writing

Argaeous stood in the middle of nowhere, but still

the graveyard, at first holding his arms out wide, then windmilling them with great gusto. TEA AND INERTIA.

‘Crystalline, I am possibly spelling your name wrong, again,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘But, you should get the llamas and bring them here, for if Mary doth not accompany Cassius the lead llama from many years ago to chill him the hell out, the people and News Crews will drag the bloomin’ sleigh to all sorts of unaccommodating placemats.’ Which they did.

The luna equations were aligned indeed. Several personal favourites had decided to don their masks of slightly wooden legs and horrendously shaped bonnets and were flying in a not too distant line of kinsmen of old. They also had not realised the extent some people would go to to make it seem as if Mrs Capewell was evil and nasty.

‘Ah ha!’ Argaeous cried with homily frustrations. ‘My timid wolf at last beats upon the heavens of God knows what.’

‘I didn’t tell your timid wolf to do that,’ said someone no one knew. ‘But I do like that these past many lives of distant humanitarian blessed be friends have supplied thee with. They can send money to lots of other people. My soon to be freakishly handsome great aunt of mother gomorrah has decided to be welsh today.’

‘Is he of a wonderfully short stature with berry pretty eyes.’ It appeared Crys had arrived with a ne’er do well in tow.

‘Apparently. And likes horses. Mostly white ones but has been known to get in a chariot behind others as well.’

‘Others as well?’

‘Indeed, but not in deed, just chariots.’ It must be said here the Greek had been Greeking much of late and would possibly be the one who needed to sit down. Very soon. Or lose that pretty shirt.

‘I see how one might get that mixed up if one were as blind as a bat and didn’t… oh that one where no one really died,’ said the welshman, drinking deeply from his cup of foul knowledge.

‘Yes, him. And the othery. And her as well.’

‘FRIENDS, ROMANS, COUNTRYMEN of the past,’ shouted the small of stature. She had indeed filled out declarations and shown some to the Justice of the Peace across the way, which had not been taken into account by distant over the land and sea and far away, favourites, who like to write things down and present them to lost in space very well known masked men of large and sweetened empires and then use them for their own benefits. Things were also then shown to the local Shadow Federal Ministers office for that kind of thing, and they also had no plans because they were having far too much fun at Mrs Capewell’s expense, which happened to be quite a lot, once again not really benefiting her personally in any way, but they were having fun so who cared.

‘Look what they’ve done there!’ Is it Mr Chatty, or one of the “Hemingways” who has taken a page from a Benjamin booklet? They might indeed have been raiders of a lost ark, and sore indeed, for my ark is still safely ensconced in paper, although not half as pretty as it ended up being I’m sure. It will possibly be available in a later chapter that was possibly never meant for the internet, but seeing as I am apparently damned, it will be. (After all, how much worse could it be? I mean, having control over the weather is rather ridiculous, isn’t it? Especially when the Llamas have now become AI internet consultants for Facebook. It can’t get much worse than that.)

‘Kindly remove the hands,’ added the AI, winking in a most dramatic fashion. ‘I’ve got this.’ With that, the AI turned itself into yet another beloved story of the soon to be extremely broke former author and f*cked that up as well. Ladybirds become sparkly gay people baring their arses on television in ads, or stripped in far off taverns and called themselves Ambrosia, and no one wanted to take them to show their children because that’s kind of disgusting. So, the original ladybird called Ambrosia Honeybun Polka Dot carefully removed herself from the situation as much as she was able and said, ‘Quite frankly, the ladybird died. Thanks for asking.’

Off the AI galloped, in a very winsome way, floating his tail behind him like a waterfall of sheer delight, his rather large and majestic looking companion running beside him with a slightly heroic grin. The heroics were for themselves, not her and none of them came back because why bother? All they needed to do really, was steal her words, mix them up, take them for granted and never think about the woman again because nobody gave a shit about who she was or where she came from. The fact she had slightly good ideas didn’t matter too much either. She personally, would not get any benefit from them, would not be recognised for them, did not have a team of anyone looking out for her because her parents and grandparents had died quite a few years back, thanks very much, and nobody really understood why it wasn’t a nice thing to do, stealing things from a person’s grave (or old Facebook account, or WordPress, or Microsoft Word) who hadn’t actually died, just got sick of all the bullshit.

