As you will probably be able to tell, I'm not particularly enamoured of English coursework.
Even the dullness of taking the bus
Never compares to the coursework
Going on walks you know will disgust
Looks preferable to doing the coursework
I’ll do some dusting to occupy time
Should I be given the coursework
However, these dirty patches of grime
Can never dispose of the coursework
O coursework, coursework, please let me be
Unless you enjoy to torment
Right now I could jump off a bridge and be free
Smile as I start my descent
Even a board meeting held in my lunch
Would never get rid of this feeling, this hunch
Of coursework a-waiting
Reading, annotating
KILL ME NOW! I CAN’T STAND THE COURSEWORK!!
Wednesday 31 March 2010
Friday 26 March 2010
Charlotte Has A Reunion
Part of the 'let's compile a big folder with lots of random poems and stories and pictures and give it to Charlotte for her birthday' series. Again written a while ago, so-- Nah, not going to apologise. I like it. Enjoy!
Charlotte Has A Reunion
Charlotte slowly lifted the rusty latch and winced as it protested loudly.
“What’s the big idea?” it screeched. “I was sleeping here!”
Charlotte ignored it and padded across the dew-speckled garden towards the imposing double doors at the front of the house. Tiptoeing up the steps, she looked round furtively, desperately hoping that no-one, or nothing, had seen her.
A whisper swept through the garden. Charlotte tensed as a large wuffle waddled out onto the lawn. With its hooked beak and razor-sharp talons, it looked a fearsome beast. Charlotte was certainly scared, but more for her mind than her flesh. Wuffles were incapable of physical damage, but they caught their prey by stupefying it with a longwinded sermon on “The Advantages and Disadvantages of the Moral and Ethical Rights Committee’s Opinions on the Fluoridation of Water”.
After gulping down a large sycamore tree, the wuffle departed with a wobble. Charlotte breathed a sigh of relief and continued her interrupted creep towards the door. Looking around again, she plucked a key from her pocket and slowly inserted it into the bulky keyhole set into the right-hand door, stopping suddenly whenever it creaked.
Finally managing to get the door open, Charlotte slipped through the crack and found herself in a big hallway bedecked with dusty birthday decorations. A faded banner emblazoned with the words ‘Happy Birthday’ loomed forlornly above the marble staircase leading into the higher reaches of the house. Deflated balloons littered the expensive mural-spangled floor tiles.
Charlotte scuffed a few of the pathetic balloons aside with her foot to reveal part of an extravagant image displayed on the floor of the hall. It was a mural of a group of friends, painted expertly in ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise. Charlotte remembered the picture well; she had helped to paint it. Even after ten years of heavy dust-wear the small smudge on the side of one of the noses was still visible.
Charlotte, feeling nostalgic, slumped on a wrought iron bench next to one of the doors leading off the hall. She reached into her pocket and drew out a crumpled photograph which she straightened out. It showed the mural 10 years earlier, with several girls brandishing paintbrushes at the camera, laughing hysterically with condiments all over their faces.
A creak from the banisters made Charlotte’s head whip round. A tall and imposing woman was standing at the top of the stairs, looking down at her. She was wearing a smart grey skirt and jacket, a white blouse, and grey tights leading down to black office-standard shoes. The only bright colour came from a large yellow toad perched on her head, which croaked every so often in a disapproving manner.
Yes, Mel really had come far with her voodoo lawyer practice.
“She’s here!” Mel called up the stairway. Beckoning to Charlotte, she retreated back up the stairs. Charlotte followed her, sighing at the failure of her ‘stealth plan’ (Charlotte was a top secret spy working for the Santon Liberation Front, and she liked to test out her training now and again).
In a large room on the first floor, 8 people sat in an untidy circle on dusty floorboards, in the middle of which was a big wooden box. It was glowing slightly.
“We’re still waiting for Sam, and Rachel said she might join us later.” This came from a bedraggled looking heap sat near the box. “Want any drugs?” it said.
This was Ellie, a hippiefied drug-smuggler from the wrong side of Ballasalla. Her hair was matted and smattered with beads and feathers at random intervals. Her bare feet were grubby and her colourful clothes were torn and smelly. Since leaving school at 16, Ellie had drunk only the foulest ditchwater and eaten only the rawest potatoes and juiciest beetles. Charlotte looked down at her own jet-black, stylish spying gear, and was grateful.
“Oh, enough with your drugs!” sang a loud, clear voice. Sophie had become an opera singer at 18, and was nicknamed the Female Pavarotti. In her fashionable evening gown and sparkling tiara, no-one would have suspected her of murdering the real Pavarotti. Which she didn’t, of course…
A long, sibilant hiss came from the corner of the room. “I sssensse a presssencce about yooouu,” the unseen voice hissed. It sent a shiver down everyone’s backs.
“Hi, Alice,” Charlotte said weakly. Since developing the ability to speak to the dead and see into the future, Alice had taken her role as a medium and fortune-teller very seriously indeed. Unfortunately, she thought she had to look the part as well. Great masses of occult jewellery dripped from her neck, ears, wrists, and fingers. Whenever she moved a cosmic ringing seemed to emanate from her, and on several occasions she had been mistaken for their leader by flocks of sheep accustomed to following a bell.
“I don’t know why you insist on wearing those awful clothes, darling!” a well-dressed young man exclaimed. Callum was Sophie’s style and fashion advisor, and he was coveted by everyone else on the opera scene. With his keen eye and sharp dress sense, Callum was the top style advisor in the business.
Suddenly, as Charlotte was finding a seat on the floor, a woman with a tennis racquet in her ear bounded in through the door.
“Hi everyone, hope you don’t mind me dropping in!”
