A Game Of Patience

A Game Of Patience, 1937, Meredith Frampton

Alone again.

Would not one of them ever stay?

Sooner or later, there would be a parting of the ways,

and all her hopes come to nothing.

It had been civilised, this parting,

but so had all the others.

The men she chose 

- hand-picked each one - 

could be trusted to behave well.

For a while they seemed to fall in with her wishes.

She, tempting them with promises of fair reward,

free rein and generous refreshments.

They, nodding fulsomely, and keen to demonstrate

their prowess, bared strong arms

and grabbed their tools.

But when she mentioned digging in her beds,

pruning abundant growth and taming hedges,

they blanched, they gasped,

too soon their strength deflated

and they professed themselves

unequal to the task.

Bring out the pack,

lay out the cards.

Perhaps this time she’d solve the riddle?

What have we here?

Thoughtful she stared into the future.

At last.

A gardener for Lady C!

A rather free interpretation and off-the-cuff quickie for
today’s Magpie Tales.

For more ideas click on the link.

In Secondhand Heaven

Come in! Come in!

Look around, take your time.

You’re sure to find what you’re looking for.

A chair, a table?

Take it, cheap at twice the price.

A desk, as good as new, not a mark on it.

Nobody ever sat here and wrote their heart out.

There’s the lamp to go with it.

Perfect.

What more could you possibly want?

Have you seen the armchair? 

Take a pew, take the weight off, read a book;

books we have too, the best authors, writers you will find in no bookstore;

snapped up they were, long ago, classics well hidden from view.

You want toys? 

Pictures?

Posters for your walls?

You came to the right place, it’s all here.

An Aladdin’s cave of treasure.

I can see you’d love to splurge,

furnishing your own little nest, are you?

setting up home together?

Don’t be shy, tell me what you want

and you shall have it.

And just for you,

I’ll throw in the planter.

A fool to myself, that’s what I am.

Never could resist young love.

A contribution to Magpie Tales. Click on the link and you will find many more.

The Lighthouse

La Jument, off the coast of Brittany, 

photograph by Jean Guichard

Stiff-necked, and proud,
the indomitable tower rises from the sea,
defying gravity and all the powers of nature.

Man, who made earth herself his subject,
whose confidence and self-belief
allow him to stand idly by
while all the world around him is at war,
is no more than a step away
from utter devastation.

Reaching into the depths,
the Gods fling up a handful of their ire
and place it like a ruff around man’s throat.
destroying effortlessly all that he has built.



The photo above is taken just seconds before a giant wave engulfed  the lighthouse La Jument in Brittany. Theodore Malgorn, the lighthouse keeper, was waiting to be rescued. When he heard what he thought was the rescue helicopter, he rushed downstairs and stepped outside the door. It was a photographer come to take pictures of the storm. Malgorn made it back inside only by virtue of a very quick reaction.


This post is in response to Tess Kincaid’s Magpie Challenge No. 202. To find other contributors click on the link.

The Wedding Feast

Resurrection Reunion 2, 1945, Sir Stanley Spencer

The Mag 192

Provided by Tess Kincaid.

Many years ago, I received an invitation to a very grand wedding; a beautiful young princess, with skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood and hair as black as ebony, was marrying the King’s son and all the people of the land were to come and join in the celebrations. You can imagine how delighted we were to attend the festivities and see the happy pair be joined in holy matrimony. After the ceremony, tables were carried in laden with all manner of glorious food; there were capons, geese, larks, chickens, beef, bacon, lamb, salmon, herring, eels and other fresh water fish; the dairy had contributed cheeses and butter and great mounds of eggs.  There were huge bowls of sweet and spicy mead, there was ale, cider and perry, while the courtiers themselves drank wine. In short it was a feast to make the heart sing.

When all had eaten and drunk their fill, a band of musicians entered the hall and a space was cleared for dancing.  Prince and Princess led the courtly dances with a Quadrille, but jigs and country dances soon took over and we ordinary folk joined the fray, kicking and hopping until our faces turned red and the sweat poured off the peasant’s brow.

