Tea and Cakes

I’ll post the answer up over the weekend.
Sharon, you’re not allowed to play!

Update: Sorry, haven’t really been at home enough to demonstrate and take pictures of it in use, will try to get them done asap. In the mean time, keep on guessing, none of you are close.

“I look dead!” Sophie squealed, grabbing the still developing polaroid picture from her best friend’s hand.
The two girls were sunbathing on towels in Laura’s back garden, and Laura had taken Sophie by surprise with a picture while she’d had her eyes closed. They were supposed to be studying, but they both only had one exam to go: history, the following afternoon. Laura would walk it; everyone knew that she was the cleverest girl in their year. Somehow she just didn’t need to study. Sophie was a different matter, but she maintained that she didn’t care how she did in her exams as she was going to get a job as soon as the summer was over and be earning heaps and heaps of cash by the time Laura was finished at university.

“Come on,” Laura said. “I’m bored of sunbathing. Sammy and I’ll walk you home.” Sammy was Laura’s dog, an English springer spaniel, and he was very energetic. Sophie lived over the hill from Laura, so they often took Sammy along, the three of them walking to the top of the hill, half way between the two houses, and then heading off in their separate directions, Sophie down the hill to the estate her family lived on, and Laura and Sammy back down the other side of the hill and across the field to their farmhouse.
Sometimes the girls would be so engrossed in their conversation that they’d get almost all the way to Sophie’s house and Laura would have to walk all the way home alone. Sometimes they stayed at the top, sat on the bench chatting while Sammy ran in and out of the undergrowth sniffing out the rabbits.

On the way up the hill Laura talked about James, they boy she’d been in love with all her life. His family were friends with her family, they were the same age, they’d grown up together, and they were destined to be together forever. James had only realised this and started dating Laura a few months ago, but Laura had known for ages. Recently they’d been talking about taking their relationship further, making it special before they went off to college. James was away at boarding school but they wrote often and saw each other on his weekends home. He was due home again the following weekend, and Laura’s parents had a dinner party to go to on the Saturday night, so would be out late. Naturally Sophie knew all about the relationship and how things were developing. She’d had a few older boyfriends and was more experienced than Laura.

When they reached the top of the hill Sophie said that she was running late, so would have to go, but would see Laura the next morning for their exam. Laura called for Sammy and turned round to head home. She was half way down the hill when she noticed that he wasn’t following her, so, with a heavy sigh, she trudged back up to track him down. This wasn’t the first time it had happened, he’d usually just found an interesting smell and didn’t want to leave it.

As she reached the peak of the hill she saw Sammy’s tail disappear down into one of the old chalk pits that pockmarked the hill, so she headed towards it to fetch him, taking his lead from where she’d been wearing it around her neck as she went. She called him but knew from experience that it would make no difference; she was going to have to go and get him.
As she approached the gap in the bushes surrounding the pit she heard a rustle, and Sophie appeared, looking flustered. “Laura… I … erm… needed the loo.”
Sammy barked and Laura pushed past Sophie. “Hold on, let me just get Sammy,” she said, as she followed the direction of his bark. That’s when she saw James, looking flustered too, trying to pull up his jeans and hide from Sammy, who was greeting him enthusiasticallly.
“Laura… shit… babe… it’s not what you think… you wouldn’t… she’s just a shag, that’s all… everyone’s slept with her… I love you… I’m sorry.”

Laura grabbed Sammy’s collar and clipped his lead into place. She looked at Sophie, who started to cry. “I’m sorry.”
“He’s right you know,” Laura was amazed at how calm she felt. “You are a slag, everyone knows it. I should’ve seen this coming. I trusted you. I told you everything. I thought you were my friend.”

