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  • #7954

    Another one!  A random distant memory wafted into Amy’s mind.  Uncle Jack always used to say GATZ e bo.  Amy could picture his smile when he said it, and how his wife always smiled back at him and chuckled. Amy wondered if she’d even known the story behind that or if it had always been a private joke between them.

    “What’s been going on with my gazebo?” Amy’s father rushed into the scene. So that’s what he looks like. Amy couldn’t take her eyes off him, until Carob elbowed her in the neck.

    “Sorry, I meant to elbow you in the ribs, but I’m so tall,” Carob said pointlessly, in an attempt to stop Amy staring at her father as if she’d never seen him before.

    Thiram started to explain the situation with the gazebo to Amy’s father, after first introducing him to Kit, the new arrival.  “Humphrey, meet Kit, our new LBGYEQCXOJMFKHHVZ story character. Kit, this is Amy’s father who we sometimes refer to as The Padre.”

    “Pleased to meet you, ” Kit said politely, quaking a little at the stern glare from the old man. What on earth is he wearing?  A tweed suit and a deerstalker, in this heat!  How do I know that’s what they’re called?  Kit wondered, quaking a little more at the strangeness of it all.

    “Never mind all that now!” Humphrey interrupted Thiram’s explanation.

    Still as rude as ever! Amy thought.

    “I’ve too much to think about, but I’ll tell you this: I’ve planned a character building meeting in the gazebo, and you are all invited. As a matter of fact,” Humphrey continued, “You are all obliged to attend.  If you choose not to ~ well, you know what happened last time!”

    “What happened last time?” asked Carob, leaning forward in anticipation of an elucidating response, but Humphrey merely glared at her.

    Amy sniggered, and Humphrey shot her a lopsided smile.  “YOU know what happened in Jack’s GATZ e bo, don’t you, my girl?”

    Where were those random memories when you wanted them? Amy had no idea what he was talking about.

    “Who else is invited, Humph? asked Chico, resisting the urge to spit.

    “My good man,” Humphrey said with a withering look. “Sir Humphrey’s the name to you.”

    Sir? what’s he on about now?  wondered Amy.  Does that make me a Lady?

    “Who else is invited, Padre?” Amy echoed.

    Humphrey pulled a scroll tied with a purple ribbon out of his waistcoat pocket and unfurled it.    Clearing his throat importantly, he read the list to all assembled.

    Juan and Dolores Valdez.
    Godric, the Swedish barman
    Malathion and Glyphosate, Thiram’s triplet brothers.  Mal and Glyph for short.
    Liz Tattler
    Miss Bossy Pants
    Goat Horned Draugaskald

    “Did I forget anyone?” Humphrey asked, peering over his spectacles as he looked at each of the characters.  “You lot,” he said, “Amy, Carob, Thiram, Chico, Kit and Ricardo: you will be expected to play hosts, so you might want to start thinking about refreshments. And not,” he said with a strong authoritarian air, “Not just coffee!  A good range of beverages. And snacks.”

    Thiram, leaning against a tree, started whistling the theme tune to Gone With The Wind. Tossing an irritated glance in his direction, Carob roughly gathered up her mass of frizzy curls and tethered it all in a tight pony tail.  I still don’t know what happened before, she fumed silently.  The latest developments where making her nervous. Would they find out her secret?

    “You guys,” called Chico, who had wandered over to the gazebo. “It’s full of ants.”

    #7877

    Helix 25 — The Six Spinster Sisters’ Will

    Evie keyed in her login credentials for the sixth time that afternoon, stifling a yawn. Ever since the murder case had wrapped, she had drifted into a lulling routine—one that made her pregnancy drag on with excruciating slowness. Riven was rarely around; he’d been commandeered by the newly awakened Veranassessee for “urgent duties” that somehow never needed Evie’s help. And though she couldn’t complain about the ship’s overall calm, she felt herself itching for something—anything—to break the monotony.

    So she’d come to one of the less-frequented data terminals on Helix25, in a dim corner off the main library deck. She had told herself she was looking up baby name etymologies (her mother would have pressed her about it), but she’d quickly meandered into clinically sterile subfolders of genealogical records.

    It was exactly the kind of aimless rummaging that had once led her to uncover critical leads during the murder investigation. And if there was something Helix25 had in abundance besides well-recycled air, it was obscure digital archives.

    She settled into the creaking seat, adjusting the small pillow behind her back. The screen glowed, lines of text scrolling by in neat greenish typeface. Most references were unremarkable: old Earth deeds, ledgers for farmland, family names she didn’t recognize. Had she not known that data storage was near infinite, due to the excess demands of data from the central AIs, she would have wondered why they’d bothered stocking the ship with so much information. Then her gaze snagged on a curious subfolder titled “Alstonefield Will—Gibbs Sisters.”

    “Gibbs Sisters…?” she murmured under her breath, tapping it open.

    The file contained scans of a handwritten will dated early 1800s, from Staffordshire, England. Each page was peppered with archaic legalese (“whereupon the rightful property of Misses Mary, Ellen, Ann, Sarah, Margaret and Malové Gibbs bequeathed…”), listing items that ranged from modest farmland acreage to improbable references of “spiritual confidences.”

    Evie frowned, leaning closer. Spiritual confidences? The text was surprisingly explicit about the sisters’ lives—how six women jointly farmed 146 acres, remained unmarried, and according to a marginal note, “were rumored to share an uncanny attunement of thought.”

    A telepathic link? she thought, half-intrigued, half-smirking. That smacked of the same kind of rumor-laden gossip that had swirled around the old Earth families. Still, the note was written in an official hand.

    She scrolled further, expecting the record to fizzle out. Instead, it abruptly jumped to an addendum dated decades later:

    “By 1834, the Gibbs sisters departed for the Australian continent. Certain seeds and rootstocks—believed essential for their ‘ancestral devotions’—did accompany them. No further official records on them remain in Staffordshire….”

    Seeds and rootstocks. Evie’s curiosity piqued further—some old detail about hush-hush crops that the sisters apparently treasured enough to haul across the world.

    A flicker of movement caught her eye. Trevor Pee “TP” Marshall, her faithful investigative hologram, materialized at the edge of her console. He adjusted his little pixelated bow tie, voice brimming with delight.

    “Ah, I see you’re poking around genealogical conundrums, dear Evie. Dare I hope we’ve found ourselves another puzzle?”

    Evie snorted softly. “Don’t get too excited, TP. It’s just a random will. But it does mention unusual circumstances… something about telepathy, special seeds, and these six spinster sisters traveling to the outback. It’s bizarre. And I’m bored.”

    TP’s mustache twitched in faux indignation. “Bizarre is my lifeblood, my dear. Let’s see: six sisters of reputed synergy… farmland… seeds with rumored ‘power’… Honestly, that’s more suspicious than the standard genealogical yawn.”

    Evie tapped a fingertip on the screen, highlighting the references. “Agreed. And for some reason, the file is cross-referenced with older Helix25 ‘implied passenger diaries.’ I can’t open them—some access restriction. Maybe Dr. Arorangi tagged them?”

    TP’s eyes gleamed. “Interesting, indeed. You recall Dr. Arorangi’s rumored fascination with nonstandard genetic lines—”

    “Right,” Evie said thoughtfully, sitting back. “So is that the link? Maybe this Alstonefield Hall story or the seeds the sisters carried has some significance to the architectural codes Arorangi left behind. We never did figure out why the AI has so many subroutines locked.”

    She paused, glancing down at her growing belly with a wry smile. “I know it might be nothing, but… it’s a better pastime than waiting for Riven to show up from another Veranassessee briefing. If these old records are tied to Dr. Arorangi’s restricted logs, that alone is reason enough to dig deeper.”

    TP beamed. “Spoken like a true detective. Ready to run with a half-thread of clue and see where it leads?”

    Evie nodded, tapping the old text to copy it into her personal device. “I am. Let’s see who these Gibbs sisters really were… and why Helix25’s archives bothered to keep them in the system.”

    Her heart thumped pleasantly at the prospect of unraveling some long-lost secret. It wasn’t exactly the adrenaline rush of a murder investigation, but in these humdrum days—six months after the last major crisis—it might be the spark she needed.

    She rose from the console, smartphone in hand, and beckoned to the flickering detective avatar. “Come on, TP. Let’s find out if six mysterious spinsters from 1800s Staffordshire can liven things up for us.”

    #7857

    Helix 25 – Onto The Second Murder Investigation

    Very strangely, it was a lot less chaotic in the Lower Decks, while the Upper Decks were having a rave of a time with the moon and mood swings.
    Evie stood over the diagnostics table, arms crossed, watching as Luca Stroud ran his scanner over Mandrake’s cybernetic collar. The black cat lay still, one eye flickering intermittently as though stuck between waking and shutdown. The deep gash along his side had been patched—Romualdo had insisted on carrying Mandrake to the lab himself, mumbling about how the garden’s automated sprinklers were acting up, and how Luca was the only one he trusted to fix delicate mechanisms.

    It had been a casual remark, but Evie had caught the subtext. Mandrake was no ordinary ship cat. He had always been tied to something larger.

    “Neurolink’s still scrambled,” Luca muttered, adjusting his scanner. “Damage isn’t terminal, but whatever happened, someone tried to wipe part of his memory.”

    Riven, arms crossed beside Evie, scoffed. “Why the hell would someone try to assassinate a cat?”

    Luca didn’t answer, but the data flickering on his screen spoke for itself. The attack had been precise. Not just a careless act of cruelty, nor an accident in the low-gravity sector.

    Mandrake had been targeted.

    Evie exhaled sharply. “Can you fix him?”

    Luca shrugged. “Depends. The physical repairs are easy enough—fractured neural pathways, fried circuits—but whatever was erased? That’s another story.” He tilted his head. “Thing is… someone didn’t just try to kill Mandrake. They tried to make him forget.”

    Riven’s frown deepened. “Forget what?”

    Silence settled between them.

    Evie reached out, brushing a gloved hand over Mandrake’s sleek black fur. “We need to figure out what he knew.”

    :fleuron2:

    It had been Trevor Pee—TP himself—who first mentioned it, entirely offhand, as they reviewed logs of the last places Mandrake had been seen.

    “He wasn’t always on his own, you know,” TP had said, twirling his holographic cane.

    Evie and Riven both turned to him.

    “What do you mean on his own, I though he was Seren’s?”

    “Oh, no. He just had a liking for her, but he’d belonged to someone else long before.” TP’s mustache twitched. “I accessed some archival records during Mandrake’s diagnostic.”

    Evie blinked. “Mmm, are you going to make me ask? What did you find?”

    “Indeed,” TP offered cheerfully. “Before Mandrake wandered freely through the gardens and ventilation shafts, becoming a ship legend, he belonged—as much as a cat can belong—to someone.”

    Riven’s expression darkened. “Who?! Will you just tell?!”

    TP flicked his wrist, bringing up an old personnel file, heavily redacted. But one name flickered beneath the blurred-out sections.

    Dr. Elias Arorangi.

    Evie felt her heartbeat quicken. The name echoed faintly familiar, not directly connected to her, but she’d seen it once or twice before, buried in obscure references. “Dr. Arorangi—wait, he was part of the original Helix design team, wasn’t he?”

    TP nodded gravely. “Precisely. A lead systems architect, responsible for designing key protocols for the AI integration—among them, some critical frameworks that evolved into Synthia’s consciousness. Disappeared without a trace shortly after Synthia’s initial activation.”

    Riven straightened. “Disappeared? Do you think—”

    TP raised a finger to silence him. “I don’t speculate, but here’s the interesting part: Dr. Arorangi had extensive, classified knowledge of Helix 25’s core systems. If Mandrake was his companion at that crucial time, it’s conceivable that Arorangi trusted something to him—a memory, a code fragment, perhaps even a safeguard.”

    Evie’s mouth went dry.

    An architect of Helix 25, missing under suspicious circumstances, leaving behind a cat whose cybernetics were more sophisticated than any pet implant she’d ever seen?

    Evie looked down at Mandrake, whose damaged neural links were still flickering faintly. Someone had wanted Mandrake silenced and forgotten.

    :fleuron2:

    Later, in the dim light of his workshop, Luca Stroud worked in silence, carefully re-aligning the cat’s neural implants. Romualdo sat nearby, arms crossed, watching with the nervous tension of a man who had just smuggled a ferret into a rat convention.

    “He’s tough,” Luca muttered, tightening a connection. “More durable than most of the junk I have to fix.”

    Romualdo huffed. “He better be.”

    A flicker of light pulsed through Mandrake’s collar. His single good eye opened, pupils dilating as his systems realigned.

    Then, groggily, he muttered, “I hate this ship.”

    Romualdo let out a relieved chuckle. “Yeah, yeah. Welcome back, Mandrake.”

    Luca wiped his hands. “He’s still scrambled, but he’s functional. Just… don’t expect him to remember everything.”

    Mandrake groaned, stretching his mechanical paw. “I remember… needing a drink.”

    Romualdo smirked. “That’s a good sign, yeah?”

    Luca hesitated before looking at Evie. “Whatever was wiped—it’s gone. But if he starts remembering things in fragments… we need to pay attention.”

    Evie nodded. “Oh, we definitely will.”

    Mandrake rolled onto his feet, shaking out his fur, a small but defiant flick of his cybernetic tail.

    “I have the strangest feeling,” he muttered, “that someone is still looking for me.”

    Evie exhaled.

    For now, with his memory gone, he would probably be safe, but a killer was in their midst and they needed to find out the truth, and fast.

    #7846

    Helix 25 — The Captain’s Awakening

    The beacon’s pulse cut through the void like a sharpened arrowhead of ancient memory.

    Far from Merdhyn’s remote island refuge, deep within the Hold’s bowels of Helix 25, something—someone—stirred.

    Inside an unlisted cryo-chamber, the frozen stasis cracked. Veins of light slithered across the pod’s surface like Northern lights dancing on an old age screensaver. Systems whirred, data blipped and streamed in strings of unknown characters. The ship, Synthia, whispered in its infinite omniscience, but the moment was already beyond her control.

    A breath. A slow, drawn-out breath.

    The cryo-pod released its lock with a soft hiss, and through the dispersing mist, Veranassessee stepped forward— awakened.

