Search Results for 'aunt'

Forums Search Search Results for 'aunt'

Viewing 20 results - 201 through 220 (of 287 total)
  • Author
    Search Results
  • #3669
    prUneprUne
    Participant

      Christmas has always been a strange tradition in our family.
      Maybe because first and foremost, Christmas is all about family. Besides the twins and their bond, sometimes I wonder what makes us a family at all.
      It doesn’t help that we can never get snow around this place, and dressing in red and white fluff is not going to make things suddenly magical.

      It was comical to see the exterminator come with a red bonnet, panting and all red himself, as if he were some genial Santa bringing gifts of death to our yonder’s rodents residents.
      He didn’t catch a rat, but got himself a fright. Thanks to Mater, when she erupted in the attic in her white hanuka honey cream face-lifter mask. I think that sneaky Finly got to her in the end.
      The mystery of the strange noises in the inn is not going soon, apparently.

      Bert and Aunt Idle got back from their trip in the evening. Apparently Bert had insisted to bring some sort of shrub to make a Christmas tree in the great hall (it’s not so great, but we call it that). Finly didn’t seem pleased too much with it. Raking leaves in summer, bringing pests inside… she didn’t have many kind things to say about it. So Mater sends her to cook a “festive dinner”, that’s what she said. I heard Finly mutter in her breath something about kiwi specials. I like kiwis. Hope she’ll make a pavlova… just, not with Mater’s face cream!

      It seems that giving small gestures of appreciation got the mood going. Aunt Idle is always very good at decorating with the oddest or simplest of things, like rolls of TP. Sometimes she would draw nice hieroglyphs in the layer of dust on the cabinets, it gives the furniture a special look. Mater always says it’s because she’s too lazy to do some cleaning consistently, but I think it’s because cleaning is not creative enough for her. Can’t believe I just said nice things about Aunt Idle. Christmas spirit must be contagious.

      Then, Devan came home with some pastries. It’s not often I see Devan these days, and usually he’s always brooding. I would too, if I had to come back home when I could just start my life away from there. Finly was all eyes on him all of a sudden. Seems nobody noticed, not even the twins, too busy being snarky while playing on their phones,… it looks like there is some strange game between these two, my brother and our Finly. I think Finly makes a lot of efforts to look younger with him, I can see when she fiddles with her hair. They would make good friends, and I’m sure Devan doesn’t mind the accent.

      As always, it’s not about how pretty the tree is, or how good the food is, or how big the gifts are… It’s more about being together, for better or for worse. And Dad, and Mum are always out of this almost nice picture, but somehow, it matters less today.

      There’s a good thing about that Christmas spirit. It gives you the weirdest ideas. To be nice, I asked Mater if we should invite the guests to our festive dinner, and probably lifted by the mood, she said yes, of course. When I went to the closed door to invite the guy, I thought a random act of kindnes is a perfect occasion to learn more about our mysterious resident stranger… Maybe that’s what the adults mean in church when they say you should always be kind to each other.

      #3639

      Mater was more relaxed now that Finly had everything run smoothly at the Inn.

      Granted, not all was to her liking, such as her choice of marmite against the usual favourite vegemite, but if you had to make some concessions to retain the staff, what the hell.

      Finly had set up more strict rules for the children, which was a necessity. No parents, an irresponsible aunt, and frankly, herself was at an age where she had done her share of chores.

      She wondered if the girl was not secretly trying to bribe her with the right mix of strength and kindness. After all she had offered to do her a facelift mask with manuka honey from her hometown. As if she would fall for that. At her age.

      She had answered to her quite firmly to make things unequivocal And then, are we going to braid each other’s hair? The poor girl had looked a bit confused, but then very quickly went back to her tasks after muttering some sort of apology.

      “While you are doing the upper floor,” Mater added with some afterthought “you should have a look at the attic, there seem to be a strange racket…”

      “Yes, M’am, certainly. Probably rats. I’ll call the exterminator, M’am.”

      If only that were so simple… Mater thought to herself.

