shoeshine Posted May 12, 2007 Share Posted May 12, 2007 I have oft seen similar fences around the gardens I frequented at dead of night many years ago, searching for an unsuspecting free-range goose at Yuletide 1943. There must have been many old ladies like your grandma with similar recipes. I wasn't asked, but commanded to search out such delicious (though somewhat greasy) additions to the Christmas Feast at my grandma's house. My researches lead me to believe it was a direct result of the U.S. Army's being based in the U.K. during the war years. Their inevitable presence on British soil led directly to the phrase (first appearing in the Oxford English Dictionary of Popular Phrases, 1943) of "Them blo*dy" Yanks are overpaid, over-sexed, and over here!" I remember (as a short, stumbly and rather grateful youth of those days) the pleasure of chewing free-issue Gum in a garden littered with zig-zagging, snake-like fence works as my grandma entertained what I now know to be a G.I. to tea and arrowroot biscuits in the hovel she called "home". I remember vividly the Christmas of that year opening a package from my Grandma which was to become my prized possession........the nearest thing by then to a goose neck she could get at the Co-op Store A Snake Belt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seriessix Posted May 12, 2007 Author Share Posted May 12, 2007 Talking of snakes... May 12th.... A few months ago my husband entered into a voluntary research program at the Hallamshire Hospital that was investigating the benefits of regression hypnotherapy. Whilst under he mumbled on about a hat and his mothers garden but later, back at home, he seemed to think that he had somehow been connected with his pre-reincarnated origins. In fact he believed that he was once a snake in a previous life. Some days later in the middle of the night I noticed a dark shadow slithering across the the bedroom floor, when I switched the light on it saw it was him, trying to get to the bathroom. After that he insisted on me putting his evening meal on the floor for him to eat which he'd consume slowly with his arms tightly by his sides. He later had his mum make a rubber mold in the shape of a rat, I then had to line this with hairs from the cat basket and then push his meals into it before I'd turn it out onto a plate. If it wasn't to his satisfaction he'd hiss and stare at me with an emotionless blank sideways gaze. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pattricia Posted May 12, 2007 Share Posted May 12, 2007 Brilliant, seriessix, and shoeshine also. You seem to bring the best writing out of him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shoeshine Posted May 13, 2007 Share Posted May 13, 2007 Y'see, seriessix, it's easy for you! Nose in the air, women shot out of a cannon under the influence of a smooth-talking bloke years ago! Remininscences of goose-neck fencing, and all that! But what of the vast majority of kids like me? Grandmothers in those days had a "whisper" of a dark moustache, brown eyes, lots of facial wrinkles and a "certain" gleam which was best not explored by an innocent grandchild. Certainly not by a kid who believed their grandma's explanation of where lamb's kidney really came from! Snake belts were King! I have taken to wandering around the Sheffield streets these days in a desperate search for wrinkly grandmas. They don't exist any more! They are taking the "Swingin' Sixties" to the extreme, with Botox injections, uplifts (quite what they pay to have uplifted I have no idea) and worst of all, pre-ordering tickets for Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy's Swansong performance of "When I'm calling yoo..who...oo..oo. oo.ooo" performance on "YouTubeMemories.com. circa 1952". So you can stuff your Grandma's gooseneck fencing up wherever it causes the most discomfort! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seriessix Posted May 31, 2007 Author Share Posted May 31, 2007 Dear Sir, The other morning I was eating breakfast in bed when I noticed some flea eggs in my husbands chest hairs. I quickly retrieved Rodgers (my son) flea comb and used it to brush my husband down. After some moments of tense analysis I ascertained that they were not flea eggs at all but poppy seeds that must of fallen from the edges of the toast that he had made for breakfast that morning. Thanks, Julia Damplegge. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seriessix Posted May 31, 2007 Author Share Posted May 31, 2007 Dear Sir, I was recently wondering if any of the local residents of the city of steel remember old Arnold Scuttle? We used to attend the same school many years ago and I was there when, whilst on a class trip to a farm out in peaks, he witnessed the birth of a baby lamb. The effect of the obvious shock of this event had such a profound effect on Arnold that all his teeth fell out. Back then we didn't have fancy medical care so his father carved him some teeth from a mahogany chair leg. He then had to mallet these into the socket holes in Arnold jaw. These teeth would last about a year before his father had to repeat the process using whatever woods he could find at the time. I have to say Arnold did strike a rather suave figure with his exotic looking smile, the ladies where quick to notice his new look too. But a man cannot live on his smile alone and soon he discovered something that would not only allow him to leave school but also make him a modest living for the rest of his life. Arnold had a backside akin to a nut cracker, it exhibited almost supernatural strength but also amazing dexterity. This information was soon picked up by the corner electrical shop who utilized his backside as an in house wire stripping and crimping tool. As far as I know he still works there to this day. Thanks, Barton B.Mankey. