Truth or Dare SECURELESS FOR A DAY
Citizens, Quake in your beds,
The mighty NCA
Is forbidden tapping phones
For more than one whole day!
Oh how unpatriotic
Senator Rand Paul must be
For security in the USA depends
On what the NCA can see.
Does he honestly believe
T’were better the Brits had stayed,
To guard the US homeland?
(All defence costs to be defrayed!)
AWE
<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/truth-or-dare/”>Truth or Dare</a>
Now just how honest is this? I mean how possible, how likely and how truthful?
Sally
Her smile was intimate and full of fun
The face, the eyes knew well how it was done.
One tender, touching hand caressed my face.
Our wooded, deserted glen was just the place.
Had she led me there on purpose or by happy chance,
Had she deliberately given me a seductive glance,
Telling me I could do whatever my passion willed?
Had the moment been planned as totally as it thrilled?
My heart, my lips, my body pressed against her chest,
With all my libido rising as I caressed her breast.
If paradise is even half the pleasure of this
The promise of eternal love lies in one such kiss.
We slowly wound ourselves around each other there
I stroking her locks, she rumpling my wavy hair.
She pulled me to the ground to complete my pleasure
We took our time, why hinder love’s timeless treasure?
“Oh Sally, I cannot live for even one more day
Until I hear your answer. Oh darling Sally say
‘I love you’. Oh please, tell me you always shall.”
She answered, “You know I will, you gorgeous gal!.”
AWE
https://antonwillseve.com/2015/05/31/the-town-square-or-180-degrees/
a change of ways
THE TOWN SQUARE, OR 180 Degrees
It was several miles from Paris when I started to wish I had accepted a lift from Jean-Claude and not tried to walk all the way back to my flat in the centre of Paris on the Ile Saint Louis. It was a warm spring day but dustier and muggier than I expected.
The road approaching the river at Chatou sur Seine stretched out like a scene from a painting by Monet even thouh it was 1960, a hundred years since he first painted it. I decided to give up my heroics when I reached Chatou and take the train into the city and then take a taxi from the Gare Saint Lazare. The welcoming station was just about in sight as I entered the town square and stopped at a Tabac for a cold beer and sandwich to keep up my strength. I thanked the young waiter but nearly choked before I even got the bread near my mouth.
“And consider yourself lucky you’ve got off so lightly! I usually prosecute thieves.” A small crowd gathered round a young girl lying exhausted on the cobbles, many of them spitting at her and making obscene gestures. One old haridan even went so far as to almost scream at her, “and if you haven’t any money make some the way you usually do! We don’t have whores in this town. We are a respectable community. On your way!”
I was quite simply horrified. Regardless of what she may have done she was obviously destitute and I was never so glad in my life that I spoke fluent French. As I walked over to the poor creature I could not resist shouting at the loud mouthed spokeswoman for the crowd, “Your husband must have very sore feet having to walk so far each evening.” Then I helped the girl to the place where I was sitting and asked what she would have. She looked at me as though I was mad. The waiter looked admiringly at me but out of his depth. I repeated my question and the owner of the cafe came up to me.
“I am sorry, Monsieur, but we do not serve girls like Nicole. It is house policy. Do please have your beer and sandwich on us.” I could not believe the double standards in what he said. But I silently took he sandwich and drink and stood up. All I said was,
“How do you know she is called Nicole? She seems too young to be your sister!” And he was so offended, and indignant in his stuttering reply, that Nicole had time to drink half the glass of beer before I took her by the hand and she ate the sandwich as we strolled to the station. It was only when I bought two tickets to Paris that she pulled up abruptly shaking her head. “Non, Monsieur, my appartment is further on by the river.” She was scared of me now and in an odd way for both of us. She was not exactly shabbily dressed but her shoes and thin jacket gave away the state of her finances. I was so set on helping her that I just sat on a bench outside the station and beckoned to her to join me.
