Fearsome tales in our Readers 1

The not-at-all-fearsome Introduction

The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

   So begins Dorothea Mackellar's poem, more recognisable no doubt by most Australians for its second stanza, beginning:

I love a sunburnt country,...

   What the hell has that to do with the title? Relax, I'm just setting the scene, and you'll appreciate it in the end. Let me retrace a few steps into my past, and guarantee you that the promise I made in the title will be honoured.

   "Grade Six, get out your Readers and turn to Page 88."

   A flurry of activity under desks would follow, green Reading Books would appear, and Grade Six would sit, ready to go.

   "Now, read 'My Country'."

Grade 1 Reader with colour illustrations: SOURCE

   Before I go on, I should explain that this is 1955, and I am in that Grade Six class, and I'm nine years old, going on ten. We're in a little two-roomed school, the "Big Room" housing Grades Four to Eight. 

   Poor mathematicians will whip out their calculators and they'll take 4 from 8, and get 4. 

   Wrong. You just jumped straight in there, didn’t you? There are five grades there. Count them on your fingers, assuming you've got the regulation number on each hand. See?

   This meant that when Grade Six read "My Country" aloud, all five grades had the benefit of Ms Mackellar's poetry. In fact, every grade had the benefit of every other grade's Reading Book contents, and I'll come to that in due course. The point is, by the time we got to Grade 8, there was little we didn't know about what was in every grade's Reader.

   So what did we know about from them, word for word?

   This explains it rather well, but don't go there right now. It's probably of interest only to those who have been through the experience, but those who did will never forget it. You'll see why later.

    Most of the Readers reflected the ambiguity to which "My Country" alludes. I knew all about the sunburnt country because I spent half my childhood milking cows in its sunburnt bit, but that first stanza fascinated me.

    The paradox sprang from the fact that the literary adaptations were chosen to give us an attachment to and love for the "Old Country" that our parents and grandparents had fought for in two World Wars, and simultaneously to cater for the 1950s brand of Australian nationalism, which was as monochrome as most of the illustrations in the Readers.

    From these Readers, there were dozens of illustrations from Great Britain etched into our consciousness – Westminster Abbey for example, which to me seemed supremely ugly, but the villages in the English countryside seemed wonderful.

    Exotic and powerful images they were, of an alien chocolate-box world I was drawn to. What was a coppice? I had no idea. We didn't use the term "field" except to play cricket on; to us, they were paddocks. Nor did we have "woods". No, we had "the bush", or "scrub". We didn't have villages; we had... what? "Townships."

    I rather wish we'd had villages – a much more attractive notion than "township", which seems like something just waiting to grow into something bigger, like a town. Let's face it, some of our townships weren't all that pretty.

    But how easy for us "village" kids it was to identify with:

When the voices of children are heard on the green
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast
And everything else is still.

Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down
And the dews of night arise;
Come, come, leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies.

No, no, let us play, for it is yet day
And we cannot go to sleep;
Besides, in the sky the little birds fly
And the hills are all cover'd with sheep.

Well, well, go & play till the light fades away
And then go home to bed.''
The little ones leaped & shouted & laugh'd
And all the hills echoed.

Songs of Innocence (William Blake)

   [Oh Mr Blake, for a brilliant poet, that last rhyme is unworthy of you. Of all the things that rhyme with "bed" you settled for "echoed", which meant we had to pronounce it "echo-wed". Can Do Better.]

   In those Readers, we had joyful poems from our own experience to which we could also relate, those of us who knew something of the tropical and subtropical rainforests, or even our little creeks and rivers:

By channels of coolness the echoes are calling,
And down the dim gorges I hear the creek falling:
It lives in the mountain where moss and the sedges
Touch with their beauty the banks and the ledges.
Through breaks of the cedar and sycamore bowers
Struggles the light that is love to the flowers;
And, softer than slumber, and sweeter than singing,
The notes of the bell-birds are running and ringing.

Bellbirds (Henry Kendall)

   In the higher grades, the content darkened. We were being prepared for real life, with no illusions, kiddies. Even the choice of English poems reflected this:

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (Thomas Gray)

   It's not the poetry so much I wanted to talk about; not the pretty stuff. It's mainly the prose extracts and adaptations that were served up to us to improve our minds, to instil solid values derived from Victorian England and the early twentieth century. Some of them were vividly and starkly painful for sensitive children.

    Dare you go on? Dare I? Of course I will, and so should you. I'll give you some examples of what we heard over and over for five years. It's a wonder some of us didn't end up as psychopaths or emotional wrecks.

