Blogstory

Ni sa bula vinaka and hello readers!!! I have been silent I know....I know....there was some hospital time....then some moving across the ocean...then the finding somewhere to live...but now I am far more settled I will reignite the blogstory light :D

Coming Up Next!!!!

Part 3 of 'Spaceships over Africa (for Simone)'

and

Blogstory #5 ( Words: Igneous, fruitloop, wananavu, extreme) for Ryan

New Words = New Worlds!

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Installment Five - The Wondrous Courage of Geoffrey Gobblejuice

Her eyes glinted with the shine of a rainbow upon the horizon. Air born and determined she reached out her arms and grabbed hold of an ancient flying fox rope.

 

It was not only the two guardians that were now on the move…the giant ruby serpent was roused from his lair beneath the busy city streets. The sky above erupted into shimmering colours like some sort of celestial piñata that had been broken and was scattering its rainbow innards throughout the heavens. Unlike the others, he did not know why he had to leave his resting place. In this, he was most similar to Geoffrey Gobblejuice….an unwitting actor in a chain of mind-bending events that were unfolding like quicksilver. Like a kite in the wind the serpent (whose name was old and hard to pronounce), floated and fluttered into the deep blue sky drawn ever closer to the dancing colours. If anyone had been looking up, they would have been mesmerised by the ethereal lights skipping through the atmosphere and the winding snake flowing like a river of lava, ever upward. There was now very little time left to prevent the disaster…

 

 

STAY TUNED!

Next up: Installment Five of 'The Wonderous Courage of Geoffrey Gobblejuice' and Part 3 of 'Spaceships over Africa' WOOOT!

 

Blogstory #4 - Lettuce Soup (for Darragh)

Blogstory #4

Words: prosopography, llama, crainology, emperor, iconoclast, rap battle and Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin

Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin wanted lettuce soup. He needed lettuce soup. He dreamt of lettuce soup. Creamy green goodness sliding down his crooked throat. Unfortunately for the Count, the only place that lettuces grew in the entire world was in the garden of the Emerald Emperor and they were not friends. In fact, they were enemies since birth.  Of course this was made clear in Herald Buutton’s recent prosopography on the Dynastic Idiots of Our Time.

Count von Zeppelin ordered his most loyal llama to scour the land for a thief so clever and daring that they could steal the very stars from the sky. The llama’s name was Junuous and he had many extremely interesting theories relating to cakes and catechisms but since no one ever brought up the subject he never got to show them off. The Count’s people got wind of the llama’s mission and made sure to avoid him like the plague (which sadly had been much harder to avoid the year before making the llama’s search a little quicker than it might have been previously). No-one wanted to be ordered on such a ridiculous and suicidal quest. The Emerald Emperor was far more powerful than the Count and would likely explode anyone foolish enough to break into his garden with his famous Jade encrusted wand.

So the llama went here and there and round the back until he came across a filthy looking peasant child tending wallow of pink and blue spotted pigs. “Hello child” spoke Junuous gently, for he really was a very decent kind of llama. “Would you happen to know where the greatest thief in all the land resides?” The mud caked face looked up at the llama with a look of disdain that reminded him of a vinegar and lemon sandwich he’d once tasted. “Child? Child?! Look you, I’m 14 years old! I’m practically a grown woman” she flicked her slop splattered pig tails in annoyance. “What you want a thief for anyways?” she demanded. Junuous was taken aback by her abrupt manner and almost started to stutter.

“L-l-look here miss, I am the envoy of the great Count von Zeppelin. He has a special secret mission for the greatest thief in all the land. Reward to be offered for services provided”. The young girl frowned as she engaged in some deep thinking. “Secret mission eh? Anything to do with religious type artefacts?”  Junuous was very confused and a little ruffled by this pint sized person and he knew very little about religious artefacts. “Why do you ask?”

The girl locked eyes with the llama and declared “One day, I’d like to become an iconoclast”. The llama started to breathe a little faster which was his usual response in situations in which he was thoroughly lost. “Err...yes...hmmm I see....of course...that means....” The peasant girl rolled her eyes.

“You know, rising up against the dogmatic status quo.....iconoclastic glory and stuff?”

Junuous was bamboozled. Then he thought, perhaps this child can bamboozle her way into the Emerald Emperor’s garden and steal the lettuce? “Yes child, if you carry out the Count’s secret quest you will be known forevermore as the most iconic of iconoclasts in all the land....” Junuous coughed to cover up his confusion and lack of current cognition. “Right then. Take me to the Count” said the girl, planting her pitchfork into the mud and giving all of the pigs a kiss and a hug goodbye.  