It was then I saw her: a beautiful woman, no longer young but well preserved, dressed in courtly finery and glittering jewels, dancing in the centre of the throng. I had had to take a breather, my heart was pounding fit to burst and while I looked round to find a way out and maybe a stool to perch on for a minute, my eye was drawn to her. She danced wilder and faster than anyone else around; other dancers had opened up a circle around her and as they backed away, I saw horror on their faces. Curious, I edged nearer, the better to see her: her feet fairly flew across the ground. Her shoes! Oh, Lord have Mercy, her shoes! they were of iron, red-hot iron and no matter how hard she tried to shake them off, they were stuck to her feet.

And now I recognised her.

I had, of course, heard of her and her envious, malicious and murderous deeds. Not content with banishing Snow-white she had then thrice tried to kill her; first trying to lace her to death, then by combing her hair with a poisoned comb and lastly by making her choke on a poisoned apple. Three times her plan failed and Snow-white was resurrected, twice by the dwarves with whom she had found a home and lastly by the Prince, who fell in love with her instantly, the moment he saw her lying in her glass coffin.

The wicked stepmother’s machinations had finally failed and now she was paying the price. Condemned to dance herself to death there was to be no miraculous resurrection for her.

The Clock

image by crilleb50

Day in day out, wherever I go,
I carry my clock with me.
Seconds, minutes, hours of my life,
it tells them all,
it beats and strikes and sometimes chimes.

Made to the highest specification,
by a Master Clockmaker,
it pleases me but seldom.
Today, the pace is wrong,
too fast, too slow.
Relentlessly, the clock ticks on.
its tempo never varies.

Today I plead with it to take its time,
to stay the hour of departure,
to keep my loved one by my side,
for happiness to last a minute longer.

When pain and sadness visit, it beats too slow for me.
I want the time to fly, the misery to end,
the hands to move around the face at twice the speed of light.

The clock was with me when my father died and
mother left her place beside the hearth.
Each step I took away from home into the world beyond,
was marked in stately progress by my clock.
When love was new, when marriage joined two hearts for life,
When children came and went,
when hair turned grey and backs grew bent,
when summer turned to autumn,
my clock was by my side.

Just now and then, it stutters, falters,
its rhythmic beat disturbed by unknown hands.
The Master Clockmaker probes its workings,
a little oil, a touch, a a tightening of the springs,
and off it goes, the mechanism wound once more.

One day my clock will stop,
and when it stops, it stops for good,
no power on this earth can make it beat again.
I know I’ve used it well and when I hand it back,
I’ll say,

‘Returned in gratitude;
I took great care of it,
but now it's time to rest the hands.
It wasn’t me who broke it.
The clock has stopped, all by itself.'




The Mag No. 189
Tess Kincaid’s Prompt for Sunday, Oct 6th, 2013
For many other treatments of the image click on the link.

Connections

Map of St. Ninian’s Isle, Shetland, Scotland

For A.H.

The two of us

Tethered

For all eternity.

Ravages of time,

tempests and turmoil

cannot separate us.

Spring-tides and storms

may force the link

to become submerged,

but soon calm prevails

and it is free again

for all to see.

Like the 

umbilical cord

connecting us,

no matter how great

the strain

we put upon it.

This poem is in answer to
Tess Kincaid’s Magpie 186.
For more contributions click
on the link.

Rockwell’s Boy In A Dining Car 1946

“I’ll have.....”

The boy was giving the menu his full attention. The rattle of the train made the card sway in his hand, his other hand firmly held his money purse. He knew how much there was, knew it would be sufficient  to pay for a generous breakfast. All the same, he had miscalculated badly on a previous journey, getting his sums wrong, and he did not wish to repeat the mistake. A gentleman must not embarrass himself.

The waiter in his spotless server’s whites smiled patiently. His job depended on  patience and efficiency. He wished the boy would come to a decision, spending too much time on one traveller might cost him more time than the company allowed; still, the boy’s earnest and single-minded study moved him, he stood and waited, arms folded behind his back, his black face in the shadow above the window, nothing visible to the observer but the smile. Life had trained him well.

"I’ll have.....”. The boy had made up his mind. He would have ham and eggs, tea and toast and some marmalade. His voice was steady as he ordered, his eyes barely rising from the menu as he read.

“Yes sir, young master,” the waiter said.



