Pigging Out for Prosperity!

December 30, 2009

An Austrian New Year’s Eve celebration would not be complete without the traditional pink pig-shaped biscuits. A Sylvesterabend (Eve of St. Sylvester) dinner also includes actual pork. If it’s not a ham hock, it’s sausages – which, being fatty, connote fattening wallets. If the past year was unlucky, then the part of the hog to cook was the jowl, supposed to bring about a reversal of fortune. Germanic people tend to pick beef short-ribs as lucky foods.

Italians combine the pork with lentils. In other countries, the legumes of choice are black-eyed peas. This is because during cooking both swell and look like coins; in some cultures they are combined with rice or cereals. Strictly speaking, one ought to eat 365 lentils, black-eyed peas, or grains of rice, in order to “qualify” for a lucky new year. The Italians eat cotechino (boned, stuffed trotter) con lenticchie just after midnight.

Counting, for the Spanish and Portuguese, and their former colonies such as Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico, Ecuador, and Peru, is a matter of months – they pop a grape for each stroke of midnight, and if a grape turns out to be bitter, the month it represents will be so, too. Peruvians insist on taking in a 13th grape for good measure. Rumour has it that this tradition was deliberately begun in 1909, when there was a surplus of grapes in the Alicante region.

Saint Sylvester is credited with having baptized Constantine the Great; and this means that not only is he the precursor of a new year, but also the vanguard of a new Christian era. It is traditional to toast one another with a typical punch on this night.

Dollar bills are called greenbacks and cabbage in slang. This idea is also transposed to the dinner table – and therefore, eating green leafy vegetables (kale, lettuce, spinach, cabbage, or, to stretch a point sauerkraut or coleslaw) that are torn, as opposed to being cut with a blade, is supposed to bring luck for the forthcoming year. The Danish sprinkled their stewed kale with sugar and cinnamon.

Germans have been known to place fish scales, since they look like shiny coins, in their wallets for good luck. By association, eating herring on the stroke of Midnight on New Year’s Eve will bring health, wealth, and happiness. Herring is eaten either as roll mops (marinated and rolled around a pickled cocktail onion) or, when it is of portion side, whole, with salad.

If the very thought of pink biscuits makes your tail curl, you can follow the Greek customs and put some coins into a plain cake – cheating to make sure that there is one in every slice, perhaps.

The pig, however, remains a prime candidate for New Year’s Eve dinners, perhaps because of its corpulent body, a symbol of opulence. In many American states, it is traditional to eat Hoppin’ John, which combines all three principal ‘lucky’ ingredients – pork, beans and greens.

As with minestra, Christmas Log, and other dishes, everyone insists that there is only one correct recipe – his – for Hoppin’ John. If the dish is going to be cooked like the Italian risi e bisi, must the rice and the peas be cooked separately, and combined, or must they be allowed to simmer together for the flavours to mingle better? Should tomatoes be added to the pot, or must they be purred into a pouring sauce consistency? Or must they be chopped, and raw? Must the peas be mushy, or must they have bite? Is it wrong to use a Dutch oven, a wok, a pressure cooker, or anything else except the traditional cast-iron skillet? If you are using chitterlings, must they be cooked separately, or should you begin with them and then add the rice, and later, the peas? May one use processed peas? The questions go on – and on.

Why Does NORAD Track Santa?

December 28, 2009

Once upon a time, there was CONAD (The American Continental Air Defence Command). Since 1958, this has been known as NORAD (The North American Aerospace Defense Command).

Included in the nitty-gritty that was part and parcel of the workload of the former, passed on to the latter, is literally and figuratively a flight of fancy.

NORAD is responsible for tracking Santa’s Flight across the skies. This will take him past Mount Fuji , 100 times faster than a 500 series Shinkansen bullet train, and also to Britain, France and Switzerland – but for some reason he does not fly across the Mediterranean. This began through whimsical happenstance. There was a Sears Roebuck and Company advertisement with a typo in it. This gave the number of the agency rather than the Santa Hotline one it had been supposed to give.

When a little girl saw the advertisement, in a Colorado Springs newspaper, which said “Hey, Kiddies! Call me direct and be sure and dial the correct number.” She obeyed the instructions. Yet she got through to Colonel Harry Shoup, the Director of Operations on duty on December 24, 1955 at the time. He happened to be the right person in the right pace at the right time. Rather than being officious and telling the child she he had a wrong number, the Colonel, perhaps touched by the innocence of the child, decided to ask his staff for the radar readings of the whereabouts of Santa’s Sleigh. The children who called later were given updates – and so a cute tradition was born.

In 1997, Canadian Major Jamie Robertson took over the programme, and went on the www with it. The idea remains to track Santa as he travels across the skies to deliver presents – not only through the original radar, but through satellite systems as well. Thousands of volunteers staff computers and telephones at Cheyenne Mountain and Peterson Air Force Base in order to answer phones and provide Santa updates live – to children, adults, as well as the media.

This tracking scheme has now achieved cult status; this year, Google introduced its own 2D and 3D Google Earth maps, which indicate Santa’s position on lifelike maps. The NORAD Tracks Santa website www.noradsanta.org offers a service in seven languages – English, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish.

This year, new videos of Santa flying over Zurich, Switzerland; Toronto in Ontario, Canada, and Mexico City, Mexico were added on You Tube. Like all the others, it features a voice-over by a member of the NORAD staff, indicating Santa’s location, and showing the sleigh, complete with Rudolph’s hooter at full brilliance, approaching the city and then slaloming in the air currents over it, accompanied by the familiar jingling bells.
Those who were after a more personalised service, however, could email his team at noradtrackssanta@gmail.com and get updates sent directly to their inbox. There were also several social networking sites offering the service – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and TroopTube.tv.

You can watch Santa’s message here www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ-YkFOfITc, and the one by General Renuart, Commander of NORAD, here www.youtube.com/watch?v=hipMSF5vpA0

Play It Again, Sam: Re-Gifting

December 17, 2009|

You can use the bars of scented soap on your lingerie and stockings. You can use the cheap towels as dishcloths. You can never have enough designer ballpoint pens. You can use the wine for cooking. You can add the jewellery to the tree decorations.

But there are some things that you simply cannot utilize. There is a fashionable third alternative to donating such things for to the nearest charity shop, or dumping them into the closest skip. However, re-gifting is a potential mine-field.

• All re-gifted items must be in perfect condition and unused. Seals of scents and toiletries must not be broken, since this would mean you are giving what you did not like.