“No, not at all Rachel! How’s your job at the circus? I’ll have to come and see you sometime,” said Melissa, a high-ranking porn star. She had come in her favourite outfit, that is, nothing.
“Oh, it’s great. Free beer and all the tennis balls you can eat!” No-one commented on Rachel’s nonsensical remark; she had been mildly insane for years and they had all gotten used to it.
“Have you got a tomato for me?” enquired Jenny in a sweet, little-girl voice.
“Err, I’ll see if I can find one for you,” replied Rachel awkwardly. Jenny was on her once-a-year visit with her parole officer – she had been incarcerated just before her 16th birthday and sentenced to at least 50 years inside for killing, cooking and eating her Cooking teacher, Mrs Brown, all the while screaming “How’s that for lasagne?”.
“No! No tomatoes!” cut in Catriona, Jenny’s parole officer-cum-restrainer. “You know they make you homicidal.” Catriona considered herself lucky to be Jenny’s restrainer; she got to hit her regularly and no-one cared so long as Jenny wasn’t eating them.
Jenny sighed and twitched her eye, listening to her personal Brown demons telling her that her stroganoff was underdone.
“Well, we’re all here apart from Sam,” said Mel. “I wish she’d get a move on.”
“She is the Prime Minister, Mel,” retorted Ellie. “She’s probably doing something very important, like legalising weed hopefully…” Ellie smiled dreamily.
“She is coming! She is coming!” shrieked Alice, rocking back and forth with spittle flying out of her mouth.
Everyone else rolled their eyes. At the crunch of tyres on gravel, Charlotte got up and peered out of the window onto the darkened drive below.
“It’s her,” she called back to the others. “And she’s brought the entourage.” The rest of the gang crowded round the window to gaze out at the seemingly endless stream of cars inching up the driveway.
As they watched, a young woman in jodhpurs, riding boots, and tracksuit top, with a riding helmet under her arm, got out of the second car. Sam was famed as the youngest British Prime Minister in history, and the only one to refuse to wear a suit. Most of the time she wore jeans and trainers.
“I suppose we’d better go down and meet her,” moaned Callum. “But those riding clothes do absolutely nothing for her complexion.”
“Callum, she refuses to wear a suit. Do you think she’s going to kowtow to your comments about her riding suit and her complexion?” Melissa asked.
They all trooped down the stairs to the front doors. Upon opening them, they all gave a little mock bow to the woman standing there.
“Hi, Sam,” smiled Rachel, giving her a hug. “And how is your sandworm?”
“Hi everyone. I see no-one bothered to clean up the decorations from last time.”
“That was five years ago,” warbled Sophie reproachfully. “And we’ve only just got here.”
“It doesn’t matter, we’ll do it later. Are we all here?”
“Yep,” said Catriona. “Shall we go back upstairs?”
Leaving Sam’s bodyguards defending the doors, the group walked, bounced, and jingled back up to the first floor. When they were all seated around the box again, Sam retrieved from her pocket an extremely squashed and out of season mince pie. She chucked it to Jenny who cackled in delight, and settled herself between Alice and Melissa.
“So, shall we get down to business? Alice, if you’ll do the honours,” Charlotte said.
Alice rose jerkily and lurched over to the glowing box. With a quick gabble in an unearthly language, she heaved the lid up and stepped back as it crashed to the floor. The box glowed brighter as they all gathered around it.
“So much for ‘The radioactivity will do it all good.’,” trilled Sophie.
“Yeah, well done, Charlotte,” interjected Callum with a sarcastic clap.
“My bunny rabbit died,” said Jenny in a hurt voice. Everyone breathed a silent sigh of relief. When their time capsule had been constructed, they had surreptitiously replaced Jenny’s donation of a live rabbit with a toy one, hoping that she would be too far gone by the time it was opened to notice the change.
“It’s gone all green and mouldy,” complained Melissa. She grimaced as she poked the mass of compost-like material inside the box, then drew her hand back suddenly. “I’m sure something in there is moving.”
Ellie poked around in the heap with Jenny’s shoe to reveal a glowing rod. “The radium is pulsing slightly,” she said in a puzzled expression.
Everyone glared at Charlotte as she shifted her weight from foot to foot. “I’m sorry guys, I might have put some, you know, chemically stuff on it, just to make it glow more. It might be kind of explosive.” She lapsed into an embarrassed silence.
“Typical!” exploded Mel. “Trust you to put something radioactive and explosive in!”
“Err, it’s spinning round and round,” said Rachel worriedly.
“I’m going to stand back a bit.”
“Me too.”
“Me too!”
Charlotte peered into the box just as the rod reached a critical point in its spinning and was emitting a high-pitched noise. “Oh bug–”
Charlotte Has A Reunion
Charlotte slowly lifted the rusty latch and winced as it protested loudly.
“What’s the big idea?” it screeched. “I was sleeping here!”
Charlotte ignored it and padded across the dew-speckled garden towards the imposing double doors at the front of the house. Tiptoeing up the steps, she looked round furtively, desperately hoping that no-one, or nothing, had seen her.
A whisper swept through the garden. Charlotte tensed as a large wuffle waddled out onto the lawn. With its hooked beak and razor-sharp talons, it looked a fearsome beast. Charlotte was certainly scared, but more for her mind than her flesh. Wuffles were incapable of physical damage, but they caught their prey by stupefying it with a longwinded sermon on “The Advantages and Disadvantages of the Moral and Ethical Rights Committee’s Opinions on the Fluoridation of Water”.
After gulping down a large sycamore tree, the wuffle departed with a wobble. Charlotte breathed a sigh of relief and continued her interrupted creep towards the door. Looking around again, she plucked a key from her pocket and slowly inserted it into the bulky keyhole set into the right-hand door, stopping suddenly whenever it creaked.