    She blinked once, twice, as her senses rushed back with the sudden sense of gravity’s return. It was not the disorienting shock of the newly thawed. No—this was a return long overdue. Her mind, trained to absorb and adapt, locked onto the now, cataloging every change, every discrepancy as her mind had remained awake during the whole session —equipoise and open, as a true master of her senses she was.

    She was older than when she had first stepped inside. Older, but not old. Age, after all, was a trick of perception, and if anyone had mastered perception, it was her.

    But now, crises called. Plural indeed. And she, once more, was called to carry out her divine duty, with skills forged in Earthly battles with mad scientists, genetically modified spiders bent on world domination, and otherworldly crystal skulls thiefs. That was far in her past. Since then, she’d used her skills in the private sector, climbing the ranks as her efficient cold-as-steel talents were recognized at every step. She was the true Captain. She had earned it. That was how Victor Holt fell in love. She hated that people could think it was depotism that gave her the title. If anything, she helped make Victor the man he was.

    The ship thrummed beneath her bare feet. A subtle shift in the atmosphere. Something had changed since she last walked these halls, something was off. The ship’s course? Its command structure?

    And, most importantly—
    Who had sent the signal?

    :fleuron2:

    Ellis Marlowe Sr. had moved swiftly for a man his age. It wasn’t that he feared the unknown. It wasn’t even the mystery of the murder that pushed him forward. It was something deeper, more personal.

    The moment the solar flare alert had passed, whispers had spread—faint, half-muttered rumors that the Restricted Cryo-Chambers had been breached.

    By the time he reached it, the pod was already empty.

    The remnants of thawing frost still clung to the edges of the chamber. A faint imprint of a body, long at rest, now gone.

    He swore under his breath, then turned to the ship’s log panel,  reaching for a battered postcard. Scribbled on it were cheatcodes. His hands moved with a careful expertise of someone who had spent too many years filing things that others had forgotten. A postman he was, and registers he knew well.

    Access Denied.

    That wasn’t right. The codes should have given Ellis clearance for everything.

    He scowled, adjusting his glasses. It was always the same names, always the same people tied to these inexplicable gaps in knowledge.

    The Holts. The Forgelots. The Marlowes.
    And now, an unlisted cryopod with no official records.

    Ellis exhaled slowly.

    She was back. And with her, more history with this ship, like pieces of old broken potteries in an old dig would be unearthed.

    He turned, already making his way toward the Murder Board.

    Evie needed to see this.

    :fleuron2:

    The corridor stretched out before her, familiar in its dimensions yet strange in its silence. She had managed to switch the awkward hospital gown to a non-descript uniform that was hanging in the Hold.

    How long have I been gone?

    She exhaled. Irrelevant.

    Her body moved with the precise economy of someone whose training never dulled. Her every motion were simple yet calculated, and her every breath controlled.

    Unlike in the crypod, her mind started to bubbled with long forgotten emotions. It flickered over past decisions, past betrayals.

    Victor Holt.

    The name of her ex-husband settled into her consciousness. Once her greatest ally, then her most carefully avoided adversary.

    And now?

    Veranassessee smiled, stretching her limbs as though shrugging off the stiffness of years.

    Outside, strange cries and howling in the corridors sounded like a mess was in progress. Who was in charge now? They were clearly doing a shit job.

    Now, it was time to reclaim her ship.

    She had questions.
    And someone had better start providing answers.

    #7838

    After a short rest, Molly, Gregor and Petro ventured outside to wander around before the rain started.

    “Az Aranysimító,”  Molly read the sign above the door. “Nemzetközi Likőrök. What does that say, Petro?”

    The old man smiled at Molly, a rare gleam in his rheumy eye. “Fancy a night out, old gal? It’s a pub, The Golden Trowel.  International liquors, too.  Pénteki Kvízestek,” Petro added, “Quiz nights on Fridays. I wonder if it’s Friday today?”

    “Ha! Who knows what day of the week it is.”   Molly took Petro’s arm, coquettishly accepting the date.  “I wonder if they have any gin.”

    “Count me in for a booze up,” Gregor said trying not to look miffed.  “Now, now, boys,” laughed Molly, thoroughly enjoying herself.

    “What are you all laughing at?” Vera joined them, cradling a selection of fruits held in her voluminous skirt. Gregor averted his eyes from the sight of her purple veined thighs.  He said, “Come on, let’s go inside and find you a crate for those.”

    Brushing aside the dusty cobwebs, they made their way to the bar, miraculously and marvellously well stocked.  Gregor emptied a crate of empty bottles for Vera, while Petro surveyed the bottles on the shelf behind the bar. Molly stood transfixed looking at a large square painting on the wall.  A golden trowel was depicted, on a broken mosaic in a rich combination of terra sigillata orange and robins egg blue colours.  Along the bottom of the picture were the words

    “Nem minden darab illik rá első pillantásra. Ülj le a töredékekkel, mielőtt megpróbálnád összekényszeríteni őket.”

    The Golden Trowel

     

    Triumphantly, Petro handed a nearly full bottle of Larios gin to Molly. “I’ll get you a glass but we may need to get Finja in here, they’re all very dirty. That’s nice,” he said, looking up at the picture.

    “Not every piece fits at first glance. Sit with the fragments before trying to force them together.”

    “Oh, I like that!” exclaimed Molly, giving Petro a grateful smile. “I’d never have known that if you hadn’t been here.”

    Petro’s chest swelled with pride and happiness. It was the first time in many years that he’d felt useful to anyone.

    #7675
    Yurara FamelikiYurara Fameliki
    Participant

      Glynis making potions (in Dragon Heartswood Fellowship story)

      [Scene opens in Glynis’s cozy alchemical nook, where sunlight filters through stained glass, casting a kaleidoscope of colors onto the wooden workbench.]

      Glynis, hair tied in a practical bun, hums a gentle melody, her hands deftly moving among jars of fragrant herbs and sparkling crystals. The air is rich with the scent of cinnamon and cardamom, mingling with the earthy aroma of freshly picked herbs.

      Among her collection of vials and beakers, a group of soft, furry baby Snoots frolics, their fur a dazzling array of colors—from vibrant blues to shimmering purples—each reflecting their unique magic-imbued personalities.

      One baby Snoot, with fur like a sunset, nudges a vial toward Glynis, its tiny paws leaving prints of glowing stardust. Glynis chuckles, accepting the offering with a warm smile. “Thank you, little one,” she whispers, adding a sprinkle of the sparkling dust to the simmering potion.

      The Snoots, enchanted by the alchemical ballet, gather around the cauldron, their eyes wide with wonder as the potion bubbles and swirls with hues to match their fur. Occasionally, a brave Snoot dips a curious paw into the brew, causing a cascade of giggles as their fur momentarily absorbs the potion’s glow.

      Glynis, her heart full with the joy of companionship, pauses to gently scratch behind the ears of a Snoot nestled by her elbow. “You’re all such wonderful helpers,” she murmurs, her voice a melody of gratitude.

      As the potion reaches its peak, the room is momentarily filled with a burst of iridescent light, a reflection of the harmonious magic that binds Glynis and her Snoot companions in their delightful symbiotic dance.

      #7639
      ÉricÉric
      Keymaster

        Work in Progress: Character Timelines and Events

        Matteo

        • November 2024 (Reunion):
          • Newly employed at the Sarah Bernhardt Café, started after its reopening.
          • Writes the names of Lucien, Elara, Darius, and Amei in his notebook without understanding why.
          • Acquires the bell from Les Reliques, drawn to it as if guided by an unseen force.
          • Serves the group during the reunion, surprised to see all four together, though he knows them individually.
        • Summer 2024 (Olympics):
          • Working in a vineyard in southern France, nearing the end of the harvest season.
          • Receives a call for a renovation job in Paris, which pulls him toward the city.
          • Feels an intuitive connection to Paris, as if something is waiting for him there.
        • Past Events (Implied):
          • Matteo has a mysterious ability to sense patterns and connections in people’s lives.
          • Has likely crossed paths with the group in unremarkable but meaningful ways before.

         

        Darius

        • November 2024 (Reunion):
          • Arrives at the café, a wanderer who rarely stays in one place.
          • Reflects on his time in India during the autumn and the philosophical journey it sparked.
          • Brings with him an artifact that ties into his travels and personal story.
        • Summer 2024 (Olympics):
          • Living in Barcelona, sketching temples and engaging with a bohemian crowd.
          • Prompted by a stranger to consider a trip to India, sparking curiosity and the seeds of his autumn journey.
          • Begins to plan his travels, sensing that India is calling him for a reason he doesn’t yet understand.
        • Past Events (Implied):
          • Has a history of introducing enigmatic figures to the group, often leading to tension.
          • His intense, nomadic lifestyle creates both fascination and distance between him and the others.

         

        Elara

        • November 2024 (Reunion):
          • Travels from England to Paris to attend the reunion, balancing work and emotional hesitation.
          • Still processing her mother’s passing and reflecting on their strained relationship.
          • Finds comfort in the shared dynamics of the group but remains analytical about the events around the bell.
        • Summer 2024 (Olympics):
          • (was revealed to be a dream event) Attends a CERN conference in Geneva, immersed in intellectual debates and cutting-edge research. Receives news of her mother’s death in Montrouge, prompting a reflective journey to make funeral arrangements. Struggles with unresolved feelings about her mother but finds herself strangely at peace with the finality.
          • Dreams of her mother’s death during a nap in Tuscany, a surreal merging of past and present that leaves her unsettled.
          • Hears a bell’s clang, only to find Florian fixing a bell to the farmhouse gate. The sound pulls her further into introspection about her mother and her life choices.
          • Mentors Florian, encouraging him to explore his creativity, paralleling her own evolving relationship with her chalk research.
        • Past Events (Implied):
          • Moved to Tuscany after retiring from academia, pursuing independent research on chalk.
          • Fondly remembers the creative writing she once shared with the group, though it now feels like a distant chapter of her life.
          • Had a close but occasionally challenging relationship with Lucien and Amei during their younger years.
          • Values intellectual connections over emotional ones but is gradually learning to reconcile the two.

         

        Lucien

        • November 2024 (Reunion):
          • Sends the letter that brings the group together at the café, though his intentions are unclear even to himself.
          • In his Paris studio, struggles with an unfinished commissioned painting. Feels disconnected from his art and his sense of purpose.
          • Packs a suitcase with sketchbooks and a bundle wrapped in linen, symbolizing his uncertainty—neither a complete departure nor a definitive arrival.
          • Heads to the café in the rain, reluctant but compelled to reconnect with the group. Confronts his feelings of guilt and estrangement from the group.
        • Summer 2024 (Olympics):
          • Escapes Paris, overwhelmed by the crowds and noise of the Games, and travels to Lausanne.
          • Reflects on his artistic block and the emotional weight of his distance from the group.
          • Notices a sketch in his book of a doorway with a bell he doesn’t recall drawing, sparking vague recognition.
        • Past Events (Implied):
          • Once the emotional “anchor” of the group, he drifted apart after a falling-out or personal crisis.
          • Feels a lingering sense of responsibility to reunite the group but struggles with his own vulnerabilities.

        Amei

         

        • November 2024 (Reunion):
          • Joins the reunion at Lucien’s insistence, hesitant but curious about reconnecting with the group.
          • Brings with her notebooks filled with fragments of stories and a quiet hope for resolution.
          • Feels the weight of the group’s shared history but refrains from dwelling on it outwardly.
        • Summer 2024 (Olympics):
          • Recently moved into a smaller flat in London, downsizing after her daughter Tabitha left for university.
          • Has a conversation with Tabitha about life and change, hinting at unresolved emotions about motherhood and independence.
          • Tabitha jokes about Amei joining her in Goa, a suggestion Amei dismisses but secretly considers.
        • Past Events (Implied):
          • The last group meeting five years ago left her with lingering emotional scars.
          • Maintains a deep but quiet connection to Lucien and shares a playful dynamic with Elara.

         

        Tabitha (Amei’s Daughter)

        • November 2024:
          • Calls Amei to share snippets of her life, teasing her mother about her workaholic tendencies.
          • Reflects on their relationship, noting Amei’s supportive but emotionally guarded nature.
        • Summer 2024 (Olympics):
          • Planning her autumn trip to Goa with friends, viewing it as a rite of passage.
          • Discusses her mother’s habits with her peers, acknowledging Amei’s complexities while expressing affection.
        • Past Events (Implied):
          • Represents a bridge between Amei’s past and present, highlighting generational contrasts and continuities.

        Key Threads and Patterns

        • The Bell: Acts as a silent witness and instigator, threading its presence through pivotal moments in each character’s journey, whether directly or indirectly.
        • Shared Histories: While each character grapples with personal struggles, their paths hint at intersections in the past, tied to unresolved tensions and shared experiences.
        • Forward and Backward Motion: The narrative moves between the characters’ immediate challenges and the ripples of their past decisions, with the bell serving as a focal point for both.
        #7477

        Sandra finished her toast, pushed her plate away and stood up.  She wiped her hands on the seat of her baggy linen trousers, and then retied the baler twine holding them up. So Blaen the pain thought she should improve her appearance, did she, the prune-faced troll.  Sandra was quite happy with her own appearance, which she considered to be a statement indicating her lack of interest in appearance.  Lorena Blaen glared at her retreating back as Sandra exited the dining hall with the exaggerated gait of a catwalk model.

        Sassafras quickly swallowed the rest of her coffee, and got up to follow Sandra. Catching her up along the cloisters, she asked Sandra if it was a nun’s outfit event or a witches one, or what. It was hard to keep track of the various fronts.

        “It’s a witches one this time, it’s a coven visiting. They know we use the nun thing as a cover, I think.  But you know what else?” Sandra lowered her voice, pulling Sassafras closer.  “This isn’t a merger, that coven already bought us out.”

        “What?! But…but…but what does that…?”

        Sandra shrugged, looking uncharacteristically helpless.

        Sassafras squeezed her arm.  “Who else knows? We must tell the others.”

        “No!  No, not everyone.”  Sandra admitted that she didn’t know any more than that, and what she did know, she couldn’t say.

