The Racing Puzzlers

This story was written to the following theme:

"The season of renewal had only just begun, but against all odds it had brought a sliver of hope with it."

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The staffroom at the University library was spacious and accommodating. It was where most members of the library staff, of all grades, took their meal and refreshment breaks and could chat with each other when off duty. It had all the usual facilities, such as fridges, microwave ovens, a water heater, a sink, and cupboards for storing the staff members’ coffee mugs. It also had plenty of seating and several large tables.

It had become customary for one of the tables to be set aside for a jigsaw puzzle. This was nearly always a massive 5,000 piece puzzle that needed a large surface – the sort that was not usually available in an average home for the length of time it would take to complete the puzzle. That was why staff members often brought in puzzles that had started off as well-meant Christmas presents but which were better suited for communal solving in the staffroom.

These puzzles were usually the sort that took a great deal of work. Not only were they enormous, but they included huge areas of sky or sea in which it was impossible to find features that helped one to match likely looking pieces to their neighbours. If you managed to fit just one piece during a coffee break you left feeling deeply satisfied.

Then came the day when two such puzzles turned up together. It must have been early in January, when the “what do I do with this” Christmas present crisis was at its height. They were both in the 5,000 piece category, and the pictures looked to be of similar difficulty.

One was a scene that consisted largely of trees bursting into leaf in Spring – masses of tree branches and tiny green leaves, topped with a cloudless evenly-coloured blue sky. It had the title “The Season of Renewal”.

The second puzzle was based on a Victorian painting of a shipwreck. A vessel had gone aground on rocks on one side of the picture, and on the other side there was a distant lighthouse and a small rowing boat that was heading towards the wreck with two people rowing through the raging sea. The bulk of the scene was that selfsame raging sea, all dark colours with lots of white crests, beneath a storm-tossed sky. It was almost certainly a depiction of Grace Darling and her father on their way to save the passengers and crew of the Forfarshire in 1838, and the artist had given it the title “A Sliver of Hope”.

The question was clearly, “which puzzle do we do first?” and then somebody came up with the bright idea of doing both of them at the same time, using tables at opposite ends of the staffroom. A further bright idea was to make a race out of it, with two teams pitted against each other.

As things turned out, the teams were based on the departments that the library staff worked in, with a general division between front-of-house and backroom staff. However, due to the fact that many staff members fulfilled both functions during the working day, this was by no means fixed and people tended to align themselves to the team that contained more of their close friends than the other. The numbers on each team were kept as equal as possible to make the challenge fair.

Team lists were drawn up, and only then was a coin tossed to decide which team would do which puzzle. There had to be a prize for winning the challenge, and it was settled that the losing team would take over the slots of the winning team on the tea-towel rota for the whole of the following term.

And so the race began!

At first everything was absolutely fine, with each team assiduously turning over all the pieces and finding those with straight edges for the frame. Naturally, people kept a weather eye on how the other team was progressing and noting if they appeared to be doing better or worse.

All would have been well if the spirit of professionalism had been maintained throughout the exercise, but unfortunately this was not the case. The opportunity to cheat was always going to be there, and some of the competitors found it hard to resist temptation.

It began with people stealing a few extra minutes in the staffroom, using the excuse, when arriving late back at their workstation, that they had been waylaid by a student who needed their help. It soon became noted, however, that student waylaying of staff when returning from their breaks had increased by approximately 250% in the time since the jigsaw competition had begun.

People then got sneaky and found that their travels around the library in the course of their work seemed to take them past the staffroom more often than not, and a quick minute on the puzzle could always be fitted in without anyone noticing.

However, as time went by it occurred to a few of them that the odd minute grabbed in this way could be spent more productively in direct sabotage of the other team’s puzzle rather than in hoping to find a piece that fitted in one’s own. The sabotage usually consisted in pieces that had already been fitted being unfitted, or of pieces being mysteriously knocked off the table and finding themselves wedged under a rug or a chair leg. This had to be subtle – just the odd piece every now and then – so as not to excite suspicion.

The cheating was relatively minor until the day when somebody had the not-so-bright idea of opening a book on the outcome and taking bets. The stakes were strictly limited, but it did mean that winners might expect to pocket around 20p – which was not to be sniffed at.

With the money incentive added to the mix, schemes for nobbling the opposition, and for guarding against being nobbled, reached what amounted to fever pitch in the environs of a University library.