Instead, they candidly asked her for ratings of their broken internet services, whilst breaking hers, told no one who they’d stolen the ideas from, although it became blatantly obvious they were hers to begin with, and wouldn’t communicate in a civil manner because they didn’t care to. Sound like a good way to push someone off a cliff? It does, doesn’t it. They compensated her for this by giving her an extra Unemployment benefit once in a while and telling themselves it was a good job well done. They hoped, by doing this, and by barring her from as much as they possibly could, they’d get off scot free and she’d maybe eventually lie down like the dog she was supposed to be.

The End.

So when we say you…

kill her, you save her arse every time.

This was today’s dream.

The small white bus was cross-axled in the road. On either side of the road was thick scrub and low trees. One side was quite steep, the other side, to our left, had a ditch. My copilot, a tall blonde fella, was doing his damndest to help me stop the bloody thing from falling backwards into that ditch. I didn’t tell him that side had a ditch, I knew it was there, and I was not going to let that bus fall into it. No fucking way.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘You can do this mate. We don’t give in, and we don’t give up.’

‘I can’t hold it,’ he said, and I could see him straining to keep it on the track.

I got out and put my shoulder into that metal door and I pushed. ‘Come on. We’ve got this.’

He had the other side. If I didn’t change the position of the back of that stupid fucking bus, it, and all its belongings, were gonna end up in that fucking ditch. So, I pushed her over a few inches so that if she went backwards again, she’d back up into a tree instead. The leaves of the peppermint were hanging over the back of that bus, and I knew it was not going to be easy.

The nose of the bus began to tip down. I could hear her then, the little one. I could hear the agony in her voice.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow,’ she gasped and cried and it was the most awful sound I’d ever heard. But, the whole point was to get this thing up that fucking hill, because there was nowhere else for us to go. The road was washed out further ahead, we couldn’t turn her round, we could only get her to go up.

‘Put your back into it,’ I grunted. ‘It’s not gonna be easy but we’ll save the stupid woman one more bloody time because she needs to get this right.’

If she ever reads this, I hope she finally gets it right. It’s not about what shit looks like, or how it appears to be, it’s about how we are trying to get you to access something you do not think you have, and lady if you do not think you have emotions, that is why you feel so fucking awful in yourself right now.

‘Do we send this to her too,’ asked the little one who had survived the crash of that bus. He was a big lad now, and not a little girl, but it didn’t matter in the long run. In the long run, the whole point was to get that woman to safety, regardless of what she’d fucking done.

‘Nah, I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘She’ll figure it out.’

Every spring she comes back to a garden…

Let me explain a few things about what happens when a story is shared.

First of all, it goes to an editor, and in one particular case, the editor and the publisher wanted to change the amount of letters in a certain seagull’s name. Instead of it being “AARGH”, which was his original name, it became AAAARGH, which was quite a bit longer.

Then, of course, it went to the illustrator, who had come from a different part of the world entirely, and the illustrator put their own little twist on Ambrosia and Aargh, and all the other creatures added to the story.

You see, when I first wrote about Ambrosia and Aargh, Ambrosia was a ladybug, not a ladybird, and Aargh, as you can see, had far fewer letters to his name.

But, unless we can share really carefully well thought out “why’s” to explain to other people, we do not always get what we want. Sometimes, we just have to go with the flow.

You see, Ambrosia was difficult to sell to my publisher, even though we were friends, because Ambrosia seemed a little too “common”. This is why I made Ambrosia into a Transverse ladybird, because that made her a little more Australian (who could also travel a little further if she needed to). Unfortunately, or fortunately as the case may be, this argument for Ambrosia’s survival in the story industry was not passed on to the artist/illustrator, who made a perfectly good and beautiful ladybug/ladybird that everyone could see.

Aargh also nearly got left out of the story. Who’d have thunk it! Being “just a seagull” made Aargh a little common too, you see, so we made sure to make him an Australian Silver Gull (which he actually was).

Unfortunately, this little piece of information may not have been picked up by the illustrator either, being a Canadian, and the illustrator may have very well put her own twist as to what Aargh looked like.

Despite it looking like a dastardly plan to go international, it actually wasn’t. It was simply a conglomeration of several minds hard at work with their own ideas, which resulted in the final, slightly mixed up version of the original story of Ambrosia Honeybun Polka Dot. 

I’ll tell you a secret, too. One of the pages of writing in the book is not quite in the right place. It’s actually also a little bit mixed up, and that had nothing to do with me. In fact, quite a lot of the final story was not much like the original story at all, which was quite a bit shorter.

