Here is another of those three letter words that can have so many meanings that it is nigh on impossible to pin it down.
You have to use it in a sentence which all but explains it.
For instance,
A pad might be a writing pad, or a note pad, something on which you can write, notes, stories, anything really, even doodles.
Cats, dogs, a lot of animals have padded feet. I’d say, for a cat, those pads would be like shock absorbers.
You can pad an expense account with false expenditure in an accounting sense, I’m sure a lot of people are tempted to do so.
I know places, where a single man might live, is called a bachelor pad. So many men like to think they may have one, but it takes money to buy the accouterments of seduction.
Then there’s a medical dressing, a square of gauze called a pad, usually absorbent and soaked in disinfectant to help protect and repair a wound.
Shoulder pads, for broader shoulders
KInee pads, for when crashing off a bike
Shin pads for soccer, and ice hockey players
A helipad which is for helicopter landings and takeoffs, much the same as a launch pad for rockets. Unfortunately, rockets do not generally have a tendency to land, not unless they are bombs, like the V1 and V2 rockets of WW2.
It could also be someone walking around a house in socks, the man stealthily approached the thief, padding silently in his socks so he wouldn’t be heard.
And lastly,
A place for frogs to hang out, ie, the flat leaves of a water Lilly.
50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.
They all start with –
A picture paints … well, as many words as you like. For instance:
And the story:
It was once said that a desperate man has everything to lose.
The man I was chasing was desperate, but I, on the other hand, was more desperate to catch him.
He’d left a trail of dead people from one end of the island to the other.
The team had put in a lot of effort to locate him, and now his capture was imminent. We were following the car he was in, from a discrete distance, and, at the appropriate time, we would catch up, pull him over, and make the arrest.
There was nowhere for him to go.
The road led to a dead-end, and the only way off the mountain was back down the road were now on. Which was why I was somewhat surprised when we discovered where he was.
Where was he going?
“Damn,” I heard Alan mutter. He was driving, being careful not to get too close, but not far enough away to lose sight of him.
“What?”
“I think he’s made us.”
“How?”
“Dumb bad luck, I’m guessing. Or he expected we’d follow him up the mountain. He’s just sped up.”
“How far away?”
“A half-mile. We should see him higher up when we turn the next corner.”
It took an eternity to get there, and when we did, Alan was right, only he was further on than we thought.”
“Step on it. Let’s catch him up before he gets to the top.”
Easy to say, not so easy to do. The road was treacherous, and in places just gravel, and there were no guard rails to stop a three thousand footfall down the mountainside.
Good thing then I had the foresight to have three agents on the hill for just such a scenario.
Ten minutes later, we were in sight of the car, still moving quickly, but we were going slightly faster. We’d catch up just short of the summit car park.
Or so we thought.
Coming quickly around another corner we almost slammed into the car we’d been chasing.
“What the hell…” Aland muttered.
I was out of the car, and over to see if he was in it, but I knew that it was only a slender possibility. The car was empty, and no indication where he went.
Certainly not up the road. It was relatively straightforward for the next mile, at which we would have reached the summit. Up the mountainside from here, or down.
I looked up. Nothing.
Alan yelled out, “He’s not going down, not that I can see, but if he did, there’s hardly a foothold and that’s a long fall.”
Then where did he go?
Then a man looking very much like our quarry came out from behind a rock embedded just a short distance up the hill.
“Sorry,” he said quite calmly. “Had to go if you know what I mean.”
I’d lost him.
It was as simple as that.
I had been led a merry chase up the hill, and all the time he was getting away in a different direction.
I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book, letting my desperation blind me to the disguise that anyone else would see through in an instant.
It was a lonely sight, looking down that road, knowing that I had to go all that way down again, only this time, without having to throw caution to the wind.
Christmas was a time of surprises, some of them not always pleasant. In fact, I don’t think I could remember one that was what I expected, and I had a very low level of expectation.
And, being that magical time of the year, once again, I had received my gilt-edged invitation to come visit my parents. What filled me with trepidation was the address.
They had this knack of finding places, anywhere in the world, that were, well, different.
Last year, it was a haunted Scottish castle. The year before, they had found a dilapidated mansion in Louisiana that was once a slave owner’s residence and hadn’t been lived in for years.
This year?
A recently refurbished three-story mansion that once belonged to a railway magnate, had been a boarding school, then a bed and breakfast, and now was a billionaire’s retreat.
It was also rented out for those times the billionaire wasn’t there, which apparently was most of the time, a fact my parents seized on and most likely the reason why they took the place for Christmas.
