Kurtz tried, but she couldn’t keep from laughing. Which proved to be almost as contagious as vomiting on a plane.

“Davy is a hundred and three just turned and Granny’s hundred and first birthday is on the ninth of next month. Elle has telt Casper Lawton to be prepared, and to have a traditional Bearthwaite ash wood coffin ready for him. The allotment lads have said that for more than his entire working life Davy was one of them and they’re ready to dig the grave at a moment’s notice.

This contains an edited version of ‘A DISTURBING SCENE’ first posted on 2019/09/10

I sneezed explosively; by happy coincidence, the sound bore an uncanny resemblance to the word, “bullshit.”

I could apologise for this. It reads a little bit like I’m channelling a grumpy old Brit who feels that the wrong side won in 1783 but, truth be told, as with most wars, I think the wrong side would have won regardless of who surrendered first.

I should say I’ve never been within a hundred miles of route sixty six and all the descriptions come courtesy of my mate Google, so you can blame any inaccuracies on him. I hope you enjoy.

Family home

I tore the wrapping paper off. Inside was the bear. It was soft. I hugged him and buried my face in his artificial fur. And it felt soooo good…

“Do not open or scan battery,” Worm replied in his flatest voice.

“What will happen if we do?”

“Boom,” he said.

I reached into my purse and flipped him my drivers’ license. “That’s me,” I said. “Or was, up until a month ago. I have sixty years of memories to go with the photo. If I was scammed, the scammers are the functional equivalent of an advanced species. And there’s no way that I could ‘delude’ myself into a working knowledge of Old English, Norman French, Greek, Classical Latin, Church Latin and Hochdeutch, with a smattering of other languages besides.”

“As a matter of fact, they aren’t staring at you because they are impressed by your academic credentials.”

A Grumpy Old Man’s Tale 37 Alf’s Philosophies and Youtube

“It’s not all bad getting old you know, John. The good thing about being an old bugger is youngsters just assume you know nowt, which in the case of stuff you don’t give a toss about is probably true, well it is for me any road, but for stuff that really matters, they know nowt and I do. I love dealing with ’em because I won’t play their games and they have to play mine. I haven’t figured out what an app is yet never mind a bloody widget, and don’t bother telling me because I won’t listen because I don’t care. Tell you lads dealing with youngsters is easy money.”

“How do you mean, Alf?”

“Well, while they’re busy doing a thousand quids’ [$1117] worth of damage to a car to rip out a hundred pound [$112] radio to sell on a car boot [yard sale] for a tenner [$11], I’m busy making a legit living out of them. They can’t rip me off because I only deal in cash and direct bank transfers, after I’ve rung the bank to make sure I’ve got the money of course. I only deal in owt that guarantees I get paid up front, cash or goods it doesn’t matter as long as I can tell it’s actually worth what they say it is. If there’s any doubt I won’t accept the deal. I don’t do credit unless it’s someone that lives here. I don’t have owt to do with anything that comes over a mobile phone or a computer, and I don’t give a monkeys how smart it’s reckoned to be. I don’t trust credit card transfers and I’ve never accepted cheques. Result is I’ve never had any bad debts.

Herbertstown House, Dunboyne, County Meath, Ireland:
Mona looks out the massive window in the drawing room. She wipes away the tears that have started leaking from her eyes. Her grandmother had passed away in her sleep last night. She wasn’t looking forward to calling all her aunts and uncles to let them know. She had already called her aunt Charlotte and her father.

She feels her hand nudged by a wet nose. She looks down and notices it is Lady. One of her uncle Jack’s specially bred wolves. Lady and her mate Bruno guarded the grounds and Mrs. Bounty.

I was starting to think that a Distinguished Professor of Linguistics ought to be able to come up with something more penetrating, more insightful, or at very least more likely to generate an informative response from others. Not that my use of “what” as an interrogative pronoun was in any way improper, of course. I was just surrounded by idiots.

He took the step anyway, and my finger went down on the bear spray. Which, it turns out, is a bad idea around a campfire. Who knew?

A trans woman faces the loss of the love of her life.

What if supernatural beings like Witches, Faeries, Demons, and their ilk are all real? Glen Evanston is about to be caught in their many traps in my new work in progress: Magic, Mystery, and Mayhem a Graphic Novel by Raine Monday

What if supernatural beings like Witches, Faeries, Demons, and their ilk are all real? Glen Evanston is about to be caught in their many traps in my new work in progress: Magic, Mystery, and Mayhem a Graphic Novel by Raine Monday

What if supernatural beings like Witches, Faeries, Demons, and their ilk are all real? Glen Evanston is about to be caught in their many traps in my new work in progress: Magic, Mystery, and Mayhem a Graphic Novel by Raine Monday

What if supernatural beings like Witches, Faeries, Demons, and their ilk are all real? Glen Evanston is about to be caught in their many traps in my new work in progress: Magic, Mystery, and Mayhem a Graphic Novel by Raine Monday

What if supernatural beings like Witches, Faeries, Demons, and their ilk are all real? Glen Evanston is about to be caught in their many traps in my new work in progress: Magic, Mystery, and Mayhem a Graphic Novel by Raine Monday

This is a story about having a second chance to be the person you were meant to be.

The traffic on the north circular was hell as usual. Typical London traffic. Everyone angry, everyone just trying to get home. No one giving an inch. It had been gridlocked for half an hour. I had promised my wife that by some miracle I would be home earlier than my normal 7pm to take her out to her favourite restaurant for her birthday.

What if supernatural beings like Witches, Faeries, Demons, and their ilk are all real? Glen Evanston is about to be caught in their many traps in my new work in progress: Magic, Mystery, and Mayhem a Graphic Novel by Raine Monday

In the end we shall be reunited with our distant kin and the oligarchs will have had to realise there are some wars that are not worth trying to win. Ukrainians and Russians, though at war, are both western Europeans, but we are not.

What if supernatural beings like Witches, Faeries, Demons, and their ilk are all real? Glen Evanston is about to be caught in their many traps in my new work in progress: Magic, Mystery, and Mayhem a Graphic Novel by Raine Monday