...there was a very curious lady by the name of Consuelo (he father was Scottish, so go figure). Connie, as she was known to family, was interested in everything, from mangoes to mulberry trees to murder. But especially murder, preferably with a little mayhem thrown in. As you can imagine,this led to some interesting episodes. Why, one time her curiousity ( piqued by an article in the Daily Telegraph)even led her to the back alleys of Harrogate where she discovered, to her horror, that....
... the diary she had kept so meticulously, and graphically, during all her time in the Marchmont Mafia (her father had been so proud) had not, after all, frizzled in the flames on last year's Guy Fawkes Night but was Here - here in this darkest, smelliest of all Harrogate's back alleys!
Why had it been snatched from the flames? Who had read its evil content? And what was it doing so far from those unforgettable & very scary Edinburgh Vaults??
So many questions that she didn’t know. The last time she felt like this was when she watched University Challenge.
Toe-tipping toward the ledger, the smell was unbearable; she wished she had a peg handy. A calling card of sorts was beside her diary. A mashed banana with its entrails hanging out of the skin like the intestines of a dead body. This threatening message could only have came from a rival organisation of the Marchmont.
Using the outside of her shoe, Connie flicked the banana away from her diary. She leaned over to pick it up and…
... and a loud CLICK broke the silence. She knew that sound; it was a gun being cocked. And without turning around, she knew who it was - her nemesis...
And the second loud CLICK confirmed it. Arcany’s preferred weapon for a close quarter execution was a double-barreled shotgun. Slowly, Connie straightened up, and turning, she flicked the remaining two pieces of banana entrails from her shoe high in the air.
Arcany’s reactions were instinctive and instantaneous. As the two pieces of banana entrails circled in an arc through the gas-lit night sky, he took aim and fired. Connie had calculated correctly - once a clay pigeon shooter, always a clay pigeon shooter.
...because her shoes, of course, were Jimmy Choo stilettos and deadly , and not just on the feet. Before Darnlies could reload, she kicked them off, picked them up and took aim at her nemesis, But suddenly, there was another loud click, this time from an alley to her left. Momentarily distracted (and how unprofessional is that?) she lost focus. It was a critical mistake,and one she would live to regret because, seizing the moment, Darmlies moved out of range as,out of the shadows emerged...
… the dreaded Schiltron Pike struck Arcany Darnlies through his right shoulder, leaving a wound of gaping proportions, and as the pike emerged, it caught in Connie’s collar, lifting her off the ground as it embedded in the alley wall behind her. She was now sandwiched and suspended between Arcany and the wall.
Sturdy Allotment Man (Sam) stepped back to survey his handiwork; he had thrust the pike at a precise upward angle of 69 degrees, and with a velocity stipulated by Willy Wally at the battle of Stirling Bridge and with a kinetic energy endorsed by Bob the Brew at the later battle of Bannockburn. His lip curled in a satisfied smile.
As his helpless victims looked on, Sam picked up the Diary, and began turning the pages ...
To find it was written in code. Obviously, this was all Dan Brown’s fault. Sam needed a seat to work this out. He sat on a cardboard box that was in the alley. Unfortunately, it was one of those empty Starsky and Hutch boxes and he fell through it onto the ground.
Arcany Darnlies, like a reluctant tough piece of satay, disembodied himself from the skewer. Connie followed suit. It was then that Sam shouted.
"But...that's impossible," gasped Connie. "I wrote that code myself. No-one else could know the key!'
"Aha, but I have!' cried Sam, who was really a famous detective in disguise. "I'm off now to London, where all shall be revealed." And with that, he turned swiftly and ran into the dark as fast as his wellies would let him.
Connie was desperate. Her secret must never be allowed to get out. She turned to Darnlies, who was busy trying to stem the flow of blood with the banan skin, having left his hanky at home. 'AD, we have been sworn enemies for years, but now we must work together! It's to your advantage, because if I go down I'm taking you with me!'
"OK," said AD. "We will form an unholy alliance and track down our foe before he reaches the Yard. We must hie away right away to the railway station and catch the sleeper. We'll be waiting for him in The Smoke."
