Relativity in ToyTown (4)

DillyTante's profile

DillyTante
Posted by DillyTante on Tue 17 Oct 06, 8:07 PM

It might seem to the occasional visitor to ToyTown that not much of note happens here. Everything of course, is always relative.

It's true we don't have riots, racketeering or road rage. Violent crime seems to be limited to after the Saturday night disco held in the Hoarse and Jocular. I understand that swearing happens then, in loud voices and sometimes, just sometimes a fist might fly amongst the hormonally agitated youth imprisoned here. Oh and the younger kids around smile and say hello. Even when they don't have to.

In the main, ToyTown is peaceful, but not uneventful. Relatively speaking.

There are hatches, matches and despatches of course. ToyTown may be shrouded in fog, parked at the end of the rainbow in the Land Which Time Forgot, but its inhabitants aren't immortal. Thank goodness. Ambulances however are a rarity. So much so, that should one fly by my Dolls Dwelling I can guarantee that someone will phone, to see if I know where it stopped.

I don't think I've ever heard a police siren here, although I do see police. One visits my next-door neighbour quite regularly (I think he takes his tea break there) and I think I saw a couple at ToyTown's Torchlight Parade a couple of months back. Given how relaxed and jovial they were however, I should concede that they might have been civilians fancy dressed for the evening.

We don't really have property theft here either, although some bugger keeps stealing my dog's stick from our (apparently not-so) secret hidey-place. We also don't have cinemas, fancy restaurants, theatres, bands, theme pubs, clubs, sushi or Sainsburys.

What you lose on the swings of convenience, you gain on the roundabouts of rural tranquillity.

Now you need to bear all that in mind and of course, the aforementioned issue of relativity, when you consider the interest value of yesterday's events.

We had a thunderstorm.

Not any old thunderstorm. Not one of those thunderstorms, which shows off a bit and then goes on to belabour a point. Not an ordinary ToyTown thunderstorm, which I'd quite enjoy if it didn't drive my dog into nervous breakdown mode and immediately under the table for the duration.

No. This thunderstorm went something like this.

Rumble. Rumble. Mutter. Silence.

EXTRAORDINARILY LOUD EXPLOSION!

Then a bit of a shower.

I live opposite a rugby pitch. All my friends, live on the other side of the rugby pitch. Bit of a nuisance really, because if I could cut across, it would shave at least two minutes off the five minute walk from my home to any of theirs.

Location, location, location. Yesterday, mine paid dividends. Everyone in the road opposite the rugby pitch, on the other side to me, lost their power. As expected, five minutes after the explosive clap of thunder, the phone began to ring.

I detached my teeth-chattering, quivering wreck-of-a-dog from my leg and temporarily became a pc help line.

Not that I could do much.

First call announced that a pc, phones and stereo had blown up. Second call describing symptoms, which sounded very much to me, as if a modem had fried. And so on. Consternation all round, I can tell you. Apparently, ToyTown's Mr. PC FixIt, is experiencing a nice boom in business today.

Oh and Larry Coffin's, the main local Purveyor of Provendor and Everything Else You Can Think Of, can't use their card swiping machines! Even today! Blimey, eh?

As you might now understand, it was quite an event and I've not even told of the fatal casualty yet.

Two independent eyewitnesses have told me that at the beginning of the storm, sitting atop of one of the floodlights at the rugby pitch, was a pigeon. Retrospectively and regrettably perhaps, it was perched on a flood light, which was hit by lightening.

Evidently, one second the pigeon was there; the next a large cloud of feathers floated whimsically towards the ground.

It occurred to me that there are probably many worse ways to bite the dust. Seriously!

Imagine sitting on top of a flood light (a long ladder may be necessary to achieve this) looking at the weather and thinking, 'Oh, I don't like the look of that weather.', and the next?

Feathers!

Tonight ladies and gentlemen I invite any reader to join me in raising a glass of your favourite intoxicant, to Feathers!

Edited Tue 17 Oct 06, 8:54 PM by DillyTante

Replies

17 Oct 06, 9:09 PM
PFLsAgain
UK, 3 yrs

DillyTante wrote:
Tonight ladies and gentlemen I invite any reader to join me in raising a glass of your favourite intoxicant, to Feathers!

I think that calls for a glass of Grouse whisky in the form of the witches brew that my mother drinks: drowned in excessive amounts of fresh orange juice. A concoction which she insists on calling "a duck", even in the local pub, while blithely ignoring the shirking embarrassment of her offspring.
Now the only mystery remaining must be the identity of the mysterious soul who has gained one flash-roasted supper item.
"I learned what every dreaming child needs to know - no horizon is so far that you cannot see above or beyond it." ~ Beryl Markham (first pilot to cross the Atlantic solo the hard way - East to West)

17 Oct 06, 10:43 PM
DillyTante
UK, 3 yrs

PFLsAgain wrote:

DillyTante wrote:
Tonight ladies and gentlemen I invite any reader to join me in raising a glass of your favourite intoxicant, to Feathers!

I think that calls for a glass of Grouse whisky in the form of the witches brew that my mother drinks: drowned in excessive amounts of fresh orange juice. A concoction which she insists on calling "a duck", even in the local pub, while blithely ignoring the shirking embarrassment of her offspring.

Oh I'm shuddering here. My imagination is making my teeth hurt. Although I'm mindful that Your Drink (or in this case, your Mother's drink) Is Not My Drink but Your Drink Is Ok!
As I'm currently imbibing Martell sans additives, with the intention of giving Feathers an heroic send-off, I cannot help but feel slightly superior.

Now the only mystery remaining must be the identity of the mysterious soul who has gained one flash-roasted supper item.
Hah! I'm betting that it's already been consumed in the Hoarse and Jocular, in a nice pitta bread, with a side salad. Oh and of course, no chips. Barbykewed style.
Sauce optional.

Dilly

18 Oct 06, 5:50 PM
MarcusStrapp
UK(CB), 4 yrs
Erm... 26 fit rugby playing lads between you and your destination and you ask us to believe that you are delayed two minutes by walking around them?
No truth to the rumours that you were two hours late and not two minutes too soon?

DillyTante wrote:
I live opposite a rugby pitch. All my friends, live on the other side of the rugby pitch. Bit of a nuisance really, because if I could cut across, it would shave at least two minutes off the five minute walk from my home to any of theirs.

Conventional wisdom is often more about convention than wisdom.
-- Marcus Strapp

18 Oct 06, 6:58 PM
DillyTante
UK, 3 yrs

MStrapp wrote:
Erm... 26 fit rugby playing lads between you and your destination and you ask us to believe that you are delayed two minutes by walking around them?
Um. Not around them. Around the perimeter of the field. There's a river between the rugby field and me. Besides while handsome chaps are all very well it takes more than a well turned thigh, or even fifty two of them, to make me break stride.
I do fret a little in the winter though when the Under-somethings are playing. The poor little sods look bloody miserable to me. I've been assured however that the whole wintery, icy, wet, muddy, mucky, brutal rugby experience, is character forming.
I'm in the wrong country to snort disbelieveingly and publically at that one

No truth to the rumours that you were two hours late and not two minutes too soon?
No truth at all. I'm reliably punctual

Dilly


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