• Always check boxes, inside and out, for old cards, scrawled-on dedications, and receipts.

• Anything re-gifted must be in the original packaging. Forget about spraying a chocolate box with metallic paint and filling it with fewer toffees than were contained in the original, bigger one!

• Hand-made items are usually one-of-a-kid and re-gifting them will probably lead to questions about their provenance. Would you bluff it out and say you ordered them?

• If someone discovers you have re-gifted his present, his feelings may be hurt – unless he would have re-gifted it himself, in which case he’d understand.

• If you are re-gifting a heirloom, make sure you indicate this; otherwise a person might think it is simply “old stuff”.

• If you know where your unwanted gift was bought, you may be able to exchange it for another in the same price range, and the re-gifting is then virtual.

• In some cases, such as when you know someone collects certain objects(white soft toys, books by a certain author, angel statuettes), it is perfectly permissible to re-gift items that are bought second-hand, as long as you disclose this before the gift is opened.

• Ironed-out, old wrapping paper shrieks “re-gifting”, especially so when the gift-tag is an out-of-season card cut down to size.

• Never feel obliged to use something, or to keep it in a conspicuous place, because of who the giver is. This attitude trains you how to re-gift with panache.

• Partially-used gift cards are never to be re-gifted. Ask the shop whether they will make out a new one, even if you have to add something to make it a round sum.

• Re-gifting works with some things but not with others – if you are re-gifting personalised stationery or monogrammed handkerchiefs make sure they are suitable for that person.

• Remember that if you are re-gifting because you do not like something, the chances are that the recipient will not, either.

• Some gifts, especially the white elephant type, are easily recognisable; it is better to be safe than sorry when someone gives you a Venus de Milo with a clock in her stomach.

• Sometimes, people re-gift things because they could not be bothered to choose a present. Try and include a re-gifted item, such as a tiny figurine, with your gift-card.

• Think about whether you could sell your unwanted gifts on eBay or to a local shop that takes unwanted gifts, and use the money to purchase new gifts instead.

• Unless it is s known and accepted practice (and something of a joke), always re-gift outside your family and social circle.

• When it comes to books, always go through each page, to remove bookmarks; never re-gift a book with even one dog-eared page.

The Christmas Concert

December 20, 2009|

The hall sounded as if there was the gathering of the clans of chipmunks.
The children could be heard twittering behind the curtain. The faces of a few of the more audacious ones occasionally peeked from the side of the closed stage curtains; if they were lucky enough to spy their parents, they called out.

A scream rent the air in two. One of the girls had sneaked a look – and, seeing the sea of faces below her, was stricken with a dire case of stage fright. Imagine the embarrassment of the parents of this little girl, when they were called over the PA system and asked to go to the back of the hall.
The tot, globules of tears travelling down her cheeks, insisted that she was “too shy” to sing in front of the “thousand people” present. Until that moment, her parents had not known that she had been singled out on account of her perfect Maltese diction.

The show must go on, so the teacher allowed the child to sit on her mother’s lap “for a bit”, hoping that she would pluck up enough courage to join the group later.

The procession of Mary, Joseph, and assorted shepherds had already begun moving up the aisle towards the stage. The hindquarters of the donkey were apparently a day late and a dollar short; the back legs kept moving out of sync with the front ones, and the font legs appeared to be trying to kick the back legs.

The audience sniggered – and the donkey suddenly became a dromedary. “She stinks!” exclaimed the child who had by then been pulled out of her costume. It was a toss-up between the two girls’ mothers to see which of them was the ore embarrassed – but at least, the front half of the donkey was still anonymous.

Of course, by the time the concert had reached the end, the rumour mill had ground far faster, and far more coarsely, than that of God.

The main party, accompanied by hordes of angels (the choir) who had streamed out from the sides of the stage took their positions inside the carefully-marked circles. All went according to plan, until “Gabriel” forgot his lines. “Hey, I’ve got news for you!” he said to the audience. “Christ, Our Saviour, is born in Bethlehem!” The audience, however, only heard the first sentence – they were doubled up in laughter at the second one.
The teacher and her assistants thought they were going to have a collective fainting fit. Things could only get better – or so they thought.

A pool of liquid (unseen by the audience) was quietly but surely collecting at the feet of one of the shepherds. The one beside him pushed him away; and since he wasn’t expecting this, he tumbled against the little girl next to him, who, in her turn, toppled her neighbour, domino-style.

One of the assistants rushed out to take the boy who had wet his pants inside – but this was his first ever fifteen minutes of fame and he wasn’t giving it up easily. There was a slight scuffle, during which he bit the young lady. She yelped, and then lifted him bodily up and took him offstage.

The little girl who had refused to take part in the concert, and had been fast asleep in her mother’s arms, suddenly woke up and, seeing her friends on the boards, for some reason thought that her turn had come. She yawned, rubbed her eyes, and began singing her part.

The teacher grabbed her chance… and going down to the girl, led her gently up the few steps. The closing notes of the song, thought the teacher, could well close the concert.

But this was not to be. The parents all got up to give the team a standing ovation, and the teacher had to open the curtains again and again for no less than four curtain calls – complete with the children who had left the stable scene in the proceedings.

Those of us who were there know it was the best Christmas concert we have ever attended.

Rock On! Who do you say that I am?

http://amazingcatechists.com/2011/11/rock-on-who-do-you-say-that-i-am/

Every so often, television station air series such as This is Your Life or, the latest, who Do You Think You Are? These programs trace the genealogy of the protagonist, researching family backgrounds, ancestral homes, surnames, coats of arms, and anything that could have had a bearing on making the person who or what he is today.

These programs have a solid fan-base, because people tend to be curious about the lives of others – however private they may want their own affairs to be.

Sometimes, it turns out that personalities had convicts, or scientists, or suffragettes, or royalty, – or even lion tamers – in the lower branches of their family trees.  This is what makes episodes of the program interesting; for nobody wants to read about generation upon generation of skullduggery.

Be that as it may, we also use Who do you think you are? as a sarcastic question, when we feel that someone is getting too big for his boots.

“Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He was asking His disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.’ He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’”

Jesus turned the tables on this query when He asked His disciples these two important questions – what people were saying about who He was, and what they thought, themselves. This was an issue they could have been taken for granted – but now, it was time to consider it deeply.  The second one a make-or-break question – it was either that they believed in Him, or that they denied Him and His teachings

Thinking deeply about these questions, we would realize that our replies have a bearing on our values, our lifestyles – and our Hereafter, too. Jesus told us that He and the Father are one. So – we know that He is God incarnate. He was not a guru, or a philosopher, or a prophet… or even a madman, as some would have us believe. Ironically even Satan and his demons believe in the true God.

