Many thanks to Mriceman1964 for his help, advice, editorial assistance, and much constructive criticism (and the occasional WTF? question) about the story. I could not have got to this point with this story without all of the above, so thanks much, Mike! Also, thank you to all those of you who've been kind enough to read and tell me how much you enjoyed my work - no-one on this site gets paid for submitting their thoughts and ideas on this forum, and to get appreciation from such a very discerning readership is high praise indeed!
As always, if you liked this segment, please rate it, if you didn't, please tell me why - I do heed the comments made (except for the pointlessly rude, deranged or downright demented), and if there is a particular character or situation you think needs developing or tailing-back, please do tell me - I can't promise I will, but I do promise to at least consider it (unless it's totally bonkers, of course...)
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Excerpt from the private diary of Nguye't Morrison
Wed, 27th April, 2011
I haven't had a chance to update this since Saturday, things have been a little...hectic, shall we say. After Jamie gave me such a stunning Graduation present, he surprised me with a trip to Paris, and put a ring on my finger. I must show it to Julie and Shelagh, do a little gloating, well, a lot of gloating, the rock is enormous, or, as dad put it, bigger than a pimple on a pig's arse; he's such an old-fashioned romantic, how did mum resist him for as long as she did...
Jamie brought back something from his sojourn in Vietnam that made my weekend, in a 'this is terrible but it's also fantastic' sort of way; details of the sordid dealings of that animal who stole my sister when she was 3-weeks old. It made terrible, horrifying reading, and it made me feel deeply unclean, but it gave us a definite lead on where to begin looking for Hu'e, and it finally let me know the true extent of the pain and loss that man has caused. I'm not sorry to say that I feel a great deal of schadenfreude, 'Shameful Joy', to know that he's probably being tortured or raped in a hell-hole prison right now; sometimes natural justice does get a chance to work, and he's probably lucky at that; if it were up to me, I'd tie the rope and kick away the chair...
I gave Polar Bear the low-down on how to bend the law sufficiently to allow us to get married, he wants to know why I'm not running for Parliament, and dad's worried I'll take up bank fraud as a hobby, but I just wanted my Polar Bear to be aware that the clock's ticking; mum gave him the speech, the verbal equivalent of choosing to cut the red wire or the blue wire, and it finally percolated through; he may be a whiz at determining deep well yields and thingies, but when it comes to the realities of human marital customs,and the intricacies involved in planning weddings and suchlike, like all men, he's a complete arse-head; he couldn't seem to see that putting a ring on a girl's finger and thinking it ends there is not a good or healthy thing to do, especially if said girl wears stiletto heels and is willing, purely in a spirit of scientific enquiry, to discover if it's possible to push one though a man's instep and nail his foot to the floor.
Sometimes poor Jamie is all too living proof that the average man's head is a large echoing space, with only three active neurons; one each for football, beer, and scratching, all enclosed by a thick bony case that's a good place to hang his ears, that sometimes looks like George Clooney, but more often like Mickey Rooney.
Anyway, we 're waiting with bated breath for a package from one more of his mysterious, nefarious, nay, downright shady contacts in one of the world's lesser-known waste spaces, he refused to discuss it with Jamie via email, so it's obviously relevant and important enough to send by bonded courier. Apparently the man is some sort of Frontier Sheriff-type, hand never too far from his gun, 1,000 yard stare, all that stuff, and I keep asking myself; how does an oil prospector from South London ever meet shady characters like that, is there some sort of secret society they belong to, The Ancient and Elucidated Order of The Wandering Idiots, or is there a real Star Wars-type cantina out there somewhere, where some murky Han Solo-ish character waits for people like Jamie to show up? Enquiring minds want to know...
You're waffling, girl, stop it.
The Polar Bear is trying to look all nonchalant, but I've been able to see through him since I was 3 years old, and he's definitely keyed-up and excited; I know he's trying to keep me from getting my hopes up, but he really should give me more credit than that; I know that whatever happens, we couldn't be any worse off than we are now; we're currently in a state of advanced ignorance about where Hu'e went after she was taken, and if this package has no new information, we're still ignorant of her whereabouts -- it's not additive, we won't suddenly become more ignorant, no matter what, it just means we start looking again, and find someone else to help us, and fretting about it and clicking and drumming fingers on tables and pacing and flicking TV channels aimlessly does no good to anyone, and really, really gets on my nerves. I just wish he'd go to the pub, find an old school friend and get smashed, blow-off some of that excess nervous energy, because he's driving me up the bloody wall!
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This week has been the slowest week on record, every day since we got back from Paris has been one of those days where suddenly! nothing happened, and it's been fantastic. This is my first real break from work/study in 6 years, and Nia's not due to start her new job until May 16th, so two whole weeks of Nia and lounging around. What shall we do, what shall we do?
I had a couple of suggestions for her, but she deep-sixed those, she said it was impractical, that walking bow-legged into her new job was bound to cause comment; she's not closed and barred the bedroom door or anything; nor is she averse to more than a little wild whoo-hoo; she just believes I should give her a sporting chance to get away now and again...she did suggest I give my dirty mind a good wash, and get a proper shave while I'm at it, designer stubble works on Brad Pitt, on me it just looks...scraggy, like a badly-mowed lawn.