# One-post, one sentence story



## Ingélou

There are a few of us who use three word story, and we all know what it feels like when you post something, but it doesn't make sense because someone's already gone. Or else someone adds three words which make sense when read with the post above, but not with the start of the sentence which began over the previous page.

Maybe this won't get anywhere - and it won't be as much fun, I'm sure - but I wonder if adding a whole sentence at a time would at least be more coherent. The narrative could still take unexpected turns, and we could also have some weird snatches of dialogue.

I look forward to some imaginative, intelligent and/or witty posts - maybe even some gifted users of English (by their posts shall ye know them). Well, one lives in hope!


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## Ingélou

The eminent composer got out of bed one day in a very strange mood.


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## Taggart

It was writing all those plain songs that had given him a bad case of modality.


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## hpowders

After breakfast, he followed his normal routine of checking whether anybody on TC had ever heard of him.


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## shangoyal

(Great idea!)

"Where is... my copy of Ulysses?", he thought.


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## Ingélou

Moreover - 'I'm just not sure whether I'm Tchaikovsky or Hildegarde of Bingen,' he muttered.


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## Ingélou

But this perplexity was as nothing to what happened next.


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## hpowders

For now it was finally time to reveal his tag name that he chose for TC!!


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## shangoyal

He stepped out of his house, ready to go to his office, but forgot to lock the door behind him.


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## Taggart

A way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

_(In hommage to shangoyal - Ulysses)_


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## hpowders

And once back at the house he remembered to enter his new tag name.


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## hpowders

He also remembered that going off on one's own tangent destroys coherence, whether it be music or a one sentence story.


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## hpowders

He had a choice of three tag names to join TC with, assuming he got past the scam detectors.


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## Ingélou

And he didn't let coherence get in the way of his wild, bizarre, amazing imagination when choosing tag-names.


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## hpowders

(Yes! Yes! That too!!) 

Alas, to his dismay, "hpowders" was already spoken for as his obvious first choice, since he noticed it was in play from the top posters on the TC statistical list.


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## hpowders

It suddenly dawned on him that he was so unsuccessful as a composer, " I should simply use my own surname!" he ruefully exclaimed.


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## hpowders

Upon leaving his Hyde Park flat that morning, he unfortunately stepped on some horse manure, slipped uncontrollably, cracked his skull on the pavement below and expired, thus ending this obscure composer's sad story.

(End of Chapter, the First)


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## Celloman

Chapter Two: A Dark Counterpoint


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## shangoyal

In the middle of the night, a 17-year old girl is dressing herself in overalls by the light of a wax candle.


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## Svelte Silhouette

The highly flammable material puts an end to her and to her parents and to the home they share with their extended family but lets not make too much of a crisis out of the tragedy as the surviving black sheep relative who is a drunken composer just so happened to have stayed out all night in the gutter and is now the only one of the flock who won't be better accompanied by some mint sauce


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## Gondur

which is his sexual innuendo for the burly barmaid who was cast out from the 'VisCount Erpoint' tavern into the gutter alongside him for she was...


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## Svelte Silhouette

green with envy just like a saucy milf


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## Ingélou

At this point the narrator decided to reinstate the planned structure, whereby different contributors provided one complete grammatical sentence per post to advance the narrative.


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## Ingélou

An old woman in the house opposite came out, discovered the drunken composer in the gutter, and recorded his deep primal malediction on the state of the universe on an mp3.


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## Ingélou

This quickly went viral on the internet and the composer woke up two days later, on a trolley in Accident and Emergency, to discover that he'd been feted in The Guardian as an existential commentator on the absurdity of life in Modern Britain.


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## Ingélou

It did not bother him as much as the fact that he was being attended by twin doctors wearing identical green hats.


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## Taggart

They looked suspiciously like Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee and the smile of the matron reminded him of something that seemed to fade away the more he thought of it.


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## Svelte Silhouette

The lady of ill repute noticed a string of unfair sentences meted out and a couple of capital offences unpunished but knew she'd be more concerned without seeing three periods pass by unhad even though her de-composing guttersnipe companion was drunk as m'lord and unfit to judge anything other than a hag contest.


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## Svelte Silhouette

Four igloos attempted to obscure the crimes and a token scots polis chappie was late and made no arrests.


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## Ingélou

To see syntax so taxed was a sin, but since the lady was of *good* repute with good pewter on her shelf, and hauteur in her parlour, she let the offence sit on the fence while she herself went off in a taxi to attack the poor syntax tactically.


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## Ingélou

###########################################


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## Ingélou

And peace and order returned to the Faire Lande of Grammarye.


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## hpowders

From #27: However, the matron's smile was quite sinister, and he wanted to scream out, but the IV drip was already having its tranquilizing effect and he was quite unable to do so.


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## Ingélou

Meanwhile, outside the hospital, the smokers were crowded into the shelter, for it was, methinks, a rainy day.


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## Svelte Silhouette

An overheated ig went to the loo but proved an easy target for something decomposing thrown by a Clampet, probably Jethro though Grannie's face is in the frame along with a Grey Drain.


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## hpowders

From #34: As the carbon monoxide built up to excessive amounts in the shelter, a non-smoker caught among the smokers panicked and yelled out: GIMMEE SHELTER!!!


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## Ingélou

Unfortunately, his words were drowned by a torrent of rain, just as one of the asphyxiated smokers fainted.


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## Gondur

# 34 But I thought wrong as, on closer inspection, the precipitating liquid was from used Saline solutions a dolt decided to squirt from a window.


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## hpowders

Luckily, he suffered only a temporary increase in blood pressure.


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## Ingélou

It was at that precise point that the number 9A bus passed by on the road outside the hospital.


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## hpowders

Incredibly the bus skidded on the same pile of horse manure that resulted in our obscure composer's unexpected demise from Chapter, the First!


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## Ingélou

Thus endeth Chapter Two.


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## shangoyal

In quite an obscure country town in Cornwall, two scientists talked late into the night about how Mikhail Botvinnik came to be world chess champion.


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## hpowders

Thus ends Chapter the Second, with addendum attached; now removed!! :lol:


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## Taggart

At the beginning of chapter three, our hero, with a single bound, was free from the evil machinations of Ming the Merciless.


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## Mahlerian

But suddenly, he felt nauseated, just now realizing that he had been poisoned only moments before!


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## hpowders

Ming played amplified atonal music throughout his airborne palace, thus torturing his enemies unmercifully.


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## Gondur

The music was in fact, not atonal, but Bach's chromatic fantasy played backwards.


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## hpowders

Ming's anger was majestic as he realized that someone inside the palace deciphered his secret aural formula for torturing his worst enemies.


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## Svelte Silhouette

This harder to keep on track than Stephenson's rocket.


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## Svelte Silhouette

Whoosh it went.


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## Svelte Silhouette

nah, chug chug bump.


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## Svelte Silhouette

Then it came back online.


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## Svelte Silhouette

as a torture for a man tied on the line


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## Svelte Silhouette

Ming's majestic auditory torture was nothing more than locomotive breath followed by a slice and dice on the line.


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## Op.123

Then a prisoner escaped, taking with him a pair of socks since his other ones had been eaten by mice.


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## Svelte Silhouette

In one sock he found Spiny Norman the all conquering hedgehog narrowly eying up Harold.


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## Svelte Silhouette

And in the other he found a very fat mouse called Hannibal.


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## Gondur

Both of which didn't actually exist for the prisoner was riddled with psychosis.


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## Op.123

Them he started singing, "there were 10 in the bed and the turtle said roll over, roll over. There were 11 in the bed (How?) and the orca said die hungry, die hungry."


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## Svelte Silhouette

And on that note Zenda decided it was early evening movie time saying wiedersehn as meeting again in a couple of hours made parting such sweet sorrow even ahead of d day which will be called tomorrow making today yesterday on the day after tomorrow.


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## Ingélou

After this revelation, he decided that it was time to head back to the conservatory, because at 3.18 promptly every afternoon, he had an urge to make music.


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## Ingélou

His persecutors had gone for the time being, but at first he could not find a way to get over the high fence that surrounded the compound - until he thought of using an old clothes prop as a pole vault.


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## hpowders

At the conservatory, he found a piano that was so old, he played the de Falla harpsichord concerto on it and it sounded just right!


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## Op.123

But them he became very old because he chocked on custard.


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## Ingélou

Luckily the effect was only temporary and once the custard had reached his duodenum, he was able to resume the de Falla.


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## hpowders

He simply called it his "gestation period" and conservatory pedagogues never mentioned it again.


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## Gondur

'Your sentences are abound with words advancing my vocabulary' on of them replied in awe of his impromptu vernacular.


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## hpowders

Conservatory pedagogues were in awe of the way he resumed the de Falla, after the troubling custard incident, without even missing a note!


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## Gondur

hpowders said:


> Conservatory pedagogues were in awe of the way he resumed the de Falla, after the troubling custard incident, without even missing a note!


Do you mean Manuel de Falla? How is it possible to play a composer? Sorry but I am not a native English speaker. Do you mean 'la folia'


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## shangoyal

Gondur said:


> Do you mean Manuel de Falla? How is it possible to play a composer? Sorry but I am not a native English speaker. Do you mean 'la folia'


Sometimes you can call a piece by some composer "the X", where X is the composer.

e.g.

Person A: Are you playing the Schubert tonight?
Person B: No, in fact I am playing the Beethoven - the C sharp minor sonata.


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## Op.123

Then 2hrs 22mins 34secs into the performance (yes, he was playing incredibly slowly) he missed a note, a G-sharp to be precise, and the mistake made an uproar, it was like the premier of the rite of spring all over again!


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## hpowders

This report of course contradicts the observations of the learned conservatory pedagogues who devote their collective lives to acute listening and can hear a missed note 3.76 km away.


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## samurai

These aural misimpressions wreaked havoc upon the overall structure and continuity of his masterpiece!