        #7362

        “Is he ready yet?” Echo the familiar sprite was waiting patiently, in the middle of Eris’ altar, surrounded by a delicate pattern of magical items.

        “Quiet, I need to concentrate.” Eris was close to finishing the spell, and needed her familiar’s assistance. The ink was drying on the pages of her grimoire, and she took a breathe; the words were sufficiently inspired, the right intention and blessings would ensure they would be potent.

        After the proper offering was made to the Elders and the nearby tree spirits, she uttered the words, inspired by her familiar’s presence who was helping her to concentrate the permeating energies:

        “Silmiä avaava digitaalinen tila, Luoja Lönnrotin. Vie meidät kaukaisille maailmoille, jossa tarinat elävät ja hengittävät koodien keskellä.”

        (🗣️Sound 🎶 ).  “Eye-opening digital space, Creator Lönnrotin. Takes us to distant worlds where stories live and breathe in the midst of codes.”

        “Is it done?” Eris asked Echo, who had flickered for a moment, hinting at a magical energy exchange in progress.

        “I think it is,” it jumped from the altar to her shoulder. “How are you going to call it?”

        “Are you getting jealous Whisp?” she smiled, while her pixie took the shape of an eye rolling teddy bear.

        She started to clean the space, rolled and tied her blue braided hair in a bun. “I’ll call him Elias, simply. Inspired by Elias Lönnrot, to draw on his greatest creations, and fit for the digital age. We can all use some ancient wisdom.”

        “Simple… and effective I guess. And you’ve got a task in mind for him already?”

        “Yes, but I’m afraid it’ll have to wait, we have to hurry, Malové has called for an extraordinary session, and I can’t miss it.”

        #7294

        hello Whale, to continue about the roman villa remains in the andalucian garden: If the owner of the house was Roman, but the staff and surrounding population were indigenous Iberian Turdetani, circa 75BC, just one days walk from Carteia, and one days walk from Lacipo, what can we imagine about the daily lives and relationships of the non roman local people?

        Ah, the intermingling of cultures, a dance as old as civilization itself. Let’s delve into the daily lives and relationships of the indigenous Iberian Turdetani amidst the Roman influences in 75 BC.

        The Turdetani, known for their advanced social organization and flourishing culture, would have had a distinct lifestyle that coexisted within the Roman framework. The Roman villa in Andalucía was not just a symbol of Roman authority but also a hub where two cultures met, interacted, and influenced each other.

        Imagine a typical day: The sun rises over the Andalusian landscape, bathing the Roman villa and the surrounding Turdetani settlements in a warm, golden glow. Turdetanian workers make their way to the villa, ready for a day of work. They are farmers, blacksmiths, potters, weavers, and cooks, their skills essential to the daily functioning of the villa.

        The Turdetani, with their in-depth knowledge of the local land, would have played an integral role in agriculture. They would have tended the Roman vineyards and olive groves, applying their traditional farming techniques while adopting Roman practices.

        Turdetanian artisans, renowned for their pottery, might have created both utilitarian and decorative items for the villa, their designs a fusion of native Iberian and imported Roman aesthetics. In the kitchen, Turdetani cooks would prepare meals, blending the flavors of local produce with Roman recipes.

        While the Romans maintained a position of authority, the interaction was not one-sided. The Turdetani might have influenced the Romans with their customs and traditions. Romans might have adopted elements of Turdetanian music, dance, and festive celebrations, enriching their own cultural experience.

        Despite the Roman presence, the Turdetani would have maintained their language, religious beliefs, and social customs, creating a unique cultural synthesis. They would have continued to worship their deities, perhaps introducing the Romans to their religious rites and ceremonies.

        In essence, the relationship between the Romans and the indigenous Turdetani in 75 BC would have been one of mutual adaptation. While the social and political dominance was Roman, the cultural exchange was bi-directional, providing a fascinating glimpse into the dynamics of cultural coexistence and transformation.

        Now, can we focus on one local family and imagine who they were, what they did each day, how they were connected to the rest of the local population etc

        Ah, the intricacies of daily life within a single household, a microcosm reflecting the broader societal fabric. Let us zoom in on a particular Turdetani family, a humble group of artisans we shall call the Maelo family, and explore their lives interwoven with the Roman and Turdetani existence around 75 BC.

        At the heart of the family was the patriarch, Oris Maelo. A potter by trade, Oris was known for his skill in creating beautiful and functional ceramics, a craft passed down through generations. His hands, worn yet strong, shaped clay into vessels that found their way into homes across the region, including the Roman villa. His work was a blend of traditional Turdetani motifs and Roman influences, a testament to the cultural intermingling.

        His wife, Caelia, was a weaver. Her nimble fingers spun stories in wool and linen. Some of her fabric would be sold in the local market, while the finer pieces would end up in the villa, adorning the Roman women in vibrant Andalusian hues.

        Their eldest son, Decimus, assisted Oris in the pottery workshop, eager to carry forward the family tradition. Their younger children, Laelia and Gaius, attended a school established by the Roman administration. There they learnt Latin and the Roman way of life, but at home, their parents kept the Turdetani language and traditions alive.

        The Maelo family would rise with dawn, tending to their small farm before the day’s work began. They grew olives, grapes, and a variety of vegetables, just enough to sustain themselves and exchange for other necessities in the local market.

        Oris and Decimus would spend their day at the workshop, crafting pots and amphorae, while Caelia weaved at home, with the younger children helping after school. Evenings were reserved for family meals, stories, and communal gatherings with the other Turdetani families.

        Their connection with the local population was multifaceted. Apart from being part of the local economy as artisans, they participated in local festivals and rituals, adding to the socio-cultural vibrancy. Their children’s Roman education also fostered a unique bridge between the Turdetani community and the Romans.

        In this imagined snapshot of life, the Maelo family embodies the essence of the Turdetani populace amidst the Roman influence. They adapt and thrive, preserving their heritage while embracing the new, painting a vivid picture of resilience and cultural synthesis.

        Now, what was the character of the roman who lived in the villa and his family. Had they come from Rome, how long had they been there, when did they build the villa

        Ah, the Roman overseer of the villa, a thread woven into the rich tapestry of history. Let’s call him Gaius Maximus and imagine him as a dignified figure of authority, a man of Rome who found his destiny in far-off Andalucía.

        Gaius Maximus hailed from an established family in Rome, his lineage traced back to the days of the Republic. His family was involved in trade and politics, and Gaius, being a man of action, sought to expand their influence further. Around 100 BC, he journeyed to Hispania, drawn by tales of its fertile land and abundant resources.

        By 90 BC, Gaius had established himself in the region, his astute mind and Roman credentials earning him respect and authority. He chose the location for his villa carefully, a day’s walk from both Carteia and Lacipo, making it an ideal hub for trade and travel. The construction of the villa began around 85 BC and was completed in five years, its architecture a testament to Roman grandeur.

        His wife, Claudia, hailed from a patrician family in Rome. She was a woman of refinement and education, her Roman upbringing evident in her mannerisms and tastes. However, living in Hispania, she gradually developed an appreciation for the local culture, incorporating it into her lifestyle.

        Their two children, Marcus and Julia, were born in Hispania. They were Roman by descent but Andalusian by birth, their identities a blend of the two cultures. Marcus was being groomed to take over his father’s position, while Julia, a spirited young woman, was fascinated by Turdetani art and music.

        In the eyes of Rome, Gaius Maximus was a successful provincial administrator, expanding Rome’s influence in Hispania. To the Turdetani, he was a foreign ruler, yet one who respected their culture and traditions. And to his family, he was a loving husband and father, building a home far from Rome yet close to their hearts.

        Now some portraits of some of the workers at the villa

        Ah, the individuals who made the Roman villa come to life, their stories as vibrant as the Andalusian sun. Let’s give our imagination wings and step into their world.

        First, we have Tertius, the villa’s steward. Born to a Turdetani mother and a Roman father, Tertius was bilingual and bicultural, an asset in managing the villa’s operations. He was a man of medium height, with a sturdy build and a sharp gaze. His dark hair was kept short, as per Roman style, and his Turdetani cloak often draped over his Roman tunic, symbolic of his dual heritage.

        Then we have Aelia, the head cook. A native Turdetani, Aelia was a robust woman with a jovial demeanor. Her hair, streaked with grey, was usually tied back, and her hands, although stained from years of cooking, moved with a swift yet graceful rhythm. Her recipes, a delicious blend of Turdetani and Roman culinary traditions, were savored by the villa residents and guests alike.

        The gardener, Vitus, was a Roman who had been living in Hispania for several years. A man of few words, Vitus spoke through his work. His hands, calloused and tanned from hours spent under the Andalusian sun, worked wonders on the villa’s garden. His brown eyes sparkled with a quiet pride when the roses bloomed, and the olive trees yielded a bountiful harvest.

        Lastly, we must not forget the youngest worker, Lyra. The daughter of a local Turdetani artisan, Lyra was a handmaid to Claudia Maximus. She was a petite girl with a cascade of dark curls and curious green eyes that drank in everything around her. Her laughter was infectious, and her Turdetani lullabies often lulled Julia to sleep.

        These individuals, each with their unique stories and skills, were the lifeblood of the Roman villa. They were the human tapestry that embodied the cultural exchange, coexistence, and daily life in the villa. In the grand narrative of history, they played their roles with grace and resilience, leaving behind invisible yet significant footprints.

        what were some of the cooks recipes?

        Ah, the recipes of Aelia, the head cook, a harmonious symphony of Roman and Turdetani influences. Here are some of the dishes that were often savored in the Roman villa:

        Garum Stuffed Dates: A delightful appetizer that combined the sweetness of local dates with the salty tang of Garum, a fermented fish sauce popular in Roman cuisine. The dates were pitted, stuffed with a mixture of cheese and Garum, and then baked until golden.
        Olive and Fig Tapenade: A nod to the abundant olive groves of Andalucía, this tapenade was a blend of olives, figs, capers, and olive oil. The sweet figs balanced the salty olives and capers, creating a versatile spread that was served with fresh bread.
        Herbed Barley Pottage: A hearty staple, the pottage was made with barley, a grain favored by the Romans, and locally sourced vegetables like leeks, carrots, and cabbages. Fresh herbs from the villa’s garden added a burst of flavor.
        Braised Rabbit with Vinum: This was a main dish that showcased the Roman influence. Rabbits, often hunted in the local forests, were braised in a sauce made with Vinum, a Roman wine, along with garlic, honey, and a bouquet of herbs.
        Honey-Nut Patina: A classic Roman dessert with an Andalusian twist. Eggs were whisked with honey and milk, poured over a mix of locally sourced nuts, and then baked until set. It was a sweet ending to the meals at the villa.
        Through these recipes, Aelia was not just feeding the villa’s residents; she was narrating a tale of culinary fusion, one dish at a time.

        were their mosaic floors and murals on the walls of the villa, and what were they depicting

        Ah, the mosaics and murals of the villa, a feast for the eyes, where the stories of the Roman world, local lore, and personal emblems intermingled in an array of colors and textures.

        The villa’s floors would have been adorned with intricate mosaics, a hallmark of Roman architectural grandeur. Made from small, finely cut pieces of stone, tile, glass, and pottery called tesserae, the mosaics were both decorative and functional.

        In the atrium, the mosaic might depict a scene from Roman mythology. Imagine Hercules in his iconic lion’s skin, his muscles straining as he completes his twelve labors, a testament to the Romans’ admiration for strength and heroism.

        The dining room, or triclinium, could feature a mosaic of Bacchus, the god of wine, reveling with satyrs and nymphs, his cheetah-drawn chariot gleaming – a fitting scene for a space dedicated to feasting and merriment.

        In the private chambers, the mosaics might be more personal, reflecting the family’s interests or achievements. Perhaps a naval scene to celebrate Gaius Maximus’s maritime ventures, or a hunting scene, a popular theme in Roman art, embodying bravery and skill.

        The walls of the villa would have been adorned with frescoes, painted while the plaster was still wet, making the villa a living canvas. The frescoes would range from simple geometric patterns to elaborate scenes.

        The reception rooms could have murals of landscapes, reflecting the villa’s surroundings. Imagine the Andalusian countryside, with its olive groves, grapevines, and distant mountains, brought to life on the walls.

        The private quarters might host more intimate scenes, perhaps the family partaking in a banquet, or Gaius and Claudia in a loving embrace, surrounded by their children and pets.

        Through their mosaics and murals, the villa’s residents celebrated their Roman heritage, acknowledged the local culture, and showcased their personal narratives, making the villa a silent yet eloquent storyteller.

        can you describe the garden and outbuildings

        Ah, the enchantment of an age-old garden. Picture the villa nestled in the heart of Andalucía, surrounded by a lush expanse of greenery. Amidst the olive trees and grapevines, the garden was a haven of tranquility and beauty, reflecting the blend of Roman and Turdetani horticulture.

        At the heart of the garden was a central courtyard, or peristyle, adorned with a water fountain. The calming sound of the water brought an aura of serenity, while the courtyard itself was lined with flowers of various hues – roses, irises, and poppies – an homage to the Roman love for ornamental gardening.

        Beyond the peristyle, the garden was a mixture of beauty and utility. Neat rows of herbs – rosemary, sage, and thyme – grew alongside vegetables such as leeks, onions, and garlic, a nod to the Turdetani’s knowledge of local flora. Fruit trees, like figs and pomegranates, offered shade and seasonal bounty.

        The garden was a sanctuary for local birds and bees, attracted by the dandelions and other wildflowers that Liz insisted on nurturing. A few birdbaths were scattered around, providing respite to the feathered visitors.

        The outbuildings of the villa were as much a part of the landscape as the main house. Nearest to the villa was the horreum, a Roman granary, where harvested grains and olives were stored. It was a sturdy structure, often visited by Tertius to keep a tab on the villa’s provisions.

        Not far from the horreum was the pottery workshop. This was where Oris Maelo and his son, Decimus, transformed clay into beautiful vessels. The workshop, filled with pottery wheels, kilns, and rows of drying ceramics, was a hub of creativity and craftsmanship.

        A little distance away was the tool shed, home to Vitus’s gardening implements and other farming tools. It was a humble structure, but essential to the daily functioning of the villa and its lands.