We cannot cut-and-paste our own views of what He is, on Jesus.  He told us, often enough, who He is. Even as He wrote in the sand, He was showing us that He is The Way, The Truth, and the Life.

Jesus told us that He is holy, when He called for us to be holy, “… for I am holy.” The Bible tells us that Jesus is the Savior, the righteous Judge, the sovereign Lord, and the Living God. John wrote in his Gospel that Jesus was God made flesh.
Peter said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus told Peter that he was blessed, and enlightened by God the Father. This, so soon after Jesus had called him a “man of little faith” when he wanted to set up three abodes for Jesus, Moses and Elijah.

Jesus said that He could forgive sin; this is something only God can do. Just in case anyone doubted that He could, He followed this up with a miracle.  Again, only God can do miracles, and this showed that Jesus was God. However, religious leaders accused Him of blasphemy.

And after the humiliation, suffering, and death on the cross, Jesus rose from the dead, and proved, once and for all, that He is God.

The Interview

https://blog.reedsy.com/creative-writing-prompts/contests/56/submissions/31092/

“You’re hot!” he said, placing his open palm just millimetres away from my face. I moved back involuntarily, and nearly fell backward over a dog that had loped into the room.

He reached out to steady me, and I knew I would feel his grip for a long time.

“Yes… there was an accident at the crossroads, and a traffic snarl-up… I didn’t want to be late, so I ran all the way down the avenue, since I did not want to be late; I’d love a glass of cold water please.” One sentence. The News Editor would have had my head if he’d heard me.

I blushed and put my hand over my mouth. This was the second time I’d met him face-to-face, and the first time I’d been to his house. I hoped he didn’t think I was too forward.

But if I was to ghost-write his autobiography, in the little time he had left, it was as good a way as any to break the ice… “I don’t drink water. I only have orange juice and white wine in my fridge. Which would you prefer?”

I had regained a bit of my composure. “I don’t drink on the job…” I smiled, thinking that if I were the flirty type, I would have said “… maybe later.” But I didn’t. Even young, I was an old fuddy-duddy.

Carefully—too carefully—I lined up my pencils parallel with the edge of the table. My spiral notebook, however, I laid at an angle. I’m left-handed, and I find I work better like that.

Peter came back with a beautiful cut-glass tumbler of chilled orange-juice for me, and a mug of white wine for him. My sharp intake of breath must have registered my surprise—because matter-of-factly, he explained that “since the diagnosis” he preferred to use glassware with handles, “just in case.”

I winced. Yet again I was proving that I didn’t even have to open my mouth to put my foot in it. But surely he wouldn’t want intimate details like this to get into the book? I shivered involuntarily as his fingers touched mine. I flipped my notebook open, put the glass on the first page, tore off the thick cover, and placed it on the table, as a placemat for the glass.

“Well, young lady”—he said this with an old-fashioned courtesy and yet a half-smile that stripped it of all formality, “Shall we begin? And if so, where from?”

“I’m easy!” I said, showing off my knowledge of slang, and all too late realising what it meant in “good” English. “I mean, begin from wherever you want and I will edit later. Just tell me what comes into your head. In any case, with your permission I’ll switch on my tape-recorder so I’ll have back-up if I can’t read my own handwriting.”

“Please do. But first there’s something I want to know. Do you listen to radio?”

“Sometimes,” I replied, wondering what this had to do with the interview I was supposed to be doing.

“Typical reply from a person of your age, I guess. How old are you, what, 23? Let me put it another way—what would you be listening to, if you hadn’t come here?”

I glanced at my wristwatch. It was 8.15p.m. “The Chase and Sanborn Hour, definitely. I love Charlie McCarthy—sometimes it’s like he’s the ventriloquist and Edgar Bergen is the dummy! I’ve even bought the Big Little Book! My Mom loves it too, and we try never to miss an episode.”

He smiled. “But today it’s different, isn’t it? I’m sorry you missed it because of me, but there’s something else on, which might interest you. In any case, your Mom’s sure to fill you in. Are you fond of science fiction?”

I had always found Little Green Men—or Huge Slimy Creatures—intriguing, and I said so. “Well, then, this should please you”—and he twiddled the knobs until some music came on. “Listen! That’s Ramon Raquello and his Orchestra…” and sure enough, seconds later the announcer confirmed it, saying they were playing live from New York’s Hotel Park Plaza. Actually, they were playing in a CBS studio, but the acoustics were really good; I mean bad enough to make you think they were in the open air. “This is partly my idea—it’s the Orson Welles’s Mercury Theatre On The Air group adaptation of The War of the Worlds…”

“Oh! I know that story. But that was written over 40 years ago by H.G. Wells, no? We have the book; it used to belong to papa.”

“Indeed? Orson and I were at school together. He bounced the idea of resurrecting it on me, and I suggested some things… Listen to him; he has exactly the right sonorous tone of voice for the ominous news…”

My brain told me there was no question of the “huge meteorite smashing into a New Jersey farm” being true, because I knew the story already. But the broadcast was so realistic that I almost accepted what I was hearing for fact. The purported newscaster was telling us that the aliens did not walk—they crawled….or wriggled, to be more precise, out of the spacecraft. “It glistens like wet leather. But that face – it…it is indescribable.” Those were his exact words. Brrrr…

And then it began. Someone tooted a car horn. In an instant, the air was filled with a cacophony of drivers blowing their horns. There were sounds of shouting and panicked screams, and cars’ headlights made it look like day again.

The penny dropped. “I think people are really believing what they are hearing on radio!” I said.

I didn’t even realise, at that moment, how privileged I was, not being one of them.

It is said hundreds of people required medical treatment for shock and hysteria, and that many died in the stampede, or of heart attacks. Not everyone joined in the exodus, however. Some people hid in cellars, taking down blankets and food and those emergency radios that work with a dynamo that has a handle, rather than batteries…as well as loaded guns.

We must not forget that not everyone knew how to read at the time, and so radio was welcomed by people, especially in the rural areas, for whom it was their only means of discovering what was going on in the world around them.

Back then, radio was not an incidental background noise like it is today. Radio sets were big, bulky pieces of equipment, sometimes incorporated into furniture. People sat facing them, rather as one sits facing a television set today.