Next: The Daisy and the Lark [256 words]
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Fearsome tales in our Readers 1: Introduction [1000 words] 
Fearsome tales in our Readers 2: The Daisy and the Lark [256 words] 
Fearsome tales in our Readers 3: The Little Match Girl [206 words] 
Fearsome tales in our Readers 4: The Crocodile and the Bull [280 words] 
Fearsome tales in our Readers 5: Escape from the wolves [444 words] 
Fearsome tales in our Readers 6: Mazeppa's Ride [438 words] 
Fearsome tales in our Readers 7: A Tale of Two Cities [336 words] 
Fearsome tales in our Readers 8: Gelert [343 words]

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The jumping of the sharks

A friend of mine used the header containing the words "jumping sharks" in one of her feisty political articles. At least I regard her as a friend, though I've never actually met her, and she might tell me to go visit the aquarium and take a leisurely swim in the shark pool. But this isn't about her.

   It was when my older sister Lyn and I were about nine and seven respectively. All too rarely we would stay a few days with Aunty Kate and Uncle Harry in Gladstone (pop. then 7500). They lived in a narrow lane on the seaward side of the main shopping street in town. It was an open, airy house and you could see a broad sweep of the bright blue harbour from their kitchen.

   We loved these little holidays – not enough of them from our point of view (and probably our mother's). Aunty Kate would walk with us down to one of the two local picture theatres and then walk home. We'd see a movie, and walk back on our own. We thought that was big bikkies because there were sometimes cars in the main street, driving along – three or four a minute, unlike Calliope, which would have averaged three or four an hour.

   On this occasion, we were going to see Walt Disney's Peter Pan down at the Regent Theatre, with its vertical neon sign in several hues that read – you guessed it – REGENT.

   This was hugely exciting, and we were not disappointed in the movie. I fell in love with Tinker Bell, though even at that age I could see she was a right little sod and would be ... well ... a handful. 

   I vividly remember when Hook, that evil swine, was creeping up on Peter, half-snoozing at the top of the hill, arms folded under his head. I was also screaming like every other kid around me as Hook, or his wicked black silhouette, got closer and closer to the top. Why wouldn't Peter open his eyes?
 
   'Peter!" we screamed, utterly terrified for him and nearly busting the canvas seats in our consternation.

   The idiot took no notice at all.

   Peter, you will be relieved to know, escaped. I've forgotten how now, but maybe it was something to do with that relentlessly ticking crocodile, with whom we had something of a love-hate-fear-awe relationship, given his determination to swallow the villainous Hook. We heartily approved of that bit.

   But hey, I don't want to give away the best bits of the movie if you've never seen it. It was the one and only time I ever did, and maybe at the age I am now, it's probably best I never see it again. Things don't have quite the same magic as when you're seven and when, for us bush kids, movies were a great novelty.

   Anyway, we came back to Aunty Kate's at Oaka Lane, having safely negotiated the crossing of Tank Street all by ourselves.

   "You should have seen it, Aunty Kate. It was...(words failed me – there were none grand enough) ... good!"

   She smiled at me. She always had a soft voice.

   "No. I was happy sitting here in the kitchen, watching the sharks jumping out there in the harbour." 

   Sharks jumping in the harbour?

   In spite of the wonders Mr Disney brought us with his cartoon, I was utterly entranced by the idea. To spend the afternoon on the canvas deck chair watching as massive grey sharks leaped high amongst the choppy white caps in the ocean seemed to me a wondrous enterprise.

   Why hadn't she told me about it before? I spent quite a lot of time in the last days of our holiday on the little porch looking and looking for even just one shark to thrust its great bulk high into the air, but none did I see.

   Not even one.

My perception [at age 7] of what I should see

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Afterword:

Aunty Kate lived to 101 years of age. It would be nice to claim or to have extracted some longevity genes from her, but as she was married to Dad's brother, I got no genetic benefit from that. Her maiden name was Howard, and now, for the first time in my life, I have made the connection with a less fortunate Catherine Howard, whose wifely head Henry VIII had chopped off when she was only 20 or so.

   Aunty Kate got her 100th birthday telegram from the Queen, I was told, though I never saw it. Luckily the Queen isn't too au fait with the new technology, because all too soon, she'll probably just dash off a quick email on the laptop for the centenarians before jumping into bed, and that won't be anywhere near as good as a real telegram.

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How the battle is played

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I remember reading on one blog how deeply someone resented the use of the expression: "John Smith lost his fight with cancer last night...."

   Their resentment was based on the idea that "lost" implied the victim* was weak or hadn't tried hard enough to confront the illness. The truth is that most do everything in their power to survive, yet still lose.

   I gave this some implicit backing in a blog post in May this year, when I mentally berated a person intending to comfort me when they said

     "If anyone can beat this, it's you."

   I said nothing at the time, but wrote on the blog (waspishly I now see):

It's well meant, and a huge compliment in one way, but some have no idea the way it makes me feel, if I am going downhill - which, bit by bit, I am, going by the objective evidence. It makes me feel that I've failed, and am continuing to do so. Are you expecting me to conquer this thing that no-one in the world has overcome before? Pardon me if I "fail". I'll do better next time if I can. I'll try harder, I promise.

