Friday, July 19

I'm writing this a little earlier today as Marilyn's cleaning lady has arrived, spot on 8 o'clock.  I was in the shower and have now been told to sit at my desk and keep out of the way.  Breakfast is on hold although I could probably get a cup of coffee if I sulked enough.  

Nera's nephew, Brendan, is coming around later this morning with Jamie and will detail both our cars, for a fee.  He starts his coutse on Monday and is desperate to find ways to earn a quid.  He has put in applications in various places and we'll just have to see how it works out.  At least he seems willing.

I like today's story because it is true and mentions fishing boats from Gourdon, a village on the East Coast of Scotland.  During the time mentioned in the story, several of my ancestors were fisherman from that town so could well have been involved in the incident.  Mr McGonagall's poetry is a bonus.

WHEN THE SHIP COMES IN                                                            APRIL 9, 2021

 

In 1965, everyone from Bob Dylan to the Clancy Brothers was singing When the Ship Comes In and,  even though I thought it was a great song, I couldn’t get out of my mind that the words were wrong.  To me, it should have been  ‘When the Boat Comes In’, preferably said with a strong Geordie accent.  These were familiar words from my childhood, from a song my mother used to sing:

“Thou shall have a fishy

On a little dishy 

Thou shall have a haddock

When the boat comes in.”

 

It became a common saying in my family and every time my brother or I asked for something, Like “When are we going to get that record player you promised?” the reply would come “When the boat comes in.”

In our minds, ‘when the boat comes in’ came to mean ‘some time, never’.  And, in any case, if all your dreams depend on a fishing boat bringing it to you, you’re sure to be disappointed.  But who is to say that a fishing boat might not be capable of bringing home something much more exciting than a fishy on a dishy?

 

In the year 1883, some fishermen from the port of Dundee in Scotland seized on an opportunity which might only arise once in a lifetime.  They heard the news that a humpback whale had been sighted in the Tay River close to the town.  Without any thought of what might come of it, they grabbed harpoons and set sail in their little wooden fishing boats, determined to capture the beast.  A local poet, William McGonagall, now widely regarded as the worst poet in the English language, was on hand to record the event.

 

‘Twas in the month of December, and in the year 1883,

That a monster whale came to Dundee,

Resolved for a few days to sport and play

And devour the small fishes in the silvery Tay.

 

Then the people together in crowds did run,

Resolved to capture the whale and to have some fun!

So small boats were launched on the silvery Tay,

While the monster of the deep did sport and play.

 

Oh! It was a most fearful and beautiful sight,

To see it lashing the water with its tail all its might,

And making the water ascend like a shower of hail,

With one lash of its ugly and mighty tail.

 

Then the water did descend on the men in the boats,

Which wet their trousers and also their coats;

But it only made them the more determined to catch the whale,

But the whale shook at them his tail.

 

Heading for the open sea, the whale finally succumbed to its injuries and was sighted, floating on the surface, by two fishing boats from the nearby village of Gourdon.  Tying ropes to the monster’s tail, they towed it to shore at Stonehaven.  People watching from the shore would have had no idea what they would see when those two boats came in.

 

Mr McGonagall’s poem brings the saga to its conclusion:

 

And my opinion is that God sent the whale in time of need,

No matter what other people may think or what is their creed;

I know fishermen in general are often very poor,

And God in His Goodness sent it to drive poverty from their door.

 

So Mr John Wood has bought it for two hundred and twenty-six pound,

And has brought it to Dundee all safe and all sound;

Which measures 40 feet in length from the snout to the tail,

So I advise the people far and near to see it without fail.

 

Then hurrah!  For the mighty monster whale,

Which has got 17 feet 4 inches from tip to tip of a tail!

Which can be seen for a sixpence or a shilling,

That is to say, if the people are willing.

Thursday, July 18

 I had to buy a new 'phone earlier this year and go through the process of adding all the apps which I use on a daily basis.   The biggest problem was with my bank.  I do all my banking through the app but adding it to the new 'phone was a total pain.  I eventually had to go into the branch in Launceston and get one of the staff to talk me through it.

Yesterday, I had a message from them that they were updating the app.  Fair enough,  but now I have to go through the whole process of setting it up again.  The problem is that I can't remember passwords and, if I write them down, I can't remember where I left them.  And I can never remember which of the passwords I have written down is the most recent.