Newspapers later reported that many people—like us—had tuned in after the announcement that a radio play was going to be on—and they got the fright of their lives upon hearing that “the Martians had landed”… the show was that realistic. I still have cuttings that tell how people jammed the emergency lines, asking what they could use as gas masks (and whether soaking towels in water and tying them over their faces would be any good), and which cities were safe, and whether there would be emergency transport.

The newspapers, of course, considered radio an ephemeral parvenu. So they tried to ride on the wave of popularity engendered for it by this show. In order to boost sales they churned out exaggerated reports, with as many “eye witness” accounts as possible.

At the same time, they took the opportunity to pontificate about how irresponsible of CBS Radio it was to have broadcast the play. They wanted to eat their cake and have it.

I asked Peter whether I could use his phone to call the Exchange so Barbra the Operator could contact Mom to tell her I was okay. “Feel free,” he said, “but judging from the ruckus outside, I suspect you might not get through.”

He was right. In my entire career as a journalist, I never had such a weird experience as this. What was supposed to be a routine interview had turned out to be a surreal adventure in which I was practically under siege. “I had thought I would be catching the 10.00p.m. bus home… Mom will be worried sick” I faltered.

“I had already ordered you a taxi. But I doubt whether he’ll turn up.”

 “Oh, how embarrassing! I usually take the bus because…”

“I know. It’s much cheaper. I’ve been there, you know.” How perceptive of him. Actually, I did know that about him, as I knew several other things—such as that he had been a professional dancer. I also knew that his wife had died in a skiing accident when she was with her lover, and that he had a daughter who had inherited his feline grace and teal eyes with gold flecks, pale skin, and good looks. She was a model much in demand in Europe.

Documentaries and books have been written about that night. They even made films and television series. Historians and sociologists admit that the verisimilitude was flawless. Radio would actually work like that in an emergency, with all regular programming aborted, and musical interludes interrupted for official announcements.

Only, these statements were not authentic—but so cleverly done that people thought they were genuine.

And there I was, in the same room as one of the people behind this sensational hoax…which Conspiracy Theorists say was not one at all, and that the alien invasion in Grover’s Mill really happened. Some, these days, still actually believe that what happened in 1938 was just the tip of the iceberg – that the Martians who did come to earth were the vanguard evaluation team for the main taskforce.

Their mission was to assess how far we had progressed physically, mentally, and technologically. “Proof” of this is that the Grover’s Mill Militia had a complement of 38 men in the militia in 1938, of whom only four remained alive in 1988. And there’s more. These people insist that aliens have been visiting Earth for the last 2000 years. The mind boggles.

I read somewhere that the “offspring” of those Reconnaissance Mission aliens, today, still have the innate ability to create technological stuff from ordinary household equipment. That way, they will never raise suspicion by shopping at a hardware store for components of their gizmos. They just buy a food processor and dismantle it to make a radio receiver. You know— the highfalutin’ version of E.T.’s phone—or the device you can make from a computer and a particular device, should you want to commit suicide.

Someone later came up with a theory that the ‘bodies’ of these aliens are structured like those of jelly-fish, and as such, they can osmose into humans, and that in the second, main invasion that happened in 1953, this began happening all over the world.

But of course, all this came later. The broadcast continued. I only caught what I thought was one incongruity, and I asked Peter about it. Why would aliens not target the White House? “That would have cut the story short. What was needed was something that would stretch out the plot and make it more credible.” Ah.

Peter told me that he had suggested that the introduction of the War of the Worlds broadcast on CBS Radio specifically mention that Orson Welles and his team had previously dramatized novels such as The Count of Monte Cristo and Dracula, and that what would follow would be something on similar lines. But people who tuned in late had no way of knowing this. It was scary. It was exhilarating. It was fun.

Later, Michele Hilmes, a communications professor at University of Wisconsin in Madison, wrote in Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, “Audiences heard their regularly scheduled broadcast interrupted by breaking news,” and that, according to him, had been indispensable for the ruse to work. Also, science fiction was a relatively new genre—a sort of glorified Steampunk—and it was gaining popularity. If Mankind could send rockets out to space, couldn’t alien civilizations be doing the same, from their sector of the universe?

Every so often, we heard what sounded like a flip-switch being pressed, some static, as if the power supply was going to go out, and the voice of a “live” reporter bringing us up-to-date with what was happening. It got better—or worse, depending on whether you had swallowed this hook, line, and sinker. Because quite soon, even the radio studios themselves were ostensibly under attack. This, while testimonies from astronomers were read out, indicating that there had been several explosions of “incandescent gas” on Mars. Peter kept cranking the handle of the phone-box, trying to get through to Barbra, and he finally succeeded. He knew the script of the radio-play by heart, anyway, and left me to listen to it, enthralled. He passed me the receiver and I explained to Barbra what was happening. She told me that her switchboard was a Christmas tree, and that it was a good thing that I had called because Mom was all but tearing her hair out.

I could hear a zillion bleeps and buzzes in the background; people kept hoping to contact their loved ones through the Exchange, as I’d done. At the time, anyone who mentioned the possibility of mobile telephony would probably have been taken to the sanatorium!

As it happened, I began spending most Saturdays at Peter’s flat. But for the life of me I cannot exactly pinpoint the first time he kissed me, though heaven knows I have tried.

I’d looked up from my notebook, because he had paused, and for the millionth time my eyes registered the infinitesimally tiny scar at the left of his upper lip. His face moved closer, and my life changed forever.

We shared two glorious, poignant years… His autobiography was published some time before he died; he was housebound by then, and it was only because I knew him so well that I could tell when he was uncomfortable or in pain.

Peter taught me a lot about world politics. He was more au courant of what was happening than I, I am ashamed to say—my only excuse is that I covered national news. In March Adolf Hitler had given an ultimatum to Chancellor Schuschnigg of Austria to resign and allow a new Chancellor of Germany’s choosing to take over—failing which Nazi troops would march into Austria.

Schuschnigg kowtowed, and puppet Dr. Arthur Seyss-Inquart replaced him. He immediately ordered the Austrian army to cede to the German troops when they invaded. Thus, Hitler achieved the Anschluss he was after.

People were on tenterhooks because of this issue, and the developments following it.

So, the icing on the cake was that the War of the Worlds broadcast reminded people of how the Munich Crisis had been covered…. thereby lending it a further aura of truth. People do tend to hear what they want to hear, and some listeners never even realised that the show was about aliens—they thought Hitler had attacked, and assumed that the stuff falling out of the sky came courtesy of the Luftwaffe.