   The fact is that when John Smith loses his battle with such a disease, there's nothing inherently wrong with saying so. 

   Many will remember the Australian Open Tennis final in January 2012. I certainly do. Rafael Nadal was playing Novak Djokovic.

   "I went to sleep before it finished," someone said on the phone later in that day, "Did Nadal win? I wanted him to."

   "No," I said, "he lost, but it was one of the greatest battles of all time. It went to five sets."

   Nadal lost that fight. I don't remember anyone saying he was a wimp. After a match that took nearly six hours, who would dare? He lost, but displayed fantastic courage right up to (and after) that last point.

   It's often the same with a person who dies of cancer. They’ve done all in their power to stay alive, but against an attacker which over time has so many advantages, they may well lose their fight. It's no criticism or disrespect to say so. Even the use of the word "fight" indicates otherwise.

   There does come a time when a person has the right to a peaceful death. An acceptance of its inevitability. They should not be denied their right to appreciate when they have reached that point. Nadal lost the battle, and walked off with great dignity. Let's not deny that right to the terminally ill.

Afterthought, Tuesday, 9 October 2012 [My late mother's birthday.]  10:20 AM: What I was also reaching out to was another thought: there is also no weakness in knowing the right time to yield (I use that word deliberately, but "accept" is also a fair description.) Chess players see no loss of face or dignity in resigning a game when they know several moves from the end that they have no avenue of escaping inevitable defeat. There is far more dignity in that than in playing it out to a conclusion that even Blind Freddie can see coming.

Analogise that.

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*The word "victim" is another that many might baulk at, because these days it's regarded as a loaded word as well.  **sigh** Writing anything these days is like walking through a PC minefield. Maybe I shouldn't use "Blind Freddie" either? Well, guess what, Freddie may be incapacitated, but it doesn't mean I think he's stupid.

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The pitfalls of self-medication

Last night Tracey brought me a late cup of tea, as she always does, with the usual pills. There are only two; a Keppra the size of a horse-pill, and a little one that's basically an antacid, along with a little food, so the horse-pill doesn't burn a hole through my stomach as I sleep.

   "I'll bring you something to eat with it in a minute. I have something else to do."

   I did not enquire what could be so important as to hold up delivery of my co-pill snack. Some things I don't need to know, and nor do you. She'd just been watching a long TV programme, had rushed to perform kitchen duties and probably should have detoured on the way to the kitchen, but enough said. I'm a patient man by nature and these little derelictions don't faze me.

   I have a pressing and enduring concern that this thing in my brain is crowding out the useful bit, and Alzheimer's, memory loss or dementia will be my fate, so anything I can do to slow it down I will.

   When she returned with the snack, I had up on the screen this news article from our trusty ABC online news:
 
Curry drug could help rebuild brain after stroke

   There was additional information in another article. Not only did it have implications for the memory-destroying capacity of the drugs I'm on, it may, according to the study in the first article, reduce "stroke-caused motor deficits – problems of muscle and movement control...."

    I never had a stroke, but many of the effects of the brain tumour in the motor area for my right side are identical.

   "The active component is [I'll fill this in later – I've forgotten!] based on the saffron component of the [forgotten this too] herb," I said to her. "It seems you can get it as a capsule. I'd love some of that."

   "Hang on a minute," she said. "I read about that some time ago."

   She's always read about these things before they hit the news, in her odd quest to keep me alive as long as possible. I honestly don't know why, but to continue....

   I can think of every other herb known to the Spice Islands and even the Baby Jesus ones, but this one won't come to me till I get the news item back up on the screen.

   CIRCUMIN in TURMERIC. CIRCUMIN in TURMERIC. CIRCUMIN in TURMERIC – yes, I had to look it up, dammit.

   "There's a warning that Circumin doesn't go with Avastin," she said. "They negate each other or something, I can't quite remember how it works."

   "Oh."

   I looked that warning up on google too, and sure enough, there was an explanation on a colon cancer page. If this is right, it doesn't negate the anti-angiogenesis of Avastin, it does something just as dangerous. It reinforces it, but not in a good way.

   [I]f you are taking Avastin or any type of blood thinner such as Coumadin or Lovenox, then you should not take Circumin. The anti-angiogenesis effects of it in combination with those of Avastin can be a double whammy....

   ...Double whammies are bad because none of these medicines or spices or herbs restrict their activities to tumors. The effect of anti-angiogenesis drugs on the rest of your system is to inhibit wound healing. Avastin puts you at a much higher risk for GI bleeds (or brain bleeds) and then the Lovenox or Circumin will both increase that risk, and make it harder to stop bleeding.*

   I've never heard of Lovenox or Coumadin, but I'm injected daily with Clexane, which does the same job as a blood thinner. I'm clot-city I am.

