Strange Magic
Magic Dust
I love car boot sales, but have often come back empty handed. Just browsing around and meeting people give me enough satisfaction. Of course there have been times when I've spotted a bargain or something unusual to grace my home.
Magic Dust
I love car boot sales, but have often come back empty handed. Just browsing around and meeting people give me enough satisfaction. Of course there have been times when I've spotted a bargain or something unusual to grace my home.
I had also been digging around the family tree for many months now and
trying to piece our family together, especially on my late mother's side.
I often admired a grotesquely but strangely beautiful, almost tacky, pale
green dinner set my owned as long as I can remember and she told me that it
would eventually be passed down to me. She was very vague as to what person
from the family originally owned it, only that it was passed down to her late
mother and from her mother to my late mother. Apart from being old, it was in
reasonably good condition, considering its age, apart from one missing plate.
It was lovely just to display it in a cabinet only to come out when it needed
dusting. It was a shame it was incomplete, but for something so old, looked
very pretty in its own way in the cabinet.
My father was born in Scotland, my mother in North London and we always
seemed to be moving house earlier on in my childhood. My mother never seemed
settled, almost as if she wanted to run away from something but she seemed to
enjoy the upheaval of the moving and she often said she couldn't see the point
in staying in one place; both her parents has passed away and was not
particularly close to her two sisters or extended family, although I did not
know why. We did try to keep in touch with our cousins, but very difficult when
on the move! My younger brother and I thought it was one big adventure and have
revelled in the fact that we know much about many counties of England. Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Shropshire, Northamptonshire to name a
few. We even moved to Glasgow, Scotland for a while, near to where my father
was born, but dad had terrible trouble finding work and when he did, he
couldn't settle. We finally ended up moving to Hertfordshire where we
settled for many happy years until I met my husband and had two gorgeous girls.
As they grew up they didn't share my
enthusiasm of car boot sales, our family tree or my inheritance of the dinner
set! So it seemed I wouldn't have immediate family to pass it down to. 'What's the point of a
dinner set with a plate missing?' They often reminded me.
With the birth of the Internet, one of my daughters just happened to find a web
page on antiques and accidentley stumbled on a
similar dinner set worth approximately £3500 for auction in its entirety, even
in bad condition! A rarity, all made by hand and not many around. So she
casually asked me to live it in my will to her. Oh it probably wasn't the same
set, but did look familiar to my dinner set but didn't think any more about it.
For goodness' sake, what were the chances of this?
The family tree was getting more mysterious but trying to piece it
together was getting exciting. It took many months to track down members of the
family and eventually wrote to three, a
great aunt, a second cousin on my dad's side and a cousin who we lost contact
with on mum's side when we moved the first time, who passed on my address to
other relations and after some time I was completely baffled as to who was who!
After some moths of corresponding, with my cousin from my mothers side of the
family, one of the letter I received from her was rather strange but almost
convincing. I have never believed in witchcraft, but apparently according to
he, there was a little bit of hocus pocus, white magic,
tarot cards, séances all going on with a late great great great aunt and that
she had left all manor of oddities in
her will to various nieces and nephews (as she had no children of her own)
which included various stones, a crystal ball, magic dust and all other things
I had never heard of. Interesting, but never believed in any of it. My parents
had never mentioned anything like this before, so maybe my cousin was just
being a little over imaginative and after all, this was many generations ago
and things like this get misconstrued over many years. My cousin lived in Lowestoft and although
not that far away, very unlikely I would take time out to meet her. However,
she did make the effort to keep in touch after some weeks gave her my telephone
number for the odd chat. She didn't emphasize on what she had mentioned in her
letter about witchcraft when we spoke, but she did say, during one
conversation, that maybe one day, some unexplainable occurrence might happen
and I might well question it and laughed at her comment. Sadly, she died after
only fourteen months of making contact again and regretted that I never took
the time to go and visit her.