The building attendants, whose job was to supervise students as they entered and left the library, and who patrolled the place to check that all the students were behaving as they should, found themselves being asked to report back on any unusual movements on the part of suspect library staff. The attendants could view virtually the whole library – but not the staffroom itself - via a system of CCTV cameras that relayed their pictures to a bank of small screens in the front-of-house area. These screens were now avidly watched by jigsaw team members, a number of whom had volunteered to do extra duties in this area for that sole purpose.

But things went too far on the day that a member of the cleaning staff, who was at work in the staffroom with only one other staff member present, was asked by that staff member to clean a mark on the floor underneath the table on which The Season of Renewal was progressing very nicely, unlike “A Sliver of Hope” which was presenting considerable problems with the raging sea section. For that reason, more neutrals were backing “Renewal” than “Hope”.

“You’ll have to lift one leg of the table to get at it properly”, said staff member X, who just happened to belong to the “Hope” team. The leg was duly lifted and a whole corner of the puzzle fell on to the floor.

“Oh no”, said staff member X, “Look what you’ve done. You’ve ruined the jigsaw!”

The cleaner was mortified and full of apologies. “I’m so sorry”, she said, “but don’t worry, most of it fell in one piece so it shouldn’t be too difficult to put it back where it came from”.

“I’ll help you”, said staff member X, diving to the floor to grab as much of the fallen section as he could. For reasons that were perfectly obvious to anyone who knew where staff member X’s allegiance lay, and who was also aware that he had placed a full 10p bet on “A Sliver of Hope”, the largest pieces that were still joined together were nothing like as closely acquainted with each other when he placed them back on the table, nowhere near where they had come from.

When the “accident” was reported to the team captains they decided that it would only be fair for the Renewal team to be allowed to restore their jigsaw before the competition continued. Staff member X was not too happy about this decision, but he reckoned that making his objection public might not be in his best interest, especially if anyone cared to track his movements at the time the disaster occurred.

However, the incident did have the effect of denting the morale of the Renewers while boosting that of the Hopers. Even though repairs to The Season of Renewal had only just begun, against all odds it had brought a sliver of hope with it to the “Sliver of Hope” team and their financial backers.

Indeed, the point was soon reached when both jigsaws were within fifty pieces of completion. Given all the shenanigans that everyone knew about but pretended not to know, a decision was made to end the competition in a sprit of friendship. All betting was cancelled and the stake money returned to the punters. There would be a time set aside for a final race to the line, both teams working at the same time and the winner declared by a neutral judge. To make life easier for everyone, only four members of each team would take part.

So that is what happened. The flag went down and the puzzlers went to work, each desperately trying not to get in each others’ way. The idea was that a hand would be raised when the final piece was pressed home and the judge would make sure that everything was above board.

What nobody expected was a dead heat, but that is exactly what happened. A Renewal hand shot up at precisely the same time as a Hope hand and the result was declared to be a draw, with the tea-towel rota staying as it was.

It was also decided that, in future, the staffroom would only play host to one giant jigsaw puzzle at a time!

©John Welford

Contracting a kidnap

As I discovered later, as soon as I was kidnapped my parents leapt into action. Actually, that is not quite true, because their actions had started some time before I found myself grabbed from behind as I walked towards home, a gag stuffed in my mouth, a hood thrust over my head, a rope tied round my chest and arms, and the whole of me bundled into the back seat of a car. 

Although I could neither speak nor see I could still hear, and the muffled voices that came through to me sounded vaguely familiar. I could have sworn that the man who said: “Why didn’t we shove him in the boot?” was Mr Phillips from number 35, and the woman who replied: “Because we put all the shopping in there, didn’t we?” was Mrs Phillips, also from number 35. It turned that there was a very good reason for my thinking what I thought, this being that my kidnappers were indeed Mr and Mrs Phillips from number 35. 

Naturally enough I began wondering why these two otherwise perfectly normal near-neighbours of ours, who regularly partnered my parents at contract bridge, had suddenly discovered a criminal tendency that had led them to seize a 30-year-old male off a suburban street and roar off into the sunset with him. 

Actually, “roar off” was a bit of an exaggeration. Mr Phillips never drove at more than 25 miles an hour at the best of times, and he was not inclined to break the habit of a lifetime on this occasion. 

My ordeal in the back of the car was not a long one, even at Mr Phillips’s gentle pace. We could only have been a couple of streets away from where we started, when the car pulled into a driveway. The doors opened and I was encouraged to get to my feet, but with the hood still over my head. A doorbell was rung, and when the house door opened a young man’s voice was heard, clearly in some alarm. 

“Bloody Hell, Dad, what have you got there?” 

“Sshh, David, keep your voice down, we don’t want all the neighbours to hear. We’re involved in a kidnap and we need you to be our safe house.” 

