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The Continuing Adventures of the Three Time Traveling Maids From Versailles.

The three maids, Fanella (previously known, briefly, as Fanetta), Mirabelle, and Adeline and the three time travelling Russian stage hands, Igor Popinkin, Boris and Ivan, leave Paris in the 18th century via hot air balloon, heading for the Tower of Hercules on the Galician Coast, with Mirabelle’s parrot. Sporadically they are assisted by Pseu Dan, a cross between a sort of oversoul 8 and a future focus with cloaking abilities and other skills, who tends to be unreliable due to a fixation on building a folly of tiles in the City.
After a series of mishaps attempting to board the ghost galleon of Belen, an Amazonian shapeshifting timetravelling pink dolphin pod comes to their rescue, and they find themselves washed up on a beach near the Pillars of Hercules (Spanish side) in the year 2020 and are found by Lisa, a middle aged Englishwoman. She takes the six timetravellers back to her village, an experimental new kind of community in the orange groves not far from the beach.
Jack is Lisa’s partner, and other inhabitants of the village include Etienne and Pierre.

Mirabelle and Igor continue an on/off tempestuous affair, Mirabelle often considering Igor (somewhat unfairly) a feckless whoremongering cretin. Igor considers himself to be an average adventurous funloving young man willing to explore new opportunities.
Mirabelle, once considered to be the bossiest of the three maids, finds she has no need to control the others in the absence of the responsibilities of working long hours for others at Versaille. Initially she struggled with learning the new languages, but was easily diverted from the worry and thus learned with ease, after the unexpected trip to Portugal (looking for the stolen whale tile) with Lisa. Lisa finds herself strangely attracted to Mirabelle while under the influence of sangria.

Adeline settled into the new timeframe by pursuing her fascination with the unfamiliar multitude of coloured plastic objects, making them into sculptures. She and Boris have an easy ongoing friendship; Boris and Ivan settle into life at the village by taking an interest in car and tractor mechanics and farming, and digital photography.

Fanella was the most unsettled, yearning to return to the familiar hometimezone in Versaille. She found peace in solitude outside in natural surroundings, often practicing teleporting and projecting by the river or in the woods. She rediscovers her adventurous spirit after a series of teleport and time travelling mishaps. Her unexpected meeting with Sanso in the Great Fire of London in 1212 starts another chain of teleport and timetravel adventures, as she is now determined to reach the island in 2121 that she read about in an old book of Lisa’s called Circle of Eights and Other Stories.

It came as a surprise to Fanella to discover that she was homesick for the village in 2020 ~ despite that the entire time she had spent there, she’d been homesick for 18th century Paris. If Sanso belches in my face one more time, I’m off! she said to herself. I know I can do it ~ after all, I ended up in London in 1212, so I can do it again. Well, not back to 1212 of course, but somewhere else ~ ideally 2020, back in the comfort and familiarity of Lisa’s kitchen perhaps. Fanella sighed. I can’t even remember where I was trying to get to the last time, maybe I should just go back to the village and think about it. Travelling with Sanso has turned into a confusing wild cucumber chase, and I can’t make sense of it ~ where will I end up next?
“Umm, where is the loo?” she asked, hoping to find a quiet place in which to concentrate on teleporting out of this cucumber pickle.

When Jack had sent Lisa a message to ask if Fanella had joined her and Mirabelle in Portugal, she was worried.
“Mirabelle, Fanella has disappeared, do you know anything about it?” asked Lisa. “Did she say anything to you that might give us a clue? Was she planning on going anywhere, did she have any friends outside the village? I know she homesick for 18th century Paris, but she couldn’t possibly have gone back ~ or could she?”
“Bit of a dark horse, our Fanella,” replied Mirabelle. “Always down by that river on her own, reading that strange old book.”
“Not Circle of Eights and Other Stories!”
“Yes, that’s the one. She was practicing projecting to the places in the book.”
“WHAT?? Mirabelle, there’s no time to lose, we must go back to the village at once. If Fanella has been doing that, she could be anywhere, anywhere at all ~ and the trail will be a hard one to follow!”
“But what about our holiday? And not only that, what about the strange tile that was stolen that we’re supposed to be looking for?”
“The damn tile can wait.” snapped Lisa. “But I haven’t forgotten your arousing arms,” she added, her voice softening. “But we must find Fanella first.”