A couple of years later, my husband very unexpectedly lost his job and we
all jointly decided that it was time to downsize our home and move to another
area where the houses were a lot cheaper, as we could not find anything
suitable in our area on our budget. Money was beginning to get tight and had started to dig into our
savings. We all had a huge discussion and started to take steps into moving to
the one place where we all loved and holidayed on many occasions and begun
looking on the Internet for places in
Cornwall. It took a few weeks to find somewhere perfect for us and we were
thrilled to finally settle in a little cottage just outside the village of Mevagissey. We had
gained a little bit of equity from the sale of our old house and managed to get
our new cottage more or less how we wanted it. Jobs were scarce, but we all
found little part time jobs and things to do, but after a few months, we did
wonder if we had made the right decision. It almost got to the point of only
being able to afford very cheap meals for dinner and wondered how we were going
to cope in the future, but somehow we all pulled together and were thankful
that we were living in such a gorgeous part of England - money or not money. However there
were times it could be very worrying and stressful. My brother and his children
delighted in coming to visit us during the school summer holidays so that was always
something to look forward to.
One morning, to cheer myself up, I visited the local car boot sale and
browsed around, talking to the locals and still getting used to the slower,
more laid back lifestyle and enjoyed browsing at the stalls. One owner of a
stall was selling bric a brac and it looked
as if one of the plates was being used as an ashtray as there was gray looking
dust over it. Something made me look a bit closer though. 'That plate looks a
little familiar'........I
looked at it more closely and I asked how much it was and she laughed, brushed
the gray dust from the plate, wiped it clean, laughed again and just gave it to
me! I took it home, with a feeling of excitement and anticipation and telling myself not to be so silly as to even think it would
match with what I already had in my dinner set. I mean, how could it have been?
How?
Miracle of miracles, it was a match! I stared at it for what seemed like
hours and began to wonder if this old relation of mine had somehow sprinkled
her magic dust around and it this is what my cousin meant that I would
question?
Maybe this is why my late mother never felt close to some members of her
family, with all the hocus pocus going on, but
now I'll never know.
One of my daughters eventually got the dinner set valued and now we are
£23,575 better off.
Copyright Linda Lawrence
15th November 2005
Strange Magic
Dated
He had walked into her life so quickly all those years ago but now she wished he would walk out just as quick. Trudie and Kelvin were living in a sad existence of a marriage. They really didn’t like each other any more but neither could move on because of their commitment to their two sons and all the financial arrangements with the house, the mortgage and everyday living. Trudie just wanted Kelvin to walk out of their life, or try to meet someone else, so that she could live her own life. He did not contribute much to the family in the way of a father either and he was so miserable, had no social skills and with each family celebration, he did not want to join in and when he did, Trudie used to cringe with embarrassment with his thoughtless comments to people and he almost always put his foot in it with some useless remark that made people want to move away from him. He simply was not a peoples’ person. In addition, he did not make any effort to help Trudie around the house or anything that needed to be done and in spite of being a motor mechanic, deliberately avoided to keep Trudie's car road worthy adding to her suffering as he knew Trudie relied on the car for some kind of social life and to get her out of the way of him. Even his two sons’ despaired over his very presence in the house and did their level best not to argue with him. He never helped the boys with their homework and left Trudie to entertain them even from when they were tiny. He was very controlling at times - an expert at mind games and had become much worse over the years. He often gave Trudie ‘the silent’ treatment if she wanted to ask or know something, or used to argue and raise his voice when his opinion was not needed and he seemed to enjoy intimidating all of his family.
All Trudie ever wanted was some peace and tranquillity, or some decent adult conversation and a smile would not go amiss. Kelvin had also become a bit of a hypochondriac in the past and enjoyed having symptoms of one virus or another. He never gained attention which annoyed him even more and Trudie often thought what he would be really like if something were really wrong with him, how on earth would anyone cope?
At the beginning of their volatile relationship, she used to love cooking meals and preparing time consuming dishes for him, but as time wore on, he grew very demanding about having dinner on the table at the time he wanted it and eventually made Trudie so bitter, she never bothered with her lovely home-made dishes and stuck to basic, quick meals. Kelvin never seemed bothered what he ate anyway – as long as it was edible. Even the housekeeping money was reduced that left very little for other treats and it seemed all that mattered was food was in the cupboard and fridge. Just another way to control things, Trudie thought.
