Search Results for 'bet'

“Really, Godfrey, do you think it’s wise to let the children play tea parties down there? Every time I take a peek, it looks like they’re making a hell of a mess,” asked Elizabeth with a worried frown. “Just look at the mess they’re making with that cake. I dread to think what will happen when they ice it.”

“I think part of the problem” Godfrey replied wryly “Is that they iced it before it had finished rising.”

“Hot cakes!” Nasty shouted. “HOT CAKES!”

Lilac rolled her eyes. I don’t think I can take much more of this nonsense, she thought.

Nasturtium knew what Lilac was thinking and added “Hot cakes is the clue, Lilac! YEAST!”

“Yeast?”

“Yes, yeast! There was too much yeast in the furcano mixture. Too much yeast and what happens? It rises too much! We must find a way to neutralize the yeast!”

“Well I think I can help you there” replied Lilac helpfully. “I’ll give old Dophilus a ring. Never been a saucerer better at sorting out yeast problems. You know Horace Dophilus!” she added, seeing Nasty’s blank look. “He was a guest speaker at the Worserversity once, remember? In some circles he’s known as the Biotic Man.”

“Oh, HIM! Go on then, give him a ring.”

“Fish” said Raxie when asked what she would like for her Fragmentation Day lunch. Fish synchronicities had been sprouting up all over the plaice, sturgeoning you might say, if you were wanting to include the word burgeoning, burgeoning like the gnarly old grape vines waking up and unleashing green on the chalky hills.

“The synchronicities and connections were like individual blades of grass turning into a meadow, singing and sighing as one in the breezes,” Elizabeth replied.

“Well this is my own personal meadow” Raxie pointed out “These are all mine”.

“Oops”

“Who said that?”

“Was it that guy over there in the bowler hat and checkered past?”

“Don’t mention checkered pasts!” Elizabeth exclaimed, “Or the Ooh Dimension! You’ll open the sluice gates….”

“Antidisestablishmentarianism”

“Who said that?” Elizabeth and Raxie exclaimed together.

“I don’t know, but that guy in the bowler hat’s disappeared, and can you see that fellow starting to appear over there? Must be a multidimensional Port Hole or something…”

“Well, we know what a Froopish and fabulously magical place this is, so it stands to reason…”

“Reason?” Raxie and Elizabeth were reduced to giggles at the very idea of reason having any standing.

“A portal to the Froop dimension, here? Wow! Can I see?”

“You’ll have to wear these goggles. And it will require some stamina, are you sure?”

“Of course I’m bloody sure” replied Elizabeth tartly. And then she began to intuit something.

“I don’t need googles*, silly!” she laughed. “I already AM multidimensional, I don’t need anyone elses googles. But it’s ok if you want to wear the googles” she added, not wishing to sound judgemental.

“Actually, I like this amethyst crystal myself, I like the frequency. I have dreams of amethyst sometimes, they are a delight.”

“Come and look at this sunset if you want to see a delight,” said Raxie, who was still a bit miffed about the goggles. “Who needs another dimension when we’ve got this one?”

Elizabeth sighed with speechless awe at the spectacular sunset, a reflection of all her colours, and all her dear ones colours, all blended together with magic aqua and sparks of blue and tones of orange blossom.

Blinking? Did you say blinking? Felicity said in between sneezes.

“These old ezines and blogs are fascinating” remarked Periwinkle, passing the one she had just been reading to Daffodil. “Thank goodness some folks had the foresight to print some of them!”

“I know, imagine if they hadn’t. We’d have no artefacts for the collection. Well, we have all those flat discs, but no way to decipher them. Oh, did I tell you? Bignonia found something even older than the discs!”

“NO!” exclaimed Periwinkle “Do tell!”

“Yes, even older! Funny looking contraption, with two reels and a ribbon. An information storage device, so they say, although they haven’t discovered how to decipher it.”

“I wonder why we’re still not simply accessing that information without, well, without messing around with the physical contraption, you know?”

“Wouldn’t be any point in being here in the first place, if we weren’t going to mess around with physical things, silly” replied Daffodil.

There was no answer to that, so Periwikle didn’t answer. She continued to thumb through the printed pages.

