draliman on life

Here is my contribution to Laura’s Literary Lion challenge, which has a 400 word maximum. This week the Literary Lion has supplied the prompt word “time”.

I had lots of ideas for this week and finally went for the maddest one :-).

Flowering thyme – image from Wikimedia Commons, attributed to user “Greenmars”

“Thyme. A king among herbs.”

This was the opening line of the presentation given at the Twelfth Annual Conference of Advanced Physics, Manchester by Professor Grint Bigglesworth.

Bigglesworth, a man so convinced of his own infallibility that “mistakes” were something which happened to other people. A man who, in his youth, had developed a theory which had made him impossible to ignore, much as everyone wanted to.

An appreciative laugh rippled through the audience. Biggleworth was slightly confused – he’d decided not to start with the standard opening joke – but carried on unperturbed.

“Used by the ancient Egyptians for embalming and by the Greeks as incense, today we use it…” he continued.

Had he taken a moment to think, he might have wondered why his allotted topic at a conference of advanced physics was a discourse on a small green plant. Had he looked at the faces of his audience (all inferior to him, as he believed), he might have noticed the grins of embarrassment. the nervous fidgeting. Had he insisted on a written copy of his invitation to speak, he might have noticed the spelling of the word “time”.

However, he did none of these things. And thus he continued extolling the virtues of thymus vulgaris for a full hour and thirty minutes.

He was instantly ruined. No-one would return his calls. No journal would accept his submissions. His university finally had an excuse to be rid of him.

And so on that day, a self-important blowhard was forever removed from the invitation list of every major scientific conference in the world. On that day, a self-righteous narcissist with all the social graces of a cucumber was denied access to all public forums. On that day, an annoyingly persistent serial letter-writer was permanently barred from publication in any respectable (and many less respectable) scientific publications, magazines and newspapers.

Was it an honest mistake, an insidious conspiracy or rampant stupidity that brought him to this? Do we care? Let us just sit, close our eyes, take a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit perhaps, and be thankful.

Just under the wire (and in a hurry), here is my contribution to Laura’s Literary Lion challenge. This week’s prompt word is “king”. Sorry there’s no photo, I’m doing this in my lunch break and don’t have time to find something suitable. So, with very little proof-reading, here we go.

A Day in the Life

It’s not easy being King. Some days it feels like the whole world and his wife is after me for something. It’s always, “Sign this, Your Majesty!” or, “The palace sewers are backed up again!” Like I’m a plumber. I’m the King, dammit! Here we go…

“Your Majesty, Drimmen’s let his cows graze in moi fields again.”

I don’t care.

“I’ll send someone over. Next!”

“Your Majesty, the milk’s turned sour. It’s witches!”

Saints preserve us.

“You left it in the sun again, didn’t you, Breevor? Next!”

“Your Majesty, my daughter’s run off with the milliner’s son! What shall I do?”

How should I know? She’s your daughter.

“Prepare for a wedding. Next!”

And so it goes on. And on. And on. Day in, day out. Don’t I have people for this? It’s not right. Ah, here comes a royal messenger.

“Your Majesty, King Matchett of Greater Gribdovia has crossed the border! It’s war!”

At last, something I can sink my teeth into. Something Kingly!

“Call my generals, sound the alarms, bring me troop…”

“Whoops, sorry, your Majesty. Wrong piece of paper, he hasn’t crossed the border after all. Just a little novelette I’m writing. Ahem. I meant to say that the royal chickens have burrowed under the wire and escaped into the woods again. What shall we do?”

Buggerit.

Here is a story I’ve written for Literary Lion, hosted by Laura at I Smith Words. Laura has interrogated Literary Lion and he has delivered the following word for the prompt – “merry”. Now we have up to 400 words to write our story.

My story is pretty mad even for me this week, so don’t be expecting a clever plot :-).

Picture courtesy of disney-clipart.com

Not So Merry

Merry wasn’t. Merry, that is. Not living up to his name. In fact he’d change his name to “Grumpy” if that weren’t already taken.

Few people are aware that the Seven Dwarfs line-up has changed over the years. Merry was an original. Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Merry, Bashful, Sneezy and Myxomatosis.

“Merry” was deemed too confusing (given “Happy”). “Myxomatosis” was a non-starter. They were quickly replaced.

All the other dwarfs had made good lives for themselves. New stories, repeats, remakes – they were living the high life. Merry had nothing. A dank bedsit, no job… was it any wonder he wasn’t merry?

Even his showbiz friends had made it big. Okay, so Bambi had a drinking problem and Snow White had spent six years working in a meth lab to fund her crack habit, but she’d cleaned up her act and it had only helped her career in the long run.

What did poor Merry have?

Nothing. Zip. Nada.

Poor, poor Merry.

It came as no surprise when one day he snapped, strapped his shovel to his back and smashed his way into the studio, swinging his pick axe left and right. Chaos ensued.

Puff trampled the Ice Queen in his panicked attempt to escape. Cruella tripped over a Dalmation and took a shovel blow to the head. Road Runner ran into a wall. Visiting super-villain Ming the Merciless, Lord of the Universe, Destroyer of Worlds had an embarrassing panic attack in the corner.

In the end it took the concerted efforts of Alice, Aslan and the entire cast of “The Wizard of Oz” to bring him down.

And so now Merry lives in a padded cell, pumped full of exciting pharmaceuticals. And thanks to those pharmaceuticals, Merry finally is. Merry.