Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Silence from the music room

Friday, June 09, 2006

Can I have change of a wistful glance in pennies and tuppences, please.

Daft things, memories. I'm not at all sure about the new ones they've put into my old noggin. I much preferred some of the old ones which, I am told, were far too damaged in the operation to be repaired. The funny thing is, I still recall some of the apparently excised memories, which fact makes old Nyfenfork lean forward interestedly on his shooting stick (that is why the floors in here are made of cork) but the look in his eye makes me feign befuddlement- too late!- as he reaches anew for that tool of his which is surely too large to be classified as a mere scalpel.

What understands a Maginot Worm of romance?

It was only when she cubed the Cheddar with a swipe of her racquet that I understood that she had replaced the strings with, well, cheesewire. An apple was next, toppling in all directions off the waxcloth table-cover where I had left it. The house was full of apples, and yet she had chosen mine.

Outer space impressed her not in the least, she declared, starting on the hard-boiled eggs I had prepared for the afternoon's snacking in the garden. She had presumed me master of my own house, which I suppose started her on the wobbly path to discombobulation. How could I explain the nomadic nature of, for example, the lake? Or the towers that frequently and cheekily rearranged themselves, often not even waiting until one's back was turned to do so?

She called for bicarbonate of soda, declaring her tummy to be upset. To my shame I though this was a ruse to lure me within range of her racquet. And by the time I realised the truth it was too late. Bob, as we called him (I think he was male) lived for twenty minutes wrapped in a tea towel. We buried him as the sun set, closed the grave and have not been able to find it since, although it is occasionally glimpsed in the distance on summer evenings.

Pardon me. My ear is full of milk.

Horrid things, foodstuffs. At least as I regard them now. Halfway rotten already, it seemed to him. Nurse is encouraging, of course. She finds a knife tough enough to cut my sausages into what she deems to be friendlier sections and pops onesuch on the end of a fork that I swear wasn't on the tray. And when I refuse that she grabs the offered tidbit with her own gob and mimes a big oh, this is LOVELY overactment as she forces the thing down.

Determined to repeat the example until I succumb, the fork swoops again like a Stuka with a baleful eyeful of a roadful of slow-moving refugees, only to stop, poised in the air an inch or two above the elected next bit of...Well. Long story short, there was a vein protruding from the misfortunate morsel of presumed porkmeat, which, needless to say, never made it to Nurse's quivering lips. Although, oddly, the half-whispered name Terry did, even as the fork clattered to the floor.

The egg was as bad.

The Cure of Crooning Water

Busyrot, rots the rot; rot the walls and strings. Parrot-rot, aping the rot of the rotten apple as the rolling thunder remains rotten. Roll a few more R's there, missus, instead of funnelling rotten old pills into my rotten old maw. I shan't swallow 'em. But you've thought of that. And since when do pills have legs? And how many? Marching straight down my throat like a military tattoo, disassembling superannuated artillery pieces, handing them in bits over walls and fences to their co-marchers on the other side of said jerry-rigged obstacle, and then assembling 'em again. All conducted against the clock, of course. Shades of "What the flipping use is all this?" offered as a prayer for the repose of the souls of Polish lancers flung in formation against the carterpillar onrushing Mark 2's of the thousand year...well, not as it turned out.

At least five legs on each one, he thought, as I slipped into the second person again.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

An unfeasibly-shaped thirties racing plane heads for the sunset. Control tower reports the pilot singing all the way.