TAmsin Enjoyed home life which was a mixtuRe of enjoying herself and doing a chore or two for her parents. Today it was time for her to harvest every red berry on the redcurrant bush. She groaned as jeers could be heard from the undisciplined children next door who felt she was rather weird. From what she could hear of what went on next door, she was content with her life.
An auction was taking pLAcE at the town hall. As each item's bidding was finalised, the auctioneer brought his gravel (which was made from hazel) down with a bang. It was a very multicultural town and when there was a break between item bidding, there was a babel of sounds as different bidders spoke in their own language. The final item was the most exciting one and as the famous painting was put onto the easel and uncovered there was a gasp from all around the room.
Tony was trying to find a suitable job. He'd got through quite a few and was now having a stint at the iron foundry. This job was more interesting - watching the molten metal poured into a mold and later being lifted out as an ingot caught his imagination. His boss was forever chewing gum so his breath was frequently minty but at least it was better than tobacco. At the end of the shift today it was pouring with rain (it was Manchester after all!) so he was glad he'd brought his tunic to work.
Alex was crying. "What's all the fuss about?", asked Dad. "Oh, his soft toy is now a gammy-legged panda; he wants a replacement", replied Mum, "I've told him that pandas are quite faddy and that he should have an alpaca instead as they are very much on trend". "I'll see if I can placate him with a few jokes", Dad offered. "No way - I don't want him listening to any of your bawdy jokes", was Mum's quick response. They took the grumpy Alex to the Alpaca attraction down the road and afterwards Alex was clamouring for a cuddly alpaca.
She wAs preparing a capon, but it slipped out of her hands and fell on the sandy floor. Dinner was going to be late.
SAturday mEant puzzle day for him. But in a bizaRre turn of events, as he put out his hand to reach for the eraser to erase a wrong item, his wife was letting in the daylight and his beard got caught in a drape. He went spare and made a right old mess kicking over furniture as he tried to move with the curtain. "Trying to share these first thing jobs didn't work well this morning", he laughed. Later that morning he had to take his young son to the Arena cinema to watch a film that he wasn't looking forward to - in fact he had held this morning in dread for ages. The one redeeming feature was that there was bream for lunch and strawberries and cream for afters. At the end of the day he thought back to the freak accident and the lounge wreak and laughed deeply once again.
She caRressed the round LP record with the picture of Perry Como on it. "I just love it when he sings a song in croon fashion", she soothed. Her tastes in music were so different now that she was grown up. Her daughter barged into the room asking for something. "Urrgh, you look dreadful in those brown jeans with the purple tight blouse", Mum remarked with a frown. "It's trendy Mum", her daughter responded with attitude as she left the room.
The twins were quite different. He was always noisy; she was always mousy. But as they aged they swapped over and she became quite bossy.
She was not proud of this phase of her son's life. His room was frequently noisy and having a bass on full blast made the whole house boomy it would seem. And when she saw him come home all woozy she didn't like to think what dodgy stuff he'd been up to that evening. She couldn't confront him because he was so cocky. It would appear that the house pets, the doggy and moggy, had the same caution about him too because they skedaddled whenever he was around. Somehow he was on good terms with his pet rat, although it was clearly overfed and looking quite podgy. Whenever one of his friends called for him she heard his gobby chatter with dismay as they set off down the road for yet another evening out. One day she took a peak in his room and was distraught to see the gooky splodges on the carpet and the walls. Confrontation was inevitable. Next time he came downstairs in the morning she stopped him - "You are being very goofy and are throwing your life away. You can't go on as you are and live here. If you want to live here, we're going to have a discussion about some acceptable behaviour guidelines. Otherwise you have two weeks to find somewhere else to live".
When The dentist pulled out his wobbly tooth, the man couldn't help but give a big shout.
"I could have got one of those if you weren't so fidgity and noisy", she said. Grandma had taken her grandson fishing. "Look there's quite a few snook there. If you sit still and keep quiet I'll try to catch one", she instructed. All was going well when grandson piped up "What's that net thing on the back of your head". She sighed. "That's a snood keeping my hair out of the way", she explained. It was time to abandon the fishing trip and go home for some tea. "That's a pretty spoon", he commented. "Oh, yes, that's very old and delicate. I can't let you touch it I'm afraid."
On thE other side of the the door it was noisy. The jivey music drew her in. "I'm not sure this is right - I should be doing wifey things like washing, cleaning, home making and the like", she thought. (This story is set in the past, well before TV adverts with men with smiley faces cleaning the kitchen floor and doing the laundry.) In the end she decided it was too dicey to give in to the music and she headed back to the normality (and drudgery) of her daily tasks.