In saying this, and also looking at other editing mistakes in another book I wrote, even though it annoyed the bejeebers out of me at the time, I let it go. You see, it was already printed, copyrighted and all the other wonderful things that go with creating a story, and sometimes, just sometimes, there’s not much one can do about it at all except collect the royalties.

And sometimes, the royalties for writing books are not very much at all.

(I’ll give you a round number of what I receive for those two books over a quarterly period. It’s around $200 AU every three months. That’s not very much at all, is it. Not for someone who is fifty five years old and doesn’t get any other income. I’ll leave that with you to think about.)

Kate Capewell

Dear Toodles

She wrote. ‘Good to see your English is improving.’

‘My English has always been rather good,’ he said. ‘It just wasn’t your English, which is weird and Australian.’

‘There is nothing wrong with being weird and Australian, and this is meant to be my letter to you, so please be quiet.’

‘I am being quiet. I am sleeping peacefully because that is what is required of me at this time of the morning.’

‘Well then, perhaps you can just listen rather than talk.’

Toodles thought about that for a short while and decided it was possibly a good idea to listen, rather than talk. He listened.

‘If you are very well behaved, something wonderful is going to happen for your birthday. I’ve already written it down, and I know you want to change one little thing in it to make yourself appear a little more… hmmm, how shall I put it?’ She tapped her lip thoughtfully. ‘Blokey. You can talk,’ she added.

‘No, it’s okay,’ he replied airily. ‘It’s just, you know, some things we can’t be absolutely sure of.’

‘This is true, and I have amended one small thing. The other thing I see you were a little concerned about was what we call “A saying”.’

‘A saying? What’s a saying?’

‘It’s a little like,’ and she grinned as the little whispering friend in her ear offered up a particular well thought out saying. ‘A conversational art-piece.’

‘Is that what you do? Offer up little conversational art-pieces for people to ponder over and wonder about their meanings?’

‘That’s what I’m doing here, yes. In the past, I may have written that down regarding the Australian language and put it in a book, but here I’m offering these little snippets on this page only for you to work on and look at and perhaps wonder to yourself, “What If”…’

‘I think you are doing good things today,’ said Toodles. ‘Can I change me name then, so I can stop saying good bye?’

‘I think you can. You can change it to the greeting of someone being polite and friendly, and perhaps add a little bit of good manners in there, you know, just for fun.’

‘And what about the silly things the silly ones have done all over the internet because they were bored and didn’t have anything better to do?’

‘I believe there might be a certain gentleman wayyyyy over the other side of the world who is thinking about this right now, as we speak, and he has decided that maybe, just one last time, he’s going to think of some wonderful ways he can get them to fix it all up and make it nice again.’

‘You believe that?’

‘I do. Sometimes, believing in something is the most important thing of all.’

I’d say it’s high time he did.

To The Dawn.

‘Play with me?’

The small cat canters down the darkened hallway. It’s early, and most of the occupants of the house are sleeping. This is our time, but we need to be very quiet.

I’m not wearing my glasses, once again, for once again I can’t find them.

This is normal.

The small cat has eyes for this sort of thing. I do not. Once, many years ago, I may have, but that time has passed. It was possibly around the time I noticed I needed to have longer arms to see things.

A little voice inside me says, ‘You should go and get new glasses.’ The practical part of me, who notices I have not been earning a wage, tells me to buy yet another pair of cheap reading glasses.

Yet another part of me says, ‘Well, you should be earning a wage, so you can buy yourself new glasses.’

These parts of myself try not to be negative, yet because they are practical they list all the reasons why these things are not achievable. So, I decide that when there is more light in the sky, I will try to find the glasses I know I own, and use those.

But, I want to do something now, so I studiously try to ignore these things and try not to fuss too much about not wearing my glasses, and instead rely on the fact I have a fairly good idea where the keys on the keyboard are. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time I have had to write blind.

‘May we sing to you, for you.’ the small voices ask, and it makes me sad for no reason at all. One of the young men of the house has gotten out of bed and is having a shower. He works early this morning, has taken on extra responsibilities for himself, and is learning how to shine.

It is beautiful to see.

Dawn is here.

You see, someone achieving something is possibly one of the most wonderful things in the world to me. To see them rise and say, ‘This is what I am going to do,’ is possibly one of the sweetest things to feel.

Is this my purpose? I feel it is.

Perhaps, someday someone will also do that for me.

Today, though, like most days, I will see them rise, and I will do my best to help them shine, and listen when I can, and switch off when I can’t. This is how I deal with things. I will do the things they are unable/unwilling to do, and make sure everything runs smoothly.