PS: US readers, please forgive me for my culinary ignorance. I have no idea what kind of breakfast would have been served in a dining car in the US in 1946. And Tess Kincaid’s Prompt No. 185 didn’t say, naturally,  this being a writing prompt and neither a history nor art prompt. For other interpretations please click on the link.

Up a Tree

artwork by Jeanie Tomanek

So, here I am;
up a tree;

 climbing up was easy,

now I’m stuck.

How do I get down?

Stop laughing, birdbrain,

fat lot of good your tiny wings are on me.

Twitter Fiction: 144 characters or fewer.

Tess Kincaid’s Magpie 184
Prompt and other contributors can be found by clicking on the link.

Golden Potatoes

photo Agustin Berocal

Tess Kincaid’s Magpie 177

In the days when people undertook long journeys overland on foot a goldsmith and a tailor were travelling together.  One evening they had reached the edge of a wood when they heard music and laughter. They decided that such jolly sounds meant jolly company, so they entered the wood and soon came upon a group of little people, dancing and singing in a clearing, by the light of the harvests moon.

The two travellers stood full of astonishment, watching the dance. The tallest of the little people, an old man, who whirled and stomped the hardest, beckoned them to join in. The goldsmith, brave as only a hunchback can be, jumped at the chance whereas the tailor held back at first, but when he saw how merrily all was going he plucked up the courage to step into the circle.

The travellers sang and danced and leaped about, all fear having vanished. Then the old man drew a large knife from his belt, whetted it and jumped upon them. Instantly terrified the pair crouched and cringed but from within the circle of little people there was no escape. The old man seized the goldsmith and with the greatest speed shaved the hair off his head and then did the same to the tailor. The little people laughed and slapped the travellers on the back, as if to say how brave they had been and what good sports. The old man laughed the hardest and then pointed to a heap of potatoes to one side and urged the travellers to stuff their pockets with them.

Not knowing what to make of it the travellers did and then continued on their journey. They found a poor inn where they spent the night on straw pallets, covering themselves with their coats. Waking up hungry in the morning a baked potato seemed a good idea. They went to the fireplace and were just about to put a potato each into the ashes when they noticed a golden glow: the potatoes had turned to nuggets of pure gold!  They had become rich beyond their wildest dreams. Happily, too, the hair on their heads was there again, thick as ever.

The tailor wept tears of joy but the goldsmith, being a greedy man, instantly wanted more. He belaboured the tailor to go back with him when night fell and bring back still greater treasure from the old man with the knife. The tailor refused. He stayed at the inn and promised to wait for the goldsmith to return from the wood.

In the evening the goldsmith hung a couple of bags over his shoulders so that he could stow away a great deal and took to the road they had travelled the day before. He found the little folks at their singing and dancing, and the old man again shaved him clean and signed to him to take some potatoes away with him. He was not slow about stuffing as much into his bags as would go, came back to the inn quite delighted and covered himself with his coat. He fell asleep with the sweet anticipation of waking an enormously rich man.

O the folly of greed! The potatoes in his bags remained potatoes and what’s more, the previous night’s gold had turned back into nothing more than wholesome, earthy tubers. The goldsmith wept bitter tears, and his wailing became even louder when he rubbed his head and found himself as bald as a coot. 

The good tailor felt sorry for him. He comforted the goldsmith who was as contrite as any poor sinner facing up to the error of his ways and promised to share his own wealth with him. He kept his word and the two of them continued on their journey, steering well clear of singing and dancing and all such temptation they might later come to regret.

(With a nod and a wink in the direction of the Brothers Grimm, two old men who might well have told a morality tale along similar lines)

The Extraordinary Dandelion

"Has there ever been a year for dandelions like this year?”
Standing in the kitchen, after his walk with the dog, he looks wistful, undecided.

Gathering and preparing dandelions for wine-making is labour-intensive;
dandelion heads must be plucked when in full bloom,
preferably late in the morning or early in the afternoon,
and always on a dry and sunny day.
Leave it too late and the flowers will be half-closed and difficult to handle.
Make sure that every trace of stem is removed,
and also remove as many as possible of the green sepals that enclose the yellow petals.
If you don’t, your wine will be bitter.
Kitchen scissors are the tool of choice.

