Search Results for 'era'

“God damn it, my headpiece! I forgot my headpiece!” croaked Mother Shirley when she heard the command to assemble in Area 12. She looked around desperately for the final piece of her attire but it was nowhere to be seen.

Mother Shirley hated to be seen without her headpiece. Other than a few wiry grey hairs, she was bald—a fact which under normal circumstances her veil and wimple disguised admirably. It was a devil of a thing to get on though.

As the alarms sounded for a second time, she grabbed a pyramid shaped receptacle from the small desk in her capsule, and placed it on her head, where it perched precariously.

“God help us,” she grumbled, as she stiffly creaked her way to Area 12.

Prune had only just managed to get 157 — Mater had liked to call all the guinea pigs by numbers; she said it helped her keep track — safely back inside her jacket when a loud screeching alarm went off. The next moment Finnley’s smooth voice, programmed to convey anxiety, reverberated around the ship

“Code Red, Code Red. Leave whatever you are doing and assemble in Area 12. I repeat leave whatever you are doing and assemble in Area 12.”

Prune and Hans looked at each other uneasily and began to run.

“There’s a very fine line, Finnley, between feckless drivel, and fecking snivel, and to not put too fine a point upon it, it’s all fairly pointless anyway,” replied Liz, smiling amiably into the curmudgeonly scowl. “Bert will put the kettle on, I’ll call him over from the thread next door.”

“Typical!” muttered Finnley, “Never a thought about waking the poor bugger up, that it might be night time over there. Bloody inconsiderate, if you ask me.”

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.

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.

Prune was only to too happy to take credit for the disappearance of the flying fish when Bert suggested it. It would give them more time to work out what was going on in room 8, before anyone else thought to suspect the enigmatic dust covered fellow of having a hand in it. Tell them you buried it in the woods, Bert told Prune, when she asked what she was to do if they asked her to bring the old fish back, and then say you can’t remember where you buried it. She was a good girl really, thought Bert, cooperative and resourceful when she wanted to be, if something captured her interest.

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.

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.

Corrie:

Funny how things pop up. While Clove was taking supper to the guy in room 8, I signed into Spacenook and the first thing on my perusefeed was an article about maps.

“Cartographies can be altered endlessly to reflect different priorities, hierarchies, experiences, points of view, and destinations.”

How syncy is that. There was another sync like that yesterday, after the kitten fell off the barn roof. I was just posting a photo of the kitten on Spacenook and glanced at the sidebar and there was an ad for a catnip garden memories of dead cats group thing there. I wonder if that dream I had of our old dog Lilly the other day was because the kitten was a remanifestation of her? Lilly’s name was supposed to be Delilah, that’s what it said on her papers, Delilah, but nobody ever called her that. We always called her Lilly.

Anyway, they come and they go, we’ve had hundreds of cats wander through this town, but they always come back. I saw a rat the other day and it reminded me of Boozer, the old sheepdog we had when we were little.

Funny thing was, yesterday morning I’d posted this poem by Mary Oliver:

“…. Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?”

Made me feel a bit better when I read it again later, because I did wonder if I’d got there quicker when I heard it crying, when it must have been halfway done falling and stuck on a branch, it might not have ended up the way it did. It must have been meant to be that way I suppose. Well, she’ll be back. They always come back sooner or later.

Sighing, I refocused on the article.

“Maps produce new realities much as they seek to document current ones. Maps are always a going-beyond the space-time of the present.”

No mention of a room full of map covered mannequins in the Brundy place though.

Aunt Idle:

The twins and Prune were going on about Mater again but I wasn’t listening, I was just wishing they’d hurry up and finish supper ~ I’m trying to think, Think! Look at the maps and piece it all together, clear my mind and try and work it out.

“Give it a rest will you, and eat!” The kids were exasperating, always going on about Mater.

“She’s MISSING, Aunt Idle!”

“What?” I said absentmindedly. “Don’t be silly, she’s probably on the loo, she’ll be down in a minute.”