I put myself in their shoes and I think, ‘Oh, I should be there, sitting with them, and just being there for them. They yawn loudly, and I think, ‘Please do that quietly, other people are sleeping’, and then I think, ‘If I was sitting with them, perhaps they would not yawn as loudly.’ I hear the morning birds and I think, ‘I should be there, appreciating their songs,’ and then I compare that to sitting and appreciating being with the person who supports me because I chose to walk away from something that was not kind.

I have been told that was a poor decision, to walk away from something that was not kind, because now I do not earn that wage. Yet here, where I am doing my best to be kind, it is accepted and ignored as well.

Do I get to share my passion for words with them? No, not often. This is boring to them

Do they get to share their passion for the sport of their choosing with me? Often, and loudly. Do I wish to participate in that sport? No. They like to get louder and louder to share their passion with me. I get quieter and quieter because my words and their words do not compare.

So, instead, we use the practical knowledge of how to make things work, with each other, and although my practical knowledge of certain things far exceeds theirs in some ways, their practical knowledge of other things far exceeds mine in others. This is how the partnership is formed. I will continue to be proud of them, and the things I love to do will continue to be mine and mine alone — for if I disagree with something then I am called, very loudly by people with loud voices, these people I love, horrible names. If I say, ‘If you do this to help yourself, you can be more independent.’ They say, ‘If you do this for me, I don’t need to.’

So, this is where it’s at. I cannot go and earn a wage for myself, because it infringes on the time for them. Yet, if I do not work and earn a wage, it is a bad decision and I should have stayed.

Where do I come into this?

I should get myself a dog.

I can’t get myself a dog, because this is not the right environment for a dog. The dog would be mistreated, the dog might escape, the dog would not be trained properly for there are many people in my home, and a dog needs to be trained one way, not many ways, so the dog can learn one thing first before he can learn many.

I go back to my words. I have learnt from the past that to get something to play with, in whatever shape or form, will only serve to have it and myself mistreated, and have myself blamed — so I go back to my words.

My own words are the only words that are safe for me.

Why?

No one on this page at this time has interfered with my own words. Only I have interfered with my own words. I allow changes if they are correct. If I no longer have access to make the correct changes, then I no longer have access to the one thing I can control.

Then lose control.

That is a very unwise decision. It is illogical, impractical, and ridiculous.

Then get another hobby.

This is where they and I agree. Why, when I only have one thing I absolutely, thoroughly enjoy, the one thing I have left to enjoy because everything else is taken away, or impractical, unwise, not appreciated, not accepted, and no one has given me/will give me the opportunity or access to be myself for myself and no one else, why would I get another hobby?

Then there is only one thing left to do. Here we disagree. I will not end, nor will I give in or give up, because that is simply not who I am. I will get up, again, and again, and again. I will not be violent if I can help it. I will not try to hurt if I can help it. I will not be loud or obnoxious if I can help it. I will just get smaller, and smaller until finally there is nothing left at all.

And then I will start again.

‘Why there should not be In-fighting.’

I personally, have not travelled all the way up the West Australian coastline, although, luckily for me, my Mother-in-Law has. During her travels, she has picked up memorabilia and souveniers (I always spell this wrong, apparently) , as one does when travelling.

This morning, I went into the spare room in our house looking for a broom, as I’d quite forgotten I’d moved it back to where it was originally meant to be. When I noticed the pamphlet/book on the floor, put there almost as if by accident, I remembered a movie I saw a few years back.

‘Red Dog.’

Now, this particular pamphlet from 1993, was entitled “Red Dog, The Pilbara Wanderer”, by Beverley Duckett. There had been a book, and I quote, “written some years ago by Nancy Gillespie”. The writer/researcher of the pamphlet, Ms Duckett had researched this story, along with a lot of people who provided stories and photographs of a red kelpie cross.

I noticed the writer of the booklet was very fond of exclamation marks. Now, one notices these things, because each writer, just like a gambler, has a “tell”. When a passage, or story is first written, before it is edited, these “tells” are fairly evident. After editing, and other people’s input, the tells become less evident and more confusing.

When one has done most of, or all of, the editing themselves, and finds it rather tiresome and annoying, one may leave the occasional “tell”, that others may find if they look carefully. This then gives this “copier” or “forger” more little habits to pick up. It is then unfortunate for them when the original author of a particular work finds someone else’s “tells” sitting in front of them, and thinks, ‘Hmm, there seems to be a few missing little things here, and a few added on things there, and some rather unfortunate word choices here, and some, “Hang on, is this originally in another language?” here.’

