Search Results for 'bea'

“So how was your lunch date with your new best friend?” Harvey sounded distinctly sarcastic, even to Lavender’s forgiving ears.

“Oh, you know …”

Harvey raised his eyebrows. No mean feat when you have a book balancing on your nose. He sighed, and let the book fall. A few months ago he was balancing four poster beds, and now he could barely manage a Lemoine novel. Heavy as they are! He sniggered to himself. Oh well, at least I havn’t lost my sense of humour, along with my sense of smell!

“Well, to be honest Harvey .. I think I may have been possessed by those pesky aliens. I suddenly came to and I was talking all this rubbish about ‘random quote generators’ and using words like ‘dear’.

Lavender shuddered in horror at the memory, and then rolled her beautiful eyes and sighed. “Poor Ann, I think she is a really tortured soul.”

The writer wondered if it was time to add a dark side to Lavender’s personality. All this beautiful eyes business was getting a tad irritating, the beauty of Lavender’s eyes not withstanding. Not to mention her lips which she painted a bright shade of amaranth for every day wear, and on special occasions, rose madder. The writer wondered if the last thought made sense and wondered again how to strike out text. The writer decided to try that last line again.

Lavender shuddered, and then with an enigmatic smile which even her good friend Harvey found hard to decipher, she said softly, “I ate olives for lunch. They were yummy.”

The writer sighed and then noticed the random quote generator said “mean cleaner coming soon.” The writer wondered if it was a sign.

Ann slapped her forehead when she realized her mistake, notwithstanding that there were no ‘mistakes’ as such.

The story is for the writer that writes it, not the reader.

What the repercussions of that were for the future of publishing, Ann wasn’t quite sure.

“Oh, I can answer that for you, dear” Lavender responded. “On my recent trip to the future I went to the Pick Your Own Pages book store. There’s a wonderful Pick ‘N’ Mix section, and a Lucky Dip. You can pick various quantities, such as chapters, pages, paragraphs or sentences, and you arrange them yourself.”

“What a wonderful idea!” Ann replied.

“Oh, the idea was an old one, very old!” Lavvie explained. “People were doing it all along, though they didn’t realize it. The idea of being spoon fed an entire story went out with the Ark. It was the advent of random quote generators that started the ball rolling.”

Ann beatled off to check the random quote for the day….

“Arona! Sanso! Oh, how wonderful to see you guys again! Come and meet Lavender and Walter, we’re discussing continuity….”

“Oh well, the problem is Harvey, I can’t actually swim”, Lavender confessed. “So I didn’t see the dolphins blowing rings. But thank you so much for the movie. I think it was probably lying around in the rain pretending to be a mermaid which got me this cold. Last time I am doing one of Moosy’s daft classes”.

Lavender rolled her beautiful eyes and sneezed again.

“What do you think Harvey? It is my first assignment in the new writing course. I really think I have made progress with my limericks.” Lavender beamed proudly at Harvey. “It is written in Sloopernoff and is full of rich symbolism, indeed, it cleverly elaborates on the symbolism in a coded form inherent in the precise rhyming structure required for the pure art form of the limerick poem. I think Gubby will be impressed. Okay, put down that zebra and listen:

They made a fine statooe of Melon
which pissed off his thirteenth wife Ellen
When a pigeoon stoopped by
She said with a cry
That man was a nasty oold felon!”

The bell rang, and Ann made her way to her next class. Professor Amy Less was a new teacher at the Academy, and she was one of Ann’s favourites. Prof Less’s philosophy was that everything was perfect just as it was, which of great benefit to her students. Top marks for everything was such an encouragement to their creative urges. Even if they failed to attend class, or they were late with an assignment, she gave them full credit for going with the flow.

“Good afternoon class!” Professor Less beamed brightly at the assembled students. “Today’s assignment will be to make up a story about an surprise gift that you receive unexpectedly. Part of the assignment is to send an unexpected gift to someone else. You may use this class time to go shopping if you wish.” Prof Less smiled and added “And as always, have fun!”

“Any idea what this is all about?” Beattie asked, to nobody in particular. A crowd was gathering at the crossroad.

The crossroad reminded Bea of a movie she’d watched some years previously, called, coincidentally enough, Crossroads. A symbolic sort of place, although real enough, a junction seemingly in the middle of nowhere. There was a large oak tree looming above the intersection, but nothing else could be seen in any direction but endless expanses of fields. There was a wooden signpost, the old fashioned kind, with two slats of wood pinned crosswise in the middle to a leaning post, but the place names had long since weathered away.

It was an odd sort of place and not much traffic passed by. In fact, the only traffic to pass by the crossroad stopped and disengorged itself of passengers..

“Is that a word, Bea?” asked Leonora. “Disengorged?”