The loyal llama and the seditious peasant girl journeyed to the castle of Count von Zeppelin. Here Junuous presented her to his Royal Strangeness. “Excellent work Junuous! Is the mud a kind of clever camouflage or is she always this filthy and smelly?” Unlike his llama, the Count was not polite or considerate. The girl growled but before she could speak the von Zeppelin burst out “We must make sure! We can’t be sending the wrong type of thief on this mission you know. Very important we do this right”. What he meant was of course, it was very important that the thief not get caught and thus point the finger back at himself. “Bring me the royal head handler!”

A few moments later a very shadowy man appeared in the royal hall. He was covered head to toe in black and he smelt like missing socks. It was widely believed he had a name once but these days he was simply known as the royal head handler, practitioner of the almost but not quite lost art of crainology. The head handler walked over to the girl and without any instruction from the Count, began to examine her head. A low rumbling sound was soon heard emanating from the peasant and the llama took a few more steps away from her in case she erupted into a fit of spontaneous biting.

“Truthful, pig-headed, spiritual but never religious, somewhat clever and often invisible” was the pronouncement of the royal head handler. She had chomped her teeth at the ‘somewhat’ but other than that there was no spontaneous biting much to Junuous’s relief.

The Count and the llama had a brief discourse in the corner before approaching the girl again. “What is your name child?” said the Count in an extremely condescending way. “None of your business” she replied just as rudely but much more justifiably. “Excellent” he replied as if not hearing her at all, “I want you to steal lettuces from the Emerald Emperor’s garden and bring them back here to me....without being noticed or leaving a trail”. The girl had never heard of the Emerald Emperor or lettuces for that matter, her world being more made up of pigs, mud and hard work, but she was eager to become an iconic iconoclast. “Fine” she replied, “Where’s this garden then?”

 “I will send Junuous to show you the way to the garden wall but from there you’re on your own”. The unlikely pair (who had actually secretly grown quite fond of each other) made their way on the long and hazardous journey to the Emerald Emperor’s domain. They had several extremely interesting and exciting adventures, but as they don’t pertain to lettuces we shall have to hear about them at another time.

After an arduous trip they finally made it to the high walls of the Emperor’s castle wearing pink tulips behind their ears (as the tulips pertain to aforementioned adventures I shan’t bother to explain). “Well my friend, how shall you breach these towering walls? Will you attempt to scale them? Dig below them? Break through them?” asked Junuous who was starting to worry about the safety of his little brave friend. “No, my friend. I shall use my invisibility to get inside these walls” her eyes glinting mischievously. Despite all of her adventures, the little peasant girl looked no different (other than her pink tulips) than the day the loyal llama had stumbled and bumbled upon her. She kissed the llama lightly upon his lovely long nose and walked off towards the main gate of the Emperor’s castle.

She went straight past the guards on the impressive front gate without them ever raising an eyebrow, for peasants came in and out of the entrance all day to carry out the bidding of the Emperor and she was particularly small, dirty and boring looking. Once inside she found another peasant and asked them for directions to the Emperor’s garden. Finally she came to a vivid evergreen coloured gate guarded by a very tall man in aquamarine robes. “Excuse me Sir” she said in her most convincing polite peasant tone “I am new here and I’ve been asked to help out in the garden”. The very tall man looked down at her from a height with a look of disinterest. He saw a little dirty looking peasant child with dirt wedged beneath her fingernails and mud through her hair. She looked like a thousand other dirty little peasant children who lived in the area and toiled for the Emperor. “Mind you don’t stand on any of his vegetables girl” he sneered and opened the pretty evergreen door allowing her to pass through into the garden. It was a beautiful garden, full of bright succulent vegetables, all squat and juicy in long long rows as far as the eye could see. It was a gorgeous garden, not because the Emperor was particularly talented but because his peasants were. The vegetables here were grown by the Emperor’s order and were devoured by him but all had been grown by his servants.

Before she left on her quest, Count von Zeppelin had drawn the young girl a picture of what a lettuce looks like. She reached into her dusty pocket and pulled it out for another look. It looked a vague frilly green thing to her and she scanned the vegetable plots for its likeness. She walked and walked, seeing some amazing looking vegetables but none of them matched her drawing until suddenly she came across a plot encompassed by a tiny golden fence. Inside were ludicrous amounts of lettuces. She thought they looked much prettier in real life, a little like flowers without the stems.

Just before she could step over the tiny golden fence, two cleaner female peasants walked past glancing at the lettuces. “Ah” said one, “Our lord and saviour’s lettuces....” the little peasant girl missing the rest of the sentence as the pair turned at the turnip patch and headed away. Now you and I would probably assume that the women were remarking about their master the Emperor but not the little muddy peasant girl. The words “our lord and saviour” twigged something in her aspiring iconoclast wiring and she looked at the lettuces anew. “Religious artefacts” she breathed in awe. The rest was a haze of iconoclastic lettuce pulling, as she uprooted the symbols of dogma and sadly injured many very fine lettuces. The next thing she knew she was being hauled out of the spoilt lettuce garden by her muddy pigtails by two very angry and very green guards.