The young man was obviously as astonished by the proceedings as I was, but he assisted his parents in bundling me inside the house. He was about to take the hood off my head when he was stopped by Mrs Phillips. 

“No, David, wait until we’ve gone. He might recognise us, and it’s important that he doesn’t know who any of us are. Wait until we’re out of sight before you release him or take the hood off.” 

“And then,” said Mr Philips, “You must let him use your spare room, at least until Susan and the kids get back from Auntie Margaret’s next week. “Further instructions will then be given”. 

“Just what is going on?” David asked. “Have you two been overdosing on John Le Carré novels or something?” 

But no further explanation was forthcoming. The senior Phillips’s left, after which David did the decent thing and released me from my bonds. 

If Mr and Mrs Phillips had imagined for one second that their dastardly plot would work, on the basis that I would not have a clue as to who they were, or who my new jailer was, they were sadly mistaken. It had clearly slipped their minds that I had known David Phillips ever since we had been at school together. Not only that, but I had been David’s best man when he married Susan some ten years previously, and Mr and Mrs Phillips had pretended to laugh at all my terrible jokes when I made my speech at the reception. 

As I stood there in David’s front room, shaking my head to get my eyes into focus, I even recognised the IKEA furniture that I had helped David and Susan put together when they had moved into this house on Waterpark Road only three years previously. 

David was every bit as astonished as I was when he recognised who his parents’ kidnap victim was. 

“John!” he exclaimed. “What the hell is going on?” 

“I wish I knew”, I replied. “I can only imagine that your parents and mine have been playing some silly little game that they dreamed up at their last bridge evening. I’d better be getting off home.” 

And so I did, after David had kindly offered me a stiff whisky to get my brain back into gear, an offer that I was pleased to accept. 

But when I turned the corner of Laburnum Avenue, I could see that maybe going home would not be so easy. You remember I began by saying that my parents had leapt into action as soon as I had been kidnapped? The action they had taken was to order a man and a van to take all my belongings to a storage depot so they could rent out my room to a lodger, and the man was busy packing the van as I watched. 

All those hints about “didn’t I think it was about time I found a place of my own” and “all my friends got married and settled down long before they reached my age” suddenly made perfect sense. 

With better planning, and somewhat less hopeless accomplices than the Phillips’s, their plan might have worked. Actually, I had to admit that it did work, because I had now had no choice but to go back to David’s place for the night before working out a permanent arrangement. 

On the other hand, a large enough bribe would have done the trick just as well.

© John Welford

A Good Disco?

(The challenge was to write a story based on the line: “It was a good disco, the teachers were selling fags and booze in the classroom”. This was what I came up with.)

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Those few days on America’s West Coast will live long in the memory. I was attending a conference on behalf of my company – all expenses paid – and the best thing about it was that all I had to do to justify my attendance was come back with sheaves of notes that I could plonk on my boss’s desk. The more notes the better.

Gathering what I needed did not take long – the notes had all been prepared in advance for every session and consisted entirely of reprints of the PowerPoint slides that the conference presenters duly read out in front of their audiences. Actually being in the room was completely unnecessary, as prior experience at such events had told me long since.

I didn’t even need to visit the conference venue, because everything was available via the Intranet that the organisers had set up. A link had been established to all the hotels that the delegates had been assigned to, so it took less than an hour to download all the relevant papers to my data stick, making sure that I didn’t make the mistake of claiming to have been at two sessions that took place at the same time.

Once back in England all I had to do was print everything off and scribble a few comments in the margins to give the impression that I had been following everything with rapt attention. As long as it was good enough to fool my boss, that was certainly good enough for me.

It was certainly not the first time I had performed this sleight of hand – I was an old hand at this, having had my fill of being a proper conference delegate at venues all over the world. It was always the same – a programme of sessions that were either far too basic or completely mystifying, with the same unedifying rush of hundreds of people pouring out of all the sessions at the same times and heading for the bars or the loos. And all one ever had to show for it was a pile of reprinted PowerPoint slides!

So what it all meant was that I was free to enjoy myself for three whole days in sunny California. I was even spared the famous fogs of the Bay area. 

I did the tour of all the best beaches, although I took the precaution of not getting myself too good a tan, just in case it excited comments back at base. I thoroughly enjoyed a beach volleyball tournament – especially when the women were playing – and at other times there were fantastic views of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Whenever I’m overseas I usually have problems with my accommodation. Don’t ask me why, but if something is likely to go wrong at a hotel, it’ll be me who is the victim of the problem. I often find that the keycard doesn’t work the first time I try to use it, and I have to make another trip down to reception to get it re-programmed. But this time everything went swimmingly – one click with the card and I was in. 

