Esther Chilton

This week’s challenge is to write a story, limerick or poem on the subject of:

Pets

Last week’s challenge was to write about holidays. You sent in some great pieces. Here are a few:

Here’s a belter from Keith Channing:

I don’t know if maybe you’ve heard
That to go on vacation’s absurd.
There’s fun to be had
But what drives people mad
Is the hours in the big silver bird.

I was so pleased to see Peter Wells join in this week:

There’s nothing I cannot shirk,
Certainly that includes work
Don’t talk of my duty
Or facing “Reality”
I just want to finish dessert.

Now for Kevin‘s:

Lonely men abroad
Get bored
With sea and sand
And command
A peach
Upon the sun kissed beach.

Perchance
Man will dance
With a mermaid
And having played
Return home to his humdrum life.

In foreign parts
No hearts
Are broken, though his wife
May discover
That his lover
Provided him with more
Than he bargained for …

And another one from Kevin – a little lighter, this time:

There was a young lady called Fay
Who went on holiday
She sat on a deckchair
With her teddy bear
In a field in the month of May.

And a huge welcome to Melissa Barker-Simpson:

The was an old woman from Leeds
who was tired from all her good deeds
so she went on strike
climbed on her bike
and cycled away in her tweeds.

And two from the talented Jason Moody:

Each year from our cultured(?) green plane.
We migrate, en-mass t’ Spain
Our manners amiss
As we burn to a crisp
And laugh at folk, back home in the rain.

–

The thought of our hols made me beam
Sun, sea and sand – what a dream
I unpacked my case
And my heart quickened pace
Instead of P20 – salad cream.

Last, and by no means least, is the entertaining Martin Strike:

BEING FRANK ABOUT FRONK

Frank insisted that his name was pronounced ‘Fronk’ when he took his summer holiday, which he found far more in keeping. These were his favourite two weeks of his year for which he started preparations months in advance, sowing onions in his allotment and growing a slim moustache that he waxed as soon as it was long enough.

Frank had become obsessed by France when, aged thirteen, he fell in love with his French teacher, Miss Mecredi, as did all the other boys at West Berks Grammar. In lessons, he would daydream, picturing himself as the Xavier from his text book, with Miss Mecredi being Mme DuPont, living together in a maison in the French countryside with Serge, their pet monkey. The day Miss Mecredi missed a button on her blouse sufficient to inadvertently expose the bottom edge of her bra and the top of her belly to him and the rest of 3T he rated as the pinnacle of his education and still the most erotic moment of his life.

Now, some ten years on, France and everything French still held an aura of excitement, romance and with a slow bucolic way of life not available in downtown Newbury.

But Frank was disappointedly British. Despite his longings, he never got to grips with speaking French, even though he still remembered the words for certain things, like stylo for pen for example, but irregular verbs and past participles had always made him shudder, so he could never string his sparse array of nouns into coherent sentences. This made him terrified of actually visiting France, although he had taken a weekend ferry trip to Calais a few years ago with his cousin. He had loved it; sitting outside a cafe sipping café in the town square after walking the aisles of the hypermarket, marvelling at the unusual kinds of biscuits, the colourful range of misshapen vegetables and the tank at the back containing live crabs. How he wished he was French. But his cousin had found the trip boring, and with no travel partner, Frank had never returned to the home he’d never had.

His fear of the French language meant he spent his summer holidays cycling around Berkshire dressed as a French onion seller. This was no fancy dress, he was as authentic as he could make it – blue-and-white stripy top, black beret and trousers, red neckerchief. He wove his ripe onions into strings in a French plait which he bore round his neck before setting off at a gentle pace on his heavy bicycle along the country roads of Newbury and beyond. With camping gear in the basket, he stopped at every village for an ice cream or just to sit on a bench and smile. Sometimes he even sold a few onions, more often he was ridiculed, or just stared at. But he didn’t mind – he loved travelling like this and sleeping under the stars.

This year he stopped to see the Newbury Summer Show. Pushing his bicycle through the stalls, Frank was admiring the rare cattle breeds and heritage chickens when someone called out to him, “Oi, Pierre! – over here!” He turned to see a man running towards him from a marquee.

The man explained that The Round Table were holding an onion-eating contest but due to an unprecedented number of entrants, were in danger of running out of onions. The man offered to buy all the onions Frank had. He’d had no intention of selling them all – they weren’t worth much, were an integral part of his Frenchness, and without them he suspected he’d look silly. However, the man was persuasive as Frank was a pushover, so trade was transacted.

Frank was now quite irritated – at his lack of onions certainly, but more so at himself as he made his way towards the exit, when another voice called at him “Garcon! Ici! Vite, vite!”

He turned to see a tiny old lady limping towards him carrying an even smaller dog. It was one of those yappy things that look more ratty than doggy and bare their teeth and angst to everyone.

“Shh Pipi,” demanded the lady, the dog taking no notice and was clearly angry with Frank for being the object of his mistresses attentions. Frank reared back from both the dog’s high-pitched barking and the woman who had started shouting at him in fast, unintelligible French.

Frank shrugged his shoulders in true French style before admitting to the old lady, who he reckoned had more wrinkles than a pickled walnut, that he “non understandez pas le Frenchais.” She narrowed her eyes. “Mon dieu. You are French boy who not speak French?”  

Frank nodded shamefully.

“You Engleeesh,” she slapped her forehead hard with the palm of her hand. “Bonkers.”