“You haven’t been listening, have you?” asked Prune. “Mater’s been kidnapped.”

“She’s DISAPPEARED, we don’t know if she’s been kidnapped or murdered yet, Prune. Don’t exaggerate.”

“Maybe she was tied up in the cellar at the Brundy place and you never noticed, Clove.”

Bert glance up sharply and frowned at the mention of the Brundy place, it caught my eye, but I didn’t give it any thought at the time.

“Oh shut up, all of you! You’ve given me a headache, I’m going to lie down. Prune, you can do the washing up tonight. Corrie and Clove, you can cook for the dust covered man in room 8, he’s not fussy what you feed him, but he wants to eat in his room.”

That should keep them all occupied for an hour and give me time to look at those maps. That’s what I thought, anyway.

Mater:

I am 73 years old and some think I look pretty good for my age. Not the kids—the kids think I look as old as Methuselah. When I was young my hair was jet black. Now it is white and I wear it in a long braid down my back; it is easy to look after and I certainly don’t trust Dodi to cut it, though she has offered. I wash it once a week and put vinegar in the final rinse to get rid of the yellow tinge. My back is straight, no dowager’s hump like some my age, and I can still touch my toes at a push. I married my childhood sweetheart—the love of my life—in 1958 and he died of sickness, April 12th, 1978. My favourite dish is spaghetti and meatballs. When I was younger, when I lived in Perth, I was a milliner. I don’t make hats now; there is not the same demand out here. And of course there is Fred, my son, who scarpered God-knows-where a year ago.

It isn’t much to say about a life, but I suspect it is way more than you wanted to know.

This reminds me; Dodi went to a funeral in Sydney a few months ago. The funeral of a dear school friend who died in a motor vehicle accident. Not her fault, as I understand it. She was driving along, minding her own business, returning home from a quiet night playing trivial pursuits at the local community centre. A teenage driver lost control of her car. She was fine; I mean the other driver was fine, barely a scrape. Dodi’s friend was not so fortunate. At the funeral of her friend—I forget her name—the place was packed.

At the time, when Dodi recounted the events of the funeral, I started thinking about my own future demise. It may perhaps sound morbid, or vain, but I found myself wondering who might be there to see me off. Other than the family, who would be duty bound to attend, I couldn’t think of many who would care enough to pay their respects—perhaps a few locals there for the supper afterwards and a bit of a chinwag no doubt.

I am rambling; I have a tendency to do that. I can’t blame it on old age because I have always rambled. The point is, I don’t think I have done much with my life. And this saddens me.

However, I suspect this is of less interest to you than the ghost I mentioned earlier.

The idea of a ghost is not a new concept at the Flying Fish Inn. It has been around for as long as we have been here. But it was just a joke—it wasn’t a real ghost, if you see what I mean. Every strange noise or other untoward happening we would blame on “the ghost”. The dilapidated look of the place lent itself very well to having resident ghost, it was almost obligatory, and Fred even had a plan to market our imaginary ghost as a tourist attraction.

So what changed? Well, I saw him.

Mater:

I feel myself moving slowly today. The thought of death and my poor little guinea pig is still nagging. It occurs to me that perhaps I am walking slowly because I don’t want to move too fast into the inevitable.

Or perhaps it is just that I did not sleep so well last night. It is so damned hot and night time offers little respite from the heat.

At least the kids have stopped fighting. I worry about them. Always shut away in their rooms on that internet thing.

I am so tired. More tired than I should be. It is not the usual aches and pains. Something feels wrong. I have made up my mind to go and visit Jiemba, the local aboriginal healer. It is a wee bit of a walk, so I will need to start early, before the heat gets up. I don’t want to ask Dido to take me. “Just go and see the doctor in town!” she will say to me. For all her alternative ways, Dido can still be pretty closed minded about some things—and she thinks I am a crazy old fool anyway.