He has decided, he will make dandelion wine,
the first in many years.

Be warned, however.
A strong bladder and digestive system are essential if you want to come away unscathed.
The dandelion’s other names are:

Jack-piss-the-bed,
Pissy beds,
Pittley beds,
Tiddle-beds,
Wet-the-bed,
Dog’s posy,
Old man’s clock,
Peasant’s clock,
Swine’s snout,

the seeds are known as:

Fairies,
Parachutes,
Sugar eaters.

 

Dandelions mean carpets of golden-yellow flowers, jagged green leaves (the dent de lion - lion’s tooth) and clouds of featherweight seeds blowing in the wind. Albrecht Duerer saw the appeal even of the closed and withering flower-heads and included them in his extraordinary close-up portrait, painted in 1503, of a square foot of meadowland, "Das Grosse Rasenstueck". Shakespeare included the plant in the elegy in Cymbeline : “Golden girls and lads all must / As chimney sweepers come to dust.” Keats imagined “The soft rustle of a maiden’s gown/ Fanning away the dandelion’s down.”

Children still blow dandelion down from the round dandelion clocks - the ‘chimney sweepers’ - to ‘tell the time’. The number of blows needed to remove all the seeds gives the hour. if you can catch one on the wing. you can make a wish.

Lastly, dandelions appear more and more on menus; the traditional French dish Pissenlit au Lard has fried bacon scraps (lardons) and croutons served on a bed of dandelion salad; dandelion leaves can be found in ordinary pub salads. There’s dandelion pasta,  pickled dandelions, and stir-fried dandelion.

In spite of all the above I have spent a good part of today’s gardening gouging out dandelions in my flower beds. Lesser celandine and dandelions are this gardener’s greatest enemies, no matter how highly tradition values them.



Tess Kincaid used Jamie Wyeth’s image
`’Lighthouse Dandelions” for her prompt
MAG 169.

This post is loosely connected.

Those Were The Days

Spring, 1935 by Kuzma Petrov-Vodin 

The MAG 164 provided by Tess Kincaid

when boys and girls 'walking out'  really did go for walks together.  Do you remember summer days when your heart beat faster because the two of you had escaped from parents and friends and he led you to the quieter parts of the local park? Did you have a favourite park bench for those daring bits of dialogue so embarrassing in retrospect?

It was a long walk to the town woods but getting there was definitely worth the effort. My boy and I thought ourselves fortunate if we found the little pavilion overlooking the lake empty. Open on three sides, roofed and with a stone bench running along the rounded back wall, the little ‘temple’ was the perfect place for assignations. Once a pair of lovers was installed inside, nobody else entered while they were there. Sometimes families occupied the space and teenage couples slunk away into the woods, waiting their turn. It was the town’s hardier teenagers' favourite place for a rendezvous. Because of the long walk there, the cold stone bench to sit on and the draughty sides, nobody lingered for very long. The boy, being a gentleman, stretched his arm out behind the girl, so that she  could rest her back on it rather than the unyielding stone wall and if his hand should stray and squeeze her shoulder, well, she was ready for that. Cool lips met in chaste kisses and by and by both his arms encircled her and she lent into him for comfort, heart beating wildly.

How sweetly innocent it was.

'The Deuss Temple'

Would today’s young couples ‘walk’ out together? Could they walk?  There they are, she poured into her skin-tight trousers, tottering on 4” stilettos, holding his hand for safety rather than romance, while he has a job keeping his jeans decent and is barely able to lift his feet in boat-sized, dangly-laced trainers. I always feel I should post a letter in that strip of bumcrack or perhaps stick one of those little plastic flags in it, suitably at half-mast. And I admire her bravery: sitting down in those trousers for more than a few minutes must be hell, not to mention the danger of splitting the seams.

image: block couponsherpa

Yes, I know, I am showing my age. Perhaps these kids are just as tenderly in love as we were all those years ago. Perhaps it’s only ever the fashions which change, not the feelings.  But do pull your jeans up, young man, before I forget myself and do something we might both regret.

Magpies, Guaranteed No Poem

Not to be Reproduced, 1937 

by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte

"Nice to see you’re back"

or

Twitter Fiction:

140 characters or fewer:

"Face me, you scoundrel.

