The Story I did not Write

The festive day itself ended, unexpectedly, with a dog
fight. At least we have learnt that two of the family dogs can't be in the same room together. We had been trying to introduce them to each other gradually and we thought it had been going well.  Clearly the dogs thought differently. It has made me wonder about how everyone else's day went.

And also I was thinking about the story I did not write. I have no idea what it would be about but it would be called: Miss Milton Paled.

It would have been inspired by something in one of Richmal Crompton's William stories, one in which William is taking part in a village pageant organised by Miss Milton, the Sunday School teacher.

She is assigning each small child the part of a bird, and writing a little rhyme to go with it. William is given the part of the Tom Tit, and this is his rhyme:

Around the garden

I do flit

Tom Tit I am

I am Tom Tit.

William, unsurprisingly, is not too keen on this.  He tells Miss Milton he wants to be a vulture, and will write his own rhyme, thus:

I swoop down upon 'em,

and then

dead men I eat 

I eat dead men.

whereupon:   "Miss Milton paled"

What could the story be?  Sadly, if I wanted to have a blockbusting best seller, I should make it a gore-fest and title it Miss Milton Impaled.

As I have no intention of doing that, I guess the story will never get written.

But, to end on a more positive note, will I meet Richmal Crompton one day - if Jehovah remembers us and wakes us from the dreamless sleep of death when the time comes?  If so, I will be able to tell her how much I loved the William stories.  I don't know how many hours I spent in the 1950s in various cosy corners at Nabbs, bookworming over a William book.

You will see that I made more of a Violet Elizabeth Bott choice for the blog photo than a William one, as it is a long tailed tit, not a vulture - even though I am sure I could find a vulture in the Captain's archive.  But I went for pretty.  Vultures are beautiful, in their way, and very useful birds too, but not exactly chocolate-box pretty.

"And neither are you lady!"  did I hear our local vultures chorus from, well, it would be the local safari park I suppose?

I hope we are all going to make it into the year 2025. We are nearly there. And we are now one year nearer to the coming of the Kingdom of God to rule over the earth and restore it to the paradise it was always meant to be.

How much we need that restoration.