But I think Jiemba has the gift—special healing powers—and he comes from a family of aboriginal healers. His father was a healer and his grandfather too. I went to see him once, his father, years ago. My back was bad and the doctor in town said I would need an operation. He did some chanting, calling up spirits I think, put his hand on my back and pulled out a stone. He said the stone was the sickness causing my back pain, or some such thing. I was sceptical at the time, but my back never did give me any more bother. I’ve read up on it since then and I think there is something in it all. The older I get the more I realise I don’t know it all.

Besides, there is something else I want to ask him about and I don’t know who else I can talk to. That’s the problem with getting old—one of the problems anyway—people tend to assume you are losing your marbles if you say anything out of the ordinary.

But I think the Inn is haunted.

Another bang on my bedroom door, my hands suspended over the keyboard. “Go away Prune!” I shouted, exasperated. “If you bang on my door again, I’ll come out and give you such a wallop, now bugger off, will you!”

“It’s me, Corrie” came Clove’s voice. Walked over to the door and unlocked it. A chat with my sister might help me with this project. Unlike Prune, who would be guaranteed to disrupt my train of thought.

Locking the door again I tell Clove what I’m writing about. We don’t go to school, me and Clove, we’re what they call “homeschooled” but what that actually means in our case is that we’re left to our own devices most of the time. Aunt Idle asks us (when she remembers) what we’ve been working on, and as long as we’ve been writing something or researching something, she’s happy.

So when I saw the group project about alternative timelines to avoid the disaster timeline, I had some ideas. Well, to be honest, I didn’t have any definite ideas until I saw the other suggestions. All Americans, and all of them talking about changing the timelines by changing the results of presidential elections!

“Not much chance of a different timeline there then!” remarked Clove astutely.

“Exactly!” I knew Clove would get it, she knows were I’m coming from, but then, everyone knows twins are like that.

“So this is what the plan is, right: “The goal of this exercise is to discuss amongst the group and choose significant past moments, and then As a Group, focus on creating alternate histories, thus sparking alternate timelines. We should vividly imagine moving forward from those probability forks and creating a more viable and desirable future.” Oh, and this bit here: “ our current timeline is convoluted to the point where many probabilities are leaning towards a disaster scenario simply to shake out of the current focus.” And then all these suggestions about different presidents, and then this: “My suggestion would be also to consider how we would like our current time frame to appear,” so I’m thinking…”

“I’m thinking” interrupted Clove, continuing my train of thought, “Of all those states and communities that got with the programme ten years ago, and took their kids out of school and built those Earthships so they didn’t need money for water and electricity..”

“And started cooperative worker owned businesses like they do in South America….”

“And they all started a guaranteed basic income years ago, so everyone was doing what they did best, especially the kids, cos they had such great ideas and weren’t stuck in boring schoolrooms…..”

“and there was no poverty, and nobody without a home…”

“Yeah, and they all stopped paying taxes so there was no money for the military, and then loads more people stopped paying taxes too…”

“Good one, Clove!”

“So nobody gave a fuck what president was elected anyway, because they were all sorting themselves out, and those states and communities were doing so well…”

“Because they’d already been doing it for years” I added.

“…that other states and communities started doing it too.”

“So that it snowballed, like dominoes, and there were more and more of these places..”

“And they had exchange students and stuff like that to learn from each other, and shared stuff online..”

“So when the disasters struck, it wasn’t half so bad because there were already a bunch of people managing perfectly well without dollars or oil, and they could help the people in the disaster. Makes more sense that electing another blimmin president, huh?”

“Bloody obvious if you ask me” replied Clove. “Pity we don’t have basic income, did you see Mater’s face when she was talking to that debt collector?”

That made me laugh, remembering her waving the stick around. “Her face was as purple as her cardigan.”

In unison, we both starting singing Start Wearing Purple and dancing around, acting the fool. I had a purple wig hanging on the back of my chair, so I put that on, and Clove grabbed a purple feather boa off the coat stand. No shortage of wigs in this town, though god only knows why. Just about every damn trunk in every empty house is full of wigs.