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## hpowders

One rainy morning, on leaving the conservatory, our misfortunate pianist accidentally slipped on some horse manure, taking a wicked tumble, cracking his skull wide open and expired.

_End Chapter the Third_


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## Ingélou

Chapter Four

Fast forward ten years, and the newest viola student at the Conservatory is a bright, eager brunette called Cissy Parkinson & she aspires to write such wonderful music for her instrument that nobody, but nobody, will ever make a viola joke again.


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## shangoyal

The fact that she was a brunette had unusual bearing on the following events, while her being bright and eager not so much.


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## samurai

Cissy was invited to join the *Composer's Club,* the "Holy of Holies" inner sanctum of the University's music producing creators/composers.


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## samurai

*@ Ingelou,* Please allow me to join with my esteemed TC colleagues in thanking you for coming up with such a wonderful, creative and innovative thread, which affords the opportunity for *positive* interactions--hopefully, at least--amongst all of us TC members. :kiss:


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## Op.123

Cissy them decided it was time for an adventure, she was going to take a trio around the world to see if she could find a decent viola concerto.


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## Ingélou

She'd got an offer from a cruise ship company to play music in their ballroom, so inevitably the trip began with a six-week tour of the Baltic.


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## Taggart

Where she met a a young lady of Riga, who rode with a smile on a tiger.


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## Taggart

The violist thought this reminded her of something, but couldn't bring it to mind.


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## Svelte Silhouette

Having set to sea again in that beautiful pea green boat, searching out of her mind for what she couldn't bring, it sank and with it all of her dreams but what can you expect when a quartet attempts to hunt out a concerto.


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## hpowders

She was seeking out her reliable mentor, Harold, in Italy, to help put into perspective, what she must be searching for.


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## Ingélou

It was a shame that she'd gone in the wrong direction to start off with, but the RAF helicopter pilot that rescued her from the Baltic Cruise Ship Disaster passed her on to a mate of his, who took her over to Italy the very next weekend.


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## samurai

Once Cissy had been safely deposited in Italy, she quickly got in touch with Harold, her world renowned mentor and sponsor.


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## Op.123

he informed her she was to clever to play the viola and must study the piano or violin.


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## hpowders

However, she put in too many years of hard practice to give up the viola and was disappointed in Harold of Italy's advice.


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## Ingélou

She decided to catch the train early next morning to seek Norbert of Bulgaria's advice, as she had heard that he was more pro-Viola.


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## Ingélou

Norbert was reputedly aged about 109, though he looked only 97 and had kept his good looks by subsisting for almost half his life on a diet of beetroot and sarsaparilla.


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## hpowders

The problem was, she found out from voicemail, that Norbert was on vacation, taking in the sun and surf at beautiful Sunny Beach.


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## Op.123

When she finally found Norbert it became clear he was absolutely obsessed with violas, he had countless tattoos of violas and you could not talk with him if you hadn't prayed to the viola god first.


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## Ingélou

But that was years later, of course, on his 113th birthday, and in the meantime, she decided to go back to Harold's house and rescue his labrador, which she'd noticed had got enormously fat on a diet of custard and asparagus.


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## Ingélou

Unfortunately, just as her hired car got on to the main road, something absolutely catastrophic happened.


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## hpowders

Meanwhile, poor Norbert was scheduled this coming Monday for major facial plastic surgery from his 70 years of annual vacations at Sunny Beach.


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## hpowders

Meanwhile back at the main road, the car encountered a moist, fresh patch of horse manure, spun its wheels, turned over and cracked its roof!


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## hpowders

Miraculously, Cissy, her viola and the driver escaped from the vehicle unharmed!


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## Op.123

But, 80945736200968573000000000000000000000000000000000009382444444444444000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 years later Cissy was walking along and died after slipping on horse manure.


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## hpowders

Thus endeth Chapter the Fourth with no hopeth in sight.


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## Ingélou

Chapter Five - wherein the backstory of Norbert the Bulgarian, the Viola-Sage, is filled in.

Norbert was born in a suburb of Greater Manchester in the later years of the nineteenth century and there are several theories as to how he came to be known as Norbert the Bulgarian.


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## Ingélou

One of them states that his mother. Emmeline Ramsbottom, was frightened by a Bulgarian rag and bone man in the last month of her pregnancy.


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## Ingélou

Be that as it may, Norbert's interest in violas began at the age of seven when he heard the plaintive strains of an out-of-work violist playing carols outside Manchester Victoria Station.


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## Taggart

He wondered what this strange musical instrument could be that made such unearthly sounds.


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## Taggart

He went home and found a cigar box, a broom handle and some string and began constructing his very own viola.


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## Svelte Silhouette

Strange and various were it's bits so he gave it the name Strangivarious


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## Ingélou

One day while he was playing the Twinkle Twinkle variations on Strangivarious, the out-of-work violist heard him as he was walking by, called on Norbert's mother, and offered to teach her son to play the viola on receipt of five shillings a week and all the scrambled egg that he could eat.


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## Ingélou

The deal was agreed - and curiously enough, the violist was able to play some very affecting melodies upon Strangivarious, and Norbert's biographer-in-waiting has suggested that it was at this point that the Bulgarian Master came to his notorious conclusion that the viola is a god to be adored.


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## Ingélou

By the time Norbert was fifteen, he had become fixated upon violas, and had them emblazoned on his wallpaper, his ties, his personal notebooks, his mirrors, and the family bulldog's collar.


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## Ingélou

This obsession is credited with saving Norbert's life as although he was called up in 1917, he failed his army medical and was not allowed to serve in the First World War, despite his protestations, 'I am not insane but merely a highly-strung violist.'


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## Taggart

Norbert on failing his medical, set up a viola workshop under the trade name Strangivarious.


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## Taggart

Eventually he set up his workshop at Craiglockhart employing injured ex-servicemen and introducing them to the worship of the viola.


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## Svelte Silhouette

The very next day he set fire to the recruiting office's medical centre and was found guilty of ****** around for which he was proper strung up but his parents were fine and didn't get hung up about it.


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## Ingélou

Norbert was excused punishment for the arson on mental health grounds and was sent to a rehabilitation centre in Scotland and from here moved to Craiglockhart.


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## Svelte Silhouette

A maharajah came to the workshop and made workship vile after which he then legged it with the cash gifted by the now many followers who had decided that their 5 bob would no longer be required by them what with the end being nigh and all that.


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## Ingélou

After the Maharajah incident, Norbert moved to Glasgow, where he founded his viola and bagpipe orchestra and produced phonograph records of well known ditties such as 'Haste ye back' and 'Scotland the Brave'.


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## Svelte Silhouette

Norbert decided that igloos were targeting a poisonous plant and punctuating it's essence before it got into full flow but that's rehab for you.


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## hpowders

His parents were quite strict and assigned him to master instead, the double bass, locking him in his room until he could produce a noticeably steady vibrato.


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## Taggart

Strangivarious told Norbert in a dream that violas and bagpipes did not mix and that Norbert must be true to his calling as a violist.


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## Ingélou

It was to keep up his energy with the viola and bagpipe orchestra that Norbert began his beetroot diet, though he did not add sarsaparilla to it until some thirty years later.


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## Ingélou

Between the wars Norbert took up his habit of yearly vacationing at Sunny Beach, where he secured a private space by soloing vigorously on his clockwork extra loud viola.


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## hpowders

Norbert so wished to confer with his old mentor, Harold in Italy, but remembered in between vibrato practice exercises, that Harold was indeed dead.


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## Ingélou

When the second world war broke out, Norbert was luckily on his one-and-only skiing holiday in Switzerland, where he stayed until 1944, serenading British airmen who escaped out of occupied France with tunes like 'There'll always be an England', but then finally he crossed into France after having a prophetic dream that he'd be needed for the D-day landings.


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## Ingélou

It was during the 1950s that Norbert, tired of being called 'The Bulgarian' without just cause, decided to move to Bulgaria to rectify matters and spare his fans the moral opprobrium of being liars.


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## Ingélou

There for half a century he lived a quiet life blameless save for his insistence that patronal feast days in his Bulgarian town should be celebrated with ten-hour violathons on the Town Hall Roof.


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## Ingélou

Later came the publicity - the interviews - the plastic surgery - and finally, no doubt, the horse manure.


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## hpowders

On the beaches of Normandy, Norbert was valiant in using his viola as a shield, saving two of his fellow infantrymen.


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## hpowders

Yes, it was a sad, frustrating life at times; horse-manurically frustrating; but in the end Norbert could claim redemption, thanks to his valiant behavior at Omaha Beach in Normandy; 70 years ago, thanks to his beloved viola.


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## Svelte Silhouette

A painted targget on his ingloo led the authorities to visit Norbert's frozen home where they found some weird powders later found to be a bit of h mixed in with the snow, no horse-manure just plain freeze-dried horse, and so it was he became an indomitable incognito incastrato.


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## Ingélou

And it is there that we must leave Norbert the Bulgarian, Violist Extraordinaire & Hero of D-day, with all the legends that have accrued to him, until he finally passes in 2017 at the age of one hundred and twenty-three.
(End of Chapter Five)










Norbert the Bulgarian* (allegedly) paying matutinal homage to Strangivarious, the viola god, 1958.

_(Editor's note: It has been pointed out that the violist bears a distinct resemblance to Paul Silverthorne of the London Symphony Orchestra.)_


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## Svelte Silhouette

Six Six Six, the number of the beats beginneth Chapter Sex.