      #3635
      TracyTracy
      Participant

        Aunt Idle:

        Trying to get a conversation out of Bert was like trying to prise a can of beans open with a nappy pin. If he’d been a bit more willing to discuss it with me I might have told him about the note, but I didn’t. I suppose he was disgruntled because I was more interested in that medical team buying up ghost towns than his bridge, so we sat in silence for the rest of the trip. Not that I wasn’t interested in the place on the other side of the river, but there was something very odd going on, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. That note, made from old maps at the Brundy place, then Flora’s card with the same name on ~ what the dickens was going on? Should I ask Flora point blank, or would that alert her that I was on to her? Might be better to be more subtle, see what I could find out before confronting her. I even thought of getting the remote view team to see if they could find anything out ~ although the results were so sketchy that might just be a wild goose chase, lead me off in the wrong direction.

        “Take the next left, Idle, down this here track,” Bert said.

        Miles away I was, so I didn’t hear him at first and had to slam the brakes on a bit sharpish. I caught Bert rolling his eyes at me and glared at him.

        The track hadn’t been driven on for months, if not years ~ that much was obvious. We bumped along kicking up a cloud of dust for a few miles before the river came into sight, then the track followed the river for another half a mile or so, eventually petering out.

        “We’ll have to walk from here,” said Bert, getting out of the car. I passed Bert the rucksack with the bottled water and locked the car. “You don’t need to lock the car here” Bert snorted.

        “Habit,” I snapped, “Lead the way.”

        #3632

        In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud

        AvatarJib
        Participant

          sha lazuli job free pay
          reason gazalbion message forgotten
          laughed offered person consciousness
          maps brought aunt soft replied
          tree later months

          #3618

          Aunt Idle:

          Bert came with me. Usually one of us always stayed home to keep an eye on Mater and the kids, but now we had that capable girl, Finly, to keep an eye on things.

          It was good to get away from the place for a few hours, and head off on a different route to the usual shopping and errand trips. The nearest sizable town was in the opposite direction; it was years since I’d been to Ninetown. I asked Bert about the place on the other side of the river, what was it that intrigued him so. I’ll be honest, I wondered if he was losing his marbles when he said it was the medieval ruins over there.

          “Don’t be daft, Bert, how can there be medieval ruins over there?” I asked.

          “I didn’t say they were medieval, Idle, I said that’s what they looked like,” he replied.

          “But …but history, Bert! There’s no history here of medieval towns! Who could have built it?”

          “That’s why I found it so fucking interesting, but if it doesn’t fit the picture, nobody wants to hear anything about it!”

          “Well I’m interested Bert. Yes, yes, I know I wasn’t interested before, but I am now.”

          Bert grunted and lit a cigarette.

          ~~~

          We stopped at a roadside restaurant just outside Ninetown for lunch. The midday heat was enervating, but inside the restaurant was a pleasant few degrees cooler. Bert wasn’t one for small talk, so I picked up a local paper to peruse while I ate my sandwich and Bert tucked into a greasy heap of chips and meat. I flicked through it without much interest in the mundane goings on of the town, that is, until I saw those names: Tattler, Trout and Trueman.

          It was an article about a ghost town on the other side of Ninetown that had been bought up by a consortium of doctors. Apparently they’d acquired it for pennies as it had been completely deserted for decades, with the intention of developing it into an exclusive clinic.

          “There’s something fishy about that!” I exclaimed, a bit too loudly. Several of the locals turned to look at me. I lowered my voice, not wanting to attract any more attention while I tried to make sense of it.

          “Read this!” I passed the paper over the Bert.

          “So what?” he asked. “Who cares?”

          “Look!” I said, jabbing my finger on the names Tattler, Trout and Trueman. Bert looked puzzled, understandably enough. “Allow me to explain” I said, and I told him about the business card that Flora had left on the porch table.

          “What does Flora have to do with this consortium of doctors? And what the hell is the point in setting up a clinic there, in the middle of nowhere?”

          “That,” I replied, “Is the question!”