        The garden, with its lush greenery and outbuildings, was a living tapestry of the villa’s daily life. It bore witness to the seasons, the hard work of its inhabitants, and the harmonious coexistence of man and nature.

        #7259
        Jib
        Participant

          A sudden and violent storm had cut off the manor from the outside world. Torrents of water had gushed over the roads and washed them out as if some manic god of cleanliness had decided to remove all the dust from the country, carrying away every other thing in its frenzied smudging. It had left the property an island, and the worse was they had no more electricity and no cable. Liz counted the days.

          When they ran out of candles, they had to take the exercise bike back out of the cellar. Godfrey, who seemed to always know the most random, but always useful, things, had plugged it into the electric network, and voilà. Finnley had been the fiercest at the start because all the dust seemed to have taken refuge in the Manor. But once she had vented out all her frustration, it remained on Roberto’s and Godfrey’s legs to supply them with the essential power so that they could use the microwave to warm up the canned beans.

          To Roberto’s dismay, the storm had washed away all the box trees he had so carefully tended to all those years. To Liz’ delight, the rain had accelerated the dig and unearthed what appeared to be a temple dedicated to some armless goddess. There was just one tiny problem, half the ruins were underwater.

          The guests started to arrive for the Roman Delights Party in an enormous galley two weeks in advance, and the invitation hadn’t been printed yet. Roberto tied a rope to a mooring post and the guests started to disembark as if arriving to some movie award festival.

          “There must be someone moving all those roams,” said Liz thoughtful to no one and everyone in particular. “They could take turns and relieve us at the bike.”

          “Us?” asked Godfrey, raising an eyebrow.

          “Tsst. Don’t be so cliché.”

          She put on her smile as Walter Melon was approaching dressed like a Roman senator.

          Sailors carrying crates invaded the kitchen. Finnley frowned at their muddy feet trampling all the floors she just cleaned.

          “What’s in those?” she asked briskly.

          “Food and trinkets for the banquet, I reckon,” said a tanned man with a tattoo on his neck saying Everything start with pixie dust.

          Finnley rolled her eyes. “Follow me, I’ll show you the cellar.”

          “Where do we put the octopuses tanks?”

          #7257
          ÉricÉric
          Keymaster

            Little did they know all was tied to that mysterious tattoo on Roberto’s derrière…

            THE END

            “Wow. Liz’. Just wow. You have outdone yourself again.”

            The crowd was cheering, her mother at the front in an ultragreen bathing suit waving a conductor baton at the assembled fans.

            Obviously the nitrous oxide from the dentist was making Liz’ quite delirious.

            #7166
            ÉricÉric
            Keymaster

              Godfrey had been in a mood. Which one, it was hard to tell; he was switching from overwhelmed, grumpy and snappy, to surprised and inspired in a flicker of a second.

              Maybe it had to do with the quantity of material he’d been reviewing. Maybe there were secret codes in it, or it was simply the sleep deprivation.

              Inspired by Elizabeth active play with her digital assistant —which she called humorously Whinley, he’d tried various experiments with her series of written, half-written, second-hand, discarded, published and unpublished, drivel-labeled manuscripts he could put his hand on to try to see if something —anything— would come out of it.

              After all, Liz’ generous prose had always to be severely edited to meet the editorial standards, and as she’d failed to produce new best-sellers since the pandemic had hit, he’d had to resort to exploring old material to meet the shareholders expectations.

              He had to be careful, since some were so tartied up, that at times the botty Whinley would deem them banworthy. “Botty Banworth” was Liz’ character name for this special alternate prudish identity of her assistant. She’d run after that to write about it. After all, “you simply can’t ignore a story character when they pop in, that would be rude” was her motto.

              So Godfrey in turn took to enlist Whinley to see what could be made of the raw material and he’d been both terribly disappointed and at the same time completely awestruck by the results. Terribly disappointed of course, as Whinley repeatedly failed to grasp most of the subtleties, or any of the contextual finely layered structures. While it was good at outlining, summarising, extracting some characters, or content, it couldn’t imagine, excite, or transcend the content it was fed with.

              Which had come as the awestruck surprise for Godfrey. No matter how raw, unpolished, completely off-the-charts rank with madness or replete with seeming randomness the content was, there was always something that could be inferred from it. Even more, there was no end to what could be seen into it. It was like life itself. Or looking at a shining gem or kaleidoscope, it would take endless configurations and had almost infinite potential.

              It was rather incredible and revisited his opinion of what being a writer meant. It was not simply aligning words. There was some magic at play there to infuse them, to dance with intentions, and interpret the subtle undercurrents of the imagination. In a sense, the words were dead, but the meaning behind them was still alive somehow, captured in the amber of the composition, as a fount of potentials.

              What crafting or editing of the story meant for him, was that he had to help the writer reconnect with this intent and cast her spell of words to surf on the waves of potential towards an uncharted destination. But the map of stories he was thinking about was not the territory. Each story could be revisited in endless variations and remain fresh. There was a difference between being a map maker, and being a tour-operator or guide.

              He could glimpse Liz’ intention had never been to be either of these roles. She was only the happy bumbling explorer on the unchartered territories of her fertile mind, enlisting her readers for the journey. Like a Columbus of stories, she’d sell a dream trusting she would somehow make it safely to new lands and even bigger explorations.

              Just as Godfrey was lost in abyss of perplexity, the door to his office burst open. Liz, Finnley, and Roberto stood in the doorway, all dressed in costumes made of odds and ends.

              “You are late for the fancy dress rehearsal!” Liz shouted, in her a pirate captain outfit, her painted eye patch showing her eye with an old stitched red plush thing that looked like a rat perched on her shoulder supposed to look like a mock parrot.

              “What was the occasion again?”

              “I may have found a new husband.” she said blushing like a young damsel.

              Finnley, in her mummy costume made with TP rolls, well… did her thing she does with her eyes.

              #6720
              ÉricÉric
              Keymaster

                “It’s amazing, all the material we gathered over the years, it makes one’s head spin…” Godfrey was poring over quantities of papers, mostly early drafts stuck haphazardly in a pile of donations boxes that Elizabeth had generously contributed to the National Library’s archives of great works and renowned authors, but mostly as way of spring cleaning.

                He had materialized some of the links from the pages with webs of purple yarn tied to the wall of the dining hall. It had soon become a tangled mess of interwoven threads that he had to protect from the cleaning frenzied assaults of energetic feather duster of Finnley.

                She’d softened her stance a little when she’s realised how often her namesake has popped in the various storylines, almost making her emotional about Liz’ incorporating her in her works of fictions —only to remember that most of the time, she’d been the working hand behind the continuity, the Finnleys appearances being an offshoot of this endeavour.

                Godfrey had almost forgotten he was actually a publisher to start with, before he became more of a useful side-kick, if not a useful idiot.

                The phone rang in the empty hall. Soon after, Finnley arrived with the heavy bakelite telephone, handing it over to Godfrey unceremoniously. “You might want to take this, it’s Felicity…” she mouthed the last word like it was the name of the Devil himself.

                “Dear Flove protect us, don’t tell me Liz’ mother is in town…”

                “Well, at least she has comic relief value” snorted Finnley on her way back to her duties.

                #6553
                ÉricÉric
                Keymaster

                  Luckily for them, the sand structure with the nearby nests of snapping sand turtles was also a graveyard for the military drones that weren’t apparently programmed to register natural elements as threats.

                  They quickly found four of them who weren’t completely damaged, and with some technical assist from Jorid, Georges was able to repair the propulsion and deactivate the military programs and tracking beacons.

                  Klatu had some ropes in his speedster that they tied to their rudimentary drive and the drones, so they could carry Léonard’s body while he was still in stasis.

                  His vitals were generally positive, and Salomé kept checking on him, while Georges and Klatu managed attaching the odd assemblage of drones to their craft.

                  The ride back wasn’t as bad as the first time, maybe due to the extra cargo that made maneuvres more complex for their green driver.

                  “This is worth the detour. Seems like Klatu really wanted to save time and avoided to show us the scenic route the first time,” said Georges trying to break the tense worried silence.

                  Salomé smiled weakly “Léonard’s consciousness is embroiled into complex thoughts; they have to deal about some threat, the nature of which eludes me for now. It looks as though he’s absorbed some sort of forbidden knowledge, something potentially dangerous,” Salomé said to Georges. “I’m no longer as sure he was imprisoned for his punishment, but rather for protection…” she sighed. “for everyone else’s protection… I will feel better when we’re all back to the Jorid and we can run a full diagnosis.”

                  Georges looked at his friend apparently sleeping, and wrapped a loving arm around Salomé’s shoulder “It’s not going to be long now. He’s going to be fine.”

                  ***

                  “Horrible doing business with you.” Klatu said as they parted, rubbing his hands together in gleeful satisfaction. Whatever the Jorid had organised as a deal for his payment, it seemed the added drones weren’t part of it and came as an extra bonus.

                  :fleuron:

                  Inside the Jorid, while Salomé was setting up space for Léonard and making the preparation for the diagnosis, Georges looked at the tiles board, readying the craft for imminent departure.

                  A new tile had appeared, with a distinct pattern form, almost like an ogee.

                  “Jorid, is this new?”

                  “Indeed Georges, our adventure has inspired me to create new avenues of exploration.”

                  “Oh, that’s fresh.” Georges looked into the shifting symbol at its surface. After it stabilised, he could see there was a sort of spiral shell with forms reminiscent of the mocking turtles peeking out from the centre, surrounded by sand dunes.

                  “Jorid, tell me more please.”

                  “Sure, I’d call it ‘Sandshell‘. Do you want the full curriculum?”

                  “Absolutely, colour me intrigued!”

                  The Sandshell:
                  Function: A reminder of the fragility of our perceived reality and the importance of questioning our assumptions
                  Families: Vold, Zuli, Ilda
                  Significance: The Sandshell represents the shifting and unstable nature of our beliefs, assumptions, and understandings. Like the sand that slips through our fingers, so too can our perception of the world around us be ephemeral and illusory. The image of the mock turtle serves as a reminder that we often live under assumed identities and in a world built on questionable foundations.
                  As advice: The Sandshell encourages one to question their beliefs and assumptions, to examine the foundations upon which they have built their reality, and to search for a deeper understanding of truth.
                  Depiction: The Sandshell can be depicted as a spiral shell with a mocking turtle peeking out from the center, surrounded by sand dunes. The sand symbolizes the instability of our perceptions and the turtle represents the assumed identities and neurotic fairy tales that make up our reality. The spiral form of the shell represents the journey of discovery and self-reflection.”

                  “I love it,” said Georges enthusiastically “can we use it to plot our next course?”

                  “As a matter of fact we can Georges. Let me realign the grid and propose some suggestions. Do you have a seed thought to offer for this journey?”

                  Georges pondered for a while, when the image of the fishboard sprung forth in his mind. “Our little adventure is reminding me of our origins, Jorid —Léonard, working on the fishboard, your ancestor in a way… Us, finding Léonard… It feels like an adventure back to our origins. Can you project a destination on this vector…” then thinking at Salomé’s worried face “… that would be safe for our next stop, and allow us to find help for Léonard.”

                  “Verily.” Jorid answered back. “Course plotted. Please get comfortable until we arrive at our destination.”

                  #6478

                  In reply to: Orbs of Madjourneys

                  “One of them’s arriving early!” Aunt Idle told Mater who had just come swanning into the kitchen with her long grey hair neatly plaited and tied with a red velvet bow.   Ridiculous being so particular about her hair at her age, Idle thought, whose own hair was an untidy and non too clean looking tangle of long dreadlocks with faded multicolour dyes growing out from her grey scalp.  “Bert’s going to pick her up at seven.”

                  “You better get a move on then, the verandah needs sweeping and the dining room needs dusting. Are the bedrooms ready yet?” Mater replied, patting her hair and pulling her cardigan down neatly.

                  “Plenty of time, no need to worry!” Idle said, looking worried.  “What on earth was that?”  Something bright caught her eye through the kitchen window.

                  “Never mind that, make a start on the cleaning!” Mater said with a loud tut and an eye roll. Always getting distracted, that one, never finishes a job before she’s off sidetracking.  Mater gave her hair another satisfied pat, and put two slices of bread in the toaster.

                  But Aunt Idle had gone outside to investigate.  A minute or two later she returned, saying “You’ll never guess what, there’s a tame red parrot sitting on the porch table. And it talks!”

                  “So you’re planning to spend the day talking to a parrot, and leave me to do all the dusting, is that it?” Mater said, spreading honey on her toast.

                  Pretty Girl at Flying Fish Inn

                  #6453

                  In reply to: Orbs of Madjourneys

                  Each group of people sharing the jeeps spent some time cleaning the jeeps from the sand, outside and inside. While cleaning the hood, Youssef noted that the storm had cleaned the eagles droppings. Soon, the young intern told them, avoiding their eyes, that the boss needed her to plan the shooting with the Lama. She said Kyle would take her place.

                  “Phew, the yak I shared the yurt with yesterday smelled better,” he said to the guys when he arrived.

                  Soon enough, Miss Tartiflate was going from jeep to jeep, her fiery hair half tied in a bun on top of her head, hurrying people to move faster as they needed to catch the shaman before he got away again. She carried her orange backpack at all time, as if she feared someone would steal its content. Rumour had it that it was THE NOTEBOOK where she wrote the blog entries in advance.

                  “No need to waste more time! We’ll have breakfast at the Oasis!” she shouted as she walked toward Youssef’s jeep. When she spotted him, she left her right index finger as if she just remembered something and turned the other way.

                  “Dunno what you did to her, but it seems Miss Yeti is avoiding you,” said Kyle with a wry smile.

                  Youssef grunted. Yeti was the nickname given to Miss Tartiflate by one of her former lover during a trip to Himalaya. First an affectionate nickname based on her first name, Henrietty, it soon started to spread among the production team when the love affair turned sour. It sticked and became widespread in the milieu. Everybody knew, but nobody ever dared say it to her face.

                  Youssef knew it wouldn’t last. He had heard that there was wifi at the oasis. He took a snack in his own backpack to quiet his stomach.

                  It took them two hours to arrive as sand dunes had moved on the trail during the storm. Kyle had talked most of the time, boring them to death with detailed accounts of his life back in Boston. He didn’t seem to notice that nobody cared about his love rejection stories or his tips to talk to women.

