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Horseplay: a story of clowns

To be very honest with you, I don’t know whether this one should be repeated or not, but we wrote it together, like many other things we wrote together.

I had my own Words once, many years ago. It isn’t the same thing now. Horseplay was written by us for fun.

C.S Capewell and C.D Chevalier.

Citrin du Chevalier was a magnificent stallion of ill repute who wanted to tell a story before his brains fell out.

‘Why would your brains fall out, Citrin,’ asked his rider, a jockey by any other name.

‘Because I have been very silly, galloping around the countryside, and forgetting what I am supposed to be doing.’ Here, Citrin says, “I am better now, this was long ago and far away and I am better but I’m still an idiot.’

‘Is that why you wish to be a goldfish’ the jockey asked gently, rubbing Citrin’s magnificent chestnut neck.

‘Neigh,’ cried Citrin. ‘But, it resonated with me, because I have the attention span of one.’

The jockey pondered this for a little while, then asked Citrin if he would like to try some dressage.

‘To be honest, I am used to racing,’ Citrin snorted. ‘Dressage makes me a little cranky. Can we have a run around the paddock a few times and then, perhaps, I’ll give it a whirl.’

So, the jockey took off her boots and spurs, reminded Citrin he was not a porcupine because they do not exist in Australia, then removed Citrin’s saddle and bridle, unbranded his coat and removed the iron from his feet. She did not let him float off and up into the air, she let his winter coat grow in and he began to look a little scruffy.

‘How does that feel, Citrin,’ she asked, looking into his mismatched yet awesome eyes.

‘It feels like I am free, for once.’ He puffed through his nostrils and looked around the paddock. And, looking back on these words, he says softly “It feels like I am free all over again. Thank you. ‘How big is the world beyond this paddock, oh jockey friend.’

‘The world is a very large place, Citrin, and I am a little concerned you may get lost. But, here in Australia the sky goes on forever and, if you plan carefully, you can run for many kilometres before you need to stop.’

‘I like this idea,’ said Citrin. ‘Would you be too concerned about me running for many years?’

‘It depends on what you want to run, and whether you want to run to something or from something. What would you like to do, Citrin?’

‘I just want to run to something rather than from something,’ Citrin said. ‘That is all I want to do. I haven’t been able to run to something for a very long time and I’m sad. I just need to have a destination.’

The jockey stroked his scraggly mane, and brushed his tail until it shone. ‘Before I open this gate again, Citrin, I am going to let you have a rest in a safe place and think about where you would like to run to. I know you have been a good stallion all your life, now, and I know you just need to have a break. I think you are perfectly capable of being victorious one last time, if you want to be.’

You write it differently today, he thinks. This is not how it went the last time. I have a copy too. I think I am getting fed up with people more often than I’m not, and I really need to talk about it to my friends. Properly this time, I think, not just with you.

This had been a huge step in the right direction for Citrin. The jockey did not sit outside the gate and wait, and she did not need to find the other horses who were Citrin’s friends. They had found him quite soon after this story was written the first time, and have been “coddling the bejesus” out of him ever since. They had spoken of pavlova, and how one should not eat in bathtubs, and had spoken of pools, and how one should sing about scarecrows in pools, and had laughed a great deal about being weird and friendly, all at the same time, and they had reached a point where almost every single one of them was reasonably happy, if not completely whole again.

Little did she know, they had helped her write this one last time as well, and were sitting in bathtubs with rubber duckies, and crying into their noodles, and desperately trying to be patient and not mean, and demonstrating that they could be nice too, if they really wanted to.

What matters the most though, more than anything else, is that they are trying. And, if they’re trying their best, that’s all we ever ask for really, isn’t it?

‘Yes,’ whispered Citrin from atop a distant mountain. He looked down at the chestnut gelding he had “appliqued on his destrier’s blanket” just the previous week. ‘That’s all we can ask for.’

Protection.

‘Will you tell me a story?’

Yes, of course I will. You sit in my lap and I’ll tuck your brothers into bed, okay?

‘Okay. Can we do Jack and the Beanstalk? Or Hansel and Gretel? Or maybe we do inside things today.’

‘It’s sleepy time now. You can fall asleep while I tell the story.’

‘I wanna see pictures.’

‘You make pictures in your head then, okay?’

‘I don’t like that poster. It makes me scared.’