“Now Nicole, I assume that is just your name for today, why can’t you make any money as you usually do? Are you ill, and what are you scared of?”
Then she told a tale straight out of an opera. “Oh Monsieur. It is true I have been working as a prostitute for more than two years now and I am not yet twenty, but I have never had any parents. The nuns at the orphanage assumed that all the girls there would become nuns and all the boys priests. They lectured us to death until one day I accepted an offer from a rich middle aged man to have dinner with him. Need I tell you the rest?” I shook my head. But I did ask one more question,
“You seemed very scared back there, what are you frightened of?” Her story was dreadful. After her first protector had finished with her she was roped into working in a brothel but she was scared that she was possibly pregnant. She was not sure, but her pimp told her he could get rid of any possibility of that. Then one lesson the nuns had taught her that had impressed her came back. All life was sacred and she could not kill an infant no matter how young. Life began with conception, she had been taught and she believed this. Even being uncertain that she might be pregnant she would never kill a baby. Her pimp gave her two days to reconsider and then he would make her wish she had never been born. She had no money and did not know what to do. So I told her.
“Well, to start with, what is your real name, I am only going to help you,” she told me it was Janine.”Eh bien, Janine, if you want to try to settle into a happier and less frightening life, I can help you. I am extremely wealthy and live on the Ile Saint Louis in Paris. I am in my last year at university at the Sorbonne and then hope to work at UNESCO for the United Nations. You know what all these organisations are?” She nodded but could not see how this would help her.
“Well, Janine, I have only six weeks to go at University and then I want to start writing a book on internatonal cultural relations. I shall need a secretary and I assume they taught you to read and write well at the orphanage. Would you like the job? You speak with quite a pleasant voice and nobody need know about your past?”
It was obvious the idea was magic to her, but she knew nothing about me. I could see this and did not know what to say to convince her I meant what I said. Then I had an idea. I could see her jacket had pockets in it and I slipped an envelope into one of them. “Janine that will cover all your needs for at least a month.” It was $5,000 in French francs and my address written on the envelope. I gave her one of the train tickets I had bought and said I hoped to see her very soon. When the train came we got into different carriages. I said a silent prayer for her and made my own way back to my luxury appartment.
For nearly three weeks I kept a daily look out for her but she never came. I had put my first name only on the envelope and had almost given up hope when I was intrigued to notice a man very obviously keeping an eye on me in my local bar and favourite restaurant for three days in a row. On the fourth day, wearing just a shirt and slacks I let him get close to me when I spun on him and pinned him to a drain pipe. “Why are you following me, who are you. Be quick or this knife in my other hand will really hurt.” He was sacred stiff.
“You are Monsieur Paul?” I nodded. “And this is yours?” He handed me my envelope without a note spent from it. He was smiling now. “I have been looking into you and your affairs for nearly a month now and am satisfied that you are a good man, a rich man and a clever man. You are also, I can see, a very compassionate man.”And he held out his hand.
We went into the bar and over a glass of wine he told me he had been at the orphanage with Janine and had been trying to get her to give up her way of life for some time, but finally gave up.
It was she who came to him on the night we met and told him about me and how much she wanted to work for me. But she was scared of me because she knew nothing about me at all. She gave him my money and he had been looking after her until he knew enough about me to be sure she would be safe working for me. His name was Pascale Boncourt. He wanted to take me to Janine at once and we went to his appartment near the pont d’Alma. She was in tears on seeing me and flung her arms round my neck.
I accepted the $5,000 I had given her and could see Pascale had bought her clothes and anthing else she needed.
I had started writing my book but suddenly realised it was in English and might be far too difficult for her. It was, but I told her all I wanted was a clean copy typed version and there was no rush. She might even learn some English at the same time.
“Janine, I own the first and second floors of this building, facing the river, a total of 14 rooms. Also there is a lift to all five floors and I know that there is a four room appartment to let on the fourth floor, so if you are happy to work for me for $1,000 a month that should keep you in all you need. Oh, by the way, are you pregnant?” She shook her head and added,
”I have not yet met the right man!”
