Pull the Other One

To kickstart writer's this week, Tess at Willow Manor has this picture prompt.  The link takes you to the list of responses.

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Don't Push Your Luck

For the week hosting St. Patrick's Day (17th March) Theme Thursday gives writers this striking picture of a rare little plant . . .

   The idea woke Dr. Octavius Trefoyle at four in the morning. "How appropriate that my life's Eureka Moment, involving as it does, the number four, should strike at this very hour. Four of the tickety-tock kerr-lock!" He said this aloud, gazing at the ceiling, clutching the edge of the duvet. Mrs. Trefoyle did not stir, but this did not mean she was asleep. She was used to him.
   "A rogue gene,"he said, still out loud. "It must be! What else could it be? This is worth millions!" In a long working life, now approaching its conclusion, Dr. Trefoyle had been visited by many ideas worth millions. His wife was used to them. Now she proved herself awake.
   "What is it this time?" She did not open her eyes.
   "I wonder how many I will need?"
  "How many what do you wonder you will need?" Mrs. Trefoyle opened her eyes and made a face at the morning. "A single million would do me. I could buy myself a place somewhere. Australia perhaps."
   "Ah ha!  Wait and see! Tell it not in Ghatt, nor whisper it in the streets of Ashkelon. Now! I, Trefoyle the Invincible, Prince of the Lanes and Hedgerows, will make us tea."
   Mrs. Trefoyle, sixtyish, first name Honoria, closed her eyes again because the Prince of the Lanes and Hedgerows had removed his pyjamas and was hopping about on one leg as he put the second half of his trousers on.
   From behind closed lids she asked, "Isn't it a bit early for tea?"
  "It is never too early to hunt for the rogue gene. The gene for the fourth leaf, no less." And so, the midsummer sun being fully up, Dr. Trefoyle made and delivered tea to Honoria who had by then gone back to sleep, then set out with two plastic specimen boxes to search for those time-honoured harbingers of good luck, four leafed clovers.
   Let it be related that eight hours and twice as many miles of lanes and hedgerows later he had been lucky enough to find four. "Four-by-four, so to speak." He put these in one of the boxes, and the same number of bog-standard three leaf clovers - for comparison - in the other.  These precious boxes, worth an estimated millions, he took to the Gene Sequencing Laboratory in the Department of Molecular Biology of the University of Blogspot-sur-Mer.
   The astute reader will have guessed the rest. You haven't? Then I'll tell you. Trefoyle planned to isolate the mutant gene responsible for fourleafedness and introduce it - the anti GM lobby permitting - into the seed of the three leaf variety so that as generations of clover came and went, the four leafed strain would proliferate and eventually take over the world's clover fields so that anyone, everyone, that's you and me, our parents, children, fellow bloggers, lovers - everyone - would need only to bend down in a clover meadow to help themselves to handfuls of good luck.
  "The relentless march of science!" Trefoyle mused. "What a wonderful world it will be!"  This on the morning four (note, four!) years later when the sequencing was complete and a white suited lab assistant wearing blue wellies, face mask and surgical style cap  handed him two large rolls of paper chart covered with squiggles. The letters of the clover genomes!  One for the three leaf and one for the four leaf variety!  Inch by inch and foot by foot Dr. Octavius Trefoyle pored over the charts looking for the difference - the tiny difference - between them that would pinpoint the rogue gene.
   Four months later - a computer analysis would have taken a few minutes but Trefoyle had no faith in the things - he found it!  A peak on one chart which did not show on the other! There is no feeling in the world (to a scientist) to equal the thrill of discovery, to stand alone, Prince of the Lanes and Hedgerows, looking upon something no man has looked upon before.
   But there was a rat in the works, as there usually is.
  I mean, have YOU ever found yourself in a field of four leaf clovers? Of course you haven't. Neither have I. Nor will you ever, unless you repeat Dr. Trefoyle's experiments. But he tried. Oh how he tried! Every technique known to molecular biology to get four leaf genes into three leaf seed. Nothing worked, and in due course, defeated, Trefoyle retired with only his dreams for company, Honoria having gone to Australia, millions or not.
   It never occurred to Octavius, or anyone else for that matter, to ask -
   "Did someone perhaps get the specimen boxes mixed up?"
   I mean - how unlucky can you get?


(Readers have perhaps noticed that Octavius = Eight = Twice Four. Coincidence, probably.)

Magpie Tales#57

Willow at Willow Manor shows us this picture for her 57th. writing prompt.  Many more responses can be seen by following the link.

My Name is Violet

   Grandma told me about her mother, my Greatgran, who I can't remember.