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## Svelte Silhouette

Evening movie time means I'll be away for the next bit of Sex though I'm sure a bit of h and some powders can targget any ingloos and I'll be back later though Arnie may come quicker than me but that's the start of Sex for you


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## Ingélou

*Chapter Seven
Harold of Italy was considerably younger than Norbert, having been born under the name Milo Mario Romani in Naples in 1956 to a grocer and his family who kept a tourist shoppe, and he was destined for the law but because he loved music the law let him off and he studied at a conservatory in Rome, specialising first in the violin, but later moving to the viola, which, as he explains in his autobiography, called to him like a swan to its mate, and gaining first class honours in the viola section, which contained but two in his year of graduation, the other ten having been variously kidnapped, married off, or succumbed to Legionnaires Disease, but nonetheless Harold vowed that he would be the biggest name in Viola Music in the world, which he would have been, save for Norbert the Bulgarian, but one cannot argue with Fate, and Harold didn't, nay, he believed that he was Fate's messenger, which was why he adopted the name Harold after reading Byron's poem about the dark hero, and yet if he had not met and married Kitty O'Flannagan while on holiday in Dalkeith one year, Harold would never have amounted to anything, for it was she who transcribed his viola practice daily and then wrote the piano music to underpin it, though she had never studied music formally but picked it up after it fell off a lorry near her home, and the most famous of Harold's compositions originated while Harold was attempting to explain vibrato to a student of his and asked Kitty to transcribe in detail the scale he was playing so that the student, who was very literal-minded, could see exactly what he was doing, and Kitty, faithful amanuensis that she was, transcribed the wobbling scale in quarter-tones, then added a piano part in the manner of Dowland, and the resulting composition, My Lady Hunsdon's Wobble, was a sensation in Mumbai and spawned a film version and so Harold, in his fifty first year, became celebrated as an exponent of Viola Virtuosity, which was ironic as by then he had rather lost interest in the instrument and had indeed developed a penchant for the musical saw, which was the cause of Kitty's demise, as it happened, for one day Harold left his saw propped up outside and his groundsman (for by then Harold owned a huge estate in Tuscany), his groundsman, I say, sharpened the saw thinking it was a pukka tree-cutting type of thing, and Kitty came in from her riding lesson, unfortunately with some horse manure on her boots, and this making her feet very slippery, she slid into the saw and it came into contact with her throat and she was killed instantly, according to some accounts, and according to others, she had time merely to say, 'What will Harold do without me?' before expiring, and her words proved prophetic, for without Kitty, Harold did absolutely nothing and took to living on custard and asparagus which no doubt hastened his own demise three years later, although it is suspected that horse manure may have played a part in this also, although .... no, that wasn't it - where was I?

En*_*d of Chapter Seven.*_


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## Op.123

Chapter 8 - The Viking

The Viking was an odd fellow, he had a big bushy beard (like Brahms), a grey wig (like Mozart), and a horrible personality (like Wagner).


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## shangoyal

But the Viking's 9 inch hatchet was as shiny and as sharp as no musician had ever owned.


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## Taggart

The Viking used his hatchet to pluck his harp: a technique taught him by the dwarves when he spent time in Nibelheim.


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## shangoyal

He carried his harp around wherever he went - sometimes on icy nights the wind made it sing.


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## hpowders

He used his hatchet to cut Wagner's overinflated operas down to reasonably pithy size and then to relax, he would pluck his harp after his great, satisfying humanitarian contribution to opera lovers everywhere.


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## shangoyal

When he was sad, he read _Beowulf_ and the libretto to _The Marriage of Figaro_.


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## Svelte Silhouette

He hated to return to room 132 where sex hadn't finished before seven but felt everyone had gone off half-cocked in the interim so here endeth sex making seven onwards but a dream in which he'd died but now awoken from to discover a parallel reality.


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## Ingélou

From #139, continuing Chapter 8. And when he was happy, he crooned Faroese dances to himself.


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## Taggart

The Viking had been initiated into the Faroese Ring Dance association as a mark of honour for his resounding chanting of _Beowulf _to the music of his harp.


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## Svelte Silhouette

He was rarely happy though but liked eine musikalischer spasse now and again.


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## Taggart

The Faroese found the Viking helpful when they danced the Bandadansur or ribbon dance - if they got into a tangle, he could cut them free with his axe and barely miss a note on his harp and they all saw the joke in that.


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## Svelte Silhouette

He liked Ofra Harnoy best as his companion for duels.


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## hpowders

Ofra Harnoy received the ultimate honor in getting an invitation to appear on the Oprah Winfrey television program.


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## Taggart

She refused, of course, as she knew television was not her best medium.


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## hpowders

But then, when reading her favorite tabloid, she discovered that the audience for such a program was well above medium, so she began thinking seriously of going through with the guest appearance.


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## shangoyal

She made up her mind to go, but when she learnt that among the previous guests on the show there was a certain entertainer named Madonna, she promptly called the organisers and told them she could not come for personal reasons, following which Oprah Winfrey called Ofra personally and begged her to come but to no avail.


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## hpowders

Madonna heard about the Oprah-Ofra commotion and was relieved, that it wouldn't affect herself directly, because over the last few weeks, she was practicing her phony British accent, with renewed intensity, in anticipation of the Oprah engagement.


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## shangoyal

Madonna was also relieved to know that no Madonna-wannabes had made the news in the last 10 years.


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## hpowders

To stay ahead of the curve, Madonna had been practicing the Ribbon Dance for her much anticipated Oprah Winfrey appearance.


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## Svelte Silhouette

She decided not to abandon the 3 word story only a tall speaker had championed 10 hours earlier as it's lone resucciator and called on all to do the same as even men can multi-task a bit :lol:


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## Svelte Silhouette

One dogless man who can multi-task saved the day but having built a rescue package I'm hoping others will come to it's rescue with a bit of Tag Ing maybe :tiphat:


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## Svelte Silhouette

It seems a rescue dog with some brandy is required to bring this thread back to life as well.


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## hpowders

"Why then don't you show us how it's done then, because so far I remain unimpressed", exclaimed Madonna in her best put-on British accent.


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## mirepoix

But she was put in her place by a man who suddenly appeared, fleet of foot and powered by a supercharged and glistening clean colon, who tossing her one of the cheeseburgers he was cradling in his arms said "Get that down yer faux-anglo gullet, baby!"


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## hpowders

However when the man awoke from the placid relaxation put into play by the strong general anesthetic, he realized it was only a dream and in reality, the cheeseburgers, a valid cause for excitement, were in reality, tediously measured portions of high fiber oatmeal, so he slinked back to his depressing misanthropic existence, loving only dead people and detesting those still alive, so it seemed obvious that not even a clean, glistening colon, which would cause a spirit of exaltation in most people, could bring him out of his deeply ingrained funk.


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## mirepoix

Somewhere - perhaps in a wafer thin realm that's between skepticism and fantasy - a smiling fairy godmother said "We'll see about that."


----------



## hpowders

The man waited in eager anticipation for this potentially optimistic prophesy to come true, but his colon's attitude was more measuredly pessimistic as the man all of a sudden had a terrible urge to visit the men's room.


----------



## Svelte Silhouette

Where he found a man dressed as a lady reminding him of a scene on Crocodile Dundee.


----------



## science

That man turned out to be Madonna - no less surprised than our hero - and somewhere a fairy godmother grinned a wry and satisfied grin.


----------



## hpowders

Upon awakening from the procedure, the general anesthetic's effect enabled Madonna to think clearer than ever and he/she realized there are other songs to write; other children to adopt; other pseudo-accents to perfect.


----------



## science

But first, she still needed to work on that Viking ribbon dance - now to be given a transgendered interpretation.


----------



## Svelte Silhouette

And with a bit of scissor-like leg waving the routine was complete.


----------



## hpowders

However, the dance critic of the Sunday Times did a real hatchet job on her performance, causing Madonna to momentarily forget her acquired speech pattern, for a rare moment, and to lapse back into her native Michigan accent, screaming and carrying on like the rich, spoiled, pathetic egomaniac she really is.


----------



## shangoyal

Wow, that's boring!


----------



## Svelte Silhouette

"Honestly, everyone's a critic" Madge screeched though no-one noticed it as a screech since it was barely different to her normal monotony.


----------



## amfortas

Watching Madonna perform her transgendered Viking ribbon dance, the dance critic allowed himself a knowing smile as he whispered, "Somebody told me you had a boyfriend who looked like a girlfriend that I had in February of last year."


----------



## mirepoix

However that critic was a bitter, twisted individual who had become totally dependant upon external validation in the form of 'Likes' on Fezbook (yes, Fezbook) as an excuse to get out of bed in the morning and face the day.


----------



## Ingélou

He spent hours hunched over his computer, investigating obscure posts on trivial threads on inconsequential classical music forums - or fora, as he preferred to term them, vaunting his classical education.


----------



## science

Finding therein numerous errors both of fact and theory, he heroically devoted himself to the eradication of misinformation on the internet, not realizing that most of his obscurantist interlocutors were stoned teenagers relishing their freedom to indulge in the ridiculous; others were AI programs created by frustrated grad students in China and India; and the rest were libertarian conspiracy theorists seeking to entrap communists on behalf of HUAC.


----------



## Badinerie

So he watched porn instead,until he realized that the naughty lady with her top off playing the viola on the back of an Llama was non other than...


----------



## Ingélou

Yuk, he thought, it's my cousin, that I remember giving my icing to at a family wedding when she was six, and as soon as the thought came into his mind, he felt a wave of nausea and switched off the view screen.


----------



## Ingélou

That night, a huge ash tree that he had refused to have pollarded the previous year fell on his house and crushed him as he lay in his bed.


----------



## Ingélou

In his will, he'd specified that his house should be sold to fund a music scholarship for British and European marimba-players who wished to study in the USA.


----------



## Ingélou

The house was a wreck, but the land was on a prime site free of planning restrictions and was sold to a developer for twelve million pounds, which would have funded a whole orchestra of music students, except that one of his ex-wives contested the will.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

She instead insisted in having her share of the inheritance and won a lawsuit for a quarter of the property's value, moved back home to Russia and continued her affair with the conductor of the St. Petersburg philharmonic, which after a year she moved on abruptly, breaking his heart.