I start work at UNESCO in two weeks time and that is our situation as of today. Oh, in what way was any of this a complete turn about in my normal behaviour? Well it was the first time I ever picked up a whore in the street.
Anton Wills-Eve
<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/do-not-disturb/”>Do Not Disturb</a>
TERMS AND CONDITIONS
FOLLOWING IS A FREE OFFER OF $100,000
Terms and conditions below apply
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Click here to repeat and prove you’ve read.
<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/do-not-disturb/”>Do Not Disturb</a>
no choo choo coming down my line
DOWN THE LINE
Never say ‘I luv ya’ on the line
Don’t do my banking, a bank’s just fine
Won’t post my vote coz it’s just for me
Only my business how I wanna be
Thanked for what I give to people in need.
So I’m not tellin’ ya how I feed
My family an’ friends’, no business o’ yours
Anyways ain’t got no ‘puter in or outta doors!
AWE
first of a few posts to make up for my absence
JEZ AND JED
Jez and Jed are twins and live in a poor, quarter of Omaha, Nebraska. They are seventeen years and twenty three days old and love going somewhere secret and polishing up their lovely stolen policeman’s gun. They think it has about twelve to sixteen bullets in it but are not sure.
A couple of days ago they were listening to their favourite rap music on the local radio station when it was interrupted for a news flash. About four minutes later the music resumed so Jez put her earphones back in. Jed had not taken his out as quickly and his sister asked him as they both resumed their roller skating up and down a free piece of concrete banking, “Anything hot on de news, bro? I mean like anyone in government been killed?” She did not know the word assassinated. The word had never been taught in their school.
“Nah, sis, just some rich sport player getting richer by winning a key game here in Nebraska. Commentators said it couldn’t been closer. But even ma dumb math don’t figure 30 – 19 very close. But not in our league hun!” And they rolled on their way.
When they got home around five in the afternoon they couldn’t understand why their parents and relatives and a lot of the locals were jumping up and down and dancing in the in the street. “Jed, Jez we won, yeah man, we won.”
Jed, who was famous in the family for his ignorance of, or interest in, most things floored his family by adopting a very laid back posture and saying, “Yup, but I still don’t see how 30 – 19 was close. Sounds like a thrashing to me!”
“Look at it how you will it was both. The closest thrashing in Nebraska history”, his father said. But the boy was still puzzling it over an hour later when his sister came up to him and tossed their police gun to him.
“Not loaded, man.We don’t need this no more. The state’s just banned the death penalty. That was the vote overturning the governor’s veto today. 30 votes to 19. Made it by one vote.”
Her brother then surprised her. “Jez, when was the last killing by the state of Nebraska for any crime? Bet you don’t know. It was 18 years ago. But the white police still shoot us for fun.
I reckon we’ve gotta follow what our Governor says. He says we must have the death penalty to defend our families. So go put the ammo back in dat gun. The governor says we gotta protect Maw and Paw. Agreed?”
So this morning Jez reloaded the gun and everyday life in Nebraska resumed as normal.
AWE
A Mystery Wrapped in an Enigma
truth will out, but names had to be changed
THE FAR FLUNG FIELDS OF BEDFORDSHIRE
Well it really is nice to be back amongst my blogging friends after a very strange two weeks journey into the unknown. What a journey too! I did not even have time to pack.
I can remember looking at my watch and seeing it was fourteen minutes past nine in the morning. I had promised to take a fruit cake round to old Mrs.Winters, a miracle at ninety three, blind as a bat but with a mind still as sharp as a razor. I had promised to read to her for an hour. Then I suddenly sat up, supported on my right elbow and wondering who the five people were gathered round my bed. My wife looking like death, my son and daughter-in-law concerned and frightened, and two ambulance people speaking coaxingly to me to try to get me into a wheel chair.