  "She was an orphan, Lucy. A foundling." Grandma explained what a foundling was. I was eight or nine, I guess.

   "Where was she left? Was she warm enough?"  

   "Outside the Post Office. "

   "So she could be posted?"  Grandma tutted me. Tutting was the crossest she ever got. 

   "There was a ticket on the box she was in. It said 'My name is Violet.' She went into an orphanage." When Grandma explained an orphanage, I thought about Mum and Dad at home.

  "Gran . . when I come to stay with you, am I an orphan?" Grandma smiled, something that didn't happen very often. She fetched her photo albums from the bookcase nearly as high as the ceiling. 

   "I'll show you." We sat at the table. She gave me some lemonade she'd made herself. It was O.K., but not as good as Cola.

   "Here she is when she was a little girl about as old as you." We looked at a picture like the pictures they take every year at school, girls sitting in a row, another row standing behind. The photo had crease marks across it.

   "They all look thin. And sad. And their dresses are all the same. Are they all orphans? And why has that one got no hair?" I pointed to the orphan at one end of the standing-up row.

   Grandma said, "That's your Greatgran Violet." I looked at Grandma then, trying to imagine her without any hair. Or Mum. Or me.

   "What happened? To lose her hair."

   "There are dreadful things in this world, Lucy."

   "I know, Gran! She had nits." I thought about Mum's little black comb and how she said "Chop it all off. Best way."

   "The supervisors beat those children, Lucy. All the time. They called your Greatgran Little Violet NoName. They cut all her hair off because she couldn't remember 'Our Father'"
   I just looked at Grandma. The words my Greatgran Violet couldn't remember even though they cut off her hair came into my head. "Why, Gran?"
   "Then . . " I saw Grandma's jaw clench. "Then they painted her head and face and neck with stuff they used when the girls got skin rashes. Stuff called Gentian Violet. Then they laughed and told her she was a real violet now and to go away and learn her 'Our Father' and then they'd wash it off."
   Grandma got up and went to the window and stood very straight, looking out, and I saw her hands clenching and unclenching and I could tell she was angry.  I went and stood beside her and she put an arm round my shoulder and pulled me to her.
   "Her face stayed all purple till she could remember 'Our Father'? That wasn't fair, Gran."
   Grandma turned me to her and hugged me and I saw her eyes were full of tears, something I'd never seen before. "No, love. It wasn't fair." Then she said, "Look! Here's Dad coming to take you home. I'll get your anorak."
   When we got home I went to my bedroom and said 'Our Father' to myself, all the way through, just to make sure my hair would be safe.
   I was eight, then, maybe nine, old enough to want to keep my hair, too young to understand all that my Gran's story and tears had taught me.

Theme Thursday for 10th. March has "Space" as the prompt. 

Nordwand

What small misjudgement doomed him?

Weather? Being there alone?

Snow on the 'Spider' loose, wet

giving his axe no grip. He slipped,

drove the axe down again, swore,

slipped, slithered, kicked his crampons,

planed a white diagonal 

across the steepening snow,

unbelieving, cursing, lunging

for an edge, step, check, finding

no handhold in the dreadful air.

The precipice swarmed upwards

blurring past his flailing, sheer

into spinning space. A mile

below, the valley, sunfilled, green.

What galled him as he fell were

the lower climbers, safe, roped,

brewing tea in bivouacs

perching like nested seabirds

on saviour ledges, watching

his helpless plummet, aghast

that they were not him. "Bastards!"

he screamed, "The lucky bastards,"

noticed their bright Gortex kit

and wondered how much the smash -

despairing -"Christ! Don't let it hurt!" 

(Slightly left of the summit and about one quarter down the picture, the "White Spider" - a permanent snowfield on the North Face of the Eiger - can be seen, lying between two buttresses. About 40-45º slope. At least 64 climbers have died attempting the ascent, earning the face the German nickname "Mordwand" - the Murder Wall.)

Bat Soup

 Magpie Tales#56 serves up a tasty garlic prompt this week . . .

Grandma always wore black. I accepted this, as kids do. She was just Grandma. In black. I was about seven, I guess, when I asked her about it. 

   "I'm in mourning, child."

  "But it's afternoon, Grandma."  That's how kids are - short on knowledge but too logical for the grown-up world.

  Grandma explained 'mourning,' but not why hers went on so long.

  "Who for, Grandma?"

  "For your Granddad, child." She was at the kitchen sink, doing things to vegetables.