Those of us who have worked in radio will tell you that its pictures are more potent than those of television. This broadcast was in the right (wrong) place at the right (wrong) time to indicate how the media manipulates public opinion. It’s a wonder that people ever brought themselves to trust the news bulletins again, after this happening.

I’m 91 years old now, and I thought it was time you lot knew that not all the things that happen on the eve of Halloween are scary!

One Crow—Sorrow?

The headlines said “One is the Loneliest Number”

But what do the headlines know?

They have never loved and lost.

Just because the song was on Top of the Pops

And someone liked the sound of the words

And hummed the tune

As they two-finger typed the article,

That does not make it true.

Two is lonelier by far.

I know.

I’ve been there, done that

And bought the t-shirts…

One of which still bears his smell

Because he was wearing it

When he died in my arms.

Will I, Won’t I?

https://blog.reedsy.com/creative-writing-prompts/contests/57/submissions/32417/

Real Estate Deeds – check. Jewellery inventory – check. Bank Documents – check. House photo album – check. List of vehicles – check. Monogrammed stationery – check. Chequebook – check. Ballpoints galore – check. Iced coffee – check. Ritz Crackers – check. Spotify on – check.

Being of sound mind… that is my story, and I am sticking to it… I have decided to write this, My Last Will and Testament, which cancels all the others I have written so far.

I know, posthumously and humorously, that most of you gathered here are at loggerheads with one another. I ask you to recall the Will Reading Scene from Will & Grace, where Karen, bless her tinny voice, got to inherit loadsamoney.

You (I am looking at you, Jennifer) always said I was a control freak. Well, a will, together with life-time donations, is how one stays in control over who gets what.

I am not with you to answer your “why did you do it that way” questions, and anyway, it’s none of your business. This will is to make sure that there will be no “Mum said I could have this” stuff (I am looking at you, Kristina); because what I gave each of you, I wanted to give you. None of you will be able to pull wool over the eyes of the rest of you.

I know of cases where the next-of-kin who had Power of Attorney just so happened to inherit the bulk of the assets of the dear departed. (I am looking at you, Charlene.)

In these Covid-19 days, it was difficult for me to get two notaries public and two disinterested witnesses in my house at the same time; but as you can see, I pulled it off, by asking them to stand at the corners of The Great Hall, and providing them with megaphones, just in case one of you (I am looking at you, Laurence) would have protested at the use of cell-phones, saying the call must have been rigged, and disputed it…

So with this Will you have a self-proving affidavit.

I am making this will airtight. I trust my Executor (I am looking at you, William) because never in my life have I known him tell a lie, or be otherwise dishonest.

I am not going to explain unequal bequests – none of you worked for my money and possessions, so you have no call to decide who gets what, after my funeral and the inheritance taxes or succession duties, or whatever they are called when this is being read, have been paid.

This letter of instruction is an integral part of the My Last Will and Testament. It’s like when I used to edit and proof-read simultaneously, to save time and hassle. My idea is to make life easier for you all, and stop the squabbling before it begins. That is why I am including my Bank Account numbers and passwords and where to find the keys to the deposit boxes, on the last page.

I know (I am looking at you, Alessandra) that there might have been the temptation to touch-up, shall we say, the original will, because the “safe yet accessible” place was known to all. Yet, this document is the actual original one – the one in the metal box in the nightwear drawer was a decoy copy.

With this will, I declare that some of the beneficiaries are people who are unrelated to me – people who have touched my life in many ways, and who would have been deprived of what I want to give them (I am looking at you, Stacey) had I died intestate, with only a handwritten note to establish my wishes.

As the testator, I know I have been regarded as eccentric; but you have the evidence that this Will is valid, and not being written through coercion or fraud. My Notaries Public did actually make me remove some derogatory statements contained in my draft (I am looking at you, Fiona)… but that’s water under the bridge.

I have no debts.

Contesting my will (I am looking at you, Carlos) means that you will automatically be disinherited. So will anyone who shows aggro (I am looking at you, Doreen). What was due to you will be auctioned or sold, and the money therefrom will be given to the Charity of Choice of William. I do not want something as crass as a lottery between those who did not dispute the will. In a nutshell – woe betide drama llamas. 

Oh, and – by the way – when I was a teenager, I had a baby. (I am looking at you, Aimee). That is why you are present at this reading. So now you know why I always made it a point to come to your desk at the supermarket, and why I was so interested in the lives of your children, and why I was so happy to see you promoted to Manager. I would like you to know that you look exactly like your father. We couldn’t be together, and at the time, being a single parent was anathema. When you told me that you were adopted, but you didn’t want to search for your birth parents because it would hurt your Ma, I didn’t hold it against you. When she died and you said you look upon me as her substitute, but I wasn’t old enough to be your actual mum, it broke my heart. I did not want to complicate things by telling you, then.

But let’s not digress. I have requested that each of you here be given a copy of this Testament.

I owe no one anything; not as the reference to debts, above, but, to reiterate, I made my own fortune, and it is my prerogative to choose how to distribute it. I know that you hate prosopopoeia (I am looking at you, Gerald) but My Last Will and Testament speaks of what I have accomplished through blood, sweat, and tears.

That having been said, William will now begin reading the pertinent sections of My Last Will and Testament, which I am sure you are all itching to hear…

To my firstborn, Aimee, I leave this mansion and everything in it, including the cars in the garage… 

The Sting

https://blog.reedsy.com/creative-writing-prompts/contests/58/submissions/32911/

I left my boyfriend for him, because he promised me the earth and a bag in which to put it.

But after three years I knew I still yearned for my first love.

“Leave him!” he said, when I reconnected through a false identity, on Facebook. It was not easy. My (ex!) husband owned me – mind, body, soul.

It began to fall into place when I was standing at the sink.

No, no, I tell a lie. It began slightly before that; before there was a power outage. But for the sake of this story, let’s just say that it began after supper.

Just for the record, the first time we met he’d arranged my bangs and the collar of my blouse “just the way he liked them”, and, mea culpa, I never realised it was a symptom of the way that he would try to fix my life – and me – from that moment on. I was enthralled by his attention. The snide comments and hostile criticism came later.

But I digress.

I had spent the morning and part of the afternoon in bed engrossed in the first two books of different series I had won on a television Trivia Quiz – you know, the ones where they ask questions about obscure topics…such as what was the name of the character Liam Neeson played in Taken, and which character was called Horatio, and which character was called Angus and is which series they appeared.

War ‘n’ Wit and Tex, the Witch Boy had…well, bewitched me.