Periwinkle and Daffodil sat together on the patio in the warm spring sunshine, sipping lemonade
and leafing through the papers. Bright white clouds in cartoon shapes romped across the blue sky,
and the birds chattered in the trees,
occasionally landing on the printed pages and cocking their heads sideways to read for a moment, before flying off to tell their friends, which was usually followed by a raucous group cackling.

“Dear Goofenoff” read Daffodil, “This one looks interesting Peri, someone here is asking for advice on a problem.”

“What’s a “problem”, Daffy?” asked Periwinkle. “For that matter, what does the word “advice” mean? Oh, never mind” she said as she noticed Daffodil rolling her eyes, “I’ll look it up in my pre shift dictionary of defunct words.”

“She’s asking the Snoot too, about the same problem. Oh, I think I’ve heard of them! It’s coming back to me, the old Snoot’n‘Goof team, they were quite famous in the beginning of the century, I remember hearing about them before in a Shift History discussion.”

“Well, I can’t say I’ve ever heard of them, but then, I’ve never been into history like you, dear. So what is this “problem” all about, then?”

“I’ll read it out to you, it’s way too convoluted to put in a nutshell. Lordy, they sure did complicate matters back then, it’s almost unbeleivable, really, but anyway, here goes:

Dear Goofenoff,

I don’t know what to do! I am confused about which probable version of a blog freind, let’s call him MrZ, I have chosen to align with. The first probable version was ok, nothing to worry about, and then I drew into my awareness the probable versions of MrZ that some of my freinds had chosen to align with….”

“Blimey”, interrupted Periwinkle, who was starting to fidget. “Is it much longer?”

“It’s alot longer, so be patient. Where was I? Oh yes:

“….and while that was very interesting indeed, and led to lots of usefully emotionally heated discussions, I started to align with their probable version, at times, although not consistently, which led to some confusion. So then I had a chat with someone who was more in alignment with my original probable version, although there were aspects of that probable version that were a little in alignment with the other folks probable version, notwithstanding. I suppose I was still in alignment with the other folks probable version when it came to my attention that there was another individual that might be aligning with a probable version, and my question is, in a nutshell, is it any of my business which probable version the new individual on the scene is aligning with?”

“Well, I can tell you the answer to that!” exclaimed Periwinkle.

Daffodil rolled her eyes. “Yes, dear, WE know the answer, but the point is, SHE didn’t know the answer at the time, which is why she asked Goofenoff.”

“If you ask me, she knew the answer all along” Periwinkle intuited. “What did Goofenoff say anyway?”

“He said:

Are you requiring a short or a long answer?”

Daffodil turned the page to continue reading. She frowned, and flicked through a few pages.

“What a shame, some of these pages appear to be missing! Now we’ll never know what Goofenoff said.”

Periwinkle laughed. “Well, never mind that anyway, have you seen the random story quote today? Rather synchronistic I’d say, listen to this bit:

Illi felt much better, and was sitting at the breakfast table, basking in the warm shafts of sunlight filtering in through the window, and listening to the birds singing in the lemon tree outside.”

Ann felt rather put out.

“How jolly rude to disappear like that.” she muttered

The truth was she had been feeling a tad out of sorts lately, plodding along, day in and day out, doing the same old things. She was finding Lavender rather dreary too, partly because she never seemed to be there when Ann called round. So the idea of helping the exotic, headless stranger with his mysterious request for “pea sauce” assistance had felt rather exciting. Ann loved nothing better than a good adventure.

And now the bugger had disappeared!

They were thick as theives, freinds for thousands of centuries, or even more; sometimes thick, sometimes theives, and anything else you might imagine. They got together again and again in this time and that, here, there and elsewhere, just for the fun of it. There was nothing they liked more than a puzzling occurance, or a riddle, or a basket full of clues to ponder over, unravel, and turn around and around, toying with meanings until they found one they liked. They had a home in The City, sort of a home base so to speak, where they met regularly each night in the dream state, regardless of which time or place they spent their waking hours. It was sometimes a releif to meet up at home in The City and always a pleasure: sometimes it was hard to stay under the radar back down on the ground, it was part of the job to stand out in the crowd, which often resulted in a lynching, or a ducking, or the stocks, at the very least. All too often it ended up on top of a bonfire, tied to a stake.