   This ramble is a convoluted way of saying that when it comes to treating yourself with pills and potions when you're already on patent drugs of various types, it's fools who rush in. I could easily have been tempted to see if Circumin was available at the health store, and they could cheerfully have sold it to me. [OK, maybe there would be warnings on the label; I have no idea.] I could have taken it thinking I might help delay loss of memory or related conditions as well as motor skills, and blown my brain up after the next Avastin infusion – which is a very precisely measured dose based on body weight.

   These are just studies, which means there's much testing to be done and much to take into account before getting carried away. And surprise of surprises, not everything you read on the net is true.

   Rely on impulse, and the next thing that happens is you may well get carried away – on a one-way trip you-know-where.

   Oh – last thing. I almost forgot [again] to come back to where I started. Remember I said I'd forgotten what the treat was that Tracey gave me with my tea last night? I'm just going to have to ask her what it was because even to save my life I can't remember, and it's driving me nuts.

   It's like it never happened. Mind you, I was focused on that article on memory a time. Yeah. That's it.

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* My underlining.
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Open letter to baby-boomer critics

We didn't ask for much

I don't get cross at much, but one thing that really sticks in my craw is the constant harping by a certain section of a certain age bracket – that somehow the baby-boomers are the source of all evil in the world.
   
    Not you, of course – you're smarter than that.
   
    Do they realise that the next generation is going to say exactly the same thing about theirs? With just as much or as little justification? Probably not. They're God's gift to humanity they are.
   
    What exactly are they doing to create a better world? Are they using fewer resources? Are they voting for political parties that are trying to? Not by the look of that house and that car and those clothes they're not.
   
    Which generation is expert at internet crime, likely to cause the collapse of the global economic system as we know it, and deal in new forms of bush-button warfare?
   
    Not fair criticism, they say. No, it's not fair – but it's as fair as what they're dishing out to their parents, or maybe their grandparents.
   
    Not you, of course, if you happen to be of that generation – as I said, you're smarter than that.
   
    Do they think corporate greed suddenly emerged twenty-plus years after the end of World War 2, just with people now retiring? Have they never heard of the 1929 Depression, the idiocy of Prohibition that gave us the platform for organised crime? Should the baby-boomers try to pass the buck to their parents, and they might do to theirs?
   
    Yes, some baby-boomers made money by investing in a house to put a roof over their children's head. Generally, they were not looking to end their lives basking in luxury. They just wanted security, and most paid for it fortnight by fortnight, interest rates at about 15%.

     Some put off travel until retirement, once they gave their kids a start in life. Now a lot don't have the money or the health to do that, or new responsibilities have been dumped in their laps that they had no idea were coming. They've missed out on a lot of the fun. Maybe not your oldies. Good for them if they've managed to squeeze it in before they drop off the perch.
   
    Who wants to start at the top? Who's seeking luxury right now? Who's travelled all over the world before they're thirty, and have a brand new car?
   
    I know that you saved money and paid for your trip and are busting your guts paying off that car. You know better than the whingers. I've no intention of insulting you. And you also know what your oldies did for you.
   
    A lot of baby-boomers didn't have any of this. They didn't leave high school with a glorious gap year ahead, often with no end of the gap in sight, supported by social security built on a system the post-war generation paid for. It was unthinkable.
   
    Incidentally, I'm in favour of the gap year, but that's another story. The point is, remember where the structure which supports it comes from.
   
    Most baby-boomers helped create a stable financial environment, paid into superannuation funds or, if they couldn't afford that or it wasn't available, the money was put into giving their kids the education and comforts they now have.
   
    Break your arm at basketball on a Saturday afternoon, and [in Australia] you can go to Accident & Emergency at a public hospital and have it dealt with – free of charge. Yes, it's way from perfect, but Gina Rinehart didn't give you that. Those baby-boomers did.
   
    The greatest critics are the well-heeled upstarts who have been handed their advantages on a silver platter. Luckily there are others the same age; you, for example, who know what your parents have done/are doing for you, and yes, we know you are still paying off your HECS tertiary education debt. I had to pay term by term for my university fees as well in the 1960s. Up front.
   
    Let's not forget a few things. Many of these baby-boomers are rearing their children's kids while their own children draw a salary. Yes, that income is critical and they don't begrudge it. In sadder cases, they're rearing children whose parents are rarely if ever around.
   
    Bear in mind that this is after these baby-boomers spent their working lives rearing their own, and thought they were going to get a break. Raising grandchildren is exhausting for people approaching old age, but they rarely complain, for the sake of those kids.
   
    They have not robbed their children of their future. In many cases, they sacrificed their own. And if they haven't solved the world's problems, like it or not, you may well have been the beneficiary, and the debt for that might well be passed down to your children through you.
   
    The ingratitude of those who say they are now going to have to pay something to support their parents' old age is bloody despicable. If that's their attitude, I say, grow up, kiddies. Make the stats say what you like. We were there, preparing to give our kids a future. It so happened that some made money. Woopie-do. A lot didn't because they made big sacrifices, and often still are.
   
