Magpie Tale#18 A Coronation Mug

It all had to be straight.

The desk, the laptop, paper and the office chair. She straightened the two baskets on the desk, the one basket with new paper and the other one ready for the typed story. She straightened the pot of pencils, in the coronation mug and the memories came flooding back. The mug had come from her Aunt’s china cabinet after she had died. It had stood in that cabinet for as long as she could remember, along with a George V plate, and a George V cup and saucer, the Elizabeth II coronation mug and a mug commemorating Charles and Diana’s wedding. Given the choice of which she had wanted, she had chosen that mug, because it reminded her of Edward VIII. It was her pencil pot and as she looked at it, she smiled. Such a romantic story of love when he gave up the throne for Wallace; she thought it would inspire her to write her romances that were her income. What would he have thought she wondered, if he knew that his short-lived life as King had been reduced to pencils in his commemorative mug? She shrugged and looked again at the blank screen, it was no good, her publisher had phoned and phoned for the next three chapters, and writers block had set in, not one single idea came to her. She moved the mug with the pencils; it wasn’t quite in the right spot. Everything had to be straight otherwise she couldn’t concentrate and the ideas wouldn’t come. She moved the corner of one of the baskets, it had to be straight, she looked at the mug again, and turned it so she could see the crest fully, was it in the right spot? Her fingers hovered over the keys and still her mind was blank. She fidgeted in the chair, was her laptop straight to the edge of the desk surface, perhaps she should sharpen all the pencils again? What was wrong, everything was straight but the ideas just wouldn’t come.

Magpie Tales #17 Stone Face

The stone face screaming stood in there,


Greenery all around.

Tall ferns couldn’t soften the raw look.

Small white flowers at the base smiled, but not she.

Did she die like that?

Is that why she is cast in stone?

Horrible, horrible stare.

A pair of Shoes. Magpie#16

Elise glanced in the charity shop window as she hurried along in the rain. There in the middle of a display of china was a pretty little blue jug, something she had been looking for to join her other blue china on her shelf in her kitchen. It was perfect and only a couple of pounds. She could just about afford that, now that she didn’t have a job money was tight. A bell rang as she pushed the door open and the woman behind the counter looked up from what she was doing and smiled at Elise.’ Can I help you,? She asked.

Elise pointed to the jug, ‘Could I look at the little jug please?’ She asked as she stood her umbrella in a tub near the door. The woman put the jug on the counter so Elise could examine it. The shop had a large box just in front of the counter filled with oddments and Elise had to lean across it to get near to the jug.

‘I am so sorry,’ said the woman, ‘I was just stock taking when you arrived and I moved this box so I could go through its contents, we have such a lot of stuff brought in, some days we just pop into boxes till we have a quiet moment to go through them all.’
Elise glanced down at the box’s contents; on the top tied together with string were a pair of black suede shoes. They looked vaguely familiar and she picked them up and looked at them more closely. Were they, could they be her Mother’s? Her sister had said she had got rid of a lot of stuff after her Mother’s death and Elise hadn’t bothered to ask where or what. The whole thing was too much to take after the funeral. Later she had wished she had taken something for herself..... to have, to hold , something that Mum had really liked, and she had loved those shoes. They were her favourite and she always had said that when she wore them she thought she was like a queen. They made her feel regal.

When Richard had arrived home from work tired and ready to eat, he was pleased that the smell of a casserole greeted his nostrils as he entered their kitchen. ‘Hello Love,’ he said,’ Something smells very nice.’

Elise smiled, ‘I have been slaving away all day cooking just for you.’

Richard smiled back and kissed her, it was their joke that Elise and cooking just didn’t go together, but a casserole was just one of the things she could do and while there was this rainy wintery weather, a casserole was their evening meal every evening. He sat down at the table while Elise brought the casserole to it.
Looking at the shelves behind her he noticed something strange on the shelf. ‘Is that a pair of shoes on the shelf?’ he asked.

Elise, her face lit with smiles, answered, ‘ No its a pretty blue jug, I saw it in a charity shop in the High Street and had to buy it. Its got quite a story , so come on eat up and I ‘ll tell you all about it.’