I've heard of things called Password Managers.  I assume they are programs rather than people but, if I installed one of these, would I have to password-protect it?  If so, I'm no better off.

I wrote the following little story yesterday as an exercise.  The first sentence (in italics) is the prompt.

There is an urban legend floating around about a taxi that doesn’t take you where you want to go, but rather where you need to go.  Write about a character that gets into this taxi.

 

Jeremy thought it was just a joke. He couldn’t believe there could be any truth in the story that there was a taxi in town which wouldn’t take you where you wanted to go.  Instead, it would take you where you needed to go.  Not only was it a joke, he decided, it was a zen joke.  He could imagine a bald monk in a robe, nodding wisely and saying, “There are things, brother, over which we have no control and a wise man accepts that wisdom. None of us is so clever that he knows everything.”

 

Anyway, thought Jeremy, what’s the difference?  If you tell the driver that you want to go to a certain spot, surely that’s where you need to go.  

 

“Oh, how naïve you can be, sometimes, Jeremy.”  The voice of the bald monk seemed to echo in Jeremy’s head.

 

It was rare for Jeremy to catch a taxi nowadays but, every now and again, if he planned to have a drink or two, it was sensible to leave his car at home and ring a cab.  In fact, today was Saturday; this evening he was meeting his friends at a Steakhouse for dinner, and he had heard there was a 2 for 1 drinks special on at the moment.  He didn’t intend to get drunk, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

 

The taxi arrived promptly.  The driver was someone Jeremy had not met before.  He was bald and looked Asian, perhaps from Thailand or Myanmar.  Often Asian immigrants gravitated to jobs like taxi-driving, thought Jeremy.   I hope he knows his way around the city; I don’t want to have to give him directions.

 

“I want to go to the Aussie Steakhouse,” he told the driver, who didn’t acknowledge, but simply drove forward as soon as the door was closed.

 

“You should have taken that turn.” Jeremy didn’t usually tell taxi drivers which way to go but this fellow seemed all at sea.  He was driving too fast, as well, and was hunched forward over the steering wheel as if he was anxious to get to his destination.  

 

“Slow down, man!” shouted Jeremy, starting to become a little worried about his safety.

 

“Sorry, sir,” apologised the taxi driver. “This is my first day on the job and I’m a little nervous.”

 

To Jeremy’s horror, the driver turned around to look at him and Jeremy saw his eyes widen as he caught sight of a car coming up quickly on their left.  Frantically, the terrified driver threw his steering wheel to the right and Jeremy found himself hurtling forward, striking his head on the rear vision mirror.

 

By good fortune, the cars did not collide but Jeremy felt a hot rush of blood from his forehead running down his face.  The driver looked aghast and started to accelerate down the street.

 

“What are doing, you fool,” shouted Jeremy. “This is not the way to the restaurant.”

 

“I’m taking you to the hospital,” the driver shouted. “You need to have your head looked at.”

 

It was only later that Jeremy realised that, instead of the taxi driver taking him to where he wanted to go, he took him to where he needed to go.  Jeremy, in his imagination, could see a tall, bald, monk nodding his head wisely.

 

Wednesday, July 17

Today is going to be a great day.  The sun is shining, we have nothing demanding to be done and we're expecting a parcel from Temu.  I worry that I'm becoming addicted to Temu; we've already bought quite a bit from them, I spend quite a bit of time browsing and if Marilyn ever makes any off-hand remark that she could use something, I'm straight on to it.  Today's parcel has some new sheets and a couple of those things you attach to the bottom of toothpaste tubes to make sure you get every last drop.  Can't wait!

I wrote this next story in 2023 and I must have been feeling unusually sentimental.  I've called it ....

DEAR JOHN                                                                                                0CTOBER 8, 2023

 

My wife is not often short-tempered with me but this morning I could hear an edge to her voice as she called me from the garage.

 

“I’ve just found your old briefcase in this store cupboard and I thought we had agreed that it was time to get rid of it.  You know we’re short of space in this unit and we can’t afford to hold on to rubbish.”

 

It was a fair comment but I couldn’t help thinking that we could easily find more space if she would agree to donate more of her old clothes to the City Mission.  That’s a conversation for another day if I were ever brave enough.”