    But as I said, I'm not talking about you. You have more sense. It's them. The immature, self-centred ingrates.
   
    To them I say, get off our backs. Many baby-boomers are all too familiar with that sensation, and we don't buy those spurious claims the piggy-backing little sods are making.

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NOTE: My own children paid their own way after high school. They gave us as much as we gave them, and they don't complain.

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Five Sentence Fiction: Devotion

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Once again, a five sentence fiction challenge posed by Lillie McFerrin.

This time: devotion. Here's a link to other contributions. 

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Her anticipation mounted as she savoured the prospect of guilty pleasure, the wicked sweetness at the end – ah, she was so near now.

   She looked up into his eyes with that fateful longing, her lust so obviously exposed to the young man – this stranger.

   "I do this so rarely...." she stammered, "... it's..."

   "You did order extra fries and a double cone, didn't you?"

   "Yes...it's my one indulgence – just once in a blue moon," she tried to add, but already he had turned away, checking the next order as another car rolled up behind hers.

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My suddenly "electric" chair and FaceBook

A picture is worth a thousand words. What would I do without Wonder Woman?

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Note: as Tracey added to the FaceBook thread because people were [understandably] confused by my metaphorical use of the term "electric chair".

Tracey James Just to clarify - Den's chair is a regular old mechanical recliner. Normally there is nothing electric about it!

[✺le sigh✺ It payeth not to wax lyrical....]

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The return of the tabby

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She is a free spirit. But no way does she belong to us is what I said as late as April this year.

   In that posting I related the sad circumstances by which Soxy regarded us as having betrayed her fragile trust. It seems she's on the way to forgiving us, though it has taken two and a half years. There are strings attached – her conditions, needless to say.

   That she seemed likely never to come round was hugely disappointing to Tracey and Christian. When we returned from Melbourne, they did their best to convince her we were staying, but no blandishments were sufficient. At night she would prefer to starve and freeze rather than come inside to eat or to sit at the fire.

   'Idiot cat,' said Tracey, with colourful verbal embellishments I won't write down here. Some family secrets must be preserved.

   One freezing night round June this year, snow was predicted. One of us opened the front door that night and she simply strolled in, tail high in the air. I own the joint. When she ate food in the kitchen, we left her alone, because people hanging around made her nervous. They're going to try to catch me or do something evil. I just know it.

   We were sitting in the lounge, expecting from the moment she finished eating to demand immediate release from the comparative warmth of the kitchen to return to the bitter conditions outside. Instead, she strolled into the lounge and sat Sphinx-like in front of the fire.

   Every time someone moved, she swivelled around to see who was going to leap upon her and try to tear her to pieces. She didn't stray from the hearth.

   Surprisingly, nor did she demand to be let out when we went to bed, but remained basking by the fire. A couple of years older and fatter than before the Great Betrayal, she'd mellowed. True, when Dr Who was on she covered her eyes, and in dreams sometimes she acted out great dramas, judging by her body movement. Mostly, she sat or lay with tail wrapped neatly around her legs, the perfect embodiment of qi.

   Over the next few days, she decided for herself whether to stay in or go out. She knew when the night was going to be extra cold, and usually stayed in, but not always. She had territory to defend from the black and white cat with the mournful drawn-out mew. (The first time I heard it, I thought some cat, maybe Soxy, was trapped or poisoned and in terrible pain, but it was just the rival cat doing its thing.)

   She settled fairly well into the lounge area, though never failed to react to the slightest movement from one of us. Occasionally she took to strolling over to Christian, asking to be made much of. He obliged, as was his duty as an underling.

   She was still a princess, asserting her authority. That never changed. Sometimes she'd ask to be let in, and then sit just outside the door. Now and again, affecting great reluctance but genuine condescension, she'd come in, after a bit of ego-stroking by the door-opener. 

   More often than not, the door would be closed in her face by the impudent human, but on its reopening seconds later, she'd walk in with a facial expression like the Dowager Countess in Downton Abbey. There, let me add hastily, the comparison ends, apart from certain qualities of disposition.

   Mission complete. Humans playing their subservient role at the door, taking their cue from the Mistress of Ceremonies.

   When so inclined, she'd even play with her old toys; a realistic little mouse in particular. She'd act out the role of cruel mouse tormentor as with live mice, and then go to sleep with it, hugging it to her belly.

Laugh and I scratch your eyes out

   The belly. Why was it getting bigger and bigger? She wasn't eating all that much that we could see, and yes, a spayed cat as she gets older does tend to develop an early middle-age spread. As well, in front of the fire, she wasn't using anything like as much energy keeping warm as in sub-zero temperatures and in fighting off other cats. But it didn't quite add up.

   We got a clue when next door's ancient little terrier cashed in his chips and went to Jesus.

