Raven's Wordzzle Challenge # 71

For the rules of the game, and for more stories, go to Raven's Nest.

The words this week were:
Ten Word Challenge: sober, spoilage, knight, laugh and the world laughs with you, peak, blueberries, owl, drugstore, lampshade, keyboard
Mini challenge: economy, Michael Jackson, ladder, clue, structure
Together, they make a
Mega Challenge.

The Slumber Party Mystery
Chapter 18 - Upstairs

Lt Skittles decided to end the interview with Diana for now. Before he went to find Adam Challenge, however, he felt in need of a short break. He also had a sudden urge to see a bit more of the house. Not that there was much point in looking for clues as he didn't even know whether there was any real mystery to be solved. He just had a feeling that perhaps a tour of the house might provide hime with some sense of structure. Since he couldn't think of a better excuse, he asked Diana for directions to the bathroom.

"Follow me upstairs, then!" she said, and led the way. Skittles was glad to get out of the dark library with all its strange objects; but he soon found the rest of the house to be just as museumlike. In the hall right next to the library there was a knight in shining armour standing guard – or rather, Skittles corrected himself, a shining armour presumably without any knight inside. On a small table beside it stood a big ceramic owl crowned with a hideous lampshade with a pattern of blueberries. At the peak of the stairs there was a gallery with a collection of paintings, but Skittles did not get a chance to get a closer look at them. Diana pointed to a door on the right, saying "There's the guest bathroom, just opposite my room."

The bathroom had a suprisingly sober atmosphere of economy with all white tiles and no extraordinary decorations at all. The only object that did not quite seem to belong there was a ladder leaning against one wall.

He could not resist opening the little cabinet over the washbasin, but to his disappointment, this turned out to contain nothing but an unused toothbrush in a clean glass. "I'll probably have to go to the drugstore to get my own aspirins," he thought sulkily.

Leaving the bathroom, he found that Diana had left the door to her room open. She was sitting at her computer, her hands resting on the keyboard. On the wall he could see a poster of Michael Jackson and the text "Laugh and the worlds laughs with you". Under the desk a big box marked "spoilage paper".

"Good luck with the rest of the interviews, lieutenant," she said, without looking up. This left Skittles with no alternative but to go straight downstairs again, feeling that he had been wasting time, while being laughed at behind his back.

---

Author's PS: Raven says she thinks "this was a really tough set of words" this week, and I'm inclined to agree... Looking back now at what I came up with, and especially comparing it to another blog post from this week – In The Margin – I had to laugh at myself, because I realized that I'd been transferring my own frustrations onto Skittles… When I'm not getting anywhere, neither is he!

The Miracle of Printing

Gutenberg reviewing a press proof. Source: Wikipedia.

One quite important event took place "in the margin of my life" this week - I finally got a new printer, which is also a scanner, which is also a copier, which can even be used while the computer is turned off. What a long way we have come since the days of Gutenberg's first printing press!

Actually, one does not have to go that far back in history to stand in awe of modern technology. In the mid 70's, when I started working as a secretary, it was still pretty advanced to have an electric typewriter in the office. For copies you used carbon paper; or if you wanted more copies you could write on stencils, which were then put through a huge manual stencil copier, a messy process which usually left you with ink stained fingers.

One of the first offices I worked in was at a small paper mill. There we also had telex machine. When this started ticking, the whole staff used to gather around it, excited to see if it might be an order coming in. Sending was a more complicated process - you first had to use a special kind of typewriter to punch holes in a narrow strip of paper, then put the strip of paper through the machine (where it sometimes got stuck or ripped off and you had to start over...). But when sometimes after just a few minutes you got a written reply back from another country, it felt like a miracle.

Telex/teleprinter

32 years later, here I am, finding it quite normal and necessary to have two computers, wireless network, broadband internet connection, and a combined printer-scanner-copier, for private use in my own home... Who would have thought it?!

In The Margin

Couldn't find any writing inspiration today, so I just ended up fiddling about with the margin layout. Decided to only list books I've actually commented on or at least quoted from in the blog.

Writing this down, it strikes me that just fiddling about in the margin is kind of typical of my whole life right now. I get stuck on details instead of getting round to dealing with more important stuff. It's probably part of the grieving process; and also, I think, rather typical behaviour when you feel generally exhausted or just don't know how to deal with something: Grab hold of something smaller and more manageble instead, to get back some kind of feeling of control...!