It was getting to dark for me to see to read – so I said to myself I might as well go downstairs and get supper ready.

His one concession to my knee replacement surgeries after my driving accident was to get an elevator installed in the stairwell. That way, of course, I would have no excises to fetch and carry stuff, and to keep the house pristine. He didn’t want “strangers” i.e. a maid, inside the house, and it would have been infra dig for him, had I to work outside the home. So, I ended up somewhere in between a lady of leisure and a housemaid… a glorified housemaid, if you like.

I had not even had breakfast, go figure prepared dinner – and my (ex!) husband was due home in two hours. I realised I would have to move fast to avoid the usual Grumpy Cat running commentary.

So, without even stopping to flex my knees as the physiotherapist had told me to do, I leapt out of bed and whipped the quilt into place, and changed my clothes. I would wash and fix my hair while the food cooked, in the downstairs bathroom.

I pushed the button for the lift door to open, and walked in.

Midway through the descent, it stopped. Just what I needed, a power outage. I screamed, not because I wanted someone to hear me and save me, knight in shining armour style, but because I was frustrated.  

All lifts are supposed to have a facility that takes you to the next floor down, and opens the door automatically – but this lift was only for one floor, so we had never bothered to check whether it worked or not.

It didn’t. At least not the part where the door opened. Not until, after half an hour of alternately swearing and praying as I struggled to wedge my fingers between the door and pulling with all my might, I heard a faint click and the mechanism gave. By this time, I was going spare, and covered with sweat. My knees were not happy that I had stood up for so long, either.  

I hobbled into the kitchen, half-filled a pot with water, and put it on the hob, and ran the electric kettle to have more hot water, faster.

I dumped four turkey drumsticks that had been soaking overnight in marinade, one Italian herb stock cube, some brandy, a knob of butter, a handful of frozen onion rings, and a packet of mixed frozen vegetables. Then I prepared a bowl of instant mashed potatoes with cream and pimento, and chopped up some cherry tomatoes, olives, and garlic cloves, and doused them in olive oil (I would drain them just before serving).

The dusk and the street light gave me just enough light to work.

I put some water and disinfectant in a bucket and went over the floors with a cloth wrapped around a squeegee, and opened all the windows for the draught to do its thing.

While the food cooked and the floor dried, I showered, brushed my hair and pulled it back in a pony-tail, and washed and flossed my teeth.

I got out the votive candles that I’d bought for the Christmas centrepiece, and lit them. They made eerie shadows dance on the walls, and of course I could not help making some shadow animals.

My (ex!) husband always insisted that I do the newspaper crossword, daily, to “work my sloth-brain”, as he so courteously puts it. I took it out and called my whiz friend Samantha to give me the solutions, as I usually did. I barter with her by keeping her kids while she is with her lover. I left out a couple of easy ones, so I would be able to act as if I had just thought of them while we were having dinner. I was – am – smug about the fact that my acting prowess never failed to take my husband in.

I grabbed the sponge to give my (ex!) husband’s breakfast mug and cereal bowl a quick rub-and-rinse, but as soon as I opened the tap, I yelped in pain.

I felt as if someone had taken a steel sledge-hammer to my knuckles; not all of them, just six out of ten. Immediately, my joints swelled and my fingers throbbed and turned purple.

With tears pouring down my cheek, I finished the task and sat down in front of the aforesaid crossword, barely able to hold the pencil… just in time, because the next moment, my (ex!) husband’s key turned in the lock.

I went to greet him, and he kissed me perfunctorily – as he usually did, and sniffed the air – and he likewise usually did. Smells good. But you’ve put in too much onion. I said it in my mind before he said it out loud.

He whipped off his jacket and draped it over the chair, and undid his tie, positioning it exactly over the middle of the jacket. Creature of habit, m y (ex!) husband.

He had not even noticed my fingers. I showed them to him and of course, he assumed it was my clumsiness that was the cause of my injuries. I told him what had happened, and he said that after he ate, he would take me to the clinic. Selfish sonofabitch.

He sat at table, and as he expected me to do, I asked about his day so he could boast about his wheeling and dealing. I was sick and tired of this charade – but it suited me, because being the Lady of the Manor and not having to go out to work was the one good thing I got from it.

He happened to glance at the crossword, and pursed his lips. Not ready yet? I said it to myself before he did. “Oh!” I said, gingerly picking up the pencil, pincer-style like a Kindergartner, and dashing of the last five words without even looking at the clues, “I’ve been thinking about them while we had dinner…”

We went to the Clinic and the doctor said it was Gardner-Diamond syndrome. My (ex!) husband asked him – twice – whether I could have hurt myself shutting a drawer ‘because she is so clumsy…’ and the doctor explained patiently how veins sometimes rupture spontaneously, and the red blood cells cause the contusions and the swellings and the pain.

The doctor said I must support each injured finger by taping it to the one next to it, and avoid extremes of temperature, and to wear mittens if possible.

We returned home, and the rest of the evening passed as it usually did – except for the part where he parked himself in front of the television set because we had spent that time at the Clinic. Sex, showers, and bed. Did he care that I was in pain? Did he heck. The power came back at around midnight.

The throbbing pain kept me from sleeping, despite the analgesic balm I had rubbed on my fingers (and the whiskey I’d drunk).

As I sometimes did, to escape from my dreary existence, I let my imagination run riot. I idly toyed with the idea of drawing my rouge blood cells out with a syringe… and injecting them into the butt of my sleeping (ex!) husband, to create enough pain so he would not be able to sit down for a month of Sundays. Ah! This would be the other meaning of Blood Doping, as per articles with facetious titles such as If I Did a Bag of Lance Armstrong’s Blood, Could I Bike up a Mountain?

I concocted plans to inject him with air, to create an embolism. Probably, though, I’d be rumbled, if they decided to do an autopsy, because he did not have a dickey heart. Maybe I could kill him with insulin…Reversal of Fortune style, but I’d make sure my approach would work. But there was nobody, of all my friends who have diabetes, whom I could trust to give me a pre-drawn syringe, and keep mum about it. Oh, to delegate the whole enchilada to a hit-man. Or a cat’s-paw.

And that’s when the idea hit me. My (ex!) husband usually spent Saturdays ensconced in the greenhouse, fiddling about with his beloved orchids. He sold each bloom at about €50 a pop. Not because he needed the money, but just because he could.

It was Monday. Time enough. Maybe… My plan was sketchy…it was a long shot…it might not work… but it was worth a try.

