Storyteller - Colin & Anne Brookfield (ebook and pdf reader .txt) 📗

Storyteller

 

A Collection of Short Stories

by

Colin & Anne Brookfield

 

 

 

©2018 Colin & Anne Brookfield

 

The rights of Colin and Anne Brookfield to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

 

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author.

 

ISBN 978-0-9532635-9-2

 

Sketch illustrations by Colin R. Brookfield

 

 

Contents

*Stories based on true events

About the Authors

Preface to Part One

 

1. The Righteous Man

2. The Last Master

3. *Against all Odds

4. What Goes Around

5. Out of the Ashes

6. *Farewell Dear Lola

7. Book of Many Colours

8. Nobless Oblige

9. Double Jeopardy

10. Ned & Ben

11. Palais de Danse

12. Santa Clause is Coming to Town

13. Menage e Trois

14. The Painting

15. One Good Turn

16. He Who Dares

17. Nobody

18. Grandfather’s Legacy

19. Melbray Bridge

20. More than the Sum of our Parts

21. Digital Revelation

22. The Dream Catcher

23. The Purpose of Life

24. Willow

25. Footprints of Love

26. *The Returning

27. Ten Pieces of Gold

28. Tiger Prawn

29. Is There Anybody out There?

30. Jake & Jemma

31. A Truck full of Oddities

32. Undying Gratitude

33. Water Baby

34. Et tu Bruté!

 

Preface to Part Two

 

35. A Matter of Honour

36. Wiggy

 

By the same Author

Other Information

Poems

 

About the Authors

Colin Brookfield’s life has been a balancing act between many occupations. Born in 1932 he left school at fourteen. He was put to the building trade and in later life ran his own business for several decades.

He ran away to sea at sixteen and sailed around the world with the P&O ship SS Corfu until he was eighteen when he was called up to do his National Service in the army. He became a Physical Training Instructor (PTI) and whilst stationed in Germany, went on to become the individual fencing champion of BAOR (British Army of the Rhine) and nominated for the Royal Tournament.

After leaving the army he was eventually drawn into local functions with his acrobatic speciality act (Duo Collise), which in turn led to an agent and paid appearances.

Vocal training followed and for many years, he sang locally as a solo tenor, accompanied by his wife Anne on the piano and later in light entertainment with Anne.

In 1968, he and his wife Anne emigrated to Australia and travelled 28,000 miles around the continent before settling on the Gold Coast.

They returned to England after five years where Colin resumed business in London. Anne worked in the music industry of EMI Records and later with British Airways, until her retirement.

He has always been intensely interested in human nature and, his lifelong ambition has been to express his observations and solutions as to the anomalies of mankind and his books have now gone into the subject more fully.

Three of his books, (The Summerhouse Journals Trilogy) The Summerhouse, Summerhouse Timeshift and Summerhouse Stepping Stones, were a break from reality but still had aspects open to question.

He has acquired several patents (one presently being developed in China). His inventive interests and other hobbies included sub-aqua, water skiing, surfboard riding and hang gliding.

Anne was classically trained on the piano and, both she and Colin used to be members of oratorio choral and musical societies in Australia, London, Dorset and later, in Cyprus.

In 2007 they moved with their two Siamese cats, Sable, Sapphire and Amber, their black domestic, to Paphos in Cyprus. Sadly, all the cats passed on during their seven years on the island. They have since rescued four feral Cyprus cats, Millie, Dobby, Pippin and Bravie and in 2014, brought them all back to Somerset in England, where they are thriving and playing for the first time on green grass.

 

 

Preface to Part One

 Setting aside my preferred writing genre and following my wife’s advice, I have put together a number of tales that I had written over the years. The collection varies from ‘boys own’ adventures to ghost stories. Some are autobiographical and could serve in historical reference of the time, as they are woven around fact with some licence.

The last two stories in this collection have been taken from the manuscripts of my fictional novel titled ‘The Summerhouse Trilogy,’ it is based on a group of personable and adventurous domestic creatures that meet in a dilapidated summerhouse and they can talk. (When our pets go out they have secret lives of their own.)

Another reason that prompted me to seek the publication of my adventure stories is that it may encourage imagination in others. I constantly discover when asking young people about their lives in terms of adventure, that there is not much understanding of what adventure is - much beyond the sunny holiday they had last year, or some such similarity. What has happened to real adventure? What has happened to the colour that we need in our lives? What has happened to our sense of self reliance? It seems that we must try to find a way of rekindling people’s imagination.

Like others born in 1932 or beyond, I have lived through enormous cultural and economic changes. Amongst the good and the bad that comes with change, my focus tends to be towards the young, and especially so, when unhealthy changes are taking place. In particular, there is such an elevation of ‘freebee’ expectations that others are expected to provide, the downside of which is the erosion of imagination and self sufficiency. In comparison with my early times, I have seen a general drifting away from the need to search our own minds for ways to entertain, or self support ourselves. It is apparent that we are entering a place where, unless others guide and provide our future hopes, then we are left to sit on our hands and wait for the dream or adventure to appear on its own; a forlorn way into dulling one’s future into dotage.

Having said these things, we are creatures of our respective times and happenings, for which I must make allowances.

The times and happenings of my own school age, were in wartime London throughout the 1940s and when looking back, it all seems so outrageously unbelievable. The life that I had in those times was at the sharp, rough and tumble end of life. Barbed wire entanglements to keep the deadly enemy out of the fighter aerodrome and surrounding army camps, did little to keep the more adventurous boys like me at bay.

I recall the warnings to parents in our local paper of young boys accidentally blowing up their garden sheds, when they got their explosive mixtures wrong. Even my very young friend Trevor Baylis (one day to receive the OBE & CBE), accidentally blew his neighbour’s chimney pot off their roof with his home made cannon.

At night, my bedroom window became my television screen; it switched itself on each time the siren sounded and the German bombers were heard overhead playing cat and mouse with the searchlights, anti-aircraft (ack ack) guns and arcs of glowing tracer bullets.

There were more wars at work on the domestic front. If the marauding doodle bugs overhead didn’t get us, then the teachers cane got to war on our hands, which I usually deserved. However, the most dangerous place was at home. It was to escape this, that I once spent several weeks sleeping rough in the local woods until matters quietened down.

Of course there were also lots of adventures. I learned to swim in the local canal whilst my sister held a broomstick with string (like a fishing rod). The string was tied around my waist to keep me afloat. Naturally, it broke one day and I discovered I could swim under water, but not on top. This way of living, developed my imagination, drive and resilience which have served me well since.

However, I am not in any way recommending such radical courses of action for the betterment of youth, but rather as an extreme exercise, reminding us that exposures to endangerment are the means by which dreams, imagination and character might then be achieved.

 

The Righteous Man

The red granite tombstone looked out from its high mountain resting place and across the heavily forested Cascade mountain range in Oregon. Etched deeply into the face of the headstone were the words:

Major, died 31.8.1980 aged 12 (Army Number 48790).

Dear friend, my debts to you are far too great ever to be repaid.

Mike turned away quietly and made his way down the stony forest track.

“I’m so pleased you brought me to this beautiful place,” said the young lady at his side. “He had a long and incredible life and there is no greater epitaph than for a giant to rest amongst Nature’s other giants. Now that Major is safe, there