I Am Less Than Satisfied
With my lot at the moment.
I know what brought about this uncharacteristic negativity – the trainee gale that we are experiencing at the moment!
I hate wind. We knew when we came to Spain that it would be hot. We also knew that it would be cold. But nobody mentioned the wind!
However, as ‘they’ say; What cannot be cured must be endured. I might have to endure it, but it’s not going to stop me complaining about it!
My grumble at the moment takes centre stage, and it’s a mega-grumble. I have lost several years worth of articles and stories. I have my early articles, I have my more recent articles, but there is a yawning chasm in the middle.
I was happy in my belief that everything was on the many back-up sticks, but when I went to look for a specific poem about Santa and the Mouse it was nowhere to be found.
I searched high and low. I searched in all the nooks and crannies. I boldly went into internal computer places where no man except the Steves dare tread. All to no avail – Santa and the Mouse had disappeared into the ether, leaving me bereft and cross.
I like to think that I am a fair critic of my own work; most of that which I write is OK, but occasionally I come up with a gem, one of which is the missing mouse poem – I am mortified that I have lost my mouse!
But I’ll give you one I did find; It’s true-ish, and about the origins of Pantomime.
Once upon a time, long, long ago a lunchtime argument was going on in the pub in the rural village of Creek. It was about the future of the local theatre group, known by the anachronism of UPTHE Creek. This stood for Unlimited Productions To Heartily Enjoy, but was commonly referred to as Up The Creek.
An atmosphere of despondency, beer and pipe smoke filled the room. The membership had fallen drastically, and now numbered 4. The group’s last production, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, had been a flop – the only ones to turn up where the local fat boy, who was under the impression that there would be ham sandwiches, and his dog who hoped that his master might drop one.
‘We’ll have to wind it up.’ Said the Chairman sadly. He sighed, and the members sighed in unison, looked pointedly at their empty glasses and then at the Chairman. Nobody moved.
‘I’ve got an idea,’ chirped Rosie, the pub’s buxom barmaid. ‘I’ve written a play – I’ll show it to you when I serve your next round.’
The members agreed, mainly because they enjoyed watching Rosie bend forward to place the tankards on the table.
She fished a tightly folded wad of paper out of her corsage. ‘Here it is. It’s called ‘Jack and Cinderella take Mother Goose to the Chinese laundry, and meet Dick Whittington under the Beanstalk. It’s full of drama - people are bound to love it.’
The Chairman flicked quickly through the pages. ‘Sorry, Rosie. Nice try, but not quite up to our standard. I don’t want to offend you, but the plot is, well – isn’t really, and the dialogue is, I don’t like to mention it, coarse, more suited to the common man than Thespians such as ourselves. We have our standards to maintain, that is why we only stage plays by famous bards, not barmaids, especially barmaids with no education in the art of theatre.’
Rosie flushed, took back the proffered pages and stuffed them back into her corsage. ‘Fine! If it is not good enough for you ‘Thespians,’ she stressed the word, ‘I’ll find someone who it is good enough for.’
The Chairman spread his hands derisively and looked round at the members. ‘The poor girl is delusional. She hasn’t even got command of basic grammar!’ He took a long slug of his beer.
‘H’m’ spat Rosie. ‘We’ll see!’
That evening Rosie, wearing her lowest cut dress, was auditioning a packed pub full of customers for parts in her play. She auditioned everybody, regardless of gender, (at that period women were not considered for acting parts, it was a male-only domain) and by closing time she had a full cast, including a female Principal Boy and a male Dame.
That weekend the production of ‘Jack and Cinderella take Mother Goose to the Chinese laundry and meet Dick Whittington under the Beanstalk’ played to a packed pub audience, who, fuelled by best bitter and encouraged by the players, entered into the spirit of the occasion with much audience participation in the form of cheers, boos, hisses and applause.
And thus was born the Creek Village Play, or as we know it now, Pantomime.
The UPTHE Creek Theatre Group has disappeared without trace, but Pantomime survives to this day!
Unconventional but Effective
The joy of my life, the new ironing board cover, has thrown up difficulties which I never anticipated.
Initially it was getting it on the board. Having surmounted this problem with Susie’s help I hit problem #2. In order for the cover to stay in place it has to be tightened with a very small piece of string – you pull the string and it tightens the cover over the board. Except that the string is so thin that pulling it was like garrotting my hands.
I tried. I tried a bit more. I uttered a short word of exasperation. I sat down and had a think. Obvious! Thread a thicker piece of string through, one that I can pull without endangering my digits. I didn’t have any string, so I elected to use garden twine. With amazing foresight I checked that the twine was not too fat to pull through. I then spent a tricky half hour joining the twine and the string together, the idea being that the string would pull the twine through after it.
Now I was away! Laboriously I coaxed the string and it’s twine through the little tunnel on the edge of the cover, and inch by inch it progressed, until I got halfway. Then it stuck. The tunnel had become smaller, and the twine was too fat to fit.
I sat down. This problem was not one that I could solve standing up. I could abandon the string and substitute it for a piece of elastic. The problem was twofold; I didn’t have any elastic, and if the twine didn’t fit, then neither would the elastic or I could sew it on – and I emphatically don’t do sewing!
Then, as I sat in gloomy contemplation, the answer came to me. I didn’t exactly hear choirs of angels, or even spectral voices, but it was blindingly brilliant – in my eyes, at least!
I fancy that it is also unique – I bet I’m the only person in the world who has an ironing board where the cover is held in place by three bootlaces!
I’ve just experienced the Miracle of the White Chicken!
Recently I was given a chicken. Opinion varies as to what this chicken is; some say it’s a magazine rack, but I see it as a garden ornament with flower pots in it.
It is, however, rather the worse for wear. No problem, now that I’ve found my inner Leonardo da Vinci I could see no reason why I should not paint it.
I betook myself (while we were still allowed) to various places where paint was available for purchase. I eventually lit on a suitable paint – the lid was white, and it had Exterior written on the outside of the tin, so I presumed that it was white paint suitable for painting on something that was exterior.
Of the multitude of white paints available to me I chose the smallest tin – it won’t need much, it’s a chicken, not a wandering albatross! I also bought a brush, an ordinary paint brush, not a top-of-the-range badger hair brush; this is a flower pot container, not the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
The area of combat was the back terrace, specifically the top of the long defunct garden table. I put the chicken on the table, opened the paint pot with a screwdriver (is there any other way of opening paint tins?) gave the paint a stir with a honeysuckle twig, dipped the brush and applied it to the chicken.
No problem. The sun was out, the terrace was warm, I had a chair to sit on that was the exact right height for painting chickens on tables. All was right with the world. Enthusiastically I painted half the chicken, and gaily set out to turn the chicken round so that I could paint the other half.
Once more I dipped the brush, but as I raised it to apply its load of paint the chicken made a bid for freedom and toppled off the table. With the lightning reflexes of a sloth I caught it before it hit the ground. I replaced it on the table and surveyed the scene.
The chicken had 2 pristine white handprints on it and a liberal coating of white running in streaks down its red comb. The table was coated in a random splodge design of white, while the terrace tiles sported a fetching spray effect design in white. There was more paint on my hands than there was on the bird. But I wasn’t worried. The paint will wear off my hands eventually, I can paint over the comb with red, the table is going to the Great Furniture Store in the sky in any case, and I’m planning to have the terrace re-tiled, so no harm done.
Calmly I recommenced painting. So what was the Miracle?
There was paint everywhere – but not a spot on my clothes!
Now that is a Miracle!
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