Below is a selection of submissions for our September 2017 meeting. The topic of the home work is 'Vignettes'.
Leighton Buzzard
Dallas Berge
It was a beautiful day in Leighton Buzzard, and, as usual, Gordon looked forward to a stroll to the local shops. Actually, he wasn’t a great fan of the town, as, like many other towns in England, the characteristic shops like the local butcher’s, the pharmacy where the pharmacist knew everyone and could begin looking for their medicines as soon as they hoved into view, and the shop where you could buy candles, chocolate and cream had been replaced by a supermarket, Boots the chemist, a shop with expensive fragranced candles and a 7-11 convenience store. In those days everyone knew everyone, and there was always a conversation to be had. Nevertheless, it still had its charms.
Jonno, Derek and Dean were looking forward to a walk around town too. Some old guy would come along and they would put on their best ‘Lock Stock and 3 Smoking barrels’ gangster postures, and demand money. There were usually easy pickings in Leighton Buzzard.
Gordon strolled past Sainsbury’s, Boots, and the Jo Malone candle shop, and was headed to the local pub when Jonno and his mates walked towards him.
“Hey, fatso! Give us a pound!” said Dean.
It was true that Gordon’s build was what some people would describe as ‘portly’, but there was no need for this.
“Give us a pound!” demanded Derek, as menacingly as he could.
“Sorry, haven’t got a pound,” replied Gordon. “Fantastic plastic only these days, lads.”
“Give us ya money,” insisted Jonno.
Gordon tried not to laugh. How old were these boys? Thirteen? Fourteen? They were probably young teenagers, but rather slight for their ages if they wanted to bully him into coughing up his cash.
“Off shopping are we, lads?” enquired Gordon.
“Give us your cash, you fat f*ckwit”, spat Jonno.
“Sorry lads. Not today.”
Gordon smoothly passed them by and continued heading towards the Hare and Hounds.
“You’ve got a baldy patch on the back of ya head,” shouted Dean, after him. “Looks like a duck pond, dontcha know?”
Gordon calmly turned around. He’d been living with the ‘duck pond’ for quite some time.
And then he saw two police officers. The boys were being led away to a police van. Gordon smiled. He looked forward to telling his mate Pete down at the pub about this one.
Rendezvous with Australia
Tatiana Efremova
There I was, a new immigrant with little practical knowledge of overseas life and a quite substantial luggage of preconceived ideas. A sudden twist of fate dropped me in Australia, a complete Terra Nulius, if I omit my vague knowledge about kangaroos, Aborigines and ‘Crocodile Dandy’. All gaps in my knowledge about Australia, or… well…I have to admit: all my knowledge about Australia was one big gap - that colossal void which meant to be my knowledge of Australia was filled with general ideas. I knew for a fact that I ended up in a country of plenty and freedom, democracy and good weather, or as some would call it, heaven. It was what my husband told me, and I believed him. He meant to know, it was his country, after all.
I was eager to learn about my new home, I was eager to embrace it… My husband was eager to show it off to me, and maybe to show me off as well. He planned a trip from Gosford to Coffs Harbour, to see his friends and whatever Australia was in between… I planned our trip to be Russian in style, a picnic trip. I packed a basket with food, he drove me to a rendezvous with Australia.
The motorway was brand new and marvelous, he explained to me. I didn’t really appreciate his excitement. To me, it was just asphalt and there was nothing interesting to see along the road.
We stopped for a picnic at a vista with tables, a BBQ and a toilet. It is the best picnic spot, he explained to me. I refused to eat in a vicinity of a public toilet and on the table. Picnics happen on the grass, when you can’t be any closer to the land, when grasshoppers and butterflies are a part of the scene, when flowers sway around you in the wind, when the water runs in the creek nearby, when you fall in the tall grass and float away with the clouds above your head… A rumbling public toilet, a gravel under my feet and an aluminum table could not be a part of that romantic scene. I needed a much better setting for my picnic. We drove further.
Vista after vista I kept rejecting all proposed picnic sites. Not one of them was close to nature, not one of them was free of concrete and asphalt. There was nothing to see along the road, our trip was boring and I was hungry… And just to please me, my husband drove off the motor way and hit a country road. A beautiful country side opened up to my delighted eyes: New England looked stunning in autumn, with the familiar palette of yellow, orange, red and burgundy hues as if I dived into the Russian autumn, as if I returned home.
Twisted dirt roads took us through the rolling landscapes and spectacular views which would be perfect as a backdrop for a picnic… I begged my husband to stop at many beautiful spots but every time when I picked a place we discovered a barbed wired fence. Kilometer after kilometer, hour after hour - we were cut out of the beautiful land and locked in the narrow space of the road.
There I was, supposedly a prisoner who escaped an oppressive Soviet regime in a supposedly free country where people could do whatever they were pleased - and I could not sit on the grass where I wanted… The whole world around me was sliced and diced and locked away from me. Those who grabbed a slice of this paradise were not in a hurry to share their patch of heaven with me. I had to come to the end of Earth and into a democratic heaven to feel so utterly excluded for the first time in my life.
Apparently, it was not my heaven.
Be Careful what You Wish For, Mate
Dallas Berge
Once upon a time, ‘Les Girls’ in Sydney was the height of cabaret dining sophistication, with its supposedly classy show performed by drag queens. I went there for the Christmas celebration of the small office I was working at in the 80s. I’d never understood the appeal of drag queens, but the show was entertaining and the food was OK. Even more entertaining was the free ‘after-show’ show in the nightclub upstairs.