  Even at seven, this struck me as odd. Granddad was sitting at the table, reading the paper he called 'The Pink.' The Pink had all the football results and who had scored the goals and how many people had been at each match. When he finished with The Pink I liked to add up all the people at all the matches. I wondered where so many people came from and why they all watched other people playing football. I looked from Granddad to Grandma and back. I tugged her long black skirt and when she tutted me, I pointed at Granddad. I said nothing. Granddad hawked and shook his paper and said "The 'Ammers lost. Again. Three nil."

  "He's been as good as dead for years, child." Such things are puzzling at seven. Years later I began to understand what she meant, and came to wonder how my mother - Grandma's daughter - ever came into being. I couldn't imagine them, Granddad and Grandma, at it. I couldn't imagine Granddad, or anybody, at it with this angular lady, forever in black, her long boney hands always busy with vegetables or brush and dustpan or clearing the table for Granddad to sit at to read 'The Pink'.

  When she died, Grandma, I was nineteen. It was while I was at University. Mum phoned me in Hall to tell me. "You'll come to the funeral, Lucy?" It was a command disguised as a question.

  Afterwards, Mum said, "Your Grandma wanted you to have this. It's odd to say the least." She handed me a notebook, the old-fashioned foolscap size, hardbacked, black like Grandma. It was labeled, large letters in Grandma's hand, "Terrible Transylvanian Dishes." Weird, but apt. Sort of. Her name was Sylvia.

  All but the first page was blank, as if Grandma had started with good intentions but given up. I could use it for taking lecture notes. Or a diary. Something like that.  On the first, the only used page, was a recipe.

  Bat Soup.   Saute five or six small bats in butter till the wings are crisp.  Heat some bat stock in an iron pot. Its lid must be heavy enough to keep the bats inside.  Fine chop a small onion and some mushrooms or carrots.  Add all these ingredients to the stock. Season with salt, pepper and a little curry powder to taste.  Do not use garlic. Bats abhor garlic and even a pinch will kill them.  Simmer for twenty minutes. Serve hot when The Count has finished with The Pink.  If you don't like live bats, even hot ones, hang a string of garlic cloves round your neck. The Health and Safety Executive have suggested that diners should keep some Silver Bullets handy. A stake through the heart would be preferable.

  Underneath her recipe Grandma had written, "Lucy, Be Warned." 

  I cried for a long time.

The photgraph here, courtesy of Mr. Jacob Lucas, is today's prompt from One Stop Poetry.

Plagairise! Plagairise!

Just look at that!  If all the world's a stage,

where are the infants, schoolboys, lovers, ghosts

witches, soldiers, judges, pantaloons

and shrill toothless old gits? Their revels are

just starting is my guess. They're backstage, drunk

on spirits Prospero said dreams are made of.

Maybe in cloud capped palaces they hoped

to make with a bare bodkin quietus

had Props not left the bodkins on a bus?

And if the play's the thing wherein to catch

the conscience of the King, where is the King?

Plenty of kings to choose from. Try inside

that clapped-out wardbrobe, looking tired, stage right.

Two Richards. John. A clutch of Henrys. Lear.

Don't say they're all afflicted with stage-fright?

Has conscience made base cowards of them all?

Enter with hautboys! Each play's just five Acts small.

The audience doze and yawn, longing to end

the heartache and the thousand natural shocks

boredom is heir to.  They'll shuffle off back home,

with chip suppers devoutly to be wished,

to sleep perchance to dream and by a sleep 

forget soliloquies that Shakespeare takes 

so long to reach the point of.  Life's too short.

Plays are for weirdos, fruitcakes, cranks.

The curtain falls. For this relief, much thanks.

(With apologies to As You Like It, The Tempest, Hamlet, The Scottish Play, the History Plays, King Lear and the master poet who wrote them . . . )

Poetry Bus. 7th March.

Peter Goulding dons the Bus Driver's uniform this week and steers us towards three prompts, one of which is to compose a rondeau, the example he gives being John McCrae's World War 1 poem "In Flanders Fields". I'm sure many writers will produce examples more hauntingly beautiful than McCrae's, or mine here. Others will miss the point completely.

First Class Tickets Only on This Bus!

We're wonderful! Let us agree
each sonnet, haiku, etheree
airing our self-pitying dirges
or priapic faux erotic urges
"awesome" they are, collectively.

For certain you will never see
"Your poem mopes! Your verse is twee!"
"Empty of thought! "It limps. It splurges"
It's wonderful!

Worthwhile "critique" can never be
part of the comment-recipe.
For sure all such would fall to purges
by "comment moderated" surges
of "Please don't prick my vaniteeeee!
I'm WONDERFUL!"