 

“Sorry, sweetheart,” I called out.  “I’ll come and get it.”

 

The briefcase had sentimental value; it had been given to me when I started work at my first job in November, 1965. I had been employed as a Trainee Accountant and I remember I turned up on the first morning, wearing a business shirt and tie I had borrowed from my father, so I would look the part.  I was also carrying the briefcase which I thought was an important part of the image although, on that first morning, it contained not much more than a clean handkerchief and a sandwich for my lunch.

 

I retrieved the briefcase from the resentful hands of my long-suffering wife, gave her a rueful grin and shuffled off to my study to see what it contained.  It wasn’t a very large briefcase and I wondered why we couldn’t find room in this reasonably spacious unit for such a tiny chunk of my history.

 

The catch had become a little rusty but clicked open after a bit of effort.  At first I thought it was empty, but digging a little deeper, I found that it contained just one small envelope.  The once-white paper was discoloured now and the glue had deteriorated. Inside the envelope was a single sheet of writing paper folded three times.  I was curious and opened it.

 

“Dear John,” I read, and memories came flooding back into my, now, middle-aged brain.  I remembered I had written this letter on my eighteenth birthday.  I must have been suffering from an attack of some teenage angst, perhaps influenced by The Beatles and George’s obsession with Indian philosophies.  Somehow, I had thought it a good idea to write my future self a letter.  I remember thinking that I ought to write on the cover NOT TO BE OPENED UNTIL 2015.  Why 2015?  Because that. was 50 years on and my pessimistic self could not imagine that I would still be around.  In any case, it didn’t matter.  I had almost forgotten that I had even written the letter.

 

I waited until I arrived home after work before reading more deeply into the note.  The house was quiet so I poured myself a glass of wine and settled down, not knowing what to expect.  What did my 18 year-old self feel moved to write to his future persona?

 

“Dear John”, it began.  “I’m writing this letter on the occasion of my 18^th birthday and hope I have the strength of will to leave it unopened until at least 2017.  Still, knowing how forgetful I am, I’ll likely not remember that I’ve even written it and some future descendant will find it in a hundred years and chuck it in the rubbish”.

 

“Anyway, I hope that everything is well with you (me!).  Our politicians tell us that the world is heading for disaster and the catch-cry is Mutually Assured Destruction.  I don’t know whether to believe them but I thought I should write this letter in the hope that I’ll still be around in 50 years time.  If I do happen to find it some time in the new century, I wonder whether I will open it, or will I just throw it into the bin.”

 

“As you can see, you were pretty mixed up.  On one hand, you were looking forward to the future.  You started your first job recently and were excited about it, but you will already know that and will also know how that worked out.  You were wondering whether you will marry.  You’ll remember that you didn’t have a steady girlfriend but you lived in hope.  You couldn’t think beyond that”.

 

“You’ll remember, too, that you were really interested in music so I want to finish this note with a few words from your favourite band.  I hope they are still remembered into the future and I suspect they will be”.

 

“All you need is love”.

 

I took my eyes from the page and was surprised to find myself wiping away a tear.  Bloody Beatles!  I knew they would have had something to do with it.

 

 

Tuesday, July 16

Winter is really upon us in this southern state and one of the worst things is that I run out of the summer fruit I enjoy on my cereal in the morning.  I get blackberries from the local farm, rhubarb from my garden and strawberries from the supermarket.  Of course, I freeze what I can but there is usually not much left by  the middle of July. I finished the last of the raspberries yesterday and all I could find tn the freezer this morning was a solitary bag of blueberries which Nera and Jamie had picked a year or two ago.  I'm not fond of blueberries. I think they have a nasty chemical taste but, if all else fails, I have to hold my nose and suffer it.  Maybe I'll have to invest in a bag of frozen imported blackberries from the supermarket.

I found this story, Old Bill, which isn't dated (although I wrote it in 2022) and doesn't seem to have an ending - just a stream of consciousness.  Doesn't matter!

 

OLD BILL

 

Old Bill was always up and about by 7 o’clock in the morning.  He’d read about other old codgers who never stayed in bed after 6 but he thought 7 was a reasonable hour and it fitted in with the pattern he’d established in his working life.  He had always worked what he called ‘office hours’, starting at around 9 and working until 5: ‘civilised hours’ he liked to say.