It was going to be fun; snow, Santa and his sled, and the quaint celebrations of the small town nearby, a town which I don’t think would be quite ready for the eccentrics that made up the family members.
Good thing, then, I only had to see them once a year.
Eleanor had her bags packed, and we were waiting for the driver to pick her up and take her to the airport. She, too, was going home for Christmas, only she had sane parents who lived in a normal town in a normal house and did normal things.
We had been together for a few months, and it was still a work in progress, getting used to a life living with someone else. After so long on my own, it was a big adjustment. She had just come off a bad breakup, and we were taking it slow.
I knew the last thing needed was her to meet my parents, and although the subject of family came up, more than once, I told her she was better off not knowing them. I told her, when she asked, to think of the Addams Family and then multiply it by a hundred.
As I said, early days. This girl was big on the sanctity of family.
Just before the arrival time of her driver, there was a phone call. If it was me, I would not have answered it because it had ‘ominous’ written all over it.
She answered, listened for a minute, said a few words, and then hung up.
“They’re snowed in, worst blizzards in a century. No one in or out for a week, maybe more. Change of plans. I’ll be coming with you.”
I considered objecting but inevitably knew two things were going to happen, no matter what I said. The first, that snippet in the paper’s star sign forecast, “unsettling news will cause a deep rift in a relationship” was as true as it was going to get, and the second, come New Year’s Day, I would be single again, though that was an optimistic assessment.
I just shook my head. By the calendar, there were, at best, twelve days left, and I had better make the most of them.
On the plane, I tried to give her a rundown of the family members. They were, to outsiders, very different to those who didn’t know them and those who did wisely kept their distance.
It’s why I worked and lived on the other side of the country, and overseas whenever there was an opportunity. But, sometimes, I had to go and see them. This was one of those occasions. It was a matter of getting in and getting out as fast as possible. By myself, it would be easy, with Eleanor, it would be impossible.
Only once before had I taken a girlfriend with me, the first time, and I vowed after that, never again.
I started with my father. Inherited a fortune and kept it, unlike a lot of people who inherited fortunes and lost them. He was brilliant but completely crazy. He wears crazy coloured suits, dressed as a clown because he once wanted to be a circus clown, even running away as a child.
He was always interested in what I was doing with my life, and endlessly disappointed I was not married like my two brothers and sister. His over-enthusiastic ministrations on that occasion were enough to never bring another.
Eleanor didn’t seem fazed.
Next was my mother, who once worked briefly at a circus as a trapeze artist. I never quite got the story of how my parents met, only that she was over the top with everything she did. That was makeup, clothes, speech, and flamboyance. She made entrances and then commandeered the floor, extinguishing every other light in the room.
She regularly was in a story about her or something she was doing, so I was always up to date. The latest project was a cancer wing at a hospital somewhere in Africa.
Leo, brother number one, the heir apparent, was a lazy indolent ass if ever there was one, who treated me very badly as a child and got away with it. He was the chosen one who could do no wrong.
His wife, Maisie, was a mouse, and sought as little time with him as possible, making it what I would have called a marriage of convenience. He often forgot he was married and featured with some socialite or starlet in the news or in what we called the ‘scandal sheets’.
I asked her once why she stayed, and the non-answer told me. Some people could sacrifice a lot for a life that could hardly be imagined. It was not every day you could mingle with royalty.
A word of warning, Leo would try his darnedest to take her off me. He always had, and another reason why I didn’t bring anyone.
Younger brother Tom didn’t care about anything and just did his own thing. He was an amazing painter, and one of his murals graced my lounge room wall.
The youngest sister, Francine, aspired to be a trapeze artist like her mother and actually got an audition at a circus but fell. There was a safety net, but somehow, it collapsed on one side when she landed, spilling her onto the ground and ending any aspirations. Now she had a slight limp, and a chip on her shoulder, but was my closest ally.
That relationship was forged over the six months I stayed with her in the hospital while the doctors put her back together. I gave her the nickname Humpy Dumpty, which in hindsight was in very poor taste, but she loved it.
There were eccentric aunts and uncles, some of whom were egregious, some innocuous, others not so much, but I just avoided them. By the time we touched down at the airport, if you could call it that, she knew as much about my family as I wanted to.
It was no surprise that Francine was at the airport with a card that said World’s Best Brother in that calligraphy hand that looked amazing.
So was the smile, and her general demeanour that for a long time had been sad.
Eleanor recognised her before I did.
Then I got the biggest hug, and right after that, Eleanor got one almost as big. What she whispered in Eleanor’s ear I couldn’t hear, but the smile said it was probably about me.
“Just when I was beginning to think all of his family were crazies,” Eleanor said.