“Don’t butt in to the narrative part Leo, or the story won’t make any sense.” hisssed Beattie, “Wait until you’re supposed to speak as one of the characters.”

“Well alright, but I don’t suppose it will have much effect on the making sense aspect, either way. Do continue.”

To say it was a motley crew gathering would be an understatement.

“You got that right,” Leonora said, sotto voce, surupticiously scanning the assortment of individuals alighting from the rather nautical looking yellow cab. Bea glared at Leo. “I suppose I’ll have to include your interrupions as a part of the story now.”

“Good thinking, Batman!”

“Oh for Pete’s sake, Leo, don’t go mad with endless pointless remarks then, ok? Or I will delete you altogether, and that will be the end of it.”

“You can’t delete me. I exist as a character, therefore I am.”

“You might have a nasty accident though and slide off the page,” Bea replied warningly.

“Why don’t you just get on with it, Bea? Might shut me up, you never know…”. Leo smirked and put her ridiculously large sunglasses on, despite the swirling fog..

“Oh I thought it was sunny” said Leonora, taking her sunglasses back off again. “You hadn’t mentioned weather.” She put her sunglasses back on again anyway, the better to secretly examine the others assembled at the crossroads.

“Why don’t you go and introduce yourself to them and see if anyone knows why we’re here, Leo, while I get on with the story.”

“Who will write what they say, though?”

“I’ll add it later, just bugger off and see if anyone knows who sent us that mysterious invitation.”

“Right Ho, sport, I’m on the bobbins and lace case” replied Leo. Bea shuddered a bit at the mixture of identities bleeding through Leonora’s persona. “Och aye the noo!”

Dear god, thought Beattie, I wish I’d never started this.

Franlise was unusually despondent. She flicked half heartedly through the last pages of Ann’s novel, looking for some sort of common thread which she could cleverly take hold of and expand upon, in order to provide the necessary continuity.

Daunted by the formidable proportions of her task, her thoughts turned instead to the strange man who had followed her that afternoon. Her attempts to lose him had failed, and, in the end, she had thought it best to delay her appointment with the Fellowship. Perhaps the man was just lured by her beauty, but she knew she could not risk exposure.

“Oops, I got me directions wrong again” said Gloria, “I think we’re a trifle overdressed. I weren’t aiming fer the nudist beach, I was aiming fer the prehistoric cairns.”

“Trust you to land us ‘ere, Glor!” Sharon replied, averting her eyes from the spectacle or milk bottle white flesh and unappetizing dangly bits. “Speaking of tea bags, I fancy a nice cuppa.”

“No bloody tea bag icon” grumbled Gloria.

The word flounder popped into Yolands head, and for want of the inspiration to do anything meaningful, or even useful, she googled flounder. She was astonished to find so many varieties of flounder, and recognized that she was counterparting with quite a number of them.

There was the Crosseyed flounder that she felt an affinity for, at the end of an evening of trying to sort out her photos; Alcock’s narrow-body righteye flounder, which was what she felt like in a bed full of male dogs every night, and she could relate to the Antarctic armless flounder when she couldn’t keep track of the Antarctic thread. Barfin flounder reminded her of the green icon and her friend Finn; Bigmouth flounder ~ Yoland sighed, she definitely felt a connection to that often enough. Blotched flounder, well that sounded a bit like botched ~ there were many occasions when Yoland felt that everything she did was botched, half done and messy. Chain-mail wide-eyed flounder when she dabbled a bit in past lives, and the Disc flounder when she got her music in a muddle. The Dark flounders were the worst, when everything seemed to take on the tone of a horror movie, but they were often followed by a Deep flounder, which sometimes contained a few insights, more often than not promptly forgotten.

Yoland sighed. Imagine counterparting with just about every flounder known to man! She decided she wasn’t the only one counterparting the European flounder, which was a releif, nor was she the only one counterparting the Fantail flounder, although at least it could be said that she wasn’t a complete fan of anyone in particular, dead or alive, she was a fantail of quite a number. There were long spells of resonating with the Finless flounder; Finn was always disappearing, or so it seemed to Yoland. Very rarely she felt an alignment with God’s flounder, thankfuly she wasn’t often prone to dwelling on God things.

Ah, the Gray flounder, yes she’d had a bit of a flounder when Gray sent all those photos of the Beltane Dance, she’d had a flounder for sure in amongst all those. Looking back though, she’d had fun with the mummy and Ella Tindale in the Gulf flounder…

Yoland had to laugh when she came across the Intermediate flounder. Yoland wondered if the majority of her foundering was counterparting with the Intermediate flounder and decided she was probably too intermediate to work it out objectively anyway. She often had a tussle with the Large tooth flounder, lordy, she was always floundering with dental issues. And the Largescale flounder, that really was the biggest ongoing flounder of them all, the sheer vastness of everything.

