Along the road of my blog life I have done some strange things and stepped up to many challenges.
- I made a CD Cover with clues from a Meme.
- Wrote a post using all the words in my category tag cloud
- Wrote a post using a word from the fifth sentence of a book, chosen and opened by someone else.
- I often begin with a line of utter rubbish (You will say I do that all the time), let it run and end up with a post and erase the original line completely.
- Every Friday afternoon I produce something based on a common topic chosen by the members of the LBC (Loose Blogging Consortium).
BUT today beats the band altogether. We have a new challenge and scary it is too.
Conrad – You heard of him. Right? I worry about him by times, He is like the naughty schoolboy in the back of the class thinking up mischief!! 🙄
Well the latest shenanigans involves some of the regular ‘Non Bloggers’ who are very much part of our blogging world. Some of them make Fridays ‘FUN night’ bouncing backward and forward with us – most of it you do not see. I cry! Yes, I regularly spend Friday evenings with tears tripping down my face. Have no fear, they are not being nasty to me, no, they are shared tears of laughter between us. The craic is mighty!
Conrad, the guy I mentioned above has suggested this:
PARAGRAPH POSTING MAYHEM! PPM for short
The idea is:
We get about five non-bloggers to each produce a paragraph, no idea what the other four are producing, and each of us as bloggers try to take those five random paragraphs and put them together into a coherent post! And, you can’t alter the paragraphs a whit.
I think we should ask: Maynard, Deb, Magit and two people that each of us know and can ask independently.
So Maynard, Deb, Magit will be the common core to all of us taking part and I needed two more victims collaborators. No sooner was the ball set in motion than the paragraphs arrived like falling rain. Famine or feast, and it suddenly looked like It was time for a feast in my neck of the woods.
Magpie 11 did not feel able to give the time to the needlework involved in this one, but offered to write a paragraph. Conrad and I had a race to accept, but ever the gentleman, Magpie provided each of us with a contribution. The other person that I have chosen is Nancy Leitz a regular visitor offering pearls of wisdom with great humour in her comments.
As with the LBC where we began with a small group the Bloggers taking part in this new experiment are Conrad, Ramana, My very own self and Perhaps Maria Silver Fox. Once we are up and running with the glitches ironed out the circle may grow!
So where did I put those needles… I need to join some seams and I hope the stitches are not very visible.
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Now in the past I have told you about my days as a member of the Rubber Knees/ Number Please Club. It was my jumping off step to the world of earning my keep and playing at being a grown-up!
Telephonist at work
Each position for a telephonist had ten pairs of cords and a dial. One cord was used to answer the incoming caller and the other to connect to a line on which to dial the requested number. For each pair of cords there was a little switch with three positions. It was used to open the line for the operator to speak to either or both parties. Once the call was connected the switch sat in the middle or upright position. Moving the switch to the third position allowed the call to be monitored without interrupting the conversation. It was important to do so as long distance calls were considered expensive and the caller did not wish to pay for wasted time if disconnected.
There were times when the lines were all in use and you were unable to deal with any more calls so on occasions to prevent boredom I would flick the switches in quick succession along the line and mix up all the conversations (only I knew about it and not the callers). Another game was to throw a switch and listen to the conversation for a few minutes.
It might work like this:
Pressing the first key into the listening position….
It sounds like a young girl in her early twenties, a right scatterbrain with no brothers to settle her, I bet she is blonde with long fine fluffy curls……
This morning, around the time of my second cup of strong coffee, realized that I did not dream again last night. This has me wondering if I’m not dreaming at all or if I’m just not remembering my dreams. I miss them. Have always dreamed vividly, lots of thrashing around, talking out loud, waking up any house guests, and about the strangest things. Some have been down right scary, waking up with a jolt of adrenalin and thinking WOW!! But for the most part, my dreams have just been entertainment for me, fun to rethink and try to make sense of. I’ve decided to take action in the form of supreme pizza right before bedtime. Sure hope it works!
Pizza before bed… that would surely give me nightmares! That young lady needs to start taking hold of her diet. TWO cups of strong coffee on an empty stomach! I hear the American twang, so I bet the cups are huge (Everything in America is HUGE!), that is surely the express route to a stomach ulcer and if she is not careful her skin will match a rhinoceros before she is forty!
Moving the next key forwards…
A man this time….. deep voice, crisp like a good dry wine and clipped, yet still a little sexiness to it…… Professorial type I imagine, long and lean like good streaky bacon…..
Among the many signs used in the past by countrymen to predict the weather is the phenomenon of distant objects appearing nearer than they are. This foretells the onset of rain within the next few hours. You may be wondering how this can be. Well, it has something to do with the refractive index of air changing with the amount of water vapour held in the air. The variation of the refractive index of air with temperature also has an effect and can give rise to mirages in the desert.
Hmmmm! I wonder if that is why I can smell the rain before it arrives? Now I must remember that snippet of information, I might used it to impress Tony at the dance tonight! 😉
Forward with switch number three…
A mature female voice here….. I see her like a well sprung mattress, very motherly with a good heart and arms well used to giving comfort….
