AND NOW FOR SOMETHING YOU'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR...!

I'm back.

Sorry for the absence readers but first we had a 24 hour power cut, and after that I seem to have been none-stop getting ready for my England trip.

Well, it is 7.30 p.m. Friday and we have to be up early tomorrow to go to the airport (Lydia will take us). So you may not hear from me for a few days. Sure if I can get to a computer then I will let you all know what I am doing, but as this is a Vrahassi blog I'm sure you are not interested in my adventures in England. So, just to give you a bit of reading while I am away, here is the next part of...

IT'S JUST A STORY. (for those of you who are new to my blog, please scroll down and read from the beginning.

Maisie spent her time discussing whether things were happening now, happened in the past (once or continuously or at the same time as something else was happening) or happened in the future, or rather, would happen in the future (only once or continuously). And the amount of time she spent on this was unbelievable. Maisie was, unhappily, a language teacher. I say unhappily because her class was a group of fourteen year old smartarse Vlahassians who didn't really care when things happened so long as things happened. They were not short of language but it was, most of the time, bad language. Bad language to Maisie was like some horrible green canker which smelt like bile, had maggots creep-crawling about in it and the sound of big black flies feasting on it. But try as she mingt she could not get her adolescent students to understand the concept of good language. They were the class from Persephone's pit. Theywere the cause of her headaches. They gave her nightmares.

Maisie's worst nightmare was that the whole wolrld would sooon be full of people like the class from Persephone's pit. All using bad language which eventually would evolve, as language does, into some hybrid form of communication only understood by the illiterate who would by that time rule the world. She had one nightmare in particular that recurred. It was that whenever she opened heer mouth she said things back to front or inside out or upside down and her verbs were always in the present participle. It sounded like this: 'to going me yesterday,'' or 'tomorrow I being to having off me." Most nights she went to sleep and entered this world of unacceptable syntax. Maisie's dream bubble trembled in some sort of stress-state that Zod's sensors picked up and automatically knew to avoid.

"I've got to divert my mind," Maisie said to herself. "I haven't had a good night's sleep for ages. She tried hot cocoa; it only made the dreams worse. She tried sleeping pills and found that she was so tired that she was cat-napping during the day and dreaming twice as much. She tried yoga, jogging, swimming, watching TV, nibbling a biscuit before she went to bed, not eating anything after six o'clock, but all to no avail. As soon as goldilocks hit slumber she slipped into her nightmare.
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Dr Kurakis should have retired several years ago, seeing as most of the people with more than one brain cell had left the mountain for pastures new long ago but he still had a part to play in the village. He didn't really do any doctoring but he provided a place where all the old biddies could gather and moan about their stiff joints and catch up with the weekly gossip. Dr Kurakis was pushing eighty if he was a day: he had a big, fleshy growth over his right eye, stooped slightly, had Mozart type hair, which was thin, grey and longish and was always lank and greasy: he wore a dark grey suit day and night, which he probably had had specially tailored for his daughter's wedding; he carried a small leather doctor's bag and generally looked quite eccentric. In the bag there was an obligatory stethoscope and a very ancient sphygmomanometer.

Dr Kurakis was well respected. His house was full of books and, whether he had read them or not, this was a just reason to revere the man. Whether he ever actually cured anyone was something else. When he wasn't at his surgery he wass tending his beans or else sitting in the cafeneon drinking raki with the shepherds. He was in the cafeneon when Takis came blundering in with news of Yorgos.

Takis, who had not been blessed with over bright parents was an even shorter than most Vlahassian, with large feet, shovel-like hands and thick, round, black rimmed glasses. What's more he stuttered and spat saliva all over the place when he spoke so it was difficult for him to make the cafeneio-crowd understand. When they finally did get the gist of his babble there was instant panic. yorgos had been found in some sort of trance-like state. In the words of his brother, who by now had entered the scene, "In a world of his own". Yorgos was walking but didn't know where to. He was talking but no-one had any idea to whom he spoke. He was conscious but at the smae time totally unconscious of his earthly surroundings. Manolis had brought him into the village. He had found him thus, wandering around with the sheep, muttering over and over "here, there and everywhere, here there, and everywhere, here, there and everywhere, here, there and everywhere," like some record stuck in the groove.

People crowded around the two brothers as the one led the other into the cafeneon where Dr Kurakis was already on his third karafachi o f raki. Out came the stethoscope. out came the sphygmomanometer. All were silent in anticipation of the diagnosis. Dr Kurakis rocked slightly. "The man's not at home," he said, "the man's definitely not at home". He gigled slightly, which was a llittle disconcerting for the family, who were naturally upset, but they had every faith in the doctor, he was after all, a man of leaning and he would know exactly what to do. His suggestion therefore that they take Yorgos home and put him to bed to sleep it off, seemed wise. So that is exactly what they did. They tucked him up safely in his bed and waited for his senses to return.
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Sorry for any spelling mistakes but spell check wont work for some reason. I'll be back on the 13th February so until then

HAVE A BRILLIANT CHINESE NEW YEAR ON THE 7TH

AND A BIG, BIG, BIG, THANK YOU GERALD FOR SENDING THE PARCEL OF GOODIES WHAT A WONDERFUL SURPRISE - HAVE A GOOD ONE,
Love Jane x