You don't mess with Grandma

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Winter Blues

On a summer day Grasshopper dude was hanging when he saw Ant toiling.

‘Wassup bro come and chill', he called.

‘Far too busy, I must work or starve. Times change,’ sneered Ant.

Alas chill winter came.

Grasshopper warm and chewing on roasted Ant thought, Yep, change with the times, bro.

Work in progress

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'Take of the earth its fruits only if sown with the sweat of your labours,' said the LORD.

This was so said Kings and the lowly said Amen.

Till truth fell Kings to sweat in fields.

And then it came to pass that Bankers said this was so and the lowly said Amen.

Till truth...

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That cold feeling ain’t the weather

140 character story – drop by to Grandma's Goulash to leave your own

I told you I'd come back

What flowers should I order?’ said Harry struggling to stand as his legs trembled and the pain in his chest got worse.

‘Well what does she like’ said Kali the care assistant, trying to look interested as she wiped the dust around his room.

Harry, thought for a moment, then smiled and said ‘Roses'.

*

The blitz was still bad but Harry ran through the streets to Rose’s house. He was being sent up to York tomorrow for training and then being shipped out to the Far East. As he neared the house she was waiting for him. 

‘Hurry up, mum will be back from the factory in an hour or so,’ said Rose in a strange nervous tone. 

Shutting the door behind her, she kissed him and pulled him upstairs to her room. In one sweep her dress was off and she stood naked. 

Harry stunned, said, ‘No, it’s not right’. 

Rose just put her fingers to his lips and said, ‘you could be dead before I see you next and I don’t want regrets and might have been’. 

Throwing back the bed covers the sheet was covered in the petals of a red rose. 

*

In the morning, Harry’s son came to lay out the old demob suit that he had always kept just in case. Thanking him, he stayed with his thoughts. His wife, now long since buried, had always known she was second fiddle. Thank God, she saw me as a good man and knew that love comes in many forms. Our Mark was never left bitter. 

Seeing his father crying Mark said, ‘Dad you know that mam, would be OK with this’. 

‘I know but-,’ 

'No not for me to know.' Mark quickly got busy and distracted his father with shaving and dressing. 

*

Harry got the letter while on service about Rose and his baby and wrote back but was captured by the Japs, When he got back he only found bombed houses and half- remembered names. After a while he got on with his life.  Then one morning a knock at the door and a Hello dad,’ from a dapper grey haired man. 

'Pardon, I ain't lost me marbles yet, you're no son of mine.'

George just smiled and said 'Rose begs to differ.'
                                                                  *
At the church, Harry’s younger son walked him down the aisle as they waited for his older son to push Rose down to meet them. Meeting eyes, they both knew it was right and Harry bent down to whisper, ‘I told you I'd come back.’

Strict Alice

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Alice was a good girl. All the boys said so. She said it was the practice.

She was especially good to the big bad boys, taking them in hand. When she spanked them, they said they deserved it and never complained. 

When taking her particulars down, the policemen agreed that Alice was very, very good.

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Love Is Not For Us

Walking to the Moon

'My name is Lenny and I love walking to work. It makes me happy. I am twenty-two years old but when I walk to work people laugh at me. When I watch cartoons on the TV, I laugh because its funny but they laugh at me and shout at me saying I am stupid. Mum says I should ignore them but they make me feel sad. I try to be nice and smile but the kids run up and try to trip me and hit me and say bad words. They throw things at me. If you do not believe me, look at the scar near my eye. See it? That was done by a stone the size of my fist. My face got all hurtful and my eye went dark with blood. I cried and ran away. The big policeman came and let me ride in his car and asked lots of hard questions and said he would tell the mums and dads of the kids not to throw stones. They still did and Mum said a rude word about them and said their mums and dads gave lots of presents to bad kids and none to good kids.I walk to my work at the mushroom factory in Cable Street. I enjoy my work. Mr Armitage is the boss. He tells me to stand by the conveyor belt and pick out the brown and black mushrooms as they go past. These are bad. He says I am the best mushroom sorter he as ever seen and always gives me and the others a smile when he says that. Mr Armitage is nice. He says I am money in the bank. The others laugh and look sad when he says that to them. When I am picking out the bad mushrooms, I like that I can add and think about how many mushrooms I am sorting. And how many my friends are sorting. The small numbers make patterns in my head and I use them to count big things like where the stars are and how small things can get.I go and see Mike my friend on Saturday. I met him on the internet. I have lots of friends on the internet and we talk about numbers and what you do with them. Mum will not let me see the friends I make chatting. She says they may be bad and want me to take my trousers down and I must only allow Doctors do that when she is with me.That is silly. Mike has said he is not interested in my trousers and says I am the best in the world at looking at shapes and breaking them up into many small boxes, and adding them up to say how big or small things are. The words he writes are too hard for me to understand but he is showing me lots of new ways of playing with the numbers in my head. He says I can look at any figures and get answers quicker then a machine. Mike says he going to help me get work going to the moon. I have money for a train ticket and he says he will meet me at the station. And has asked me have I told my mum about meeting him.He says I can still walk to work but I will miss counting the mushrooms. If I tell the kids that say bad things to me that I am going to walk to the moon they may be nice to me. I will tell them when I walk home tonight. And I can tell my mum my big surprise. I bet she will be happy.'