‘The poster on the wall? It’s just a lion at the circus, baby. We’ll tell another story.’

‘Okay.’ He curls up small, little blonde ringlets shining in the lamplight. His mother tells the story, and she does all the voices, and he can see the rabbit with the irish accent in his head.

‘I like the rabbit,’ he mumbles. ‘It’s nice.’

His brothers ask for the blue light. She holds up a finger and traces it around them.

‘It will protect you all through the night,’ she says, and they can almost see it glowing.

‘See,’ says the littlest one. ‘This is my mummy. She protects me.’

The little girl…

stomped into the room.

‘Get up,’ she said, not very nicely.

‘What?’ the small boy looked up at her with bleary eyes.

‘Get up, I said, or…’ she looked around his room quickly. ‘I will whack you with a tennis racquet.’

‘You will not!’ He shot out of the bed like he’d done something in it.

‘Yes, I will. Where are your brothers?’

‘They’re not here,’ he cried, scrambling for the bin, where he’d hidden her papers. ‘Damnit!’

‘Yes they are. I can hear them.’ She stomped her foot imperiously.

Giggling came from behind the curtains. Perhaps, if the boys had been older, it would have been masculine giggling. As it was, they were still very young and didn’t know how to hide properly. Two sets of feet, in very unattractive shoes, poked out from beneath the hideously orange hanging cloth.

The little girl didn’t say anything to warn them. She picked up the racquet the boy had hidden under the bed and advanced towards the window.

‘Run away!’ the boy called from the bin he had accidentally-on-purpose fallen into. ‘How the hell did this get so big,’ he muttered to himself.

The two brothers peeked out. ‘Oh no,’ cried the one with the blue eyes. ‘She’s gonna get me by Jumminy. I must run slowly in a wriggling line of not very far so I can’t be caught.’ He began to tiptoe, very unquietly, and very vaguely, and hideously slowly in the general direction of something that was not her.

‘Arrrrrgh,’ cried the one with the green eyes. ‘I am friendly, I am friendly!’ He deposited himself on the floor and began to giggle uncontrollably.

‘You are NOT HELPING MOIIIIII,’ said the first boy. His eyes were very large and brown, and rather pretty in their own stupid way. ‘Not fair,’ he muttered. ‘I was trying to be cute.’

‘It does not suit you AT ALL,’ cried the little girl and swung the racquet at him as hard as she could. It hit him on his rather horribly shaped backside, for we must remember he was currently upside down in a bin.

‘You better watch out,’ cried the little girl. ‘For when I grow up, I am gonna get my future husband to come along and clean you up like something or other that I can’t think of right now.’

‘Well then! Well then!,’ the little boy cried from under the sheets of paper he’d finally found. ‘When I get a wife that… when I get a wife, and I WILL, I’ll set her onto you and you’ll be SORRY.’

‘Not gonna happen,’ said the little girl furiously. ‘And I’ll tell ya why. It’s because me and your future wife, whoever she may be, are gonna be best mates, and that’s that. So THERE.’

Someone’s mother dashed into the room as quickly as she was able, with her bad back and gimpy leg, and one eye missing. ‘What the hell is going on,’ she cried.

Her husband walked in slowly after her and surveyed the room. He began to grin.

‘What are you laughing at,’ cried the little boy with the big brown eyes as he backed out of the fallen over bin.

‘I see now,’ said the father. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said to his wife, who was trying to grab one of the screeching boys.

‘Don’t worry about it? Look at them!’

‘They’re fine. The only problem I can see here,’ and the father grinned quite widely. ‘Is the fact there aren’t enough girls in this room. But, that’s okay. They’re playing together quite nicely, don’t you think?’

‘They are?’ The mother looked again. The screeching and whacking and begging for mercy all seemed quite… civilised, if the playing of children could seem that way, especially if it were three boys and only one girl.

‘Yep, it’s fine,’ said the father. ‘They’re all friendly, you see. Kids these days just don’t know how to do it right, that’s all.’

‘What year is it here then?’ the mother asked.

‘Most likely the seventies, or something. Maybe the eighties. Doesn’t really matter,’ said the father. ‘They’ll be alright. See, she’s making him feel better now.’

They looked at the little girl, who was currently trying to drag one of the little boys out of the bedroom door by his ankles.

‘See?’ said the dad. ‘They’re friends.’

The End.