“We are. Just some less so. Did he tell you about the last time he brought a friend?”
“Only that it went badly.”
“‘And then some. Just keep away from Leo. He’s a serial pest. The rest, well, I’ll make sure I’m with you at all times, and everything should be fine.”
Eleanor looked at me with a face that I recognised as ‘what have you got me into’. I shrugged. “Maybe being stuck in a blizzard had its advantages.”
“No. It had to be done. If we are going to spend the rest of our lives together, it is best to get it over and done with.”
Francine gave me the look. “Who is this girl, and where did you find her?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Good. Log fires and hot chocolate will never be the same.”
Of course, it was 20 questions plus another 200 during the drive to the mansion, another of those reputed to have a lot of paranormal activity, also famous for being used as a film set.
How my father discovered this little-known fact outside the film and paranormal investigators’ world was beyond me, but not unexpected.
“You’re going to love it. Footsteps on the creaky stairs, noises from the attic, we’ve had a couple of blood-curdling screams.”
Turning off the road and onto the driveway, the arch formed by overhanging trees made it darker than usual, and with a noticeable change in atmosphere.
I shivered, half expecting to see a couple of headless ghosts crossing in front of us. Then we came out into a clearing and the house before us bathed in sunshine.
“Well, there’s something I haven’t seen before. Usually, it’s dark and dismal with snow falling. Today was one of the few days we’ve been able to get up the driveway. The gods must know you were coming, Alex.”
She stopped just short of the portico, and we got out. It was freezing cold, sun out or not.
“Is it going to be the usual circus?” I asked.
That circus, it was tradition that the visitors already there would line up to greet the new arrivals. No one was spared the meet and greet session, which was why I’d left it as late as possible to arrive.
I had warned her of what to expect, and again, I was surprised it didn’t seem to faze her.
“Leave the bags. We’ve got house staff to help. Dad took the all-inclusive package.”
“Including the fright night show?” Eleanor chose that moment to show she had a sense of humour.
“Especially the fright night show.” Francine laughed. Perhaps it was a joke of sorts passed in whispers earlier.
I braced myself. This was going to get ugly very quickly.
Just past the hallway and where the building opened out into a very large entertaining area, perhaps the size of a ballroom, the family were spread out in a line, parents first, children and their children, uncles, aunts, and finally special guests. There were about thirty in all, and I could see we were the last to arrive. Francine stayed with Eleanor.
My father decided to play it reasonably straight, having a matching Christmas jumper with my mother, the sort no sane person would wear.
It was one of those traditions, and I was sure there was one waiting for me in our room. Francine didn’t wear one, but Leo and Tom would have to.
He ignored me and looked straight at Eleanor. “I’m glad to see my son has finally decided to bring one of his friends. How are you?”
“Why do you ask? Do you think I’m ill?”
It was not a response he expected, nor I.
“No. It’s just a normal response when you greet someone.”
“Your son told me you and everyone else are anything but normal. I hope you haven’t changed just to please me.”
He looked confused. Finally, some who was not afraid to speak their mind. And to me, it was a surprise that she would be what I would have said, annoyed.
“We are normal people, I assure you,” he said.
I shook my head. “This isn’t going to be a very long visit, Dad, so don’t spare the horses.”
“Why, are you not staying for Christmas day?” My mother decided to chime in.
“After the last time, what do you expect. I doubt much has changed in ten years. I expect that by the time I get to Leo and punch his lights out, you’ll be asking me to leave.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that.”
“Perhaps, then I suggest you talk to your favourite son. The one I really feel sorry for is Tom. He has to endure the bastard all year round.”
I could see Tom skulking in line, but there was no sign of Leo. Probably he forgot I was arriving and was trying to make out with one of the staff. Maisie was there, waiting, anxiously looking for her miscreant husband.
“Well, even if you are not pleased to see us, we are pleased to see you. We would like it to be more than once a year though, now you have a friend.”
“It remains to be seen if she still is at the end of this circus.”
I felt an elbow in the ribs and looked to see that it was Eleanor, not Francine. “Play nice, Alex. I can stick up for myself.”
As we stepped sideways to greet Maisie, Leo came dashing in looking dishevelled, then slowed and smoothed out the wrinkles before stopping in front of Eleanor.
Leo at his best worst self. Maisie groaned.
“Well, what have we here, Alex?” he gushed.
All smiles, he reached out to give her a hug. She stepped back slightly and said, “You would be well advised not to invade my private space, Leo.”
He stopped almost crashing into her. “I’m sorry.” The urbane affable mantle slipped slightly at the rejection, but if I knew anything about him, it was just a minor setback, a challenge to be overcome. “You are Alex’s friend?”
