I'm talking about the new simpler bus service designed to make travelling easier.
The new simpler bus service that makes things significantly more difficult and totally confusing. And of course we all know that once we've spent months trying to understand it all, they will change it again.
Rule Number One - if something is working well, change it.
Now it's my job to try to make sense of things so I can communicate them on village matters to my e magazine Hethersett Herald. Sometimes that's a tough ask as I need them explained to me.
So I asked the other threequarters to take a long hard look. She did a little bit better than me but then admitted that she too was confused about what will be running and what won't be running.
*. *. *
I keep waiting for inspiration but inspiration just doesn't come.
I refer to my aim to write a number of short stories of exactly 500 words. I posted my first one sometime ago.
I have completed a second and written half of a third. When I started out with the idea, I was expecting inspiration to hit me like a sledgehammer, but it hasn't as much as tapped me on the shoulder. But the thing I like about the idea is that sometime, somewhere in the not too distant future an idea will strike and it won't take long to turn it into a 500 word story.
Until that happens I will let you have what I have imaginatively called 500 Words Number Two.
Firstly a bit of an explanation. The first one was completely made up. This one is based on a legend in Weybourne in North Norfolk. It's the legend of a ghostly smuggler who can be allegedly heard whistling and shouting a warning to his fellow smugglers who have actually abandoned him. This happens at sundown. Weybourne is well known as a famous area for smuggling in the dim and distant past. Anyway here goes.
* *
When the sound came it was an eerie one. A high-pitched whistle. It sounded ghostly and indeed it was.
The ghostly figure from whence it came did this night after night after night. There were accomplices to warn. They may have sold him down the river on this occasion, but they were still his friends. He chuckled at the thought of being sold down the river. Being sold down the sea would be more to the point.
He stared out to sea. He could see the King’s men approaching. They would soon be upon him. He had been left to fend for himself. “Everyman for himself” is what they had agreed previously but it was hard now that it came down to it.
Perhaps they would still come to his rescue. He had nothing to lose now. Within minutes he would be caught and the game would be up. So, another loud whistle, another loud holler wouldn’t do any harm.
It brought no action, just the stillness of the night and the footsteps of the oncoming customs men. There was nothing left for it but to be a man. They wouldn’t take him alive; he would deny them that at least. His clothes would hold him down and make the end come quicker. If they caught him, it would almost certainly be the gibbet.
So, he walked to the sea’s edge. It was dark enough not to know when the water would engulf him, but it soon did and before he knew it the sea had completely overcome him. His lungs filled with water and he found himself unable to breath.
As the sun came up the next morning the customs men found his body bloated and swollen and washed up on the stony beach. None of his accomplices were found but a stash of contraband turned up at one of the local hostelries, although nothing could ever be pinned on the landlord who may or may not have been part of the gang.
• * *
There was something very romantic about watching the sun go down over the sea, particularly on a barmy summer evening like this.
Tony and Diane had chosen this evening to have a stroll as darkness fell. There was a silence that enveloped the village on nights like this when the local shops had shut and what few day trippers there were had gone home for the day.
Darkness had just fallen when Tony and Diane’s daydreams were shattered by an ear-piercing whistle and ghostly words that sounded something like “Come Quick, Come Quick.”
It took 48 hours for Tony and Diane to be reported missing. Being on holiday nobody missed them for well over a day. Twenty-four hours later their bodies washed up on the beach. They were found by a local fisherman who reported the fact to the police.
“It might be nothing but when I found them I swear I heard a high-pitched whistle and somebody shouting Come Quick,” he told them.