Lockdown Season, Episode 4

Totally Made Up Tales

Lockdown may be over, but our store of lockdown tales is not.

Music: Creepy — Bensound.com.

Here are some Totally Made Up Tales brought to you by the magic of the internet.

Try placing your hands on my thighs and then rub.

Language makes it easy to understand other people and animals.

Friends don’t listen to moaning. Friends tell each other to shut up.

One day, Maisie got out of bed, stretched, and thought, I wonder what I should do today. She arched her back and flicked her tail and stretched her claws. Perhaps she would go and chase birds. That will be a wonderful thing to pass the time, particularly if she could catch that fat blue tit that had been taunting her for days. She jumped up onto the window sill and out, climbing up onto the roof.

From her high up vantage point, she looked over the gardens of the neighbourhood that she regarded quite rightly as her own.

There, three gardens down, sat a bird. Perched on an old fashioned flat surfaced bird table covered in bacon rinds, pecking away at them with an arrogant swagger in its manner. Maisie extended her claws and licked them carefully, making sure that they were sharp and ready for action. Stealthily putting one paw in front of the other, she crept across the tiles of the roof, with the smoothness of a monorail.

First, from her own house to the next door. And then the one beyond that, and finally to the one in whose garden the bird perched. She crouched low against the roof tiles, peering intently down at the bird, still unaware of her presence. And then, letting out a yodelling screech, she leapt for the bird table.

Midway through her jump, the bird, alerted by her yodel, turned, looked at her, and took flight.

Maisie landed on the bird table, which wobbled precariously. As it wobbled slightly, it fell onto its side and an ungainly heap of cat, bacon rind, and table were left on the lawn.

From inside the house, Maisie heard the owner yelling. He was fumbling for the key for the back door and looked like the sort of angry red-faced man that might teach geography. Maisie took off like a shot. And crouched in the branches of a nearby tree where she wouldn't be able to be reached, she licked the bacon fat off her paws and was surprisingly pleased by the taste.

Perhaps, she thought, I should hunt bacon next.

The end.

Timothy sat down on a rock, at the side of the road. He was weary, having walked from the village all the way out to where he was now. The flat, marshy fields of the fens stretched out in a featureless expanse, as far as the horizon in all directions. He was beginning to worry that the pub that he was heading for, maybe didn't actually exist.

It had sounded so attractive when his Airbnb host had recommended it to him as a pleasant Sunday afternoon outing. But now, the wind whistling between the rocks and the heather, he was having second thoughts. As he sat on his stone, a cold feeling started to creep from the rocks into his bones. He thought he should get moving again, but somehow couldn't quite pick up the energy to stand up.

It seemed that he was getting heavier by the moment, and that his thoughts were slowing. His heart rate seemed to be slowing too. His pulse, almost impossible to discern.

Eventually the sculpture park in Lowestoft became Britain's top tourist attraction for 2020.

Walking home one afternoon, Melissa stopped by a bank by the side of the road to pick some wild flowers. They were a wonderful selection of colours, bright yellow, dark purple, and pale cornflower blue. She wrapped them carefully in a scarf that she had with her, and took them home and arranged them in a vase.

The smell of the flowers filled her living room. It was rich and intoxicating, with that edge of the night that comes from wild flowers. Even by the time she was getting ready to go to bed, she could still feel permeated through the house, the magic and feeling of dusk.

As she slept, the land of dreams washed itself over the horizon of her consciousness. She saw herself dancing, dancing through fields of flowers, dancing with flowers, just dancing throughout the night.

When she woke in the morning, it was not in the comfortable and familiar bed that she had gone to sleep in. Although the bed was still there, now it was twined with flowers. Every surface covered with creepers, with blooms, and even the very sheets had turned to patterned flowers. She lay in a bed entirely of flowers.

As summer turned to autumn, the bloom of the flowers faded and the leaves of the creepers crinkled and shrivelled and prepared for the winter ahead. Now the house felt more cold than it had ever done. And she started to resist going to bed, staying up later and later, the bed feeling cold and unwelcoming when she slipped into it, finally.

At last, on a chill October night, the first frost of the year came and carried her away.

When they found her body cold, dark, and alone, creepers were still entwined with her limbs and a small wreath of still vibrant flowers sat upon her brow.

The end.

Philip loved the colour purple, and everything that he owned, wherever possible, he would either buy in that colour or subsequently paint or dye to match his preference. He had purple socks, shoes, purple t-shirts and hats, purple house, a purple car, and a purple cat. He preferred purple food, although it wasn't always easy, but beetroots and certain types of broccoli for instance were among his favourites. He liked purple music, and that meant that he listened to a lot of Prince. And, at work sitting at his purple desk, wearing his purple suit, he picked up his purple phone and spoke to other people who did not appreciate purple to the same extent he did.