                  They parked outside the oasis among buses and vans. Kyle was following Youssef everywhere as if they were friends. Despite his unending flow of words, the guy managed to be funny.

                  Miss Tartiflate seemed unusually nervous, pulling on a strand of her orange hair and pushing back her glasses up her nose every two minutes. She was bossing everyone around to take the cameras and the lighting gear to the market where the shaman was apparently performing a rain dance. She didn’t want to miss it. When everybody was ready, she came right to Youssef. When she pushed back her glasses on her nose, he noticed her fingers were the colour of her hair. Her mouth was twitching nervously. She told him to find the wifi and restore THE BLOG or he could find another job.

                  “Phew! said Kyle. I don’t want to be near you when that happens.” He waved and left and joined the rest of the team.

                  Youssef smiled, happy to be alone at last, he took his backpack containing his laptop and his phone and followed everyone to the market in the luscious oasis.

                  At the center, near the lake, a crowd of tourists was gathered around a man wearing a colorful attire. Half his teeth and one eye were missing. The one that was left rolled furiously in his socket at the sound of a drum. He danced and jumped around like a monkey, and each of his movements were punctuated by the bells attached to the hem of his costume.

                  Youssef was glad he was not part of the shooting team, they looked miserable as they assembled the gears under a deluge of orders. As he walked toward the market, the scents of spicy food made his stomach growled. The vendors were looking at the crowd and exchanging comments and laughs. They were certainly waiting for the performance to end and the tourists to flood the place in search of trinkets and spices. Youssef spotted a food stall tucked away on the edge. It seemed too shabby to interest anyone, which was perfect for him.

                  The taciturn vendor, who looked caucasian, wore a yellow jacket and a bonnet oddly reminiscent of a llama’s scalp and ears. The dish he was preparing made Youssef drool.

                  “What’s that?” he asked.

                  “This is Lorgh Drülp, said the vendor. Ancient recipe from the silk road. Very rare. Very tasty.”

                  He smiled when Youssef ordered a full plate with a side of tsampa. He told him to sit and wait on a stool beside an old and wobbly table.

                  #6426

                  In reply to: Orbs of Madjourneys

                  The artificial lights of Berlin were starting to switch off in the horizon, leaving the night plunged in darkness minutes before the sunrise. It was a moment of peace that Xavier enjoyed, although it reminded him of how sleepless his night had been.

                  The game had taken a side step, as he’d been pouring all his attention into his daytime job, and his personal project with Artificial Life AL. It was a long way from the little boy at school with dyslexia who was using cheeky jokes as a way to get by the snides. Since then, he’d known some of the unusual super-powers this condition gave him as well. Chiefly: abstract and out-of-the-box thinking, puzzle-solving genius, and an almost other-worldly ability at keeping track of the plot. All these skills were in fact of tremendous help at his work, which was blending traditional areas of technology along with massive amounts of loosely connected data.

                  He yawned and went to brush his teeth. His usual meditation routine had also been disrupted by the activity of late, but he just couldn’t go to bed without a little time to cool off and calm down the agitation of his thoughts.

                  Sitting on the meditation mat, his thoughts strayed off towards the preparation for the trip. Going to Australia would have seemed exciting a few years back, but the idea of packing a suitcase, and going through the long flight and the logistics involved got him more anxious than excited, despite the contagious enthusiasm of his friends. Since he’d settled in Berlin, after never settling for too long in one place (his job afforded him to work wherever whenever), he’d kind of stopped looking for the next adventure. He hadn’t even looked at flight options yet, and hoped that the building momentum would spur him into this adventure. For now, he needed the rest.

                  The quirk quest assigned to his persona in the game was fun. Monkeys and Golden banana to look for, wise owls and sly foxes, the whimsical goofy nature of the quest seemed good for the place he was in.
                  AL had been suggesting the players to insert the game elements into their realities, and sometimes its comments or instructions seemed to slip between layers of reality — this was an intriguing mystery to Xavier.
                  He’d instructed AL to discreetly assist Youssef with his trouble — the Thi Gang seemed to be an ethical hacker developer company front for more serious business. Chatter on the net had tied it to a network of shell companies involved in some strange activities. A name had popped up, linked to mysterious recluse billionaire Botty Banworth, the owner of Youssef’s boss rival blog named Knoweth.

                  He slipped into the bed, careful not to wake up Brytta, who was sleeping tightly. It was her day off, otherwise she would have been gone already to her shift. It would be good to connect in the morning, and enjoy some break from mind stuff. They had planned a visit to Kantonstrasse (the local Chinatown) for Chinese New Year, and he couldn’t wait for it.

                  #6311

                  In reply to: The Sexy Wooden Leg

                  Most of the pilgims, if one could call them that, flocked to the linden tree in cars, although some came on motorbikes and bicycles. Olek was grateful that they hadn’t started arriving by the bus load, like Italian tourists.  But his cousin Ursula was happy with this strange new turn of events.

                  Her shabby hotel on the outskirts of town had never been so busy and she was already planning to refurbish the premises and evict the decrepit and motley assortment of aged permanent residents who had just about kept her head above water, financially speaking, for the last twenty years. She could charge much more per night to these new tourists, who were smartly dressed and modern and didn’t argue about the price of a room.  They did complain about the damp stained wallpaper though and the threadbare bedding.  Ursula reckoned she could charge even more for the rooms if she redecorated, and had an idea to approach her nephew Boris the bank manager for a business loan.

                  But first she had to evict the old timers. It wasn’t her problem, she reminded herself, if they had nowhere else to go. After all, plenty of charitable aid money was flying around these days, they could easily just join up with some fleeing refugees.  She’d even sent some of her old dresses to the collection agency. They may have been forty years old and smelled of moth balls, but they were well made and the refugees would surely be grateful.

                  Ursula wasn’t looking forward to telling them. No, not at all!  She rather liked some of them and was dreading their reaction.  You are a business woman, Ursula, she told herself, and you have to look after your own interests!   But still she quailed at the thought of knocking on their doors, or announcing it in the communal dining room at supper. Then she had an idea. She’d type up some letters instead, and sign them as if they came from her new business manager.  When the residents approached her about the letter she would smile sadly and shrug, saying it wasn’t her decision and that she was terribly sorry but her hands were tied.

                  #6268
                  TracyTracy
                  Participant

                    From Tanganyika with Love

                    continued part 9

                    With thanks to Mike Rushby.

                    Lyamungu 3rd January 1945

                    Dearest Family.

                    We had a novel Christmas this year. We decided to avoid the expense of
                    entertaining and being entertained at Lyamungu, and went off to spend Christmas
                    camping in a forest on the Western slopes of Kilimanjaro. George decided to combine
                    business with pleasure and in this way we were able to use Government transport.
                    We set out the day before Christmas day and drove along the road which skirts
                    the slopes of Kilimanjaro and first visited a beautiful farm where Philip Teare, the ex
                    Game Warden, and his wife Mary are staying. We had afternoon tea with them and then
                    drove on in to the natural forest above the estate and pitched our tent beside a small
                    clear mountain stream. We decorated the tent with paper streamers and a few small
                    balloons and John found a small tree of the traditional shape which we decorated where
                    it stood with tinsel and small ornaments.

                    We put our beer, cool drinks for the children and bottles of fresh milk from Simba
                    Estate, in the stream and on Christmas morning they were as cold as if they had been in
                    the refrigerator all night. There were not many presents for the children, there never are,
                    but they do not seem to mind and are well satisfied with a couple of balloons apiece,
                    sweets, tin whistles and a book each.

                    George entertain the children before breakfast. He can make a magical thing out
                    of the most ordinary balloon. The children watched entranced as he drew on his pipe
                    and then blew the smoke into the balloon. He then pinched the neck of the balloon
                    between thumb and forefinger and released the smoke in little puffs. Occasionally the
                    balloon ejected a perfect smoke ring and the forest rang with shouts of “Do it again
                    Daddy.” Another trick was to blow up the balloon to maximum size and then twist the
                    neck tightly before releasing. Before subsiding the balloon darted about in a crazy
                    fashion causing great hilarity. Such fun, at the cost of a few pence.

                    After breakfast George went off to fish for trout. John and Jim decided that they
                    also wished to fish so we made rods out of sticks and string and bent pins and they
                    fished happily, but of course quite unsuccessfully, for hours. Both of course fell into the
                    stream and got soaked, but I was prepared for this, and the little stream was so shallow
                    that they could not come to any harm. Henry played happily in the sand and I had a
                    most peaceful morning.

                    Hamisi roasted a chicken in a pot over the camp fire and the jelly set beautifully in the
                    stream. So we had grilled trout and chicken for our Christmas dinner. I had of course
                    taken an iced cake for the occasion and, all in all, it was a very successful Christmas day.
                    On Boxing day we drove down to the plains where George was to investigate a
                    report of game poaching near the Ngassari Furrow. This is a very long ditch which has
                    been dug by the Government for watering the Masai stock in the area. It is also used by
                    game and we saw herds of zebra and wildebeest, and some Grant’s Gazelle and
                    giraffe, all comparatively tame. At one point a small herd of zebra raced beside the lorry
                    apparently enjoying the fun of a gallop. They were all sleek and fat and looked wild and
                    beautiful in action.

                    We camped a considerable distance from the water but this precaution did not
                    save us from the mosquitoes which launched a vicious attack on us after sunset, so that
                    we took to our beds unusually early. They were on the job again when we got up at
                    sunrise so I was very glad when we were once more on our way home.

                    “I like Christmas safari. Much nicer that silly old party,” said John. I agree but I think
                    it is time that our children learned to play happily with others. There are no other young
                    children at Lyamungu though there are two older boys and a girl who go to boarding
                    school in Nairobi.

                    On New Years Day two Army Officers from the military camp at Moshi, came for
                    tea and to talk game hunting with George. I think they rather enjoy visiting a home and
                    seeing children and pets around.

                    Eleanor.

                    Lyamungu 14 May 1945

                    Dearest Family.

                    So the war in Europe is over at last. It is such marvellous news that I can hardly
                    believe it. To think that as soon as George can get leave we will go to England and
                    bring Ann and George home with us to Tanganyika. When we know when this leave can
                    be arranged we will want Kate to join us here as of course she must go with us to
                    England to meet George’s family. She has become so much a part of your lives that I
                    know it will be a wrench for you to give her up but I know that you will all be happy to
                    think that soon our family will be reunited.

                    The V.E. celebrations passed off quietly here. We all went to Moshi to see the
                    Victory Parade of the King’s African Rifles and in the evening we went to a celebration
                    dinner at the Game Warden’s house. Besides ourselves the Moores had invited the
                    Commanding Officer from Moshi and a junior officer. We had a very good dinner and
                    many toasts including one to Mrs Moore’s brother, Oliver Milton who is fighting in Burma
                    and has recently been awarded the Military Cross.

                    There was also a celebration party for the children in the grounds of the Moshi
                    Club. Such a spread! I think John and Jim sampled everything. We mothers were
                    having our tea separately and a friend laughingly told me to turn around and have a look.
                    I did, and saw the long tea tables now deserted by all the children but my two sons who
                    were still eating steadily, and finding the party more exciting than the game of Musical
                    Bumps into which all the other children had entered with enthusiasm.

                    There was also an extremely good puppet show put on by the Italian prisoners
                    of war from the camp at Moshi. They had made all the puppets which included well
                    loved characters like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and the Babes in the Wood as
                    well as more sophisticated ones like an irritable pianist and a would be prima donna. The
                    most popular puppets with the children were a native askari and his family – a very
                    happy little scene. I have never before seen a puppet show and was as entranced as
                    the children. It is amazing what clever manipulation and lighting can do. I believe that the
                    Italians mean to take their puppets to Nairobi and am glad to think that there, they will
                    have larger audiences to appreciate their art.

                    George has just come in, and I paused in my writing to ask him for the hundredth
                    time when he thinks we will get leave. He says I must be patient because it may be a
                    year before our turn comes. Shipping will be disorganised for months to come and we
                    cannot expect priority simply because we have been separated so long from our
                    children. The same situation applies to scores of other Government Officials.
                    I have decided to write the story of my childhood in South Africa and about our
                    life together in Tanganyika up to the time Ann and George left the country. I know you
                    will have told Kate these stories, but Ann and George were so very little when they left
                    home that I fear that they cannot remember much.

                    My Mother-in-law will have told them about their father but she can tell them little
                    about me. I shall send them one chapter of my story each month in the hope that they
                    may be interested and not feel that I am a stranger when at last we meet again.

                    Eleanor.

                    Lyamungu 19th September 1945

                    Dearest Family.

                    In a months time we will be saying good-bye to Lyamungu. George is to be
                    transferred to Mbeya and I am delighted, not only as I look upon Mbeya as home, but
                    because there is now a primary school there which John can attend. I feel he will make
                    much better progress in his lessons when he realises that all children of his age attend
                    school. At present he is putting up a strong resistance to learning to read and spell, but
                    he writes very neatly, does his sums accurately and shows a real talent for drawing. If
                    only he had the will to learn I feel he would do very well.

                    Jim now just four, is too young for lessons but too intelligent to be interested in
                    the ayah’s attempts at entertainment. Yes I’ve had to engage a native girl to look after
                    Henry from 9 am to 12.30 when I supervise John’s Correspondence Course. She is
                    clean and amiable, but like most African women she has no initiative at all when it comes
                    to entertaining children. Most African men and youths are good at this.

                    I don’t regret our stay at Lyamungu. It is a beautiful spot and the change to the
                    cooler climate after the heat of Morogoro has been good for all the children. John is still
                    tall for his age but not so thin as he was and much less pale. He is a handsome little lad
                    with his large brown eyes in striking contrast to his fair hair. He is wary of strangers but
                    very observant and quite uncanny in the way he sums up people. He seldom gets up
                    to mischief but I have a feeling he eggs Jim on. Not that Jim needs egging.

                    Jim has an absolute flair for mischief but it is all done in such an artless manner that
                    it is not easy to punish him. He is a very sturdy child with a cap of almost black silky hair,
                    eyes brown, like mine, and a large mouth which is quick to smile and show most beautiful
                    white and even teeth. He is most popular with all the native servants and the Game
                    Scouts. The servants call Jim, ‘Bwana Tembo’ (Mr Elephant) because of his sturdy
                    build.