"That won't work, scoffed Connie. "I have a better idea. Listen to this..."
"... I've brought my camel - Albert - nothing goes faster if there's banana involved! So stop messing about with that one - wipe that blood off, stick it on the pike & saddle up. If we keep it waving in front of Albert's nose, we'll be at the Yard in time to waylay that dastardly detective Sam!"
She tucked her skirt sensibly into her knicker legs and leapt onto their trusty camel.
"Whatever happens, Arcany," she palpitated, "They must never read... June 8th 1987! Can you imagine what would happen...?"
Connie’s plan was startling in its originality. AD listened attentively, scribbling notes on a spare piece of banana skin and occasionally grunting and nodding in approval.
“Brilliant!” he exclaimed when she had finished. “You mean we Won’t catch the sleeper train to London? We'll go by camel and wait for Sam in The Smoke before he can get to the Yard?”
“Exactly!” yelled Connie, as she leapt onto Albert’s comfy hump.
As they sped through the night, Connie chuckled to herself. This was much better than running to the station to catch a Choo-Choo in her Jimmy Choo shoes...
The 2:05 non-stop Sleeper from Harrogate to Euston heaved, faltered, and then gently built up steam as the platform slipped away in its wake. Sam stared through the steam at the receding platform from the rear carriage window.
Nobody had boarded the train after him.
Stepping over the garroted corpse of the train guard, and closing the connecting door behind him, he made his way down the train to his first class berth. He needed to study: he could forgo sleep; he had the diary; he needed to break the code.
And if he couldn’t break the code, Connie and AD believed he had. Which was why he'd allowed Connie and AD to live, and told them he was going to London. Of course they would follow, and if he couldn't break the code, he would be waiting for them.
As he bent over the diary, and began to read, he was unaware of a shadowy DDQ (Double Don Quixote), seated on a single camel, streaking past on the parallel "A" road to London…
Sam strode into the tea-room of The Yard to a Gasp from the throng - "What are You doing here, Sturday Allotment Man?" they cried.
Sam snorted, waving the diary threateningly. Just then, Albert burst through the window, DDQ both clinging desperately on.
"Too late!" laughed Sam, "June 8th 1987 is about to be revealed - did you really think you could get away with it, Connie?"
"It wasn't my fault," she whimpered, "Arcany had my Choos... I was powerless..."
Sam burst into tears. "Couldn't you have told me before... Mother?"
The throng gasped again. "Ah-hah!" interjected Slipper of the Yard, "so the trail of havoc you've wreaked since that fateful night was just... Revenge?..." ...
'Whose mother? What revenge?' said Gladys tea-lady, hands on enormous hips, 'And who brought that bloody camel in 'ere?'
Getting no reply she grabbed the nearest semi-automatic and shot them all dead. 'Gawd,' she sighed, 'How long does it take to tell a flaming story...?'
At which point Andrious Coriolani Del Conti (AC/DC to his friends) threw one of his legendary prima donna fits as he screamed "CUT! CUT!! CUT!!!" at his film crew as they scattered to escape the hail of gunfire.
His accountant wept in the background. This was going to be the most expensive film trailer in the history of Warner Brothers...
We should think about expanding this by taking turns to write a chapter each week. Say, 2,000 words. (Palpitations all round. I write 4 paragraphs a week and I'm shattered)
2,000 a week? Aw, that's chickenfeed. I've been writing around 1,500 a day for the past week. So, if you want to do a story about the pros and cons of various types of excavation support for new construction or highway upgrade, I've got about 8,000 words in the can already.
No? Well, we could discuss the effects of carpel tunnel flare ups, a subject near and dear to my heart right now.
Ooh Yes, Expat - carpel tunnel flareups are my favourite! (I thought you'd said carpeT tunnel at first). You're obviously super-dynamic in spite of your Agonies!
Your target, JW, is Terrifying but one can't Wait to follow your plunge! (is it going to be set in the sordid corridors of bizwhizzing?! (or the sordid tunnels of an anonymous football team?...)