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Magpie Tales#15

The charm bracelet lay broken beside the pool of blood. ‘Strange the murderer didn’t take it, ‘ said Rizzlo, ‘Looks as though it could be worth a bit.’ He looked down at the face now drained of blood and the open eyes that stared up into the sky. Mitch shivered as she leaned over to look at the bracelet.

‘Another young girl killed before she had lived.’ She thought. The early morning noises from the city street was all around them, but the girl lying in her own blood heard nothing.

‘Get the morgue van here double quick before the heat of sun gets to her, at 30°C she is going to smell.’ He said into his phone and then to Mitch, ‘bag that bracelet so the ME can examine it.’

In the clear bag, Mitch looked at the bracelet, the little silver fishes shone and shaking them they jangled. Was the bracelet a present ? A Twenty First birthday present? A Congrats for passing your Exams? A Driving Test? An Anniversary? What tales could they tell.? And they, with their shiny, beady little eyes..... had they seen the perpetrator, the murderer, would they reveal who had done it?
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The Blue Willow Plate. Magpie Tales#14

The plate had always been on my grand mother’s dresser alongside some pretty flower patterned ones as long as I could remember. As I saved blue coloured china bits I would have loved to have that plate and thought it would look rather nice on the shelf in my room.

I always looked at it first when I visited her and sat at the side of the kitchen table so that I could look at it while we drank tea and chatted. She couldn’t remember where she got it from, somebody gave it to me when I was first married she once said. I asked her about the story behind the design and she had laughingly said.. ‘Oh you don’t want to know that, it is too sad and we are having a lovely chat. I want to know all about your new boyfriend. Happy talk not old stories.’
But I wanted to know and so I looked it up the internet at home, I thought it was a lovely story and that the star crossed lovers were forever together now as doves. ‘That’s why,’ I thought 'Cross stitched Wedding Samplers often have doves.'

When I called in to see Gran the following week, the plate was gone, it was no longer on the dresser. My grandmother was busily making the tea and getting out her cake tin. ‘Where’s the plate Gran?’ I asked hesitantly.
‘Oh that old plate I have put it away, I kept thinking about past times and the plate made me feel sad, I can’t be thinking sad things, not when I have my lovely granddaughter here with me to cheer me up.’ And she smiled as she spoke. But behind that smile I could see that Gran was near to tears.
‘I love that plate,’ I said, ‘especially now I know the story of Koong-se and Chang, is that the story that is making you feel sad?’ I asked.
That story is nothing compared to the truth and real life,’ she answered. And by the way she was putting out our cups and saucers and how her face was set in that stubborn way, I knew there was no point in asking anything further about it. Once I was back home I settled down to my college work. But I worried about Gran, she wasn’t herself that afternoon and I had never seen her like that before.
Gran died later that year and it was my mother and I who had to clear her house, as it had to be sold. It seems I was to receive some of the money from the sale. ‘Good old Gran,’ I thought, but really I would rather have had the plate. Mum and I went to Gran’s house a couple of days after the funeral and we started the sad task of sorting through Gran’s things. Everything was very tidy and almost as though she would walk into the kitchen at any moment to offer us tea and cake, in fact there was a fruit cake wrapped in grease proof paper in the tin. And packed ready to go to the Home where Granddad was, were his clean clothes for the following week. He had already been there for two years with Alzheimer's, Gran used to visit him every Sunday but he didn’t know who she was, so he wouldn’t miss her, not like I would.

