I live alone in a little wooden shack deep in the middle of nowhere, free from the frenzied existence of townsfolk and at one with nature.
As a new morn arrives, I stand and gaze at what little surrounds me. Droplets of dew sparkle on blades of grass and dance upon quivering cobwebs.
There, a bird, perched on the branch of a tree. Hark. It tweets, and with a flap of its wings it flies away to who knows where. I don’t care, for if I could fly, I’d go nowhere.
In this place, what little I need and all I desire surrounds me. I covet the silence; no need to speak, for there’s no one to hear.
“Sorry I’m late”, said Arthur as he entered The Baaamy Inn looking a little hot and bothered, “I’m not having a good day; this afternoon, when I took the rubbish out, I accidentally kicked the door-stop and the door slammed shut behind me, I didn’t have a key so I had to climb through the window, I looked at the clock and thought I had plenty of time, but it had decided to stop so I hadn’t, so I dashed to the bus stop, but the bus didn’t stop, it went straight past and I had to leg it here – time for the bad luck to stop and have a glass of pop!”
“I was walking down the high street this afternoon”, said Ted, “and a bloke said to me, ‘stop, it’s you, isn’t it, you’ve changed your hairstyle, started wearing glasses and shrunk an inch or two, but it’s really good to see you again, George’, so I said, ‘my name’s Ted’, and he said, ‘gosh, you’ve changed your name too!’ – goodness knows who he was!”
“I saw Big Bill the other day”, said Babs, “his wife said she’d leave him if he didn’t stop smoking, stop swearing, stop snoring and stop drinking as much, well, he’s a changed man now – he got through a whole sentence without using any rude words or flicking ash on the ground – he says he’s now officially a stopaholic!
“Len hasn’t held a pub quiz for ages”, said Poppy over at the knitting circle, “I hope he doesn’t stop having them, I suppose it could be because that posh professor from the university keeps on winning, although I did beat him once: we were neck and neck with one question to go, and Len asked what time we thought he set his alarm clock for, the prof said seven o’clock, but I said six-thirty and won hands down!”
Colin came back from the bar with a tray of drinks, sat down and went into his quick-fire joke mode: “the clocks are going back soon, that’s daylight robbery – my book about clocks finally arrived, it’s about time – hickory-dickory-dock, the mice ran up the clock, the clock struck one and the others escaped unharmed – clocks just go tic tic tic because they don’t toc to themselves – when I parked my car illegally, the ticket on my windshield said Parking Fine, it was such a relief – it’s hard to stop smoking, I’ve done it twenty times – my wife said she’d leave me if I kept singing I’m a Believer, I thought she was joking then I saw her face – the prisoner didn’t stop talking until he finished his sentence – the banker stopped working when he lost interest – the priest stopped preaching and became a lawyer, now he’s a father-in-law – my can opener stopped working, now it’s a can’t opener- I’m going to stop playing the triangle, it’s one ting after another – the French hen decided to stop laying eggs, she’d had un ouef……!”
Every night before going to bed, Landlord Len winds up the cuckoo clock on the living room wall, he’d hate it to stop; often, when it went cuckoo, his dearly departed Maggie would cuckoo back – “cuckoo”, he muttered…‘cuckoo’, whispered Maggie in his ear as he stroked the little wooden bird and wiped a tear from his eye.
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Thanks to Denise at GirlieOnTheEdge for hosting Six Sentence Stories, where this week’s given word is Stop
I shouldn’t have done it, I know, but I followed her down the hallway. She wanted me to, of course she did. I was unable to resist when she peered over her shoulder, beckoning me with her smouldering eyes.
She stopped and slowly turned. A primal urge rose within my beating heart. I was about to do something I vowed to never do again. But the shame I had felt the last time simply evaporated along with all sense and reason. Just one kiss, I told myself. That’s all. But it was not to be all. So now I have another guilty secret to lock away. It will never happen again.
Will it?
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The pictures also reminded me of something I wrote eleven years ago. I hope you don’t mind me adding it!
