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Showing posts with label craigy mcfarlane. Show all posts
Showing posts with label craigy mcfarlane. Show all posts

Friday 1 December 2017


 seapenguin (2) three tales of woe

'What's wrong with the world?  What's wrong with people?  Why are they horrible? Why is everything rotten and stinking all of a sudden?'
Tuppence lay on the settee under five eiderdowns, raving in his pyjamas and sweating out a fever.  He's prone to fevers;  often they're psychological in nature, brought on by too much excitement or a need for attention, so we don't get too concerned unless his temperature goes over 150.  Even then, there isn't much we can do except -
'It's 149 and three quarters Uncle Tuppy!' shrilled Tuppence. 'I'm burning up!'
On this occasion it was all his own fault.  He'd been out late last night trying to flog his stolen tins of value rice pudding and he hadn't worn his winter pully.
He'd also used the computer at the mobile library this afternoon with the help of library assistant Craigy McFarlane (Chic's husband) and 'gone on the internet' and 'looked at the news'.  If that wasn't bad enough, he'd looked at 'Instagram' and felt inferior.
That was more than enough to trigger his current crisis.
Yes, we've finally got 'the internet' Hereabouts.  Tuppence wants to be a Youtube and/or Instagram star.  Unfortunately, he doesn't have a 'smart phone' or indeed any other piece of 'tech' as he calls it, and can only access the internet with Craigy's help via the library van. 
In my day, we aspired to being train drivers or - no, that's not true actually.  We aspired to Very Little because our window on the world was not a virtual window, with all the ghastly magnitude and mind-boggling awfulness that generally entails, it was a real window, and all we could see through the grime and bubbles in the glass was a tiny square of light in the morning, dimming as the day progressed,  and a tiny square of darkness at night, occasionally illuminated by a 'Hunter's Moon' or a meteor shower or such-like.
We had to turn inwards to our own firesides and learn about the world from occasional visitors from Far-flung Places, Co-op flyers and dog-eared copies of the Bunfettle Gazette.  And it didn't do us any harm.  Or Did It?  More on that later.
It won't end well.  It can't end well.  Tuppence's brain can't take it.