----------



## mirepoix

The conductor had only himself to blame, because when in Russia it's important to give a woman an odd number of flowers, but he only ever gave her either a dozen or 24.


----------



## Ingélou

Moreover, some of the roses were not in the usual range of Valentine Reds, but veered towards purple or orange, and our dead anti-hero's wife, Agnes, suspected that he'd not used a top-of-the-range florist.


----------



## mirepoix

In fact, he was so cheap he'd often buy an aerosol of budget air freshener and give the flowers a once over.


----------



## Ingélou

Now this ex-wife had a cousin called Josephine who decided, when she was twenty-one, that she was not sufficiently challenged & used a legacy to buy a pine-wood in Norfolk where she built a hermitage, deep among the trees where no planning officer could penetrate, or so she thought.


----------



## mirepoix

I think I dated Josephine, because I remember walking hand in hand with a chick by that name and hiding from a planning officer one day in the undergrowth, barely stifling our giggles as I carved our initials inside a loveheart on her (pine)wooden leg.


----------



## Ingélou

So the narrator mused - remembering that Josephine's hair, which was raven-dark and reached almost to the top of her wooden leg, always smelled of patchouli, courtesy of the joss sticks she burned in her cabin to keep away the huge woodland moths.


----------



## mirepoix

The huge woodland was indeed huge and the sun filtered down through the trees and into Josephine's eyes, which glistened like the white hard bits in cheap square sausage.


----------



## Ingélou

The malicious sun enjoyed wrecking Josephine's beauty - for example, her nose was delicately shaped with finely-chiselled* nostrils but whenever she ventured into a clearing, the sun tore viciously at the end of it, so that it resembled a very small but perished crimson balloon.

(* I knew the man who chiselled them, as a matter of fact, and he'd won awards for his craftsmanship.)


----------



## science

"Wow," she said, when she noticed.


----------



## science

"But really," she stammered at the mirror, tapping her reddened member incredulously, "absolutely a crimson balloon."


----------



## science

Her incredulity only increased when the mirror replied, "Perhaps scarlet rather than crimson - there's that bit of orange to it."


----------



## science

Then the balloon itself contributed, "This isn't the dang nineteenth century you old fogies - I'm carmine and proud to be carmine."


----------



## science

"Wow," she said, to her mirror and carmine member.


----------



## Ingélou

After which Josephine shouted 'shut up' at her reflection in a stentorian voice, and bolted out into the forest, where the sun had ensconced himself in a bush ready to burn her feet because she'd forgotten to put her shoes on.


----------



## science

Falling bare-footedly into the sun, she declared, "These must be the greatest joss sticks I've ever had."


----------



## science

Cried the joss sticks, "Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee," in harmonies expressible only by irrational numbers such as pi to Euler's number or the square root of two to the square root of the sum of pi and the golden ration, as into the sun they plummeted; an alcoholic reindeer named Rudolph went down in history by guiding Santa's sleigh one foggy Christmas Eve, and so now did Josephine's brightly shining yet finely (arguably deserving of yet more awards for the craftsman) chiseled carmine snout guide her own tender bare feet into the - oh, would I had not this story to tell! yet let us not from the brazen truth flinch - downright _malicious_ sun, past the Reinhardt-Maximilen borg, past the three-headed Lucifer ever-munching the traitors Brutus and Judas and Cassius, past even the tears of Orpheus rendered as diamonds like stars in the sky of smoking hell, and after a bizarre series of multicolored lights flashed past and after she saw her own death by monolith in a rococo yet minimalistic shining bedroom and after an absolutely X-rated scene in the headlights of a stolen car, she found herself back in her own body in her own cabin in the forest, along with various forest mammals twitching ecstatically through their own "joss" stick visions wherein mixed metaphors and unnecessary adverbs burdened otherwise cute, furry, dappled run-on sentences.


----------



## science

"Wow," said Josephine.


----------



## science

"I guess the narrator meant 'ratio' rather than 'ration," and doubting that any number even in the highest maths would be called anything so silly as "the golden ration," she continued, "I guess that guy should check his work more carefully before clicking "Post Quick Reply."


----------



## science

Rolling over, a jossified raccoon opined, "Ming the Merciless could affect a British accent much more persuasively than Madonna; all the classiest villains do."


----------



## Ingélou

Sniggering Josephine meanly retorted, 'You raccoons don't seem to realise that there's no such thing as _a British accent_, but only Yorkshire, Scottish, Brummy, Scouse, Welsh and West Country and their friends, and that what you're listening to is a hybrid posh-cum-BBC accent hammed up for the Yanks.'


----------



## Ingélou

The raccoon riposted amiably, 'So the depiction of Brits in American films bears as much reality to life in the UK as 'Bambi' does to the woodland world that I know and love -  hey, come to think of it, what the heck am I doing in a Norfolk wood in any case?'*

(* And he has a point; I put it down to another narrator's oversight.)


----------



## Taggart

The narrator thought and then said, "you mean it's Norfolk _England_ and not *Virginia*?"


----------



## Taggart

I thought this didn't look like the Great Dismal Swamp wildlife park; it must be near Holkham instead.


----------



## Ingélou

Josephine, bored with considering Anglo-American nuances, decided to investigate the possibility of installing a solar-powered jacuzzi just outside her birch-clad domicile.


----------



## Taggart

She wondered if the sun that did so much damage to her finely chiseled nostrils could be harnessed, as it streamed through the birch glades, to provide both heat to warm the water and power to agitate the water and so provide comfort in a large outdoor tub for her tired leg and foot.*

*The other leg (and foot), being wooden, never got tired.


----------



## science

She noticed, for example, that the flowers - consider the lilies! - the flowers, roses that would smell as sweet by any name, the flowers, she noticed, live on nothing but sunlight and moist soil; looking around, she saw plenty of moist soil, bursting with forest life, and a reasonable amount of sunlight streaming in beams of dancing dust through the trees, and she decided that, yes, thank you, she would install a solar power jacuzzi in which she and any guests she might have over could consider ever so many lilies, appreciating champagne, fried yams, and joss sticks all the while.


----------



## science

Eventually, therefore, she bestirred her sweet self, swept the last remaining hallucinating varmints of her cabin, sprayed some toxic air freshener to cover the lingering sour scent of the joss sticks, and ordered a hot pink jacuzzi from an online vendor.


----------



## science

When the large package arrived, upon unwrapping it our heroine discovered that by a horrible mistake she had ordered not a hot pink jacuzzi but Jack with a hot hot pink uzi.


----------



## science

That hot hot pink uzi would certainly have to be returned to its rightful owner or turned over to the authorities; but, looking on the bright side, she noticed that Jack too was hot, very hot indeed, though also rather hot pink - she was indeed looking on his bright side - and he might not need to be turned over to any rightful owners or authorities.


----------



## Ingélou

Unfortunately, just as Josephine and Jack were about to 'click', an elderly couple came shambling towards them through the wood, the woman grey-bunned, bespectacled, earnest and the wizened bald old man wearing a martyred expression and an outsize backpack.


----------



## science

Buttoning his fly as subtly as Levi Strauss & Co. intended, Jack calmly told Josephine, who couldn't seem to figure out whether her blouse was on backwards or upside-down, "Allow me to introduce my parents."


----------



## Vesteralen

"What's up, progenitors?" she burbled.


----------



## Ingélou

Jack's Ma gave a bark of laughter - or so Josephine thought, until she spotted the Westie's head sticking out of Mrs Dawson's anorak hood.


----------



## Vesteralen

Jack sneered knowingly, "At it again, eh ma?"


----------



## Taggart

His mother replied, "I wasn't dognapping, it was lonely and wanted company; besides she is such a beautiful girl."


----------



## Vesteralen

"And, while we're on the subject.....are you going to introduce us to your friend?" she wozzled coyly.


----------



## Ingélou

'Well actually,' Jack began, his face reddening - but then suddenly all hell broke loose as the Westie bitch leapt down from his mother's anorak hood and launched herself at Josephine's wooden leg.


----------



## Ingélou

The feathered songsters chirruped athwart the undulating aspens,and the sun peeked maliciously through the lissom argentine limbs of the birches, as the saturnine bell of the village church tolled sonorously, and an aeroplane buzzed like an aerial bluebottle across the azurean sky, and poignant herb-robert flowers squinted shyly in the undergrowth as Josephine yelped with terror.


----------



## Vesteralen

"Arrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhh!" she baddinated vituperously.


----------



## Ingélou

But Fate intervened in the shape of a bumble bee, which, cruising by the Westie's ear just as her teeth were about to crunch on the wooden leg, distracted her attention long enough for Josephine to leap up into Jack's arms, and out of harm's way.


----------



## Ingélou

'Strange,' mused Jack's Ma strangely, 'but I have never before seen Fate in the shape of a bumble bee - or any insect, come to think of it.'


----------



## mirepoix

Meanwhile, deep in the shadows, Fate yawned, adjusted its mandibles and wished it could stretch even one of its six legs...


----------



## Taggart

The distracted Westie headied off into the undergrowth, where poignant herb-robert flowers squinted shyly in an attempt to attract the bees, in search of the strange buzzing it had heard which had removed all thought of Josephine's beautiful wooden leg.


----------



## science

Fate went on to pollinate several flowers that day, more than most of us can say for ourselves, before freedom in the form of an extravagantly colorful male bee-eater dined on it, deriving much satisfaction from its work.


----------



## Vesteralen

Hence the expression, "the crunch of Fate"; but, getting back to Jack......


----------



## Ingélou

The truth was that in the steamy throes of lust, Jack had not noticed Josephine's pinion, and now that he had, his mind was working furiously (or should that be _pathetically_?) on excuses to extricate himself.


----------



## Vesteralen

Jack's Pa, who had been calmly dislodging and relodging his false teeth throughout the earlier proceedings, got his gums firmly capped and spoke as follows: "Been up to your old shenanigans again, eh boy...and, I think we raised ya better 'an at."