When replenishing my kitchen freezer from the one in the basement, I had noticed a wasps’ nest at one corner of the ceiling. They’d probably been grateful for the box of newspapers I saved for the once-a-month recycling collection, because it meant they did not have to forage far for material with which to build it.

I poured a good measure of honey inside a big bin bag, and made my way downstairs. There were no wasps flying about, and I heaved a sigh of relief. I manoeuvred a table just under the nest, keeping one eye open for the insects, and placed a chair on the table.

Then, I cautiously climbed on the table, and stood on tiptoe, on the chair, placing the opening of the bag over the nest. I knew I was risking a broken leg or two, but I was on an adrenaline high and nothing could stop me. Using the outside of the bag to shield my hands (I thought it would be better not to use gloves, since there would be some kind of residue on them), I detached the nest from its anchors and nudged it into the bag.

There was such an angry surge of buzzing that I nearly fell off the chair. Apparently, the wasps were quick to notice the honey, and they quietened down almost immediately.

As best I could, I held on to the neck of the bag while putting the furniture in its place again.

Next stop: the greenhouse.

I took the bag and went in through the back door, just in case someone was looking out of the window; and anyway, the orchids were nearer that than the front entrance.

Gently, very gently, I upended the bag and out rolled the nest, sticky with honey. Some of the wasps had died a sweet death by drowning – alas, there was nothing I could do about that. The others appeared lethargic. I hoped they would recover in time to carry out their duty.

I have always been taught that unless you act aggressively towards wasps, they will not attack you. I kept calm when some of them flew toward me to examine me; and true enough, I was not stung.

I grasped the bottom of the bag and turned it inside out, making sure that no wasps were stuck to the plastic, turned it back sticky side in, and folded it into an oblong small enough to fit into my jeans pocket. I left the greenhouse, walking backward, in slow movements, just in case, and nonchalantly walked around two blocks, hands in pockets – discarded the binbag into the street litter bin farthest from the house.

The suspense nearly killed me.   

Around the time he left for the greenhouse, as I had planned, I was standing, not a hair out of place, at the delicatessen counter at the supermarket, selecting cheeses for the weekend, as I always did.

It had been my original plan to walk back casually, do some light chores, and then call him on the intercom to say that dinner was in ten minutes. I had stopped at that point, since I would then play it on the wing, so it would appear to be a spontaneous thing. 

However, my plan was dashed when one of the neighbours met me halfway. She had been running, and her words came out in between her gasps for air. Wasps… husband… urgent… stings… come… ambulance… swell… heart-attack…

I really should be nominated for an Academy Award. I grabbed her by the arm and shook her, asking her to explain what she was on about. Taking a deep breath, she said that she had heard shouting and the sounds of breaking glass, and had run out of the house just in time to see my (ex!) husband reeling about in the middle of the street, wheezing and lurching about, holding a hand to his throat. His face and hands were covered with angry red welts. With great difficulty, he had whispered my name and “supermarket”.

She had pounded on the door of another neighbour, explained the situation and told her to call for an ambulance, and ran to fetch me. My plan had worked out been faster and easier than I thought it would.

I was told that probably, since the attack on my (ex!) husband happened in an enclosed space, the hive mind of the whole nest had been mobilised to sting. In these cases, unless antihistamine treatment is given within minutes, the victim dies.

It could be that my (ex!) husband had swatted one of the insects, and it had released a pheromone that warned the others that there was a threat, and caused them to attack him.

I will never know. Not that I want to. The Coroner’s Report states “death by misadventure”.

My husband and I often drink to that.

The Human Zoo

https://blog.reedsy.com/creative-writing-prompts/contests/59/submissions/34044/

I’m here. It looks all right, so far… but there’s a kind of smell in the air, like someone has gone crazy with the mint-and-lavender air-freshener.

I’m a bit confused, still.

Me and my big mouth.

Oh! You want to know how it happened. Bear with me while I do one of my Voices skits. I am a stand-up comic, after all…   

–      Real people.

–      What do you mean?

–      I’m not about to spend megabucks on safaris, when there’s raw material galore here.

–      That’s nasty.

–      Specimens, then. Natives.

–      Explain.

–      My idea is to have visitors. They come here and see… and pay.

–      You disgust me.

–      We feed and clothe these… persons… and…

–      …make money off their backs. Isn’t that it?

–      Why not? It has been done before, and no doubt, will be done again.

–      I hate the very idea.

–      But you won’t hate the trappings of wealth that will come with it.

–      Yeah, astute choice of word, trap-pings.

–      Come on, I was only trying to be punny.

–      The very idea of using real people as exhibits, disgusts me.

–      I present to you the Great Paris Exhibition of 2013, in which…

–      I know all about that. I’m a history major, remember.

–      I didn’t know the degree covers such esoteric niches…

–      Oh yes. I won an award for my haiku;

“two by two they come

amphibians, insects, fish, fowl

heirs and masters of the earth”

–      But as I was saying…

–      I know, dammit, what you were saying.

–      Listen to me. People are jaded, they need new things to pique their curiosity. My ‘inhabitants from foreign lands on display as article of curiosity’ is a sure-fire money-spinner.

–      If you say so. 

–      It will be bigger and better than anything that’s gone before. I may even call it The Pan-European Attraction Unlimited.

–      Oh yes. Why not celebrate the religion of post-modernist atheist colonialism?

–      Ah. I knew that sooner or later you’d start with the verbiage.

–      Yes. Just as this ‘noble cause’ waffle in this pamphlet draft here.

–      Awareness. Discernment. That’s what it is.

–      It’s a travesty. It’s man’s inhumanity to man.

–      You are misinterpreting me. All I want is to make people aware. If it means I earn oodles of boodle into the bargain, I’m easy.

–      Oh come on. In a moment, you’ll be saying that you are challenging the romantic and exotic view of creating the stereotypical noble savage.

–      Say that again, will you, so I write it down and add it to the blurb. It rolls off the tongue.

–      The hell I will. What you are doing is violence. Racism. Bigotry. A rampant, misguided, moral superiority complex.

–      It’s Art, with an upper-case A. Art must challenge, provoke, stimulate…

–      …make use of uncouth savages…needs must when the devil drives, and all that…

–      I see you’re getting the picture.

–      You don’t even recognise sarcasm when it hits you right between the eyes.

–      Racism is not at issue here.

–      Really? It’s just the second fowl of when you kill two birds with one stone. An incidental death – but a murder, anyway.

–      It is a latter-day voyage of discovery; a means to an end. Using the interest and delectation of the crowd to make me – and you – some dough. Stop being so self-righteous, for Pete’s sake.

