.png) |
| credit: Canva/Irena Szirtes |
Lin shared Carla’s liking for laced hot drinks and laughter, and her partner, Ben, was the funniest man I'd ever met, telling many a true tale against himself. His teaching Roland basic farm chores provided laughter in abundance too. Lin and I were sitting in the window, watching Roland fall base over apex as a small flock of honking geese mobbed his bucket, flapping their wings like washing in the wind.
“They’ll tek the Michael if you let ‘em,” Ben had told him, “you’ve andled dogs, the young un says - treat em t’ same as dogs!”
But Roland couldn’t best the geese. One of Ben’s illegal working collies, Gyp, teamed up with Roland whenever she had the chance and did whatever he asked, but he just couldn’t seem to transfer his handling skills to geese.
To make matters worse for Roland, I could. At first, I spoke to the geese, but soon just had to look at them thinking, “I don’t think so!” and they backed down every time. Roland felt a little better when he learned the geese gave all house guests the same badass welcome. They enjoyed it in their own goosey sort of way, especially when they got a result; doubtless I was rather a disappointment. Ben and Carla thought it hilarious their guests escaped Bots, only to be attacked by geese.
They happened to be good watch geese too.
“Those ancient Romans ad watch geese,” Ben informed us, “ they knew what they were doing – better than technology, those geese are.”
“Who’s afraid of Benson Parry?” Lin went on, “Shut him in the henhouse, loose that lot in! He’d be the only dictator in history to suffer death by goose!”
Lin and I wiped our eyes as we watched the geese, all hiss and honk, vie to grab the back of Roland’s trousers the moment he struggled back up again.
He was in for merciless ragging all the rest of the day.
4 comments:
Enjoying my morning read! Today the humanising of Roland. What, where next?
So glad you are enjoying it Liz 😊 thankyou. I wanted to introduce some lighter material to balance all the dire stuff, though there's more of both to come in the batch of episodes still being written 😊 I particularly like geese and how they read people so very well 🤣
As a child I remember being terrified by geese in my aunt’s neighbour’s Portsmouth garden 😱
Awww I can believe it! Ours used to go for my cousin when were little, but I was used them, learned what Mia did at an early age! Another but of dad's influence I guess! It seems to work for most animals 😆 but I had to make a very deliberate effort to be quietly confident when confronted by a raging mastiff, who'd escaoed his grounds, a little while back! 😱 fortunately it all worked out OK 🙂
Post a Comment