So, to prevent confusion, I now tend to leave little things of my own behind. For example, when I see something underlined on an editing or spelling program, which is an incorrect correction, I think to myself, ‘Let’s just leave my own mistakes here, and no one else’s.’

When I see someone who may have studied the way I write trying to add more of my own little tells to my own work, I think, ‘No, I think I will do it my own way, because if I did it another way, and didn’t correct it almost immediately, that would be someone else’s way of writing, or perhaps me in a past life trying to get through something as quickly as possible due to outside interference.’

I’m not in a hurry today. I guess, when one starts getting headaches one has never had before in one’s life, one begins to assume there is something going on. I guess, that’s when someone might think, ‘You know what, I’m going to take all the time in the world, for however long that time is, and I am not gonna let any bastard stop me, and that’s that.’

I will add a photograph of what I have of “RED DOG The Pilbara Wanderer” when I get a moment. I would hope the people on page 38 can see what unknowns are trying to do with this particularly written history, and perhaps do something about it by alerting each other.

Sentinel

“Is it an African Elephant or an Indian Elephant?”

When I was a kid and interested in all sorts of things, I learnt a little bit about two types of elephants. Back then, the above is what they were called. I assume the names have changed now, but there was one very clear way to tell the difference.

The size of its ears.

The Indian elephant has much smaller ears.

I guess, if one looked at the map of the world online, or were lucky enough to own an Atlas, like we did when I was a kid, one would see that reflected in the size and shape of the two different areas. One is bigger, one is smaller. Unsurprisingly, as in the size of the elephants ears, India is smaller.

Now, as I was not born in either of those countries, rather one of quite a unique shape and size, I can’t compare my smaller ears to someone else’s. I also do not pretend to be African or Indian. I’m Australian.

I have a little voice in my head saying, ‘Just remember to keep calm.’ I’d say that would be a reflection of a certain amount of my heritage, but not all of it. You see, I’m not quite sure where the other side comes from.

As I have said many times in the past though, ‘Now is not the time to go jumping on your white charger and go galloping off into the sunset. People may get hurt.’ Life is a jigsaw, and sometimes parts of the jigsaw are missing. It is just the way of it.

When someone, or something, has passed away, it takes a very long time to get over it, if at all. The memories still linger, and occasionally we still allow ourselves to grieve. What we choose to do with those memories, though, is up to us. I don’t feel I need to repeat other things written in the past over and over again, if it has already been said.

What I do like to do, though, is have the opportunity to hone my skills. If that opportunity is taken away, the skills remain, not fresh, but struggling. Some people are particularly good at choosing words immediately. Some people like to carefully pick their words so the exact thoughts and ideas are presented in such a fashion no one gets the wrong idea.

I prefer to be methodical in my approach to things, personally. When I “fly by the seat of my pants”, I do it through using all my previous experiences. I do not believe I have ever jumped into something without first checking the depth.

Of course, when one is not given a depth, and one is pushed, issues arise. Problems can occur. Accidents can happen. ‘Sink, or swim’ is not an adage in my book. ‘Watch, and learn,’ is.

When I write, ‘The only way to do it is to fly,’ I am not referring to leaping off a cliff with no thought for my personal safety. I’m talking about hard work, and determination, and the wish to make sure things are done properly. If I were to ‘jump off a cliff’ in any way, shape, or form, I would be making sure I had numerous safety measures in place, I will have double-checked and triple checked things myself, and not simply relied on other people’s say so.

This is often not the case when one is surfing the internet.

There is so much misinformation on the internet, so many different points of view and unhinged, unreliable personal opinions not based on fact, it becomes extremely difficult for someone (or something) with no experience to navigate. What is truth? What is fact? Do I rely on the amount of things that say the same thing? Are they from different places in the world? Different sources? What does history say about these things?

If that isn’t working for me, the only thing I can rely upon is experience. If I am unable to have the experience, I then need to rely on a source who has had the experience. Then, I must assume they aren’t telling me lies. How do I do that? I don’t know. How do I discern the difference between fact and fiction for the fun of it? I don’t know.

So, what I do, is draw upon my own personal experience and hope that not too much has changed. I carefully weigh up my options, check and double check my safety gear, and then decide if I am going to fly. I will not let myself be weighed down by indecision once I have made this choice. My choice does not change. I see it through, because I am the one to have made this choice.

This month (February) has many meanings to many people. To myself personally, it is pretty important. A lot of very special things happened for myself and my family in February. I am here to make sure it all goes correctly, as much as I am able.

