meal and can cause all kinds of issues.
The transition may be a difficult one for many and I would seriously consider a stage in which you resort to wooden spoons for eating before you achieve the final, fantastic, liberation of eating as natures always intended we should – with our fingers.
Please be aware that once you have adopted this lifestyle change you will notice the impact on your social life immediately. You will come to discern who are your true friends and who are simply lingering at your side in the hope of basking in a little of your glory. Cast aside those who cast you off and ignore their tweets about how disgusting you are to have as a dinner guest. You know you are living your best life and that is what matters.
Namaste!
Lucida the Lambent Lifestyle Coach
Telling an entire story in just one hundred words…
Susan had never really understood all this tech stuff – smart this and smart that. It was all too smart for her. So she was the only person in her town who didn’t have a fully connected house. She couldn’t even get emails except at the library.
But as time went on she began to wonder if she was indeed being old-fashioned and even stubborn about it.
Until the day every smart meter and speaker, smart fridge and smartphone was taken over by the aliens.
As her neighbours were all forced to obey their new overlords, Susan felt smugly justified.
A selection of rhymes by Jane Jago, made age appropriate for those for whom their second childhood is just around the corner…
Freda and Bill went up the hill
To the shop at the end of the street
They bought syrup for chills
Viagra pills
And corn pads for Freda’s sore feet.
You can find this, and other whimsical takes of life in On The Throne? a little book of contemplation from Jane Jago.
There’s a hole in my lung now
Where the smoke demons played
There’s a song to be sung now
Of my young careless days
But I’ve no breath for singing
Though the cancer is gone
Watch my summer swallows winging
How this winter will feel long
Sometimes we walk the edges of realty…
“So what has this to do with anything?” Jessica asked at last, when the small talk dried up over their beer.
“Your dream,” Roald told her, “the one you keep having about a glowing necklace of strange pearls.”
Jess nodded, she had told him of it when he asked her if she ever remembered her dreams.
“I’m not sure they were pearls, just the kind of odd light they gave off made them seem like it. They were pearls shaped in ridged spirals.”
In the dream, she had seen something glowing under her uniform blouse, shining and everyone staring until she had run away and been standing on a cliff edge, then ripping open her blouse to see the strange necklace lying there on her naked breasts. The image came into her mind clear as a photograph and she heard Roald draw a small, sharp breath, which brought her back to the pub.
“Uh, yeah,” he said, his expression slipping into an odd smile, “that’s the one.”
For some reason, she felt uncomfortable and looked out of the window to escape the moment.
“It’s only been since the – the accident,” I’ve never had that kind of dream before.”
Standing naked on the cliff-edge, her hair so long it ran the full length of her back and blew out around her, sparking with energy, and feeling so whole, so complete – so powerful.
“I know.”
The way he said it, made her blush. She started pulling herself to her feet, leaning on the crutches.
“I need to get back – I promised I’d take my aunt to the talk on astrology. She loves all that kind of stuff.’
Roald rose too.
“And you don’t?”
“I never used to,” she admitted, as he helped her ease back into her coat.
“And now?”
She tried to shrug, but it was not so easy with the crutches.
“Maybe, believing in fate helps make this all seem less meaningless. Maybe it helps make sense of the senseless. Even if all I’m doing is seeing patterns in the stars by joining the dots with random lines.”
He stopped on the way back up the hill to the car. Asking her to wait as he dived into a tourist shop, full of costlier craft items. She studied the window but could not see what had caught his eye. When he came out he pushed a small flat box into her hand.
“Just something to remember today by,” he said. The leaned forward to kiss her, lightly, one hand running up over the curve of her breast, lingering as he whispered: “You look beautiful naked.”
She had been so stunned that she had frozen, her whole body stiff, paralysed. Just as it had been when she woke up to find herself in hospital. So she had not said a word as he turned his broad back away and strode off into the crowds of tourists, lost to sight the moment he did so.
Sitting drinking coffee poured from her aunt’s ceramic samovar, it seemed a lifetime ago.
“You know the young man I mean, don’t you pet? He came to one of my rune workshops? You went out with him a couple of months ago – he seemed such a nice young man.”
“I don’t think they got along, Susan,” her uncle said, frowning.
“No. We didn’t have much in common,” Jessica said quickly.
“Oh that’s such a shame,” her aunt sounded almost as if she really meant it. “He was at the workshop again yesterday, I told him he should be the one teaching it, he’s very good. I invited him over for dinner.”
Jessica felt her hands lose all their strength and the tiny coffee cup slipped through her fingers to shatter on the polished wood of the floor. It was suddenly hard to breathe, as if something was stifling her. Then her uncle was there, helping her up, helping her to escape to the sanctuary of her own room, knowing what she needed, so leaving her alone after a brief hug.
“Don’t fuss over the girl so much, Dave. She’s not a piece of china. And get something to clear that up, good thing it was mostly empty. I’d never get the stains out of the curtains…”
Her aunt’s voice receded as the door to the lounge closed.
She sat there for a moment then started to pack. Slowly, because movements were awkward and not easy still. She had tried to slip unnoticed through the kitchen, but her uncle was there starting on making the usual sandwiches they had for lunch, thick cut ham with pickle for Aunt Susan, and Marmite salad for himself and Jessica. She saw him take in her appearance as he looked up from his work and he wiped his hands on a tea-towel, before reaching into his pocket.
“Take this, lass.” He pushed a wad of notes into her hand. “No arguments. Come back when you can. “
Part 3 of Maybe by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook will be here next week…
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