Deborah Makarios – Page 146

August 16, 2017

An Inconvenient Inheritance

“But you can’t just leave me in the street with an elephant,” Adrian protested.
“Why not?” enquired the carter simply.

“But I can’t take her in there,” said Adrian wildly, gesturing at Mrs. Dredge’s six foot square front garden. “She won’t fit, for one thing… and she’d tread all the plants down.”
“Ar, you should ‘ave thought of that before you ordered ‘er,” said the carter.
“But I didn’t order her. She was left to me by my uncle,” said Adrian, reflecting as he said it how very unlikely the whole thing sounded.
“‘E couldn’t ‘ave liked you very much,” said the carter.

from Rosy is My Relative by Gerald Durrell

August 14, 2017

Aunts vs. Uncles

“It is no use telling me there are bad aunts and good aunts. At the core, they are all alike. Sooner or later, out pops the cloven hoof.”

Thus did Bertie Wooster condemn the genus aunt in The Code of the Woosters. Admittedly, uncles come in for a certain amount of censure too – the 5th Earl of Ickenham, aka Pongo Twistleton‘s Uncle Fred, is a notable example. But never do we find the wholesale condemnation of aunts repeated on the avuncular side.

What do you think: on the balance of things, is it aunts or uncles that are “a menace to one and all”?

August 12, 2017

Gargoyle Chips Report IV

Progress this week?

Nowt. Zero, zip, zilch, nada. Nothing.

Assuming we’re talking about chipping away at gargoyles, that is. I did a whole heap of other things, many of which were large and tiring jobs, which is probably why no progress on the gargoyles. I tend to do most of my non-portable handwork in the evenings, relaxing as my husband reads aloud. This week, the evenings were more fit-in-one-more-job-and-then-crash. Or sometimes just crash, minus the job.

So not an overwhelming quantity of good news at this end. How are your gargoyles going? Still chipping away?