          #3614
          TracyTracy
          Participant

            Aunt Idle:

            I noticed a change in Bert after the explosion. He seemed more reckless and carefree, more jovial, unlike his usual terse martyred demeanor. Curiosity got the better of me and I asked him about it, one day while we were in the garden picking tomatoes.

            I had a sudden pang of guilt when he told me all about it because it rang a bell, a dim and distant bell, that I’d known about the bridge that he built but had forgotten all about it. Always so many other things to think about every day, and yet now, I wish I’d found the time to cross that bridge and explore the other side, or just sit there and think of nothing, and relax. But I didn’t, and now the bridge was gone.

            After the explosion, people said it must have been an accident, some buried mining explosives set off by a wandering animal. I don’t know how many people knew about Bert’s bridge, but none seemed to recall it after the explosion. It was as if it had never existed.

            It was a funny thing though, now that the bridge was gone, now I knew the story, I wanted to see what was on the other side. If I had to drive all the way up to the bridge in Ninetown to cross the river, then so be it.

            #3599
            TracyTracy
            Participant

              Corrie:

              I woke up this morning with an idea in my head, and I don’t know if I was dreaming about it or if it just popped in, in the brief moments between sleep and waking. I made a connection with the topic I was doing an anthropology report on, and something I’d forgotten. No, not forgotten, it wouldn’t be true to say I’d forgotten it as it was always there at the back of my mind niggling at me that there was more to it somehow, but I hadn’t made the connection so obviously with the current project.

              My research was about disconnection, and the separation agenda of the American channeling dream. At first I felt driven to explore particular areas and then piece by piece the puzzle that had nagged at me for years ~ I say years, it felt like years, but maybe it wasn’t so long ~ started to fall into place.

              At first when I woke up the idea of censorship was in my head and the idea to start a petition and public awareness campaign about certain channeled texts that were withheld from public viewing, despite repeated requests for them to be public along with all the other texts. But then it occurred to me that censorship and omission wasn’t always deliberate. I mean, not a conscious choice to keep information secret, but something else. Almost like a case of some information not being seen clearly through the filters, yet for some reason dismissed as not fitting, and pushed away, almost unconsciously, and suppressed.

              The text was about disconnect mainly, and there was some stuff about Nazi’s although the part about animals was the part that had stuck in my head, probably because I felt more connected to animals than Nazi’s. There were more animals growing up here than Nazi’s after all, Nazi’s was only something I’d heard about. But then it occurred to me that I’d been hearing more and more about Neo Nazi’s, in Europe mainly, forming groups and having protests. So that got me wondering about that too.

              Anyway, the disconnect part: it was the reaction on the American channeling forums to the Ferguson riots that started me on this project, and Aunt Idle was full of encouragement when I started to explain to her what I was noticing. She said she had noticed similar things in her remote viewing circle online. Everyone seems to think Aunt Idle is losing her marbles, but don’t you believe it. She seems vacant and scattered but that’s only because her mind is occupied elsewhere.

              The gist of this suppressed text was extreme separation, but it was the part about using words to seem enlightened to hide extreme disconnect that seemed to fit my project.

              I did have to chuckle though, I wondered if I was being a racist by calling Americans disconnected as if it was a racial characteristic. More of a cultural thing, I suppose, can one be called a culturalist as if it’s a bad thing? I don’t see how you can study anthropology without a certain degree of separating into cultural groups though, even if it is shift anthropology. I’ll think about that a bit more later.

              #3592
              prUneprUne
              Participant

                I don’t know what possessed Mater, but I like the new version of her.
                She’s a true inspiration. The way she commandeers, how she pays attention to the little things. If she wasn’t so wrinkled, I’d want to become her.
                She doesn’t seem to need anyone in her life, maybe that’s why she’s so strong.

                I don’t know how this all happened, but we now seem to do well enough. We have one paying guest (he seems to pay on time too, I don’t know where he gets that kind of money around that place), and it seems we can afford some manservant. Well, that’s something Aunt Idle would call that nice lady, surely not Mater. She was very kind to her.
                Hope she doesn’t get funny ideas like she should become some sort of Mary Poppins or the like.