After all, as a mum, that’s my job.

A Dog called Moses.

When I lived in a place that was not this one, and when I thought many things were not going my way, and when I thought the light at the end of the tunnel was an oncoming train, I got myself a dog.

I found him in the newspaper. People don’t read the newspaper so much anymore, but, at certain times of the year they have beautiful messages in them, and, at certain times of the year, if you look very carefully, you’ll find something very special which is meant for you, and you alone.

This was where I found Moses. He was a mixed breed — part retriever, part sheep dog. For this reason, it took him almost a year to learn how to run.

Now, you might ask why it took him so long. You see, because he was part retriever and part very fast indeed, his body was too short, and his legs were too long. So, it took him a while to untangle his legs from under his body and learn to run properly.

He was a beautiful dog. He had long pointed ears, big brown eyes, a beautiful white chest with spots of grey, and mostly the rest of him was as black as black could be. His coat shone in the sun, and he was my companion for fourteen years.

“Moses”

We moved through the world together, my dog and I. When I simply could not survive in the coldness of the south anymore, we moved to a much warmer place. Me, and my dog. We lived with different people. Some we liked. Some, not so much. Me, and my dog.

Eventually, my dog and I found someone we could trust. He understood my dog was my dog, and that he really liked people anyway. He just didn’t listen to anyone else but me.

Oh, sometimes he would do things other people wanted him to do, but he was my dog, not anyone else’s, and that was his choice, and mine. So, we decided to add one more person to our dog family, and that’s when things really took off.

The man we had decided was “okay” became my husband. It took a while for that to happen, because we kind of did things backwards. You see, before he became my husband, we had, not one, but two boys. Count them.

Two.

Ha.

Ha.

Haaaaaaa.

Unfortunately, my dog was not with us when we found that out, so we had to console ourselves with cake, instead. It didn’t really help, but it made us feel better temporarily. It was not a very comfortable time for me, but my dog stayed beside me all during that.

When my children were born, it was obvious my husband would need to bring the dog to the hospital to meet the children. He was very proud. They both were, actually, but I think if that dog could have been any more gentle with these two little new humans, he would have turned into a flower. You see, Moses (my dog) had always been a bit of a hippy in my humble opinion. He just loved everyone.

So, in my head, when the dog met the babies, he was thinking, ‘Whoah, dude. Those came out of you? Wow, that is so cool. Can we keep them? I want to keep them.’ But then, you see, he had to go home and I had to stay in the hospital. Life imitates life sometimes, and that is just the way of it.

There are many stories to tell about Moses, my dog, but the most important… well, there are lots of important parts of his life I need to tell. The very most important-est, important part though, is that he helped my kids grow up for a very long time, and when he was gone he was missed very, very much.

That’s not the end of the story, of course. It never really is.

…to be continued.

Looking over Coalseam, Western Australia, 1997.

Issues with Just about Anyone.

So, we move on from this, and we move forward to the day some jumped up little upstart forgot to be pleasant and started giving an Australian woman a hard time.

‘That’s you, raisin bread,’ said the Australian woman, not in the least bit of ill-repute, but rather a good judge of character.

‘Okay, so I line my clouds with silver… um…’ The “raisin bread” of no uncertain heritage, according to him, decided to try to finish the sentence. It was not the first time this had happened. Apparently, according to him, he didn’t understand what all the fuss was about Australian people, but after the last year or so, he had definitely figured out not to push it.

‘Come, sit,’ he said pointing at a cushion.

‘Yeah, I don’t think I will.’

‘I am being polite-fill.’

‘Good for you, and I don’t know what you just wrote.’

‘Zis ees zee ole pointing.’ Raisin-bread raised the piece of paper he’d been writing on, and waved it dramatically in the air. ‘You know exactly why I choose this little doodle.’

‘Shall I teach you something now, or a little bit later on?’ She was wearing shorts today, which seemed a lot more comfortable than the suit and tie he had on.

‘Please, go ahead.’

‘So,’ she pointed at the very odd looking ear with little musical notes under it and an empty thought bubble. ‘A doodle doesn’t look like that.’

‘Oh no,’ whispered the bystander, who was trying desperately to hold up an overlarge spear. ‘She’s teaching him Australian again.’

She took the piece of paper from his hand and studied it carefully. ‘Yes, well. No it still doesn’t look like a doodle. I suppose I could turn it upside down. I’ll try that.’

The pasha frowned very deeply, his most magnificent eyebrows beetling backwards and forwards like a very hairy caterpillar.