~~

Lisa was not surprised to find on her return to the village that everything had descended into chaos. She knew that her responsibility belief about her herd tribe had something to do with it, and although she detested the word control, she was well aware of her propensity for monitoring and guiding the creatures and characters in her domain. The lifestyle in the village had relaxed her guidelines about fair play to some extent, but by golly some people were lazy slackers at times. But the one thing that got her goat was being kept in the dark. How could she keep a benevolent control if she wasn’t aware of what was going on? When she found out that Fanella had been making a granite box, and that she was the last to know, she was furious.

Livy and Me
– a suspense novel
by Flove

“I’m going to need expensive Italian real estate, big, expensive Italian real estate.”

He had not known love or loss until he risked losing his brave basket ball player Livvy.

His contented life is shattered when he learns that the lazy Dead Kennedys plan to bankrupt Livvy and he knows he has to stop them or his heart will die.

At 40, the Exercise Mat Salesman from Belgium is both delightful and friendly. But will it be enough to protect Livvy?

He goes to a Basket ball tournament in Hawaii where he acquires some expensive Italian real estate and Scooters. It finally seems that he will be able to stop the Dead Kennedys that wish to bankrupt Livvy.

However, when Livvy calls, begging him to come home, he is forced to decide what is more important: stopping the lazy Dead Kennedys that bankrupting each other, or preserving his relationship with his basket ball player?

Flove delivers a brave and poignant story that explores the love between a Exercise Mat Salesman and his basket ball player.

“Never have there been more chilling villains than lazy Dead Kennedys that bankrupt each other.”
– The Daily Tale
“Are we seriously supposed to find a delightful and friendly Exercise Mat Salesman from Belgium heroic?”

The whitewashed blue trimmed village by the sea had an air of tranquility despite the abundance of colourful beach dresses and accessories draped outside the shops, and the red and blue parasols shading the cafe tables and chairs. Locals and holidaymakers strolled about, unhurried and relaxed, and the blue sea twinkled enticingly beyond, as if the street disappeared into the ocean. Mirabelle imagined shoppers carrying bags of vacation purchases wandering right into the water, perhaps to continue their strolling on the seabed, idly perusing it’s treasures and trinkets; wandering back out again on to another street somewhere, dripping at first and leaving little puddles in their wake.
I wonder how deep you could go? she wondered, If you could walk on the ocean floor for as long as you liked?
Lisa, however, was more interested in the shops and had disappeared into one of them, lured by the gaily coloured scarves. She chose two and held one in each hand, wondering which one would be more reassuring, more comforting. A scarf is something to hold on to in a storm, she thought ~ and then wondered where the thought had come from.

The early morning sea mist was evaporating as Fanella strolled around the village picking up dog shit. She reminded herself to fully appreciate the damp coolness, before the scorching summer sun enveloped them in a bone warming blanket, and then reminded herself to appreciate the bone warming effects of the full sun later. As she retraced her steps she noted how differently everything looked on a return journey, how piles of dog shit had escaped her notice while going one way, but were obvious on the way back. It reminded her of something she’d read recently in one of the books that Lisa insisted she read to improve her English ~ A Field Guide To Getting Lost . Hah! Had there been a cruel irony in that choice of book? Fanella had felt lost ever since she arrived in 2020. But according to the book, getting lost wasn’t a bad thing, not at all.

To be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery.

Fanella sighed. All sounds very philosophical, but I’m still stuck in the wrong time zone.
Another passage from the book popped into her head:

We treat desire as a problem to be solved, address what desire is for and focus on that something and how to acquire it rather than on the nature and the sensation of desire, though often it is the desire between us and the object of desire that fills the space in between with the blue of longing.

Fanella gazed up at the sky ~ the blue of longing was taking over, as the white wisps of clouds dispersed.