Finally managing to get the door open, Charlotte slipped through the crack and found herself in a big hallway bedecked with dusty birthday decorations. A faded banner emblazoned with the words ‘Happy Birthday’ loomed forlornly above the marble staircase leading into the higher reaches of the house. Deflated balloons littered the expensive mural-spangled floor tiles.
Charlotte scuffed a few of the pathetic balloons aside with her foot to reveal part of an extravagant image displayed on the floor of the hall. It was a mural of a group of friends, painted expertly in ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise. Charlotte remembered the picture well; she had helped to paint it. Even after ten years of heavy dust-wear the small smudge on the side of one of the noses was still visible.
Charlotte, feeling nostalgic, slumped on a wrought iron bench next to one of the doors leading off the hall. She reached into her pocket and drew out a crumpled photograph which she straightened out. It showed the mural 10 years earlier, with several girls brandishing paintbrushes at the camera, laughing hysterically with condiments all over their faces.
A creak from the banisters made Charlotte’s head whip round. A tall and imposing woman was standing at the top of the stairs, looking down at her. She was wearing a smart grey skirt and jacket, a white blouse, and grey tights leading down to black office-standard shoes. The only bright colour came from a large yellow toad perched on her head, which croaked every so often in a disapproving manner.
Yes, Mel really had come far with her voodoo lawyer practice.
“She’s here!” Mel called up the stairway. Beckoning to Charlotte, she retreated back up the stairs. Charlotte followed her, sighing at the failure of her ‘stealth plan’ (Charlotte was a top secret spy working for the Santon Liberation Front, and she liked to test out her training now and again).
In a large room on the first floor, 8 people sat in an untidy circle on dusty floorboards, in the middle of which was a big wooden box. It was glowing slightly.
“We’re still waiting for Sam, and Rachel said she might join us later.” This came from a bedraggled looking heap sat near the box. “Want any drugs?” it said.
This was Ellie, a hippiefied drug-smuggler from the wrong side of Ballasalla. Her hair was matted and smattered with beads and feathers at random intervals. Her bare feet were grubby and her colourful clothes were torn and smelly. Since leaving school at 16, Ellie had drunk only the foulest ditchwater and eaten only the rawest potatoes and juiciest beetles. Charlotte looked down at her own jet-black, stylish spying gear, and was grateful.
“Oh, enough with your drugs!” sang a loud, clear voice. Sophie had become an opera singer at 18, and was nicknamed the Female Pavarotti. In her fashionable evening gown and sparkling tiara, no-one would have suspected her of murdering the real Pavarotti. Which she didn’t, of course…
A long, sibilant hiss came from the corner of the room. “I sssensse a presssencce about yooouu,” the unseen voice hissed. It sent a shiver down everyone’s backs.
“Hi, Alice,” Charlotte said weakly. Since developing the ability to speak to the dead and see into the future, Alice had taken her role as a medium and fortune-teller very seriously indeed. Unfortunately, she thought she had to look the part as well. Great masses of occult jewellery dripped from her neck, ears, wrists, and fingers. Whenever she moved a cosmic ringing seemed to emanate from her, and on several occasions she had been mistaken for their leader by flocks of sheep accustomed to following a bell.
“I don’t know why you insist on wearing those awful clothes, darling!” a well-dressed young man exclaimed. Callum was Sophie’s style and fashion advisor, and he was coveted by everyone else on the opera scene. With his keen eye and sharp dress sense, Callum was the top style advisor in the business.
Suddenly, as Charlotte was finding a seat on the floor, a woman with a tennis racquet in her ear bounded in through the door.
“Hi everyone, hope you don’t mind me dropping in!”
“No, not at all Rachel! How’s your job at the circus? I’ll have to come and see you sometime,” said Melissa, a high-ranking porn star. She had come in her favourite outfit, that is, nothing.
“Oh, it’s great. Free beer and all the tennis balls you can eat!” No-one commented on Rachel’s nonsensical remark; she had been mildly insane for years and they had all gotten used to it.
“Have you got a tomato for me?” enquired Jenny in a sweet, little-girl voice.
“Err, I’ll see if I can find one for you,” replied Rachel awkwardly. Jenny was on her once-a-year visit with her parole officer – she had been incarcerated just before her 16th birthday and sentenced to at least 50 years inside for killing, cooking and eating her Cooking teacher, Mrs Brown, all the while screaming “How’s that for lasagne?”.
“No! No tomatoes!” cut in Catriona, Jenny’s parole officer-cum-restrainer. “You know they make you homicidal.” Catriona considered herself lucky to be Jenny’s restrainer; she got to hit her regularly and no-one cared so long as Jenny wasn’t eating them.
Jenny sighed and twitched her eye, listening to her personal Brown demons telling her that her stroganoff was underdone.
“Well, we’re all here apart from Sam,” said Mel. “I wish she’d get a move on.”
“She is the Prime Minister, Mel,” retorted Ellie. “She’s probably doing something very important, like legalising weed hopefully…” Ellie smiled dreamily.
“She is coming! She is coming!” shrieked Alice, rocking back and forth with spittle flying out of her mouth.
Everyone else rolled their eyes. At the crunch of tyres on gravel, Charlotte got up and peered out of the window onto the darkened drive below.
“It’s her,” she called back to the others. “And she’s brought the entourage.” The rest of the gang crowded round the window to gaze out at the seemingly endless stream of cars inching up the driveway.
As they watched, a young woman in jodhpurs, riding boots, and tracksuit top, with a riding helmet under her arm, got out of the second car. Sam was famed as the youngest British Prime Minister in history, and the only one to refuse to wear a suit. Most of the time she wore jeans and trainers.
“I suppose we’d better go down and meet her,” moaned Callum. “But those riding clothes do absolutely nothing for her complexion.”