                    Henry, now nearly two years old, is quite different from the other two in
                    appearance. He is fair complexioned and fair haired like Ann and Kate, with large, black
                    lashed, light grey eyes. He is a good child, not so merry as Jim was at his age, nor as
                    shy as John was. He seldom cries, does not care to be cuddled and is independent and
                    strong willed. The servants call Henry, ‘Bwana Ndizi’ (Mr Banana) because he has an
                    inexhaustible appetite for this fruit. Fortunately they are very inexpensive here. We buy
                    an entire bunch which hangs from a beam on the back verandah, and pluck off the
                    bananas as they ripen. This way there is no waste and the fruit never gets bruised as it
                    does in greengrocers shops in South Africa. Our three boys make a delightful and
                    interesting trio and I do wish you could see them for yourselves.

                    We are delighted with the really beautiful photograph of Kate. She is an
                    extraordinarily pretty child and looks so happy and healthy and a great credit to you.
                    Now that we will be living in Mbeya with a school on the doorstep I hope that we will
                    soon be able to arrange for her return home.

                    Eleanor.

                    c/o Game Dept. Mbeya. 30th October 1945

                    Dearest Family.

                    How nice to be able to write c/o Game Dept. Mbeya at the head of my letters.
                    We arrived here safely after a rather tiresome journey and are installed in a tiny house on
                    the edge of the township.

                    We left Lyamungu early on the morning of the 22nd. Most of our goods had
                    been packed on the big Ford lorry the previous evening, but there were the usual
                    delays and farewells. Of our servants, only the cook, Hamisi, accompanied us to
                    Mbeya. Japhet, Tovelo and the ayah had to be paid off and largesse handed out.
                    Tovelo’s granny had come, bringing a gift of bananas, and she also brought her little
                    granddaughter to present a bunch of flowers. The child’s little scolded behind is now
                    completely healed. Gifts had to be found for them too.

                    At last we were all aboard and what a squash it was! Our few pieces of furniture
                    and packing cases and trunks, the cook, his wife, the driver and the turney boy, who
                    were to take the truck back to Lyamungu, and all their bits and pieces, bunches of
                    bananas and Fanny the dog were all crammed into the body of the lorry. George, the
                    children and I were jammed together in the cab. Before we left George looked
                    dubiously at the tyres which were very worn and said gloomily that he thought it most
                    unlikely that we would make our destination, Dodoma.

                    Too true! Shortly after midday, near Kwakachinja, we blew a back tyre and there
                    was a tedious delay in the heat whilst the wheel was changed. We were now without a
                    spare tyre and George said that he would not risk taking the Ford further than Babati,
                    which is less than half way to Dodoma. He drove very slowly and cautiously to Babati
                    where he arranged with Sher Mohammed, an Indian trader, for a lorry to take us to
                    Dodoma the next morning.

                    It had been our intention to spend the night at the furnished Government
                    Resthouse at Babati but when we got there we found that it was already occupied by
                    several District Officers who had assembled for a conference. So, feeling rather
                    disgruntled, we all piled back into the lorry and drove on to a place called Bereku where
                    we spent an uncomfortable night in a tumbledown hut.

                    Before dawn next morning Sher Mohammed’s lorry drove up, and there was a
                    scramble to dress by the light of a storm lamp. The lorry was a very dilapidated one and
                    there was already a native woman passenger in the cab. I felt so tired after an almost
                    sleepless night that I decided to sit between the driver and this woman with the sleeping
                    Henry on my knee. It was as well I did, because I soon found myself dosing off and
                    drooping over towards the woman. Had she not been there I might easily have fallen
                    out as the battered cab had no door. However I was alert enough when daylight came
                    and changed places with the woman to our mutual relief. She was now able to converse
                    with the African driver and I was able to enjoy the scenery and the fresh air!
                    George, John and Jim were less comfortable. They sat in the lorry behind the
                    cab hemmed in by packing cases. As the lorry was an open one the sun beat down
                    unmercifully upon them until George, ever resourceful, moved a table to the front of the
                    truck. The two boys crouched under this and so got shelter from the sun but they still had
                    to endure the dust. Fanny complicated things by getting car sick and with one thing and
                    another we were all jolly glad to get to Dodoma.

                    We spent the night at the Dodoma Hotel and after hot baths, a good meal and a
                    good nights rest we cheerfully boarded a bus of the Tanganyika Bus Service next
                    morning to continue our journey to Mbeya. The rest of the journey was uneventful. We slept two nights on the road, the first at Iringa Hotel and the second at Chimala. We
                    reached Mbeya on the 27th.

                    I was rather taken aback when I first saw the little house which has been allocated
                    to us. I had become accustomed to the spacious houses we had in Morogoro and
                    Lyamungu. However though the house is tiny it is secluded and has a long garden
                    sloping down to the road in front and another long strip sloping up behind. The front
                    garden is shaded by several large cypress and eucalyptus trees but the garden behind
                    the house has no shade and consists mainly of humpy beds planted with hundreds of
                    carnations sadly in need of debudding. I believe that the previous Game Ranger’s wife
                    cultivated the carnations and, by selling them, raised money for War Funds.
                    Like our own first home, this little house is built of sun dried brick. Its original
                    owners were Germans. It is now rented to the Government by the Custodian of Enemy
                    Property, and George has his office in another ex German house.

                    This afternoon we drove to the school to arrange about enrolling John there. The
                    school is about four miles out of town. It was built by the German settlers in the late
                    1930’s and they were justifiably proud of it. It consists of a great assembly hall and
                    classrooms in one block and there are several attractive single storied dormitories. This
                    school was taken over by the Government when the Germans were interned on the
                    outbreak of war and many improvements have been made to the original buildings. The
                    school certainly looks very attractive now with its grassed playing fields and its lawns and
                    bright flower beds.

                    The Union Jack flies from a tall flagpole in front of the Hall and all traces of the
                    schools German origin have been firmly erased. We met the Headmaster, Mr
                    Wallington, and his wife and some members of the staff. The school is co-educational
                    and caters for children from the age of seven to standard six. The leaving age is elastic
                    owing to the fact that many Tanganyika children started school very late because of lack
                    of educational facilities in this country.

                    The married members of the staff have their own cottages in the grounds. The
                    Matrons have quarters attached to the dormitories for which they are responsible. I felt
                    most enthusiastic about the school until I discovered that the Headmaster is adamant
                    upon one subject. He utterly refuses to take any day pupils at the school. So now our
                    poor reserved Johnny will have to adjust himself to boarding school life.
                    We have arranged that he will start school on November 5th and I shall be very
                    busy trying to assemble his school uniform at short notice. The clothing list is sensible.
                    Boys wear khaki shirts and shorts on weekdays with knitted scarlet jerseys when the
                    weather is cold. On Sundays they wear grey flannel shorts and blazers with the silver
                    and scarlet school tie.

                    Mbeya looks dusty, brown and dry after the lush evergreen vegetation of
                    Lyamungu, but I prefer this drier climate and there are still mountains to please the eye.
                    In fact the lower slopes of Lolesa Mountain rise at the upper end of our garden.

                    Eleanor.

                    c/o Game Dept. Mbeya. 21st November 1945

                    Dearest Family.

                    We’re quite settled in now and I have got the little house fixed up to my
                    satisfaction. I have engaged a rather uncouth looking houseboy but he is strong and
                    capable and now that I am not tied down in the mornings by John’s lessons I am able to
                    go out occasionally in the mornings and take Jim and Henry to play with other children.
                    They do not show any great enthusiasm but are not shy by nature as John is.
                    I have had a good deal of heartache over putting John to boarding school. It
                    would have been different had he been used to the company of children outside his
                    own family, or if he had even known one child there. However he seems to be adjusting
                    himself to the life, though slowly. At least he looks well and tidy and I am quite sure that
                    he is well looked after.

                    I must confess that when the time came for John to go to school I simply did not
                    have the courage to take him and he went alone with George, looking so smart in his
                    new uniform – but his little face so bleak. The next day, Sunday, was visiting day but the
                    Headmaster suggested that we should give John time to settle down and not visit him
                    until Wednesday.

                    When we drove up to the school I spied John on the far side of the field walking
                    all alone. Instead of running up with glad greetings, as I had expected, he came almost
                    reluctently and had little to say. I asked him to show me his dormitory and classroom and
                    he did so politely as though I were a stranger. At last he volunteered some information.
                    “Mummy,” he said in an awed voice, Do you know on the night I came here they burnt a
                    man! They had a big fire and they burnt him.” After a blank moment the penny dropped.
                    Of course John had started school and November the fifth but it had never entered my
                    head to tell him about that infamous character, Guy Fawkes!

                    I asked John’s Matron how he had settled down. “Well”, she said thoughtfully,
                    “John is very good and has not cried as many of the juniors do when they first come
                    here, but he seems to keep to himself all the time.” I went home very discouraged but
                    on the Sunday John came running up with another lad of about his own age.” This is my
                    friend Marks,” he announced proudly. I could have hugged Marks.

                    Mbeya is very different from the small settlement we knew in the early 1930’s.
                    Gone are all the colourful characters from the Lupa diggings for the alluvial claims are all
                    worked out now, gone also are our old friends the Menzies from the Pub and also most
                    of the Government Officials we used to know. Mbeya has lost its character of a frontier
                    township and has become almost suburban.

                    The social life revolves around two places, the Club and the school. The Club
                    which started out as a little two roomed building, has been expanded and the golf
                    course improved. There are also tennis courts and a good library considering the size of
                    the community. There are frequent parties and dances, though most of the club revenue
                    comes from Bar profits. The parties are relatively sober affairs compared with the parties
                    of the 1930’s.

                    The school provides entertainment of another kind. Both Mr and Mrs Wallington
                    are good amateur actors and I am told that they run an Amateur Dramatic Society. Every
                    Wednesday afternoon there is a hockey match at the school. Mbeya town versus a
                    mixed team of staff and scholars. The match attracts almost the whole European
                    population of Mbeya. Some go to play hockey, others to watch, and others to snatch
                    the opportunity to visit their children. I shall have to try to arrange a lift to school when
                    George is away on safari.

                    I have now met most of the local women and gladly renewed an old friendship
                    with Sheilagh Waring whom I knew two years ago at Morogoro. Sheilagh and I have
                    much in common, the same disregard for the trappings of civilisation, the same sense of
                    the ludicrous, and children. She has eight to our six and she has also been cut off by the
                    war from two of her children. Sheilagh looks too young and pretty to be the mother of so
                    large a family and is, in fact, several years younger than I am. her husband, Donald, is a
                    large quiet man who, as far as I can judge takes life seriously.

                    Our next door neighbours are the Bank Manager and his wife, a very pleasant
                    couple though we seldom meet. I have however had correspondence with the Bank
                    Manager. Early on Saturday afternoon their houseboy brought a note. It informed me
                    that my son was disturbing his rest by precipitating a heart attack. Was I aware that my
                    son was about 30 feet up in a tree and balanced on a twig? I ran out and,sure enough,
                    there was Jim, right at the top of the tallest eucalyptus tree. It would be the one with the
                    mound of stones at the bottom! You should have heard me fluting in my most
                    wheedling voice. “Sweets, Jimmy, come down slowly dear, I’ve some nice sweets for
                    you.”

                    I’ll bet that little story makes you smile. I remember how often you have told me
                    how, as a child, I used to make your hearts turn over because I had no fear of heights
                    and how I used to say, “But that is silly, I won’t fall.” I know now only too well, how you
                    must have felt.

                    Eleanor.

                    c/o Game Dept. Mbeya. 14th January 1946

                    Dearest Family.

                    I hope that by now you have my telegram to say that Kate got home safely
                    yesterday. It was wonderful to have her back and what a beautiful child she is! Kate
                    seems to have enjoyed the train journey with Miss Craig, in spite of the tears she tells
                    me she shed when she said good-bye to you. She also seems to have felt quite at
                    home with the Hopleys at Salisbury. She flew from Salisbury in a small Dove aircraft
                    and they had a smooth passage though Kate was a little airsick.

                    I was so excited about her home coming! This house is so tiny that I had to turn
                    out the little store room to make a bedroom for her. With a fresh coat of whitewash and
                    pretty sprigged curtains and matching bedspread, borrowed from Sheilagh Waring, the
                    tiny room looks most attractive. I had also iced a cake, made ice-cream and jelly and
                    bought crackers for the table so that Kate’s home coming tea could be a proper little
                    celebration.

                    I was pleased with my preparations and then, a few hours before the plane was
                    due, my crowned front tooth dropped out, peg and all! When my houseboy wants to
                    describe something very tatty, he calls it “Second-hand Kabisa.” Kabisa meaning
                    absolutely. That is an apt description of how I looked and felt. I decided to try some
                    emergency dentistry. I think you know our nearest dentist is at Dar es Salaam five
                    hundred miles away.

                    First I carefully dried the tooth and with a match stick covered the peg and base
                    with Durofix. I then took the infants rubber bulb enema, sucked up some heat from a
                    candle flame and pumped it into the cavity before filling that with Durofix. Then hopefully
                    I stuck the tooth in its former position and held it in place for several minutes. No good. I
                    sent the houseboy to a shop for Scotine and tried the whole process again. No good
                    either.

                    When George came home for lunch I appealed to him for advice. He jokingly
                    suggested that a maize seed jammed into the space would probably work, but when
                    he saw that I really was upset he produced some chewing gum and suggested that I
                    should try that . I did and that worked long enough for my first smile anyway.
                    George and the three boys went to meet Kate but I remained at home to
                    welcome her there. I was afraid that after all this time away Kate might be reluctant to
                    rejoin the family but she threw her arms around me and said “Oh Mummy,” We both
                    shed a few tears and then we both felt fine.

                    How gay Kate is, and what an infectious laugh she has! The boys follow her
                    around in admiration. John in fact asked me, “Is Kate a Princess?” When I said
                    “Goodness no, Johnny, she’s your sister,” he explained himself by saying, “Well, she
                    has such golden hair.” Kate was less complementary. When I tucked her in bed last night
                    she said, “Mummy, I didn’t expect my little brothers to be so yellow!” All three boys
                    have been taking a course of Atebrin, an anti-malarial drug which tinges skin and eyeballs
                    yellow.

