tales from the town

Tales From The Town #161: Stinkhole

“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.

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Notes:

1. Written on May 19th, 2024

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Tales From The Town #159: A Stupid List Of Stupid Things

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)

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Tales From The Town #158: The Witch’s Birthday

She didn’t see anyone all day, and that was how she liked it.

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Notes:

1. Written on May 15th, 2024

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Tales From The Town #157: A Postcard From The Depths Of Space

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!”

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Notes:

1. The space poem was written on May 10th, 2024
2. And the rest was written on May 14th, 2024

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Tales From The Town #156: Film Studies

Int: The Kitchen (evening)

“Urgh,” said Claire. “I thought being off school on my own would be fun, but it wasn’t fun at all. It was awful!” She stamped her feet so hard to emphasise her point the water in the cat’s bowl rippled ominously. “Mum made Anna look after me because she was too tired and so I had to sit up there in Anna’s stupid room watching all these stupid films she watches at her stupid college for stupid students like stupid her! I’d have had more fun at school!”

“Anna’s not a student at college,” Ethel said. “She’s a postgrad at university.”

“I don’t know what any of that even means, Ethel,” said Claire. “You don’t even know what any of that even means. No one knows what any of that even means!”

“I know what it means,” said Tina.

“Yeah, well you would,” Claire said furiously, contemptuously, and also slightly contradictorally.

“I can’t believe you tricked Mum into letting you have the day off school, spent it watching films with Anna, and you’re still somehow angry about everything,” Tina said.

“I can,” Ethel said.

“You can’t,” said Claire, more out of habit than anything else. “And you’d be furious too if you’d had to watch that weird awful stupid nonsense with Anna. I mean, those films were so weird. So weird.”

“How weird?” asked Ethel. “Weird how?” asked Tina.

“There’s nothing wrong with being weird,” said Daniel, bouncing his hard boiled egg against the floor, up onto the wall, and back into his hand.

“There is,” Claire said. “This film was so weird it was made LAST CENTURY!”

“That’s not weird, Claire,” Tina said. “It’s just old.”

“It’s pretty weird if you think about it,” said Claire. “We weren’t even alive then! And Mum would only have been our age!”

“That’s still not weird,” Tina said.

“Nanny would have been Mum’s age,” Claire said.

“Claire, we know how time works,” Tina said. “Even Daniel does.”

“Yeah, so?” Claire said. “And it was in GERMAN!”

“That’s not weird, either, Claire,” Ethel said.

“It is!”

“It’s just… not,” Ethel said, shaking her head.

“And then it was just the same film over and over again!” Claire shouted. “Time kept repeating and this weird old german woman in this weird old german film just kept having to save herself over and over again! Why would you even watch that? What’s the point? Why didn’t she just do it once instead of over and over again?”

“Because – ”

“AND we didn’t even have any popcorn,” said Claire, finally getting to the heart of the problem. “Or ice cream. Or a chocolate bar. Or biscuits. I had to have carrots for lunch. And an apple!”

“I had yoghurt for lunch,” said Daniel. “And two oranges!”

“Shut up, Daniel,” Claire said. “And I bet they were satsumas. No way could you eat two oranges.”

“I could,” said Daniel.

“He did,” Tina confirmed. “One of them was yours.”

“So?!” Claire said. “What’s that got to do with films?”

“Maybe it’s symbolic,” Tina suggested.

“Maybe you’re symbolic,” Claire snorted.

“If anyone’s symbolic it’s you,” Ethel snapped.

“You don’t even know what symbolic means!” Claire shouted. “No one does. Especially not Daniel!”

She grabbed his stupid hard boiled egg and threw it into the bin so hard it bounced straight back out of the bin and into Daniel’s hand like magic. So then Claire kicked the bin over instead because that’s what she should have done in the first place.

“What’s any of this got to do with Daniel?” Tina asked.

“EVERYTHING!” Claire absolutely screamed as loudly and as wildly as she could directly into the camera. “EVERYTHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!”

CUT

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Notes:

1. Written on May 13th, 2024
2. This one was originally just going to be called This Film Is Old
3. But then I forgot and called it something else instead.

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(Ko-fi contributors probably only get the gratitude I'm afraid, but please get in touch if you want more).

Thank you!