Your four year old has been to Chloe’s party. Somebody has to fetch her home and you drew the short straw. There’s a very real chance that you’re going to have to hear how she behaved while there …

After the Party

“I like to pick my nose
And sometimes I eat it.
It’s all green and …”
“Could you sing a different song, do you think?”
“Why?”
“Well, singing about picking your nose is not as nice as singing about picking daisies, for example.”
“I don’t pick daisies.”
“True.”
“But I do pick my nose.”
“Also true. But maybe it doesn’t need singing about.”

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You settle down with your four year old to listen to her reading you a nursery rhyme, just to help her with her reading. It’s four lines long, for goodness’ sake! How hard can it be?

Well, for a start, children pick up on more than you might think …

Baa Baa Black Sheep

“Baa …”
“Baa.”
(Pause)
“Then it’s the same again. Baa.”
“Why?”
(Pause)
“Well, because it just is.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s the way the man wrote it.”
“What man?”
“The man who wrote ‘Baa, Baa, Black Sheep’.”
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t know! Just a man, who wrote down the nursery rhyme, so that you could show Mummy what a clever girl you are, and read all these words to me.”

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Emma works all day, while her husband dabbles at mysterious scientific projects. Their long-suffering cleaner leaves notes for her employer each day, telling Emma about the vanishing sandwiches, the destroyed hoover, the trouble with the ceiling and the day the house is destroyed …

Dear Mrs Golding

Dear Mrs. Golding,

Have cleaned all windows inside and out. Tea for you and Mr. Golding is in fridge. Mr. Golding did not eat his sandwiches today, so have put them in fridge too.

I am sorry about the plates. I didn’t take my money today, because I thought it might help pay for the damage. Have hoovered carefully and I don’t think there are any splinters in the carpet.

Mrs. Jenks

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‘Essence of Humour’ is a collection of short stories which brings together the best of humour writing from 17 authors across the globe.

It is 1896. The new century approaches, new inventions abound and for one Victorian miss, living the stultified life of the genteel middle class, it is the chance for freedom. Freedom, most particularly, in the shape of the new Motor Cars. But whoever heard of a Victorian petrol head?

Good to be Out on the Road

Wednesday 29th January 1896

The rain has been well-nigh constant. Mama has been even more fretful than usual, and Papa more absent, for which I, at least, have been grateful. He did not appear for breakfast this morning and Mama found fault with everything the maids did and eventually retired to her room. Papa’s newspaper was lying in his place at table and so I was rather bold and opened it up to read it myself.

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How are you supposed to cope when you’ve lost your husband? And what if your phone rings and there’s never anybody there? Can a phone be haunted?

Caroline is alone now but someone seems to want to contact her. The caller wants something, and Caroline may know what that is.

Harry

The telephone rang insistently in the empty air. Outside, while birds sang and traffic roared, a key scraped in the lock and a woman rushed through into the neat hallway, leaving the door wide open behind her. She dashed for the phone on the polished fruitwood table in the living room. Just as her hand closed over the receiver, the ringing stopped.

Irritated, the woman walked back through the hall, slamming the front door shut on her way and sweeping her hand down to retrieve the carrier bag she had dumped there when she heard the phone ringing.

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In a moment of weakness, you decide to take your four-year old on a train trip.

Big mistake. Big, big mistake.

Mind the Gap

“Mummy? Why is there a yellow line on the ground?”
“It’s a warning, so people don’t step over it.”
“Why?”
“Because if you step over it, you’re too near the platform edge.”
“Oh!”
“Don’t go across it! I said it’s too near the edge. Come on, hold my hand.”
“What’s down there?”
“Just the track. But it’s quite a few feet down.”
“Feets? Where are there feets?”

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Leaving your boyfriend is sad – but not half as sad as finding yourself in Yorkshire with a coach full of old gits, Vlad the Impaler in charge of the driving, and the hotel receptionist from Hell.

Of course there are ways of livening things up…

The Coach Party

It was cold, it was raining and worst of all, it was 5 a.m. The bus stop stood forlornly in the empty street like some sort of last outpost of civilization. I’d been there for a quarter of an hour, listening to the rain drumming onto the umbrella, before headlights pierced the gloom ahead and a long dark shape pulled up by the stop. Pallid faces stared at me from the windows. There was a sudden creak, the doors juddered open, a blast of hot air hit me in the face, and I heard the driver growling, in some sort of foreign accent, “Bloody doors! I shoulda brought a hammer!”

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It was an empty house. Ideal, for ghost hunters. We set up our equipment and waited through a long night for a ghostly apparition to appear in one of the other rooms. It wasn’t until too late that we realised that it was already here …

The House on the Hill

The house stood on a hill above the village. It had been built in the 17th century, of local stone.  It had stood empty for some months and you could tell it was abandoned. Moss was beginning to grow between the flagstones of the path and one of the mullioned windows was broken, one large piece lying abandoned on the grass.

There were three of us: Josh, Kev and me. I’d already had a long day, driving for a haulage firm. God knows what possessed me to agree to another one of these trips. I needed my head examining.

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