I sacrificed the best years of my life for you.

If you think you can turn your back on me you have another think coming."

For better offers look here:

The Mag 161

Love, Lust and Attachment

Artwork by Joseph Lorusso

The Mag 155

“I do hope we stay together for ever”, she said to him, “but you know we might not”.  

As they had only just met while sitting at adjacent tables in the coffee shop, 

the likelihood of them lasting was pretty slim.

I give them a week. Tops.

Let’s look at love and marriage in the cold light of statistics: nearly half of all UK marriages end in divorce. Relationships are difficult, even intelligent, confident people who go into them with their eyes open and the best intentions end up in situations which leave them powerless, heartbroken, asking themselves what went wrong. Again.

Science knows very little about love. A key insight is that love has three distinct modes or phases: attraction, lust and attachment. Humans are messy, the attraction, lust and attachment phases get blended together. Every loving relationship can be seen as a unique combination of these three modes. They form a ground on top of which the cultural and individual variants of love are built. This is the simple but rather melancholy observation that, when you knock away thousands of years of ritual, poetry, myth and song, love is just another neurobiological process, like sweating.

Long-term relationships are problematic for modern humans because we aren’t built for them. We’ve evolved to successfully procreate, not to enjoy deathless romance. During our long hunter-gatherer existence, life expectancy is thought to have been about 30 years. This means that, assuming we coupled off as teenagers, for the great majority of our species’ history, at least half of all relationships would have ended within 15 years. Today, the median length of a marriage is 11 years, which fits surprisingly well with our human ancestors’ 15 years. As we live ever longer, it seems that we are condemned to outlast the possibilities of love.

So, the next time you end up fighting over who gets to keep the Homeland DVD box set, blame human evolution. 

With grateful thanks 

to great chunks from an article in the

guardian weekend 09.02.13. 

Books And Talking About Them

Living in the English countryside, even as far away from easy access to cities, and therefore centres of culture, as we do, is not as bad as one might expect, once the season of summer festivals is upon us. And not only festivals gladden the heart, people also rediscover the joys of entertaining and to those who belong in such circles, invitations to luncheons, tea parties and suppers are issued with as lavish a hand as at Christmas; the only thing missing is the tinsel. Bunting is not usually in evidence, although at present, post-Jubilee, there are still traces of such misguided decoration visible;  ones friends would never indulge in such obvious bad taste. Naturally.

The annual two-week, not-for-profit literary festival at Hay-on-Wye is nearing its end. The festival celebrated its 25th year with a grand programme of international writers and thinkers; Hay-onWye is the bibliophile's Mecca, every second house is stuffed full of books for sale, and it's a must-visit little town at any time of year for us.

I am not so fond of writers who only come to publicise their new books and spend their allotted hour on reading excerpts. Jeanette Winterson was one who did just that. She is a good speaker and very funny and although "Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal", her new memoir,  is certainly a book I shall buy, I didn't need her to read quite so much of it. I loved her first memoir/faction, "Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit" and this book promises to be as good.

An interview with Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian writer who won the 2010 Nobel Prize for literature was more to my liking; he spoke about his life as well as his latest oeuvre, a book on Roger Casement, the humanitarian campaigner and Irish patriot, revolutionary and nationalist, whom the British executed for treason in 1916. The friend I was with had interviewed Llosa for the BBC when he stood for the presidency in his country. She won't mind me saying how very ineffectual and lack-lustre Llosa had been on that occasion, almost as though he was hardly interested in the job at all.

He spoke well, although he kept saying lee-gends instead of legends, which confused me at first. (Okay, I know I'm being petty.) The good thing about these readings, interviews and lectures, is that members of the audience can question the speaker afterwards and Llosa certainly didn't have it all his own way.

A.C. Grayling is a less well-known name; I enjoyed his lecture because anyone speaking on reading and thinking, without visible support in the form of lecture notes, has my vote. Grayling is a philosopher, he has probably given this lecture a zillion times before; but it was the first time I heard him and, although he said nothing earth-shatteringly new,  I agreed with every word he said. It probably means that he was one of the few speakers at the festival whom I could follow easily; sometimes I feel such a fool when both the people on the stage and in the audience leave me sitting in dumb ignorance. I should have got used to it by now, it happens a lot.