 

His father had worked as a mechanic and followed ‘tradesman’s hours’, maybe starting as early as 7 o’clock if he was on the dayshift, which meant he would get up around 5.30.  When he retired, Bill’s Dad kept to the same pattern and used to say it was ‘against his religion’ to still be in bed after 6.  Like many of his generation, Bill’s dad didn’t live long in retirement.  He was gone before his 75^th birthday and Bill used to say that he only lived long enough to spend his paltry retirement money and that didn’t take long.

 

It was different nowadays and people retired with pretty significant savings, all

 due to the push by government to encourage superannuation.  The pension wasn’t much but, so long as you had a house, you wouldn’t starve.  Bill worried, of course, about those poor buggers who hadn’t managed to save enough for their retirement and hadn’t managed to buy a house for one reason or another.  Their future, in rented accommodation, without a decent nest egg looked pretty bleak.  He just hoped their health held up.

 

Bill couldn’t understand the people he had met who couldn’t wait to retire so they could get hold of their superannuation and lash out on expensive holidays, new cars and so on.  He’d heard more than one superannuation millionaire say that the government could look after him when the money ran out.  Bill and his wife didn’t stint but were careful not to spend too much on ‘frills’.  One holiday a year is enough and there’s only so many times you can sit on a cruise ship watching the gulls fly by.

 

He often thought about his travels and the wonderful adventures he had had.  He loved to drop the names of favourite places into conversations: When we were in Kathmandhu… Vladivostok was an interesting city … and his friends and family were tolerant of stories they had heard many times before.  In his 80^th year, he thought he was entitled to take up a bit of people’s time to chat about things that interested only him.

 

Bill found that he had too much time on his hands.  He was never keen on the church and had resisted invitations to join the Bowls Club or the Men’s Shed so had to look for other ways to fil his time.  Sheila, his wife, kept herself busy with reading and crosswords and she always seemed to be knitting something.  Bill was unsure what, exactly, was being knitted and assumed the products were being passed on to one charity or another.  There were no little children in the family any more to knit for so someone else’s children would be the beneficiaries, and Sheila seemed happiest when she had something to keep her hands busy.

 

Keeping busy made him think of his garden and how much harder it was becoming to find the energy to keep up with the weeding and the watering, apart from the thousands of other little jobs which kept springing up.  He couldn’t imagine the day when he could no longer look after the garden adequately but he had no doubt that day was coming closer.

 

Was that Sheila calling him in for a cup of tea?  His hearing had been a problem for years and was getting worse.  His new hearing aids were supposed to be the latest model but he still couldn’t hear anything with them.  Still, he didn’t have to pay for them and there was no problem with booking in for a check-up.  He was sure Sheila always accepted the invitations to have the regular check-up because she enjoyed the chat and talking to someone different about their ailments.  She always suggested that Bill was useless and a burden to her, but that was OK; if she wanted to let people know how hard she worked then that was fine, Bill knew he couldn’t do now what he could do years ago and it was better if he didn’t dwell on it.  He knew he was the most fortunate man, to have a wife like Sheila who had stuck with him for over half a century.

 

Some of his mates complained that their wives became crabby and one even told her husband she had had a choice of men when she was young and only realised now that she had made the wrong decision in whom she should marry.  Bill thought that was a terrible thing to say; she had made her bed, for better or worse, and she should lie in it.

 

There was a football match on the TV this afternoon; Rabbitohs v Sharks, apparently.  He could understand why a team might call itself Sharks, or Bears or Jets, they suggest strength and power, but Rabbitohs or Swans?  Might as well call yourself the Marshmallows or the All-Day Suckers.  He started to chuckle at the thought but stopped himself in time.  If Sheila heard him chuckle, she’d want to know what was so funny and wouldn’t let up until he thought of something innocuous to tell her.  She wouldn’t get why the thought of sissy names for football teams tickled his fancy.  That’s another saying you don’t hear nowadays: some people have dirty minds, he supposed.

Monday, July 15

My soup was a great success and I made enough for a week so that has my lunch covered.  I've ordered  some soup-size containers from Temu so that I can store it appropriately but they haven't arrived yet.  Marilyn had a set of three unused containers which would do the trick: three different sizes.  She then commented that I should send some to Jamie and Nera because Nera is always sending me a bowl of whatever soup she is making.  OK, but because they have Nera's nephew, Brendan, staying with them I needed to send three portions.  That's half of my week's supply gone!