The people thrown into other cultures go through something of the anguish of the butterfly, whose body must disintegrate and reform more than once in its life cycle…. how often the early stages of change or cure may mimic deterioration. Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly….No, the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.

Charming, Fanella thought, just bloody charming. Rotting soup of change, that just about sums it up. No wonder I wake up every morning with my bones feeling like mush.

The dogs barking woke Lisa up; at first she assumed she had woken up disorientated and disgruntled because of that, but then she recalled all the screaming, no, more like bellowing, she’d been doing in her dream. Intense passionate bellowing howls, like an expulsion of pained frustrated energy, of outrage. Frustratingly, she recalled no details. There had been a similar dream the previous Easter when she was sick ~ the same kind of howls, and she had felt much better afterwards, but she wasn’t sick now ~ in fact, she had been feeling better than she had in a long time.
Sipping her tea and still feeling cranky at being woken up, Lisa recalled the strange phone call she’d received the night before, and had a feeling it might be an element of her dream. One of her neighbours from just outside the village phoned, Clarissa. Clarissa was a young widow; since her elderly husband had died some months ago, and she had lived alone with her eight dogs. There had been nobody to ensure she took the medication she needed for her condition, which had resulted in a series of challenging episodes, alarming the locals. A few weeks ago, one of Juan’s sheep had been talking to her and wouldn’t stop, so she killed it in the lane outside her house. The sheep kept talking to her, so she cut it’s head off (a gruesome struggle by all accounts, although thankfully Lisa hadn’t witnessed it herself). The severed sheeps head continued to talk to the troubled Clarissa, so she kept the head on her verandah. That was the last thing that Lisa had heard when she received the unexpected phone call.
Clarissa was polite and friendly on the phone, inviting Lisa and Jack over for drinks ~ insisting really with an edge of desperation in her voice. Lisa declined the invitition, and omitted to mention that Jack was out playing poker. If it had not been for the sheep incident, Lisa might have responded differently, but her sense of responsibility to her own animals made her cautious. Then, to her horror, Clarissa offered to come round and feed Lisa’s dogs.
As soon as the long and insistent phone call ended, Lisa gathered all the dogs up into the gated top patio; a little later she was gratified to hear a noisy game of football going on in the street outside. Had she over reacted? Should she have had more compassion for the distressed young woman? Lisa lit another cigarette, feeling confused. She had only met Clarissa once, many years ago, and had no idea why she had called her, or where she got her phone number from. She knew of her because of the convoluted connecting links between them ~ Clarissa’s husband had been her own friends father. And she had heard about the various incidents since he had died from other neighbours.
Lisa had the unsettling feeling that she had refused a call for help. On the other hand, she felt that she had responded to the call for help in merely speaking to Clarissa on the phone. Lisa had been kindly towards her, although not encouraging of any physical contact.
Lisa sighed. She felt a stronger connection to Clarissa now, but was unsure what it would entail.

“Yes get lost!” muttered Adeline rudely. “Go back to where you belong and stop depriving some poor village of his idiot!”

Just at that moment the plaintive hoot of an owl was heard in the far distance. Adeline recalled the strange way the flock of birds had been behaving the previous day at the beach. With a feeling of foreboding she remembered her promise to the Virgin Mary in the chapel.

Were the birds a sign sent to warn her?

She was filled with remorse for her cruel thoughts and actions towards Igor. The Queen and her men could not touch her now, but was she out of reach of all those Saints and Angels?

“Would you like some toast with your coffee, dearest Mirabelle?” she asked sweetly, anxious to make amends and appease the powers that be. I promise I will say a prayer for the soul of dear Igor later, she silently vowed.

“Thank you, you dear sweet child,” said Mirabelle. “What a terrible shame though that Igor took that beautiful shell with him. Be a dear will you; run after him and see if you can’t get him to leave the shell here with me. Quick, quick Adeline, don’t dilly dally. Run like the wind or you will miss him!”