“Callum, she refuses to wear a suit. Do you think she’s going to kowtow to your comments about her riding suit and her complexion?” Melissa asked.
They all trooped down the stairs to the front doors. Upon opening them, they all gave a little mock bow to the woman standing there.
“Hi, Sam,” smiled Rachel, giving her a hug. “And how is your sandworm?”
“Hi everyone. I see no-one bothered to clean up the decorations from last time.”
“That was five years ago,” warbled Sophie reproachfully. “And we’ve only just got here.”
“It doesn’t matter, we’ll do it later. Are we all here?”
“Yep,” said Catriona. “Shall we go back upstairs?”
Leaving Sam’s bodyguards defending the doors, the group walked, bounced, and jingled back up to the first floor. When they were all seated around the box again, Sam retrieved from her pocket an extremely squashed and out of season mince pie. She chucked it to Jenny who cackled in delight, and settled herself between Alice and Melissa.
“So, shall we get down to business? Alice, if you’ll do the honours,” Charlotte said.
Alice rose jerkily and lurched over to the glowing box. With a quick gabble in an unearthly language, she heaved the lid up and stepped back as it crashed to the floor. The box glowed brighter as they all gathered around it.
“So much for ‘The radioactivity will do it all good.’,” trilled Sophie.
“Yeah, well done, Charlotte,” interjected Callum with a sarcastic clap.
“My bunny rabbit died,” said Jenny in a hurt voice. Everyone breathed a silent sigh of relief. When their time capsule had been constructed, they had surreptitiously replaced Jenny’s donation of a live rabbit with a toy one, hoping that she would be too far gone by the time it was opened to notice the change.
“It’s gone all green and mouldy,” complained Melissa. She grimaced as she poked the mass of compost-like material inside the box, then drew her hand back suddenly. “I’m sure something in there is moving.”
Ellie poked around in the heap with Jenny’s shoe to reveal a glowing rod. “The radium is pulsing slightly,” she said in a puzzled expression.
Everyone glared at Charlotte as she shifted her weight from foot to foot. “I’m sorry guys, I might have put some, you know, chemically stuff on it, just to make it glow more. It might be kind of explosive.” She lapsed into an embarrassed silence.
“Typical!” exploded Mel. “Trust you to put something radioactive and explosive in!”
“Err, it’s spinning round and round,” said Rachel worriedly.
“I’m going to stand back a bit.”
“Me too.”
“Me too!”
Charlotte peered into the box just as the rod reached a critical point in its spinning and was emitting a high-pitched noise. “Oh bug–”
A Day At Foxy's
A sea shanty I composed for my friend's 16th birthday, relating our brief interlude at Foxy's Bar on Jost van Dyke, BVI. I know you won't be able to imagine the right tune, but you can make up your own if you like.
C G
In Foxy’s Bar we spied a guy
C D G
Oh, arr, a pirate!
C G
We saw ‘e ‘adn’t done ‘is fly
C D G
Oh, arr, a pirate!
C Em G
With swimmin’ shorts an’ a beer belly
C Em G
An’ a jug o’ rum; we christened he
G
LARDMAN
‘E went to the bar an’ did ‘is round
Oh, arr, a pirate!
‘Is charter’d prob’ly run aground
Oh, arr, a pirate!
For ‘is crew an’ ‘is mates ‘e got some booze
Then went to an ‘ammock to ‘ave a snooze
LARDMAN
With poppin’ eyes we stared at ‘e
Oh, arr, a pirate!
An’ what could we not ‘elp but see
Oh, arr, a pirate!
‘E still ‘ad ‘is fly undone
An’ ‘e‘ad some ladies undies on
LARDMAN
We giggled loud an’ caused ‘is awake
Oh, arr, a pirate!
With guilty looks ‘is ‘and we shake
Oh, arr, a pirate!
Said “Nice to meet ee, ‘ow’d ee do?
Do you know what we christened you?”
LARDMAN
We wrote on the wall of our encounter
Oh, arr, a pirate!
Remember ‘im? We are boun’ta
Oh, arr, a pirate!
Our testimony is there still-y
Forevermore we ‘ope it will be
LARDMAN
We ‘ope you enjoyed our little shanty
Oh, arr, a pirate!
So give us rum an’ don’t be slanty
Oh, arr, a pirate!
If ever you meet ‘im say “’Owdy!
D’ye remember what they christened ye?”
LARDMAN
C G
In Foxy’s Bar we spied a guy
C D G
Oh, arr, a pirate!
C G
We saw ‘e ‘adn’t done ‘is fly
C D G
Oh, arr, a pirate!
C Em G
With swimmin’ shorts an’ a beer belly
C Em G
An’ a jug o’ rum; we christened he
G
LARDMAN
‘E went to the bar an’ did ‘is round
Oh, arr, a pirate!
‘Is charter’d prob’ly run aground
Oh, arr, a pirate!
For ‘is crew an’ ‘is mates ‘e got some booze
Then went to an ‘ammock to ‘ave a snooze
LARDMAN
With poppin’ eyes we stared at ‘e
Oh, arr, a pirate!
An’ what could we not ‘elp but see
Oh, arr, a pirate!
‘E still ‘ad ‘is fly undone
An’ ‘e‘ad some ladies undies on
LARDMAN
We giggled loud an’ caused ‘is awake
Oh, arr, a pirate!
With guilty looks ‘is ‘and we shake
Oh, arr, a pirate!
Said “Nice to meet ee, ‘ow’d ee do?
Do you know what we christened you?”
LARDMAN
We wrote on the wall of our encounter
Oh, arr, a pirate!
Remember ‘im? We are boun’ta
Oh, arr, a pirate!