One day in one of the Decembers, in amongst all the sweet dreams they often shared, they started having some unsettling group dreams, where they all felt like they were betwixt and between, falling through the cracks you might say. It was a feeling similar to dying of thirst, although it wasn’t really a physical thirst, it was more than that, a hungry yearning sort of thing. Some of them had strange nightmares, of a monstrous beast, and some of them actually saw beasts in the daytime too, especially on those falling through the cracks days. When they met up at home in The City, they compared notes about the beasts, and not always, but sometimes they found they were mirroring each others beasts. That often ended up in a heated debate, because the more mirroring that occurred, the more real the beast seemed. Some said that the beasts that appeared when you fell through the cracks were in a deep ravine, in a manner of speaking, and not of this plane at all. Others argued that if the beasts appeared through the cracks, then they were on this plane.

And so it went on, and on. There were many more puzzling occurances to come, and lots of meanings to be considered, rejected, or taken on board for the friends, as thick as thieves, to turn around and around, and hold up to the mirror for closer inspection and dissection. They were making a tapestry, a huge rich colourful tapestry, and all the puzzling occurences, and even the beasts, were depicted in the colourful threads and patterns. They were the warp, you might say, of the weave. Love was the weft.

“Congratulations, Liz” Godfrey remarked drily. “Are you supposed to use three months worth of creative writing challenges in one entry?”

“Don’t be silly, Godfrey, of course not. Rules are meant to be broken, that’s what they’re for.”

Elizabeth had a sudden impulse to indroduce a fourth Felicity.

Bloody ancient, apparently, meaning Harvey noticed. “Ask needed, knows able”~ Green eye smile creature. “Morning, Elizabeth! Face started!” Surely fishes herself often ~ creating worserversity odd teleport head fellowship.

“Better a window broken than a window closed” admitted Window, somewhat reluctantly.

“Green years help often book!”
Elizabeth hand surprise.
Head Sanso: “Let dragons…..”
Finnley: “Dory fishes quickly!”
nothing answer…..
notice appeared remembered spiders,
speaking raucous Dolores:
“Stranger bird gift,
looks deep matter!”
“Write”, supposed young Phenol, whether himself less knows inside.
“Monica bloody apparently, probable cow”.

“The dream of caves in which I wander comes nightly now. Minkah has never appeared again.”

“He never did, did he?” interuppted Godfrey. “Minky I mean.”

“Oh yes he did!” replied Elizabeth, and continued to read the email from Hypatia. “ But each night I find myself lost there and each night I search for a child. So odd, so odd, as I know I will never give life to another.”

“Where is Yikesy, anyway?” asked Godfrey.

“With Minky, of course!”

“We walk, Ia’eh and Minkah, Desher and I,” Elizabeth read the email from Hypatia, “ towards the dark ridge of stone where the books lie hidden, awaiting the day they should be found again…..When Cleopatra ruled, the books numbered 400,000…and this, I think, is true. By the time of Theon of Alexandria, an age in which the books were no loner in the Great Library of the Palace of the Ptolemies, which was also no longer, but housed instead the “daughter” library of the Serapeum, they numbered 360,000. Those lost to the Bishop of Theophilus amounted to a tenth of these. But no matter if full half were lost, that Minkah brought out from Alexandria so many amazed me then; it amazes me still. He not only carried them here, but brought back an account of where each cave was sited, and which jars were placed in which cave.”

“Godfrey, didn’t we know a Minky once, who was a sort of a servant?”

“We did indeed, Liz, you were the one who inserted him into the story, surely you remember?”

“Well, the name rings a bell, Godfrey, but where did we meet him?”

Godfrey snapped his fingers and as if by magic, an excerpt from the Reality Play appeared:

“Just then a funny little man with a huge cheeky grin appeared and held out a tray. Smoothies! Coconut and berry smoothies, and pink cakes, croissants”

“Croissants!” interrupted Elizabeth.

“… and oranges, and a box of cadbury’s chocolates…”

“Don’t remind me about Cadbury’s” groaned Elizabeth. “I simply can’t bear it that they’ve blinked into another dimension”

Godfrey continued: “ Dory slurped and munched and gobbled and slurped some more, and underneath where the chocolate was, she saw a brochure.
On the front cover was a picture of a cave. OOHH A CAVE! Dory loved caves! Let’s go to the cave today, Minky! she said to the funny fellow with the impish grin. Minky winked.”

“He was going to take Dory to the caves!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “Why didn’t I finish that story thread!”

“There’s no need to wring your hands like that, Liz” said Godfrey soothingly. “You can continue it now!”