   'I still want to leave his dry food out,' the neighbour said sadly, 'but I've stopped. Soxy will miss it.'

   So that was it. All these years Soxy had been nicking poor Muttley's nuts. (Well, I think that's what the neighbour called his dry food, but I'm not going to check for fear it will spoil my story. We always called Soxy's her "crunchies".)

   That may help to explain the Garfield-like physique she had acquired. Mind you, in that department she has nothing on Christian's friend's cat, Hamburger, who makes Garfield look like a cheetah and Soxy severely anorexic.

   When it's not cold enough for a fire, she sits in front of the burner, looking aggrieved, staring at its glass door and willing it to fill with bright red coals and gentle flames flickering around the wood.

   'Never go away again,' she says as she strolls over, 'or I'll... I'll....'

   The threat remains hanging in the air, like an unanswerable question.

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This tale follows on from two others:

The truth about dogs and cats - dog

The truth about dogs and cats - cat

 I think you'd enjoy them.

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Five Sentence Fiction: Zombies!

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Once again, a five sentence fiction challenge posed by Lillie McFerrin.

It's a tough one: zombies! Here's a link to other contributions.

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Source

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Oh, he knew about zombies all right – sitting slouched over his desk he'd read every book and online source and viewed all the movies, but took special interest in one recurring theme. The erratic behaviour of humans in a collapsing society was as much a source of personal danger as attacks by the living dead.

   He stopped eating junk, learned how to secure a house against invasion and to defend himself, mastered techniques of survival in haunts where all the trappings of civilisation were absent, developing taut lean muscles, mental endurance and a newly generated maturity.

   With the transmutation far advanced and zombie books no longer the focus of his interest, he made a neat pile of them on his desk.

   "At last you've come to your senses," his father said, peering with profound distaste at the books destined for disposal, "that zombie stuff was such a ridiculous waste of time."

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"Taste the soup!"

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It's always fascinated me that every culture group has its own brand of humour. Sometimes a joke is so culture bound that it is incomprehensible to outsiders. 

   I remember being in Taiwan with a group of Taiwanese students and we began telling jokes. It was clear that while many of them are universal, several just didn't cross the culture barrier. Some of their own jokes were uproariously funny to them, but not to us. Some of ours were also funny for them, but others were clearly mystifying. 

   In Korea on that same trip, it seemed that all the jokes were compatible, though I admit that there were plentiful supplies of soju at that dinner, and the things that amused us highly first time round might not have stood up very well to the retelling on the next morning. 

   Sufi humour is also well known. I have a whole book of it. Sometimes I find that the stories are the same as Zen ones, but as both are in the mystical tradition, that is hardly surprising. Russian and Polish humour have their own edge as well. 

   Yet somehow Jewish humour cuts across all boundaries. Maybe we just get to see so much of it on American sitcoms. This one, from Leo Rosten's The New Joys of Yiddish tickled my fancy. 

   The book was given to me by my friends Carl and Joan. Well, in my cracked memory I thought it was Joan who'd brought it, but Tracey assures me that it was Carl who did, so there you go. I seem to recall the harder I think about it that she's right, as I now have a clear memory of it – maybe a reinvented one, as she described just where he was, next to my bookcase, at the time he gave it to me. Memory does that. 

   Anyway, here's a tiny example, based on the way 'Aha!' is used in Yiddish. 

Postscript: we were just now watching a TV show with Bernadette Peters in it.
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   "How old do you think she is?" I asked, having just consulted the oracle.

   "Old!" Tracey said. "I've been watching her in musicals since I was little."

   There was a pause.

   "She's just a couple of months younger than I am," I said, in mock-injury at her comment.

   She laughed much too loudly when admitting to her faux pas.

   I guess that's our brand of humour....

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Spurred on

It seems that many of my childhood stories involve horses, and this one is no exception. I've already mentioned how my own little bay mare, Topsy, was an utter bitch when it came to Pony Club, because she was intensely bossy and competitive.

   One afternoon we decided that I would ride the grey mare, Rusty, instead of Topsy, so the horses around me at Pony Club weren't getting their ears shredded. We hadn't done this before because in real life, Rusty was at least as old as I was, meaning that she was in late middle age in horse years. This meant that she was wise to the ways of children and could quickly dominate them.

   To compensate, she had a beautiful temperament otherwise and a canter so gentle you could put a kid of five on her.

   The only problem was that with a child on her back, she did things at her own speed. This didn't suit Pony Club activities.

    So Dad's solution seemed the obvious one. I needed a pair of spurs. I was pleased with the idea because they looked and felt cool, as if I were a real cowboy. Maybe the term 'winning his spurs' was stuck there somewhere in my subconscious.

   When I got them – an old pair that had been hanging on a nail in the hayshed – I polished the brass till it looked like gold. Well, I thought it did.

   'Just keep your toes in,' Dad said, 'and be careful.'

