A Six-Word Story
She was teary………………………………………
He offered…………………………………………..Claritin!
image from clip art
The Quirky Life of P
Humor and satire revolving around Mr P- a fictional mix of an avatar of Mr Bean and the veritable Bertram Wooster of Wodehouse fame.
Archive for the month “April, 2014”
On Neighbourly Expectations and a Fishing Expedition
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All those who have read this blog,please don’t be mad at me. Re-blogging this from an earlier post as it seemed relevant to the prompt.
Apparently it is not one of the simplest of expectations to have good neighbours…. at least not for Mr P. He was pondering on all the expectations he had had about his neighbour and it was so maddening how most of them were dashed to smithereens:
- Mr P had expected his neighbour to be artistic but every time P had played his violin, his neighbour seemed to get into a car and rush off somewhere instead of staying at home and lending an appreciative ear. Mind you, this was after P had taken special care to get to the open window closest to his neighbour, when he played the violin, so as to give his lonely neighbour some entertainment.
- He had expected his neighbour to be altruistic but he was sadly disappointed. There was a time when P had tried to squeeze park his car in the common drive-way and ended up slightly denting his neighbour’s car. P had expected his neighbour to say in all good neighbourliness and bonhomie, “Don’t you worry about that teenie-weenie scratch, my lad.” Instead, he just received grave looks and a bill to foot at that!
- There were the times when P merely peered through the curtains to see who his neighbour’s guests were, and caught disapproving frowns directed in the general direction of the windows behind which he stood. P had expected his interest and concern, about the guests that visited his neighbour who lived all alone, would be understood and applauded. But no, the quaint neighbour was totally of a different mind!
- P remembered the totally unexpected dressing down he got from his neighbour one other time as well. It was not the way you would have expected to be treated, when you hopped next door to commiserate with your neighbour who was back home from hospital after a stomach wash. Always willing to help people out, the previous day P had given his neighbour some basil leaves from the garden to make a herbal remedy for his cold. Granted P had forgotten about the liberal dusting of insecticide he had given those plants for his fire-ant problems. (https://avatarofmrbean.wordpress.com/2012/02/26/holy-basil-a-version-of-mr-bean-as-a-good-neighbour-and-fire-ants/
- To talk about adding salt to wound, P could not believe the reaction he got from his neighbour when a week later, P threw some smelly anchovy over the fence to feed his neighbour’s cat. It was true that he wanted to get rid of the anchovy meal he had bought a load of, but P thought the cat would have enjoyed it. The neighbour just decided to be a spoil sport.
- The thought of fish brought another incident to mind, where his neighbour had fallen far short of P’s expectations. He remembered the ridiculous birthday present from his neighbour. P had had a lot of expectations about his birthday presents from family and friends, and most of them, if not all, never came true. The jovial person that P was, he usually took things in his stride and whistled through his disappointments. On his last birthday, his neighbour had given him his best wishes and a neatly gift wrapped package over the fence. This was the first ever birthday gift from his neighbour and he opened the package with “Oohs” and “Ohs” to show his appreciation. P, however, could not help his sudden in-drawn breath of shock from escaping and the dip in enthusiasm from reflecting on his face… The present his neighbour had given him was a book titled “Old Man and the Sea”, by somebody named Earnest!
Remembering the book now, P went to hunt it down. He had solely used the book as a lid or coaster for his tea-cup. Now that it was Easter holidays, P had some time on his hands and decided to leaf through the book. Flitting through the blurb his intelligent mind could pick out that it was all about a fellow who went to fish and caught nothing for a long, long time… till he finally caught a big one. P considered himself to be quite an intellectual, but he could not make any sense of the book. Only the theme of fishing stuck to his mind. After a few bored yawns, P decided to put the book down and set into some sort of action. P wanted to go fishing.
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Sitting by the pier his fishing rod cast well into the sea, he whistled merrily. He expected to reel in a heavy load to feed himself, his neighbour and the cat. It was a bit late in the evening by the time he had got to the beach, but he was hopeful of making it back home early enough to cook a good meal for dinner. He watched as others reeled in fish after fish and P smirked! “Well wouldn’t they just be flabbergasted seeing the big ones he would be reeling in soon?” he thought… Hours went by and the wind began to get icy cold. Still hopeful, P held on to his rod moving it around a little bit occasionally.
P saw that others who had been fishing nearby leave as the darkness settled in, and soon, he was the only one left on the pier. P held on for a couple of hours more till he could not stop himself shaking from the cold. Finally his expectations frozen, he decided to call it a day and pulled in his reel. He looked at the hook, wishing he could find one of the gill-bearing aquatic craniates hanging on to it. Alas! He could not find even a bit of bait left on the hook. This set him wondering… Had the big fish eaten the bait, cleverly avoiding the hook? Or, in all his great expectations, had he simply just forgotten to bait the hook?