“What’s going on? Why are you two here at quarter past nine? Who told you to come?” And while my tear stained wife’s face smiled at me in sympathy I looked at my watch again and it said half past one. Gone lunchtime!. “Did anyone take Mrs. Winter’s cake round to her?” I was greeted with stunned silence.
The ambulance woman asked who Mrs.Winters was but my daughter-in-law, Jane, said none of us had ever heard of her. Of course they had. I couldn’t believe this. “Jane, don’t be silly you know the path through the copse behind the stables well she lives in the little white cottage three houses down the road to the right.
Then I started to walk along the lane past the harvest decorated village church and smiled at the stupid mistake everyone at home had made. What did they think had happened? Had I had a stroke or something? Nonensense. It was a lovely day as Chloe and I strolled across the recently harvested land, hand in hand and every bird in Bedfordshire singing to see us so happy. The love of two youngsters, I was eighteen Chloe just seventeen, and the late afternoon sun drawing us ever closer to each other. If we were not actually in Heaven, we were very close. Third path to the left were the gates with Saint Peter smiling at us, his keys were jangling softly on the cord round his waist. The whole rural scene was perfect in every tiny detail.
Each leaf was moving so softly in the light breeze as Chloe sat by the foot of the oak tree and beckoned to me to sit next to her. “You been waiting for this moment, John? Chloe intoned as though making a rhetorical statement rather than asking me a question. I’ve been needing you for more than two years, my lover.” And a silken arm, bare from just below the shoulder, slowly crept up and its fingers played a fairy tune on the back of my neck. I knew what I should and what I shouldn’t do. I had never wondered what I’d do if things ever came to this point. But Chloe seemed in no doubt what the twilight was going to give us. And given my poor Chloe’s living hell how could I not give in to my own physical need of her?
It must have been about two hours later that the phone call came from her mother and I set off walking slowly up to Chloe’s front door and her sister Mary let me in. She was slightly younger than me and squeezed my hand as we climbed the stairs to her bedroom. Just before entering the room she smiled through her tears and said, “she’s not it pain John, and it won’t be long now”.
It was very brief as it turned out, some forty minutes, and then each of us kissed her although her eyes were already shut. I shuffled my way back down the stairs, my coat pulled tight round me as the early autumn sky filled me with a sad and hopeless chill. Then, as I slowly ambled back across the Bedfordshire farmland in the full moonlight, I heard running footsteps behind me trying to catch me up. Finally a slightly breathless Mary caught up with me and we wept there under the oak tree unable to stop hugging and holding on to each other. Mary closed the evening with the most unexpected pensee.
“You know John I never thought my twin would die a virgin. Not our bubbling Chloe. Life’s cruel in what it robs us of, isn’t it John?” I just held her tighter as I cried for my sin and prayed that God had forgiven Chloe. He couldn’t have refused her Paradise. It wouldn’t be Heaven, without Chloe, would it?
“Matron, sister the gent in number three has woken up.” And so I had. I looked at my watch it was eleven am. But the date couldn’t be right. It was Tuesday and I had lost four days of my life. But what was that compared to the lovely summer with Chloe in those far flung fields of Bedfordshire some fifty years ago. A whole life lost. Funny how it took a stroke to recall it so vividly. I’ve never told anyone before, so please don’t you do so either. It would break my Mary’s heart.
–
<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/new-internet-order/”>New Internet Order</a>
prime minister of the net.
MY NET GAIN
I stood for the job of governing the net,
I won the one job I thought I’d never get.
I mean, the world is such a diverse place,
How could it be run by just one race?
For if one race ran it how would we
Show how globally welcome our ideas could be.
Well we’d follow the philosophy of all beliefs
Ensuring there’d be no oppressed, or any chiefs
Hijacking the only world wide way to tell
Which policies would make us ill or well.
No we’d quote all wisdom spoken since time began
To ensure everyone was a happy woman or man.