ERic (see 1198 - RIDER), the noisy giver of joy, again heads through the wider of the two archways and pays a fiver for some boiled sweets so that he can be a giver to entertain the children. He waves to the now recovered diver on his way to his boat. When he gets his mixer out of his bag, he finds there's a shower wiper in with it. "Oh, well, we can incorporate this in the act", he thinks. Today his hirer had been a bit vague and when Eric finds her, he discovers that all the kids are dressed as a hiker. "It looks like this may be a rather active session", he thinks to himself as he ponders how to make his routine suitable for the occasion. He finds that with these energetic kids he has to push himself in every fiber of his being to just keep up. He was exhausted when he got home that night!
AT last his stint in jail was over (see 1215 - GRANT). He hurried to his daughter's where he was warmly welcomed. Greeting his wife was another matter which would take care and time.
The visitor from the city made aLl the fArmErs laugh when he made the false suggestion that operating the valve in the cowshed would assist the cow to calve. When he could stop laughing, one of the farmers said "You have an awful lot to learn about what goes on here on your sabbatical. But you will get fitter and double your appetite. Just make sure you halve your food intake after you finish here otherwise your weight will shoot up."
Tomorrow wAs The verdict and it was almost ceRtain he would be heading to jail. This was his last opportunity to tramp down the narrow track to grant his daughter's wish to see him before he was incarcerated. She was so pleased and so grieved all at the same time.
ThE landlady, Rhoda, had just rented out the last room to Seamus. Seamus seemed fine to begin with, but in the middle of the night Rhoda was awakened by a noisy sound she couldn't make out. It was coming from Seamus's room where he was using an old-fashioned coder, in fact an enigma machine. She grabbed an implement from the kitchen for defence and went into Seamus's room. "What are you up to?", she demanded. "I'm generating encrypted messages to send to the coper about where to restock when next in port. Please don't tell excise and customs". "Well it's a bit noisy for use in the middle of the night. Can you find a way of making it quieter.", she said. It was only then that she realised that the 'weapon' in her hand was only a corer. As she went to put it away, she chuckled to herself and headed for bed.
The cAT and the dog had signed a pact - they were now in unity against their common enemy, the snake that lived next door. However, hatching a plan to outwit the snake proved problematic and before long they were at odds with each other. Their pact was kaput and they went back to the way things were. Firstly, the dog messed about with the whole gamut of the cat's toys, chewing many of them. Next, the dog just couldn't have a doze as the cat attacked, claws and all.
HE had gone out foR a walk. As he passed a hedge he picked a berry off a bramble and ate it. Two minutes later there was a scary noise as some youngsters headed his way on their scramble bikes. As it was, they weren't after him but shot straight past. Still, it disturbed his walk and he headed back to his work room. He was keen to use a ronde-type script in his Web design work and set to to get it set up. But the noisy bikes were still at it. He got out his drone to see what they were up to. It's just as well he did because one of the bikes suddenly stopped and its rider was lying prone on the ground. He was the first person to alert the ambulance control and was even able to show them pictures from the scene.
She was AT the kitchen sink doing the dishes. Out of the corner of her eye, a huge spider emerged. Her instant reaction was to stamp upon it, but this proved disastrous. She slipped on the wet floor (or the squashed spider - it wasn't clear) and landed heavily on the floor, knocking herself out for a couple of minutes. When she came to, there was a pool of her blood on the floor. She had the sense to call for help. When the paramedics came, it was decided that she needed to be checked over in hospital. Three days later she returned home to find a stack of dishes awaiting washing, a bowl of cold washing water with a dead frog in it that stank and one of her finest pieces of china on the floor with a chink out of it. She groaned, and then she spotted the blood stain on the floor and groaned again. She went to the lounge for a whiskey and soda before tackling anything in the kitchen.
They set off on their journey on Highway 71. He was first to have a stint behind the wheel. They were heading south through vast expanses of farmland. As they passed fields being harvested they had to shut the air vents because the air was so dusty. All of a sudden the car rocked violently from side-to-side. "What was that?", they chorused. Outside there was the signs of a mini-tornado receding. It must have been the gusty air from that, they agreed. They pressed on.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(webp)/GettyImages-8244409881-b62a69f38b594577b68912c545aeff69.jpg)
There were A pair of brothERs with different careers in the same organisation. Sam was a sarge in the sappers and Malcolm was a padre covering all aspects of the regiment. Malcolm's wife, Marge, had to parse some school children's homework. Sam's wife, Elfin, went off to the ballet classroom to do some barre practice. When Malcolm got home he took up his hobby and set to to carve another cross for a charity he supported.
Alfie is a noisy, 4-year-old, boisterous, cocky lad who frequently drives his Mum crazy. (His dad goes to work - this is an old fashioned story with no hint of PC!) Mum wished Alfie had never seen the EDF advert because Alfie was regularly plugging his electric guitar into his Dad's amplifier and making a boomy sound that carried all over the house. Across the road was a wild area which was boggy in places. Alfie liked going there with Mum to take the doggy for its walks - he'd always come home a mess. Today Alfie was all grumpy - he'd broken something on his guitar and Mum's attempt to fix it turned out to be a hopeless bodge. "Come on Alfie - wait till Dad gets home and see if he can sort it out. It's time to feed your gerbil, Hoppy, with some poppy seeds. Alfie was heading back to his bedroom when he slipped on a toy car on the stairs and landed at the bottom with a whump. "Mommy - it hurts", he wailed. Within 15 minutes Alfie was enjoying the cartoon having forgotten all about his fall.