Today's story was supposed to be entitled The Hero but I added the word Reluctant to reflect the character of my protagonist.

 THE (RELUCTANT) HERO                                                              OCTOBER 14, 2022

 

In the early-1800s, the birth of a child was not always a welcome event, especially to working-class families, who often struggled to put food on the table. However, Neil and Agnes Livingstone were delighted when their second child was born, on March 19, 1813.  The Livingstone family were deeply religious and every child was a blessing. In any case, it was likely that he would be able to contribute to the family income from about the age of eight. Agnes had seven babies in all, although not every one of them survived into adulthood.

 

This particular baby, born into poverty became one of the most famous missionaries of the 19^th century, credited with bringing Christianity to the Dark Continent and becoming a hero to  generations of Africans.  He is, of course, David Livingstone.

 

I’ve seen the home where he was born and brought up, in the town of Blantyre.  It’s just a single room in Shuttle Row, a white-painted tenement block of similar rooms where whole families lived out their lives while working as spinners and weavers in the local mill for a few coins a day.  The room is about 4m square on the third level of the building.  There is no bedroom nor bathroom, simply a kitchen table and some chairs, a sink and a small fireplace.  There is a cupboard for food and a wooden chest of drawers.  There is also an alcove to the side into which a bed has been built, with another underneath which can be pulled out into the room when needed .  One is for the parents, the other for any children who survive into childhood.  The youngest child might sleep in the bottom drawer of the dresser until he is too big for that space.

 

A kettle for tea can be boiled on the fire and simple meals can be cooked.   It is usual for the women to prepare a week’s supply of porridge which is poured hot into the top drawer of the dresser.  Each morning a slice is cut off for each member of the family and it is eaten, either cold, or quickly heated in a pan over the fire.  Agnes would have bathed her baby in the sink of the shared laundry. The privy is in the yard and accessed by poking a stick through a hole to lift the latch of the door.

 

All the children must earn their keep and work is plentiful, but poorly-paid, in these days when cotton goods manufactured in Scotland are in great demand all around the world.

 

David, worked as a ‘piecer’ at the mill from the age of ten years, while still attending the Blantyre Village School. A piecer re-tied broken threads on to the spinning machines, and it was a job reserved for young children who were nimble and had small fingers.  

 

David’s father was a Sunday School teacher and he was a major influence on David’s growing interest in the Christian faith.  At the age of nine, David could recite all 171 verses of Psalm 119.  The family attended the Congregational Church and David became enthused about the number of missionaries who were working at that time in China.  He decided that this was to be his life’s work and he determined that it would be beneficial to his work if he qualified in both theology and medicine so that he could both preach and heal. Of course, he was still working fourteen hours a day so it was difficult for him to find the time for study but, his employer recognised this was a dedicated young man and was happy for David to work for only 6 months of the year, leaving him time to follow his studies at University and Medical School in Glasgow.

 

It was about this time that the London Missionary Society was seeking suitable men to undertake missionary work in Africa.  David’s ambition of working in China had been disturbed by the Opium Wars and he agreed to take up the challenge of a missionary friend, Robert Moffatt, to travel to Africa.  Moffat famously said that he had ‘sometimes seen, in the morning sun, the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary has ever been’.

 

In early-1841, David Livingstone arrived in Capetown after a 3 month journey by ship via Brazil.  But his journey had only begun. He then slowly lumbered five-hundred-miles by ox cart from Port Elizabeth to Robert Moffat’s station at Kuruman.

 

David Livingstone would spend most of the next thirty-two years in Africa, as a missionary and explorer, covering some forty thousand miles on foot, by ox cart, steamer, or canoe through uncharted territory, suffering great hardship and much sickness, including twenty-seven bouts of malaria by one historian’s count. Running through all the years of his life was  “the thread of devotion to Africa woven in with his concern that the continent should be Christianized.”

Sunday, July 14

 We've been getting Meals on Wheels for a couple of weeks now and, in general, they are excellent.  We only ordered main courses and a soup which I got into the habit of eating at lunch time. The soups were pretty good but I realised they were not as good as the one I used to make, based on Mum's method.

