beautiful monsters

No news on the Fi front

Really, I have nothing to say. My life currently consists of watching Buffy and drinking Soy Chai Lattes (drinking chocolate? that’s so last month!) I may have to invest in a small coffee plunger, so I can froth my own milk. Oh, and maybe a DVD player. I don’t like being so dependent on other people.

I tried to do some writing this evening (because my flatmate is in his room, on the phone, so I can’t watch Buffy videos, or log on). I’m still having plot issues. Lack of plot issues, to be precise. I started writing a story about a cat that was scared of ants, but nothing happened. The cat and the ants just stayed on opposite sides of the cat flap, disliking each other. There’s only so much prose you can write about a nervous cat before it starts to get really boring.

Oh, by the way, I’ve added my reading journal to the menu over there on the right. At the moment it consists of my course reading journal, plus a couple of things from the last few days. I’ll add to it every time a movie or book grabs me, shakes me, and says “write about me.”

Meantime, cos I have no life and therefore nothing to blog about, I’m just going to post one of the stories from my folio. Apologies to those of you who have already read this one.

Uncle Gus

I know it’s very careless, losing an uncle, but ours was particularly hard to keep track of. He used to disappear for weeks at a time, but he’d always turn up again. Trouble was, we never knew when that was going to be.

I used to like it when Uncle Gus turned up on our doorstep. Sometimes it wasn’t much fun being the only boy in the family. We never had a dad. Well, biologically everyone’s got to have a dad, but we never knew ours.

Once Uncle Gus told me he never really knew his dad either. Uncle Gus and Liz were really young when their father died. Once he told me that he always wanted a brother, so he could play boy’s games, like cricket and go-carting. I knew exactly how he must have felt.

Uncle Gus was always turning up at the most inconvenient moments. That’s what Liz said, anyway. The last time we saw him was when Miriam went into labour with Lu. The car wouldn’t start, and everyone was running around panicking. Suddenly, Uncle Gus turned up on the doorstep with a big box under his arm. He plonked it down in the middle of all the chaos, and sat on it.

“Now is really not a good time,” snapped Liz as she rushed inside to phone an ambulance. Uncle Gus just stuck his hands in his pockets, crossed one ankle over the other, and started whistling.

“What’s that?” I asked him, looking at the box.

He just winked at me, and kept whistling.

“If you’re going to hang around, at least keep an eye on the kids till we get back from the hospital,” Liz yelled as she rushed past, half pushing, half carrying Miriam.

Uncle Gus waited until they’d gone, then he disappeared into the shed. I looked at the box. I wondered if he was working on one of his inventions.

Uncle Gus was always working on some kind of invention. Like a toaster that spread the butter on before the toast popped up, or an iron that made the clothes smell nice. Miram wasn’t very happy about the iron, it left smeary marks all over her favourite blouse.

Uncle Gus was good at fixing things too. When the washing machine broke he fixed it so well it washed the clothes twice as fast, and picked up National Radio.

On the day Lucille was born, he got the big ladder and propped it against the house. Then he tied a rope around the big box, and climbed onto the roof.

“What are you doing, Uncle Gus,” I yelled.

“I just need to borrow your aerial,” he yelled back. Then he started to pull on the rope, so the big box rose above the ground, then swayed backwards and forwards up towards the roof. When he’d hauled the box to safety, I followed up the ladder. Uncle Gus pulled a hammer and some barbecue tongs out of his trousers pocket, and started tinkering.

“What’s it going to do?”

Uncle Gus looked at me as though he was trying to work something out. Then he gestured for me to come over.

“Can you keep a secret?” he asked me.

“Sure I can.”

“A really big secret. You can’t tell anyone, or they’ll all want to do it, and that would be chaos!”

I nodded, in what I hoped was a grownup, trustworthy sort of way.

“I’ve discovered the secret of living forever!” He had such a big grin on his face, he looked as though he might split in half. “I’ve got it all worked out. All I have to do is travel into the future.”

I scratched my head. “But won’t you still die in the future?”

“No, that’s the trick! See, if I travel into the future, I’ll still be old, but I’ll be old in the future. You know what that means? I’ll be young now! Get it?”

I didn’t really get it at all, but I nodded anyway.

“If I’m old in the future, that means that I have to be young now, to grow up and be old then. So I get to live twice! And if I do it again once I catch up to myself, I’ll go on living and living!”

He was getting really excited, hopping around on the roof and waving the hammer. Then suddenly, he looked serious again.

“Promise you won’t tell anyone?”

“I promise.”

He went back to rattling the hammer around inside the box.

“But Uncle Gus? I’ll miss you.”

He looked up at me with a surprised expression on his face. “But I’ll still be here, son. Don’t you see? I’ll just be younger. But you’ll recognise me, I know you will.”

When Liz and Miriam got back from the hospital, the house erupted in chaos again. Baby Lu kept screaming, Jackie through a massive tantrum, Tiger kept trying to jump into the bassinet… ok, so it was pretty much normal family life, just with one extra kid in nappies.

It wasn’t until the toaster broke that anyone noticed Uncle Gus was missing. “Where’s that Uncle when we need him,” cried Liz. She looked at Miriam. “Hey, where is Uncle Gus?” Miriam shook her head, and then they both turned to me. I just shrugged.

“He’ll turn up, some day. He always does.”

But he didn’t. He had disappeared. At least, that’s what everyone thought. Liz worried for a while, but then she got so busy looking after Lu that she didn’t have much time to wonder where he’d disappeared to. “He’s pretty good at looking after himself,” she said to me. And life settled down into what passes for normal in our family.

Except… there was this new kid, Gavin.

Gavin just turned up on the doorstep one day, not long after Uncle Gus disappeared. Liz just about fell over when she saw him, she said the family resemblance was extraordinary.

No one could work out where Gavin appeared from, and he wouldn’t say anything about his mum or dad, or where he’d lived before. Liz decided that maybe Gavin was a kid that Uncle Gus never told us about. Maybe his mum decided it was time for Uncle Gus to take some responsibility, and so she sent Gavin to look for him. “Men!” said Liz, and shook her head, but she was laughing. Gavin looked at me, and smiled, but I think he was laughing at a different joke.

It’s pretty cool having another boy in the family. Gavin is a great kid. He’s a bit younger than I am, but he’s really clever. He makes the best go-carts you’ve ever seen. The one he made for me has a built in radio. And a toaster.

Posted by Fionnaigh at July 10, 2003 12:24 AM