“There’s two kinds of chairs, comfy ones and worky ones,” my Grandpa once told me. “You can’t work properly if you slouch.”
Grandpa was a worky chair himself: straight-backed from the army, always kept you on your toes with his rules. Grandma was the comfy chair – all hugs and kisses and tears.
I thought that was how men and women were, until I met Dave. Dave was what my Dad would call “so laid back, you trip over him”. Not so much a comfy chair as a bean bag. And when I needed him, he was there to sink into.
Extroduction
Nothing much to report on the story front, other than it’s pure fiction.
I’m off on an adventure this afternoon – Joy and Jen Take The Train Again (the sequel). We’re heading to Halifax and back over the next week, leaving husbands, kids and other responsibilities behind. So apologies if I don’t read as many FF stories this week.
Thanks to Fleur Lind for this week’s photo prompt.
Freight is great
Driving to piano lessons, we cross the railroad tracks. If we’re lucky, the gates close and we wait, windows rolled down, both thrilled by the sight and sounds of the passing train.
“Ooh, it’s a cargo train!” Dominic squeaked on Monday.
“A freight train, yes. Freight is great!” I resisted the urge to sing.
“Is freight a real word or a you word, Mama?”
“A real word,” I said, distracted, enjoying the rush of the passing train. When my brain caught up, I laughed. “Yes, it’s a real word.”
“Not like catfish?”
“Not like catfish.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to tell.”
Extroduction
Ok, this week really feels like it needs an extro. The story is a true one, but I promise it was also 100% inspired by the photo. You see, like many families, we have a lot of in jokes. Not even jokes, just phrases and words that only mean what they mean because of their history in our family. There’s a bridge in Yorkshire where you have to say “Merry Christmas” every time you drive over it, because once we were driving to my grandparents’ house and hit that bridge at midnight on 24/25 December; parking spaces where two are empty facing each other, so you can drive in and out forwards are “Grandad spaces” because they were his favourite kind, and you can’t say freight without saying (ideally singing) Freight is great from the song in Starlight Express.
You also can’t see a barn owl without the phrase “Not barn owls anyway” (from the beautiful Jill Tomlinson book “The Owl Who Was Afraid Of The Dark”) popping into your head. And to me, Fleur’s picture wasn’t a tree with a fairy door in, it was a tree with a barn owl, halfway up the trunk, facing left. So this week’s inspiration went: photo –> barn owl –> not barn owls anyway –> weird family phrases –> conversation with Dominic on the way to piano.
Catfish, by the way, apart from being catfish, are also the family name for wind turbines: Whiskery blighters, marauding across the landscape.
I know what you’re thinking. My kids have no hope!
“So Andy gets Home Farm when you die?” She sounds worried. What does the third child, a daughter, get under the rules of primogeniture?
A good marriage, but I don’t say that. “In those days, yes.”
“And Josh gets the cottage. Where will I live?” Panic rises. “In the barn?”
“Those rules don’t apply any more. Daddy and I treat you all fairly, don’t we?”
She looks at the pancakes heaped before her. Her brothers have gone to school with only time for honeyed toast. “No,” a grin appears, “I’ll get the farm!”
As a country music fan, there are just too many songs to choose from to go with a story about a farm! In the end it came down to Kenny Chesney’s “She thinks my tractor’s sexy”, High Valley’s “On the combine” or this one from Dean Brody. On the album, it follows a soulful love song to Canada called “Northern Anthem” that includes the line “It’s a land that tests our wills.” The snow’s arrived this week, so yeah, that.I drew this recently, so let’s add it to the farming collection this week.
“Who sits there?” Dad says, indicating an empty table, devoid of place settings, in prime window location. “Children? Can’t risk the fancy plates and glassware on them?”
“Not kids,” Mum counters, “That tablecloth is pristine.”
My sister thinks it’s a religious fanatic, fasting while watching others eat.
For a while we’re engrossed in the pleasures and pressures of family dinner, but later I pull my chair in to let a wheelchair squeeze through to the mystery table, its occupant’s face and upper body slack with degeneration.
“Hi Maggie!” The server says brightly. “How are you this week? Cosmopolitan to start?”