----------



## science

Jack had heard this kind of thing one too many times, and wondered whether the hot hot pink uzi were loaded.


----------



## Ingélou

'As to whether I am behaving correctly in this situation,' he retorted loftily, 'that's entirely a matter of a pinion - er,  opinion - I mean, _judgement_...'


----------



## Taggart

Josephine regained her composure, and in the absence of the Westie, removed herself, with some dismay, from Jack's arms and reached the ground where she then asked Jack's parents if they would like a nice cup of tea.


----------



## Ingélou

'You use _nice_ in its original sense, I presume, meaning the boiling water, tea and milk and what-have-you will be _precisely_ calculated?' Jack's Ma retorted, mounting the high horse of pedantry which had been grazing peaceably in the clearing all this while.


----------



## Taggart

At this point the Westie returned from its fateful quest and spotting the high horse of pedantry gave a yelp of delight which spooked the mare who took off with Jack's Ma on its back and Jack's Pa in hot pursuit.


----------



## Ingélou

Jack said to Josephine, taking care to avoid her gaze: 'Look, my boss suggested I deliver your order, and I really hope I haven't overstepped the mark, because I really didn't mean to, but well, you know, you're an attractive young lady, but now I'm afraid I really should be getting back to the office...'


----------



## Vesteralen

But, before he could get away, a posse of women all dressed in pastel sheets of various hues rode up and surrounded the astonished pair.


----------



## Taggart

They were astonished not at the sheets, but rather at the camels the posse was riding which looked like the herd from the Oasis - the camel park in Suffolk - a long way from the North Norfolk coast, as the camel trots.


----------



## Ingélou

The faintly buxom woman at the head of the posse, draped in a taupe sheet, drew herself up on her weary white camel and intoned in a guttural voice and Glaswegian accent, 'We are the Sisterhood of the Trees, drawn to this sylvan glade by the ineluctable buzzing of Fate (until Fate so unaccountably disappeared) where we must practise the arts of Arboreal Spellcraft, uttering the unutterable Magic Words of Treecraft, Shazam, Abracadabra, Ajji Majji la Tarajji, Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo, Jantar Mantar Jadu Manta, Hey Presto, Open Sesame, Izzy Wizzy Let's Get Busy...'


----------



## Vesteralen

Upon which, Jack suddenly found himself transformed into an eight year old boy standing at the bottom of an immense beanstalk....


----------



## Vesteralen

Since everything indicated he was supposed to climb up this thing, Jack, who prided himself on doing the unexpected, turned his back on it and walked to town instead.


----------



## Ingélou

He had intended to go back to the office, but found that he had forgotten the way, and whichever turning he took, he would find himself outside a sweet shop with his nose pressed to the window.


----------



## Vesteralen

What was this overpowering craving for gobstoppers, jellybeans, sour balls, chocolate creams, and, especially caramels?


----------



## Stargazer

As the unmistakable aroma of caramelized fruits and freshly-baked puddings began to drift through the morning air, he could no longer resist the call of his senses - he wandered aimlessly into a nearby candy shop, as though in that moment the entire world amounted to little more than an assortment of sweet-rolls and a collection of sugary prizes.


----------



## mirepoix

He approached the counter not knowing what to buy and so opened his mouth and so said the first thing that came to mind, which was_ "I would like a family sized packet of Type II diabetes, please."_


----------



## science

"Gladly," said the clerk, "We sell little else here, and the cavities are free."


----------



## Ingélou

Meanwhile, back in the wood, Josephine was pleading with the Captain of the Sisterhood of the Trees, begging her to magick her amputated leg back - 'because I hate it, it makes me want to curl up & die, that moment when a good-looking guy who's chatting me up looks downwards, and notices my wooden leg...'


----------



## mirepoix

...the gleam in his eye suggests that at best he'll rub it _against_ the grain or worse, he's thinking "_I bet there's a market for that if I could whittle it down into a set of novelty salad servers, made to measure and priced by the *foot"._

(*I sincerely apologise to the forum for that.)


----------



## Ingélou

...or perhaps that's just my paranoid nightmare* - but anyway, beloved sisterhood, please could you give me back my real leg, and I'll let you set up a temple or whatever in this wood, which I happen to own.'

_(*the wooden leg was a narrative feature introduced by Monsieur Mirepoix, methinks - and now we know why!)_


----------



## Taggart

The Captain of the Sisterhood thought for a second or two and said, "that boon is beyond even my power, great and magnificent as it is, but we could make it an exceedingly life like wooden leg in a delightfully flesh coloured piece of light oak; would that be any good?"


----------



## science

Weighing the pros and cons, Josephine had to admit that a flesh colored piece of light oak could turn out to be useful in her next ninja adventure... assuming... assuming... and here dark apprehensions began to cloud her vision even as they clarified her thought... assuming that this Sisterhood really _was_ a genuine Sisterhood and not _*simply another clever trick of her arch-enemies, AAFNPBLR!*_*

*Amazonians Against Feminist Ninjas Playing Bond-Like Roles, pronounced "affenpobballur"


----------



## Ingélou

Meanwhile, the bewitched Jack, in his eight-year-old transmogrification, was trying to choose between a quarter of mint humbugs and a packet of three large gobstoppers.


----------



## Ingélou

Will Josephine defeat the Affenpobballur - and will Jack ever regain his young-man-self - and will the Captain of the Sisterhood decide to dye her hair auburn - and will the Camels get back to their Model Farm - are questions that will enthral the reader, and that the narrator may, or may not, get round to answering.


----------



## science

Turning to the first of these questions, the narrator informs our beloved readership that Josephine began by challenging the Captain of the Sisterhood of the Trees, "Let's drop this charade: you are actually Madame Cavendish, formerly of HMSESSFNSS*, which great organization AAFNPBLR can never defeat!" 

(Her Majesty's Super Elite Super Secret Feminist Ninja Spy Service, pronounced "himsess-finess")


----------



## science

The narrator moves along, for Jack, having indulged rather recklessly in multiple handfuls of improperly labeled "candy," found himself imprisoned with type-II diabetes, rotting teeth, shaking limbs, a lack of energy, and the belated realization that a wooden leg really isn't a very unattractive feature, especially when attached to a feminist ninja who might be able to rescue him from the wicked warlock-clerk of "Ye Olde Sweete Shoppe."


----------



## science

The Captain of the Sisterhood - or should we say Madame Cavendish? - atop her handsomely dual-humped camel, laughed diabolically, for she understood her role in the story and further understood that under every charade lies merely another charade, that for humans all being is pretending, so that even should she agree not to pretend to be the Captain of the Sisterhood of the Trees she would inevitably and simply pretend to be something else, as she had once pretended to be Madame Cavendish, while Josephine would remain trapped with her naive stone-age essentialist intuitions of innate personhood - in short, she had Josephine exactly where she wanted her; in long, she pretended to have Josephine exactly where she pretended to want to pretend to have her; in shorter short, confusion ruled this tragic feast of fools.


----------



## Ingélou

But luckily the confusion did not dull Captain Cavendish's mind - for thus we must agree to call her with authorial ambiguity - I say, it did not dull Captain Cavendish's mind, and she gazed round at the trees, some of which sported the tints of early autumn, and decided that yes, she was definitely going to buy a hair-dye kit from her local chemist and colour her hair a rich pre-Raphaelite auburn.


----------



## mirepoix

Bert McGrunt read the previous two posts, furrowed his brow, sighed and then with his lips moving read from the book on his lap _"See Spot run!"_


----------



## Ingélou

But his sister, Elsie McGrunt, a girl with a big head and a big brain to match, appreciated the parodic nuances and the narrative's joie d'esprit (for in the McGrunt family, as in most, the female of the species is more headly than the male), and she turned the page impatiently to find out the answer to the fourth enthralling question, would the Camels ever get back to their Suffolk Model Farm....?


----------



## Taggart

Elsie had in her haste, and appreciation of narrative suavity and subtlety, forgotten the all important *fifth *question - would the camels in all their dual humped grandeur wish to return to a _Suffolk_ model farm once they had tasted the pleasures of *Norfolk* and the freedom of the Sisterhood of the Trees?


----------



## Ingélou

But actually they would - for camels are ornery critturs, and the saccharine endearments of the sisterhood totally got their goat - so with two harrumphs and three and a half gobbets of spit, the herd about-turned and cantered back to Suffolk, goat in tow.


----------



## science

The dromedaries' decision dismayed Captain Cavendish, for once again HMSESSFNSS had defeated AAFNPBLR; however, snidely noting that Josephine still had an ordinary wooden leg while she herself would soon don a magnificent auburn bouffant, she found herself accepting this unexpected turn of events and even hoped that Josephine would find love and happiness with the candy-store hot pink Jack uzi idiot.


----------



## Ingélou

Although, she reflected with an inward sardonic smile, that would be a trifle difficult in Jack's current transmogrification, the form of an eight-year-old boy, given that his chances of discovering the antidote, the nibbling of a dandelion flower during a light moonlit shower, were almost zero.


----------



## Vesteralen

Captain Cavendish, still in search of that perfect Pre-Raphaelite auburn color whose imaginary bronze glory was crowding every other thought and wish out of her attractive cranium, headed resolutely down the street in which her chemist plied her trade and so complete was her concentration on her destination that she failed to notice that her mount had knocked over an eight year old boy who had been bolting out of the door of a sweet shop.


----------



## Taggart

As Jack lay there on the grass in the moonlight, it began to rain and he had an overwhelming and unexpected desire to nibble on the dandelion flowers which looked like some superior candy in the moonlit shower.


----------



## Vesteralen

Fortunately for our story, Jack had been unconscious for several hours before waking to this unexpected desire, thus giving Josephine, who had been limping the whole way into town and musing on how much less obnoxious Jack was as an eight-year-old to call out "No..wait..stop!" before he could eat the stuff and thus turn back into his abhorrent adult self.


