Sunday August 19th, 2012

The exercise:

Write about: something (or someone, I suppose) borrowed.

Took it easy for most of the day before getting things organized for tomorrow's local orders. For a change it wasn't a struggle to find a recipe for our box customers - first time they get corn? Okay, corn recipe it is.

This one seemed quick, easy, and tasty. Hopefully they agree.

Had some help with tonight's harvest of potatoes, blackberries, cherry tomatoes, and beans. The nectarines leftover from the market just had to be sorted into two pound portions and it was only a matter of picking out which garlic would get included this week.

Fairly certain I've set myself up for a pretty relaxed morning to finish off the more perishable items in the harvest. Fingers crossed I've not forgotten something important.

Mine:

The man enters the building, walking as though he should be using a cane. The look on his face suggests that only a very foolish person would point this out, so the woman behind the desk remains silent.

She is not one who suffers it in others and is not about to allow it to slip between her own lips.

After making the passage from door to desk, he leans heavily on the latter while regarding the former with obvious disgust. It is clear that he feels the inconsiderate, wet-behind-the-ears lout who designed the place put the two an unnecessary distance apart.

"Good afternoon," the woman says with a fair attempt at enthusiasm.

"Hardly," he replies with not even a glance in enthusiasm's direction.

"Can I help you?" she asks. "Out of here as quickly as possible?" she finishes silently.

"I want to borrow a book about birds. A good one, preferably."

"That's lovely," she says without bothering to hide her relief, "but the library is across the street. This is the Lakeshore Hotel."

3 comments:

Greg said...

The corn recipe is admirably simple! I can't say I care much for corn myself, but it looks good in the picture :)
The harvest sounds pleasant at this remove, but I'm sure you eventually get tired of dealing with produce all day – I guess this means we get more writing from you then!
The punchline is very neatly delivered and nicely defuses the tension you've built up already. I'm not quite sure I understand the second paragraph, but I'm sure I will when I have time to re-read it.

Borrowed
"It's my wedding, Daddy!" The bride-to-be was not exactly blushing, but her face was definitely bright-red, almost verging on purple. "I need something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. Go and borrow me something!"
Her father, who felt he'd spent rather too much money on the wedding to be screamed at like this, considered boxing her ears and spanking her like the little girl she was acting like, and then decided that the grief he'd get from his wife wasn't worth the satisfaction. He left the hotel room quietly, and when he closed the door and the world was silent, he felt actually happy.
'Something borrowed,' he mused to himself as he walked to the lifts. 'Would something... shoplifted do?'
There was an odd smile playing around his lips as he pressed the button for the ground floor and waiting for the lift to arrive.

Cathryn Leigh said...

Hah ha, Greg took my take on the prompt, only it's not so sinister.

I will say that finding soemthing borrowed for my wedding ended up beaing the hardest thing to do.

Something old was the wedding band of my Great-Great-Grandmother 'Nana Sam', that I recieved when I graduated college. The new was, my wedding dress. the blue was the ribbon I had sewn around the bottom of the hoop skrit (hey I wasn't about to have fifteen layers of tool under that dress to give it it's girth at the end of May, when it can be hot and sticky).

And then there was the hanki that I was going to borrow, but the owner told me to keep it. There were a couple other things that had the same thing happen. But then I eyed my mother's light weight mohair losely knit cape. So, I borrowed that, at least to wear into the curch before I warmed up.

Dont' t remember wearing it all after that. I suspect my mother comendeered it and put it away so it's go home with her. :}

Marc said...

Greg - well, perhaps you just need to try our corn :)

The second para is just talking about foolishness. I could have made it more clear but chose not to.

Hah, I'd quite like to hear about how and what he goes about shoplifting!

Cathryn - all the trials and tribulations of people being too nice. Borrowing requires that they take it back, for crying out loud :P