“Girlfriend, yes. Alex’s girlfriend, are you that stupid that I need to spell it out slowly for you so you can understand me.” She said the last words very slowly like she was talking to the village idiot.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Francine grinning like a Cheshire cat.
The whole group had stopped what they were doing, and all eyes were now focused on Leo. He was used to being the centre of attention, but not like this.
“I am not stupid.”
“Fine. Let’s run with that. Who am I?”
“You are Alex’s girlfriend.” He said it quietly.
“Louder, much Louder, Leo. Who am I?”
“You are Alex’s girlfriend.”
“I am.” She looked up and down the line. “Everyone get that?”
She had their unfettered attention. It was a side of her I’d not seen, but it was one I liked. I was hoping to punch Leo’s lights out, but this had kyboshed my moment. She had them all in the palm of her hand.
Everyone nodded.
Then it was back to Leo. “Whoever you were schmoozing before you arrived late, late, I might add to greet your brother, was just simply rude. It’s not the sort of behaviour I would expect from a brother-in-law, so from today, it stops. You can now tell everyone and, particularly, your wife that you will no longer be sleeping with other women.”
“I was…”
“Are you going to add liar to the list of your misdemeanours, Leo?”
She had that look of a woman who didn’t like men who lied or slept around, and I’m guessing that had something to do with her last breakup.
“No.”
“Then…”
He made his apology and promise. It was the biggest humiliation I’d seen him take. I doubted whether it would have any impact on his behaviour, but it was a highlight, nonetheless.
She came back to where I was standing next to my mother, who had been astonished more than anything else.
She looked my hand in hers and I looked at both my father and mother.
“Despite what either of you might think, Alex is not a failure. If you’re looking for utter failures, try Leo. You have spent far too much time pandering to a complete idiot, and in the process, you have ignored the three other children in your lives. I expect this will be the year you address that issue. Yes?”
They got a disapproving glare in their direction, so they agreed. Loud enough that everyone could hear.
“Excellent. Now let’s get on with this meet and greet.”
I saw the meaningful look between Francine and Eleanor and just put two and two together. Eleanor knew far too much about my family for her to pick that up from my briefing, so there was only one other explanation.
“When did you and Francine first meet?”
She smiled. “What gave it away?”
“I belatedly realised the hug at the airport was a little more effusive than a first meeting?”
“It was the first time we met in person, not the first time we talked. She called, I answered your phone, and we clicked. You’re her hero, you know, and would do anything for you. She wanted to shoot Leo, and I had to talk her out of it.”
“I want to kill him too.”
“I know. Now you won’t have to go needlessly to jail over a worthless piece of shit.”
“He won’t change you know.”
“He will. There’s a clause in the will that drives the inheritance. Maisie has filed for divorce, and if it goes through, he’s no longer the heir.”
“Who is?”
“You. But it won’t come to that. Unless he really is that stupid. So let’s not dwell on that loathsome creature. There are so many eccentrics and so little time. Who is that guy that looks like Uncle Fester?”
First drafts are always a little messy. The words spill out onto the page, and any or all of them are rarely perfect. Sometimes you get lucky, but most of the time you don’t.
That’s why there’s revision or by the more dreaded name, editing.
Editing conjures up a lot of different images in my mind, from completely re-writing, to cutting the Mss down in size. Or where you discover the main character’s name has changed from Bill to Fred after a bad night.
Usually, though, as stories progress, they go through several rewrites, and sometimes because of what follows. It depends on how long a period the story is written. Some of mine take days, others quite a lot longer.
This is the rewrite of the first section of the short story I’m undertaking, adding some new details:
Jack was staring down the barrel of a gun.
He had gone down to the corner shop to get a pack of cigarettes.
He had to hustle because he knew the shopkeeper, Alphonse, liked to close at 11:00 pm sharp. His momentum propelled him through the door, causing the customer warning bell to ring loudly as the door bashed into it, and before the sound had died away, he knew he was in trouble.
It took a second, perhaps three, to sum up the situation.
Young girl, about 16 or 17, scared, looking sideways at a man on the ground, then Alphonse, and then Jack. He recognized the gun, a Luger, a German relic of WW2, perhaps her father’s souvenir, now pointing at him then Alphonse, then back to him.
Jack to another second or two to consider if he could disarm her. No, the distance was too great. He put his hands out where she could see them. No sudden movements, he tried to remain calm, and his heart rate was up to the point of cardiac arrest.
Pointing with the gun, she said, “Come in, close the door, and move towards the counter.”