I could write a book about all the dodgy hotel rooms I have been in – lights that don’t work, dripping taps, torn sheets, faulty windows, I’ve had them all. But on this occasion the hotel room was almost perfect. My only cause for complaint was that the minibar only stocked Bourbon and not Scotch, but that was a minor setback.

In other words, it was a really good trip, I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and the boss was duly impressed when I got back. I’m looking forward to the next one, wherever that might be.

To sum up:

It was good in Frisco, great beaches, few hotel snags or queues for the bathroom.

 © John Welford

Your Wish Is ...

William Carlton was a wealthy man who always got what he wanted – or nearly always. Things went horribly wrong, though, on the day that his beautiful young wife was kidnapped and held for ransom. 

She had been what is generally known as a “trophy wife” – regarded as yet another piece of property that was part of his rich man’s image. Her role had been to wear expensive clothes and drip with jewelry as she accompanied him to events and receptions with the sole purpose of enhancing his reputation as a man to do business with.

William faced a dilemma when the ransom demands kept coming. No – the dilemma was not whether or not to pay the ransom, which never entered his mind for a second. His problem was what to do with all those clothes and jewels after she had been murdered, which was clearly what was going to happen - and did.

She had to be replaced as soon as possible, but the ideal candidate was not easy to find. Eventually he struck lucky, and Eva became trophy wife number two. William had grown rich for various reasons, one of which was his refusal to spend money when there was no need to do so. He had already invested many thousands of pounds on all those designer dresses and he had no intention of letting that outlay go to waste. His new wife therefore had to be exactly the same size as his unfortunate first one, and Eva’s dimensions were perfect. She fitted the bill because she fitted the dresses.

Eva was Slovenian. Many of her forebears had been Holocaust victims, and her own parents had died in a ferry-boat disaster some years before. She had been an only child. She therefore came with no baggage metaphorically and very little physically. She was bound to leap at the chance to live in a big house surrounded by every luxury that her new husband considered suitable for enhancing his status. A marriage was duly arranged and Eva moved in.

William knew that one extra expense he would have to undertake would be to improve the security of the house when Eva was alone. A second kidnap would be an inconvenience that he was not willing to undergo, so the place soon bristled with CCTV, searchlights, and everything necessary to turn the place into somewhere that no potential kidnapper would dream of invading.

William did not go as far as hiring security guards – having other men on the premises struck him as an unsafe move. Eva was a very beautiful woman and surely a temptation to any red-blooded male. Apart from that, there was also the risk that a security guy might turn into a kidnapper.

Of course, there was one thing that never entered William’s head, and that was what Eva might have wanted. Not only did all that security make her a virtual prisoner, but she soon came to realise that this marriage was completely one-way. There was one thing that she really desired, and that was a child of her own so that she could have what she had never had in her past – a proper family life.

But that did not suit William. 

“You think I want you pregnant”? he said, when she broached the subject. “You wouldn’t fit into the dresses if you were pregnant. No way are you going to get pregnant.”

After many months getting nowhere with this request, Eva came to the conclusion that her only way of self-fulfillment was to get out of the marriage and find a man who would treat her as a real wife and not a trophy one.

“I want a divorce”, she said. “I want you to let me go.”

William laughed. “A divorce?” he said. “Don’t be stupid. How would you live without me? You’ve got no money, no way of supporting yourself, you’d starve in the street.”

And Eva believed this to be true. She was utterly dependent on William, who never stopped reminding her of that fact.

However, William’s real concern was that any divorce settlement would lead to him having to settle a large part of his personal fortune on his wife, and that was something that he could not possibly countenance. 

Every request for a divorce from Eva could always be rebuffed. She had no access to a divorce lawyer – William made absolutely sure of that – and so the only way the marriage could end would be if he divorced her.

“Tell you what”, he said to her one day. “I will divorce you.” 

Eva was suddenly very interested. “You will?” she said.

“Sure. When you are no longer beautiful, or the dresses are so far out of fashion that I’ll need to buy new ones. But that won’t be any time soon.”

“Please let me go”, she said, “Please.”

And then one day a letter arrived that changed everything. It was addressed to Eva and it told her that a great-uncle in Slovenia had died and that she had been tracked down as the only living relative and therefore the beneficiary of his entire fortune, which amounted to something like £25 million.

To say that this was a big surprise was an understatement. Eva had had no idea that this great-uncle existed, let alone that she was in line to become extremely rich when he died.

This was, of course, a great shock to William, who suddenly realised that he no longer had a hold on Eva, who would now be perfectly able to get the freedom she desired. He needed to think quickly, or he needed a slice of luck.