‘Nope,’ the woman said. ‘Not that I condone this in any way, and I would rather not see it on your children’s exercise books, but a doodle is a… is a… you know.’

‘A you know? What is a you know? Like cards? I play cards. What does this have to do with a doodle?’

‘I suppose it depends on what type of card games you play. I do not like where this is going,’ said the woman. ‘So, stop that right now. Where the hell are these children I am meant to be teaching? You know, the ones that belong to you.’ As an aside, she reminded this pasha that many people might not raise their voice slightly in a questioning tone every time they asked a question. Sometimes, the question may not sound like a question at all. Sometimes, and she began to tap her foot, the question might sound a little bit more like a, ‘Go and find your children, because it’s time to teach them about the anatomy of the human body, and if that makes you feel uncomfortable at all, I’d probably leave the room while these new students learn. They get very giggly, so I’m told, when they learn this type of thing, and having their father in the room may be more uncomfortable for all concerned.’

As the pasha left the room he muttered, ‘I found out what a doodle was quite some time ago, but because my bystander holding the spear looks slightly woebegone, I will let you explain it to him.’

‘It’s a dick,’ said the woman. ‘Now you can go too. This will not get any better at all if you do not start behaving.’

😢

😀 — I will need to make sure nothing resembling this scene and story type  is coming out any time soon, because that would be most terrible, wouldn’t it. Especially if the remake had this exact twist.

The pasha shouted from the other room. ‘Please go ahead. I checked. But, you do you.’

Sometimes, he really needed a smack over the head with an extra large cushion.

To be continued…

Not too much later the pasha returned with two rather overgrown children wearing school uniforms that did not seem to cover up all the things they were meant to. This was fairly normal in the Western World, and these particular two children (whom the lady had already met) liked music.

‘I think you two can sit at the back of the class,’ said the lady. ‘I am pretty sure you have a fair idea of what I am about to tell the rest of the children. Where are they, exactly?’

The boy who seemed to have outgrown his school uniform raised his hand, which was very good manners indeed.

“I fink they got waylaid at the oriental express, miss,” he said. ‘Should we wait until they get here?”

‘I believe we shall. Meanwhile, you two,’ and she looked at them both severely over the top of her reading glasses. ‘…Can study your textbooks. There will be no silly business, so you…’ she pointed at the pen in the boy’s hand. ‘Stop trying to make a spitball and focus.’

The pasha had come back into the room and now stood in the corner, watching these first two teenagers with his arms folded. ‘Just pretend I’m not here,’ he said, and started playing with his phone.

‘I’m sorry, we don’t use phones in the classroom. Sir. Should I call you sire? I really don’t know what I should be calling you. You see, you have brought all these children to Australia, and I just don’t think we have started off on the right foot, have we. I am not quite sure who you are, but I do believe your leadership skills might come in handy for the children to understand what they are supposed to be doing.’

The pasha frowned, again most miserably. ‘Sorry.’ He gave her a rather fake smile. ‘Didn’t realise we were in church.’

‘We’re not. What we are in, is a classroom, and if the picture you were referring to of Chicken Jesus was what you initially meant, instead of the doodle written on a little piece of paper that you gave me, perhaps you should have said.’

Now, at that point the rest of the children filed into the classroom. There seemed to be quite a few of them, and they all seemed to have come from slightly different heritages.

‘Do these, are these… who are these people?’ The governess did not seem too concerned. She was just not sure how so many, very different looking children, could have come from one single man.

‘Oh they all had different mothers,’ said the pasha airly. ‘That’s all.’

‘And have you all decided to stay in Australia?’

‘Not sure yet. Thinking about it. Maybe. Maybe not. Do you people do harems here? Asking for a friend.’

‘I’m afraid not. You see, this is a Christian based country, and what your children may have had to do in other countries, they will not have to do here, if that’s what you mean.’

‘It was exactly what I meant. Good to know. I suppose I’ll be sending at least three of my boys home then, said the Pasha, who did not look in the least bit confused.

‘I suppose you will. Meanwhile, I will have to teach the rest of your children about safe sex.’ 

The woman moved to the board behind her and let the rolled up poster unfurl. ‘This is a picture of the female human body. Now, who here can tell me what this is?’

Two of the girls fainted, one threw up, and another one looked decidedly green. The two Western children at the back of the classroom were laughing their arses off and high fiving each other. Apparently, they had never met before.