The lady introduced herself as Madam Hilda: French, 85 years old, one point one metre tall and to be found carrying her ‘petit angel Pipi’ everywhere. Pipi’s snarling struck Frank as entirely un-angelic and laden with intent. But Hilda didn’t seem to notice its latent malevolence and grilled Frank over why on earth he would purport to be a Frenchman in false circumstances. Frank told her his whole sorry story and of his love for France.

“Idiot!” spat Hilda, almost as aggressive as her dog. “You come back to Franҫais today. Work for me tomorrow, then all other days. You want be French? Hilda make you French. I live in big, big house. I come to England to get man as no Frenchman will work for Hilda. All gone. You French English mental man – You come.”

Frank was not one to say no, particularly to a lady, especially a French one brandishing a demonic dog, so with few English prospects and many French hopes, he agreed. He rode home and grabbed his passport, packed a change of clothes and a toothbrush then cycled to the hotel address Hilda had given him.

An hour later his bike was lashed to the back of a world-weary Citroen 2CV. Frank sat in the passenger seat holding down Pipi, trying to keep him from taking a bite out of his neck whilst Hilda drove hard for Dover, apparently untroubled by which side of the road she should be occupying.

                                                              ***

As he’d hoped, Hilda’s house was very French and enormous. Frank was enthralled at its Gallic charm and tumbledown feel. She made him follow her to the kitchen where she demanded that he make soup. Being an OK sort of cook, he found some lentils in the larder and a few carrots and herbs growing in the potager and made a decent broth which both Hilda and Pipi appeared to relish.

“You must change now,” Hilda said and pointed to a wooden trunk in the corner for him to open. From its contents, she insisted he put on a canvas shirt whose sole remaining button was at navel height and a pair of breeches so tight he was scared to sit down lest they split down the middle and drop down either leg. By the way she was looking him up and down he thought Hilda must be appalled by sight of him, while Pipi also stared, licking his lips as though anticipating titbits. Thus attired, he tottered his way into the courtyard where Hilda made him bend over and beat the dust out of all the mats in the house one by one, whilst she sat in a rickety chair behind him, stroking Pipi on her lap, both apparently monitoring his labours. Over Pipi’s growling he could hear Hilda muttering French words that he could not recall from his grammar school vocabulary.

The perspiration that covered Frank came from a mix of hard work and relief that his trousers had remained intact thus far. Hilda insisted he wash under an outside shower, watching him shiver as she tugged again at the string that brought the freezing water over him.

By the time it was dark, she had made him work so hard he craved sleep. She pointed out his room. It was very simple, just a wooden bed, chamber pot and a glass of water on a small table, but it did the job, and he collapsed into the bed and soon fell into a deep sleep. Next thing he knew it was morning, the room was bright, and he was lying on his side. He couldn’t help but notice that the glass of water now had a set of false teeth in it. Nervously he turned over and there, next to him, was Hilda, all hairnets and face cream, asleep but with her mouth moving and drooling as if chomping on a rubber blancmange. He yelped, which woke Pipi, who stuck his head up from under the covers between them, and yapped his annoyance at being disturbed.

“Ah, bon matin, my petit plum,”  Hilda smiled gummily at Frank. “Time for the cock to crow and you to perform an Englishman’s duties and make love on a poor, innocent French girl,” she cooed and pursed her lips, the crow’s feet at the sides of her mouth stretching like talons.

Frank grabbed his English French clothes and ran, while Pipi jumped up trying to nip his boules as Hilda cussed as to why there were no real men left, French or English, not since 1982.

Now at a safe distance, Frank regained his breath, put on his onion sellers gear and started walking towards England. France was just too, well, too French, he decided. After a couple of hours he reached a town. He was tired, hungry and had no money. His attention was drawn to a girl, about his age, ringing the bell on her Raleigh Chopper.

She had on a bowler hat, a three-piece suit and carried a large satchel. Frank thought she was beautiful. She saw him staring and said, with the worst French-English accent imaginable “Ello Guv. You want’nee frog-in- de-‘ole?” She reached into her satchel and held out a plastic carton containing sausages, surrounded by soft, Gallic attempt at a Yorkshire pudding. He could not resist her.

It turned out Francois (or ‘Frank’ as she called herself during her summer holidays) loved England because of her English lessons with dishy Mr Wednesday all those years ago.  Now to her grandmother’s disgust, she travelled up and down the Loire valley on her holiday selling Toad-in-the-Hole, as Frank corrected her.  “Delicious! All that needs,” he suggested, “is some onion gravy.”

“Ah, la jus d’oignon,” she said, and they laughed. 

They shared one of those golden sunny afternoons sitting in the Town Square, their eyes smiling, and they sensed Anglo-French relations could be set to improve forever. With a new-found Frenchness, Frank overcame his shyness for once, and leaned in for his first French kiss.

But just as their lips were about to meet, a rickety CV2 squealed to a stop on the road beside them.

“What you thinks you are doing!” fumed Hilda, slamming the car door behind her, Pipi barking angrily.

“Hilda!” Frank gasped, when he saw who it was.

 “Grandmere!” Francois gasped, when she saw who it was.

“Mes enfants,” smiled Hilda, delighted when she saw that finally, her oddly English French granddaughter had found herself a boy, even if it was the peculiar French Englishman.

“Grrrrr,” snarled Pipi at both of them.

***