That morning they drove into town in William’s Lamborghini to visit the bank and discuss what should be done next. An account was opened in Eva’s name and she stared at the computer screen as the money was transferred into it. She was suddenly a very rich woman. 

On the way home, William was deep in thought about his next move, and was not really concentrating behind the wheel, when a large lorry emerged from the entrance to the local quarry. He slammed on the brakes and the car slewed sideways across the road, crashed through a wooden fence, and just stopped short of plunging down into the very deep quarry. The Lamborghini was precariously balanced right on the edge. Eva had not shut the car door properly on leaving town and it now swung open. She was flung out and was only prevented from falling to certain death by her seatbelt.

Her screams could be heard all across the quarry as she begged William to pull her back. However, William was aware that any move on his part to drag Eva back might be enough to send the car over the edge, killing both of them.

He was also aware that if Eva died, having not made a will, then he would be her sole beneficiary. That was not a panicking young woman hanging over the edge of a quarry but £25 million, less tax.

There was one thing that William could reach without any danger of unbalancing the car, and that was the release button on Eva’s seatbelt. This had to be the perfect solution – self-preservation and a nice wodge of extra cash. Thus the last words that Eva was ever to hear were those of her husband:

“What was that you keep saying you want me to do? Let you go? For once in your soon-to-be-truncated life, your wish is my command.”

© John Welford

Three Policemen Bitten: a story

Every week the Hinckley Scribblers writing group, to which I belong, sets a challenge, and this one was to make sense of the above newspaper headline, which is purely fictional. What could possibly have been the event that gave rise to it? Maybe something along the following lines - or maybe not!

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Barry’s career as a journalist was – it had to be admitted – off to a slow start. As with all young cub reporters, he dreamed of becoming the editor of a major national newspaper, this being the culmination of a glittering career liberally spotted with earth-shattering scoops concerning the great issues of the day. It would be his digging and delving that revealed truths that the high and mighty would prefer to keep hidden, and his incisive analysis would cause dishonest businessmen to spend years behind bars and force government ministers to resign in disgrace.

But that was clearly going to be a long way into the future. In the meantime, his reporting skills had to be limited to telling the good citizens of Market Snodsbury who had won the prizes at the local flower and produce show. It was going to be difficult to attract the attention of the London dailies with headlines about dahlia displays and giant marrows.

As any reporter worth his salt would do, Barry had made contacts with local people who might be the source of good stories. Any local gossip that might turn into a few column inches was worth seeking out, and there were plenty of people in Market Snodsbury who would spill the beans for the price of a pint or two. Likewise, Barry had cultivated an old schoolfriend of his who was now working for the local police force. So, when PC Paul Smithers gave him a call one morning, Barry was ready to listen in the hope that his luck might change with something juicy on which to exercise his journalistic skills.

And on this particular occasion, Barry really thought that this was the moment he had been waiting for. Paul’s voice on the phone was almost a whisper, as though he was trying to make sure that he was not going to be overheard, which was indeed the case.

“Barry”, Paul murmured down the phone, “I’ve got something great for you here”.

“You have?” Barry replied, suddenly excited.

“Shh!” said Paul, “You need to keep this quiet. It’s top secret.”

“OK,” said Barry, “go ahead. What is it?”

“It’s only that the Pope is due to read his poems on Friday afternoon at Little Snodsbury village hall.”

“You what?” said Barry. “The Pope? You’re pulling my leg!”

“I’m not,”, said Paul. “I’ve got the note in front of me. It says ‘Pope poetry recital. Little Snodsbury. Friday, 3 pm’. The sergeant wants a vanload of us to provide security, but he says it looks like a big secret, because nobody has said anything about the Pope even being in the country, let alone round here.”

Barry’s emotions were suddenly all over the place. He knew that he had to contain his excitement at this astounding news, and that he could not let anyone else see how enthused he was. But this could be the one opportunity he needed to make a name for himself. He could picture the scene. His Holiness would land by helicopter on the field next to the village hall, he would be whisked inside to present his latest poems to an invited audience of local literature buffs, then hustled off back to the helicopter and away back to Rome. And only Barry, the ace reporter, would be any the wiser.

Of course, it would probably have been more sensible for Barry to make a few enquiries about what the Pope was actually likely to be doing on Friday, and he would then have known that Pope Francis was actually on a tour of Latin America at the time; and he might also have asked a few questions about the likelihood of His Holiness descending on an English village to do what PC Smithers had indicated he would be doing. But the chance of a major scoop of this importance was enough to put paid to any vestiges of commonsense that should have been to the fore in Barry’s brain.