Everything but her hand was steady as a rock. The only telltale sign of stress was the beads of perspiration on her brow. It was 40 degrees Fahrenheit in the shop.
Jack shivered and then did as he was told. She was in the unpredictable category.
“What’s wrong with your friend?” Jack tried the friendly approach, as he took several slow steps sideways towards the counter.
The shopkeeper, Alphonse, seemed calmer than usual, or the exact opposite spoke instead, “I suspect he’s an addict, looking for a score. At the end of his tether, my guess, and came to the wrong place.”
Wrong time, wrong place, in more ways than one Jack thought, now realizing he had walked into a very dangerous situation. She didn’t look like a user. The boy on the ground did, and he looked like he was going through the beginnings of withdrawal.
“Simmo said you sell shit. You wanna live, ante up.” She was glaring at Alphonse.
The language, Jack thought, was not her own, she had been to a better class of school, a good girl going through a bad boy phase. Caught in a situation she was not equipped to deal with.
This story is now on the list to be finished so over the new few weeks, expect a new episode every few days.
The reason why new episodes have been sporadic, there are also other stories to write, and I’m not very good at prioritizing.
But, here we are, a few minutes opened up and it didn’t take long to get back into the groove.
Things are about to get complicated…
We took the underground to Lancaster Gate and parted company before crossing the road and going into Hyde Park. Severin had designated the meeting place as the rotunda, as he called it, in the Italian Gardens.
It was dark, although there was adequate lighting, which made it a good cover for anyone else skulking nearby. And making it easier for Jennifer, who sensibly dressed in black, to scout.
It took my time heading slowly towards the stone building. I was deliberately early so he might not be there yet. In the intervening time I could hear the odd comment from Jennifer, as she looked over the various suspects who were also taking in the aesthetic beauty of the gardens, which would look so much better in daylight.
Oddly enough in all the times I’d been to Hyde Park, these gardens had never been a point of visiting, such was the allure of the pedal boats on the Serpentine.
I did a slow circuit of the building and saw three people seated inside. Two women, together, and a man on one side. It could be him.
“I think he’s already here, just going to check.”
“Nothing stirring out here, so far.”
“Keep alert.”
It was odd hearing a voice almost in my head as if she was next to me.
I came up to the seat in full view of the person sitting on one end of the bench, so as not to alarm them. I could feel their eyes on me as I sat down. If it was him, he would talk to me. I was not going to talk to him.
Something else I noted, there was no direct line of fire from anywhere hidden, so if there was an assassin out there, he would have to do it in the open. Severin had scouted the place earlier.
“You alone?” The man spoke after about three, or four minutes. I’d seen him look around, checking for himself I was not followed.
“As far as I’m aware.”
I moved a little closer. He was talking very softly.
“What happened to Maury?”
“Tortured and murdered by Dobbin I believe. If he knew where the device was, he didn’t give up its location.”
“He wouldn’t. Dobbin you say?”
“As far as I can tell. He was running O’Connell, but you knew that already.” To save time dancing around the truth, and lessen the time being a target I added, “Everyone believes O’Connell is still alive. He didn’t have the device when I searched him. Who shot him?”
“Not us. If he is alive Dobbin must have usurped our cleaners, and spirited him away, which means it’s likely Dobbin has the device.”
“He doesn’t. He co-opted me into his section. O’Connell appears to have done a runner from him too. Did you know O’Connell was on mission to pick up the device from an intermediary?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know that Anna Jacovich was there too?”
“Then you know what’s on the device?”
“I wish I didn’t. Or that you two were security guards at the Laboratory where Erich stole the data. What took so long for him to decide to sell it?
“When he was fired by the company after they lost the military contract. He had no intention of selling it, just getting it into the hands of the public so they would be forced to stop.”
“Except he was killed, and Anna decided she needed an escape plan.”
“Which O’Connell provided by wire transfer. The money’s gone, and the data didn’t arrive. It’s still out there.”
“Who was you boss in all this? Monica?”
“Who. No. It’s….”
I heard the phutt sound of a bullet passing through a silencer, and just caught the edge of the barrel retracting from behind one of the pillars. No need to check him, he was dead, still sitting upright as if nothing had happened.
I got out of the seat and moved towards where the gun had been, trying not to alert the other two sitting on the other side, facing the other way, fortunately.
When I reached the outside, there was no one. A quick scan in the darkness, my eyesight hampered by going from light to dark making images blurry at best.
This book has finally reached the Final Editor’s draft, so this month it is going to get the last revision, and a reread for the beta readers.
…
How many of us would ever get caught up in a dangerous situation in a lifetime?