Our testimony is there still-y
Forevermore we ‘ope it will be
LARDMAN
We ‘ope you enjoyed our little shanty
Oh, arr, a pirate!
So give us rum an’ don’t be slanty
Oh, arr, a pirate!
If ever you meet ‘im say “’Owdy!
D’ye remember what they christened ye?”
LARDMAN
Thursday 25 March 2010
Food Idioms
I will be using a huge number of food idioms in my story (or at least I was when I started writing it, and so will hopefully carry on), and any new ones would be appreciated:
apple of somebody's eye
an apple a day keeps the doctor away
bring home the bacon
bread and butter [i.e. basic needs]
butterfingers
butter somebody up
butter wouldn't melt
piece of cake
sell like hot cakes
big cheese
chalk and cheese
another bite at the cherry
cool as a cucumber
bad egg
egg somebody on
egg on somebody's face
you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs
walking on eggshells
pretty/fine/different kettle of fish
no use crying over spilt milk
keen as mustard
nutty as a fruitcake
it's like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut
know your onions
easy as pie
a finger in every pie
couch potato
hot potato [i.e. controversial topic]
souped up
not somebody's cup of tea
don't trifle with somebody
waffle on
baker's dozen
stew in your own juice
alike as peas in a pod
it's all gravy
can't do something for beans
get some nuts
now we're cooking with gas
cut the mustard
jam-packed
apple of somebody's eye
an apple a day keeps the doctor away
bring home the bacon
bread and butter [i.e. basic needs]
butterfingers
butter somebody up
butter wouldn't melt
piece of cake
sell like hot cakes
big cheese
chalk and cheese
another bite at the cherry
cool as a cucumber
bad egg
egg somebody on
egg on somebody's face
you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs
walking on eggshells
pretty/fine/different kettle of fish
no use crying over spilt milk
keen as mustard
nutty as a fruitcake
it's like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut
know your onions
easy as pie
a finger in every pie
couch potato
hot potato [i.e. controversial topic]
souped up
not somebody's cup of tea
don't trifle with somebody
waffle on
baker's dozen
stew in your own juice
alike as peas in a pod
it's all gravy
can't do something for beans
get some nuts
now we're cooking with gas
cut the mustard
jam-packed
Saturday 20 March 2010
Chapter 1
The 3:35 from Ipswich to Rome sailed out into the dreamy afternoon air like a pirate ship on its way to adventure. The windows were sparkling, the hubcaps were gleaming, the rigging was swaying. Jeremiah Bowdley, the world’s first and last aerobus conductor, was truly in his element.
‘I love flyin’!’ he called to the driver, Badgers McGee, as he leaned out of the back of the aerobus, bathing in the warm south-east sunshine. ‘The wind in yer face, and the whole world at yer feet. I’m free!’
Badgers rolled his eyes and said nothing. He was a man of very few words, and it didn’t bother Jeremiah if he neglected to join in and have a conversation. The conductor could wax lyrical about flying enough for the both of them.
They were having a relatively quiet day so far. They only had two passengers from Ipswich – a woman and her daughter on their way to Brussels who seemed to be planning on spending their whole journey poring over food magazines. They didn’t usually get any people flagging them down between Ipswich and Folkestone, a small town on the south-east coast, so the first leg of the journey would be the calmest.
After about an hour of flying, the aerobus touched down on a short runway on the outskirts of Folkestone and continued on its wheels to a large garage, built especially for housing the vehicle. Badgers braked just outside the garage while Jeremiah reiterated the parts of his long speech about travelling on the aerobus that were relevant to their short stay in the town.
‘Okay, ladies, if you would just collect your belongings from your seats and follow me. Your larger luggage will be staying on board as we will be returning in about half an hour. That is ample time for you to pop into Folkestone and buy additional food, drink or reading material. Our next stop will be Brussels, where we will be having—Oops, you’re goin’ to Brussels, aren’t ye? Well, it’s still two and an ‘alf hours away, so snacks and books are advised.’ Jeremiah slipped between his normal and his perfected speech-accent so easily it caused the woman’s daughter to giggle. Her mother looked at her sternly.
‘We’ll be serving tea at a quarter to six. Please be back here by—’ Here the conductor broke off and turned to Badgers. ‘What’s the time, Badge? I ent got me watch on.’
‘’Alf four,’ Badgers grunted, then went back to studying the darkening clouds that had started to creep menacingly across the sky. ‘Looks like rain,’ he commented, unusually providing an observation of his own.
‘Hmm…’ Jeremiah peered through the window to his left then turned back to the passengers. ‘Actually, I’d get back ‘ere as soon as possible, ladies. Looks like a big storm’s coming. This girl can take anythin’ the weather throws at her, but we ‘ave to be in the air before the storm ‘its or we’ll never get off the ground.
The two women nodded and grabbed their handbags. Jeremiah led them off the bus and they watched as the skilful driver manoeuvred his way into the garage. Once the aerobus was parked and locked, and the garage securely bolted, Badgers joined the other three and they set off into Folkestone.
There was a little shop near the edge of town where the crew of the aerobus always bought their supplies, and this is where they led their passengers. The shopkeeper, Mrs Statistic, nodded at them and went back to perusing her copy of The Folkestone Windbag. The crew left the women to choose their purchases and collected their usual items: 6 bags of pork scratchings, a box of orange crèmes, and Fish Fanciers Weekly for Jeremiah. They also stocked up of tea, milk and biscuits. With a quick reminder to the women to not take too long (‘Wouldn’t wanna be stuck in Folkestone, now would we?’) Jeremiah and Badgers made their way back to the garage.
‘Best get ‘er ready then, Badge,’ Jeremiah said as he packed away their supplies in a compartment near the driver’s seat.