There was a time when I used to make a pot of soup almost every week, but habits change and I would lately only make it on rare occasions.  However, the knowledge is still there so I decided we would forego the MoW soups and I would make a big pot of my special every weekend and dole them out during the week.  It started today.

In fact, it started last night when I put some pearl barley and soup mix in bowls to soak overnight.  This morning I put four chicken legs, in the crockpot with grated carrot and chopped turnip, some coriander, parsley and 2 litres of stock (a chicken and a vegetable, because that's what was in the pantry).  I added the soaked barley and soup mix and put on the lid.  It will take a few hours.

I'll check it later for seasoning and chop up the meat from the bones. I reckon it should last me the week if I'm careful.  Happily, Marilyn's not a fan so it's all mine.

I don't know where the motivation came for today's story; probably a book I was reading at the time.

REACHER                                                                                                         AUGUST 11, 2023

 

It was my usual Monday afternoon routine: opening my Writing folder to see what prompts had been given for the story I was expected to produce for the Friday Writing class.  I had made sure that all my chores had been finished so that I wouldn’t be interrupted while I let my brain mull over the ideas.  I had been to the gym, the bed was made, the socks had been pegged on the line, and I had checked that there was nothing else pending for me to do.  There is nothing worse than starting to get down the bones of a story only to have your concentration shattered by an unwelcome interruption.  

 

I looked at the prompts we had been given: ‘Prompt 1: A character with chronic sleepwalking problems’ ….. no, I don’t think so.  Prompt 3: ‘Think of three conflicts’ … Three?  I can’t even think of one.  So, I turn to Option 2.  ‘You are sitting reading a list’ …. And my concentration is interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell.  Oh, I think, maybe it’s the parcel I’m expecting from Amazon, so I hurry to the door.

 

There’s a very large man standing a couple of metres back from the door.  He’s not in uniform and there’s no delivery van parked behind him.  He’s carrying a small bag over his shoulder and I can see what looks like a folding toothbrush poking out of his top pocket.

 

“Are you John?” he asks in a soft American accent.

 

“Yes,” I admit. 

 

The big man smiles.  “My name’s Reacher,” he says. “I’ve been looking for you.”

 

I can’t help myself.  “Jack Reacher?”

 

“Just Reacher,” is the reply.

 

I’m astounded. “Come in.  I’m sure you’d like a coffee.  What are you doing here?”

 

I know I’m stammering but I’m so surprised that I think I must be asleep and dreaming.

 

Reacher waits until I’ve brought his coffee and says, “I got a lift with a truckdriver up from Hobart and he told me that you’d be a good person to contact to help me with a little project that I have on at the moment.”

 

‘I’ll do whatever I can,” I replied.

 

“Well, it’s like this.  I’ve been travelling around the States for years now and I decided that it was time that I looked further afield so I hitched a ride on a yacht leaving San Diego and it brought me to Hobart.  I expected that things would be the same here as they are in the States.  I thought that every time I came to a new town there would be some crime being committed and some crook to deal with.  But everywhere I’ve been in this state, all the people have been nice and nobody has needed my help.  The truckie told me that, if anyone in Tasmania knew where crooks hung out, it would be you.”

 

I can’t imagine where he got that idea, I wondered, while I racked my brains.  I thought we might live in the least criminal place in Australia but I did remember reading about a police raid on a property in Pateena Road a while back.  Apparently, they found drugs there.  And, if all else fails, there is always the bikie hang-out in Invermay.  I’m sure that mob are up to no good.

 

Reacher was anxious to get on his way so I drove him to Pateena Road and waited in the car while he got about his business. There was a bit of noise and one or two young men ran up into the scrub nearby but it didn’t take Reacher long and, before I knew it, we were on our way to Invermay.  I was aware the bikies hung out somewhere near MacDonald’s and we were able to identify the place by the number of Harleys parked outside.  I had a hamburger while I waited and Reacher soon re-appeared dragging a leather-jacket-clad fellow by his ear.

 

“This nice young man has agreed to drive me to Devonport where he says he will show me where there is another bikie hangout.  Thank you for your help, John; I really appreciate it.”

 

I was a little bemused by this whole incident and wondered whether it was just a manifestation of an over-active imagination.   However, next day’s newspapers confirmed what had happened.  The articles finished by saying that police wished to interview a large gentleman with an American accent who had been seen leaving the area.  Thankfully, there was no mention of the elderly, white-haired Australian who had driven him there.