Mum’s eyes were very wet and I had tears too. ‘Shall we have some tea first?’ said Mum, ‘I brought fresh milk with us.’ We sat at the kitchen table just like I used to with Gran. I looked up at the dresser where the plate used to be, another now in its place.
‘Do you know what happened to her Willow pattern plate Mum? I asked. ‘I would have loved to have had it.’
'I expect it will be around here somewhere,' she answered. We gradually packed up all the small things that Mum thought we’d like and the rest was packed for a charity shop. The furniture was being collected for a Charity that helped people out of work. ‘My dad won’t need any of this’ Mum said. ‘ So it might as well go to where it could be of use.' The plate was nowhere to be found. I found some old cards and letters in a shoe box and Mum said to bring them home so we could look at them.
And we did, there were cards and post cards, letters and news paper cuttings that Gran had saved over the years, for her own reasons no doubt. One was about a soldier killed in the war, he was from our village, 'I expect Gran knew him,’ I said as they would have been about the same age. At the very bottom of the box in a paper envelope was a folded age spotted piece of fabric and as I unfolded it I could see two doves cross stitched in blue thread, under the doves were two names, one was my Gran’s and the other was the name of the soldier in the newspaper cutting. Then I knew why my Gran was sad that day and what the plate meant to her. Real life was just as sad as stories, I thought and like Gran said... sadder. I showed the stitching to Mum and she sighed.’ ‘Do you think he might have been her first love, her childhood sweet heart?’ I asked,
‘Possibly, Mum never spoke a lot about her life when she was young and before she met my father.’ She said.
We both looked at tiny piece of sewing again and our tears fell as we hugged each other. It was much better than the plate, it was stitched by my Gran and it was beautiful.

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The Eye Magpie Tales#13

‘Eyes are the most precious things we have and yet some people don’t think to protect them,’ said the surgeon, as he got ready to demonstrate the technique.
Laura was standing the nearest of the two and the smell of the antiseptic he was using had started to make her feel quite queasy.
‘Pass me the scalpel nurse,’ and he held out his hand to receive the instrument.
She turned away as he made the cut and when she turned back, curiosity getting the better of her, she was surprised to see a watery bloody fluid leaking from where he had inserted the knife.
‘Dish please nurse.’ he said.
‘That’s right,’ he said as she held it out and he put the eye carefully into the sterile water which half covered it.
‘Now let’s see,’ he said as he looked into the opened covered box he had, ‘what would be the best colour match?’
Laura leaned over to see.
‘Yes I think this one,’ he said as he picked up a browny green coloured one, ‘this is perfect, what do you think Nurse?’

She watched fascinated as he carefully pushed the round glass eye into the empty socket, making sure it looked straight and matched the other one. Then closing the eyelid, he took a small strip of tape and placed it on the lid to keep it closed, then cleaned up the cheek with a gauze swab.

‘If only all dead people would donate their eyes, their corneas would give sight to so many people,’ he stated.
They stood back and watched as the mortuary attendant pushed the trolley back into the fridge. Then all three, the Doctor, and nurses left, he carrying the precious eye now covered with a cloth. ‘It will be put in cold storage until that young man with the injured eye is in theatre,’ he explained. Laura walked behind him and still marvelled at the miracle she was about to observe when the cornea was transplanted onto a living eye to give back the sight that had been lost.
‘Yes eyes are most precious,’ she thought, 'but they look horrible when out of the socket!'
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The Paperweight: Magpie Tales#12

The dust motes danced in the sunlight streaming through the window as it reflected off the glass paperweight.

A whole year gone already she thought, time flies. It hadn’t ever occurred to her before, how irrevocable death was, the emptiness was still there, and it went on and on and on.  He had bought her the paperweight on one of their visits around the antique markets, it was so colourful and she had cried in delight when she saw it, and just like a child, she just had to have it.

It was only a week later that her mother’s cousin had flown home to the other side of the world and that’s when their love affair had really started. She watched him as he walked away and she knew she would never see him again. This man who had made her heart flutter and who had said, ’I love you’ in his soft accent which burned into her soul. ‘We will write,’ he said as he went through the barrier into that no man’s land to fly to another world.

And they did for three years, blue paper, white paper, tissue thin, filled with words of love and tenderness. Then they stopped, no letters no messages until that fateful phone call from his sister who had found the letters hidden in a box.

‘Both killed outright,’ she had said, ‘he and his wife. A head on crash, they didn’t have a chance.’

The sun made the bright colours seem as though they were dancing and she touched the paperweight letting her fingers caress the roundness of it.

‘Is that yours Mummy?’ asked Alicia as she watched her mother, stop with the duster still in her hand.

‘Yes, yes, it is and in it holds some happy memories.’ She answered her small daughter.

‘I can only a see a fish, where are the memories Mummy?’

They’re there, you just have to close your eyes, and then you can see them,’ she said, ‘just close your eyes and you’ll see.’

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