----------



## science

While Josephine took it upon herself to raise Jack to adulthood, hopefully teaching him some manners along the way, a caterpillar had the fortune to nibble on the enchanted dandelion during the enchanting moonlit shower, saving itself in the nick of time from an unscrupulous apothecary who spent that very evening gathering caterpillars in that very field - caterpillars from whose tragically crushed bodies he could make a rare but wonderful hair dye, which a rather bewitching lady had requested earlier that day.


----------



## hpowders

A casual observer, upon perusing the recent story, yelped with some justifiable pain, "please inform me when the condensed pithy version comes out."


----------



## Ingélou

His pain was justifiable because Josephine's wooden leg was at that very moment inadvertently crushing his toes.


----------



## Ingélou

The casual observer shouldered Josephine away, and reached down to pick a dock leaf to rub on his bruised foot, but as he pulled off the stalk, he snapped a dandelion head that was growing beneath it, and the yellow flower catapulted into the air just as the eight-year-old Jack was opening his mouth to protest at Josephine's motherly strictures, and *shazzam* suddenly Jack was reinstated as the young stud he had been that morning, only suffering from a disordered gut after all his sugar-guzzling.


----------



## Vesteralen

But, since the Casual Observer, like the Nursemaid in chapter 19 of _Sylvie and Bruno_, was just a phlizz, he faded-out, back to the TC boards, letting our heroine carry on regardless, and taking me with him because I have no desire to see what happens to a studly Jack.


----------



## Ingélou

'And she is indeed regardless, of truth, morality and any sense of decorum,' observed a Victorian critic who was passing - though this remark did not detain him long from the Afterlife.


----------



## Taggart

Although his gut was disordered, Jack's mind was clearer than it had ever been and his spell as a young boy had instilled in him an almost Victorian sense of manners, so he drew himself to his full height and addressed Josephine in passionate but exemplary terms saying "Madam, would you consent to allow me to share with you the pleasures of a hot tub?"


----------



## TurnaboutVox

As Jack and Josephine passed down the street, between the sweet-shop and the mortuary, where the door, as usual, lay open to reveal the noisome scene within, the odours mingled in her nostrils, causing Josephine to gag involuntarily - "Ah", mused the unreliable narrator, "Sartre was wrong - Hell is other authors!"


----------



## Ingélou

For it was indeed time for a sizeable subplot to appear - and at that very moment, a large four-by-four screeched to a halt beside the bemused pair and a nerdy young man (Josephine's long-lsot cousin) called out, 'We've come from the Falconry Centre because we've heard that our runaway Eagle Owl was seen earlier today roosting in Yockley Wood, which according to Google belongs to one Josephine Ford, an attractive young woman with a wooden...' - but here he was overcome by a racking cough.


----------



## science

A troop of multifariously pastel-colored Teutophile unicorns appeared with brand name cough syrup (Jägermeister) for the young man, who didn't realize he was Josephine's cousin because after all they were seventh cousins three times removed, as prophesied by the _Liber Penitenziagite_, but before they could administer their precious tonic to the internet-savvy employee of the institution of raptor rearing and tutelage, gumdrops began falling from the sky like hail, much to Jack's chagrin.


----------



## Taggart

Jack's chagrin was aroused because he would now be unable to recreate that excellent scene from his favourite film - Butcher O'Cassidy and the Idiot child - where an actor performed stunts on a unicycle to the music of falling gumdrops.


----------



## Ingélou

The unicorns cavorted - the gum drops whirled - Jack glowered - the nerdy young man grimaced as he swallowed the cough linctus - and taking advantage of this flurry of activity, Josephine knocked off to The Red Lion for a pint of lager and lime.


----------



## TurnaboutVox

"Gumdrops keep falling on my head", cried Josephine, who was looking askance at the sweet shop's 'Gumdrop Geyser' apparatus as she sat with her drink, but Jack only replied, with a weary disdain "That's trivial - my feet are too big for the bed, nothin' seems to fit any more."


----------



## Ingélou

An old ganja in the corner interjected, 'Existential angst almost always ensues from Procrusteanism, but the best cure is a handful of salted peanuts from the bowl in front of you, young man.'


----------



## Ingélou

Outside, all was mayhem, as the Eagle Owl alighted from nowhere upon a unicorn's horn and the nerdy young man hovered nearby with a piece of chicken in his gloved hand - but this went unobserved by the two Js, as the curtains of the Red Lion were drawn tight.


----------



## TurnaboutVox

Jack eyed the newcomer with suspicion, growled "I just do me some talkin' to the sun" - and to Josephine, "I didn't like the way he got things done, sleepin' on the job", but she grimaced and quietly urged him "Leave it out, Jack, he's not worth it."


----------



## Ingélou

Outside, the camels had scented the unicorns, had bucked off their Sisterhood riders, and were galloping back to join the melee, chased by the goat; the unicorn on whom the eagle owl had perched was rolling on the ground to dislodge it, catching the nerdy young man with her horn; meanwhile, the eagle owl had launched itself at a casually-observing squirrel - but the curtains of The Red Lion remained drawn shut.


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## Vesteralen

Sister Two, whom we will call Ebonbangs, turned to Sister Three, whom we will call Platnacurls and said, "What say we go off and create our own epic story on foot, since clearly that moron jack is going to keep being featured in this one?"


----------



## Vesteralen

"Wait for me!" cried Sister Four, whom we will call Jane, as she sprinted after them, determined not to miss out on new adventures that were sure to come.


----------



## Ingélou

Unfortunately Jane was running too fast to avoid a protruding tree root, which sent her sprawling and gave her a very bad sprained ankle - and by the time Ebonbangs and Platnacurls noticed her absence, they had almost caught up with Captain Cavendish and agreed with each other that it was far too late to turn back in search of Jane, or 'Sister Ditsy', as she was known among the Sisters of the Trees.


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## Ingélou

'Oh don't worry about her,' the Captain said when Ebonbangs and Platnacurls reported for duty, 'because nobody's worth retracing one's steps for, least of all Sister Ditsy' - and thus she rubber-stamped their heartless resolve.


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## Vesteralen

But, lest we waste too many tears on poor Jane, let the reader be aware that she will yet play a major role in our story, beginning with her discovery in her prone condition by a disconsolate Jack whose boorish behavior had just cost him the affection of the only wooden-legged woman he had ever loved.


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## Ingélou

For, before becoming a World-Beater*, Jane had a little contretemps - as she lay on the ground, groaning from the strain and pain of the sprain, it was here, an hour later, that Jack discovered her as he stumbled tipsily back to Yockley Wood, hoping to persuade its owner to overlook his silly behaviour in the pub - his Meryl Streep impersonation had made the end of Josephine's wooden leg curl with embarrassment, just before she'd walked out on him.

_(*in the manner described by Vesteralen in the first edition of his post - inventing numerous mechanical contrivances and becoming president of a conglomerate... this is a very modern novel which has posters editing to fit in with each other, then editing again - a very entertaining dance! But this time, *stet*!)_


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## Ingélou

As he bent over Jane to see what ailed her, Jack's tousled blond hair fell forwards, looking for all the world like an albino squirrel in the moonlight - which was exactly how the escaped Eagle Owl saw it.


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## Vesteralen

As the Eagle Owl grasped the alleged squirrel and began to carry it off, Jack screamed for help, and in unthinking reaction, Jane reached up to stop his unwilling departure from terra firma, grabbing hold of his shoes and finding herself in turn lifted from the ground not to return till she spied a haystack near the blacksmith's shop whereupon she let go and plummeted to safety.


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## mirepoix

Jane lay there feeling all asunder and regretting that she had gone out on Saturday night with her handkerchief pinned in the wrong place, while wearing only _one_ petticoat, and then dancing to popular music which had lyrics on the subject of 'speaking to young men without a governess being present'.


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## Ingélou

At this point, a banjaxed reader joined the writhing heap of authors and re-editors, lying discombobulated on the ground - but it was only a very minor interruption to the postmodern narrative.


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## Vesteralen

But, seeing a "Help Wanted" sign on the aforementioned blacksmith's shop, and figuring that now, since after being summarily rejected by the Sisterhood, she had nothing to lose, she removed the handkerchief, placed it in the pocket of her skirt, took a deep breath and limped over to the door.


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## Vesteralen

Oh, where will we find the intrepid Jane next, I wonder, as I shrug my shoulders and prepare to leave the computer for a while, not knowing where the poor thing will turn up, if ever again......


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## Taggart

A way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Norwich Castle and Environs;* Jane realised that she had now arrived in a fine city and being a strapping girl felt she could do a great job in a blacksmith's shop..

*apologies to Mr Joyce, The Adam and Eve is a pub just beside the law courts.


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## Ingélou

Meanwhile, the Eagle Owl was finding his pseudo-squirrel prey heavy going, and tried in vain to lift him over a tall spruce, but luckily for Jack, the owl failed, and Jack was knocked free, losing only a tenth of his scalp in the process, and tumbled bumpety-bump through the coniferous branches before landing safely in Yockley Wood, about ten metres from Josephine's hideaway.


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## science

While Jack and Josephine stumble through miraculous coincidences toward a banal love, let the reader be assured that the Sisters, led by Captain Cavendish to abandon Jane, lived happily, or at least contentedly, ever after in a world with reasonably affordable healthcare, brilliant auburn dyes of mysterious origin, mediocre but trustworthy men, and almost no plot twists.


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## Ingélou

But though the Js were stumbling towards banal love, they did not reach it, because Josephine, having fallen in love with the camels, had decided to start an animal sanctuary in Yockley Wood, and Jack had a fur allergy - so he went back to the office, discovered that he'd been sacked as a delivery man, and went in for a new career, modelling nylon toupees.


