Mouse In the Clock, Chapters One and Two by Bill Bill (since Kitty is busy being blown to Kansas by the winds on the Oregon Coast).
THE MOUSE IN THE CLOCK
Chapter One
So long as we are on about Christmas..(do try
not to say "Bills!" again
until January at the very
earliest, there's a sweet
pussy..I mean, kitty.
(Though a mouse, I am of the manly gender and tend to get those two cherishing
diminutives mixed up)..
I think I would like to share with you one of the most dear and warmly held yuletide traditions in all of Mousedom..a treasured tale loved and lovingly repeated every year since time before memory. Each mousehearth, no matter how tiny its fire, has its eager huddle of old and young alike waiting for the grayest senior to begin the story. I always think of Greatgranny telling it way back when I was just barely up out of my puphood.
"This is not," she began, "a pretty tale on the whole. There is blood and treachery..coldheart sadness..there is the
sharp bite that crushes.. and the dear one who never again comes home.."(wee Timmy snuffled and his widowed mum held him close)"..but there is also the great courage of a tiny heart..a loving pair whose sweet legend still resounds in our lives
..what it means to truly give a gift..and some thought of why we live as we do and where. Are we, then, ready to begin?"
Gleaming little eyes all 'round and smiles and nods and bold Maudie called "Go it, Gran!".
She looked into the rose glow beneath the twigs and rocked twice, three times, and cleared her throat:
"So long ago that this housing estate was one of the ridings of a great house..so long that there were no electric lights, no radiograms, no railway engines and no automobiles or motor-bicycles..so long that the humble folk stood still and took off their caps when the great folk passed along the road..but not so long that there were not already clocks!"
"Yayyy!" Timmy burst out
and was gently surpressed.
(You see, everyone knows
..each and every mouse that now lives.. knows this story. It is not the knowing of it that is enough, really, but the telling of it as we are all together wintering over the Cold Blowing that
matters, as you shall soon see in Chapter Two.)
THE MOUSE IN THE CLOCK
Chapter Two
Greatgran continued "Yes, there were clocks! And as you all know this is very important to our story.
A particular clock of great age and stature lived at
Dudgeon Hall, an estate that sprawled in the wilds of west England below the edge of the great mysterious downs and above the miles of gradient to the sea. On a sort of almost level shelf of rolling
hills and forest right under Dugeon Down to the east were the home parklands of Dudgeon House..some five
good english miles on a side..and right in the middle rose the yellow-brown stones of Dudgeon House. Christopher Wren stopped over to idle an hour for tea one June afternoon on his way to Oxfordshire.
After examining the edifice both in and out, with
his eyes wide and his mouth open, he said, to the
Resident, smiling wryly, "If we may believe Grachus the Younger (and quite frankly I don't think we can) Palladio came to England in the year 243 anno domine..just toward the end of the Roman Era. If he did come (mind you, I don't think he did at all)
he just may have had something to do with the central lower storey of your house! What d'you think of that, Sir?" The Resident thought carefully for a several moments and answered, "Well, Mister Wren, if you knew what you were talking about (and I think it most unlikely that you do) that would be very fine and interesting news, indeed!" Both men then seemed
to take much comfort that there was nothing conditional about the tea. Not many years away from
Mr. Wren, the great estate gardener, Capability
Brown came. Beginning in the house, he walked the
long hall peering at the panels. "I say," he asked,
"are these Grinling Gibbons?" That era's Resident,
a stolid fellow with pig-shite on his rough boots
and ten times interest in his tenant's ploughing
practices than the artistic ply of a gouge chisel,
replied, "Aow nay..they's bas-relief carvings, them
is!".
Chapter One
So long as we are on about Christmas..(do try
not to say "Bills!" again
until January at the very
earliest, there's a sweet
pussy..I mean, kitty.
(Though a mouse, I am of the manly gender and tend to get those two cherishing
diminutives mixed up)..
I think I would like to share with you one of the most dear and warmly held yuletide traditions in all of Mousedom..a treasured tale loved and lovingly repeated every year since time before memory. Each mousehearth, no matter how tiny its fire, has its eager huddle of old and young alike waiting for the grayest senior to begin the story. I always think of Greatgranny telling it way back when I was just barely up out of my puphood.
"This is not," she began, "a pretty tale on the whole. There is blood and treachery..coldheart sadness..there is the
sharp bite that crushes.. and the dear one who never again comes home.."(wee Timmy snuffled and his widowed mum held him close)"..but there is also the great courage of a tiny heart..a loving pair whose sweet legend still resounds in our lives
..what it means to truly give a gift..and some thought of why we live as we do and where. Are we, then, ready to begin?"
Gleaming little eyes all 'round and smiles and nods and bold Maudie called "Go it, Gran!".
She looked into the rose glow beneath the twigs and rocked twice, three times, and cleared her throat:
"So long ago that this housing estate was one of the ridings of a great house..so long that there were no electric lights, no radiograms, no railway engines and no automobiles or motor-bicycles..so long that the humble folk stood still and took off their caps when the great folk passed along the road..but not so long that there were not already clocks!"
"Yayyy!" Timmy burst out
and was gently surpressed.
(You see, everyone knows
..each and every mouse that now lives.. knows this story. It is not the knowing of it that is enough, really, but the telling of it as we are all together wintering over the Cold Blowing that
matters, as you shall soon see in Chapter Two.)
THE MOUSE IN THE CLOCK
Chapter Two
Greatgran continued "Yes, there were clocks! And as you all know this is very important to our story.
A particular clock of great age and stature lived at
Dudgeon Hall, an estate that sprawled in the wilds of west England below the edge of the great mysterious downs and above the miles of gradient to the sea. On a sort of almost level shelf of rolling
hills and forest right under Dugeon Down to the east were the home parklands of Dudgeon House..some five
good english miles on a side..and right in the middle rose the yellow-brown stones of Dudgeon House. Christopher Wren stopped over to idle an hour for tea one June afternoon on his way to Oxfordshire.
After examining the edifice both in and out, with
his eyes wide and his mouth open, he said, to the
Resident, smiling wryly, "If we may believe Grachus the Younger (and quite frankly I don't think we can) Palladio came to England in the year 243 anno domine..just toward the end of the Roman Era. If he did come (mind you, I don't think he did at all)
he just may have had something to do with the central lower storey of your house! What d'you think of that, Sir?" The Resident thought carefully for a several moments and answered, "Well, Mister Wren, if you knew what you were talking about (and I think it most unlikely that you do) that would be very fine and interesting news, indeed!" Both men then seemed
to take much comfort that there was nothing conditional about the tea. Not many years away from
Mr. Wren, the great estate gardener, Capability
Brown came. Beginning in the house, he walked the
long hall peering at the panels. "I say," he asked,
"are these Grinling Gibbons?" That era's Resident,
a stolid fellow with pig-shite on his rough boots
and ten times interest in his tenant's ploughing
practices than the artistic ply of a gouge chisel,
replied, "Aow nay..they's bas-relief carvings, them
is!".
posted by Kitty O'Keefe at 3:44 PM
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