The Enjoyment of Rain

When I first stepped outside this morning I could hear the water gurgling down the pipes and into the gutters. This started me thinking whether it had been raining.

It is the middle of summer, here in Western Australia, and where I live it is not the usual time for rain. I am wearing a t-shirt and it’s warm. Occasionally, we will get mornings like this, and those are the mornings one may wish to dance in the rain.

‘Hmm,’ I thought. ‘The atmosphere around my home seems slightly misty. Perhaps it rained a little earlier and I’m simply hearing the after-effects.’

To check this theory, I looked at the sand and I looked at the fence, but could not see any evidence there had been rain. The downpipes continued to gurgle (as they do while I’m writing this).

‘If there is water coming down those pipes, it must have been raining at some point, so why can’t I see it,’ I thought to myself. I decided to step out from under the roof of my tiny patio, and onto the sand of my backyard. Immediately it could be felt, a warm glossing liquid over my skin. The soft, almost invisible to the naked eye, gentle light rain upon my face and hair felt like someone spritzing me, but without the sound of the spritzer, the someone, or the harsh squirt I might feel on my face.

‘So,’ I nod to myself now. ‘This is awesome. I quite like it.’

As I think, and look around, and hear the giggling and glugging of the drainpipes begin to quieten, and see the cat on the wall at the back fence, I know he and the other creatures up with me this morning are all enjoying the gentleness of this warm and sweet gift of rain, as small as it may be.

I believe the cat has gotten over it, though. He’s currently digging another hole to Bermuda.

I’ll explain the Bermuda theory in another post perhaps. Today, we simply enjoy the experience of rain.

What is a fairy tale?

‘Doing this properly or not, are we?’

My translation is too rough for you. You can’t do this thing and I cannot help you.

The small green frog has nestled himself within the zucchini bushes and frets about what he will do next to escape the cat.

Zucchini plant in our garden.

The cat is merely a small white and black moggie who considers himself a saviour to humans. He is rather proud of himself – which is very catlike and normal for cats.

‘Do I need saving from a frog,’ thinks the human. ‘There really are not enough of them around for me to be saved from them. Perhaps you should reconsider the circumstances of el cato.’

The circumstances of el cato were deliberately falsified by other human beings. We do not return to that horrible place. He thinks this often and it has been agreed the cat’s “mother” had been right all along. He sees a large and heavy ball by a wall, coloured to resemble waves on water or electricity (which are really quite similar). It was a pond the princess had been playing beside in the original story by the brothers Grimm or was that Hans Christian Anderson? This is the purpose of the frog and the “maid” – to share these stories with new thinking and similarities that show how the blending is done.

An old float repurposed as a garden ornament. It is very heavy as it has water inside and we are not sure how the water got in there.

The frog can hear this from under the large leaves of the zucchini plant. ‘What about me,’ he burps quietly to himself. ‘Do I need saving, or can I just dig myself a hole?’

There are many questions floating around in the small garden of the family. The frog suggests the people mama do not go out to the back fence because a kangaroo child is also listening in.

They have all watched the child of the small brown kangaroo follow his mother back and forth along the hot street. Some have seen how she gets stuck when a route she used one morning is blocked the following morning and she must feed her child by a fence with no openings she can discern. Some think they should be fed, although this is not the way of the kangaroo. All she needs to find her offspring (and here the frog would grin as his mouth is wide and the perfect shape to perform such an act) is some narrow-leaved plants with lovely sweet pieces that sit just under the soil.

‘That is all I need as well,’ thinks the frog. ‘Just some plants that are damp enough I can find some insects to eat. I am very good at hunting insects.’

‘How is the translation going,’ questions the female bird. ‘Am I getting this right again?’

‘Understanding and doing is not the… damn it,’ says the frog around an insect whose legs are long and crunchy. ‘Then count me as I jump, for I would rather be a bearer of good news.’

Pleading with me will not work, for I did not put him here.

Can we see him yet, though? Is he rounded and full with new information? Can he see the light of day? Must he always be such a pain in the arse, or will the mother realise he is dreaming again?

Does she even know my Hame, thinks the kangaroo child, for he has learnt at least one language other than his own in recent years.

The mother looks up from her position at the table. ‘They are spying,’ she thinks to herself, and she is right, for they have been trying to write with her this whole time.

They do not wish to be horrible, thinks the frog, but they do not know why she thinks they are friendly.

