(listed in order of loudness/pleasantness)
Birds
Bees
Insects
Whispering
Giggling
Swing creaking
Trampolene squeaking
Distant laughter
Not so distant laughter
School sportsday cheering
Car stereos (in passing)
Neighbour’s radio (in perpetuity)
Hoovers
Lawnmowers
Strimmers
Hammers and/or drills
Motorbikes
Ice Cream Van
Claire
__________
Notes:
1. Written on May 20th, 2024
__________“And where do you think you’re all going?” Claire said as she caught the others trying to sneak out of the back door. “You better not be going somewhere without me!”
“Out,” said Ethel. “And you can’t come, Claire. You’re ill off school.”
“Not any more I’m not. It’s the weekend,” Claire said, already putting on her boots. “So where are we going, then?”
“We don’t know,” said Tina.
“We’re just following Daniel,” said Ethel.
“We’re going to see the stinkhole,” said Daniel. “It’s brand new!”
“The what?!”
“The stinkhole!”
“You just made that up, Daniel,” said Claire. “There’s no such thing as stinkholes.”
“We think,” said Tina. “That Daniel means a sinkhole.”
“No, I mean a stinkhole,” Daniel said.” A stinkhole is a sinkhole that stinks. And this stinkhole stinks so much that if you smell it at all you die INSTANTLY!”
“Yeah, that doesn’t sound likely,” Claire said, as she finished tying her shoelaces. “I mean, if everyone died as soon as they smelt it, who’d be around to know that smelling it killed you? Cause everyone that had smelt it would be dead!”
“Ted said,” Daniel said.
“And…?”
“And Ted doesn’t have a sense of smell,” Daniel explained. “So he survived.”
“Oh right, that actually makes quite a lot of sense,” said Claire, putting on her sunhat and following the others out of the door. “I still don’t know why you’re so excited by a hole, though, Daniel. Holes are rubbish. Like the well. Or Dad’s boring cave full of stupid crabs.”
“I dunno,” Daniel shrugged, before finally giving in to all his excitement and sprinting off towards the fields behind the garden that went up towards the cliffs which was where the stinkhole supposedly was. “I just want to see what it smells like!”
“Last one there’s a rotten Claire!” said Ethel, as her and Tina ran after Daniel.
“You can’t see smells, Daniel!” Claire shouted after them, indignantly. “Hey, wait, how are WE going to survive?”
But whatever her misgivings, Claire still trudged off up the path behind the others as they made their way towards the stinkhole and all that it promised to be.
___________
Notes:
1. Written on May 19th, 2024
__________A List Of Things That Are Stupid
Anna
Anna’s room
Anna’s films
Anna’s college
Anna’s fellow students
Being nice (concept of)
Dad’s old junk he left in the loft
Ethel
Everyone
Frogs
Girls who like mermaids
Gretel
Hansel
Hard boiled eggs (in general)
Hard boiled eggs (specifically Daniel’s hard boiled egg)
Lists
Lukas’s old fashioned hair
Mermaids
Nice Dogs (concept of)
Pacifism (in general)
Pacifism (in the specific idea that it would forbid you from kicking footballs)
Poems (in general)
Poems (specifically Tina’s poems)
Poems (unpublished and/or secret)
Poetry (idea of)
Postcards (general)
Postcards (specifically Dad’s postcards)
The idea that maybe Claire is pretending to think poetry is stupid purely because she actually thinks poetry isn’t stupid but she doesn’t want anyone to know that.
The idea that all four children are the same age just because they’re quadruplets (Claire’s the oldest!)
The idea that context and intention change the meaning of words
Rapunzel (character)
Rapunzel (hair)
Rapunzel (plot of)
Rocks
School
Shoelaces
Snow
Things
Tina
Tina’s Car Game That She Made Them Play One Time
Velcro
A List Of Things That Are Not Stupid
Claire
(References: Tale #1; Tale #20; Tale #28; Tale #30; Tale #49; Tale #66; Tale #68; Tale #70; Tale #72; Tale #84; Tale #102; Tale #106; Tale #115; Tale #117; Tale #132; Tale #134; Tale #135; Tale #148; Tale #150; Tale #156; Tale #157; Tale #159)
__________She didn’t see anyone all day, and that was how she liked it.
_________
Notes:
1. Written on May 15th, 2024
__________The Picture On The Postcard
A sea of stars, and in the middle a tiny little spaceship all alone out there in the vast infinities of space
The Writing On The Postcard
Out here in space sleep forms 99% of your life.
The sleep of boredom and tiredness
of stasis
and time dilation
Endless sleep
without even the solace of dreams
The Reaction To The Postcard
“That postcard came from space!” said Daniel. “That is so cool.”
“I don’t think it actually came from space, Daniel,” Tina said.
“But imagine if it did!”
“I think it just came from wherever all these other postcards keep coming from,” Tina said, as she held up the other ones they’d received on and off for a few weeks now, about things like mysterious towers, abandoned shops, cats, castles, forests, days.
“Maybe they also came from space,” Daniel said hopefully.
“Nothing came from space, Daniel,” Ethel said. “Not unless Nanny sent us some liquorice from the moon again.”
“Well they must be coming from somewhere,” Daniel said, thinking as hard as he could. “And… from someone!”
“Very cleverly deduced, Daniel,” said Tina.
“But I wonder who they’re from…” Daniel pondered, ponderously.
(“They’re from Dad, aren’t they?” Ethel said, quietly. “Definitely Dad,” Tina said even more quietly somehow.)
“I suppose we’ll never know,” Daniel finally concluded. “It’s a mystery.” He looked at the latest postcard again one last time (definitely his favourite postcard). “A space mystery!”
“Dad’s dead,” Claire said, stomping into the room from wherever it was in the house she’d been stomping about before. “And his postcards are all stupid.” She snatched them up out of everyone’s hands. “And I am ILL!” She threw them all on the floor and stamped on them. “And this is the worst week ever!”
___________
Notes:
1. The space poem was written on May 10th, 2024
2. And the rest was written on May 14th, 2024