Leaving Hay-on-Wye we took the route back into England via the toll bridge at Whitney-on-Wye, just a few miles down the road. The toll house is a Grade II listed building and the board has the following message:

In November 1774 a bill was put before Parliament for the erection of a bridge over the river Wye at Whitney. 


Between 1774 and 1795 three bridges were built, each with five stone arches. All were in turn washed away by floods.


In July 1796 a new bill was put before Parliament proposing a fourth bridge with the three centre arches constructed of timber. The timber specified was Greenheart, noted for its durability.


The bridge was a privately funded venture and remained with the same family and its descendants until sold in 1981.


The present owner bought it in 2002 and kept the Tolls unchanged at their 1990 levels. The Auto Toll was introduced in 2004 and local charities benefit from surplus funds.


Income is tax-free and estimated at £2000 per week. I believe the bridge is back on the market  as of 2012. Interested?

This contribution is offered to Tess Kincaid's Magpie Tales No. 121. For more contributions click on the link.

THE BIG TOP

The circus with the yellow clown - 1967 - Marc Chagall 

This post was inspired by Tess Kincaid's Magpie No. 118

The fact that I have two eyes is due in no small measure to my decision, at fifteen and a half, not to run away to the circus. It was my long-haired Dachshund Seppl whose routine daily afternoon walk took me the short distance from the flat where mum and dad and I lived  - that is, if indeed they were my mum and dad, which, in spite of the large nose dad and I shared, I still doubted very much at that time; too often they declared themselves shocked by my outrageous behaviour for me to be able to own them as my parents  - via a tree-lined double avenue to Sproedental Platz, a large open area, where after the war the town's rubble had been deposited, now long cleared away.  During Advent, tree fellers brought christmas trees for sale, but most of the time the Platz was empty.  Twice a year, for three days, the Kirmes came, with its roundabouts and dodgems and Karussels and pickled herring, fried fish and sausage and potato cake stalls. The aroma of the food could make you faint with longing and if your money lasted until you had squealed in delighted horror at the mermaid, the fattest woman in the world or taken a ride through the cob-webby, smelly, dimly lit, cavernous chamber of horrors, happiness was complete. For anybody with a boyfriend the big wheel was an ideal trysting vehicle; when you were stuck at the top - and every one of the gondolas was for a short time -  a brave boy would squeeze your hand and plant a wet kiss somewhere near your mouth. It rarely happened to me, boys were always put off by the gagging noises as I fought off nausea induced by acrophobia. Besides, kissing was sex, and sex was something we giggled over nervously; things were different in those days, we believed that necking could get you pregnant and French kissing was the absolute depth of depravity. Everything was different then, the long summer holidays lasted for an eternity, until school was no more than a fading memory, French and Swedish films were our extra-curricular education, an ice cream for two cost 50 Pfennigs, blue jeans had only just become acceptable wear, and parents never got down with the kids.

In spite of the wonderful life to be had with the Kirmes I never felt the slightest desire to elope with any of the boys who jumped on to the back of the dodgem cars to take our money for the ride.

The circus was entirely different, it came to town just once a year. Placards appeared on advertising columns weeks before and two days before the big top went up, riders on horseback, and a few tumblers and clowns paraded through the streets on their way to Sproedental Platz, where these foot soldiers soon got to work  preparing the ground for the rest of the caravans, the animals and the performers and artistes, who, after the final bow after the last performance in the previous town themselves got busy dismantling and loading the big top. The Great Orlando told me that everybody at the circus could and would turn their hand to any and all jobs, even the stars of the show, the trapeze artists, the knife thrower and lion tamer, the high-wire dancers, the white faced clown as well as the ring-master were expected to muck in.

When I arrived with Seppl on the day the circus came to town, the Platz, normally empty, had become an exotic wonderland, caravans were neatly lined up, vans were being unloaded, animals exercised and fed; there were people carrying water and bales of straw, muscular  men were heaving long poles about and uncoiling vast rolls of rope; I had the impression that here was a body of work being done that had been done hundreds, perhaps thousands of times before, the organisation was perfect, as if everybody was a cog in a well-oiled machine. As I slowly walked by, people briefly looked up and smiled, saying Guten Tag, before they carried on with what they were doing.