Badgers grunted and busied himself with securing luggage to the racks and battening down any loose objects in the cabin, while Jeremiah leapt outside and scaled the side of the bus, checking that the aerials were still attached and that none of the rigging had come loose. He could understand why Dudley Chadwick, the inventor of the aerobus, had chosen to include this aesthetic addition. When the aerobus was in full flight and the wind had billowed out her sails, she was a magnificent sight to behold.
A call from the small door at the side of the garage caught the conductor’s attention. Seeing a new passenger standing there, Jeremiah leapt down from the roof and went to investigate.
‘One for Rome, please.’
The conductor stopped dead, eyes wide. Standing there was the second most beautiful woman he had ever seen! (The first being his late wife Adrienne, who had died as a result of an over-enthusiastic love-bite performed upon her by her husband). Her hair was composed of the finest golden strands; her eyes, once glanced into, would entice even the most steadfast of men; her lips curved upwards invitingly into a perfect rosebud underneath her unblemished button nose. All in all, not a bad sight.
Gathering his wits, Jeremiah stammered, ‘O’—o’ course, Madam, I mean Miss, I mean, yer—Yes?’
‘My name is Nanny Olive. The Nanny Olive. How much to Rome?’
‘T-ten pounds please, Miss Olive.’ Even just saying her name was enough to make him go weak at the knees.
The Nanny Olive reached daintily into her handbag and withdrew a sequinned velvet purse. She snapped it open, retrieved a crisp bank note then handed it to Jeremiah, seemingly oblivious of his stumbling movements and fumbling speech.
‘Right, err, Miss, if you’d, err, like to step this way. I’ll, erm, just get yer lugg—’
‘No luggage,’ the Nanny Olive said curtly. ‘I always travel light.’
It was at this point that Jeremiah knew he was falling head over heels in love. Too many times had he done his back in from lifting a heavy and cumbersome suitcase.
‘Right, okay then, if you’d just get on board there and find a seat… I’ll bring you yer ticket in a moment.’ The Nanny Olive strode onto the bus and took a seat at the back, where she could preside over the rest of the passengers when they appeared. Jeremiah watched her go with an appreciative expression on his face.
His reverie was interrupted by the two original passengers.
‘Mrs Benchpress, Miss Benchpress, right on time. We’ll be goin’ soon, so if you’d return to yer seats and buckle up, that’d be great.’
While the women got settled, the conductor raced around the bus, making sure everything was in place for take-off. Once he was finished, he hopped down from the back step and shouldered open the main garage door. He signalled for Badgers, ready at the wheel, to reverse out slowly. Once the bus was out in the growing wind (after a couple of minor scrapes along the wall of the garage), Jeremiah raced back to the building and locked first the side door then the main one.
He checked that there were no latecomers running to catch them before they took off, then jumped back onto the aerobus and motioned to Badgers that they were good to go.
‘’Ere we go, ladies,’ he called to their passengers as he hooked a sturdy safety net across the open back door. ‘’Old on to everythin’!’ The aerobus trundled around the garage so it was facing the short stretch of runway. Badgers put his foot down, the bus picked up speed, and just as it was about to hurtle into the long grass at the end of the concrete, the inexplicable mechanism inside the engine lifted the vehicle off the ground and into the air.
Jeremiah gave an involuntary whoop of delight, and even the gruff driver allowed the corner of his mouth to curl up slightly. But only slightly.
Their happiness was short-lived, however.
‘That doesn’t look good,’ the Jeremiah said worriedly when he had made his way up to the conductor’s seat next to Badgers. The storm-clouds had merged together to form an immense roiling mass that was steadily lumbering towards Folkestone from the English Channel like a giant ravenous amoeba. ‘We’ll ‘ave to go through that.’
He called back down the aisle. ‘Make sure you ‘old on tight, ladies. This is gonna be a rough crossing…’
‘I love flyin’!’ he called to the driver, Badgers McGee, as he leaned out of the back of the aerobus, bathing in the warm south-east sunshine. ‘The wind in yer face, and the whole world at yer feet. I’m free!’
Badgers rolled his eyes and said nothing. He was a man of very few words, and it didn’t bother Jeremiah if he neglected to join in and have a conversation. The conductor could wax lyrical about flying enough for the both of them.
They were having a relatively quiet day so far. They only had two passengers from Ipswich – a woman and her daughter on their way to Brussels who seemed to be planning on spending their whole journey poring over food magazines. They didn’t usually get any people flagging them down between Ipswich and Folkestone, a small town on the south-east coast, so the first leg of the journey would be the calmest.
After about an hour of flying, the aerobus touched down on a short runway on the outskirts of Folkestone and continued on its wheels to a large garage, built especially for housing the vehicle. Badgers braked just outside the garage while Jeremiah reiterated the parts of his long speech about travelling on the aerobus that were relevant to their short stay in the town.
‘Okay, ladies, if you would just collect your belongings from your seats and follow me. Your larger luggage will be staying on board as we will be returning in about half an hour. That is ample time for you to pop into Folkestone and buy additional food, drink or reading material. Our next stop will be Brussels, where we will be having—Oops, you’re goin’ to Brussels, aren’t ye? Well, it’s still two and an ‘alf hours away, so snacks and books are advised.’ Jeremiah slipped between his normal and his perfected speech-accent so easily it caused the woman’s daughter to giggle. Her mother looked at her sternly.
‘We’ll be serving tea at a quarter to six. Please be back here by—’ Here the conductor broke off and turned to Badgers. ‘What’s the time, Badge? I ent got me watch on.’
‘’Alf four,’ Badgers grunted, then went back to studying the darkening clouds that had started to creep menacingly across the sky. ‘Looks like rain,’ he commented, unusually providing an observation of his own.