Philip was a purple consultant. If the metaphor isn't clear to you at this point, then there's no hope for you in the modern world.

The end.

The river flowed lazily between the sun-kissed fields. It had been a long summer, but Annabel was looking forward to the autumn. She had the kind of fair skin that burned easily, and much as she loved the bright summer days, she had found it taxing to constantly have to be lathering on factor 50, and finding a tree to be in the shade of, and covering up her arms.

But now she could see that the harvest was coming in, and that meant that summer was at an end. Not only would she not have to worry about the sun for much longer, but she would soon see some of her friends again, returning from their summers.

She walked along the bank of the river, enjoying the soft gurgling sound that it made as it flowed through the rushes and the low hanging bushes and overhanging trees on its banks.

She wasn't really taking care of where she was going. She knew the landscape so well, she could find her way home from anywhere. But soon it was beginning to get dark, and then she realized she wasn't sure where she was.

She looked up for a familiar marker for some sense of how far she had come, and whether it would make sense to continue or to turn back. There weren't any buildings that she could see nearby. Although the hills looked vaguely familiar in shape, but when she looked down to the river, it was much smaller than it should have been had she been anywhere near home.

The light was fading, and the shadows were lengthening and thickening around her, and the now unfamiliar countryside was beginning to take on the sinister aspect of night. Desperately, she looked around, turning towards the setting sun to see if she could see any smoke rising from a settlement.

But there was nothing, even the sounds of the motorway, which was less than 10 miles from her home, or of planes overhead, or of machines bringing in the harvest had dropped away. All she could hear was the burbling of the stream.

And, as the sun went down, she heard the wolves crying.

Ooh: the end.

Fly a kite in the wind. It’ll be your freedom.

Shopping with your mother leads to strife.

Jennifer pruned her rosebush. It was the first time in the year that she'd been able to get out into the garden, and she was relishing snipping off the bits that displeased her. This bush was her pride and joy, she had been tending it for many years, and it was hardy and produced fat flowers reliably every spring.

As she pruned, she hummed to her herself, contentedly. She hummed a selection of popular classics, and she found that this not only soothed her but also seemed to please the rosebush in a way that she wasn't quite able to quantify.

By the time her husband called her in for tea, she had pruned away all of the unwanted matter and left with a perfect rose bush fit for the growing season.

She went into the house and closed the door behind her and looked out through the window as she sipped the delicious cup of tea that her husband had made for her.

I think I'm in with a good chance at this year's show, she said to him.

Out in the garden, the rose bush hummed softly to itself the overture from Cavalleria Rusticana.

The end.

Dear Maggie,

My breasts are not growing as fast as I’d like. What can I do?

Yours,

Apples

Dear Apples,

Have you tried pumping your breasts using a bicycle pump? Alternatively, just get over it.

Yours,

Maggie

I'm James and I'm here with Andrew. These stories were recorded without advanced planning, and then lightly edited for the discerning listener. Join us next time for more Totally Made Up Tales.

Andrew: I mean there was a whole thing there... Cause there's a whole thing in medieval literature about, oh, her breasts were small and round like apples. They really loved, Medieval Britons really loved apple shaped –

James: They really loved describing breasts, I think is what you're saying. I'm sure that there are many instances of, so: monk, this illustration you've done. Why exactly are you so keen on these breasts the size of apples? Do we have to see them? I mean, is it necessary to the story you're illustrating in any way? And also, what's this flying penis doing?

Andrew: It's a useful sex aid for church-sanctioned marital intercourse.

James: Surely in medieval church-sanctioned intercourse breasts are generally not for sex. I mean, I'm guessing a little, but I can't imagine that there was a Papal Encyclical going: it's okay to motorboat.

Andrew: No, but the point is that as a visual cue...

James: Breasts mean sex.

Andrew: Yes, yes, yes.

James: Yes I suppose so.

Andrew: Hemispheres is like, oh, fleshy hemispheres. It's like, oh, razzle. That's just how we work.

James: Certainly if you were a monk, and didn't see any women, I can imagine you're just going: oh, it's a pair of apples.

Andrew: Oh, two eggs have aligned in a bowl.

James: I'm just imagining a monk, a monk preparing dinner in the kitchen and he calls over his monk buddy, going, "Hey, look at that!" And he just looks at him... And it's just two eggs. It's like, "Yes, yes, yes Michael it's two eggs. What's your point?"