Pitfalls of cooking…..Quail egg for Easter!
Easter was here and though Mr P felt edgy all the time, today he was feeling quite eggy. P had eaten all the Easter eggs and bunnies he had bought earlier in the week and this Easter Sunday, he was sadly left without any. So, P decided to boil an egg for breakfast. Now, boiling an egg seems to be one of the very simplest of culinary arts and anyone would think that nothing could go wrong with the task. However with Mr P, anything could go wrong anytime! If you were to prepare a list of things you should not do while boiling an egg or things you should not do with a boiled egg, a mere study of Mr P’s endeavours in this direction would provide you with enough and more to build the lists. Experience had not still given him mastery over the technique of boiling an egg and so Mr P had made a note of what not to do when boiling an egg.
1) Do not boil an egg all by itself without the accompaniment of water.
2) Do not boil the water and forget to put the egg in it. Often when Mr P came rushing to eat his breakfast before he left for work there was only boiling water and no gladsome boiled egg waiting for him in the pot!
3) Do not put the egg and water in the pot on the stove, but forget to turn on the stove.
4) Do not put the egg and water in the pot on the stove, turn on the stove and blissfully forget about it for a few hours. Many a charred and scarred pot also would vouch for the importance of this point.
5) Do not crack the shell when you put the egg in the water to boil, unless you do not mind settling for watery egg soup instead of boiled egg.
But today was Easter Sunday and Mr P did not wish to deal with any complicated lists or notes. Luckily he remembered the boiled egg he had stored in the fridge some time ago. “It may be a month since it’s been in the fridge. Not more than that anyways…” guessed Mr P.
P went to get the egg and despite hunting around in his crammed fridge, he could not track it down. “Maybe… Just may be….” he muttered and opened the freezer door. In the freezer Mr P discovered the container he was hunting for and brought it out. He thawed the egg in the microwave oven and opened the lid. P was taken aback! It looked as though his chicken egg had been transformed into a quail’s egg! Miracles seemed to happen this Easter!
………Happy Easter!
Ode to a Cat
Mr P was so happy with his previous poem that he decided to write another one. He wanted to write on animals this time and he thought writing a poem on the feline species would be very neat. He realised that it would be good to watch his subject while he wrote about it. However, Mr P was not inclined to take another trip into the Gir forests (see Mr P, Figura and the lion) or even go and watch lions at the nearest zoo. It was then that he decided to settle for the humbler Felis catus instead of Panthera leo and chose the neighbour’s cat as his prime candidate. Mr P and the cat had a complicated relationship going between them. While the cat liked to sneak into P’s kitchen, especially after Mr P cooked some fish, it preferred to be left alone from Mr P’s doting attentions. Every time Mr P tried to sweet talk the cat to come close to him, it had only given Mr P scornful and disdainful looks, twitched its tail in displeasure, and cat-walked away.
That day, Mr P sneaked in on the cat while it was enjoying a nap in the cool of the veranda, after a sumptuous meal of mackerel from Mr P’s leftover lunch. He slowly sat down near the cat, spread the paper on the floor and took his pen to write.
Yet he was stuck again… He made a few dots and dashes with his pen and a few doodles but no words were penned. Mr P again remembered his writer’s block. There was now no doubt in his mind that he could have been born with it! P made a mental note to talk to his doctor about this at his next appointment. Gathering his thoughts back, he focused hard on the sleeping feline, put his pen to paper, and started to write:
Oh feline so sleek even in sleep,
Your paws huddled and claws withdrawn,
While awake you stealthily creep
To filch my fish and prawn.
In anger your tail whips and lashes,
Whiskers frown, topaz eyes flare
And off you scoot on wild dashes
Every time I spoil your dare.
If more fish on your menu you expect,
Then wipe the disdain off your gaze
And learn to show me some respect
The next time we come face to face.
With these few lines written down, Mr P was tempted into stretching out like the cat on the veranda floor. It was a balmy day and a gentle breeze came flowing in. Mr P was soon giving orations and reciting poems in front of a cheering, awe-struck audience……
But the poor cat began to have nightmares. The loud, jarring sound got to a point where the feline finally woke up, its heart beating in panic. She saw Mr P on the floor. Very loud purring sounds escaped from his nostrils and lips as they quivered rhythmically. With a yowl it dashed away.
Oh, to be a Poet………..