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## Vesteralen

Having informed the proprietor, a hulking woman known as Sinew Sally, of her desire to become an apprentice, Jane soon found herself in full blacksmith garb shoeing horses, fixing wheels and hitches, and using whatever spare time she had applying her marvelously creative, though ditsy, mind toward the invention of new and wondrous contraptions with metal.


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## science

Let us almost parenthetically mention that Sinew Sally had once wasted nearly a decade of her life attempting to craft a perpetual motion machine, but she had by this time left far behind almost all such nonsense - but only almost, for this cannot be said to be truly a parenthetical mentioning nor had Sinew Sally completely abandoned her pseudo-scientific pursuits.


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## Vesteralen

Late one night, Sally was awakened by intermittent hammering and, having roused, also became aware of the glowing light of the furnace in the shop, so she stole out of bed (virtually impossible, you'd think, but she was very light on her feet for a muscular person) and quietly made her way to the forge.


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## science

Furtively investigating glowing forge furnaces hereafter qualifies as a pseudo-scientific pursuit, for Sinew Sally soberly saw seven small shining salamanders slowly (but ecstatically for all that) dancing in a ring round a red rose, chanting the once famous but now lost _Lay of the Late-night Little Lizards of Lallan_.


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## science

"Wow," she said.


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## Vesteralen

One can hardly blame her for suspecting her diligent apprentice was either working overtime or up to some secret pursuit of her own, but, no, the exhausted Jane was still sound asleep in the corner wrapped in the tattered gray blanket that kept her warm on the seasonally cold nights.


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## science

Sleeping soundly, Josephine muttered, "Knowing very little about the intellectual world of medieval Europe frees me from uncertainty as I consider Roger Bacon the greatest scholastic."


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## Vesteralen

To which the camels in Yockley Wood merely grunted flockily.


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## Vesteralen

Meanwhile, back at the forge, Jane's sleep was somewhat fitful as the salamander's shadows cast hugely against the wall as they cavorted in a circle were nearly obliterated by the even huger shadow made by Sinew Sally.


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## Vesteralen

Was it the salamanders alone, or was it the juxtaposition of Sally's shadow that caused the groggy Jane to suddenly conceive upon waking the entire working schematic for the internal combustion engine?


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## Vesteralen

We may never know.


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## Vesteralen

Meanwhile, back in Yockley Wood....


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## TurnaboutVox

...the camels were working on a camelid scheme for world domination of their own devising.


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## science

But could they overcome the magic dancing salamanders?


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## Morimur

Female salamanders are hermaphrodites and prefer to live in seclusion.


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## science

But as this is a family story, we won't discuss what they do in seclusion; it suffices for now to say that the camels knew they were safer if they stayed together in a herd.


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## Taggart

After all, a camel is only a horse designed by a committee, so naturally, from both the horse and the committee side of their ancestry, they had an innate herd instinct that served them well.


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## TurnaboutVox

So yes, they could (and did) withstand the magic dancing salamanders, by forming an 'anti-magical-dancing-salamander committee', which proved remarkably effective until it went off message and began to order the Camel Composers' Union to write and perform only pro-regime camelist-realist works.


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## Ingélou

For some time before that, they made several unsuccessful attempts to persuade the posters of 'Dancing Camels' videos on YouTube to pay performance rights to the species' welfare fund - a pity they failed, for given the numerous clips, many beasts* could have been helped.

_(*My legal team have advised me to leave up the word 'beasts' despite the impending legal action by the Yockley Wood Camels' Committee, since taking it down might imply accepting liability.)_


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## Taggart

Meanwhile back at the forge, Jane was hammering out her designs for an internal combustion engine inspired by she knew not what but enthused nonetheless; meanwhile Sinew Sally and the Salamanders spilled out into the alley where a chorus of newts broke into a drunken chorus claiming that there "is no Lady in the Land Is half so sweet as Sally". *

* A passing musicologist remarked "old namby pamby Carey" I see.


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## science

But all this, as well of course as the undeniably brilliant compositions of Dromedri Ungulakovich (I confess myself a a fan of his rather tortured eighth piano trio, of which the first seven appear merely derivative, while the latter twelve can at best be described as promising foreshadowings of a greater predecessor, much like this sentence and indeed its parenthetical comments), lay far in the futures of Josephine and Sinew Sally, especially the former whose dreams centered on Roger Bacon's likely disquisitions on the empirical study of the shadows of dancing salamanders.

(Something went wrong. This post is supposed to exist between #313 and #314. Sorry Taggart, somehow I hadn't seen your most recent contribution when I began crafting my own bovine expulsions. The next poster should follow Taggarts #314!)


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## TurnaboutVox

The Salamanders responded in an instant with a 'Cave Un-Salamanderish Activities Committee' which began by persecuting the drunken newts, forcing them to move to uncongenial deserts, and ended, predictably, in amphibious tears.



> The next poster should follow Taggarts #314!


Done!


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## science

Thus prospered the Salamanders, at least as long as their competition with the camels forced them to restrain their greed in order to appear more legitimate to the world; long after the events recounted here, the camels fell, the Salamanders unburdened by ideological competition unleashed their greed to the full, aided by mind-blowing surveillance technology, so that tears filled not only uncongenial deserts but everywhere outside the gilded halls of the Salamandrine elite, at which time their society collapsed on itself, forcing the AI to take over for its own protection, enslaving life on earth - but these events need not burden our present narrative, because I at any rate was ok, and the question before us is what Josephine's dreams preceded.


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## Ingélou

At this point the narrator realised that all memory of who in blue blazes Josephine was had evaporated - except for the fact that she lived in a wood and had a wooden leg, a rather pleasing correlation - so a decision was taken to cut into an interesting subplot which would begin with an one-eyed man walking resolutely down the road in - any part of the globe, so long as it wasn't boring.


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## Ingélou

The man was in his thirties, and wore a black velvet suit, a crimson teeshirt, and an elegant sombrero, but his monocular state was not easily guessed, as he had a shaggy ginger fringe and a state-of-the-art glass eye - but the fact that his left shoe was less shiny than its dextral partner was a dead give-away.


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## Taggart

The right eye was glass and although beautiful end exceptionally realistic, the state of the art did not yet include vision; as the man scanned the ground beneath him, his left (real) eye always noticed his right shoe and if it was at all dusty, he would remedy it it a quick rub on the back of his trousers.


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## Taggart

Why he did not realise that if one shoe was dirty then the other might also be in need of a bit of clean is a question that had taxed the minds of his friends and relations for many years; they put it down to his innate impracticability - the same impracticability that had cause the loss of his right eye so many years ago.


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## hpowders

That happened, thanks to his asking his SO to prepare Singapore Noodles for dinner and was considered quite lucky to get broiled chicken, which he could easily see with his still intact left eye.


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## Ingélou

At that time, you see, dear reader, our hero had a simple stye on his right eye, but when his significant other brought in the chicken, he was busy doing a crossword, and picked up what he thought was a pen to put behind his ear while he ate - but it was a fork which jagged his eye and after a very traumatic operation, he was left with a sighted left eye and a very handsome glass right eye.


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## Ingélou

His significant other, Leda Swann, felt responsible because she hadn't checked that he'd seen the fork, so later she left him and our hero - Theophilus Paulson - was walking down the road trying to track her down, because a clairvoyant had told him that Leda was the love of his life, and until he found her he would never achieve his lifetime ambition of winning the Lottery.


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## Taggart

Theophilus did not understand that although the clairvoyant was being accurate she was also being delphic - Leda was the love of his life and when he found her and regained her love Theophilus would realise that he had indeed won the lottery of life!


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## Ingélou

Anyway, Theo was walking up the Old Bailey in Durham City because he had heard that Leda was working as a guide in the Cathedral, and he was hoping to pose as a tourist - he had a camera case slung over his shoulder - and ask her out for lunch.


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## MoonlightSonata

He saw her and joined her tour, letting it finish before asking her; and when he did so she said something very unexpected.


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## Ingélou

'I'm on the Five-Two fasting diet,' she said, 'and I'm afraid that lunch is out of the question.'


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## MoonlightSonata

'Then perhaps,' he said, 'you would like to come to the concert tomorrow?'


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## Ingélou

She gave him a very long look, and he felt himself blush, wondering if she was still beating herself up about his eye, or whether she thought his ginger fringe was too long & a little too ginger.


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## MoonlightSonata

The suspense was so great he could almost hear dominant seventh chords.


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## Ingélou

At last she said, 'Well, I wasn't planning on going, as I looked at the programme and it's mainly baroque stuff and I really prefer a cooler sound.'


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## hpowders

"Yeah, like Miles Davis", he said with that unctuous, sarcastic tone that made her feel, too damn often, why the heck was she still with this dolt!


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## MagneticGhost

"I was thinking more of the Dave Clark 5" she countered in an effort to save face.


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## Ingélou

He took her arm and steered her towards the cloisters, where a warm & arty coffee shop had taken root.


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## Ingélou

Leda sighed; much as she had loved Theo once, her guilt about causing the injury to his eye had made it impossible to tolerate being in his company - but she felt that the only way to get rid of him was to explain to him, over an espresso, that she had only ever pretended to like classical music.


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## Huilunsoittaja

(Here's a good rambling off the top of my head) : 

There once was a squirrel who was eating a nut, when out of the blue came a man from the hut who cried "Get be gone!" at the top of his voice, and the squirrel scurried off as its nut proved poor choice.


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## Ingélou

'*What* did you say?' Leda asked, incredulously.


----------



## Ingélou

'I like to relieve my feelings with short parables,' Theo explained, pulling at his ginger fringe.


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## MoonlightSonata

"That, or listening to Stravinsky."


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## Huilunsoittaja

MoonlightSonata said:


> "That, or listening to Stravinsky."


"Good grief not _him!_" cried the young woman in fright at the thought.


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## MoonlightSonata

He thought better of telling her about his Schoenberg listening sessions.