Laura strode off home, dragging Sammy along with her, ignoring James’s pleading from behind her. She was gratified to hear him tell Sophie to leave him alone and that he didn’t want anything to do with her, but it was small compensation. On the way down she pulled the picture of Sophie out of her back pocket. She stuck it into the post that held the barbed wire fence together, and went home to her mum.

~~~

Inspired by This picture taken by rougerouge from Flickr.

This was written for Flickr Fiction Friday. I’m not sure who else is participating this week, as people are off travelling, but usually taking part are: Elimare, Donal, Chris, Littlegoat and Aquafortis.

Here’s the scarf before it was wrapped up and given away.

Pattern: Feather and Fan lace, with a 2 stitch garter border.

Yarn: Rowan Soft Baby.

The yarn is super soft and lovely, but a bit odd to knit with - it doesn’t seem spun, it’s a bit like knitting with cotton wool.

Nanny seemed to like the scarf, but it totally played second fiddle to the framed picture of himself that my brother gave her - she’s been after one for ages and was delighted with it, which was lovely to see. She’d also been given a giant Thorntons hamper - I think my uncle had been in and bought one of everything they sell. I was very jealous, and if I make it to 90 I’ll be demanding one of those.

In honour of Wimbledon, the first Pimms of the season.

I love Pimms, and I love Wimbledon.

Pimms tastes of long summer evenings. I add cucumber, apple, mint, orange and strawberry to mine. Not quite conventional, but I like it.

Wimbledon I love because I grew up with tennis. I’ve been lots of times. I love it there. I’ve queued overnight for tickets, sleeping on the pavement and ordering pizza delivered to the queue. I’ve gone up after school, getting the train up and buying ground tickets for the evening, catching the last matches before running for the last train back home. I’ve spent hours playing cards under plastic sheets waiting for the rain to stop. We were on the old number one court (my favourite) with the whole stand singing heads, shoulders, knees and toes while Cliff Richard sang on centre court. And, importantly, I was there with my friends watching one of us win the boys doubles in 1995. He’s playing again tomorrow, and I wish him luck.

I don’t really follow tennis much any more, but even so, I could happily spend the next 2 weeks on the sofa, watching the matches. With Pimms.

On sale in Sussex. I was going to write a witty caption, but I don’t think it needs one.

OK, I may as well admit it here and now. I’m a snob. Totally and utterly. In my own way. I don’t like stupid people. A lot of people fit into that category in my mind. I’m not generally much of a talker. I prefer not to say anything unless it’s worth saying, and I tend to get embarrassed if I speak too much. The massive hangovers I get are the main reason I don’t drink much any more, but all the talking I do if I’m tipsy puts me off too. I just like quiet.

Yesterday I flew with Ryanair through Gatwick airport. There were lots of stupid people, and if my tennis racket and knitting needles hadn’t been packed away safely in my checked luggage I might have been forced to employ them in the absence of a stupid bat. (I really want a stupid bat).

Example A
We arrive in plenty of time to check in. Early in fact. This is partly because arriving super early to airports is one of those things that I do, and partly because on the outward journey I failed to arrive super early and missed the flight. Anyway, this isn’t about me, it’s about stupid people. There was one big queue by the Ryanair counters. For three flights. Eventually one check in desk opened and the queue divided up nicely into two queues. One, that I was in, moving, and one waiting patiently for the other desks to open. A group of women arrive, look at the massive queue, and take themselves right to the front of the non-moving queue. “Excuse me?” said the person at the front, who’d been there at least half an hour. “This is a queue. It starts back there.”
“Oh, sorry, we didn’t realise.” was the response. They then made a huge deal out of moving.

Anyway, that doesn’t really illustrate why stupid people should just shut up, but it does give you an indication of how things were going.

Example B
The airport was really busy, so there was a huge, very slowly moving queue to get through security. In front of us were two slighty overweight middle-class-but-think-they’re-posh ladies and one accompanying gentleman. I arrived mid-conversation:
“Six bags she had. Six!”
“Well, why anyone would want to travel with six…”
“Here for 5 days she said. 5 days! Well, I thought, if they believe that.”
“Well, I she wants to travel with that many bags it’s up to her.”
“Oh. Oh. And I suppose you want all these immigrants here. Think we should welcome them I suppose.”
“I only said…”
It was like listening to the Daily Mail.

Example C
The woman arguing with the security guy about why she should be allowed to take her son’s full sized toy wooden bow and arrow and sword set on the plane as hand luggauge. I don’t need to recount this conversation; you know how it went. I left as he was remaining calm and explaining she needed to go back out and check it in to the hold, and her voice was getting higher and higher and louder and louder.

Example D
We’re on the plane. A family arrives and takes the seats behind us. Four kids and two parents. The mother immediately lays into the poor air hostess, who doesn’t really speak English, about why the gate wasn’t announced earlier as they had to run to get there. Now, admittedly I didn’t have four kids with me, but I managed to stroll slowly down, drinking my coffee as I went, stopping to use the bathroom on the way, and having a good 10 minutes sat in the departure lounge before we could board. I suspect that she and her partner were in the bar, not checking the screens.
Later on the father decides that the fasten seatbelt light doesn’t apply to him, and he needs to use the bathroom. He gets up, walks to the front of the plane, and returns a few minutes later grumbling about how “I’ll piss myself in the seat, then they’ll be happy.”