As the years flew by, the more controlling he got and Trudie spent much of her time walking her cute little mongrel bitch, Bella in the depths of the nearby forest to escape the torture at home. Bella (namely because she was so beautiful) was the little girl Trudie never had and spent ages talking things over with her as if she understood and spent ages pondering over what could be done. She was very much at peace when she took her little dog for a walk and it allowed her time to ponder. Kelvin had made her worry and stressed so much that she panicked if things were not to his satisfaction and as she started preparing the next evening meal and the sandwiches for the following day, she realised in horror, that there was hardly any fresh meat, salad or vegetables neither was there much choice in the fridge. In fact, her boys and their girlfriends had helped themselves to a lot of food shopping she did the previous day leaving almost nothing to prepare for a meal. She had no option, but to open a can of dogs’ meat and as Bella looked at her very confused she added some week old carrots with some garlic salt and dried onions and rolled out some pastry for a pie and her heart pounded as Kelvin took his first mouthful with the potatoes that were used after cutting out the eyes, but he made no sound as the food hardly touched the edge of his mouth and went straight to his gut and as he belched, Trudie smelt the beef and kidney flavoured dogs’ meat that wafted and lingered through the air.
Trudie lay in bed that night giggling like a schoolgirl thinking how easy it was to feed him such rubbish and him not notice, although she thought he might have got up in the night with an upset stomach, but it never happened.
Over the next few days, she sorted out her food cupboards and put different tins and packets that had now gone out of date and she delighted in thinking of the different ‘recipes’ she could prepare.
She tried not to laugh as she prepared his lunches; a smoothie made up of too soft strawberries, bruised bananas and slightly mouldy pear and mushy kiwis, chucked in the odd left over vegetable, then added some yoghurt passing it off as a pro-biotic drink. Sandwiches became a real pleasure as she thought up more and more bizarre ingredients to use. Corn beef that had been left in the back of the fridge for a few days with a little mayonnaise passed its sell-by-date. Cheese that had a little mould scraped off kept from a Christmas hamper with some cranberry sauce to sweeten it up. A little ex lax added to a home-made chocolate cake.
Soon, the friends she confided into over the years contributed out of date food; some coleslaw, lesser than fresh vegetables, soft split tomatoes, unwanted frozen produce from the fridge freezer after a defrost, out of date pork pies, some cooking apples that maggot had got into to sweeten a curry or apple crumble made with old flour infested with flour mites that had been stuck at the back of her food cupboard. She had even started to save some of the housekeeping money away in a savings account each week when she saved on the shopping bill.
As Trudie’s confidence grew, she started adding extra chilli powder to the chilli con carne that was made of minced Turkey that had been left over from a weekend dinner and tried to stifle the laughter as Kelvin coughed and spluttered, but he never twigged that anything was untoward. After all, who would possibly annoy or upset him? The list of recipes were endless and was very satisfying to once again, cook some favourite recipes - well almost, as she added some prawns that had been in the freezer for far too long to a paella and the pork chops with chicken minced up from the previous night for a shepherds’ pie, topped with creamy mashed potato (with days old milk) that hit the taste buds first allowing the day old left over meat to follow and began to feel a lot more satisfied as she now gained some control back. She even added a tiny pinch of salt to his cups of tea and peppered his tobacco.
Laughing hysterically at the thought of her revenge on her unloving husband, she took her beloved Bella for her morning stroll into the forest and feeling so much happier and positive now that the bluebells had grown and looked like a magic carpet of the purest bluest sapphire hue and stopped to admire their beauty with some other different wild flowers and fungi. She noticed the new seasons’ insects and the pretty butterflies in the chilly spring fresh air and everything seemed a lot brighter. On the walk back home she thought about the fungi she saw and thought how Kelvin loved his mushrooms and wondered if it were safe to pick them and add them to a casserole! The urge was irresistible as she picked a dozen or so and laughed wondering how her latest recipe would taste.
The following morning, Kelvin was on such a high! He kept talking excitedly and wildly; laughing, jumping around with such vigour and enthusiasm, Trudie had tried to remember when he last got so excited as she was not used to Kelvin’s’ non stop talking, openness and friendliness. She found it so funny that he was very persistent and try to achieve cartwheels and headstands around the room. Momentarily, Trudie thought of all the happy times at the beginning of their relationship, when they got on so well and felt so blessed when the boys were born, but things begun to change slowly over the course of time to change Kelvin’s’ personality - as if food was the key to all of his controlling.