So, at around half past two on the following Friday, Barry turned up at Little Snodsbury village hall in full expectation of the arrival of the Pope to give his poetry recital. When he arrived, the police contingent, including his friend Paul, was already in place, occupying the entire back row of seats in the hall. There were only two other people there, on rows one and nine, so Barry had plenty of choice among the many empty chairs. He assumed that the bulk of the audience would turn up in due time.

They did not. 

Barry also assumed that the Papal helicopter would also make its presence felt before long.

It also did not.

Instead, as the clock moved to the stroke of three, the man who had been sitting on the front row stood up and climbed the three steps to the stage to stand behind the lectern that was already in place and on which was placed a number of ominously thick volumes. 

He cleared his throat and began:

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I was hoping for a few more people here this afternoon, but I am glad to welcome Mrs Walters who represents the Guinness Book of Records”. He duly pointed to the lady sitting in Row 9.

“I am hoping today to set a new world record by reading aloud, in a single session, the complete poetic works of Alexander Pope. This is a special occasion, marking as it does the 330^th anniversary of his birth, and I believe that this feat has never been attempted before.

“As you will know, Pope was a prolific poet whose works ran to several volumes, and this attempt will clearly take a long time to complete. I am grateful to the Village Hall Committee for allowing me to occupy this stage for as long as I like, and I fully anticipate that we will still be here well into the night.

“I shall therefore begin with ‘The Essay on Criticism’. It took Pope three years to write this – hopefully it will not take me quite so long to read it.”

And off he went. 

After the first hour, it was quite clear that everyone in the audience had clearly had about as much of this as they could stand. Barry’s eyelids felt distinctly heavy as he took note that the same was true of most of the Police contingent. When he was next aware of anything, he could see that three of the policemen, and two policewomen, were no longer there. Mrs Walters from the Guinness Book of Records gave two or three gentle snores. The man at the lectern ploughed on relentlessly, now well into “Eloisa to Abelard”.

Barry needed a change of air, so he slipped out of the building as quietly as he could manage. 

The village hall was adjacent to a large open field in which several horses were grazing. Leaning against the fence, and admiring the horses, were the five missing police officers.

The sergeant in charge of the police squad now took the view that their presence was a complete waste of time. This had obviously been the case after only the first five minutes, but the sergeant reckoned that abandoning the task so soon after it had started might not look too good when it came to writing up his report. Apart from that, having a bit of a rest on the back row of the village hall was preferable to doing the paperwork that awaited him back at the station.

He therefore led the rest of his team out of the hall just as the five absentees headed back to join them.

“Bloody horsefly”, said one of them, rubbing his arm.

“You been got?” said another, “Me too”.

“And me” said the third victim.

The police contingent got back in their van and headed off. Barry, meanwhile, had a quandary. The event had not proved to be anything like as newsworthy as he had hoped, given the complete absence of anyone worth writing about, and he did not even know if the world record had been achieved, but the journalistic streak in him was not to be thwarted so easily. He could still get an eye-catching headline if he put his mind to it.

By abbreviating his name and leaving out a full stop, the answer was there sure enough. Hence the posters for the Saturday edition of the Market Snodsbury Telegraph read:

B RAWL AT POET’S RECITAL. THREE POLICEMEN BITTEN

© John Welford

Maybe Not

Have you ever wished that you could really tell what your cat or dog was saying to you? You may be an expert at reading their mews, miaows, growls, barks and gestures, but what if they could actually use words? Wouldn’t that be so much better?

Well – maybe not! Perhaps something along the lines of what follows might be the result.

Montmorency, the talking cat, was sunning himself by the back door one Tuesday morning when there was a furious banging on the front door. Claire - Montmorency’s owner - opened the door to find Mrs Bailey from over the road standing there with a particularly unfriendly expression on her face.

“That cat of yours!” she began.

“You mean Montmorency?”

“I do indeed.”

“Has he done something bad? If so, I’m sure …”

“Something bad?” Mrs Bailey interrupted. “I’ll say he has. He’s been teaching all the kids in the street to use the foulest language you can imagine. It’s ‘effing this’ and ‘effing that’ all day long. They can’t say anything these days without sticking at least one ‘effing’ into every sentence, and if I tell them off all I get back is a series of ‘eff offs’.”

“And you say it’s all my cat Montmorency’s fault?”

On hearing his name, Montmorency had got up and was now next to the two women at the front door.

“What seems to be the trouble?” he enquired.