‘I do not believe she ever thought they were friendly,’ the cat yells from the back door. ‘Oh whoops, I didn’t realise it was open,’ he thinks as the person stares down at him with vague irritation. Ducking his head to apologise for his own small thinking, he clicks and clacks his way down a dark corridor to where he knows a large and comfortable sleeping place awaits. ‘This is the only place that is friendly, and this is where I am staying. These are my people, and I am a cat.’

He thinks loudly out the window and a kangaroo child is frightened by his noisiness. 

‘Bugger off, I said.’

The little beast is dumbfounded. How did such a big thought come out of such a small cat? The cat smiles to himself. He has been training with humans, and learnt how to borrow their voices to make his own thinking louder. He leaps onto the mattress and gazes at the man who talks in his sleep.

‘This one continues to surprise me with these thoughts,’ says the wannabe demon of his large human counterpart. ‘Where is that frog again?’ He jumps off the bed.

The frog sneaks off with a plip and a plop to find himself a hole in the sand. He just wants to live another day and get some new ideas.

‘This one is too much for frogs,’ he thinks. ‘She doesn’t like me at all.’

He would be dumbfounded to know he was right.

A “recalibration” (retelling) of The Frog Prince, with dashes of Rapunzel. Spoken with Grimm determination in an Australian accent.

C.S Capewell.

Updates from a Small Cat

The human companion has written on my behalf many times over the years and I can safely inform you she isn’t getting any better at it. As I am a cat though, I can’t complain. I can only bite her viciously occasionally and maybe rabbit-kick her with my rear legs.

It has been several years (and I do allow her to write several because I can’t count and she can’t remember) since I joined this small pride of people, and they seem to be learning absolutely nothing from me at all. Instead, I am ridiculed for my continued lack of masculinity (I believe the tag formerly used was #nonuts) and, I am still not allowed within the confines of the younger men’s room as they do not like it when I wish to conduct one-cat scouting parties for feral beasts and spare food.

It is beyond preposterous.

Yesterday evening, the human companion (whom some may call the people mama although it is not very often I see her acting in a motherly way) attacked me with something resembling a feather duster. I use the descriptive words of feather and duster together simply so people understand what it was she was attacking me with. It is not quite the correct term, as there are no feathers on it, merely some form of cotton/acrylic blend atrocity that serves the purpose of dusting when it is not being used to provoke me.

The damn thing has an extendable arm, which she (the human companion) has become rather adept at extending. I would call fowl play but as I said it has no feathers, therefore I shall use the term foul play instead, which, as I am being informed by the human companion, is exactly the right term to use – not that I particularly care what she says, because she doesn’t even know how to catch a mouse. She chose to poke me with the duster for several (please refer to the former comment on several, which usually means somewhere between five and ten but here refers to “we are not sure”) minutes after my most recent attempt at deconstructing her forearm (and sections of her upper arm as well).

As a cat, I will state here that my attempt at human arm deconstruction was for a very damn good reason, and I shall lay that reason out below.

The human companion sat down next to me.

I know, right? I do not remember giving her permission to do that. Then, the horrible creature decided to pat my beautiful fur and say hello.

The nerve of this interaction has simply upset me all over again. While I lay here in the bedroom this morning at the foot of the “Father Figure” I am tempted to attack said foot just to make up for the rudeness of his feminine partner. Unfortunately for me, I know I would be then rudely ejected from the bedroom with… Okay, I am exaggerating. The Father Figure only rudely ejects me from the bedroom when I have performed extreme and repeated manoeuvres with the vertical blinds at the front window. I may simply bite the Father Figure’s foot gently through the doona. I will not use claws, as this can be felt through the doona (it is a light, summer doona), but will bite hard enough that the light pressure (and, as one can tell I am using light as a term lightly) of my teeth will be felt and probably ignored unless I do it again.

My human companion has been enjoying herself far too much writing this update on my life, so I am going now. The rising of the sun has lightened the sky from its former darkness to a colour I cannot describe as a cat, and it is time for me to go to sleep.

Sincerely,

Jodh, AKA leChat AKA #nonuts #thatsmycat AKA many other names I have been called by the bloody woman who writes about me. Pfft.

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**This is a picture of me, taken this morning. I am waiting patiently for my neighbour, el Cato, to jump onto the fence so I can surprise him.