“I’m looking for crew” the stranger said with a thick Russian accent as he bought all the men in the bar a beer, “No experience necessary! I need strong young men to help me sail to the Big Island.”
Igor had no idea where the Big Island was, or indeed how to sail a boat, but he felt a strong overwhelming urge to accept the strangers offer. “Count me in!” he exclaimed in Russian. What a relief it would be to speak in his native tongue. Russia seemed so very far away, both in distance and in time. There was something timely about this mans unexpected appearance in the village bar, something fortuitous. Igor felt it, but couldn’t explain it. All he knew was that he was destined to sail away with this stranger.
In truth, Mirabelle hardly crossed his mind. Leaving her would not worry him, although telling her he was leaving worried him a great deal.
“We leave now” explained the stranger, much to Igor’s relief. “No time to lose, the winds are favourable tonight. Let’s go!”
And with that, Igor left the village, without looking back.

With years of intense Happiness training, and being herself a certified Happiness Coach™ in Rainbow Unified Bliss®, Lisa was reasonably adept at dispelling the occasional bouts of frustration that the six time travelers were experiencing while familiarizing themselves with the new time frame. Learning the new languages, both the local Spanish and the common language of the village tribe, English, was of paramount importance, and Mirabelle in particular was having difficulties. A basic vocabulary was easy enough, but when it came to grammar, Mirabelle was hopeless. Thus her communications were of a very basic and rudimentary nature, and she often felt unable to express her feelings, or her thoughtful observations on the many nuances, similarities and differences and overlaps of the current time and 18th century France. Not only was she obliged to learn two new languages, but was also learning to read and write. Often it seemed like all work and no play, too much pressure to perform, to learn, to do well at her studies, and yet play breaks were always frustrated in some manner because of her difficulties in communicating clearly. The fact that the others were progressing better with the languages made her feel alone, adrift in a sea of her own unexpressed thoughts.
Adeline had a more relaxed approach to the language difficulties, less inclined to struggle with it and more likely to chatter endlessly to Boris instead, and ask him to translate when she needed some help. She had discovered an interest, and some considerable talent, in the art room, experimenting with the paints and materials, and spent many happy hours engrossed in her paintings and playful collages of mundane (but to her, bizarre) objects. She was like a magpie, collecting items that caught her eye. The bright colours and smoothness of plastic appealed to her, especially when transformed in shape by one of those odd little plastic fire making gadgets. Sunglasses were another favourite, especially the different shades of lens. It was not unusual to hear one of the villagers complaining that the lids to the tupperware containers were missing, or all the bottle tops had been removed, to find they had all been glued together, with the flyswatter, a few odd flipflop beach shoes and the mirror lenses out of someones shades. But the villagers were on the whole amused, generously indulgent, and good naturedley rolled their eyes at her creative curiosity.
Boris was practical and capable, and true to form, was learning rapidly. He had no particular desire to express vague rambling thoughts (indeed, he was not a vague and rambling man by nature) and turned his attention to more practical matters. When he wasn’t chatting to Adeline, he was watching Jack tinkering inside car engines, or playing with Pierre’s camera and had quickly learned how to upload and play with the images on the computer. Often in the evenings Adeline would sit beside him and watch drowsily as the images changed in front of her eyes on the screen.
Ivan and Igor were learning what they needed to learn while doing it ~ tending the goats and chickens, working outside on the land, or helping with various building projects. They had taken to the local bars like ducks to water, and spent the evenings downing copious amounts of beer and wine with the locals, all of them babbling and shouting incoherently, but seeming to understand each other in the camaraderie of inebriation.