                The way Mater was sad after her piggy passed, I realized having a dog is a huge commitment. I told Battista I lied and I was sorry, but we couldn’t have the puppy. I knew she wouldn’t mind, she likes to keep dogs around.

                Instead, I thought I could start breeding guinea pigs; they don’t live too long. Everybody thought stealing the fish was just a prank, but I wanted to pawn it to kick-start my business. The sad truth is that it isn’t worth a dime.
                Luckily, Bert who noticed me, said he would help.
                I wonder why the only persons I can relate to are more than ten times my age… Sometimes I’m like an alien in my own family.

                #3586
                TracyTracy
                Participant

                  Aunt Idle:

                  Well I’m not one to complain, as you know, and I’m not the competitive sort at all, but I did have to raise an eyebrow when everyone agreed to Mater’s suggestion of getting some help with the cleaning. It’s a wonderful idea, but it wasn’t her idea, I’d been planting the seeds for ages. She never would have suggested if I’d carried on doing it all myself, I had to let it go a bit, get in a mess. When they started talking behind my back about me drinking, I played along with it, splashing gin on my hair and leaving an empty bottle laying around. I had to keep retrieving the same bottle from the bin, so I could pretend it was another bottle I’d drunk. They were all easily fooled, and I started to enjoy it.

                  #3584
                  F LoveF Love
                  Participant

                    It was Mater who decided they needed to get some cleaning help. She commandeered Clove to do some research on the internet and eventually found a woman from New Zealand, Finly, who was offering her cleaning services in exchange for room and board.

                    “Bloody kiwis,” said Bert when he heard. “The place is riddled with them. Bloody come and take our jobs. Haven’t we got more than enough of them here already? I am having a hard enough time avoiding that Flora, going on about her spiritual bloody awakening.”

                    “If you can find anyone local who would be willing to do the cleaning in exchange for a place to stay, I will be glad to consider them,” retorted Mater sternly. “But in the meantime this place is fast becoming a pig-sty and Dido is too busy smoking and drinking to see it.”

                    Naturally Mater got her way and a few days later Bert, still grumbling, agreed to go and pick Finly up from the airport. Mater assembled the family in the main living room.

                    “Now remember, the main thing is to be courteous. God only knows why she agreed to come to this backwater of a place, but we don’t want to put her off.”

                    ”Don’t we indeed?” smirked Aunt Idle.

                    “Yeah exactly, it is friggin’ weird I reckon. Why would she come here?” asked Clove, privately deciding she had better run a more thorough background check on Finly.

                    “I thought Finly was a boy’s name,” said Coriander. “That would be cool. A boy cleaner. I hope he’s hot. He can clean topless”

                    Aunt Idle, who had already been into the gin even though it wasn’t yet 10am, put her hand over her mouth and started to giggle.

                    “It can be a girl or a boy’s name and someone called Coriander is in no position to throw stones. And mind your language, Clove.” responded Mater tartly.

                    Clove rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically. “Well as long as she doesn’t try and boss me around, it might be quite fun to have a slave to clean up after me.”

                    Prune had been keeping an eye on the window. “Shush, she’s here!” she shouted excitedly.

                    #3567
                    TracyTracy
                    Participant

                      Flora, rising late as was her custom, and feeling the relaxing glow of being on holiday, strolled leisurely out of her bedroom door in search of coffee. As she stepped into the corridor, one of the twins, not watching where she was going, collided with her surprisingly forcefully, knocking her to the ground. She knocked her head on the door frame, felt a rush of noise and the sweet metallic scent of blood before losing consciousness.

                      “Flora! Miss Fenwick! Oh my god, Flora!” Corrie cried. After getting no reaction from the inert body and seeing the pool of blood spreading alarmingly, she sped off to find Aunt Idle.

                      As soon as Corrie was out of sight, Prune emerged from the broom cupboard opposite, saw the body on the floor, and ran in the opposite direction in search of Bert.

                      #3564

                      Aunt Idle:

                      Tattler, Trout and Trueman. Where had I seen that before? I squinted at what was left of the business card that Flora had been ripping up to use as roaches last night. I could make out tel: 88 , but the rest of the number was missing. There wasn’t much left of the card, no other writing left to see. But where had I seen that name before?