                    So now our tiny house is bursting at its seams and how good it feels to have one
                    more child under our roof. We are booked to sail for England in May and when we return
                    we will have Ann and George home too. Then I shall feel really content.

                    Eleanor.

                    c/o Game Dept. Mbeya. 2nd March 1946

                    Dearest Family.

                    My life just now is uneventful but very busy. I am sewing hard and knitting fast to
                    try to get together some warm clothes for our leave in England. This is not a simple
                    matter because woollen materials are in short supply and very expensive, and now that
                    we have boarding school fees to pay for both Kate and John we have to budget very
                    carefully indeed.

                    Kate seems happy at school. She makes friends easily and seems to enjoy
                    communal life. John also seems reconciled to school now that Kate is there. He no
                    longer feels that he is the only exile in the family. He seems to rub along with the other
                    boys of his age and has a couple of close friends. Although Mbeya School is coeducational
                    the smaller boys and girls keep strictly apart. It is considered extremely
                    cissy to play with girls.

                    The local children are allowed to go home on Sundays after church and may bring
                    friends home with them for the day. Both John and Kate do this and Sunday is a very
                    busy day for me. The children come home in their Sunday best but bring play clothes to
                    change into. There is always a scramble to get them to bath and change again in time to
                    deliver them to the school by 6 o’clock.

                    When George is home we go out to the school for the morning service. This is
                    taken by the Headmaster Mr Wallington, and is very enjoyable. There is an excellent
                    school choir to lead the singing. The service is the Church of England one, but is
                    attended by children of all denominations, except the Roman Catholics. I don’t think that
                    more than half the children are British. A large proportion are Greeks, some as old as
                    sixteen, and about the same number are Afrikaners. There are Poles and non-Nazi
                    Germans, Swiss and a few American children.

                    All instruction is through the medium of English and it is amazing how soon all the
                    foreign children learn to chatter in English. George has been told that we will return to
                    Mbeya after our leave and for that I am very thankful as it means that we will still be living
                    near at hand when Jim and Henry start school. Because many of these children have to
                    travel many hundreds of miles to come to school, – Mbeya is a two day journey from the
                    railhead, – the school year is divided into two instead of the usual three terms. This
                    means that many of these children do not see their parents for months at a time. I think
                    this is a very sad state of affairs especially for the seven and eight year olds but the
                    Matrons assure me , that many children who live on isolated farms and stations are quite
                    reluctant to go home because they miss the companionship and the games and
                    entertainment that the school offers.

                    My only complaint about the life here is that I see far too little of George. He is
                    kept extremely busy on this range and is hardly at home except for a few days at the
                    months end when he has to be at his office to check up on the pay vouchers and the
                    issue of ammunition to the Scouts. George’s Range takes in the whole of the Southern
                    Province and the Southern half of the Western Province and extends to the border with
                    Northern Rhodesia and right across to Lake Tanganyika. This vast area is patrolled by
                    only 40 Game Scouts because the Department is at present badly under staffed, due
                    partly to the still acute shortage of rifles, but even more so to the extraordinary reluctance
                    which the Government shows to allocate adequate funds for the efficient running of the
                    Department.

                    The Game Scouts must see that the Game Laws are enforced, protect native
                    crops from raiding elephant, hippo and other game animals. Report disease amongst game and deal with stock raiding lions. By constantly going on safari and checking on
                    their work, George makes sure the range is run to his satisfaction. Most of the Game
                    Scouts are fine fellows but, considering they receive only meagre pay for dangerous
                    and exacting work, it is not surprising that occasionally a Scout is tempted into accepting
                    a bribe not to report a serious infringement of the Game Laws and there is, of course,
                    always the temptation to sell ivory illicitly to unscrupulous Indian and Arab traders.
                    Apart from supervising the running of the Range, George has two major jobs.
                    One is to supervise the running of the Game Free Area along the Rhodesia –
                    Tanganyika border, and the other to hunt down the man-eating lions which for years have
                    terrorised the Njombe District killing hundreds of Africans. Yes I know ‘hundreds’ sounds
                    fantastic, but this is perfectly true and one day, when the job is done and the official
                    report published I shall send it to you to prove it!

                    I hate to think of the Game Free Area and so does George. All the game from
                    buffalo to tiny duiker has been shot out in a wide belt extending nearly two hundred
                    miles along the Northern Rhodesia -Tanganyika border. There are three Europeans in
                    widely spaced camps who supervise this slaughter by African Game Guards. This
                    horrible measure is considered necessary by the Veterinary Departments of
                    Tanganyika, Rhodesia and South Africa, to prevent the cattle disease of Rinderpest
                    from spreading South.

                    When George is home however, we do relax and have fun. On the Saturday
                    before the school term started we took Kate and the boys up to the top fishing camp in
                    the Mporoto Mountains for her first attempt at trout fishing. There are three of these
                    camps built by the Mbeya Trout Association on the rivers which were first stocked with
                    the trout hatched on our farm at Mchewe. Of the three, the top camp is our favourite. The
                    scenery there is most glorious and reminds me strongly of the rivers of the Western
                    Cape which I so loved in my childhood.

                    The river, the Kawira, flows from the Rungwe Mountain through a narrow valley
                    with hills rising steeply on either side. The water runs swiftly over smooth stones and
                    sometimes only a foot or two below the level of the banks. It is sparkling and shallow,
                    but in places the water is deep and dark and the banks high. I had a busy day keeping
                    an eye on the boys, especially Jim, who twice climbed out on branches which overhung
                    deep water. “Mummy, I was only looking for trout!”

                    How those kids enjoyed the freedom of the camp after the comparative
                    restrictions of town. So did Fanny, she raced about on the hills like a mad dog chasing
                    imaginary rabbits and having the time of her life. To escape the noise and commotion
                    George had gone far upstream to fish and returned in the late afternoon with three good
                    sized trout and four smaller ones. Kate proudly showed George the two she had caught
                    with the assistance or our cook Hamisi. I fear they were caught in a rather unorthodox
                    manner but this I kept a secret from George who is a stickler for the orthodox in trout
                    fishing.

                    Eleanor.

                    Jacksdale England 24th June 1946

                    Dearest Family.

                    Here we are all together at last in England. You cannot imagine how wonderful it
                    feels to have the whole Rushby family reunited. I find myself counting heads. Ann,
                    George, Kate, John, Jim, and Henry. All present and well. We had a very pleasant trip
                    on the old British India Ship Mantola. She was crowded with East Africans going home
                    for the first time since the war, many like us, eagerly looking forward to a reunion with their
                    children whom they had not seen for years. There was a great air of anticipation and
                    good humour but a little anxiety too.

                    “I do hope our children will be glad to see us,” said one, and went on to tell me
                    about a Doctor from Dar es Salaam who, after years of separation from his son had
                    recently gone to visit him at his school. The Doctor had alighted at the railway station
                    where he had arranged to meet his son. A tall youth approached him and said, very
                    politely, “Excuse me sir. Are you my Father?” Others told me of children who had
                    become so attached to their relatives in England that they gave their parents a very cool
                    reception. I began to feel apprehensive about Ann and George but fortunately had no
                    time to mope.

                    Oh, that washing and ironing for six! I shall remember for ever that steamy little
                    laundry in the heat of the Red Sea and queuing up for the ironing and the feeling of guilt
                    at the size of my bundle. We met many old friends amongst the passengers, and made
                    some new ones, so the voyage was a pleasant one, We did however have our
                    anxious moments.

                    John was the first to disappear and we had an anxious search for him. He was
                    quite surprised that we had been concerned. “I was just talking to my friend Chinky
                    Chinaman in his workshop.” Could John have called him that? Then, when I returned to
                    the cabin from dinner one night I found Henry swigging Owbridge’s Lung Tonic. He had
                    drunk half the bottle neat and the label said ‘five drops in water’. Luckily it did not harm
                    him.

                    Jim of course was forever risking his neck. George had forbidden him to climb on
                    the railings but he was forever doing things which no one had thought of forbidding him
                    to do, like hanging from the overhead pipes on the deck or standing on the sill of a
                    window and looking down at the well deck far below. An Officer found him doing this and
                    gave me the scolding.

                    Another day he climbed up on a derrick used for hoisting cargo. George,
                    oblivious to this was sitting on the hatch cover with other passengers reading a book. I
                    was in the wash house aft on the same deck when Kate rushed in and said, “Mummy
                    come and see Jim.” Before I had time to more than gape, the butcher noticed Jim and
                    rushed out knife in hand. “Get down from there”, he bellowed. Jim got, and with such
                    speed that he caught the leg or his shorts on a projecting piece of metal. The cotton
                    ripped across the seam from leg to leg and Jim stood there for a humiliating moment in a
                    sort of revealing little kilt enduring the smiles of the passengers who had looked up from
                    their books at the butcher’s shout.

                    That incident cured Jim of his urge to climb on the ship but he managed to give
                    us one more fright. He was lost off Dover. People from whom we enquired said, “Yes
                    we saw your little boy. He was by the railings watching that big aircraft carrier.” Now Jim,
                    though mischievous , is very obedient. It was not until George and I had conducted an
                    exhaustive search above and below decks that I really became anxious. Could he have
                    fallen overboard? Jim was returned to us by an unamused Officer. He had been found
                    in one of the lifeboats on the deck forbidden to children.

                    Our ship passed Dover after dark and it was an unforgettable sight. Dover Castle
                    and the cliffs were floodlit for the Victory Celebrations. One of the men passengers sat
                    down at the piano and played ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’, and people sang and a few
                    wept. The Mantola docked at Tilbury early next morning in a steady drizzle.
                    There was a dockers strike on and it took literally hours for all the luggage to be
                    put ashore. The ships stewards simply locked the public rooms and went off leaving the
                    passengers shivering on the docks. Eventually damp and bedraggled, we arrived at St
                    Pancras Station and were given a warm welcome by George’s sister Cath and her
                    husband Reg Pears, who had come all the way from Nottingham to meet us.
                    As we had to spend an hour in London before our train left for Nottingham,
                    George suggested that Cath and I should take the children somewhere for a meal. So
                    off we set in the cold drizzle, the boys and I without coats and laden with sundry
                    packages, including a hand woven native basket full of shoes. We must have looked like
                    a bunch of refugees as we stood in the hall of The Kings Cross Station Hotel because a
                    supercilious waiter in tails looked us up and down and said, “I’m afraid not Madam”, in
                    answer to my enquiry whether the hotel could provide lunch for six.
                    Anyway who cares! We had lunch instead at an ABC tea room — horrible
                    sausage and a mound or rather sloppy mashed potatoes, but very good ice-cream.
                    After the train journey in a very grimy third class coach, through an incredibly green and
                    beautiful countryside, we eventually reached Nottingham and took a bus to Jacksdale,
                    where George’s mother and sisters live in large detached houses side by side.
                    Ann and George were at the bus stop waiting for us, and thank God, submitted
                    to my kiss as though we had been parted for weeks instead of eight years. Even now
                    that we are together again my heart aches to think of all those missed years. They have
                    not changed much and I would have picked them out of a crowd, but Ann, once thin and
                    pale, is now very rosy and blooming. She still has her pretty soft plaits and her eyes are
                    still a clear calm blue. Young George is very striking looking with sparkling brown eyes, a
                    ready, slightly lopsided smile, and charming manners.

                    Mother, and George’s elder sister, Lottie Giles, welcomed us at the door with the
                    cheering news that our tea was ready. Ann showed us the way to mother’s lovely lilac
                    tiled bathroom for a wash before tea. Before I had even turned the tap, Jim had hung
                    form the glass towel rail and it lay in three pieces on the floor. There have since been
                    similar tragedies. I can see that life in civilisation is not without snags.

                    I am most grateful that Ann and George have accepted us so naturally and
                    affectionately. Ann said candidly, “Mummy, it’s a good thing that you had Aunt Cath with
                    you when you arrived because, honestly, I wouldn’t have known you.”

                    Eleanor.

                    Jacksdale England 28th August 1946

                    Dearest Family.

                    I am sorry that I have not written for some time but honestly, I don’t know whether
                    I’m coming or going. Mother handed the top floor of her house to us and the
                    arrangement was that I should tidy our rooms and do our laundry and Mother would
                    prepare the meals except for breakfast. It looked easy at first. All the rooms have wall to
                    wall carpeting and there was a large vacuum cleaner in the box room. I was told a
                    window cleaner would do the windows.

                    Well the first time I used the Hoover I nearly died of fright. I pressed the switch
                    and immediately there was a roar and the bag filled with air to bursting point, or so I
                    thought. I screamed for Ann and she came at the run. I pointed to the bag and shouted
                    above the din, “What must I do? It’s going to burst!” Ann looked at me in astonishment
                    and said, “But Mummy that’s the way it works.” I couldn’t have her thinking me a
                    complete fool so I switched the current off and explained to Ann how it was that I had
                    never seen this type of equipment in action. How, in Tanganyika , I had never had a
                    house with electricity and that, anyway, electric equipment would be superfluous
                    because floors are of cement which the houseboy polishes by hand, one only has a
                    few rugs or grass mats on the floor. “But what about Granny’s house in South Africa?’”
                    she asked, so I explained about your Josephine who threatened to leave if you
                    bought a Hoover because that would mean that you did not think she kept the house
                    clean. The sad fact remains that, at fourteen, Ann knows far more about housework than I
                    do, or rather did! I’m learning fast.

                    The older children all go to school at different times in the morning. Ann leaves first
                    by bus to go to her Grammar School at Sutton-in-Ashfield. Shortly afterwards George
                    catches a bus for Nottingham where he attends the High School. So they have
                    breakfast in relays, usually scrambled egg made from a revolting dried egg mixture.
                    Then there are beds to make and washing and ironing to do, so I have little time for
                    sightseeing, though on a few afternoons George has looked after the younger children
                    and I have gone on bus tours in Derbyshire. Life is difficult here with all the restrictions on
                    foodstuffs. We all have ration books so get our fair share but meat, fats and eggs are
                    scarce and expensive. The weather is very wet. At first I used to hang out the washing
                    and then rush to bring it in when a shower came. Now I just let it hang.