Extroduction I’m writing this in a waiting room, so please forgive the technical imperfections. The word count was done manually, can you imagine that??! Anyway, the story. The clear table caught my eye as it did the family in the story. I don’t know if you can pour alcohol through a gastro tube, but I bet Maggie came for the atmosphere more than the martinis.
“Who invented the aeroplane?” As his mother, I can distinguish Luke’s ‘I’m about to wind up my brother’ grin from his ‘I learned something new’ grin at 100 paces.
“The Wright Brothers!” Poor Matty, he’s like Wile E. Coyote, charging confidently into the trap.
“Nope! The Wrong Brothers… they just couldn’t work out how to make it fly.”
“It isn’t though! Read the sign!” The rising whine in Matty’s voice tells me he’s had enough. It tells his brother no such thing.
Luckily, Grandad saves us all. “Anyone want to see the plane that my Father went to war in?”
Extroduction
Luke and Matty, and their patient parents, are some of my favourite characters to write. You can read more of their stories here. The real boys in my life were tiny when Luke and Matty first came into my mind; now they are roughly the age of their fictional brothers and share a lot of similarities. Last weekend, Seb was away on a special Daddy-and-Me road trip. So yesterday, they were inseparable, eventually deciding to have a sleepover together on the Family Room carpet.
They fight like brothers and love like brothers, and I couldn’t ask anything more.
“They’ll print anything on a teatowel,” Grandpa would joke. He couldn’t stand the inspirational phrases kitsch.
He took some getting used to Kingsley, who had every phrase possible printed on a t-shirt or mug. It took me a while too, but I came to embrace the quotes as Kingsley eased me gently out of the safety of conformity.
At our wedding, we wore matching rainbow suits and kissed under a sign that said “Be the flamingo”..
Grandpa sent a telegram from the hospital. I cried when I read Live, Love, Laugh, my boys, and the greatest of these is Love.
Extroduction
Wow, this one took some wrestling! Kingsley and Grandpa were so clear to me, but fitting them both into 100 words and making it a story was like herding kittens! As one of the men seized control, the other would be pushed out of the word limit or the plot entirely. I think I have them both contained now! Entirely fictional, which is a shame because I’d love to meet either of them, or the narrator who brought them together.
Thank you to Brenda Cox for the photo prompt. Not sure why WordPress isn’t in the mood to caption it today.
Family Road Trip
“The frogs always drive 2CVs,” my husband jokes as we pass our fifth that day.
“Wearing a blue beret, with garlic round their neck and a baguette? You’ve been watching too much old TV, Dad.” Luke’s suspicious of our inclination to stereotype.
“If it was properly old, you wouldn’t be able to see the colour.”
Matty looks up then. “Black and white TV ended before you were born.” His voice is slick with disdain.
“That one’s green!” I say, trying to lighten the mood. “It looks like a frog!”
“How apt,” sighs Luke, “A frog car for a frog driver.”
*** Translation notes ***
In case you aren’t familiar, British people tend to call French people “frogs” or “froggies”. It’s generally innocent and affectionate and there’s some debate about where it came from (a summary can be found here), but like most of the national stereotypes and nicknames we grew up on, it probably wouldn’t be approved of by younger, woker generations like Luke.
“Label all the boxes,” I said, for the hundredth time. “We need to be able to find things when we get there.”
I passed around Sharpies and glared at anyone who suggested they might get to it later.
Of course, a computer is only as good as its programmer and a label is only as good as its writer.
So I stand here, in front of a wall nearly high enough to keep Donald Trump happy, and every single box is labelled. I should find my boots no trouble.
Except a full 24 of the boxes are called “Basement: Misc”
When Dad died, I sobbed about who’d walk me up the aisle. He wrapped me in a bear hug and said, “I’ll be there.” I didn’t even have a boyfriend, but my brother’s promise was what I needed.
Haven’t seen him in years; it’s Joe who holds my hand now.
But today, Joe’s inside and I’m out here alone, smoothing out my train.
There’s a shout from the lake and a boat roars into view. I don’t know what Joe or our priest will think about his attire, but we keep promises in our family. That’s gotta count for something.
elmowrites 