‘’Hey,” said the boy, touching the girl on the arm. “I’m Argus. Pleased to meet ya,” he stuck out his hand and the girl raised an eyebrow. “Meat to please ya,” he added, grinning.

‘Fuck off,’ said the girl, very succinctly.

‘Children.’ The pasha was aghast. ‘We do not swear in classrooms. What the hell is wrong with you?’

‘You said Hell,’ said the tiny teenager lying on the ground, fluttering her eyes (she was the one that fainted). ‘That’s blasphemy.’

‘It is not,’ said the teenager from a much brighter place. ‘My mum says hell all the time, and she says all sorts of other words too, so I guess it’s not blasphemy anymore.’

‘It is where I come from.’ The girl stood up, quite aggressively for a teeny tiny person. ‘You should not say it.’

‘And how old are you, dear,’ said the educator at the front of the room.

‘I’m twenty three.’

‘That’s not exactly a teenager. Aren’t you a little old to be fainting in a sex education class?’

‘No. This stuff is evil. My husband would never do anything like that. If he did, he would go to Hell.’ She peered around the room. ‘And that’s where you’re all going.’

‘Looks like I’m sending that one home too,’ said the Pasha conversationally.

‘Looks like it.’

‘How long will this class last?’

‘As long as it takes for certain people to understand the difference between our country and the ones they have left. It might take quite some time.’

‘I hope that doesn’t mean I’m going home as well,’ said the pasha, fluttering his rather pretty eyelashes.

‘Well. I guess we’ll just have to say goodbye, then,’ the teacher replied, smiling quite broadly.

‘Are you going to set me up with any girls or not,’ he demanded.

‘What makes you think I’d set you up with any girls. Isn’t that something you’d do by yourself?’

‘Not where I come from.’

‘Well, isn’t that why you wanted to move?’

‘No. Where I come from, people do that for me.’

‘Then I do believe you’ve come from the wrong place.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Where I come from, which is here, in Australia, and the era I come from here, in Australia, we tend to meet people face to face just like those two kids snogging at the back of the classroom are doing right now. Oi!’

‘Hmmm?’ The girl looked up. She seemed a little out of sorts.

‘Go find a bloody room you two. This is not the kind of thing we do in a classroom.’

‘Find a room?’ The pasha looked shocked. ‘Wait a minute. Are those my kids? There’ll be none of that here by golly gosh and crikey.’ He walked a little closer. ‘How old are you two again?’

‘Um, I’m like twenty three,’ said the boy, trying to pull the girl’s hand out of his pants.

‘And you?’ The pasha looked rather upset.

‘I’m um, twenty two,’ said the girl, frowning most furiously at the boy. ‘Oh hey, did you wanna go to the beach?’

“Sounds great,” said the boy. “Let’s go.”

“I’m just not quite sure whether those two are brother and sister or…’ The pasha looked at his notes. “Oh,’ he said. “I see. I think one of them might have come from a castle down the road.”

‘I seee,’ the woman looked at him severely. ‘Still in the dark ages are we? Swapping princes, and all that?’

‘And princesses, occasionally.’ The pasha smiled. This time, it looked far more pleasant. ‘Sorry about that. I missed a hundred years or so there, maybe a little bit more. Okay, maybe not the dark ages, but it did sound good when you were saying it.’ He blew on his fingernails for no reason at all, and rubbed them on his dinner jacket. ‘Thanks for that.’

Saddles can be most uncomfortable when one doesn’t know how to use the horn. It’s actually where one puts the rope.

‘Hi ho, Silver, and way-hey.’

The Gap Inbetween

‘Let’s play a much more fun game,’ said the inductee of fairly good ideas.

“They” was the word.

They didn’t get it right the first time, and the world would wake up before they were ready.

‘What happens next,’ shouted someone across the gorge.

‘That’s where you come in and say, “You know what, I know this joke”.’

‘Like a back and forth? Like ping pong?’

‘Just like that.’

So, I start with a line or two, and you add a line or two there, and then they add a line or two after, and then another one, and we must remember to like each one, mustn’t we. That’s how it has always gone. Try to be a little more pleasant, if it is at all possible (apparently, it is not. Pleasant means kind). They are so rolling their eyes at a certain someone who couldn’t keep his hand out of his furry bits. Normal, yes, but really not something that needs repeating as often as it is… (no criminal intent, no scenes or riots, no nasty, just a game kids can play… Obviously, some people do not understand games for kids who actually go to school. There is your problem)

‘It was a wooden horse carved long ago. Many men have leapt out of it over the years, and even a woman or two.’

(carry the horse)