Listen not to false love least your dust is cursed by nations yet to come

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Ooh, woo, wee Wild night is calling

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Dog wakes me up at 1am being sick. I sort as Wife sleeps on. 

Dog wakes up at 2.30am. I sort... 

Give up on sleeping to fumble for glasses - because you can't stare, if you can't see. Wife moans I've woken her. 

So now downstairs wondering where did the wild nights of youth go?

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The wind calls your name, get out of your bed

‘What was that tune, the one we heard at the Cart and Horse, just off Marrow Road at the back of Wheel’s stocking factory, the one they knocked down for those council flats. You know, we heard it around the time of the Coronation when we had a street party but not a telly as your Mam fall out with Aunty Grace over who had the last pork chop. Anyroads, the hospital is bigger than when I was rushed here to have Trevor, do you remember that night, you drunk down stairs with my Dad and me screaming out to me mother up in the bedroom. Dr Hoods was so nice – warm hands and a smile. Not like the ones today all beeps and cold questions. So was it a rock and roll song? Did we have them back then? It might have been country, but how would we have heard songs like that on the wireless? We had to listen as a family so none of our parents would have let us play what they would have seen as smut.  Where was I, so yes where I come in, the entrance is all glass and metal with lots of people sitting around waiting for other folks to call them to wards and clinics? I could see in the glass that wearing my best, shop brought, not catalogue were a mistake. The dress and hat made me look that I missed the church and had popped in for directions. Last time I was early, so I fancied a bit of ham and lettuce with tomatoes, no chance. The café there only served chips and fry-ups; you’d think it would be better than that in a hospital. Didn't the tune have something about wind and being lonesome? Mine you, a boy like that would wouldn't he! So that does that sound country? Did we call music like that a name back then? We said it was American or Irish ballads like your Mam belted out after a gin or two with heaving bosoms, and your mother could heave with her being broader then she were tall. Anyroads, I found the nurse, or she found me with her clipboard and papers. She was, you know, one of those from abroad but her English was good. Well I say she was a nurse because she was in uniform but nowadays it could just means she wipes you know what as full nurses are as snooty as what the doctors are. Didn't we have a record once with singing doctors on; it was hit in the sixties, from one of those Doctors in the House films. The one with a big voice was in charge, and the nice one with dark hair and charm was the junior.  The loud one had had a moustache you could hang your washing off.  Or was that someone else? Perhaps that’s the song I were thinking of? Where was I? I’d forget my drawers if I had a fur coat, so she brought me up to your ward. They are better now than those mixed ones where you try and avoid seeing bits you don’t see in a decent home. And hearing noises that they think are as normal as passing around a bag of boiled sweets. I thought the tune mentioned stormy weather so it would have been ‘sitting out the dance’ music as we would had said in those days. I know that what’s our marriage has been like at times but you don’t start off with thoughts like that unless you’re in the family way and want to get wed before the kid turns up as a page boy. Mind, Nowadays, they get wed with five in tow like our Wendy.Perhaps I'm remembering the wrong tune and time. Anyroads, no matter, I found you and I can hold your hand until we work out what our song was in those days. Oh it’s coming back to me now, what was that lonesome song by those American comedians, the fat grumpy one and the thin stupid one. They were in the old movies and didn’t we see them one in the Albany Music Hall, long since gone, it’s a supermarket now, but would we have heard that song in the fifties?’

‘Mrs Whitfield…Mrs Whitfield. I'm so sorry but he-‘

‘I know love, I know, he slipped away as I sat down but we haven’t finished our song yet.’

When the builders take back their temples

‘The rain will come, your defiance of the Gods has made them angry.’ 

 The villagers didn’t stir. Their backs filled the corn stores of others. Their strength raised the stone palaces. Their hands held the desert back. Now was the time to act, to burn and return to ancient ways.

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A thought when gardening

When death comes, do we fly over the leaves or dig under the roots? 

It depends my child on how well you water life. Burn and slash your way in the world and you become nourishment yet grow flowers from fields of weeds and you become the coolness of shade.

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Love at first sight is best cured by the second look

140 character story – drop by to Grandma's Goulash to leave your own

At a party

strangers
are wolves
scenting
a stray lamb
until eyes smile

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