1,500 words a day, Expat! My metacarpals are flaring up thinking about it.
Erm. Quick bit of back-pedalling. Maybe one chapter a month would be more ideal and erm…1,000 or so words. Charles Dickens works were often serialised monthly. Our collective effort with the different writing styles might become as popular as Charlie’s. We just need a theme.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Tweet (I know who you are) for commenting on my “overspill” blogs at the funny little place down the road. :-)
Thank god for the back-pedalling - my hyperventilating had reached levels that were disturbing the neighbours. again.
Another thought is the 50 word mini-saga - collections as published by The Daily Telegraph from time to time. They come in sections like 'Life's Large & Little Ironies', 'Fantasies & the Fabulous', 'Tales of Unease', 'Marriage - for the hell of it!'.
One we did with our English group this morning was "The Sad Tale of People Adverbially Challenged":
"They entered the house secretly, excitedly. They made love urgently, passionately, then slept, exhaustedly. He entered the bedroom quietly and stood watching them, angrily. 'You bitch' he said, loudly, awakening them suddenly. They watched him fearfully, as he raised the gun, slowly. Two shots rang out, shockingly. He left, hastily." by DAVID BLOXHAM of Wakefield
People, let's not rush into this. Ponder a while. I rather like the idea of someone (not me, because I don't have a blog) once in a while coming out of the blue with an opening line...and off we go, willy nilly.
Now, if I were to initiate such a thread, I would make it very challening. Say, perhaps with the understanding that each reponse contains at least one oxymoron...
26 comments:
...there was a very curious lady by the name of Consuelo (he father was Scottish, so go figure). Connie, as she was known to family, was interested in everything, from mangoes to mulberry trees to murder. But especially murder, preferably with a little mayhem thrown in. As you can imagine,this led to some interesting episodes. Why, one time her curiousity ( piqued by an article in the Daily Telegraph)even led her to the back alleys of Harrogate where she discovered, to her horror, that....
... the diary she had kept so meticulously, and graphically, during all her time in the Marchmont Mafia (her father had been so proud) had not, after all, frizzled in the flames on last year's Guy Fawkes Night but was Here - here in this darkest, smelliest of all Harrogate's back alleys!
Why had it been snatched from the flames? Who had read its evil content? And what was it doing so far from those unforgettable & very scary Edinburgh Vaults??
So many questions that she didn’t know. The last time she felt like this was when she watched University Challenge.
Toe-tipping toward the ledger, the smell was unbearable; she wished she had a peg handy. A calling card of sorts was beside her diary. A mashed banana with its entrails hanging out of the skin like the intestines of a dead body. This threatening message could only have came from a rival organisation of the Marchmont.
Using the outside of her shoe, Connie flicked the banana away from her diary. She leaned over to pick it up and…
... and a loud CLICK broke the silence. She knew that sound; it was a gun being cocked. And without turning around, she knew who it was - her nemesis...
… the evil Arcany Darnlies!.
And the second loud CLICK confirmed it. Arcany’s preferred weapon for a close quarter execution was a double-barreled shotgun. Slowly, Connie straightened up, and turning, she flicked the remaining two pieces of banana entrails from her shoe high in the air.
Arcany’s reactions were instinctive and instantaneous. As the two pieces of banana entrails circled in an arc through the gas-lit night sky, he took aim and fired. Connie had calculated correctly - once a clay pigeon shooter, always a clay pigeon shooter.
And now they were on equal terms…
...because her shoes, of course, were Jimmy Choo stilettos and deadly , and not just on the feet. Before Darnlies could reload, she kicked them off, picked them up and took aim at her nemesis, But suddenly, there was another loud click, this time from an alley to her left. Momentarily distracted (and how unprofessional is that?) she lost focus. It was a critical mistake,and one she would live to regret because, seizing the moment, Darmlies moved out of range as,out of the shadows emerged...
...Sturdy Allotment Man! 'I Spit on your bananas & your Jimmy Choos. And your Darnlies!' he sneered.
Reaching into his resolutely Black left welly, he drew out his Schiltron Pike and charged.