The Bunters had just agreed a purchase of one of the old Dutch merchant's houses in Topsham. The surveyor was inspecting it and wrote in his report that the furniture hoist had a rotten joint and would need fixing or replacing before it could be used. It was not a huge setback for the Bunters but something that would need coordination with the move.
LaRry had been cooking when Glenda came in. "What's this yellow color stain on the worktop?", she gasped. "Oh, that, it's only turmeric flour", Larry replied nonchalantly. Glenda was horrified - "That'll take ages to get rid of", she said as she stormed out of the room.
"TeLl me AnothER story", he said to the old sailor as everyone around applauded the sailor for his last story. "Well, it's thirsty telling stories", commented the sailor. "What do you want?", someone called out, as the barman cleaned a glass for him in the laver. "A lager would be perfect", replied the sailor as he set the scene for his next story.
ThERe was a gofer called Alfie. Today he was being bullied and had been pushed to the edge of a sheer cliff. He prayed silently "If you can rescue me from this I'll become a monk". It was hard learning to be pious. He started the process of getting rid of his possessions. He'd lined up someone to buy his diver equipment, but the monk training that day was all about generosity and he had to change his stance and become a giver of the equipment. It didn't stop at the diver equipment either - the net went wider and wider throughout his treasured possessions until he was down to his last fiver. He moved into the abbey and the Abbot tried to work out what role Alfie could play. "Ah, you could be a great children's entertainer as a mimer. There's a summer fete Saturday fortnight - see if you can perfect a routine by then." The routine involved using a food mixer to apparently be beating eggs after which he put on a hard had that a miner would use and entering what looked like a mine emerging thirty seconds later with a black face and hands. The kids loved it and the Abbott was very pleased.
Barry had been sneaking off into quiet places LaTEly. Grant, his boss, the head gardener, felt it was time to know what he was up to. The next time Barry sneaked off, Grant crept in behind him. To his slight disappointment he found that Barry was only reading a book. When Barry came out after his read, Grant confronted him. "Right, what is the title of the book you're reading?", he growled. Barry wondered what he'd done wrong to receive such a harsh questioning. "It's called Lady Chatterley's Garden Tips - I've learnt such a lot through it", replied Barry. "Oh, that's ok then", muttered Grant as he walked away.
IsAbelle was wondering around the formal garden. She looked at a set of planters each planted up with many a pansy. All of a sudden one of the pots started playing noisy banjo music. She jumped back, startled. At lunchtime she enjoyed some juicy capon with mash, veg and gravy. In the afternoon she enjoyed a ride in a horse-drawn wagon. Annoyingly the banjo music started up part way round the ride too!
He had had Lots to drink last night - bEer, wine, shorts, etc. So it was no surprise that the next morning started with a thumping hangover. He made a blend of Worcester sauce, lemon juice and egg yolk to quell the hangover. He was drinking it ok until a few pieces of egg shell got stuck in his throat. Today wasn't going too well!
BEnedict was a pious monk and during the winter months it was his task to show visitors around the abbey. He was very old school and always moved the women into a subgroup so that there was no inappropriate behaviour between the sexes on the tours. Because it was winter he came equipped with a heavy woven blanket. Among the visitors on the next group was a talkative loud golfer. "Maybe I should have visited this place before playing golf today - I might then not have got a bogey on the 7th", he joked, though no one else thought it was amusing! At first the visitors were foxed as there was no sign of a guide. The talkative member was just about to sound off about the domed ceiling when someone else found that Benedict had dozed off and was sound asleep on one of the pews. Benedict was embarrassed and jumped to his feet. He hurried the formalities, even forgetting to separate the men and women, but he soon got into his usual routine. "This here is an unusual coded codex from 1691; a lot of time was spent working out what the code is." As he concluded this highlight of the tour, they were all interrupted by the sound of the abbey modem doing its whistling handshake. "You don't have modern internet then - you are in the dark ages here", quipped the talkative golfer. Benedict was relieved when he'd gone!
It seemed that Life had dealt him a raw deal recently. He reached into the cupboard and there was a clonk as he put the bottle of plonk on the table rather firmly. He was going to drown his sorrows. But before he opened the bottle the view out of the window caught his attention. The cloud formation was spectacular. He ferreted around for his hi-res camera so that he could take some descent photos of the scene. One of these was such a good picture that he made hundreds of pounds on sales in a short period. The cheap wine never got drunk!