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I heard a voice, a sad voice Help me, it said Then from the gloom a girl appeared.
What do you want? I asked Follow and you’ll see, she said I said I didn’t want to Please, she begged
Then off she ran
She looked over her shoulder A streak of light Revealed her tear-stained face
I can’t keep up, I said You must, she said I’m losing you, I said
Then she disappeared
Where are you? I called It’s too late, she cried What did you want? I asked Too…late, she sobbed
It was another evening at The Baaamy Inn and Ted was telling his fellow farmers about his visit to the library, “they’ve got a new young lady working there called Shiela, a perfect name for a librarian, Shhhhiela; she hardly speaks, so when you ask if they have a certain book, she either nods her head, shakes it or points her finger, whilst there, I picked up a kiddies book called Noddy and Big Ears for my granson, when I gave it to him he asked if it was about his Granny and me, cheeky little devil!”
Robert entered Inn, ordered a pint, then sat down at a table in the corner; he likes to be called Bob, but the regulars refer to him as Robin, partly because he was once caught stealing and also because he always wears a red waistcoat; they waved across the bar to him and Robin, being a man of few words, began to nod his head up and down in reply – that was all Suzie at the next table needed to get her on her feet and singing – “When the red red robin comes bob bob bobbing along…!”
“I took my wife to that new Chinese restaurant the other night”, said Ted, “they’ve got one of those cat figurines on the counter that waves an arm, but not just that, it nods its head too, well, wifey became so mesmerised by it that she started nodding back; just then the waiter appeared and asked if we’d like to order, my wife jumped out of her skin, and said, ‘erm, noddle soup please’ – I enjoyed my Peking duck and she loved her noodles, but I’m not sure I’ll take her back there again!
“We had a family do the other evening and played Charades”, said Babs, “that game where you describe something with actions, not words; when it was my go, I pretended to chew, pointed to myself, and then to Stuart, well, my nephew suggested I was a cannibal, which was wrong, I reminded them that I am a shepherd and told them I was eating lamb stew – which reminds me, I once asked my partially deaf friend if they play Charades at her Hard-of-Hearing Club, she said yes, but they didn’t use hand gestures because several knew sign language, instead they mutter a clue and solve it by lip reading!”
“An old chap told his doctor he could hardly hear because of wax in his ear”, said Colin, “the doctor asked what ear it was, and the guy said ‘2026’ – sign language is the least spoken language on earth, it’s quite handy though – I know several jokes in sign language, I bet you’ve never heard them – the police arrested a mime artist and told him he had the right to remain silent – I was kicked out of the mime school for something I said – nodding has its ups and downs – they say you should lean forward when you nod, I’m inclined to agree – the letter x wasn’t angry, just a little cross – Chinese dumplings weigh wonton – the only thing I don’t like about duck in a Chinese restaurant is the bill – Susan was fired from the Chinese restaurant for being lazy….!”
As Landlord Len relaxed upstairs after another busy session, his mind went back to something special he and his dearly departed Maggie often did, “we’d look along the bar at each other, smile and nod”, he muttered, “our silent way of saying I love you” ….. ‘you can’t see me now’, she whispered in his ear, ‘but you don’t need to, we know we’ll always love each other, together or apart’.
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Thanks to Denise at GirlieOnTheEdge for hosting Six Sentence Stories where the given word is Nod.
Seeing the picture reminded me of a story I wrote about my friend Rosey back in 2015. Here’s a shortened version
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My friend Rosey had never used the public pool, only her parents’ private one.
When we suggested visiting it, she was horrified. She said people peed in it. I said that was only allowed in the corners. If she swam in the centre, she’d be alright! Eventually, she agreed to come.
As she ventured in and edged forward, a siren screeched. We’d not warned her about the Mega-Wave feature! She screamed as if she was witnessing a tsunami! We scrambled to her rescue and hauled her out.
Then she said we’d spoiled her fun and leapt back in!
You can’t win with Rosey!
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Poke a Froggie to visit the squares!
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The original story is HERE should you wish to read it!.