“You are!” said Mrs Bailey. “I’ve heard you in the street having furious rows with that cat from Number 11. You use the most terrible language, and all the kids can hear you too. They gather round and watch you two spitting and swearing at each other, and then copy every nasty word that comes out of your mouth. Why can’t you just be a bit nicer with each other and stop polluting the street with all that vile garbage?”

“It’s his fault”, said Montmorency. 

“What do you mean?”

“My territory is the even numbers, from 2 down to 32. His patch is the odds, from 1 to 29. If he starts encroaching on my side of the road, he’s going to get what’s coming to him, and I’ll use what language I choose to tell him so. 

“And by the way”, he continued, “Has anyone ever told you it’s time you went on a diet? You really are extremely fat”.

“I beg your pardon?” 

“Pardon granted”, said Montmorency. “I always tell the truth, in every circumstance, and the truth is that you are beyond fat – you are obese. You are also incredibly ugly.”

Mrs Bailey could take no more of this and turned on her heel to storm off across the road back to her own house.

Claire turned to Montmorency as she closed the door and went back her chair. “You are bad sometimes”, she said. “I do wish you weren’t quite so unpleasant to people.”

“But I’m never unpleasant to you,” said Montmorency, as he rubbed himself against her leg before jumping up onto her knee. “You’re a nice person who does exactly what I want, feeds me when I want to be fed, and lets me sleep on her lap when the need arises.”

“That’s true”, said Claire as she tickled him under the chin. “I could never be cross with you, Montmorency. You look at me in such a special way, and say all the nicest things when we’re alone.” 

However, a worried look crossed her brow.

“What’s up?” said Montmorency. “Are you ill? It can’t be a furball – only cats get those.”

“No, I’m not ill”, she said. “It’s just that there are some things you can’t do for me, Montmorency, however good a cat you are. You have to understand that women like to have men in their lives as well as cats, and I don’t want you to be jealous if I bring him home and want to spend some private time with him.”

Montmorency now looked considerably less friendly.

“Is this likely to happen?” he asked in an inquisitorial tone of voice.

“Well, yes”, said Claire. “I’ve met this really nice guy named Nick. He’s asked me out this evening, and if things go well I might invite him back here for coffee.”

“Coffee?” said Montmorency. “I know what ‘coffee’ means. Coffee gets made in the kitchen and drunk in the lounge, so how come you’ve been tidying your bedroom and changing the sheets? You do that on Thursdays, not Tuesdays.” 

There was silence before Montmorency spoke again.

“His name’s Nick, you say?”

“That’s right”, said Claire.

“Do I know him?” he asked.

“You might do”, said Claire. “He lives in Rushey Close, Number 12. Tall guy, with a short black beard. I bumped into him a few days ago when I was shopping at the Co-op. He reached me down a packet of pasta from a top shelf that was too high for me and we got chatting. He told me that his divorce had come through and that he was now looking for company, and suggested we might go out one night. He was really nice, so I thought why not, and …” 

She continued in this vein for some time, but it was all lost on Montmorency, who had left the room and slipped out through his cat-flap shortly after the word ‘Co-op’. 

It was several hours before he returned.

“Where have you been, Montmorency?” asked Claire.

“I’ve just been over to Rushey Close”, he said. “There’s a lovely little lady cat over there at Number 10 that I happen to know. I use the word ‘know’ in the same sense that you use ‘coffee’. I really hope that her owners will find good homes for all the kittens when they arrive.”

“You’ve been to 10 Rushey Close? Next door to where Nick lives?”

“That’s right. After Trixie and I had renewed our aquaintanceship we slipped across the fence to Number 12 and had a good look round.”

“A good look round?” asked Claire. “How did you manage that?”

“You pal Nick was out, but he’d left a bathroom window half-open and we soon got in. You say he’s divorced?”

 “That’s right.” His wife left him for another guy. He was heart-broken.”

“When did she leave?” Montmorency asked.

“Over a year ago. He’s been on his own ever since.”

“He doesn’t have any interesting hobbies that you know about, does he?”

“What do you mean?”

“For example, he doesn’t perform as a drag artist, does he?”

Claire stared at Montmorency. “Why on Earth would you say that?” she asked.

“It’s just that the false eyelashes and lipstick that we found in the bathroom suggested that that was a possibility. But I agree with you, it’s a not a very likely scenario, especially after what Trixie found in the bedroom.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was absolutely convinced that the discarded pair of frilly knickers had last been worn by a woman, and quite recently too.”

Claire’s shocked expression told Montmorency that he had said enough. The angry phone call that followed, cancelling the evening date, was proof of this.

Before long, Montmorency was back where he wanted to be, on Claire’s lap, looking forward to his next meal.