–      It’s not that I’m being smarmy or anything. It’s that this kind of twisted idea of what passes for entertainment, using others to line your pockets, that’s just not cricket.

–      Look you have it all wrong. The term Human Zoo has probably put you in mind of the Theory of Races.

–      Isn’t that what it is?

–      No, not at all. My idea is to emulate the great international trade fairs of yore, without the tackiness. I will pay the inhabitants of the villages, and make sure that they have decent working hours. 

–      Really?

–      Really and truly. I will even allow them to join a Union. If they want to.

–      Oh yes. And, of course, they will have to re-enact their sacred rites and rituals, in front of paying visitors… when you know as well as I do that these are supposed to be shrouded in mystery and not even the lower castes may participate…

–      If the celebrant is not really an ordained one, it is just a re-enactment…

–      And you know that most native inhabitants of the pseudo-villages in historic Human Zoos had to eat meat – dog, cat, rat, whatever, just so that the oglers would see them disembowel and clean the animals…

–      Well…

–      I learned that their diets were usually gruel-like. When they had to eat meat on a regular basis, they became ill and their blood pressure shot up.

–      Well…

–      You are beginning to sound like a cracked record, stuck on the chorus of well, well, well… 

–      “God has some work for everyone to do. There can’t be no idle hands in His Kingdom.”

–      Quoting Hemingway now, are we?

–      You’re a sharp one.

–      Yes, amn’t I? I am not titillated by the spectre of cultural superiority.

–      My version of the Human Zoo will respect traditions. Mind you, each adobe hut will have running water, air conditioning, and central heating; it will only appear to be primitive, from the outside. Visitors will not be allowed to peek inside them.

–      Ah, isn’t that a relief.  

–      Yes, of course. Oh, you were being sarcastic again. 

–      Won’t it get boring for the residents to do the same thing, day in, day out, without being able to roam to pastures new as they do in the life from which they would have been plucked?

–      Oh, definitely not. They can switch between making body paste, making cornmeal, weaving, killing and skinning animals, churning butter, sewing, making jewellery, removing body hair… the list of activities is endless.

–      I am beginning to feel sick. You’re serious, aren’t you? I thought you were kind of having me on, to gauge my reaction. This is nothing but slavery, albeit in a polite form. Sing for your supper, refined.

–      You’ll do.

–      What?

–      Based on your reactions during this interview, you have been selected to head the next mission to Valida XI. You leave tomorrow. The alternative is a quick dip in the Piranha Pond.

Hitting the Wrong Notes

Friday, 31st December 2010

A friend of mine who teaches voice technique abroad sent me a link of the first of a series of videos produced by the Musicians’ Union and the NSPCC, in collaboration with Music Leader, ABRSWM, and Educare.

The script does not mince words. It tells teachers to avoid, at all costs, touching their pupils, lest they be accused to inappropriate behaviour (including paedophilia). These instructions apply whether one teaches a class or a single pupil, in a school, in the pupil’s home or in the teacher’s own.

I was stunned. Why would the (British) Musicians’ Union think it ought to set itself apart from other bodies, the operations of which require adults to be in close contact with children? The Church, catechism groups, scouts and guides, and sundry other entities have all been splattered with accusations of abuse, sometimes deservedly.

In this series, it seems that accusations are inevitable. Anyone would think it was a pre-emptive measure. Although, to be fair, one of the clips does show a teacher who accidentally comes across signs of abuse upon a pupil, and intimates that she will have to “tell someone”. Teachers are given common-sense advice. In my opinion, however, this sometimes fails to protect the child enough, because it is intended to protect the teacher.

The clips are presented as “an online resource allowing anyone teaching music to children to gain a better understanding of their child protection responsibilities and avoid situations that could lead to accusations of misconduct”. I would say they are meant of foster an atmosphere of distrust where none existed before.

Whatever happened to the “private body” instruction we gave our young children? Most of us knew well enough to tell children that nobody could touch them in the areas covered by (full) underwear. Failure of any adult – even a relative or family friend – to observe this cardinal rule meant the children came to tell us exactly what happened, when, and why, and the rest was up to us.

These days, everything has gone over the top, on the premise that it is better to be safe than sorry – and the result is that everyone gets tarred with the same brush. Just because one postman didn’t check his work, and delivered a packet of five letters with different addresses, held together with a rubber band, to the address of the one on top, it does not mean that all postmen are careless. Just because one teacher gave students two projects to do over the Christmas holidays, it does not mean that all teachers are “cruel”.

There are children who learn music online. Here, the danger of abuse does not come up, especially if the lessons are pre-recorded and the teacher is not even online during the lesson.

My friend calls this campaign “outrageous”. Sometimes, it is imperative that the teacher touches the pupil to indicate certain areas that need to be used when singing; “I sometimes have to ‘push’ someone’s diaphragm to make students understand how it really feels when breathing and using support properly. Do the people who have come up with this campaign actually teach music?” she asks.

Enzo Gusman, never one to pull his punches, asks whether doctors, dentists and other professionals are going to face the same ordeal. He also asks whether a Mohel (the professionally-trained man who performs circumcision on boys in Judaism) would be similarly liable – but since this is a religious issue, I should think not. Many other people involved in the music scene in Malta said more or less the same thing.

One piano teacher said that nothing like an unexpected poke in the small of the back reminded a student to sit up straight. Another suggested that all doors and windows doors be kept open during music lessons – and never mind what the neighbours say about caterwauling violins. One mother told me that she is ashamed to say that, on n the way home from the music lesson, she keeps glancing at her daughter’s face, trying to catch micro-expressions, although the teacher is a childhood friend.

Having worked in a school with tiny children as well as others who have learning difficulties, I cannot but say that there are times a teacher must hold a child’s hand to indicate the correct way to do things –including how to hold a pencil to form letters. And what if a child falls and comes to you for a hug? What do you do when two children are fighting in the schoolyard? Do you turn the water-hose on them so as to avoid touching them, and risk being arrested for child abuse anyway?

The world is indeed a sad place when each action, even the most innocent, could be deliberately misinterpreted by someone. There are cases when teachers and other people in authority have been maliciously accused of inappropriate behaviour. Even when they are proven innocent, they usually find that their reputation has been tarnished forever.

However, a person who is going to lie about you will lie anyway, if he thinks he can get away with it, simply because he has been alone in a room with you… whether you have touched him or not.

Why are we making children – and ourselves – paranoid?