   We started off from the house, spurs jingling a little. Rusty knew that noise, and pricked up her ears. It was not a noise she was fond off.

   Not fifty metres from home, I decided on a little test. I turned my toes out and gave Rusty a gentle nudge with the spurs.

   She looked (and felt) very lively and broke into a trot immediately.
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   Riding a horse at a trot means standing in the stirrups every second stride. As a novice with this gear, I didn't realise that with each trotting stride I was spurring her a bit. Not a lot, but Rusty was highly offended.

   She lengthened her trotting stride, which doubled the spurring effect.

   'What?' she said, 'You little pipsqueak. You were put on my back when you were two years old, and I treated you as gentle as ... a baby. What's this about?'

   She waived the canter option and flew straight into a gallop, and at that pace we rounded the corner at the bottom of the hill.

   If I could have spoken the Calliope horse dialect and if she'd been in the mood to listen, I'd have explained that I had my whole attention focused on trying to keep my heels out, and she wasn't helping one little bit by reckless galloping.

   She was in no mood for discussions. On the contrary, she followed the road almost at full speed along past Boys's paddock, up the hill by the cowyard.

   It was only then I realised I was in a spot of real bother, on a sorely aggrieved nag about to bolt, and me with no idea of spur-control.

   She was heading straight for the narrow lane to the cattle grid that was the exit to our property – the one to the cemetery road. The way things were going, I might have been needing a plot there before too long.

   In case you don't know, a grid is very effective way to keep cows and horses in, simply because they hate trying to pass over anything they can see through downwards, and rarely will. Instinctively, cloven-hoofed animals feel unsafe on them. Horses too, they won't do it.

   If Rusty attempted to cross the grid at a gallop, or to leap it, the result would probably have been a broken leg and a merciful bullet for her, and a broken neck for me.

   As I struggled to work out how to keep my spurs from raking her sides, I did at least have the presence of mind to realise we were heading for a sudden and unpleasant way to finish life's journey, and while that might have been OK for Rusty, having gone well past horsey middle age, I hadn't really got mine started.

   For the first time since she bolted, I took a bit of control and wheeled her to the right, through the open gate of the four acre paddock beside the lane that ended at the grid. Still pelting along at a pace that would have done credit to the horses at the final bend in the Melbourne Cup – and having travelled nearly that far by then – we did one entire circuit of the paddock and were off for a second turn. I was still trying to figure things out; still focused on trying not to hurt her with the cursed spurs.

   At least, death by cattle-grid had been avoided.

   Meanwhile, my father had not been idle. He had witnessed the whole thing from the back landing, and could see the impending disaster unfolding, yea, before his very eyes.

   Barefoot, he raced after us, jumping the fence to take a shortcut through Boys's paddock and clearing the fence by a foot on the other side. All that championship sprinting he'd done in his youth came in handy on that day. Obviously, the hurdling of the two fences came naturally, which was a bit of luck for us both.

   Feet barely touching the ground, he raced by the cowyard as my charger and I were halfway round the second circuit of the four-acre paddock. Dad headed for the gate I'd opted for in avoiding the suicidal lane to the grid.

   It was at this point that I had a thought. Instead of trying not to spur Rusty on to greater speeds before she dropped dead of exhaustion, why not try to pull her up? Hit the brakes? Slam on the anchors? Stop her?

   In other words, to lean back on the reins as hard as I could.

   I simply hadn't thought of that. Over about a hundred metres, she slowed in response as I dragged on the snaffle bit. She had a soft mouth and her slowing down meant that the relentless spurring eased somewhat. Finally, with me standing in the stirrups and reefing back on the reins with all my weight, she ground to a halt just as Dad came charging through the open paddock gate, face red as a beetroot with fury and effort.

   'What the bloody hell... why didn't you pull her up a mile back? What sort of horseman are you?'

   'I was hurting her and I was trying not to,' I whimpered, looking down at her sides as my father wrenched the spurs off my boots. There were spots of blood at spur-tip level and I felt appalled at what I'd done.

   'I just didn't think about trying to pull her up.'

   He had that resigned look on his face, knowing I was so soft-hearted that it was true. Also, that I was an idiot.

   'You won't be needing these again,' he said, hobbling back down the track, my shiny brass spurs in his hand. There was sharp gravel on the road and he wouldn't have felt a thing while running over it to try to save my miserable life. He was feeling the stone bruises now.

   It's probable that mine was the shortest career for a spurred cowboy in history. I had absolutely no desire to put them back on, and never wore a pair again.
 

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Mobile phone user?

I have a little request to make of you. If you use a cell-phone or other mobile device to access this blog, will you kindly let me know if it is now taking an unacceptably long time to load?

The reason I ask is that I added a couple of items to the right side navigation bar which demand that the computer access quite a lot of information from this and other sites before it finishes loading the page.