Having gotten there, I was surprised to see there were no men, only women, but that didn’t dampen my spirits. I was in the mood to dance the night away with my colleagues. Hell, if the music was good, I’d dance round my handbag to anything. Not long after we’d arrived, I found out why it was women-only. A rather urbane looking young man, clad in a white suit and hat similar to Bryan Ferry in his stylish days, began to dance for us. He actually looked like he had trained in ballet and gymnastics, performing balletic moves and forward rolls and offering white carnations to women in the crowd. We swooned. Before long, he started taking his clothes off. Fine by me. He’d looked good in the suit, and he looked pretty good without it, too.
Next up was a man dressed, curiously, as a schoolboy. Now why anyone would think a schoolboy would be sexy to grown women, I have no idea. Backed by the Pointer Sisters’ ‘He’s so shy’, he began his dancing and stripping routine.
You may or may not know, but male strippers wear several layers of clothing, gradually taking them off to titillate the audience. These will include at least a shirt and vest, pants, and two or three items of underwear, removed one by one, til the stripper is left with only a skimpy G-string/pouch arrangement, just big enough to cover the crown jewels, meat-and-two-veg, or three-piece suite, whatever you may wish to call it. Our schoolboy, having removed his cap and dropped his schoolbag, began to sway as he cheekily undid the buttons of his shirt, then after a few more dance moves, came sashaying over to a part of the crowd, or more specifically, me.
There he was, gyrating away and apparently trying to get me to do something. I was certainly not about to gyrate with this dude in his man-child get-up, but I figured out he wanted me to pull down his pants. There was no escape, so I gamely slid my thumbs into the waistband of his pants and yanked them down. Almost all his pants, in fact. All that was left was a glittery pouch, concealing the crown jewels, meat-and…well, you get the picture.
“You stupid cow! I’ve still got half the song to get through! What I am I going to do now?”, he shouted.
Jeez, I don’t know, I thought. But one thing I do know is that you’ll be more careful who you line up for audience participation next time.
In Africa
Anne Erez
"It’s a bloody long way back to civilisation from here," said the boy as looked off into the distance along the pockmarked bits of bitumen which were optimistically signed as the main highway south."Well, we might just get lucky and catch a ride soon. It’s so hot and sticky already", replied the slightly built young blonde girl as she pulled up the bottom of her shirt and wiped her sweaty brow.
The two young backpackers had been standing on the roadside in the red dirt for little over an hour and trying to stay in the shade of the thick matte of trees and shrubs pushing up against the road edge. They had been staying on the beach for the last week or so along with a group of other adventurers in small thatched roofed huts dotted amongst the palms lining the magnificent coastline. Now they were trying to get back south to get some type of transport back to Nairobi. Unfortunately, the local bus they had come up with only ran on a select few days a week, although no one seemed to know what those days were. Anyway, nearly three hours packed like sardines in the hot stuffy old bus was not one trip they really wanted to repeat. The boy had spent most of the trip crammed onto a seat made to carry just two but was shared with another two locals plus an angry rooster in a crude cage on the lap of one of his fellow passengers. It was an experience that they were becoming used to in travelling around East Africa in 1975. They decided that they needed to start to try to get back to Nairobi to catch their booked flight out to Cairo in three days’ time. Or the alternative was to be stuck longer than they could afford in East Africa.
There wasn't much-passing traffic this early. Any that did pass were packed with ten times the amount of noisy local people and livestock that any normal vehicle should carry and looked like they were held together with wire, which they usually were. As was the custom they all stopped but were waved on with a smile and thanks.
Just when they were starting to get really discouraged with the whole idea of hitchhiking a small white car appeared up ahead and came towards them. They stood up from resting on their backpacks and waited.
"Quick, hide in the bushes and I'll see if I can get some help here", said the young girl as she pushed the boy off the verge and into some large bushes, hoping that it didn't contain any of those terrible black snakes that they had been warned about.
"Gosh, it looks like a normal car too".
It contained two white men and it slowed and stopped beside her.
"Good morning Mademoiselle" greeted the youngish man in the driver’s seat with a very heavy French accent.
"Are you wanting to go somewhere?"
"Well yes but to Mombasa and you're going in the wrong direction" she smiled and replied in her most flirtatious voice.
"OK. Yes, but we are just going up the road for a short time then we will be back. If you are still here we could take you south. OK no?"
She nodded and thanked them and they both waved and took off up the road.
When the car disappeared around the bend the boy stepped out from behind the bushes scratching his arms and complaining about all the bloody mosquitoes and other stinging creatures he had encountered in the few minutes he had been hiding.
"Seems like we may get a ride with these two Frenchies but they're sure gonna get a surprise when you appear. Might spoil their fun but it’s the best offer so far”, she laughed and patted him on the arm.
It was almost an hour later and the car appeared again from around the bend heading in the right direction this time.
It stopped and both men greeted her and didn't seem at all surprised to see her companion. She reasoned to herself that they probably had spotted him in the bushes when they went past earlier and then she realised that both their bags were beside her on the roadside.
After loading their heavy packs in the boot and settling into the back seat the car took off down the road for only a few minutes before turning onto a small side road marked 'Airport' on a small sign hanging at an angle of a pole.
The two men all the while were chatting away to each other in French oblivious to the startled couple in the back seat.
"Oh where are we going?" she asked as she glanced nervously at her boyfriend and lent forward to hear the answer.
"Didn't I mention we are flying down to Mombasa? We are geologists and we have a small plane we keep here to get around our area of operation. It's such a beautiful coastline and a lovely day to sightsee. Should only take 30 minutes or so".
The couple sat back with relief and grinned at each other. This was definitely their best hitchhiking lift so far!