                      I shivered; there was a rising mist and it was damp and chilly on the veranda, gloomy as the sun hadn’t quite risen yet. I like it first thing, before anyone else is up. Bert’s usually up, but I never see him, he goes off out the back somewhere. I stood there for awhile watching the mist rise and wondered whether to go and fetch the camera.

                      And that’s when I remembered where I’d seen Tattler, Trout and Trueman. It was on that note that I’d hidden inside the camera manual.

                      Could it be a coincidence? Should I ask Flora where she got the card, whose card it was? Or did Flora have something to do with the note?

                      My hand flew to my mouth. Automatic reaction so you don’t suck any flies down with the sharp intake of breath.

                      “Got toothache, Aunt Idle?” asked Prune.

                      “Jesus Christ, Prune! You made me jump out of my skin! What are you doing up so early?”

                      “Who is that man your friend brought with her? Is he from the desert?”

                      “What man? She came on her own.”

                      “Well who’s that tall man in the blue robes then? He said his name was Sanso.”

                      WHO?” I could almost hear myself say that in italics. “Where? Where did you see him?”
                      What did he say?”

                      I could see Prune was weighing this up, she wasn’t called shrewd prunes for nothing. I wasn’t at all surprised when she said “He told me not to tell you anything,” and ran back inside, slamming the door behind her.

                      #3563
                      TracyTracy
                      Participant

                        Aunt Idle:

                        Flora arrived, hot and dusty from the travelling, in the late afternoon. A shower and a well iced gin and tonic soon revived her, and I got the girls to see to supper and the oddball in room 8, and asked Bert to keep an eye on them while Flora and I sat on the porch. It did me a power of good to sit chatting and joking with a friend, a woman of my own age and inclinations, after the endless months of nothing but the company of kids and old coots.

                        She looked pretty much the same as I’d gathered from the videos and photos online, although her bum was a lot bigger than I expected considering her slender frame, but she was an attractive woman with a merry gurgle of a laugh and warm relaxing energy.

                        I asked her about the video she was planning to make, but it all sounded a bit vague to me. “Frame” it was to be called, and there were various period costumes involved and a considerable amount of improvisation, from what I could gather, around the theme of “frame of reference”. What that meant exactly I really couldn’t say, but she said we were all welcome to play a role in it if we liked.

                        We’d been sitting out there until well past sundown, enjoying the cool evening air and a bit of Bert’s homegrown pot, posting selfies together on Spacenook and giggling at the comments, when we heard an ear splitting scream coming from an upstairs window. Flora looked at me with a raised eyebrow, and I just cracked right up for some reason, don’t ask me why. I laughed until the tears were rolling down my cheeks, and my ribs ached. I tried to stand up and fell back in the chair, which made me laugh all the more. I was wiping my eyes with a paper hanky when Clove appeared, saying Prune had had a nightmare.

                        “Oh thank goodness for that!” I exclaimed, which set me off again, and this time Flora joined in. I did wonder later when I was getting ready for bed what she must have thought about it all, me having hysterics at the sound of a screaming child. But it did me a world of good, all that laughing, and I was still tittering to myself when I lurched into bed.

                        #3562
                        TracyTracy
                        Participant

                          Aunt Idle:

                          Really, the old girl is getting worse. Calling me a tarty trollop in front of the kids, it’s a damn shame nobody thinks of the children around here except me.

                          #3560
                          F LoveF Love
                          Participant

                            “I heard Mater calling Aunty a trollop,” announced Clove ceremoniously.

                            “What’s a trollop when its at home?” Corrie looked up with interest.

                            “A tart I think. Prune! get away from the door. I might not be able to see you but I can smell your stinky feet. Go have a bath or something.”

                            “Ye are the stinky tarty trollops” said Prune, feigning stately dignity as she poked her head around the door. “Dunna yer spake that way to her whose feet yer not fit to touch or nothing! Ye tarty trollops,” she added for good measure.