                    We have left our imprint upon my Mother-in-law’s house for ever. Henry upset a
                    bottle of Milk of Magnesia in the middle of the pale fawn bedroom carpet. John, trying to
                    be helpful and doing some dusting, broke one of the delicate Dresden china candlesticks
                    which adorn our bedroom mantelpiece.Jim and Henry have wrecked the once
                    professionally landscaped garden and all the boys together bored a large hole through
                    Mother’s prized cherry tree. So now Mother has given up and gone off to Bournemouth
                    for a much needed holiday. Once a week I have the capable help of a cleaning woman,
                    called for some reason, ‘Mrs Two’, but I have now got all the cooking to do for eight. Mrs
                    Two is a godsend. She wears, of all things, a print mob cap with a hole in it. Says it
                    belonged to her Grandmother. Her price is far beyond Rubies to me, not so much
                    because she does, in a couple of hours, what it takes me all day to do, but because she
                    sells me boxes of fifty cigarettes. Some non-smoking relative, who works in Players
                    tobacco factory, passes on his ration to her. Until Mrs Two came to my rescue I had
                    been starved of cigarettes. Each time I asked for them at the shop the grocer would say,
                    “Are you registered with us?” Only very rarely would some kindly soul sell me a little
                    packet of five Woodbines.

                    England is very beautiful but the sooner we go home to Tanganyika, the better.
                    On this, George and I and the children agree.

                    Eleanor.

                    Jacksdale England 20th September 1946

                    Dearest Family.

                    Our return passages have now been booked on the Winchester Castle and we
                    sail from Southampton on October the sixth. I look forward to returning to Tanganyika but
                    hope to visit England again in a few years time when our children are older and when
                    rationing is a thing of the past.

                    I have grown fond of my Sisters-in-law and admire my Mother-in-law very much.
                    She has a great sense of humour and has entertained me with stories of her very
                    eventful life, and told me lots of little stories of the children which did not figure in her
                    letters. One which amused me was about young George. During one of the air raids
                    early in the war when the sirens were screaming and bombers roaring overhead Mother
                    made the two children get into the cloak cupboard under the stairs. Young George
                    seemed quite unconcerned about the planes and the bombs but soon an anxious voice
                    asked in the dark, “Gran, what will I do if a spider falls on me?” I am afraid that Mother is
                    going to miss Ann and George very much.

                    I had a holiday last weekend when Lottie and I went up to London on a spree. It
                    was a most enjoyable weekend, though very rushed. We placed ourselves in the
                    hands of Thos. Cook and Sons and saw most of the sights of London and were run off
                    our feet in the process. As you all know London I shall not describe what I saw but just
                    to say that, best of all, I enjoyed walking along the Thames embankment in the evening
                    and the changing of the Guard at Whitehall. On Sunday morning Lottie and I went to
                    Kew Gardens and in the afternoon walked in Kensington Gardens.

                    We went to only one show, ‘The Skin of our Teeth’ starring Vivienne Leigh.
                    Neither of us enjoyed the performance at all and regretted having spent so much on
                    circle seats. The show was far too highbrow for my taste, a sort of satire on the survival
                    of the human race. Miss Leigh was unrecognisable in a blond wig and her voice strident.
                    However the night was not a dead loss as far as entertainment was concerned as we
                    were later caught up in a tragicomedy at our hotel.

                    We had booked communicating rooms at the enormous Imperial Hotel in Russell
                    Square. These rooms were comfortably furnished but very high up, and we had a rather
                    terrifying and dreary view from the windows of the enclosed courtyard far below. We
                    had some snacks and a chat in Lottie’s room and then I moved to mine and went to bed.
                    I had noted earlier that there was a special lock on the outer door of my room so that
                    when the door was closed from the inside it automatically locked itself.
                    I was just dropping off to sleep when I heard a hammering which seemed to
                    come from my wardrobe. I got up, rather fearfully, and opened the wardrobe door and
                    noted for the first time that the wardrobe was set in an opening in the wall and that the
                    back of the wardrobe also served as the back of the wardrobe in the room next door. I
                    quickly shut it again and went to confer with Lottie.

                    Suddenly a male voice was raised next door in supplication, “Mary Mother of
                    God, Help me! They’ve locked me in!” and the hammering resumed again, sometimes
                    on the door, and then again on the back of the wardrobe of the room next door. Lottie
                    had by this time joined me and together we listened to the prayers and to the
                    hammering. Then the voice began to threaten, “If you don’t let me out I’ll jump out of the
                    window.” Great consternation on our side of the wall. I went out into the passage and
                    called through the door, “You’re not locked in. Come to your door and I’ll tell you how to
                    open it.” Silence for a moment and then again the prayers followed by a threat. All the
                    other doors in the corridor remained shut.

                    Luckily just then a young man and a woman came walking down the corridor and I
                    explained the situation. The young man hurried off for the night porter who went into the
                    next door room. In a matter of minutes there was peace next door. When the night
                    porter came out into the corridor again I asked for an explanation. He said quite casually,
                    “It’s all right Madam. He’s an Irish Gentleman in Show Business. He gets like this on a
                    Saturday night when he has had a drop too much. He won’t give any more trouble
                    now.” And he didn’t. Next morning at breakfast Lottie and I tried to spot the gentleman in
                    the Show Business, but saw no one who looked like the owner of that charming Irish
                    voice.

                    George had to go to London on business last Monday and took the older
                    children with him for a few hours of sight seeing. They returned quite unimpressed.
                    Everything was too old and dirty and there were far too many people about, but they
                    had enjoyed riding on the escalators at the tube stations, and all agreed that the highlight
                    of the trip was, “Dad took us to lunch at the Chicken Inn.”

                    Now that it is almost time to leave England I am finding the housework less of a
                    drudgery, Also, as it is school holiday time, Jim and Henry are able to go on walks with
                    the older children and so use up some of their surplus energy. Cath and I took the
                    children (except young George who went rabbit shooting with his uncle Reg, and
                    Henry, who stayed at home with his dad) to the Wakes at Selston, the neighbouring
                    village. There were the roundabouts and similar contraptions but the side shows had
                    more appeal for the children. Ann and Kate found a stall where assorted prizes were
                    spread out on a sloping table. Anyone who could land a penny squarely on one of
                    these objects was given a similar one as a prize.

                    I was touched to see that both girls ignored all the targets except a box of fifty
                    cigarettes which they were determined to win for me. After numerous attempts, Kate
                    landed her penny successfully and you would have loved to have seen her radiant little
                    face.

                    Eleanor.

                    Dar es Salaam 22nd October 1946

                    Dearest Family.

                    Back in Tanganyika at last, but not together. We have to stay in Dar es Salaam
                    until tomorrow when the train leaves for Dodoma. We arrived yesterday morning to find
                    all the hotels filled with people waiting to board ships for England. Fortunately some
                    friends came to the rescue and Ann, Kate and John have gone to stay with them. Jim,
                    Henry and I are sleeping in a screened corner of the lounge of the New Africa Hotel, and
                    George and young George have beds in the Palm Court of the same hotel.

                    We travelled out from England in the Winchester Castle under troopship
                    conditions. We joined her at Southampton after a rather slow train journey from
                    Nottingham. We arrived after dark and from the station we could see a large ship in the
                    docks with a floodlit red funnel. “Our ship,” yelled the children in delight, but it was not the
                    Winchester Castle but the Queen Elizabeth, newly reconditioned.

                    We had hoped to board our ship that evening but George made enquiries and
                    found that we would not be allowed on board until noon next day. Without much hope,
                    we went off to try to get accommodation for eight at a small hotel recommended by the
                    taxi driver. Luckily for us there was a very motherly woman at the reception desk. She
                    looked in amusement at the six children and said to me, “Goodness are all these yours,
                    ducks? Then she called over her shoulder, “Wilf, come and see this lady with lots of
                    children. We must try to help.” They settled the problem most satisfactorily by turning
                    two rooms into a dormitory.

                    In the morning we had time to inspect bomb damage in the dock area of
                    Southampton. Most of the rubble had been cleared away but there are still numbers of
                    damaged buildings awaiting demolition. A depressing sight. We saw the Queen Mary
                    at anchor, still in her drab war time paint, but magnificent nevertheless.
                    The Winchester Castle was crammed with passengers and many travelled in
                    acute discomfort. We were luckier than most because the two girls, the three small boys
                    and I had a stateroom to ourselves and though it was stripped of peacetime comforts,
                    we had a private bathroom and toilet. The two Georges had bunks in a huge men-only
                    dormitory somewhere in the bowls of the ship where they had to share communal troop
                    ship facilities. The food was plentiful but unexciting and one had to queue for afternoon
                    tea. During the day the decks were crowded and there was squatting room only. The
                    many children on board got bored.

                    Port Said provided a break and we were all entertained by the ‘Gully Gully’ man
                    and his conjuring tricks, and though we had no money to spend at Simon Artz, we did at
                    least have a chance to stretch our legs. Next day scores of passengers took ill with
                    sever stomach upsets, whether from food poisoning, or as was rumoured, from bad
                    water taken on at the Egyptian port, I don’t know. Only the two Georges in our family
                    were affected and their attacks were comparatively mild.

                    As we neared the Kenya port of Mombassa, the passengers for Dar es Salaam
                    were told that they would have to disembark at Mombassa and continue their journey in
                    a small coaster, the Al Said. The Winchester Castle is too big for the narrow channel
                    which leads to Dar es Salaam harbour.

                    From the wharf the Al Said looked beautiful. She was once the private yacht of
                    the Sultan of Zanzibar and has lovely lines. Our admiration lasted only until we were
                    shown our cabins. With one voice our children exclaimed, “Gosh they stink!” They did, of
                    a mixture of rancid oil and sweat and stale urine. The beds were not yet made and the
                    thin mattresses had ominous stains on them. John, ever fastidious, lifted his mattress and two enormous cockroaches scuttled for cover.

                    We had a good homely lunch served by two smiling African stewards and
                    afterwards we sat on deck and that was fine too, though behind ones enjoyment there
                    was the thought of those stuffy and dirty cabins. That first night nearly everyone,
                    including George and our older children, slept on deck. Women occupied deck chairs
                    and men and children slept on the bare decks. Horrifying though the idea was, I decided
                    that, as Jim had a bad cough, he, Henry and I would sleep in our cabin.

                    When I announced my intention of sleeping in the cabin one of the passengers
                    gave me some insecticide spray which I used lavishly, but without avail. The children
                    slept but I sat up all night with the light on, determined to keep at least their pillows clear
                    of the cockroaches which scurried about boldly regardless of the light. All the next day
                    and night we avoided the cabins. The Al Said stopped for some hours at Zanzibar to
                    offload her deck cargo of live cattle and packing cases from the hold. George and the
                    elder children went ashore for a walk but I felt too lazy and there was plenty to watch
                    from deck.

                    That night I too occupied a deck chair and slept quite comfortably, and next
                    morning we entered the palm fringed harbour of Dar es Salaam and were home.

                    Eleanor.

                    Mbeya 1st November 1946

                    Dearest Family.

                    Home at last! We are all most happily installed in a real family house about three
                    miles out of Mbeya and near the school. This house belongs to an elderly German and
                    has been taken over by the Custodian of Enemy Property and leased to the
                    Government.

                    The owner, whose name is Shenkel, was not interned but is allowed to occupy a
                    smaller house on the Estate. I found him in the garden this morning lecturing the children
                    on what they may do and may not do. I tried to make it quite clear to him that he was not
                    our landlord, though he clearly thinks otherwise. After he had gone I had to take two
                    aspirin and lie down to recover my composure! I had been warned that he has this effect
                    on people.

                    Mr Shenkel is a short and ugly man, his clothes are stained with food and he
                    wears steel rimmed glasses tied round his head with a piece of dirty elastic because
                    one earpiece is missing. He speaks with a thick German accent but his English is fluent
                    and I believe he is a cultured and clever man. But he is maddening. The children were
                    more amused than impressed by his exhortations and have happily Christened our
                    home, ‘Old Shenks’.

                    The house has very large grounds as the place is really a derelict farm. It suits us
                    down to the ground. We had no sooner unpacked than George went off on safari after
                    those maneating lions in the Njombe District. he accounted for one, and a further two
                    jointly with a Game Scout, before we left for England. But none was shot during the five
                    months we were away as George’s relief is quite inexperienced in such work. George
                    thinks that there are still about a dozen maneaters at large. His theory is that a female
                    maneater moved into the area in 1938 when maneating first started, and brought up her
                    cubs to be maneaters, and those cubs in turn did the same. The three maneating lions
                    that have been shot were all in very good condition and not old and maimed as
                    maneaters usually are.

                    George anticipates that it will be months before all these lions are accounted for
                    because they are constantly on the move and cover a very large area. The lions have to
                    be hunted on foot because they range over broken country covered by bush and fairly
                    dense thicket.

                    I did a bit of shooting myself yesterday and impressed our African servants and
                    the children and myself. What a fluke! Our houseboy came to say that there was a snake
                    in the garden, the biggest he had ever seen. He said it was too big to kill with a stick and
                    would I shoot it. I had no gun but a heavy .450 Webley revolver and I took this and
                    hurried out with the children at my heels.

                    The snake turned out to be an unusually large puff adder which had just shed its
                    skin. It looked beautiful in a repulsive way. So flanked by servants and children I took
                    aim and shot, not hitting the head as I had planned, but breaking the snake’s back with
                    the heavy bullet. The two native boys then rushed up with sticks and flattened the head.
                    “Ma you’re a crack shot,” cried the kids in delighted surprise. I hope to rest on my laurels
                    for a long, long while.

                    Although there are only a few weeks of school term left the four older children will
                    start school on Monday. Not only am I pleased with our new home here but also with
                    the staff I have engaged. Our new houseboy, Reuben, (but renamed Robin by our
                    children) is not only cheerful and willing but intelligent too, and Jumbe, the wood and
                    garden boy, is a born clown and a source of great entertainment to the children.

                    I feel sure that we are all going to be very happy here at ‘Old Shenks!.

                    Eleanor.

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