AWE
what I cannot do.
HE WISHED HE COULD HAVE DONE THAT!
Jealousy is a green eyed monster, so Shakespeare tells us in Othello.
The Moor of Venice too, was an all round clever and successful fellow.
Master of all he fought and all he imperiously ruled
But alas by a servant and through jealousy was he fooled.
He would not believe that Desdemona was faithful all her life,
Ans so he choked her with a hankey, what a way to waste a wife!
Then Iago laughed behind his back having punished the pure lady he desired
But she had left an encoded message for Othello who now knew who had admired
The wife he always and only loved, indeed until death did them part.
So he sought out Iago and in turn avenged himself for misplacing his own heart.
Oh, William, your whole tragedy is encompassed in my short passionate lines.
Your jealousy must crave such succulent brief literary phrases when it dines.
AWE
I assume that by ‘idyllic’ the prompter means ‘ideal’. I am writing on that assumption.
MY IDEAL COMMUNITY, FOR EVERYONE ELSE
I have two main problems with living in any sort of community. The first is that I love exercising my free will and so would almost certainly get on the wrong side of a lot of my neighbours and acquaintances. This would in turn make life a strain and probably very often an absolute pain in the backside. The second reason is that I love living amongst people with whom I agree about all the important things in my life and with whom I can share my appreciation of the types of music, literature, religion and sport that give me most pleasure. There is no pleasure in living amongst people who don’t agree with you or are not happy when you are and do not rejoice when you do. No I would not like to live amongst people I could not get on with. I would not go so far as Sartre and define Hell as ‘other people’, which is almost but not quite what he is famous for saying, but I do agree that I could not suffer dissonance of love with any degree of gladness.
So what do I make of this prompt. I have been completely negative so far but if I had to devise a Utopia – which I think is what is meant here – I would have to impose certain duties on members of that community. They would have to be charitable even when bored rigid, good Samaritans when it would make them late for the start of the match and above all sympathetic to deeply upset people even when the cause of this distress was lack of something which the palliative helper personally thought was a load of rubbish and they should be glad they had lost. You see the idea. Those are the sorts of people I would want.
How would I want it run? Well if it was large enough to be a town, say, then I would want the officers who organised daily life to be democratic yet tolerant, oh how many of us assume that these qualities always embrace each other – THEY DON’T! And by being ready to listen to others in depth are also equally careful to think before they talk. Also communities of every sort should be governed by honesty not following party directives. But basically I think the least interference possible in people’s lives by those in power is the best way to form a harmonious spirit of cheerful unity which I am sure we all basically prefer. We never get it of course but we can see that it’s very desirable.
I turn next to the silly question ‘what does your ideal community look like?’ Well that depends where it is. For me it would be in Tuscany in Italy, but most people would choose their favourite place so that question relly is impossible to answer.
Now finally the question is raised, what values do the ideal community share? God knows. No, seriously, He does. But to get any other two people to agree on a 100 per cent list of values – if this means ethics, morals, beliefs etc – then we would be lost. But that does not mean that we need not agree in broad principle on how communities should treat their members and show them respect and politeness. Also in matters of religion for example we should accept that this is something that means a lot to various groups different to ourselves and we should treat them as we would want them to treat us when considering us as members of particular sects, denominations etc.
So I have to return just for a quickie to my opening paragraph. I really don’t like having to do what I am told by anybody. God’s commandments I accept but I don’t like having to obey some of them. Well there is no point in not being honest. If I find someone very attractive all sorts of ideas come into my head. What I do about them is between me and God but I do find myself asking him why He made up so many ‘thou shalt nots’. But I try, I try. But it does show why communities and I do not often get on. Communities are such awfully inquisitive groups of people who seem to think they have the right to know everything I do, comment on it and judge me accordingly. Well they don’t!!!