I noticed The Great Orlando right away, he seemed remote from this controlled ballet of activity. Sitting on the steps of a white caravan he had a large, flat box on his knees, out of which he lifted a number of knives, rubbing each one down with a rag until the blades shimmered like polished silver. I stopped to watch. Looking up, he smiled, like the others, and said Guten Tag. "What are you doing?" I asked. "Ich bin der Messerwerfer," I am the knife thrower," he said, "I am taking care of my knives." 

I was talking to The Great Orlando himself, I knew it must be him because I had seen his picture on many of the placards. He took pity on me. "Is that your dog, he is very handsome," he said, "what's his name?" I was in at the birth of the circus, in the company of the knife thrower and the man wanted to talk about my dog? Where was the romance in that? I realised he was quite old, at least 30, and that I would have to take the initiative and ask questions. "Yes," he said, "I ride a horse round and round the ring and throw knives at a target. And then I get off the horse and throw knives at a target disc with a target girl pinned to it; at the end of my act the disc with the girl spins round and I throw knives all around the  body of my partner." I was envious of the girl already. "Do you ever miss", I asked hopefully. He laughed. "I hope you will come to the show, and find out", he said. Ah, yes, that would be a problem. I wasn't allowed to go out at night and I didn't have enough money to pay for a ticket anyway. "I have to work now", he said, "but come back tomorrow and we'll see what can be done." Wild horses wouldn't have kept me away even in the ordinary course of events but having been invited to return by The Great Orlando practically made me a member of the troupe.

When I returned the next morning the big top was up and all was ready for the afternoon's show,  die Kindervorstellung - the reduced show for children. I wandered about; the smell of wild animals reached me from one end of the camp, following the scent I saw an elephant lifting a beautiful young girl, sitting on his trunk, high up in the air. The lion tamer was feeding his animals large chunks of red meat and two boys were grooming horses. A boy and a girl were working with a group of monkeys.  The lion tamer waved me away. "The animals need to be quiet, they don't like strangers coming close", he said in a gruff voice. "You'll find Harry in the tent." Harry? who was Harry?

I entered the big top and The Great Orlando waved me over. "You can call me Harry," he said, "what's your name?" "I'm Eva," I said, " and I want to join the circus." Harry smiled, he had the most wonderful way of crinkling up his eyes as he did so. I had seriously fallen in love with him overnight.
"What would your parents have to say to that?"
"My parents wouldn't care, they just don' understand me and I can never get anything right for them anyway."
"Still, you'd have to have their permission. Unless you are eighteen?"


Darling, wonderful Harry, who thought I might already be eighteen!

Harry decided that I should go home again and think about joining the circus very carefully. To help me make up my mind he invited me to the afternoon show and allowed me to wander about at will, so long as I kept away from the lion tamer, who, according to Harry, was a grumpy old man and not very fond of Harry, because he liked to be jolly and have a drink after work. The others wouldn't mind me being around, provided I didn't get in the way.

The afternoon show was dominated by clowns, Pierrot and August being the main characters, surrounded by tumblers and jongleurs, children on horseback and on the high wire as well as a few trapeze acts. The Great Orlando rode his horse and threw knives at the large disc and I saw the pretty girl riding on the trunk of her elephant. It was a fun show but disappointing too, I had seen most of these acts about the camp during the day. The ringmaster in costume, cracking a very long whip, was still the jovial, slightly avuncular, slightly potbellied man he was out of costume; the show needed the romantic shadows of evening and the brilliance of artificial lights to bring the glitter and glamour to life.  Afterwards, I found Harry's caravan, knocked on the door and, when he opened it, I told him so. Harry had a glass in his hand. The sparkly costume made his face look tired.