Kelvin continued to ramble and rant and almost forgot his lunch-box and Trudie almost tripped over herself making sure he took his mushroom pate sandwiches and a flask of tea made with reused tea-leaves Kelvin was still finding everything hysterically amusing as he left their house in the morning. He didn’t take the car – he walked and carried on walking.
Days later, Trudy read in the local paper that some passers-by were walking in the forest, found a naked man who now remained in hospital unidentified, diagnosed with Hyper-mania Nobody knew him or where he came from.
From this day, Trudy walked out of his life as quickly as what he walked into hers.
Kelvin still remains in hospital and as a hypochondriac; he often feels ill and constantly asks the nurses if anyone is poisoning his food.
Linda Lawrence
3rd March 2007
He had walked into her life so quickly all those years ago but now she wished he would walk out just as quick. Trudie and Kelvin were living in a sad existence of a marriage. They really didn’t like each other any more but neither could move on because of their commitment to their two sons and all the financial arrangements with the house, the mortgage and everyday living. Trudie just wanted Kelvin to walk out of their life, or try to meet someone else, so that she could live her own life. He did not contribute much to the family in the way of a father either and he was so miserable, had no social skills and with each family celebration, he did not want to join in and when he did, Trudie used to cringe with embarrassment with his thoughtless comments to people and he almost always put his foot in it with some useless remark that made people want to move away from him. He simply was not a peoples’ person. In addition, he did not make any effort to help Trudie around the house or anything that needed to be done and in spite of being a motor mechanic, deliberately avoided to keep Trudie's car road worthy adding to her suffering as he knew Trudie relied on the car for some kind of social life and to get her out of the way of him. Even his two sons’ despaired over his very presence in the house and did their level best not to argue with him. He never helped the boys with their homework and left Trudie to entertain them even from when they were tiny. He was very controlling at times - an expert at mind games and had become much worse over the years. He often gave Trudie ‘the silent’ treatment if she wanted to ask or know something, or used to argue and raise his voice when his opinion was not needed and he seemed to enjoy intimidating all of his family.
All Trudie ever wanted was some peace and tranquillity, or some decent adult conversation and a smile would not go amiss. Kelvin had also become a bit of a hypochondriac in the past and enjoyed having symptoms of one virus or another. He never gained attention which annoyed him even more and Trudie often thought what he would be really like if something were really wrong with him, how on earth would anyone cope?
At the beginning of their volatile relationship, she used to love cooking meals and preparing time consuming dishes for him, but as time wore on, he grew very demanding about having dinner on the table at the time he wanted it and eventually made Trudie so bitter, she never bothered with her lovely home-made dishes and stuck to basic, quick meals. Kelvin never seemed bothered what he ate anyway – as long as it was edible. Even the housekeeping money was reduced that left very little for other treats and it seemed all that mattered was food was in the cupboard and fridge. Just another way to control things, Trudie thought.
As the years flew by, the more controlling he got and Trudie spent much of her time walking her cute little mongrel bitch, Bella in the depths of the nearby forest to escape the torture at home. Bella (namely because she was so beautiful) was the little girl Trudie never had and spent ages talking things over with her as if she understood and spent ages pondering over what could be done. She was very much at peace when she took her little dog for a walk and it allowed her time to ponder. Kelvin had made her worry and stressed so much that she panicked if things were not to his satisfaction and as she started preparing the next evening meal and the sandwiches for the following day, she realised in horror, that there was hardly any fresh meat, salad or vegetables neither was there much choice in the fridge. In fact, her boys and their girlfriends had helped themselves to a lot of food shopping she did the previous day leaving almost nothing to prepare for a meal. She had no option, but to open a can of dogs’ meat and as Bella looked at her very confused she added some week old carrots with some garlic salt and dried onions and rolled out some pastry for a pie and her heart pounded as Kelvin took his first mouthful with the potatoes that were used after cutting out the eyes, but he made no sound as the food hardly touched the edge of his mouth and went straight to his gut and as he belched, Trudie smelt the beef and kidney flavoured dogs’ meat that wafted and lingered through the air.