AWE
I originally posted this story some time ago in 507 words. subtracting the title and the first 250 words I reduced it to this 250 words (without title)
THE BOY WHO HEARD TOO WELL
Callum’s brain was much the same as anyone else’s except that he suffered from advanced hyperacusis. His hearing was by far his most acute sense. He could hear people talking in whispers on the other side of the street and had to concentrate to shut out other noises when following a conversation or lecture. But this condition served him more good than bad.
His family attributed his success, in being offered a place at Cambridge University to read theology, to his ability to digest an enormous wealth of spoken knowledge despite his limitations in communicating it to others. But what part did this knowledge play in his own belief in God? I determined to ask him when he attended my tutorials in his second year. He said
“Well, doctor, it’s the sound of God’s love that effects me most. I love God because I can tell just by the sound of his words how much he cares for what he has created. I have no sort of vocation to any religious life or service but I do enjoy praying. It’s saying prayers, thinking them through and listening to others reading them out loud that really convinces me that God exists!”
So I asked him to prove how he knew, just by saying and listening to prayers, that God had actually created the world and everything it. He replied, “Well my favourite line in any prayer is, “Behold the hand made of the Lord!”
No one had told me he was dyslexic.
AWE
ps: how on earth can any of you know I am telling the truth & ergo meeting the prompt?
<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/polite-company/”>Polite Company</a>
why polite ?
BETTER THE PERSON YOU DON’T KNOW
You should never talk politics or religion with people you know, because that infers that you already know their views on these dicey topics. Much better if you don’t know. That way you can be honest and the other person knows you are. Also you won’t sound condescending which gets your friend’s back up. But worst of all if he/she thinks they know the way to Heaven (religion) and you know the way to hell (politics), you’ll have a very short chat and never speak to each other again.
AWE
<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/roy-g-biv/”>Roy G. Biv</a>
colours
RAINBOW COLOURS
Red is for stop, when driving a car
Blue’s for the sky wherever you are
Orange is juicy and fresh to the taste
Green’s ‘start again’, but without too much haste
Yellow’s a ribbon to tie round a tree
Violet’s been my wife since marrying me
Lastly bad “indigo” says what the police saw
“In you go” to prison for breaking the law.
AWE
total time taken 1minute 47 seconds
<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/four-stars/”>Four Stars</a>
two days ludicrous prompts in a row
NOT ANOTHER!
I can’t write an account of my life because it’s still going on. Like a detective story, I won’t know who did it until the end, and then I won’t be here to oblige you. Sorry.
AWE
<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/karma-chameleon-2/”>Karma Chameleon</a>
Your words and actions will influence what happens to you in the future.
A PROMPT RESPONSE
I have put the main idea of this prompt in italics because it is so obvious, stupid, and trite I can hardly believe it has been posted. Briefly, all life is aimed at speaking and behaving in the way we do in order to bring about the progress of our life as we want it to be. So what can one say other than , “Yes, I know”.
AWE
<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/powerful-suggestion/”>Powerful Suggestion</a>
twenty years ago.
TWO MANY COOKS
If I could have 1995 all over again I might not have given up writing for my own pleasure on April 14th that year. You must think I’m mad. A lot of people do. But honestly, that was the day I wrote back to a major publishing house and regretted I could not accept their generous offer of £150,000 ($250,000) advance to write my autobiography. The thing that stopped me was that I could not have done it without telling the truth. If I had told the truth my family would have been distraught and I would have lost many of my close friends. So I just said sorry, no deal. Well what’s so bad in that? My life was exciting, interesting, sad, funny and full of all the things many people wish they could say with honsesty about themselves and what they had been through. But the faces in my dreams just crushed me into nightmare after nightmare and I pulled out. I’m not sorry because I still have many friends who would not be talking to me now if I’d told the truth about them. But what I hate about my decision was what it led to making me do.