Mirabelle and Adeline sat in the morning sun on the verandah, appreciatively nibbling the perfectly formed sliced toasted bread and marmalade.
Almost six months had passed since they’d been found on the beach, confused and soaked, babbling incoherently. An early morning beach walker had found them (she had wondered if she was dreaming or hallucinating), and had attempted to engage them in conversation. A rudimentary smattering of French acquired during a grape picking sojourn in France many years ago helped. Much of what the bizarrely clad group said was incomprehensible, but it was clear that they were lost and hungry, so Lisa invited them back home with her. They were reluctant to get into the car, fearing a trap, and when she started the engine, they panicked and scrambled to get back out until Boris calmed them down and suggested they had better trust this stranger because frankly, what were their options? She seemed kind and helpful, even if she was shockingly under dressed with her legs exposed for all to see, and had an invisible and very noisy horse pulling her carriage.
Lisa lived in a relatively new community of creative and forward thinking individuals who were in the process of renovating an abandoned village in the orange groves. They called the village the Trading Post, a name that was a loose play on words on the social media platform where they had first become acquainted and traded and shared posts. They were a diverse assortment of people from all over the world, united with the common goal of experimenting with a new type of anarchist culture, a novel creative and expansive playful approach that was becoming increasingly popular.
Pierre and Étienne’s knowledge of French had come to the rescue upon the first arrival of the group, as they unraveled their strange tale. After much confusing conversation and translations for the rest of the occupants of the village, it became clear that the group were time travelers, although somewhat accidental and clearly unprepared.
While the travelers rested after an unfamiliar but welcome meal, the villagers discussed the situation with much interest and curiosity. It was decided that they would keep the news of the travelers a secret for the time being, and gradually assist them with learning about their new timeframe, current customs and the local languages.

cool synchs. There was another portion to the dream: After crossing the ocean the group arrived at a village. I wandered into a room … like a small hall or public room … and there were some people singing. They were singing christian songs, i think. In my dream i felt very accepting of them and appreciated their intention, but I wandered out thinking that it was not really my thing.

So a singing synch too.

Sandy Costa had been making a note of all the sightings throughout the year, as well as noting a variety of other apparently unrelated incidents and clues, and he kept them all in imaginary basket. (breaking news: draft saved at 11: 11 again). The Case of the Missing Surge Team and Possible Connection to the Flurge was known for short as the Basket Case.
Sandy was an unemployed channeler, although if you asked him to define himself in one sentence, that’s not what he would have said. He might not have known what to say, but he wouldn’t have said that. Not long after people had started growing their own food, producing their own energy, and writing their own books and magazines, everyone had started channeling their own mumbo jumbo, and Sandy was no longer in demand.
The Basket Case had been keeping him occupied and entertained, and the clues were starting to pour in like rain into an old boot.
Lisbon were expecting the arrival of some potentially interesting characters in the near future, from as far afield as Bangpie, and Caketown. There had been several cases of parallelitisis in Mari Fe’s village, a condition often associated with basket cases. There were whisperings through the sweet pea vines that there was something stirring in New Tartland, too.

Janet took a heavy stickman and smashed it on the worker’s head.

“Damn it! Janet! What have you done ?” Pearl was beginning to wonder about that hit and smash epidemy. Would she be the next to succumb ? She resisted a strong impulse to smash Janet’s head with what appeared to be a wooden hyppopotamus and took a deep breath.

“I don’t know”, Janet said with a little girl’s voice.
“Oh! Be serious for a moment and stop breathing your helium balloon for Roaster’s sake!”
Janet continued with the same voice, “At least we can throw them all through the portal now, can’t we ? Sorry, I won’t do that again…”

“Roaster! That man with the vermillion robes is so heavy”, complained Pearl.
“Maybe we can throw the portal at them and see what happens”, said Janet.

Pearl considered the idea for a few seconds, it was very tempting, but also so contrary to what they have been taught about portals, that it gave her chills. It could swallow the entire village, and the two Chicks in the same gulp.

“The story has just begun said Pearl, we can’t do that.”

While Yuhara and Sylvestrus were exploring Second Life worlds (Frolic Caper~Belle was still on an extended leave of absence), Blithe Gambol, although she didn’t entirely realize it at the time, was exploring First Life worlds on the Coast of Light.

Blithe and her partner Winn set off for the drum festival in the late afternoon heat, with the intention of reaching the Light Coast before sundown. The strong low sun flickered on and off as it hid behind trees and hills, and the hot dry wind whipped Blithes hair into her eyes, leaving the heavy heat of the Coast of the Sun behind and tranforming it into a light bone dry atmosphere that seemed to suck the air out of Blithe’s lungs. She filled the vacuum with smoke, listening to the words of the music playing ~ must be a reason why I’m king of my castle….king of my castle…it reminded her of Dealea’s story about King Author.