(Thought I’d do a hand-me-down post and reblog one of my earlier posts in answer to the Daily Prompt:-Hand-Me-Downs)
Mr P was excited! He looked at the weekly writing challenge on Daily Post and the theme was Poetry. You had to either compose a poem or write on the topic of poetry.
“Easy Peasy”, thought Mr P.
“What distinguishes poetry from prose?” he wondered as he took up a pen and paper to jot his poetry down.
He racked his brains, and apart from identifying that the lines in poetry were short and rhymed, he could not find many differences. Even with rhyming – (Mr P remembered how he had wandered into a library by chance and had browsed through a modern poetry book) he had not found any rhyme in those poems – let alone reason.
Thirty minutes down the track, with not a single word written, Mr P realised he was stuck. He probably had writer’s block, he thought. Mr P could not pinpoint when it could have started as he could not remember when he had ever written a poem before. “I could have been born with writer’s block!” he presumed.
Despite his frustrations, a few hours later Mr P was proudly reading out his poem, over the fence to his neighbour.
I tried to write poetry
And honestly did I try:
Through the window in front of me,
For inspiration, I eyed the tree;
It was not my Bodhi tree,
Enlightenment didn’t flow in spree.
I looked for answers in the sky
Where a wad of clouds floated by;
No thoughts, no words came wafting down
And I was left looking a clown;
I ogled and googled, all in vain,
Miss Verse was averse, it was plain.
I sipped a glass of drool of moose
And shut my eyes and sat to muse;
I nodded off and fell on the floor,
Knocked my head and back, still sore;
Then Poetry gushed through in galore!
“Don’t you think I write as well as Shakespeare?” Mr P asked his neighbour who now stood with a deeply pained expression.
“I would think that this would make the Bard of Avon cringe in his grave”, said the neighbour.
“Bird of What? Who is that?” wondered Mr P.
Why I Blog and My Goals………….
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Why do I blog? I blog for many reasons, but mainly I do it for pleasure. Even as a child, I used to enjoy telling stories. Growing up in a small town in south India at a time that was very restrictive, especially for girls, books and imagination were my main pastimes. Being the eldest child, I used to be left in charge of my siblings and young cousins at family gatherings. There was neither television nor computer games available those days, and storytelling was the best way to keep the restless souls enthralled and quiet. Later on in life, when I was blessed with my nieces, I continued to enjoy telling stories to them. My stories were entirely fictitious or embellishments of mundane incidents and were funny, scary or sad tales. (Interestingly, the three blogs that I have now are The Quirky Life of P at avatarofmrbean.wordpress.com, Life’s punches at somesadtales.wordpress.com and Scary tales at Scaryevents.wordpress.com).
My happiness in seeing my sisters and cousins laugh on hearing my stories was immense. There was a funny character that I had created and named Unni. Unni was as tiny as a little finger but super intelligent and could play all sorts of tricks on terrifying giants and evil monsters. I was thrilled to see the gleam in the eyes of my avid listeners and I laughed with them when they rolled on the floor laughing at my Unni stories. Don’t you feel that your joy unfurls a thousand petals when there are others laughing with you?
Perhaps I am too much of a dreamer, but if I could make a living through blogging, it would be the icing on the cake. There is no harm in wishing and hoping! To succeed in this goal, I also would like to increase my blog followers. Making a special Facebook page as suggested by a fellow blogger seems to be a good idea and I shall try to achieve that. However, obtaining a big following for the blog on Twitter….. Can it be easily done? I’m not sure.
There now, I have given all the main reasons for my blogging. I know that to keep my blog healthy, I should post at least three times a week. Wouldn’t such restrictions add the pressure and reduce the pleasure of it all? I do not believe in blogging for the sake of blogging but would vouch for blogging by inspiration. Sometimes events, incidents and thoughts that inspire a blog happen in close proximity and, at times, far apart. Some of my posts are on the same day and then I go through months of long dry spells as well.
Now, if I let things continue as such, I may not become a successful blogger. Hence here are my three “laser-focused” goals:
Although I can try to post three times a week, I can promise to myself that I shall post at least once a week.
I will spend at least two hours a week reading the creations of my fellow bloggers and commenting on them.
I will also endeavour to increase my followers by 20 % by October 15, 2014. To achieve this goal, making a special Facebook page for my blog, as suggested by a fellow blogger, seems to be a good strategy and I shall do so.
I wish all my blog classmates of 2014, a wonderful experience at the Blogging 201!
The lady needs help!
Mr P stopped his car. Frantically grabbing his phone, he ran in through the broken fence.
The driver ahead of him had crashed into the vacant land and had not emerged out!
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Mr P reached the car, breathless. His jaw fell open.
The lady was still ……
…………on her cell phone!!!!
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