Twelve hours later she emerged clean as a whistle out the front gate of the castle. Junuous rushed forward to greet her anxious to know why she was so very clean and whether the mission had been a success. It was night time now and the loyal llama had been getting frightfully worried about his muddy friend. The peasant girl grinned from ear to ear as she told the llama about her amazing escape from beheading (which of course was the customary punishment for ruining an Emperor’s lettuce garden). About her epic rap battle and how she had endured a bath. Her tale had Junuous pawing the ground with his llama legs in excitement! “But what about the Count’s lettuce?” he asked. The very clean and shiny peasant girl laughed and pulled a big bag out of her pockets. It was full of lettuce seeds. The two giggled and galumphed back home to the Count, handed over the lettuce seeds (the peasant girl already having become an iconoclast) and ran off on another adventure involving no vegetables whatsoever.

 

The End. 

Next up on Blogstory!

Blogstory #4 (for Darragh) "Lettuce Soup" with prosopography, llama, crainology, emperor, iconoclast, rap battle and Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Blogstory #3 - Spaceships over Africa (for Simone) Part 2

On the last day of school before the September holidays I couldn’t think straight I was so ants in my pants excited! Right after school I was to go home and have an early dinner with Mum and Dad before they drove me to the airport for my 10 pm flight to Cape Town.

The afternoon dripped by like honey left too long in the fridge....sloooowly but surely making its way along until finally it was time to go to the airport. As Tetta and I made passed through the frosted glass doors at customs, I turned around to see if my parents were still waiting outside but they’d already left.

Instead of lining up with all the other people waiting to get their passports checked and stamped, Tetta lead me over to another cubicle where there was no-one lining up at all. There was no signage at the desk and the man sitting behind it wore only black.

“M’am” he nodded as Tetta handed over our passports, “New carry-on this time I see” he said smiling in my direction.

“Yes Jeffrey, this is my grandson Charlie, this will be our first trip together” Tetta smiled and gave me a little squeeze.

Jeffrey raised his eyebrows and looked me over. “Well, you’re the famous grandson I keep hearing about? I look forward to hearing how you enjoy travelling with your Tetta”.

There was something in his tone that struck me as odd. As if Jeffrey and Tetta were both in on some kind of secret that I wasn’t aware of. I was too excited about our trip to think about it and I was eager to get my passport stamped for the first time. Thump! went Jeffrey’s stamp and he ushered us to go through to the gate lounge. Expectantly I opened up my passport...but there was no stamp. Thinking I must have missed it I carefully looked at each page in turn. Nothing.

Bemused I turned to Tetta, “Tetta there’s no stamp in my passport, although I’m sure I saw him stamp it....”

She looked down at me lovingly, “It’s an invisible stamp Charlie Bear. You can only see it when using a special UV lamp”.

I gawped at her like a fish in a cartoon. Invisible stamp? Before I could find out more an announcement came over the intercom system.

“Special notice – could passengers on flight DX 541 please make their way to Gate 51. Repeating – could passengers on flight DX 541 please make their way to Gate 51 for imminent departure...crackle...oh and ah bring us some chocolate while you’re at it....thank you”

I looked up at Tetta to see her reaction to the strange message but her lined face was as calm and composed as usual.  

“Right-o then Charlie, that’s us. We’d better get a move on, Gretchen hates sitting about on the tarmac”. I was about to ask who Gretchen was and why she’d be sitting on the tarmac but Tetta had swerved off to enter a gift store located along the concourse. She purchased some expensive looking chocolates then took my hand and led me in the direction of our gate.

Along the way I saw one of those brilliant mechanical walkways that some of the bigger airports have. I jumped onto one going in our direction and looked up at the sign above my head, it read:

This Way to Gates 25 – 50

“Tetta, I think the announcer made a mistake. There is no gate 51....” her smile widened like a Cheshire cat’s.

“You’ll see” she laughed.

After quite a long ride we stepped off the conveyor at Gate 50, walked past the gate and down a narrow nondescript corridor. Eventually we reached a bright red wooden door that looked like it should have been at the front of a house rather than inside an airport. Above the door was a shiny gold plaque that simply read “51”. “Here we go! Let’s get to our seats and start our trip!” Tetta clapped her hands and sprung through the door.

On the other side of the irreverent red door was the ramp-way leading to the open door of our plane. The plane itself seemed to have a strange black metallic sheen and there was no airline logo to be seen anywhere. We were greeted at the door by a fancily dressed man and woman with big grins on their faces. “Oh good you’re both here!” the woman exclaimed, “Gretchen was starting to get a little irksome but now that you’ve arrived we can get underway”.  

The man smiled kindly and showed us to our seats in complete silence.

To be continued and concluded in Part 3!

Coming up next: Blogstory #3 - Spaceships over Africa (for Simone) Part 2!!!

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