'You don't scare me!' laughed Connie hysterically, deftly sliding Arcany in front of her. 'Do your Worst, Sturdy Allotment Man!'
'No- not That...!' objected Darnlies, but too late...
… the dreaded Schiltron Pike struck Arcany Darnlies through his right shoulder, leaving a wound of gaping proportions, and as the pike emerged, it caught in Connie’s collar, lifting her off the ground as it embedded in the alley wall behind her. She was now sandwiched and suspended between Arcany and the wall.
Sturdy Allotment Man (Sam) stepped back to survey his handiwork; he had thrust the pike at a precise upward angle of 69 degrees, and with a velocity stipulated by Willy Wally at the battle of Stirling Bridge and with a kinetic energy endorsed by Bob the Brew at the later battle of Bannockburn. His lip curled in a satisfied smile.
As his helpless victims looked on, Sam picked up the Diary, and began turning the pages ...
To find it was written in code. Obviously, this was all Dan Brown’s fault. Sam needed a seat to work this out. He sat on a cardboard box that was in the alley. Unfortunately, it was one of those empty Starsky and Hutch boxes and he fell through it onto the ground.
Arcany Darnlies, like a reluctant tough piece of satay, disembodied himself from the skewer. Connie followed suit. It was then that Sam shouted.
“Ulrika! By jove, I’ve worked it out.”…
"But...that's impossible," gasped Connie. "I wrote that code myself. No-one else could know the key!'
"Aha, but I have!' cried Sam, who was really a famous detective in disguise. "I'm off now to London, where all shall be revealed." And with that, he turned swiftly and ran into the dark as fast as his wellies would let him.
Connie was desperate. Her secret must never be allowed to get out. She turned to Darnlies, who was busy trying to stem the flow of blood with the banan skin, having left his hanky at home. 'AD, we have been sworn enemies for years, but now we must work together! It's to your advantage, because if I go down I'm taking you with me!'
"OK," said AD. "We will form an unholy alliance and track down our foe before he reaches the Yard. We must hie away right away to the railway station and catch the sleeper. We'll be waiting for him in The Smoke."
"That won't work, scoffed Connie. "I have a better idea. Listen to this..."
"... I've brought my camel - Albert - nothing goes faster if there's banana involved! So stop messing about with that one - wipe that blood off, stick it on the pike & saddle up. If we keep it waving in front of Albert's nose, we'll be at the Yard in time to waylay that dastardly detective Sam!"
She tucked her skirt sensibly into her knicker legs and leapt onto their trusty camel.
"Whatever happens, Arcany," she palpitated, "They must never read... June 8th 1987! Can you imagine what would happen...?"
Connie’s plan was startling in its originality. AD listened attentively, scribbling notes on a spare piece of banana skin and occasionally grunting and nodding in approval.
“Brilliant!” he exclaimed when she had finished. “You mean we Won’t catch the sleeper train to London? We'll go by camel and wait for Sam in The Smoke before he can get to the Yard?”
“Exactly!” yelled Connie, as she leapt onto Albert’s comfy hump.
As they sped through the night, Connie chuckled to herself. This was much better than running to the station to catch a Choo-Choo in her Jimmy Choo shoes...
The 2:05 non-stop Sleeper from Harrogate to Euston heaved, faltered, and then gently built up steam as the platform slipped away in its wake. Sam stared through the steam at the receding platform from the rear carriage window.
Nobody had boarded the train after him.
Stepping over the garroted corpse of the train guard, and closing the connecting door behind him, he made his way down the train to his first class berth. He needed to study: he could forgo sleep; he had the diary; he needed to break the code.
And if he couldn’t break the code, Connie and AD believed he had. Which was why he'd allowed Connie and AD to live, and told them he was going to London. Of course they would follow, and if he couldn't break the code, he would be waiting for them.
As he bent over the diary, and began to read, he was unaware of a shadowy DDQ (Double Don Quixote), seated on a single camel, streaking past on the parallel "A" road to London…
Sam strode into the tea-room of The Yard to a Gasp from the throng - "What are You doing here, Sturday Allotment Man?" they cried.