On this blog, for example, it has to calculate from the data available the number of visits to each page, the top ten for the month, arrange them in order and give them thumbnail images.

From other blogs it has to calculate which of them was last updated, assemble them and provide each with an icon. I also had a thumbnail image for each blog entry but decided against that option to save download time.

I had another fancy little program there too, that showed the last ten visitors, where they came from and what they were viewing on this site. That was fun but again it means accessing data and arranging it. It also added advertising to the site, which I don't want. This is a no-ad site!

All this seems to make little difference on a computer, or an iPad. I'm not sure about a mobile phone like an iPhone. But what I do know for sure is that accessing the site from the primitive browser on the Kindle takes ages now and didn't before.

I'll discard every bit of gimmickry on the site if long loading time stops people visiting from mobile or any other device. But I'd just like to know if that's your experience.

Now let me write another childhood story, which I've not done for too long. I have a few sitting there to complete.

Many thanks!

Denis.

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The [complete] Secret Pleasures of Reginald

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See, I've been overwhelmed by these requests – thousands and thousands of them – to print the entirety of P. G. Wodehouse's "Secret Pleasures". Maybe close to a million requests.

Well, I would have, if anyone had thought to email such a request to me; one that must have been in their minds since I published that snippet last Thursday. But it's obvious that people have been indulging in Reginald's secret pleasures themselves. 

I know you want it though. You know you do. So here it is. A wonderful little story, and advice I intend to follow for the rest of my life.

THE SECRET PLEASURES OF REGINALD 

P G Wodehouse

I found Reggie in the club one Saturday afternoon. He was reclining in a long chair, motionless, his eyes fixed glassily on the ceiling. He frowned a little when I spoke. "You don't seem to be doing anything," I said.

"It's not what I'm doing, it's what I am not doing that matters."

It sounded like an epigram, but epigrams are so little associated with Reggie that I ventured to ask what he meant.

He sighed. "Ah well," he said. "I suppose the sooner I tell you, the sooner you'll go. Do you know Bodfish?"

I shuddered. "Wilkinson Bodfish? I do."

"Have you ever spent a weekend at Bodfish's place in the country?"

I shuddered again. "I have."

"Well, I'm not spending the weekend at Bodfish's place in the country."

"I see you're not. But..."

"You don't understand. I do not mean that I am simply absent from Bodfish's place in the country. I mean that I am deliberately not spending the weekend there. When you interrupted me just now, I was not strolling down to Bodfish's garage, listening to his prattle about his new car."

I glanced around uneasily.

"Reggie, old man, you're – you're not – This hot weather..."

"I am perfectly well, and in possession of all my faculties. Now tell me. Can you imagine anything more awful than to spend a weekend with Bodfish?"

On the spur of the moment I could not.

"Can you imagine anything more delightful, then, than not spending a weekend with Bodfish? Well, that's what I'm doing now. Soon, when you have gone – if you have any other engagements, please don't let me keep you – I shall not go into the house and not listen to Mrs. Bodfish on the subject of young Willie Bodfish's premature intelligence."

I got his true meaning. "I see. You mean that you will be thanking your stars that you aren't with Bodfish."

"That is it, put crudely. But I go further. I don't indulge in a mere momentary self-congratulation, I do the thing thoroughly. If I were weekending at Bodfish's, I should have arrived there just half an hour ago. I therefore selected that moment for beginning not to weekend with Bodfish. I settled myself in this chair and I did not have my back slapped at the station. A few minutes later I was not whirling along the country roads, trying to balance the car with my legs and an elbow. Time passed, and I was not shaking hands with Mrs. Bodfish. I have just had the most corking half-hour, and shortly – when you have remembered an appointment – I shall go on having it. What I am really looking forward to is the happy time after dinner. I shall pass it in not playing bridge with Bodfish, Mrs. Bodfish, and a neighbor. Sunday morning is the best part of the whole weekend, though. That is when I shall most enjoy myself. Do you know a man named Pringle? Next Saturday I am not going to stay with Pringle. I forget who is not to be my host the Saturday after that. I have so many engagements of this kind that I lose track of them."

"But, Reggie, this is genius. You have hit on the greatest idea of the age. You might extend this system of yours."

"I do. Some of the jolliest evenings I have spent have been not at the theatre."

"I have often wondered what it was that made you look so fit and happy."

"Yes. These little non-visits of mine pick me up and put life into me for the coming week. I get up on Monday morning feeling like a lion. The reason I selected Bodfish this week, though I was practically engaged to a man named Stevenson who lives out in Connecticut, was that I felt rundown and needed a real rest. I shall be all right on Monday."

"And so shall I," I said, sinking into the chair beside him.

"You're not going to the country?" he asked regretfully.

"I am not. I, too, need a tonic. I shall join you at Bodfish's. I really feel a lot better already."

I closed my eyes, and relaxed, and a great peace settled upon me.

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