Jax Burgoyne Writes

I have decided to call this A Study in Cream.  It was either that or Moles in Bathooms?  But that's a big ambiguous because by moles I mean the animals not the things on our bodies (that are occasionally cancerous).  And it does rather Give the Game Away too.  Obviously this whole paragraph therefore does - Give the Game Away - but I've decided to instead call it Suspense (the effect, not this story): why are these moles found in bathrooms/WTF?

My brother Rob/Bob was back from Kenya for two weeks so the whole family spent three days in the Lake District.  Mum and Dad got there first - the day before.  Tom (other brother) drove Rob and I up from Peterborough (well, near there).  (At the beginning of this, although in the middle of my own journey from Norwich, there was a cup of tea and toast in Tom's house, during which I managed to knock over a mug and break it.  This reminded me of when Rob came to visit me and almost immediately bummed a bowl onto the floor - smash!)

When we arrived I said, "Where is the house?  Unless it's that shed over there."  It was the shed.  A prefab holiday home next to the King George the Sixth and owned by that pub.  You could actually fit five, six or even seven people in it.  It was all we needed.

We like playing cards, so we played that a lot - that and the dice game, which is great fun, and the second evening we started with Racing Demon and then moved onto Scat (nothing dodgy - we just call it that).  I was sitting in one of the low grey garden chairs (some of the real chairs were broken) with a cream and brown tube cushion wedged behind me to try to 1. Make my back hurt less (cream futon NOT comfy) and 2. Help me reach the table.  White plastic kettle had been boiled - Dad and I had tea.  Mum, Rob and Tom had decaffinated (aka pointless) stuff because it was past their tea-shed.

Now Scat is a game of speed.  It's like Uno but better because it has jumping in.  We like to talk when we play - not conversation but 'smack talk' - or our version of it.  It's not rude; its creative expressions of annoyance include 'You gherkin!' and victors might say something like 'Laughing out the other side of your face now, aren't you.'  The Scat cards are carefully chosen: they are cheap and old.  Proper cards eventually graduate to become Scat cards.  You don't use new or nice ones because they frequently get bent when hands clash during an overenthusiastic or contested jump-in.  They are sticky because of years of sweaty hands holding them and also because (with the particularly old sets) Nanny used to say "I can't get these cards apart," lick them, then deal.

So, why have I decided to call it A Study in Cream?  Well, as well as the cream futon and white kettle (close enough) there were cream dice and cream prefab walls with cream plastic blinds and they grey garden chairs had whitey-cream mesh.

To be continued....

(Not a continuation from the previous tale.)
On my 28th birthday we acted like children.  Alcohol was there, but we probably would have anyway: when you get to a certain age you either face it or regress.  Plus I was in a big house with lots of nooks and crannies.  3 floors.  Cupboards.

So at about midnight the lounge was deserted.  Bright orange (cheese-puff orange) flavoured Doritos in a bright pink mixing bowl.  Squash-like wine-based drink in a few cups (most other things empty).  The laptop was quietly singing Tracks of My Tears, and then moved onto The Beastie Boys.  The room was still - just the laptop singing and a few crisp bits working their way into the corners of the pastelle and weirdly-lumped sofa.

But you could also hear a few footsteps - almost padding around except a few decibels louder than quiet because of the pink, red and white wine and the pond-green cider.  And voices crap-whispering, "Where is she?"  (You know how when you're drunk you think putting on a husky voice makes it quiet.)

I was under my big white rectangle-with-a-curved-end desk that my dad made for me years ago.   I was behind some hideous red white and grey spotty boxes.  And behind my fraying black wheelie chair.  And I couldn't stop doing a little Muttley-laugh.  Hee hee hee hee.

That's what gave me away.