Sam snorted, waving the diary threateningly. Just then, Albert burst through the window, DDQ both clinging desperately on.
"Too late!" laughed Sam, "June 8th 1987 is about to be revealed - did you really think you could get away with it, Connie?"
"It wasn't my fault," she whimpered, "Arcany had my Choos... I was powerless..."
Sam burst into tears. "Couldn't you have told me before... Mother?"
The throng gasped again. "Ah-hah!" interjected Slipper of the Yard, "so the trail of havoc you've wreaked since that fateful night was just... Revenge?..." ...
'Whose mother? What revenge?' said Gladys tea-lady, hands on enormous hips, 'And who brought that bloody camel in 'ere?'
Getting no reply she grabbed the nearest semi-automatic and shot them all dead. 'Gawd,' she sighed, 'How long does it take to tell a flaming story...?'
At which point Andrious Coriolani Del Conti (AC/DC to his friends) threw one of his legendary prima donna fits as he screamed "CUT! CUT!! CUT!!!" at his film crew as they scattered to escape the hail of gunfire.
His accountant wept in the background. This was going to be the most expensive film trailer in the history of Warner Brothers...
THE END.
Brilliant denouement!!
Explosive ending. Great stuff, folks.
We should think about expanding this by taking turns to write a chapter each week. Say, 2,000 words.
(Palpitations all round. I write 4 paragraphs a week and I'm shattered)
2,000 a week? Aw, that's chickenfeed. I've been writing around 1,500 a day for the past week. So, if you want to do a story about the pros and cons of various types of excavation support for new construction or highway upgrade, I've got about 8,000 words in the can already.
No? Well, we could discuss the effects of carpel tunnel flare ups, a subject near and dear to my heart right now.
Ooh Yes, Expat - carpel tunnel flareups are my favourite! (I thought you'd said carpeT tunnel at first). You're obviously super-dynamic in spite of your Agonies!
Your target, JW, is Terrifying but one can't Wait to follow your plunge! (is it going to be set in the sordid corridors of bizwhizzing?!
(or the sordid tunnels of an anonymous football team?...)
OMG!
Who starts?
Who follows?
Does OMG count as one word or three?
So many questions...
Lo que sea será..
Over to you, JW!
:-)
1,500 words a day, Expat! My metacarpals are flaring up thinking about it.
Erm. Quick bit of back-pedalling. Maybe one chapter a month would be more ideal and erm…1,000 or so words. Charles Dickens works were often serialised monthly. Our collective effort with the different writing styles might become as popular as Charlie’s. We just need a theme.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Tweet (I know who you are) for commenting on my “overspill” blogs at the funny little place down the road. :-)
Thank god for the back-pedalling - my hyperventilating had reached levels that were disturbing the neighbours. again.
Another thought is the 50 word mini-saga - collections as published by The Daily Telegraph from time to time. They come in sections like 'Life's Large & Little Ironies', 'Fantasies & the Fabulous', 'Tales of Unease', 'Marriage - for the hell of it!'.
One we did with our English group this morning was "The Sad Tale of People Adverbially Challenged":
"They entered the house secretly, excitedly. They made love urgently, passionately, then slept, exhaustedly. He entered the bedroom quietly and stood watching them, angrily. 'You bitch' he said, loudly, awakening them suddenly. They watched him fearfully, as he raised the gun, slowly. Two shots rang out, shockingly. He left, hastily."
by DAVID BLOXHAM of Wakefield
Wondrously succinct & Perfectly to the point?
JW, I do this stuff for a living. Sad, innit?
People, let's not rush into this. Ponder a while. I rather like the idea of someone (not me, because I don't have a blog) once in a while coming out of the blue with an opening line...and off we go, willy nilly.
Now, if I were to initiate such a thread, I would make it very challening. Say, perhaps with the understanding that each reponse contains at least one oxymoron...
I'm off to do some pondering!
Royalties...
Film rights...
Booker Prize...
Poets Laureate...
Nobel Peace Prize...
I'm all for this great adventure!
:-)
PS Here's a big "Tweet" to you, JW!
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