Saturday, July 13

 There's nothing to get up for today.  It's cloudy and chilly and there is nothing that I need to do.  However, you can't break the habit of a lifetime and I got up at my usual time of 7 o'clock.  Inadvertently, I nudged Archie and he fell to the floor, reluctantly going to his own bed where he snuggled in to his blanket.  It's now 9.14 and and he's still snuggled in.  When he smells Marilyn's egg cooking, he'll get up to seee what he can scrounge.  It's not a bad life, being a dog in a Christie household.

My story's from May 2021 and is entitled 'Perfect'.

PERFECT                                                                                                  

My wife opened her eyes first and nudged me awake to look at the glorious sight unfolding outside our window.  The sun was just beginning to peep over the massive shoulder of Dhaulagiri.  We had seen sunrises before but never one like this one.  The rays of the sun sparkled from the ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere and we sat mesmerised, understanding that we were seeing something we would remember all of our lives.  Perfect!

We had flown into the town of Jomsom in Nepal the day before in a small twin-engined plane with only about a dozen seats. It had a pilot and an air hostess who seemed to have only two jobs: hand out boiled lollies to the passengers to help them cope with the change in air pressure, and hold on to a strap to make sure the door didn’t fly open if we hit any turbulence.  As we came into land, we saw the wreckage of previous accidents which littered the approaches to the runway.

We were met at the airport by a cheerful local driving a tractor with a trailer attached to the back.  This was to transport our luggage to the hotel while we walked there over a rough stony track.  To our western eyes, used to trees and grass and flowers it was a desolate place, barren and unwelcoming. However, the management of the hotel made up for it with the warmth of their welcome.

The hotel was built almost entirely of stone with hardly any wood to be seen.  Even our rooms had walls of stone, with a stone sink in the bathroom and a stone shower bay.  The bed and other furniture was made of stone as well, but well-padded with generous cushions.  More than one of our fellow-guests drew unfunny comparisons with scenes from the Flintstones.  The hotel was well-heated and at night each guest was given an enormous hot-water bottle to warm their bed.  Perfect!

Excited by our surroundings my wife and I had risen early, expecting to walk around the stony garden and perhaps take in more of the view.  The icy air soon drove us back inside to a breakfast of porridge, bacon and eggs and coffee.  One of the staff took us to the window and pointed out some of the sights: Dhaulagiri, of course, and Nilgiri, two of the highest mountains in the Himalayas, and the Kali Gandaki River which was relatively dry at this time of the year.  In the Spring, when the snow melts on the high peaks, it is a raging torrent.

He also pointed to the roof of a large house below us and said it was the Polygamists’ House.  “Each year”, he said, “the polygamists come from India and live in that house”.  We were bemused by this extraordinary revelation but the house certainly had lots of rooms which you would need if you had lots of wives.  Sadly, our guide explained that the waiter’s English was a little lacking and what he  meant to say was that it was a Pilgrims House. Perfect!

After breakfast, our group’s plan was to walk to Marpha, a nearby town, following this section of the well-known Annapurna Circuit, which attracted thousands of tourists every year.  We had noted small groups of Nepalese men hurrying down the track carrying two or even three brightly-coloured haversacks.  These were porters, we were told, who were employed by relatively wealthy trekkers who sauntered along the trails each day with their small day packs, while the porters hurried ahead with the main luggage to establish that night’s camp.  Trekking is a very important part of the Nepalese economy and the porters are highly-respected.

We didn’t hurry to get going.  Marpha wasn’t far and the day was becoming warmer the more we delayed.  However, we were finally on the trail, following the flood plain of the river.  Our guide told us that Marpha is the Apple Capital of Nepal and, sure enough, it wasn’t long before we were walking through groves of apple trees.  I found it extraordinary that apple trees would thrive there.

Marpha was a pretty little town, clearly geared up for the tourist market.  Shop windows were filled with souvenirs, as you would expect, reflecting the theme of apples.  Every second building in the main street seemed to be a restaurant and the posted menus outside promised the best of Nepalese and European cuisine.  We picked a restaurant at random and enjoyed roast pork with apple sauce, followed by apple pie, apple crumble or apple fritters, with apple juice to wash it down.  Perfect!