When we land they have a very long conversation about how they’ll keep one of their kids off school the next day by making her lie to the teachers about the flight time. They follow this with another conversation that I couldn’t follow but couldn’t ignore. I’m not sure what they were saying but they clearly thought that everything the other said was he funniest thing in the world.
It wasn’t.

There are more examples, but I’m too tired even just thinking about them.

Sometimes I wish the whole world would just shut up.

Seriously, I am so spoiled. My secret pal really has me down.

I went to the post office to collect an amazon delivery, and they handed me this brightly coloured envelope instead:

Cool! I thought, and headed off happily. Then I realised that the delivery docket for my package was from Friday 16th, and the exciting package in my hands was posted on the 19th. I went back in, and using powerful logic, got them to hand over my books too. It was tough going, at one point it looked as though they were going to try to take my new package back from me, but I wasn’t having any of that. If necessay I was prepared to point out that they’d written on the label that I wasn’t available at home for them to deliver the packet that very day, and that it was 9.30am and the postman clearly hadn’t called to the house. I’d always suspected that they lied about attempted deliveries, but now I could prove it.

Anyway, the point is, I left with both packages.

Now, to the insides:

Yet again I am totally amazed at how great my SP is. Magazines! 2 issues of Interweave and 2 cooking mags. Stationery! Candy in the cutest little knitting tin! A giant kitkat! Yes! A giant kitkat! (ok, I know, enough exclamation marks, but it’s a giant kitkat!)

Thank you so much Secret Pal. You are wonderful.

The picture’s the first thing to go. I’m sick of looking at that fucking picture. That girl, dancing through the fucking flowers. Fucking stupid. Who does that?
Week after week I’m stuck here, looking at that fucking picture, while she’s sat there, going on and on and on and on about fucking feelings, and why I stole that car, and what was going on for me when I did it, and how did it make me feel, and what am I thinking about when I go out with my mates, and how do they make me feel, and what am I thinking about when I spark up a blunt, and how does that make me feel.
Fucking feelings.
Then it’s all, like, what could you do instead to make yourself feel that way.
I’ll show her what else I can do. Smash up her fucking office, that’s what else. It was easy to get in. Stupid cow keeps her spare keys in the top drawer of her desk. Must think I’m fucking stupid or something.

The picture’s on the wall next to the door, across the room from the two chairs we sit on for our “little chats”. Fucking “chats”. Fucking therapy, that’s what it is. They all think I’m nuts and want to cure me, want to get me away from my friends. Fuck them. My mates are the only people who don’t fucking wreck my head.

The picture’s in a wooden frame, and fixed to the wall by a stupid bit of string on the back, which catches as I pull at it, so I have to really yank it. I hold it above my head, thinking about all the time I’ve spent sat there, looking at the fucking purple flowers in the fucking picture while she tries to get into my head. Then I smash it over her computer screen. The glass shatters but the frame doesn’t break and the picture’s just dented. Fuck it. Even that doesn’t work for me. I grab the computer monitor and throw it across the room to the chairs. It crashes into the stupid little table, with the stupid little plant, and the box of tissues, and it implodes. That’s fucking better. Now we’re rolling.

I grab the keyboard off her desk and break it in two over the back of her chair. The chair joins the monitor and now broken coffee table. I’ll fucking show her. Thinks she can tell me what to do? Who I should be friends with? Thinks she knows me? Fuck her.

I sweep everything off the desk and move to the bookshelf in the corner. It’s heavy, and it takes effort to pull it over. It smashes on the floor, the books torn and ripped underneath it.

The filing cabinet’s next. I know what’s in there. I looked at my file last time. She left the room so I looked and read what she’d written about me.
“Insecurely attached”
“Behavioural difficulties”
What the fuck does that mean?
I pull at the top drawer of the filing cabinet but it won’t give. I kick it, hard. Fuck. The pain runs through my foot and settles in my ankle. Fuck it. Look what she made me do now. Fuck her. I manage to push it over, and it hits the wall, chipping paint off.
I spot a marker in all the mess on the floor and use it for the wall where the picture was. I hold the pen in my fist and push as hard as I can, up and down, up and down to make the letters big. I get as far as FUCK YOU BI when the marker runs out. I throw it at the window, screaming, then I sink to the ground and start to cry.

~~~

Inspired by Country Road taken by Ozyman from Flickr.

This was written for Flickr Fiction Friday, and you can read other tales inspired by the same picture by: Elimare, Donal, Chris and Aquafortis.

I’m off the booze, and everyone else has a glass of wine. I was getting jealous so i got this, and it’s good and i don’t mind not drinking now.

Off for work for a few days, so I’ll be away from a computer until Friday. I’m not sure how I’m going to manage. I’m a tiny bit worried that come Friday I won’t be able to function normally until I’ve read everything in my Bloglines subscriptions. Which would be bad as I have to pack to go back to England for the weekend Friday morning (flight’s in the afternoon).

Anyway, I’ll be blogging a bit from my phone, just won’t be able to answer emails or approve comments from new people (once you’ve commented once you’re not moderated any more). [Mum, you can reach me on my mobile.]

So, expect some updates on books I’ve read, some knitting updates (gotta finish that scarf), and hopefully some desserts.