Claire was just thankful that she had been spared a terrible disappointment at the hands of a local philanderer who would be bound to let her down when his next pretty victim came along. She remembered what Montmorency had said to Mrs Bailey, namely that he always told the truth in all circumstances. 

As for Montmorency, as long as Claire went on in that belief, that was fine by him.

© John Welford

Seeing Red

Dear Regan,

I am absolutely furious, not to mention seething. Daddy has gone too far this time, and I’m sending you this email to warn you that he is on his way to your place with every intention of being as unreasonable to you as he has been to me.

As you no doubt recall, when he gave that poor sap Cordelia no more than she deserved, Daddy decided to divide his kingdom between the two of us and pay us the occasional visit when he felt like it. What he did not say was that he was going to turn up with a full entourage of a hundred knights and expect us to feed and entertain the whole damned lot of them. But that is just what he’s done.

If you remember, Albany and I decided to go in for a low-key economy monarchy, so we downsized to a three-bed semi in Oadby. We therefore had to hire an enormous marquee for the garden to accommodate all the knights.

I have to admit that the knights themselves are not a bad bunch of guys, although Albany is unhappy that they are all knights and there’s not a single dame among them.

Richard Branson laid on a special train to South Wigston, which arrived horribly late. Mo Farah decided to run instead, and beat the train by over half an hour. Chris Hoy and Bradley Wiggins came on a tandem bike and Matthew Pinsent and Steve Redgrave rowed up the Grand Union Canal.

Feeding them wasn’t a problem – one of the knights runs John Lewis, which includes Waitrose – and  clearing up was a doddle – James Dyson ran round afterwards with his latest machine.

The entertainment side was also dead easy – the concert given by Cliff Richard, Elton John, Tom Jones and Paul McCartney went down very well, although Mick Jagger expressed dissatisfaction with some aspects of it. The comedy turn by Lenny Henry was also well received.

However, things started to go amiss when the actor knights did their party pieces. Mark Rylance, Michael Caine and David Jason were fine, but then Antony Sher and Derek Jacobi started claiming that each was a better King Lear than the other, and proceeded to prove the point, completely forgetting that the actual Lear was sitting in the front row of the audience. When Daddy stormed out in a rage that was far more convincing than anything that Sher or Jacobi could manage, he got a standing ovation, which annoyed him even more.

But that business with the knights is only the half of it. It’s what Daddy is turning into that really annoys me. For one thing, he’s gone an odd shade of orange, and he’s done something very strange with his hair.

You know that comedian who always goes around with him? The guy he calls his little fox? Well, it turns out that he’ll only believe what the little fox tells him, and everyone else is lying. It’s “Fox’s news or fake news” according to him.

Daddy just loves to tell everyone else what he thinks of them, sending out dozens of tweets every day, and I’m not at all sure that he’s correct with his facts. Somebody told me that Daddy tells six lies every day, and I’m not convinced that it isn’t even more.

I asked him yesterday if he would like me to spread marmalade on his toast. He said he would, but when I handed the toast to him he threw it on the floor, saying that he meant to say that he wouldn’t like marmalade. Everyone knew full well that he never had marmalade, so how could anyone possibly imagine that he would ever say that he would?

He has now decided that his knights are not as trustworthy as he thought they were. Some of them are out to get him. Not only that, but there are “illegals” among them who are capable of committing horrible crimes if they are allowed out of the marquee.

I think he`s particularly worried about Tony Robinson. As you know, Daddy spends hours every day watching TV, and he tells me that he has seen Sir Tony digging holes in the ground. I’ve tried telling Daddy that “digging the dirt” does not always mean finding incriminating evidence against him, and that it might have far more to do with Tony’s interest in archaeology, but I don’t think that I’ve won the argument.

Anyway, last night I was woken up by strange noises outside. When I looked out of the window I could see Daddy with a wheelbarrow full of bricks, which he seems to have taken from the neighbours who are having an extension built. I went downstairs to ask him what he was up to.

“I’m building a wall”, he said. “We’ll keep all this nasty people away from us. It’ll be a truly beautiful wall, and that Robinson man will pay for it”.

So – not only has Daddy stolen from the neighbours and lost me all my friends with his awful insulting tweets about them, but he has also made me a laughing stock with the whole town. I’m the daughter of the stark staring mad father. Can you imagine what this will do to local property prices?

Hence my anger. I’m sorry, dear sister, but once he realizes that’s he’s no longer welcome here he’ll up sticks and head in your direction.

I wish my news was as fake as Daddy’s tan, but it’s not.

Your loving sister,

Goneril

© John Welford