                            #3559
                            matermater
                            Participant

                              Mater:

                              I am concerned about Dido. The silly trollop has taken up drinking again—in front of the kids too. Mark my words, she will end up back in rehab if it goes on. Like last time. And then where will we all be? Those poor little mites without a father or mother and their Aunt fast turning into a crazy slush. There’s no telling her though. God knows I have tried in the past.

                              I can only hope she will settle down when that kiwi friend arrives—Flora someone. Though I don’t hold out much hope really. I have not met a kiwi with a half a brain in their head yet. And that awful accent! I don’t need this aggravation at my age.

                              Calm down, remember what Jiemba told you.

                              I have not told you yet about my visit to Jiemba, have I? There has been so much going on here, what with the fish going missing and that odd guest staying in Room 8 and Dido’s antics, it nearly slipped my mind.

                              It was Prune who hid the fish, of course. Sensitive wee thing — she has always had a particularly strong dislike of the awful old relic and I can’t say I blame her. Dido went ape when Prune eventually confessed, but secretly I found it rather amusing.

                              I digress, yet again.

                              In the end it was Bert who helped me more than Jiemba. The dear man waited out in the truck for me while I kept my appointment with Jiemba. And he held my secret safe from the others. I am grateful to him for that. It felt nice to have someone who would do that for me. On the trip back home he opened up and told me stories about the town. Apparently in its heyday it even had an ice-cream factory; I hadn’t heard that before. Nor some of the other stories he told me. There are not many left around here with the knowledge Bert has. I feel I may even pluck up courage to tell him what I have seen at the Inn. Perhaps he may have some thoughts on it.

                              But not just yet.

                              Jiemba gave me some salve made from native bush bark for my aches and pains. It seems he is more modern than his father—things change I guess. I wanted to ask him about the ghost, but what with the dogs and kids running around outside and the heat and the baby screaming in the house somewhere, I could not bring myself to do it. But one thing he said to me has stuck.

                              “Live from your heart”.

                              It was the way he said it. Very intense. He went quiet and stared at the floor for a long time while I tried not to fidget. As though he was communing with some spirit world I could not see. Though I would dearly love to. I have thought about those words since then, trying to figure out what they mean.

                              I’m not sure I can even find my heart, let alone live from it.

                              #3558
                              TracyTracy
                              Participant

                                Corrie:

                                Aunt Idle had passed out in the armchair drinking her sherry last night when I went to show her what me and Clove found online when we were googling map stuff, mumbling she was and dribbling a bit. Prune said something peculiar, but when pressed she wouldn’t explain what she meant. Something about Aunt Idle speaking in the same funny accent as Grace, though gawd knows who Grace is, Prune wouldn’t say. Secretive little bugger, our Prune.

                                After breakfast Aunt Idle asked how our home schooling was going this week, so I told her we’d been exploring geographical anomalies and rare maps. She had an impressed look on her face; that is, until we showed her the link we’d found about the mysterious box full of maps and diagrams. That’s when her hand flew to her mouth, just like the other day when she saw us carrying that map covered mannequin up the drive.

                                “1977! Oh my god!” she exclaimed, and then “Tampa! Florida! of course!” and then infuriatingly, wouldn’t explain what she meant.

                                #3557
                                TracyTracy
                                Participant

                                  Aunt Idle:

                                  Those maps got me remembering all kinds of things, not that I was fretting about the note because I wasn’t, but once I’d quit flapping about the note, all kinds of things started popping into my mind.

                                  Odd little cameo memories, more often than not a mundane scene that somehow stuck in my head. Like that cafe with the mad hatter mural, mediocre little place, and I cant even remember where it was, but that number on the mural was just wrong, somehow. It’s as clear as a bell in my memory now, but not a thing before or after it, or when it was, other than somewhere in New Zealand.

                                  I kept getting a whistling in my left ear as I was recalling things, like when I remembered that beach on the Costa del Sol, with a timebridgers sticker in the beach bar. I can still see that Italian man walking out of the sea with an octopus.

                                  I can still see the breeze flapping the pages of a magazine lying on a bench in Balzac’s garden in Paris, something about a red suitcase, but I can’t recall what exactly.