The circus was in town for the whole week, Saturday evening being the final show of the run, a gala performance. I spent every spare minute at the camp; even the lion tamer got used to me. He took me aside once and said "Be careful, Eva, Harry is not a suitable companion for you, you are far too young and you are not the first girl to hang around and you won't be the last." I shrugged my shoulders. This was exactly the same sort of talk I got from my parents, these adults were all out to spoil my fun. Harry had been very kind and friendly, not at all threatening. The more I saw of him and the artistes and the more I was allowed to see of their daily routines, the more I realised how hard they worked, how little romance there was behind the glittering façade. I still wanted to join the circus, be part of the wonderful companionship and camaraderie born out of a need to rely on each other; each member of the troupe being 100% dependent on every other.  But perhaps it would be better if I waited a little, finished school first, as Harry suggested. The children and young people I saw had all been born into the life, had been raised to perform and trained almost from the day they took their first step. Harry gave me an address which would always reach him and promised to reply to any letter I cared to send.

When Saturday came I was very sad, Harry and the others would be on their way to the next venue a day later and Sproedental Platz would be cleared as if the big top had never stood there. Harry had a wonderful surprise for me. He had a ticket for the Saturday Gala for me, front row, the best seat in the house, opposite the entrance to the ring, within foot shuffling distance of the sawdust. I begged and pleaded with my parents, who finally gave in and allowed me to go, threatening all sorts of retribution if I didn't get home within ten minutes of the end of the performance. I sat in my seat of honour and all the performers, who could do so without interrupting their act, played to me for seconds, the clowns did a little set right in front of me, the elephant dipped its trunk and the girl winked, the tumblers pretended to fall over the railings and land on me, and the ringmaster cracked his whip almost in my face. Harry's prancing horse did a curtsey and he bowed from the saddle, lifting his hat to me. I loved them all.

Harry and I did indeed exchange a few letters. He sent me colourful postcards from places abroad, places I could only dream of; holidays for the masses were still a thing of the future. Gaps between cards became longer and one day I saw a small paragraph in the paper:  In Milano, Italy, during a  performance, a great tragedy had occurred.  The Great Orlando, famous among circus folk all over Europe, had misjudged a throw and accidentally blinded his partner, the girl on the spinning disc, in one eye. If I remember rightly, I sent a letter telling him how very sorry I was. I never heard from Harry again.



PS: there have been comments asking if this is a true story. It is. 

Dream Eggs

image: egg island by djajakarta

Tess Kincaid's Magpie Prompt No. 112

Well I never!
Does that mean the chap in

STUDY OF NEST
(Magpie 111)

managed to lay an egg after all?
Several eggs?
Flying eggs?
And all of them with pretty chicks inside
ready to pop out and populate his dream island?


Ah no,
thought not,
he looks as if the effort of building his nest
has tired him out and he's nodded off.

He's dreaming.

Magpie No 111

Image ParkeHarrison

Study of Nest

No. 111 of Tess Kincaid's Magpie Prompts

Drat!

Shoes on or off,

no matter how hard I try,

I'm a man, 

and

egg-laying 

is strictly for the birds.

A Very Simple Join

Image: Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

Tess Kincaid's Magpie 109

Got a ravishing ravine?

A fabulous fissure?

A cracking creek or a creaking crack?

Got a clamouring cleft?

A ripping rift?

A flaw in the ointment, a flaming fracture?

Whether 

chasm, cranny, crevasse,

slit, slot or scissure;

a gully, gap or gulch,

 abyss, gorge or gulf,

There's only one thing to do:

Zip it up!

It may take some time,

but a zipper will fix any faultline.

Shelf Stacking

Tess Kincaid's MAGPIE No. 106

Andy,

if I've told you once,

I've told you a HUNDRED times before:

ALL TINS

must be the RIGHT way up!

See that one on the top shelf?

Well then, DO something about it!

And never mind about being distracted by your art,

you can concentrate on THAT

in your OWN time.

Tales From The Olden Days

Tess Kincaid's Magpie 105

Image: epic mahoney

Granny?"

Yes, my dear?

Does that say 'Phone' on the big light thing?

Yes, it does. Aren't you clever to be able to read that.

Why is that man there with his bicycle?

I expect he wants to phone somebody.

Yeees ?  But why is it  such a big box?

So that the person who wants to ring up somebody can get inside. Out of the rain, you know.

But the box is standing all by itself in a field. Wy would they put the box there? 

Perhaps the man doesn't want anybody to hear what he says. 

So, Granny, that man takes his mobile and rides his bike to that big box in the field, miles away from anywhere,  just so that nobody can hear him?  He must be having a big secret.