I was 52 years old at the time and had a son of five and a half just starting proper school. I couldn’t expose him to what I would have written. His brother, then aged 26 would have been far more deeply hurt so it wasn’t on. But what did I do instead? Well I somehow managed to carry on fighting a dreadful illness, and keeping a lot of the world up to spec on the main breaking news stories, and manage to get to Mass at least once a week. But to do this I started to increase my alcohol intake seriously. Nobody noticed because I had a huge tolerance to this form of abuse which I had been using for most of my life to get through my health problems. But it was just enough to turn a very bad anxiety neurosis into a form of cancer that was diagnosed in February 2,000 and has been with me ever since. It keeps me in agony most days. Was I right to keep mum when I did? I know what I think.
What do you think?
AWE
<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/daily-post-take-that-rosetta/”>Take That, Rosetta!</a>
a language I don’t know yet.
HOW ROSE ATE HER OWN WORDS.
Without any doubt I would want to be fluent in American. I already understand a lot of it and can write and read and talk it, well 23 of its dialects, but completely fluently? No, Mr Webster saw to that. I am not actually 100% fluent in any language but probably I could claim 99.8761% in English. Where I fall down is the limit of my vocabulary. There are still quite a lot of words I don’t know, probably never will, so although I’m nearly there what I have will have to suffice.
But why would I choose American? Well it would involve the smallest amount of learning, writing, reading and speaking. It is the one language I could actually see myself getting over 99% fluent in and that would be a wonderful feeling of achievement. At present I am about 98.14% fluent in most American versions of itself but perhaps I exaggerate. I may have a bit of trouble in inland North Eastern Alaska when it comes to coloquialisms and I know that the I have not yet mastered Hispanic Arizonian verbs. My youngest son’s American sister-in-law comes from New Mexico and I can talk back to her perfectly, but she assures me there is a difference over the state border. I must get over there and see if I can detect it.
In literature the greatest challenge for me with American is the spelling of words with which I am familiar in English. I remember tearing Henry James to pieces in my last year’s exams at school because he used the ‘Oxford’ Z, for those of you who know what that is, and I thought it a tragedy that a man who had mastered our language as well as he had should fall at the last fence – alphabetically literally – and pretend he thought Oxford spelling meant spelling as people did in Oxford, England. It doesn’t. It means in the style of academics at the University of Oxford. Not the same thing at all.
But many people flatter me and say how incredibly well I speak those languages which I have made a lot of headway in during my life. This is due largely to two things which on reflection I am sure are good tips on how to master a foreign tongue. I lived more than 28 years altogether outside the English speaking world so learned to speak like the people I was with. And I was blessed with a natural ability to mimic both vocally and in my gestures. But the other main help was greatly due to my passion for sports and classical music. You learn the words of arias in foreign tongues because you love them and they soon come naturally. And with sports you listen to the commentator and, as you can see what he is saying, you also can learn what his sounds, and thus his words, mean. Well I have strayed a little from the prompt if not the topic but I wish I had been asked which of my six fluent languages I found most difficult to overcome. You see the answer is I couldn’t possibly know. If I had known then, of course, the natural side of picking up the language would have made me worry about whether I was doing it right and that would almost certainly have made me do it wrong!
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<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/mentor-me/”>Mentor Me</a>
ever had a mentor?
I CAN’T SAY I HAVE
What on earth is a mentor? Oh dear I’ll have to Google it. It’s a what!? Strewth no. What would I want with one of those? You can’t teach an idiot to perfect the art of going mad, what use would I have had of one? I perfected my role in life by the age of , let’s just say much younger than usual.
But seriously. If you specialise in being an anomaly then you are in a sense unique. Now if there is one thing a mentor, if I’ve understood it correctly, could never do is duplicate unity. Apart from being a tautology wrapped in a contradiction, it would also mean the mentor would be unique as well. Think about it. That too is, an impossibility, isn’t it?