How many of us have skeletons in the closet that we don’t know about?
I had been thinking about it a lot when I discovered my mother’s previous boyfriend, the man who was the love of her life.
Then, in terms of coming up with an idea for a story, what if she had a child by him that we didn’t know about, a half-brother or sister.
There were many ways of putting a spin on this premise.
Then, in the back of my mind, I remembered a story an acquaintance at works was once telling us over morning tea, that a friend of a friend had a mother who had a twin sister and that each of the sisters had a son by the same father, without each knowing of the father’s actions, both growing up without the other knowing of their half-brother only to meet by accident on the other side of the world.
It was an enormous coincidence.
And we all wondered what the sisters had planned as retribution for the man who had lied to them both.
Of course, it could also be said that they could have spoken to each other long before it came to that, but like a lot of families, small problems become much larger ones when allowed to fester and cause almost unhealable rifts. It had in this case.
Sometimes the backstory can be just as interesting as the story itself.
The flight from Newark via Air Canada to Vancouver is about 5:30pm so we are slated to be picked up by the limousine at about 2:30.
We have to be out of our room by 11am so we decided the day before that on our last day in New York we’d go to the Times Square red lobster. It gives us about three hours to get there, eat, and get back.
It’s always fun packing bags the day you leave, so most of the hard work was done earlier. This time it’s particularly a trial because we have so much stuff to fit into a small space, and weight considerations are always paramount because of the 23kg limit.
Outside is has gone from minus four to minus two in the two hours before we leave the hotel at 11:30, but that’s not so much of a problem because we have a long walk from 56th street to 41st street to warm us up.
At least today it’s not as cold, as it has been previously.
At Red Lobster it’s not difficult to make a decision on what to have, the mix-and-match special, with Lobster alfredo, filet mignon, and parrot island coconut shrimp, with Walt’s special, though what that will remain a surprise until it is served.
To drink, it was the Blue moon beer, wheat type.
For appetizers, we had scones that are supposedly bread but to me are dipped in garlic butter and baked like a scone. Australian style. They are absolutely delicious.
There is an expression a one-drink screamer and we’ve got one, but the truth is the drinks are very lethal. Pure alcohol and ice with a touch of soda.
The meals at this Red Lobster are definitely better than those we had in Vancouver, except for the pasta with lobster I had which was little more than a tasteless congealed mess after it reached the table. This did not detract from the deliciously cooked and served seafood that accompanied it.
All in all, after such a great lunch and the thought of having to walk ten blocks the decision was unanimous to get a cab which took us back to the hotel by a rather interesting, if not exactly the most direct, route. I think the driver guessed we were tourists.
We are picked up at the hotel by a driver in a large Toyota which had enough space for 3 passengers and all our bags. The driver was chatty and being foreign, preferred soccer to the other traditional American sport. Don’t ask me how the conversation turned to sports, but we may have mentioned we went to the ice hockey.
At Newark airport, all I have room for is a glass of burned beer, whatever that means, though it has an odd taste, and a Samuel Adams 76 special which was rather tasty.
Today we are flying in a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner with a maximum of 298 passengers in three classes.
It looks very new even though it is about 6 months old. It has seating of 3 x 3 x 3, and we are in row 19, just behind the premium economy cabin, and the closest to the front of the plane of all the Air Canada flights.
Engine startup is loud at the lower revolutions with the vibration going through the airframe. Like all planes, the flaps being extended, it is very noisy. All of the vibrations go away when the engines are up to speed. On take off the engines at max are not as noisy as other planes and are relatively quiet. It will be interesting to see what the landing is like.
In-flight when not experiencing turbulence the ride is very smooth and reasonably quiet which is better than the other planes with seeming continuous engine whining and the flow of air past the fuselage.
The seats are comfortable but still just a little small and the middle passenger can be tightly squeezed in if the two on either side are larger than normal. The seats fully recline but the seatback is not completely in your face, and bearable when you recline your own seat.
There are several seats by the toilets that would be terrible on a long-distance flight because the passenger inevitably comes very close to the seat when entering and leaving. As for the toilets, they are larger than any of the other aeroplanes, and so too, coincidentally, are the windows.
The plane also makes the same amount of noise when it lands so I’m failing to see what’s so good about it. I’ve also been in an Airbus A350 and those planes are nothing to write home about either.
I suspect the only advantage of having planes is for airlines. Fewer costs and more sardined passengers.
It’s something else I can write off my bucket list.
When we arrive back in Vancouver it’s the same reasonably simple process to get through immigration.
Outside our driver is waiting and this time we have an Escalade picking us up. A very large SUV that fits us all and our luggage.