Trudie lay in bed that night giggling like a schoolgirl thinking how easy it was to feed him such rubbish and him not notice, although she thought he might have got up in the night with an upset stomach, but it never happened.
Over the next few days, she sorted out her food cupboards and put different tins and packets that had now gone out of date and she delighted in thinking of the different ‘recipes’ she could prepare.
She tried not to laugh as she prepared his lunches; a smoothie made up of too soft strawberries, bruised bananas and slightly mouldy pear and mushy kiwis, chucked in the odd left over vegetable, then added some yoghurt passing it off as a pro-biotic drink. Sandwiches became a real pleasure as she thought up more and more bizarre ingredients to use. Corn beef that had been left in the back of the fridge for a few days with a little mayonnaise passed its sell-by-date. Cheese that had a little mould scraped off kept from a Christmas hamper with some cranberry sauce to sweeten it up. A little ex lax added to a home-made chocolate cake.
Soon, the friends she confided into over the years contributed out of date food; some coleslaw, lesser than fresh vegetables, soft split tomatoes, unwanted frozen produce from the fridge freezer after a defrost, out of date pork pies, some cooking apples that maggot had got into to sweeten a curry or apple crumble made with old flour infested with flour mites that had been stuck at the back of her food cupboard. She had even started to save some of the housekeeping money away in a savings account each week when she saved on the shopping bill.
As Trudie’s confidence grew, she started adding extra chilli powder to the chilli con carne that was made of minced Turkey that had been left over from a weekend dinner and tried to stifle the laughter as Kelvin coughed and spluttered, but he never twigged that anything was untoward. After all, who would possibly annoy or upset him? The list of recipes were endless and was very satisfying to once again, cook some favourite recipes - well almost, as she added some prawns that had been in the freezer for far too long to a paella and the pork chops with chicken minced up from the previous night for a shepherds’ pie, topped with creamy mashed potato (with days old milk) that hit the taste buds first allowing the day old left over meat to follow and began to feel a lot more satisfied as she now gained some control back. She even added a tiny pinch of salt to his cups of tea and peppered his tobacco.
Laughing hysterically at the thought of her revenge on her unloving husband, she took her beloved Bella for her morning stroll into the forest and feeling so much happier and positive now that the bluebells had grown and looked like a magic carpet of the purest bluest sapphire hue and stopped to admire their beauty with some other different wild flowers and fungi. She noticed the new seasons’ insects and the pretty butterflies in the chilly spring fresh air and everything seemed a lot brighter. On the walk back home she thought about the fungi she saw and thought how Kelvin loved his mushrooms and wondered if it were safe to pick them and add them to a casserole! The urge was irresistible as she picked a dozen or so and laughed wondering how her latest recipe would taste.
The following morning, Kelvin was on such a high! He kept talking excitedly and wildly; laughing, jumping around with such vigour and enthusiasm, Trudie had tried to remember when he last got so excited as she was not used to Kelvin’s’ non stop talking, openness and friendliness. She found it so funny that he was very persistent and try to achieve cartwheels and headstands around the room. Momentarily, Trudie thought of all the happy times at the beginning of their relationship, when they got on so well and felt so blessed when the boys were born, but things begun to change slowly over the course of time to change Kelvin’s’ personality - as if food was the key to all of his controlling.
Kelvin continued to ramble and rant and almost forgot his lunch-box and Trudie almost tripped over herself making sure he took his mushroom pate sandwiches and a flask of tea made with reused tea-leaves Kelvin was still finding everything hysterically amusing as he left their house in the morning. He didn’t take the car – he walked and carried on walking.
Days later, Trudy read in the local paper that some passers-by were walking in the forest, found a naked man who now remained in hospital unidentified, diagnosed with Hyper-mania Nobody knew him or where he came from.
From this day, Trudy walked out of his life as quickly as what he walked into hers.
Kelvin still remains in hospital and as a hypochondriac; he often feels ill and constantly asks the nurses if anyone is poisoning his food.
Linda Lawrence
3rd March 2007
1 comment:
A little different and don't know where she got the idea. Interesting reading.
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