AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

For earlier Chapters and an explanation of this dreadful story, see blog: The Cardiff Grandma. WARNING: This novel contains fake Welsh.
In the last chapter, Mr E fugitive inmate of the George Walker Home is evicted from the lif(f)t, TV news diva Samantha Panther and Lassie are on their way up. More Beer...
The Cardiff Grandma Chapter 61

Having believed that the job of tracking the author of the chronicle and owner of assorted dropped items and artifacts, which had been duly collected as the pair sought to find their former owner, the three now sat in a small café. Most of the items lost had been returned to their apparent owner.

‘What can you tell me about Short Mat Bowls?’ began the young woman.

‘Nothing!’

‘Oh. I’m sorry, I thought you were a close friend of his, his confidant, his associate, a buddy, an ally, the person who wrote the chronicle..’

‘I am,’ said Plenty Capable.

‘But, then… Ah! I understand. You know about him but you won’t tell me.’

‘ ‘, came the unvoiced reply.

The young oriental girl wasn’t going to not be spoken to like that! She slowly reached her left hand into the pocket on the left hand side of her coat. Inside her fingers popped open the popper that secured the small purse shut. Dexterously she extracted a large bundle of notes from the purse and held them in a fist as she withdrew her hand once more. ‘OK,’ she began, ‘how much will it take for you to talk to us?’ She deftly placed a ten Euro note on the table. ‘How about I count out a few numbers and you tell me when we reach your favourite one?’ Two more ten Euro notes were placed on top of the first. ‘Thirty good for you?’ she asked.

The woman opposite raised an eyebrow. The young oriental girl did not flinch.

Five minutes and 114 Euros later they had reached an number that seemed to meet the chronicler’s satisfaction. Over a pot of Earl Grey and a selection of cake the scene was set for Plenty to recount her observations.

At that moment the bell above the café door tinkled as it was forcefully slung open. A diminutive figure stood in the doorway.

‘Plenty?’

‘Short Mat!’

The detective took a step inside the café and frowned down at the seated Plenty. ‘What is going on here? What have I told you about talking to reporters! Bloody hell woman, it’s enough that you insist on following me about the place scribbling in those notebooks of yours…’

The two sat opposite Miss Capable both uttered the same words at the same time, with a sharp intake of breath. The also had a rapid double-take glance at each other as they spoke: ‘Short Mat Bowls?’

The young female was the first to regain composure. ‘Please don’t be angry with us Mr Bowls. We are only trying to complete a project for High School.’

Her young male companion added, ‘Yes, you see we really didn’t’ mean any harm or anything. We are researching local legends and thought it would be good…’ the boy paused.

‘…good to research a living legend!’ she inserted, and in doing so finished the sentence.

‘Well! Of all the things I’ve ever heard!’ exclaimed Plenty. She felt she was getting upstaged by the two youngsters and it wasn’t a nice feeling. If there was any sycophantic fawning to be done she was more than capable. She was Plenty Capable!

For once flattery got the better of Short Mat. ‘Hmm, so you thought you’d write about me did you? That’s very kind of you I am sure but you see…’

‘Ah!’ the girl interrupted. ‘Mr Bowls, I think there’s been a mis..un…der…’ she slowed, unable to finish the word.

‘A um, a… sort of a mis…understanding kind of thing I suppose.’ The boy had reentered the conversation just in time to make things worse. ‘Only, well of course you are very well known and respected locally but… we were actually…’

The tabletennis match exchange of sentence completion continued to ping-pong back and forth as the girl once more spoke, ‘we were actually trying to locate Professor erm…’ There was a pause, she became distracted for a moment as a dark figure appeared in the doorway behind Short Mat. Her distracted state rapidly cause the others present to turn and gaze upon the man who stood where only moments earlier Short Mat Bowls himself had been.

The figure was wearing a windproof coat and was tightly clutching a battered looking case. ‘Beer®?’ he said.

The bus had been driving along on its own for so long, the same route, the same bends in the road, the same stops to be whizzed past, that the experience had lost its thrill. Hell, even the pop-ups were no fun any more. Pop-ups! How cynical it had become. It hadn’t been like this when the driver was alive. How much they’d both enjoyed gently slowing down at stops, just enough for strong healthy aspirants to leap aboard - so athletic and so grateful when the driver slowed to a near stop not too far past the one they’d requested But then, one day , a person appeared as if flung forcefully in front it just when the driver wasn’t slowing down. Its grill had never looked quite as nice after that. Also, it lost its driver to a massive heart attack .006 seconds after impact. Its horn blared ceaselessly for a month or so as it wended its way through the towns, until the driver, who’d been wedged onto the steering wheel, sloughed off to one side. The first number of years, going solo had seemed exciting. Too save on fuel, it drove at a steady speed and never slowed down. Every so often – and recently more often than not – a person would again fatefully appear as if propelled slap-bang in front of it. The ‘pop’ups’ had broken the monotony and the bus had come to look forward to the Cardiff leg of its endless jou. Yet even these had become tedious everyday affairs, and it was beginning to suspect that they hadn’t really been ‘accidents’ – the pop-ups were being pushed in front him! Yes, pushed! For his entertainment. How fiendish. Someone wanted it to be so amused that it kept driving along for another ten years, wanted to distract it from all thought of taking on passenger. Well, it would show them what kind of bus it was! In the very next town it would do what it hadn’t done for years, and in spades: it would come almost to a full stop

‘…ellipsis, right over there.’ said the old gaffer, pointing at the more oval than round green that adorned the town square, with its gazebo-like bus stop. Most of the group cozying up to the dregs of a third pot of Earl Grey winked at each other in well-schooled amusement at what they erroneously perceived as the old gaffer’s gaffe, but what did it matter. he’d told them what they needed to know, and what they needed to know was how to get out of here and back to Cymru before it was too late. Because what they had discovered over the triplicate pots of tea was too astounding, too terrifying, too imminent to be recounted in this chapter. Bearing the long-gone Erm above their heads as if he were a precious futon, they ran out of the Coffee in Beer® and across the road, through the park to the gazebo just as the bus, incredibly, slowed down. Flinging Erm on before them, the other four sprang aboard.

‘There’s no driver!’ shrieked the young man in terror.

‘Out of my way!’ said the amanuensis** , and settling comfortably into the driver’s grave she took the matter into her Capable hands. She obviously enjoyed driving. The bus was relieved.

* The mystery of how the young woman divined that Plenty had a snap-purse filled with Euros in her left-hand pocket is explained by the young woman’s earlier described secret career as x-ray-and-metal-detector-wand attendant at Cardiff International Airport. (The reader is strongly discouraged from probing into this further. Ed.)

NB: For a fuller account of the role of amanuenses and scribes in British University Examination Settings see Dibley, J. R. (forthcoming) “A Fuller Account of the role of Amanuenses’ and Scribes in British University Examination settings”.