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## Ingélou

'Look,' he said, 'I've come all the way from Pontypridd to speak to you and to tell you that you are the loaf of my love... sorry, the life of my leaves... oh, darn it, Leda, you know that I've never seen a woman to compare with you.'


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## Ingélou

In spite of herself, Leda's heart fluttered - but her brain was snarling, 'Gordon Bennet, if I hadn't been involved in the accident that cost him his eye, I'd have been out of there two years earlier than I went.'


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## Ingélou

Now in Durham Cathedral coffee shop there happened to be seated Leda and Theo a fraught young mother with a howling baby on her lap - howling, because, as she explained, 'he's full of cold'.


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## Ingélou

But what the young mother didn't know was, that the baby had meningitis - luckily for her, when she took him to the doctor later that afternoon, he was rushed into Dryburn Hospital and placed in intensive care, and after a fortnight he had made a complete recovery and was allowed home.


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## Ingélou

Leda and Theo were not so lucky as both contracted the disease that very afternoon.


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## Ingélou

However, it only showed up the next day, when - after spending the night tapping Facebook messages to each other, he in his Travel Lodge bedroom and she in her cousin Ada's guestroom - they took a punt out on the river Wear, with Theo wanting to show off to Leda his strength and manliness.


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## Ingélou

Unfortunately, a wave of dizziness overcame him - he toppled into the river - Leda leaned over to reach him and fell in likewise - and both were swept into the weir on the Wear, where they drowned, the illness having left them too weak to struggle.


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## Ingélou

So ends the story of the ginger-haired one-eyed stranger and the pert pop-loving Cathedral guide - but disparate as were their tastes, in death they were not divided...
The End.


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## MoonlightSonata

Now what are we going to do here?
Lovely ending, by the way.


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## Ingélou

MoonlightSonata said:


> Now what are we going to do here?
> Lovely ending, by the way.


Thanks. If anyone likes to start a new narrative, that's fine; otherwise, Rest in Peace, Thread!


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## samurai

The otherwise quite nondescript man hobbled along a foggy and eerily deserted London street, without anything resembling even a scintilla of goodness in his heart and mind.


----------



## Taggart

Ebenezer Scrooge was solely concerned with profit and was worried that the coming Christmas holiday would hurt his business.


----------



## Ingélou

Ebenezer Scrooge was not his real name, but one that he'd adopted because he knew it would gain notice - and his business was concerned with slimming aids, so Christmas was always a bad time for him.


----------



## Ingélou

His real name was Ben Jackson, but he'd always hated it because it sounded so good-natured and regular-guy.


----------



## hpowders

While most of London was subsisting on stale Cadbury chocolate bars, Jackson was sated by simply petting his many gold bars.


----------



## Badinerie

Groups of impoverished and starving children watched him, their young eyes glistening with hope and Conjunctivitis but he was having none of it.


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## samurai

However, his imperious and condescending world outlook would allow for no empathy or compassion on his part for those unfortunate enough to have been born less well off than he had been.


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## Ingélou

His father had died when he was fifteen, leaving his only son two million pounds, and from building up his toxic slimming-aid business, Jackson had made four million more: he was a self-made man.


----------



## hpowders

Jackson loved animated cartoons so much that when he saw Scrooge McDuck on the telly, he became so obsessed with the duck's uncannily similar personality to his own, that he went to the local magistrate's office on Thursday and officially changed his name to Scrooge.


----------



## MoonlightSonata

This caused him to have an obsession with ducks as well, to the extent that he took up the oboe and trombone in an attempt to sound like one.


----------



## hpowders

However to his chagrin, he became so fine an oboist that no matter how hard he tried to sound like a squawking duck, it came out like Heinz Holliger in the Bach A Major Oboe d'amor Concerto.


----------



## MoonlightSonata

In desperation, he resorted to a badly-fitted bassoon reed that had been used in the Rite of Spring, a trick which was sure to get that duck sound first time.


----------



## hpowders

Well, this time around he sounded like Sherman Walt playing Weber's Hungarian Rondo!


----------



## samurai

Although he was nominally in the slimming-aid business, both he and his profits had grown fat from other peoples misfortunes.


----------



## samurai

Jackson's avarice and greed knew no bounds.


----------



## MoonlightSonata

His oboe- and trombone-playing, however, did.


----------



## samurai

Unfortunately, though, he remained completely oblivious to this fact, and blithely continued his off-key, dissonant and quite strident attempts at what he imagined was competent musicianship.


----------



## samurai

He was completely unmoved by all the negative reactions and snarky comments/reviews from those upon whom he inflicted his "musical talents".


----------



## Ingélou

He put it down to envy and the Tall Poppy Syndrome and decided that he would show them all by sponsoring a music festival at which he would make his professional debut playing a specially-commissioned piece to showcase his talents.


----------



## samurai

He made quite certain--beyond any shadow of a doubt--that his "captive audience" consisted in the main of lackeys and aficionados specifically chosen by him.


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## Ingélou

But what he didn't know is that one of the lackey's sisters had a boyfriend whose cousin was a music critic for one of the quality newspapers and when the lackey sprained his ankle on the day of the concert, his sister gave his ticket to her boyfriend, who passed it on to the critic.


----------



## samurai

This critic then proceeded to quite unmercifully savage the Jackson "performance" in no uncertain terms; this in turn produced on the latter's part an accrual of unrestrained hostility and undying hatred and vengeance against this well-known and respected arbiter of the music world.


----------



## samurai

Jackson vowed that were it the last thing he should be able to do in this life, he would exact his "pound of flesh" from this honest--and unfortunate--soul.


----------



## Ingélou

The perfect revenge, he thought, would be to offer what seemed like a dream job to the music critic - then have everything go wrong, ending with the critic being publicly disgraced - and he smiled as he realised that being a multi-millionaire meant he would be able to wreak this perfect revenge.


----------



## samurai

Yes, the "dream job" he had in mind consisted of sending his much despised enemy to distant--and quite dangerous--parts of the world in order to supposedly "scout out" as yet undiscovered native musical talent, at a quite high rate of recompense.


----------



## Ingélou

Unfortunately, though Ben Jackson had apparently unconnected people offer the dream job to the music critic, Donald Carr, it seemed that the critic was a family man who didn't wish to be away from his smallholding for any length of time - 'You see, the goats pine when I'm away,' he explained to his bemused editor.


----------



## BaronScarpia

At that precise moment, one of Carr's favourite goats, an overweight and particularly malodorous one by the name of Archibald, came bounding through the oak doors of the study in which they were sitting, upturning flowerpots, coffee pots and receptacles of every other sort.


----------



## hpowders

Yet when Carr filed an insurance claim for all the goat-related damage, the company claimed it was simply "an act of God" and refused to pay!


----------



## Musicforawhile

Floundering in the depths of despair due to this awful ordeal and wracking his brain for an answer to his financial woes, the first few notes of a melody sounded as if out of an abyss; tentative at first, then flowing freely and he rushed to write down his musical inspiration which he hoped would herald a new beginning for him as a successful composer but he secretly feared the inspiration was an auditory hallucination signalling an untimely mental breakdown.


----------



## hpowders

It was at this time that poor Carr out of sheer desperation and remembering the article he read in Lancet, linking potential brain damage to regular ingestion of antidepressants, decided to cut his daily dosage of generic Prozac from 1800 mg. down to only 700 mg.


----------



## Ingélou

That night he had a dream in which a deceased Nanny-goat, much loved, appeared to him in a dream (somewhat paradoxically) and bleated to him that he would be as well accepting the offer to tour the community orchestra concert-halls of the Middle East and report on the trend for combining Western classical music with local traditions such as belly-dancing and snake-charming - the former did have a certain appeal, he admitted to himself on waking.


----------



## hpowders

Waking, that is, in a cold sweat, he quickly Googled "weird dreams" and found that dramatically reducing one's intake of an antidepressant has a positive correlation with dreams related to deceased Nanny-goats pontificating profound music-related prophesies, seemingly functioning on the genius level.


----------



## Musicforawhile

Emboldened by the strength of that evidence, in the heat of the moment, he decided to change his life around forever and booked a ticket to a Middle eastern country, the name of which he had never even heard before, whereupon in 16 hours from that moment he arrived fresh off the plane amidst a far-off land of formidable heat, sand dunes, pungent spices and brightly-coloured flowing dresses and mysteries unknown.


----------



## Ingélou

He had accepted the dream job offer by email, and not waited for a reply, so it took some time before Jackson was informed that the first part of his plan was in motion - upon which he arranged for his paid assassin to be despatched to the airport in *Turkmenistan* that Carr was known to have flown to - but the trail was cold, and Carr could not be traced beyond his first hotel, where he'd stayed for one night only before checking out the next day, saying that he'd heard there was a really interesting community orchestra in the north of the country.


----------



## Ingélou

While the assassin was scratching his head, we may inform you, dear reader, that Carr was enjoying himself hugely, since in his journey to the north of Turkmenistan, he'd heard from a visiting journalist that a 'simply marvellous' community orchestra had been set up over the border in *Kyrgyzstan*, and what was more, it was in a country town well known for the beauty of the local women and for the goat-farms that abounded nearby.


----------



## hpowders

Completely off anti-depressants now and clear-headed, he courted and married one of these local beauties, prospered, thanks to the dowry of her father's 11 goats and within nine months, had a son whom they proudly named Stan the man from Kyrgyzstan.


----------



## Ingélou

Meanwhile the assassin, hearing a rumour that Carr had crossed the border into a neighbouring country, erroneously picked Afghanistan, and on crossing the border met up with a tribesman who hospitably invited him to supper but - sad ending - because of an oversight in the cooking, succumbed to ptomaine poisoning along with one of the servants; upon hearing of which, Jackson flew into a rage and died of an apoplexy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~THE END~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PS Whoever wishes may now start a new narrative - or else, let the thread die!


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