‘Hmm…’ Jeremiah peered through the window to his left then turned back to the passengers. ‘Actually, I’d get back ‘ere as soon as possible, ladies. Looks like a big storm’s coming. This girl can take anythin’ the weather throws at her, but we ‘ave to be in the air before the storm ‘its or we’ll never get off the ground.
The two women nodded and grabbed their handbags. Jeremiah led them off the bus and they watched as the skilful driver manoeuvred his way into the garage. Once the aerobus was parked and locked, and the garage securely bolted, Badgers joined the other three and they set off into Folkestone.
There was a little shop near the edge of town where the crew of the aerobus always bought their supplies, and this is where they led their passengers. The shopkeeper, Mrs Statistic, nodded at them and went back to perusing her copy of The Folkestone Windbag. The crew left the women to choose their purchases and collected their usual items: 6 bags of pork scratchings, a box of orange crèmes, and Fish Fanciers Weekly for Jeremiah. They also stocked up of tea, milk and biscuits. With a quick reminder to the women to not take too long (‘Wouldn’t wanna be stuck in Folkestone, now would we?’) Jeremiah and Badgers made their way back to the garage.
‘Best get ‘er ready then, Badge,’ Jeremiah said as he packed away their supplies in a compartment near the driver’s seat.
Badgers grunted and busied himself with securing luggage to the racks and battening down any loose objects in the cabin, while Jeremiah leapt outside and scaled the side of the bus, checking that the aerials were still attached and that none of the rigging had come loose. He could understand why Dudley Chadwick, the inventor of the aerobus, had chosen to include this aesthetic addition. When the aerobus was in full flight and the wind had billowed out her sails, she was a magnificent sight to behold.
A call from the small door at the side of the garage caught the conductor’s attention. Seeing a new passenger standing there, Jeremiah leapt down from the roof and went to investigate.
‘One for Rome, please.’
The conductor stopped dead, eyes wide. Standing there was the second most beautiful woman he had ever seen! (The first being his late wife Adrienne, who had died as a result of an over-enthusiastic love-bite performed upon her by her husband). Her hair was composed of the finest golden strands; her eyes, once glanced into, would entice even the most steadfast of men; her lips curved upwards invitingly into a perfect rosebud underneath her unblemished button nose. All in all, not a bad sight.
Gathering his wits, Jeremiah stammered, ‘O’—o’ course, Madam, I mean Miss, I mean, yer—Yes?’
‘My name is Nanny Olive. The Nanny Olive. How much to Rome?’
‘T-ten pounds please, Miss Olive.’ Even just saying her name was enough to make him go weak at the knees.
The Nanny Olive reached daintily into her handbag and withdrew a sequinned velvet purse. She snapped it open, retrieved a crisp bank note then handed it to Jeremiah, seemingly oblivious of his stumbling movements and fumbling speech.
‘Right, err, Miss, if you’d, err, like to step this way. I’ll, erm, just get yer lugg—’
‘No luggage,’ the Nanny Olive said curtly. ‘I always travel light.’
It was at this point that Jeremiah knew he was falling head over heels in love. Too many times had he done his back in from lifting a heavy and cumbersome suitcase.
‘Right, okay then, if you’d just get on board there and find a seat… I’ll bring you yer ticket in a moment.’ The Nanny Olive strode onto the bus and took a seat at the back, where she could preside over the rest of the passengers when they appeared. Jeremiah watched her go with an appreciative expression on his face.
His reverie was interrupted by the two original passengers.
‘Mrs Benchpress, Miss Benchpress, right on time. We’ll be goin’ soon, so if you’d return to yer seats and buckle up, that’d be great.’
While the women got settled, the conductor raced around the bus, making sure everything was in place for take-off. Once he was finished, he hopped down from the back step and shouldered open the main garage door. He signalled for Badgers, ready at the wheel, to reverse out slowly. Once the bus was out in the growing wind (after a couple of minor scrapes along the wall of the garage), Jeremiah raced back to the building and locked first the side door then the main one.
He checked that there were no latecomers running to catch them before they took off, then jumped back onto the aerobus and motioned to Badgers that they were good to go.
‘’Ere we go, ladies,’ he called to their passengers as he hooked a sturdy safety net across the open back door. ‘’Old on to everythin’!’ The aerobus trundled around the garage so it was facing the short stretch of runway. Badgers put his foot down, the bus picked up speed, and just as it was about to hurtle into the long grass at the end of the concrete, the inexplicable mechanism inside the engine lifted the vehicle off the ground and into the air.
Jeremiah gave an involuntary whoop of delight, and even the gruff driver allowed the corner of his mouth to curl up slightly. But only slightly.
Their happiness was short-lived, however.
‘That doesn’t look good,’ the Jeremiah said worriedly when he had made his way up to the conductor’s seat next to Badgers. The storm-clouds had merged together to form an immense roiling mass that was steadily lumbering towards Folkestone from the English Channel like a giant ravenous amoeba. ‘We’ll ‘ave to go through that.’
He called back down the aisle. ‘Make sure you ‘old on tight, ladies. This is gonna be a rough crossing…’
Saturday 6 March 2010
Birthday
Woo! Birthdays! I loved this one because there were lots of people who I love giving me presents and wishing me well, and not loads of people going 'Oh, it's, um, Ellie's birthday, I should, um, get her, like, a box of chocolates, or something, you know, something that she REALLY WANTS AND/OR NEEDS.' Unfortunately, no Rainbow's End purse this year =/ (Every year, pretty much guaranteed [I got one for Christmas, too], I will get a purse/badges from a little hippy shop called Rainbow's End, because that is obviously the only thing I ever want, ever [because I'm Harry Potter (sorry, just had to throw that one in)]). Rant over.
