24th May 2020
From off the cutting room floor.....
A gusty, blustery Cornish wind rocked
the campervan all night, and did funny things with a metal joint in the pop-top
above our heads, the ‘wasp’ thing we heard during the night about a week ago.
But last night we discovered that, under a steadily increasing range of Cornish
coastal wind strengths from the right direction, it actually has an entire
vocabulary of noises.
It starts with a gentle mosquito
impression .... (dzzzzz dzzzzz dzzzzz) .... adds a bumble bee as the
breeze picks up .... (bozzzzmm bozzzzmm BOZZzzzmm) .... then goes to
blowfly-in-death-throes .... (RUZZZZ RUZZZZ RUZZZZ) .... next, as the
wind touches Force 3, the drone of a bagpipe cuts in .... (SKROWWLL ROWWLLL
YOWWWLL ROWWLL) .... on into frantic bursts of demented clarinet as the van
wheels begin to lift off the ground .... (SWWWEE-EEEEE-EEEE-EEEEKK!!)
.... and finally goes supersonic in the dog-driving-crazy range.
A thousand cocker spaniels in a thirty
mile radius would’ve had a bad night last night. All about 2am. Same as us.
– from “Haggis And Silver Birch Wine”
Joey says, pointedly...
“You were always Nan’s favourite. And
Dad’s. And Rebecca was given away and made into a princess, so she was THEIR
favourite. I wasn’t ANY-one’s favourite.”
Jemma doesn’t say anything for a while,
but then...
“You were MY favourite,” and Joey looks
away, but with the hint of something, around her eyes, a reluctant pleasure
maybe.
“I don’t snore!” (indignant)
“Look,” (exasperated), “Take a sheet of
three-ply, chop a bit out of the very middle, and get someone to hold it up in
the air while you slowly pull a length of barbed wire back and forth through
the hole. You sound something like that. It’s hard to ignore. It vibrates the
window glass.”
“Ah, bullshit!”
“Just ask the pilot!”
- extract from “Pilgrim’s Hotpot”