“I knew I shouldn’t have adopted that dog. What did I know about dogs, anyway? Weren’t four kids enough for me to handle? But they begged and cajoled and promised that THEY would be the caretaker of the dog, so I gave in and we went to the Animal Shelter to look for our new pet. It was like a Shirley Temple movie in there. Remember when Shirley was in the orphanage in a few of her pictures and the rich people came in the big black Buick to pick out a kid? Shirley was all pretty with her blonde hair and blue eyes and next to her stood Jane Withers with her dark sad eyes and limp brown hair. Shirley was always picked to ride to her new adopted home in the Buick and Jane was left there at the orphanage to cry and break our hearts. Well, I was determined that wouldn’t happen today. We would pick out the saddest, scruffiest, skinniest little dog in the place and name her Jane. There she was in the corner of the cage; just sitting there, without hope, while all the brazen Shirleys made eyes at us and tried to lick the kids. We told the attendant that we would take her and he was surprised at our choice. But take her we did and, as I knew they would, the kids left all of the doggy duties to Mom. So, through all the years that Jane lived with us she was my best pal and companion. When it was her time to go, I sat by her side at the Veterinary Clinic and petted her as I thanked her for the years of joy she had brought me and how happy I was that those people with the big black Buick hadn’t picked her before it was our turn to choose.
Well, our Mrs Shirley Temple here must have spent her childhood at the movies! Imagine picking a skinny scruffy dog! It would be worse than having a baby. The baby eventually grows up and can do things for itself, but a dog is like a baby for all of its life! You get to cook and clean up after it and if that is not enough it wants to play ball or have a walk and don’t mention the puddles or the other stuff it sticks its nose in!
Moving on to switch number four….
More dogs! No it is not a dog talking on the phone, I know it has been a long day, but I am not ga-ga yet! A woman is talking about her dog, I’m no vet but it sounds a little like curtains for Bubba – that is the name of the dog!
You all have probably seen pics of my Sheltie dogs. I have had Bubba, the male dog, for almost 13 years!
Yesterday, he got up from a long nap on the ceramic floor, shook himself and fell flat and could not get back up. I was immediately sick to my stomach because I know he has reached the expensive stage of his life. I also know that I won’t have him much longer and that makes me even sicker to my stomach. He and I have a lot of history together and that will leave a huge hole in my heart. I guess all I can hope for is that he goes quietly and doesn’t suffer. If he does suffer, I wonder who I can bribe to take him to be euthanised because I know that is something I won’t be able to do! I start to cry just thinking about how much I will miss my best friend.
Oh dearly beloved potato peeler, yer wan is weeping all over the mouth piece. If she is not careful, she’ll be gone before the dog, ‘quietly and no suffering’ is right – ELECTROCUTED that’s what will happen to her, all those tears dripping into the phone. Ah now seriously; The poor wee dog; and the poor wee woman – her best friend….. Do you think I should phone her back when the call is over, I could give her the number for that Dating Agency that is on the wall over the phone in the Call Box on the corner of the street!
Hello Mildew! (Number Five)
Mildew Mengle is the young lad who collects up all our call cards, every forty-five minutes. On these cards I record all the information from each call including my initials and special number. It is so that I can be traced if there is a problem later on. You have no idea how cantankerous some customers can be. It might be three months after a call was made and I am supposed to remember. I mean, when I’ve been out with Tony for a date on a Wednesday night, I hardly remember my name never mind what happened on a call three months ago!
Some of the girls really tease Mildew unmercifully. I don’t because he is shy and I look on him as a younger brother. He is supposed to move quietly along the line and not speak to us or interrupt us while we are talking to the customers. I always make time for him and ask him a question or tell him a joke to make him smile. He has a lovely smile, but it is a pity about his uniform. His uniform has a pretty strong musty smell to it and a slight green tinge! There are white specks on the shoulders and drips down the back of the jacket. The girls say he keeps it in a hen house or garden shed over night. I wonder if he has brothers like mine, ready to stitch up the trouser legs or hide the suit in the refuse bin.
Sometimes when Mildew is collecting my cards, he will leave me a note or a little drawing. He loves to draw and they are usually cartoons. Today he did slip a little folded note onto the corner of my desk. When I unfolded it I found this:
His drawings are usually good, but the message in this one is a little fishy today! If the Supervisor saw it he would be homeless. You see; her name is HAKE! I need to be careful and not risk having Mildew laugh out loud or Missy Fishy Hake will swim right over here faster than a mako shark, and have both of us out the door and singing for our supper! I can’t afford that, I need my wages to buy new nail polish.
“Hey Mildew!” I say smiling. “It’s four O’clock and my shift is over, I’m out of here. See you tomorrow!”
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With thanks to the five contributors who appeared In the following order:
Magit
David
Nancy
Deb
Maynard