But…
We were lucky because we were supposed to be picked up in a sedan and the baggage would not have fitted which would have involved one of us taking a cab with the extra luggage.
He was in the neighbourhood and picked up the call. His advice, called the service and request a bigger car and pay the difference. We did. It was going to cost another 20 dollars.
As for the hotel, what is it with hotels and late-night arrivals? We get in, the check-in was smooth, we get to the room. Very large with a separate bedroom. But only a sofa bed.
It was not a desirable option, not before 24 hours in relatively squashed plane seats, so it necessitated a change of rooms to one a bit smaller, but a corner room with a reasonable view, and two proper beds.
Late night, need rest, but we have free breakfast so there will be no tarrying the next morning. We have to be down by 9am being Sunday.
Besides, we have a mission. There is a toys-are-us nearby and it does have the toy we want. All we need to find is a cab.
In any investigation, suspects can have the means and the opportunity, but often it’s hard to find a motive.
And until you start scratching below the surface, there can be a point where the perpetrator can begin to believe they’ve got away with it. Especially when there are so many other convenient suspects.
The first clue, if it could be called that, is that Agatha was slowly poisoned. It was not something she would be overly aware of, other than the perpetual fatigue, nor was it a poison that would show up in the run-of-the-mill blood tests.
You have to be looking for a very specific substance, and even then, it’s difficult at best, because it is often used for heart troubles.
Fatigue is generally treated as fatigue. Doctors do not often look beyond the obvious and prescribe something they believe will fix the problem. That, of course, is rest.
The thing is, what happens to Agatha was not meant to be part of the ‘punishment’. She was simply supposed to be removed from her position of running her charity, to take time away while others ran it, using the organisation as a cover for another purpose. Once.
50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.
They all start with –
A picture paints … well, as many words as you like. For instance:
And, the story:
Have you ever watched your hopes and dreams simply just fly away?
Everything I thought I wanted and needed had just left in an aeroplane, and although I said I was not going to, i came to the airport to see the plane leave. Not the person on it, that would have been far too difficult and emotional, but perhaps it was symbolic, the end of one life and the start of another.
But no matter what I thought or felt, we had both come to the right decision. She needed the opportunity to spread her wings. It was probably not the best idea for her to apply for the job without telling me, but I understood her reasons.
She was in a rut. Though her job was a very good one, it was not as demanding as she had expected, particularly after the last promotion, but with it came resentment from others on her level, that she, the youngest of the group would get the position.
It was something that had been weighing down of her for the last three months, and if noticed it, the late nights, the moodiness, sometimes a flash of temper. I knew she had one, no one could have such red hair and not, but she had always kept it in check.
And, then there was us, together, and after seven years, it felt like we were going nowhere. Perhaps that was down to my lack of ambition, and though she never said it, lack of sophistication. It hadn’t been an issue, well, not until her last promotion, and the fact she had to entertain more, and frankly I felt like an embarrassment to her.
So, there it was, three days ago, the beginning of the weekend, and we had planned to go away for a few days and take stock. We both acknowledged we needed to talk, but it never seemed the right time.
It was then she said she had quit her job and found a new one. Starting the following Monday.
Ok, that took me by surprise, not so much that it something I sort of guessed might happen, but that she would just blurt it out.
I think that right then, at that moment, I could feel her frustration with everything around her.
What surprised her was my reaction. None.
I simply asked where who, and when.
A world-class newspaper, in New York, and she had to be there in a week.
A week.
It was all the time I had left with her.
I remember I just shrugged and asked if the planned weekend away was off.
She stood on the other side of the kitchen counter, hands around a cup of coffee she had just poured, and that one thing I remembered was the lone tear that ran down her cheek.
Is that all you want to know?
I did, yes, but we had lost that intimacy we used to have when she would have told me what was happening, and we would have brainstormed solutions. I might be a cabinet maker but I still had a brain, was what I overheard her tell a friend once.
There’s not much to ask, I said. You’ve been desperately unhappy and haven’t been able to hide it all that well, you have been under a lot of pressure trying to deal with a group of troglodytes, and you’ve been leaning on Bentley’s shoulder instead of mine, and I get it, he’s got more experience in that place, and the politics that go with it, and is still an ally.
Her immediate superior and instrumental in her getting the position, but unlike some men in his position he had not taken advantage of a situation like some men would. And even if she had made a move, which I doubted, that was not the sort of woman she was, he would have politely declined.
One of the very few happily married men in that organisation, so I heard.
So, she said, you’re not just a pretty face.
