Monday October 5th, 2015

The exercise:

Write about something that is: black and blue.

Chopped and hauled my first load of firewood this morning. It's not time to start using our fireplace quite yet but I wanted to get a head start on our stockpile.

This afternoon Kat and I made borscht together, using beets, potatoes, garlic, and onions from our garden. It turned out great and it was really nice to have her in the kitchen with me again.

Mine:

"Well, that doesn't look very good, does it?"

"No, no... I'd say it's rather appalling, in fact."

"I can't believe she'd leave the house looking like that. Doesn't she own a mirror?"

"To be fair, it's not her fault."

"Oh! Of course not, no. No one is saying that it's her fault."

"But you would hope, wouldn't you, that a friend would tell her how horrible an idea that is."

"Is that it, then? Does she not have any friends?"

"Wouldn't be terribly surprising, would it? With the way she dresses?"

"Hey! Idjits!"

"Uh... hello there! My lady..."

"I'm color blind, you wankers, not deaf!"

3 comments:

Greg said...

So are you black and blue from the effort of chopping the wood, or because you were annoying Kat in the kitchen and she beat you up?
The borscht sounds good though; I'm making Lichtenstein cake at the moment, which starts with a red velvet cake and cream cheese frosting :)
Hah, people do seem to think that one disability (if colour-blindness is actually such) implies a lot of others, so the ending to your piece is rather apposite. I quite enjoyed the back-and-forth between the main characters too.

Black and blue
The Headmaster stood at the front of the staff-room and looked over the faces of the teachers. So many of them seemed hostile, and he could see few friends there. Miss Snippet was at one end of the row looking thunderous, and Mr. Finchley was the other end pretending that he couldn't see her. There was a tension in the room like that you get before the start of a thunderstorm.
"Cultural and ethnic diversity," he said, and was forced to stop immediately as the teachers erupted. Eventually they sorted themselves out into an order to harangue him.
"We have diversity," said the Fine Arts teacher whose name he couldn't remember. Her fingers were like sticks: brown and dry and often flaking with bit of clay. "I have children from four different contintents in my class!"
"Five," said Mr. Finchley smugly.
"Seven," said Miss Snippet as though he'd not spoken.
"We are cultural!" said Mr. Thomas who had form 4 and ran the chess club. "My class wear national dress every Friday and some mornings i feel like I'm in a kaleidoscope."
"My children learn each others native languages," said Mr. Finchley, carefully not looking at Miss Snippet.
"My children create new cultures from scratch so as to understand all cultures as outsiders," said Miss Snippet, possibly talking to the ceiling.
"I've had ethnic up to here!" said Mr. Requisite, the cookery teacher. "I really wanted to teach steamed puddings this term, but after incorporating Thai, Mexican, Canadian (I mean, Poutine, really!), Maori, Venezuelan, Swiss, Hungarian and Croatian I'll be lucky if I can find time to teach them to cook steak."
"Black and blue," said Miss Snippet, to nods of approval.
"My children eat straight from the cow," said Mr. Finchley, and then paused, hearing what he'd just said.
"Uh, I mean–" he backpedalled, but Miss Forestiere, their local PETA representative, was heaving her 250-bulk to her feet and advancing on him.
"Miss Snippet," said the Headmaster, trying for reproving, but her smile told him that it was having no effect at all.

morganna said...

A bump, a knock

A quick pain,
Soon forgotten

Black and blue
Blooming across the knee
Where did that come from?

Marc said...

Greg - funny, funny. No, I wasn't black and blue, just flailing a bit desperately around for a prompt and that's what I landed on.

Well, you made me Google black and blue steak to make sure I knew what you meant there at the end. I enjoyed the way things escalated until they'd gone too far... and how Miss Snippet made sure to have Mr. Finchley being the one stepping over the line :)

Morganna - ah, the mystery bruises and cuts and scratches of life. Perfectly captured :)