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shoeshine Posted May 31, 2007 Share Posted May 31, 2007 :hihi: :hihi: Here we go again! :hihi: Another "cracking" contribution from the Master of Muse! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seriessix Posted June 2, 2007 Author Share Posted June 2, 2007 Dear Sir, As a boy I always loved drawing and making models. However, these skills where never encouraged by my parents. They had been bought up in poor conditions and naturally wished for a better life for me, to them this would not be achieved by messing around with clay and paint. So I was forced to peruse my hobbies in secret. This secrecy made me yearn to find other people with similar interests, but to no avail. My contemporaries at school seemed to enjoy perusing more plebeian activities. As the years passed my interests broadened, I progressed from making exact scale replicas of aeroplanes and buildings to creating real size facsimiles of day to day objects. My need for validation and even praise for my efforts lead me to surreptitiously introduce some of my objects to the public. The first of these expeditions involved a model of an apple that I had made with a suitably weighted plaster of Paris mix, I had spent days modeling, painting and varnishing this piece until it appeared to be real. Even back then I believed that if an object looked real then for all intents and purposes it was real. So after school one rainy afternoon I headed into town and on towards the train station, soon I spied my target, a disheveled tramp sifting aimlessly through a dustbin. As I approached he asked me for some spare change, I said I didn't have any but offered him the apple which he ungraciously took. He immediately tried to sink what teeth he had into the apple but to no avail, I carried walking with an elated smile on my face. The subterfuge had been a success. The next year was a blur. I placed models of exotic birds into peoples gardens, left fake bottles on milk on door steps, purchased items with counterfeit money, peppered the upper floor of the library with cow pats and planted modeled boxes of custard powder into supermarkets. I even managed to secrete a mannequin that I stole from Debenhams onto one of the tables in the mortuary of the Hallamshire Hospital. Soon my energies and interests seemed progress once more. I was able to easily replicate even the most complicated letter-head so I started sending out University acceptance letters to octogenarians in local old peoples homes, notifications of winning prizes in unentered competitions and call-up papers to the French Foreign Legion. I then took to dressing up, most Saturdays I would mutate into a hunched old woman, and would shuffle around town. I also often faked accidents where I, the victim, would be discovered in a bloody mess on a quite roadside. Perhaps my greatest achievement was tricking my parents into thinking I had a successful career as an Administrative Assistant at the Ministry of Agriculture, while all the time I was simply eking out a living as a community social worker, even my genuine employers never knew my real identity. But still throughout all these years I never encountered people with a like mind or that I could join where I could share all my discoveries and desires. So I decided to peruse my ultimate dream and create a Illusionist Society that didn't really exist. I rented a small room in some local halls and created the societies strict entry requirements, rules and regulations, a time table of the years events, a fancy mystical looking logo and letter-head. I bound all of these into a hard backed ledger and sent them to myself in the post, and so it began. I knew I was tricking no-one but myself but once again if it looked real then for all intents and purposes it was real and who was I to argue as finally I felt that I belonged. For the first time in my life I felt at ease. This is why I am writing this letter, it is to give hope to the people of Sheffield. Whoever you are and whatever you do there is always a somewhere available where you will not feel oddly alone or out of place. Just keep looking and you will eventually find it and if not simply invent it for yourself. Thanks, Sabre Platts. Sir, I was astounded to read the letter by 'Sabre Platts' in last weeks paper. Has this tedious character no shame? Sabres real name is in fact Tony, and he has lived down the road from me all my life. He has indeed attempted to create trick objects over the years but let me inform the readers that they have all been ham-fisted, talentless, embarrassing failures. When he was a young 'un we'd play along and pretend that he'd tricked us with his spring loaded Wrigley's chewing gum packet or fake blood, but his tricks wore thin as he got older. He works on the the other side of town in a sweet shop in Heeley, and he still lives with his parents. He does rent a room in the town hall where he practices balloon bending and ventriloquism on his own. I know this as I'm in the badminton club that uses the room after him. Tony is simply a master of delusion, don't be fooled. Yours, Gerald Trunk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seriessix Posted June 3, 2007 Author Share Posted June 3, 2007 The truth behind Hendersons Relish... http://sheffieldwriters.ath.cx/SFStoryArchive/1180905873.doc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shoeshine Posted June 4, 2007 Share Posted June 4, 2007 Now those two tales really creased me up bigtime! Absolutely magic! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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