Every now and again, less than previously though, Yoland had a Melbourne flounder on Saturday nights, and rather enjoyed it, but not as much as she enjoyed a good old New Zealand flounder.

Another flounder Yoland always enjoyed was an Olive wide-eyed flounder, roaming around the ancient olive trees of Andalucia, wide eyed and awestruck with the beauty and history of the place. She also enjoyed a Peruvian flounder on occasion, too ~ she’d even had a dream recently about floundering around by the mysterious doorway of Amaru Muru. The next night she’d had a River flounder, dreaming of the river in the Grand Canyon.

Sand flounders were the best of all though, Yoland recalled many happy flounderings in the world of sand and all its Subulmantium configurations. The trouble with the sand flounder was that it often morphed into the largescale flounder, and got quite out of hand.

Yoland sighed, it had been ages since she’d felt connected to the Seven pelvic ray flounder, what with Dan working nights. She was beginning to feel like a Shelf flounder. However, at least thanks to her new diet of replacing meals with flans, chocolate mousses and ice cream, she was closely aligning now with the Slender flounder.

The ongoing slug issue with the cat food was obviously because she was still strongly aligned with the Slime flounder. Notwithstanding, Yoland was rather pleased to note that despite her morose and petulant mood this morning, it had to be said that she often counterparted with the Smooth flounder; although that was easy to forget in moments of quiet desperation when the floundering got out of proportion.

Smiling, Yoland remembered the dream of feet touching when she noticed there was a Sole flounder too. And how often the Spotted flounder popped up, she was always spotting clues. Well spotted! she would tell herself. Oh, and the Stone flounder, wasn’t that the truth! Yoland was aligning strongly with that lately, smoking more than ever, somehow striving for either inspiration, or perhaps oblivion.

Oh well, I guess this is just a Summer flounder, it will pass, Yoland decided (who was secretly glad that she was nearing the end of the list of flounder names). And sure enough, the next on the list was the Three spotted flounder, surely a good sign! A probability change perhaps! As if to validate Yolands impression, she noticed the Tile-colored righteye flounder. There was even a Warthog flounder, which seemed to ring a bell with a recent entry to the Reality Play.

Best of all was the Windowpane flounder, Yoland felt she would even go so far as to say that this was her new focus animal. Well, she thought, if I am making this all up, I can make that up too!

Thankfully Yoland reached the end of the flounder list, rather pleased that it had ended on such an amusing and encouraging note.

Being closely aligned with flounders wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

Yoland awoke feeling disgruntled. The uncomfortable dreams of feeling left out, left alone and bored beyone endurance lingered throughout the morning. In a peculiar melding of dream and reality, Dan had woken her requesting her assistance in his preparations for a days outing, which didn’t include Yoland. The dream details were already vague, but the feeling was strong, the feeling of being bored and alone ~ wasted somehow, as if all her lust for life was withering away on a back burner, evaporating, as she mooched through her days, accomplishing little (or so it seemed), endlessly frustrated with the clutter and disorganization that was her world, yearning for the life, LIFE that was full of LIFE, that she used to have. What had happened to her sense of adventure? Where had all her fun friends gone?

“Eh Sha, emergency transmission required ‘ere pronto!” Gloria shouted to Sharon. “Yoland needs some inspiration, toot sweet, get yer arse in gear!”

“Oh bloody ‘ell, Glor! Not a-bloody-gain! Not ‘er, she never bloody listens anyway, that one!” replied Sharon, disgruntled. “This isn’t as easy as I ‘spected it to be, getting the messages through, is it?”

“Well, why don’t you look on it as a challenge?”

“Pfft, more like ‘ard bloody work, if you ask me.”

“Eh, you daft tart, you’re channeling HER! You’re sposed to be sending HER some words of inspiration, not the other bloody way round!” Gloria exclaimed. “Beats me how you ever got your ascension pass, how you got through I’ll never know.”

“Oh they let any Tom Dick or Harry in these days, Glor, they relaxed the rules you know, well did away with the rules, and what happens when you do away with the rules? Floundering, that’s bloody what. Floundering.”

“Is that a fish sync?”

nonsense real making write
gave seen girl heliptrope
known latest beautiful news
sense lilac waiting
attention ladies
tell ann

Ann Tattler beamed in delight, unable to conceal her pleasure and surprise. She had scraped in a pass for “Continuity Class for Complete Beginners”. It had taken months, but under the excellent tutelage of Prof Frantic Moose, she had finally cracked it.

Her next hurdle was “Meaningful Writing for the Scattered Brain”.

Her pleasure evaporated somewhat when she read the pithy course description.

Things most profound can be found in the most shallow conversation. Prof Leone Laminae

Sadly, I am not sure that “profound” is one of my strong points, she confided later to her twin sister Sally.