When they reached Vejer de la Frontera they made a wrong turning, although they were well aware that no turning is a wrong one. The new direction took them in a circle behind the Vejer promontory, through the umbrella pines along the coast. The sky was golden yellow behind the black sillouttes on one side, with a periwinkle sea on the other, rocky pale grey outcrops blushed with pink paddling in the gently lapping waves.

As they entered the village of Canos de Meca, they slowed to crawl behind the inching cars, as tanned people in brightly coloured clothes wove in and out of the traffic, and in and out of the exotic looking bars and restaurants. Blithe remembered the Second Life worlds she had been exploring earlier that day, and wondered if Second Life came with the smells of sardines barbequeing on the beach, or a warm breeze wafting past laden with snatches of laughter and conversation. Visually, certainly, Second Life would be hard presssed to beat the visual appeal of Canos de Meca at sunset on an August evening. There were plenty of opportunities to observe the people and the hostelries, as the traffic got progressively worse until it eventually came to a standstill. The narrow lanes were lined with parked cars, and throngs of people carrying coolers made their way to the sand dunes near the lighthouse.

Eventually, after several slow drives past looking for a miraculous parking space that didn’t appear, Blithe and Winn found a restaurant in between the coastal villages that was strangely empty of people. Even Winn, who was much less inclined towards fanciful imaginings than Blithe, remarked on how surreal the place was. It could have been anywhere in Spain, so strangely ordinary was its appearance in comparison to the Moorish beach hippy style of the villages. They ordered food, and relaxed in easy silence in the oasis of calm ordinariness. Blithe wondered if the place actually existed or if she had created it out of thin air, just for a respite and a parking place, and a clean unoccupied loo. Another First Life world, perhaps, constructed in the moment to meet the current requirements of ease.

At 11:11, after another two drives through the crawling cars and crowds, Winn turned the car around and headed for home. At 12:12 they reached the Coast of the Sun, shrouded in sea mist, and at 1:00am precisely, they arrived home. Later, as Blithe lay on the bed listening to the drums playing on the music machine, she closed her eyes and saw the sunset over the Atlantic, and felt the ocean breeze of the fan. She projected her attention to the dunes of Trafalgar ~ which, incidentally, didn’t take two hours, it was instant. In another instant, she was back in her bedroom, sipping agua con gas on the rocks and chatting to Winn. Seconds later, she was in a vibrant nightclub overlooking the beach, dancing in spirit between the jostling holidaymakers being served at the bar. She imagined that one or two of them noticed her energy.

Clearly, teleporting from one place to another had its benefits. The question of parking, for example, wouldn’t arise. But Blithe wouldn’t have wanted to miss the late afternoon drive to the Coast of Light, and the golden slanting lightbeams flickering between the cork oaks making their cork shorn trunks glow red, or the ocean appearing over the crest of a hill. And if she had arrived in an instant at the location she was intending to visit, then she would never have encountered the sunset from the particular angle of the approach via the wrong turn. Variety ~ and impulse, and the opportunities of the unexpected turns ~ was the weft of weaving First Life worlds ~ or was it the warp?

link: weaving worlds

The sky was most unusual. Something definitely weird was happpening.

Yann was looking at a TV show in which a clown was trying to juggle with his clothes.

Yann switched off the tv set and chose to go the cat in her basket.

“There you are!”

“Absolutely Sir”.

“Good very Good.”

Taking deep puffs of his pipe, he looked like a botle green velvet sofa, and that, combined with the crazy Baron of the nearby village, was the surest way of being left alone.

“The curious police want to know the details?” asked the Baron

“Not really … well now you make me think of it .. I reckon a bit.”

“ahahahahaha!” the manic laughter was infectious. Strange bugs were dancing. little dark skinned performers, tickling like an army of ants.

Rather than laughing, he’d taken a moment to consider the options. Obviously he couldn’t refuse help as his business had recently been pregnant, giving birth to conjoined twins.

So to speak.