Quotation of the Week (28/09)

That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.
From The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Societyby Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

This book, which I bought on Friday and also quoted from in this post (3 July 2009), turned out to be the kind that was hard to put down until I had finished it, which I did today. A book full of love and warmth but also sadness; and I learned things I never knew about the German occupation of the Channel Islands during World War II. The whole book is written in the form of letters exchanged between several people. This gives a personal tone, and at the same time the book tells a progressive story, in which you gradually get to know the characters as well as events in their past. I think it is a book I will want to return to, and - in accordance with the quotation above - also perhaps check out some of the references to other books and authors mentioned in it...

Raven's Wordzzle Challenge # 70

For the rules of the game, and for more stories, go to Raven's Nest.

Raven has kept this going for 70 weeks now - I'm impressed!
I didn't join until week 57 so I'm still a beginner.

Here is my contribution for this week, mixing all 15 words into one chapter.




The Slumber Party Mystery
Chapter 17 - Diana's holding pattern


Ten Word Challenge: Florida, spit, child bride, operatic, busy, holding pattern, sunflowers, ginger jars, office, superintendent
Mini challenge: music to my ears, plot, powerful, braggart, super model

When Bumblebee had left the room, Diana lifted the lid of a big ginger jar decorated with a pattern of sunflowers, dropped the letter in it, and put the lid back on. Before Skittles had time to ask why, she turned back to him again and looked him straight in the eyes.

"Look here, superintendent," she began.

"Lieutenant," said Skittles. His own rank, at least, he still felt pretty sure of.

"Sorry. I guess I read too many British crime novels. Look here, lieutentant, I'm sure you're a very busy man and must be wanting to get back to your office, and I'm getting the impression you don't really understand a thing I'm saying. I assure you I had no intention of hurting my grandfather in any way, nor anybody else for that matter. I was only kind of trying out a holding pattern, you might say, for the plot in my book. By the way, the working title is "Music to my ears" and it's set partly in England, partly in Florida."

Standing there in her lime green dress, not only did she look like a goddess, but like a mysterious combination of innocent child bride and braggart super model all in one, thought Skittles. Humble and powerful at the same time, and somehow operatic. You could never predict when she'd break out into another aria. He still wished he could get her to spit out something a bit more informative, though.

"All I did," continued Diana, "was to put the sausages on the grill. I asked grandpa to keep an eye on them for me, and to watch Bumblebee's reaction when he came out with the drinks. The sausages weren't on the menu, you see. If things went really perfect, I was also hoping that they'd pop out of their skin at just the right moment. In my book, there are explosives involved, but of course I couldn't take my real life experiment that far. Analyze the remains if you will, you'll find nothing extraordinary about the sausages! But of course it was still stupid of me not to think of the fire hazard, on a day like this, and with grandpa not able to rise from his chair on his own. But he had his alarm, you know, and I didn't expect him to faint, and I was really expecting B to come out much sooner. And then when I got upstairs to my room, I saw from my window that Adam had arrived, too – that is, I saw his car parked in front of the house. But then he left again, I watched him drive off rather in a hurry. But then he came back. Has he given you any explanation for that yet?"

The Closest Book / Bookworm Award

I picked this up from Pan's Island and The Stair Landing. Taking my cue from them, I'm not passing it on to anyone in particular but leave it open for anyone to pick up if you feel you want to.

RULES:
Open the closest book to you, not your favorite or most intellectual book, but the book closest to you at the moment, to page 56. Write out the fifth sentence, as well as two to five sentences following.



The book closest to me right now is one I bought today and just started reading. I actually didn't get to page 56 yet but looking ahead I found it to be a very good quote because it happens to explain the title. What an extraordinary coincidence!

The book is The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, written by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. And here is the quote from page 56, starting with the fifth sentence.

Other Islanders asked to join us, and our evenings together became bright, lively times - we could almost forget, now and then, the darkness outside. We still meet every fortnight. Will Thisbee was responsible for the inclusion of Potato Peel Pie in our society's name. Germans or no, he wasn't going to go to any meetings unless there were eats! So refreshments became part of our program. Since there was scant butter, less flour, and no sugar to spare on Guernsey then, Will concocted a potato peel pie: mashed potatoes for filling, strained beets for sweetness, and potato peelings for crust.

One Year Anniversary

One year ago, I got the keys to the apartment where I now live. I didn't move in until three weeks later, but it was "mine" from 1 July, and I was here on that day to have my first look at it empty. Right now I find it hard to believe it was just one year ago; so much has happened since then. I had just about got settled in when my parents' health started to seriously deteriorate last autumn. I'm still feeling grateful every day that I at least found this place and got my own move out of the way before all that.

Right now it's too hot wherever one is (compare yesterday's post), but this place is both better situated and better planned for my needs, than my old apartment.