So if such a person should happen to be passing my door and on a whim knock on the bell and ask if I needed a mentor I would immediately invite her in. I certainly would not encourage a man to indulge in my madness. No, when it comes to the hard jobs in life I am definitely a feminist. – No! I said feminist! Tasks would have to be devised for me to master and I should like to start with a mildly esoteric form of insanity. I would like my mentrix to teach me exactly those.
If she had a good sense of humour as well we could think up some super situations. I could be asked to stop people in the street with a microphone and interview them for our local radio station. I doubt I would run out of questions pertinent to our locality, you know like “how far from here was the last open golf championship played? Nice try, but the answer is 987 yards not 216 miles”. You know the sort of thing. And the public love being on the radio. They always ask, “When is this going out, which station did you say you were?” It’s a perfect person trap. Have I ever done it for real as part of my work? Yes actually I have, often, but it was too tempting to last more than two or three minutes a person.
But all the time I was playing the fool with the mike, or taking the Mike with some fool, my mentrix would be scribbling notes about me on her clip board. Imagine people strolling up to her and asking, ‘what are you doing?’ To which her reply of
“Being a mentrix” would elicit the remark aimed at me,
“Lucky you, mister!”
Yes I am begining to see the sense in this insanity and starting to approach this prompt with more passion than jocosity. I might even advertise in the local paper, “Mentor looking for desperate subjects. I only charge a small sum and you’ll come out a new man!” But if the person advertising were a mentrix, this might not be the case. Oh, I don’t know though, if you think about it you still might.
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<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/mad-as-a-hatter/”>Mad as a Hatter</a>
the last time you flew into a rage.
VOLARE SU TUTTE LE FURIE
Personally I have never flown into a rage in my life. I fell into one once when ski-ing in the Alps and missed a slalom gate. Boy was I flaming as I shot off the piste into the spectators. I really was piste off.
But rages and flying and I have yet to form a triumvirate. I drove into a rage when I was nineteen and had had a few drinks too many on the cobbled streets of Brussels. They found the front of my sports car, complete with unharmed driver, wrapped round a lamp post and the rear seat and wheels some one hundred metres further up the road. I loved that car, it was my first genuine racer. But the rage came when I was told my ‘accident’, what unwitnessed highway stupidities are called in Europe, meant I was withdrawn from that weekend’s formula two motor race at Francorchamps. Imagine missing a key race in a series you were leading and in your first season in the sport. Now that really was being driven to distraction. Rage time with a vengeance.
I have encountered rage in other ways too. Have you ever stormed into a rage? Not easy to do usually, but this was in a thunderstorm on the cliff road between Barcelona and the Pyrenees and in persuit of a felon who I had watched knock down a small child. It was twlight and the summer sheets of lightning were throwing walls of fire across the Western end of the Mediterranean sea. Incredibly spectacular but I was more concerned with catching my crook. The boy was not very badly hurt but I did not know that as set off after the villain. It really was straight out of Edgar Wallace, without the cups of tea. My father’s German saloon car was no match for the baddy’s Spanish tortoise and I finally pinned him on a corner overtaking him on the coast side of the cliff where he least expected me. The Spanish police hailed me as a hero and the French police as an idiot who could have killed himself driving like that in such an ‘orage’. I had never forgiven the officer who called me that until today when it allowed me to make the most awful bi-lingual pun!
Another brush with rage came when my wife dropped one of a pair of crystal champagne flutes which had been given to us as a wedding present. Hand crafted for us, too, by a leading glass blower in Florence, and a true work of art. How I kept my temper I do not know to this day. But she wept so contritely as she brushed up the shards of glass that the scene ended in rag time, not rage time; the pair of us just cuddling each other until our love outlived our chagrin.
So, you can see that though I have a temper of sorts, it is simply something into which I have never flown. But I have a friend who flies into rages all the time. He is in the Royal Air Force and his wife’s name really is Rafaella. Apparently they fly into rages regularly, but always out of them again afterwards, deo gratias! But you’ll never believe the tag line to this story. His name really is Roger Wilco.
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Anton's Ideas 