Nope, it was nothing like that. I had my favourite people (on the island) round for dinner, watched Something, Something, Something, Dark Side with them, then sent them home and ate some more cake =) Then put songs on my NEW iPOD! which isn't the newest one out there, but is amazingly hi-tech for me. I mean, it has a video-camera! And plays music through a speaker! And is tilty! So yes, I love it.
De toute façon, c'est l'heure d'aller se coucher pour moi, je pense, ainsi au revoir, mes amis. Jusqu'à le temps prochain!
PS: This says it was posted on the 6th of March. My birthday's actually on the 5th, and I'm writing this at quarter past midnight.
Nope, it was nothing like that. I had my favourite people (on the island) round for dinner, watched Something, Something, Something, Dark Side with them, then sent them home and ate some more cake =) Then put songs on my NEW iPOD! which isn't the newest one out there, but is amazingly hi-tech for me. I mean, it has a video-camera! And plays music through a speaker! And is tilty! So yes, I love it.
De toute façon, c'est l'heure d'aller se coucher pour moi, je pense, ainsi au revoir, mes amis. Jusqu'à le temps prochain!
PS: This says it was posted on the 6th of March. My birthday's actually on the 5th, and I'm writing this at quarter past midnight.
Wednesday 3 March 2010
2 Feet of Snow
Sorry, just testing out the new post editor thing. I didn't know it was there...
I know now that I've rediscovered this blog-thingy, I'll have to stop myself using it like Twitter and writing something every 5 minutes.
Je pense que j'utiliserai cet blog pour vous torturer avec mon français épouvantable (est-ce que vous le voyez? J'ai dû consulter un dictionnaire pour cet mot ancien) aussi.
Tuesday 2 March 2010
Jeremiah Bowdley: A History
Jeremiah Bowdley was the world’s first, and last, aerobus conductor. Flying was his passion; he handed out aerobus tickets with the kind of manic glee usually only found on the faces of chocolate tasters and those fortunate people who receive a theme park for their birthday.
The 3:35 from Ipswich to Rome was the invention of the scientific pioneer Dudley Chadwick, who decided that he was tired of the conventional bus service and endeavoured to create a new and better way of travel. And thus the aerobus was born.
When Jeremiah heard of Chadwick and his invention, he abandoned his dream of becoming the conductor on his current bus, the 11:19 from Ipswich to Jaipur (as he was only the driver at that time), and applied for the job of conductor on the 3:35.
He got the job, and along with Badgers McGee, the newly appointed driver, took to the skies in a red and white beauty, sunlight glistening off the polished hubcaps, and wind whistling through the rigging (an aesthetic addition on the part of the creator who had never forgotten his childhood ambition of piracy). Jeremiah was truly happy.
Regrettably, this new-found bliss was rather short-lived. Just a month into his tenure as conductor, yet a month which afforded many stories to tell, his beloved wife, Adrienne, died from an overenthusiastic love-bite performed upon her by her husband. For a time after her death, Jeremiah found solace in the arms of the Nanny Olive, but when she tripped over a tumour and died, he believed he could live no longer.
On the afternoon of the Scientific Awards 1877, the only aerobus in being had taken a detour and was on the journey of its existence – taking its creator, Dudley Chadwick, to the Awards to collect the award for ‘Best Flying Contraption of the Year’ – when tragedy struck. As they were passing over the bingo hall where Jeremiah’s most recent lover’s ashes were scattered, the grieving conductor wrested the wheel from Badgers McGee and plunged the aerobus into a downwards spiral, crashing into the final resting place of the Nanny Olive. All three people on board died.
No aerobus was ever made again, as Chadwick had kept all his measurements and designs inside his mind, never writing them down on paper. And so, Jeremiah Bowdley went down in history as the world’s first, and last, aerobus conductor.
Right, Not So Good At The Blog-Writing...
So, it seems I haven't written here for nearly a year. Not completely surprised. I am terrible at finishing stuff. There's a story I've been writing for 2 years this August, and I know exactly how I'll finish it, but I couldn't be bothered to type it up and have now lost the notepad I was writing it in... Ah well. I'm not good at planning out stuff.
Maybe I'll make this a blog for Jeremiah Bowdley and the Nanny Olive. I think I might. I found their story in my History folder about a month ago, and have written the first couple of chapters about how they defeated the evil General LeBœuf and fell in love, but have no idea how the story's actually gonna go. Maybe that can be my project to keep me sane amongst the Maths ('Oh, will you all just shut up and do some Maths revision!'), Mechanics ('Oh, you don't need to teach us this, we covered it in Physics.' Well I bloody didn't!), Chemistry (effing, effing MO), French (how many years have you been learning this language?) and English Literature (God of Small Things? God of crappy teachers, more like), not to mention General Studies and Life Skills. Oh, the fun we will have! At least there's no PE anymore. *shudder*
So yes, next blog'll be the overview of Jeremiah Bowdley's life, then onward to Brussels!
Maybe I'll make this a blog for Jeremiah Bowdley and the Nanny Olive. I think I might. I found their story in my History folder about a month ago, and have written the first couple of chapters about how they defeated the evil General LeBœuf and fell in love, but have no idea how the story's actually gonna go. Maybe that can be my project to keep me sane amongst the Maths ('Oh, will you all just shut up and do some Maths revision!'), Mechanics ('Oh, you don't need to teach us this, we covered it in Physics.' Well I bloody didn't!), Chemistry (effing, effing MO), French (how many years have you been learning this language?) and English Literature (God of Small Things? God of crappy teachers, more like), not to mention General Studies and Life Skills. Oh, the fun we will have! At least there's no PE anymore. *shudder*
So yes, next blog'll be the overview of Jeremiah Bowdley's life, then onward to Brussels!
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