                                  A motel in a truckstop village in California…the sherry was making me drowsy. I almost felt like I was there again for a moment.

                                  Conjure up a bowler hat, he said, while you’re out today. I forgot all about it (how often I thank my lucky stars for having a bad memory, I much prefer a surprise) and saw a delightful hurdy gurdy man wearing a bowler hat (In June! I do recall it was June). My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean, he was playing. I’m sure to have forgotten that, but I made a video recording.

                                  All these locations were holes in the maps, those ripped up maps the girls brought home from the Brundy place, just after I got that note. I was beginning to see a pattern to the connecting links between the letters ripped out of the map locations, and the wording in the note (which was made of ripped out letters from place names on a map, and glued onto the paper, as anyone who is reading this will no doubt recall). The pattern in the discovery of connecting links was that the pattern is constantly changing, rendering moot the need to decipher a plot in advance of the actual discovery of spontaneous development of the shifting patterns of discovery, and deliverance of the decipherable delegation of the delighted, promptly at noon.

                                  #3556
                                  TracyTracy
                                  Participant

                                    Bert crept past room 8 again, listening. There it was again, the voice of a woman. How the heck did the dusty old geezer manage to smuggle a woman into his room? It didn’t make sense, there were so few people in the town that a strange woman would have been noticed, someone would have mentioned it. And the woman had a strange accent, Bert couldn’t place it, but it wasn’t an accent he was familiar with. Sounded almost old fashioned, although he couldn’t be sure. His hearing wasn’t so good these days. A foreign woman in town, and not a mention anywhere? No, it didn’t make sense.

                                    Bert had a few jobs to do, but wanted to keep an eye on the door of room 8. Whoever was in there would need to come out to use the bathroom sooner or later. He decided to ask Prune to keep watch while he fed the chickens, Prune would enjoy keeping a secret, and he wanted to keep quiet about his suspicions until he knew a bit more. Nobody would find it odd to see Prune lurking around in a dark corridor.

                                    ~~~

                                    “Do you not see that satchel o’er yon upon that fine stout table? Do but hand it this way, noble sir.”

                                    Prune pressed her ear to the door and frowned. It was a woman’s voice, but what was she on about?

                                    “Your Grace, I would sit with thee and spake…”.

                                    Her name must be Grace, deduced Prune, wondering why the old dusty bugger was speaking funny as well.

                                    “…..whence I have received from thee the artefact. Get to it, you lay about excuse for a man, I do ha’e me most urgent and important things to apply my considerable value upon.”

                                    What a rude tart, thought Prune, and she hadn’t even paid for a room. She heard no more from inside the room because at that moment Aunt Idle came roaring and crashing down the corridor with the hoover. Prune scuttled off past her and went to find Bert.

                                    ~~~

                                    Prune had just started to explain to Bert about Grace when Mater came beetling across the yard to join them.

                                    Bert, where’s the fish gone?”

                                    Bert and Prune looked at each other. “What fish?”

                                    “The flying fish that’s been hanging on the wall all these years, it’s gone,” she said, pointing towards the house with her walking stick.

                                    Open mouthed in astonishment, Prune raced back to the house to check for herself.

                                    #3555
                                    TracyTracy
                                    Participant

                                      Aunt Idle:

                                      After all the fuss had died down about the missing Mater, I lost interest in the map and the strange note. It was as if the distraction interrupted my train of thought (some might say another of Idle’s hamster wheels, or another ludicrous tangent), so I gave the maps back to the girls and the mysterious note was mostly forgotten. If it meant anything, well, sooner or later it would become clear.

                                      Truth be told, it wasn’t just the fuss about Mater that distracted me, it was the phone call from my old friend in New Zealand. Flora Fenwick was making another of her arty party videos, wanted to come over to check out some of the empty properties for filming. I’d seen all her arty farty party videos online, and we’d been friends for years via Spacenook, but we’d never met in person.

                                      The timing was perfect.

                                    Viewing 20 results - 201 through 220 (of 287 total)