Par for the course for a cabinet maker whose university degree is in psychology. It doesn’t take rocket science to see what was happening to you. I just didn’t think it was my place to jump in unless you asked me, and when you didn’t, well, that told me everything I needed to know.
Yes, our relationship had a use by date, and it was in the next few days.
I was thinking, she said, that you might come with me, you can make cabinets anywhere.
I could, but I think the real problem wasn’t just the job. It was everything around her and going with her, that would just be a constant reminder of what had been holding her back. I didn’t want that for her and said so.
Then the only question left was, what do we do now?
Go shopping for suitcases. Bags to pack, and places to go.
Getting on the roller coaster is easy. On the beginning, it’s a slow easy ride, followed by the slow climb to the top. It’s much like some relationships, they start out easy, they require a little work to get to the next level, follows by the adrenaline rush when it all comes together.
What most people forget is that what comes down must go back up, and life is pretty much a roller coaster with highs and lows.
Our roller coaster had just come or of the final turn and we were braking so that it stops at the station.
There was no question of going with her to New York. Yes, I promised I’d come over and visit her, but that was a promise with crossed fingers behind my back. After a few months in t the new job the last thing shed want was a reminder of what she left behind. New friends new life.
We packed her bags, three out everything she didn’t want, a free trips to the op shop with stiff she knew others would like to have, and basically, by the time she was ready to go, there was nothing left of her in the apartment, or anywhere.
Her friends would be seeing her off at the airport, and that’s when I told her I was not coming, that moment the taxi arrived to take her away forever. I remember standing there, watching the taxi go. It was going to be, and was, as hard as it was to watch the plane leave.
So, there I was, finally staring at the blank sky, around me a dozen other plane spotters, a rather motley crew of plane enthusiasts.
Already that morning there’s been 6 different types of plane depart, and I could hear another winding up its engines for take-off.
People coming, people going.
Maybe I would go to New York in a couple of months, not to see her, but just see what the attraction was. Or maybe I would drop in, just to see how she was.
As one of my friends told me when I gave him the news, the future is never written in stone, and it’s about time you broadened your horizons.
It’s always a given that whatever city you stay in unless it’s overnight, you go on a tour and see the sights.
Even when you’re staying a short distance from the city, you may make the effort to catch a train or bus, then get on the hop on hop off tour. There’s always one in just about every city you visit.
Vancouver was no exception.
Except…
We arrived in the rain, went to sleep while the rain came down, woke up to the rain, and a heavy dose of jet lag or perhaps it was more that we had spent 24 and a half hours traveling from Brisbane to Vancouver via Shanghai.
We had an excellent view out the window of our room looking towards the shopping mall, and the steady falling rain.
I felt sorry watching the construction workers on the building site that was the main vista we had to look at.
It could have been worse. Endless mountains with snow on them.
What to do. Venture out in the rain and go on the tour, on pop over to the shopping mall and pick up a few boxing day bargains, no, sorry, boxing week bargains.
We have had some experience going on hop on hop off tours in open-top buses in the rain. And the last time was not a pleasant experience, even though we learned a valuable lesson, not to stand in front of a cannon and yell ‘fire’. Apparently, that’s how Admiral Nelson lost his arm.
But…
The shopping mall won.
We’d wait and see if the weather improved. Hang on, isn’t Vancouver near Seattle and doesn’t it rain 300 days of the year?
Not holding my breath.
I feel sorry for the construction workers again. Still raining, still cold, and still no reason to get out of bed.
Day 2 in Vancouver turned out to be the same as day 1.
Hang on, there’s a development.
We’re on the 16th floor and up at those lofty heights, we can see not only the rain but intermingled with it a few flakes of snow.
Whilst we procrastinate about what we’re going to do, the snowflakes increase into small flurries.
Yep, we’re off to the mall again and go for a walk in the snow.
On the way back we drop into the Boston Pizza, which has a sports bar and there you can sit, drink, eat, and watch the ice hockey, or whatever sort is going at the time.
Today it’s a junior ice hockey tournament, but Canada was not playing. Just the same, a long cold beer and ice hockey? How close to heaven is that?
I can now cross that off the bucket list.
Day 3, we’re going on a great rail journey, well, we are going to get the train to the city and collect the rental car, a car on the booking form that was supposedly a Jeep Grand Cherokee or similar.
Of course, ‘or similar’ are the words to be feared here because in truth the rental company can throw anything at you, so long as it matches the brief, three people and three large suitcases.
And, you guessed it…
The ‘or similar’ got us a Fort Flex.
Sounded like some place where exhausted soldiers were fending of the Indians in a last ditch battle.
Perhaps one or two too many American movies I think.
