onsdag den 4. marts 2020

In the Attic - Words for Wednesday

  These Words for Wednesday were the strangest words ever, and those requiring most use of a dictionary. For possible Danish readers I kept the translations of all the words I had to look up to be certain of their meaning. Even now I'm not sure, I used 'vindicate' right. 
  The one responsible for these words is Mark Koopmans, and his words is posted at Elephant's Child's blog every Wednesday in March. 
  We know the persons from Unicorn Farm, but there's only hints of magic in this. Mark's words are not vehicles of magic for me. 

Granulate (smuldre)
Trial (test, retssag)
Serenade
Billiards (billiardspil)
Cuss (Bande, bandeord)
Avuncular (onkel-, onkelagtig)

And/Or

Vindicate (give oprejsning, bekræfte)
Hotelier (hotelejer)
Junkie
Metronome
Questionnaire (spørgeskema)
Exemplify

Susan sat in the small room in the attic, she was impatient, Linda sat at the other chair in the room, alternately granulating an old biscuit and playing with the mocha cups on the table. The small cups belonged to Susan, but they were kept up here to keep Persephone the ghost in good temper, and everybody had forgotten that the cups were really Susan's. They were given to her by the old aunt, Cleo, who told people's fortunes and had a gigantic cat. She had been visiting her aunt together with one of her cousins, whose aunt it also was. And they had drunk coffee - more milk than coffee and lots of sugar - from those beautiful, semi translucent cups, stroking the cat, and generally putting on their best manners. Aunt Cleo was a rather avuncular woman, big-boned with coarse hair, cheroot-smoking and apt to cuss over happenings and people not to her liking. She loved having the cousins visiting her and on some occasions she gifted them with the cups from which they had drunk. She regularly gave away things, she said that she loved to see people's joy over receiving the gift, and she would not see this when she had died. Susan was a bit afraid of aunt Cleo, but at the same time she was fascinated by her. She was self reliant in the extreme, fed her cat chocolate from a chipped plate, held her husband, sons and nephews - Susan was not quite clear on who of the gangling young men were her sons and who were other relatives, but aunt Cleo could handle them all, even at family gatherings, where everybody were boisterous and loud, Aunt Cleo could make them stop their prancing and sit down and eat. She was a great, if a tad intimidating, lady, Susan thought to herself.

Susan awoke from her reverie by an outcry from inside the big room, where her father and some guests played billiards. A pair of the guests were a local hotelier and his exotic wife, they were both good at billiards, and used to winning.
Susan gave up: "Come on, Linda, let's go down again. They're not going to leave that billiards table before it's too late for us to see anything up there."
They got up and left the small room, and went down two flights of stairs, first the narrow, steep attic one, then through the old door, then down the winding stairs to the living rooms. They went into the spacious living room, Susan turned on the Television, but the programme was boring. A German murder mystery, with lots of people talking, interrupting and coming and leaving the court room, and in the end an angry junkie interrupting the trial, and vindicating the detective. She turned off the television again, and Linda sat down at the piano. She began playing, and Susan grabbed a guitar and accompanied her. "I always wanted a metronome for this piece," Linda said, it's hard keeping time, and even if you're good at it, it's still not good enough."
"No, I agree," Susan said 3/8 are hard to play. We need more practice. Let's try the serenade instead. It is in sensible 3/4 time."
They played for some time until it was getting late and Susan remembered that she had some homework for the next day. "Oh, man!" she exclaimed, I still miss that stupid homework. We have to look through a questionnaire, and exemplify different groups of respondents. I just hate statistics!"

8 kommentarer:

  1. When I first saw this post in my reader a couple of hours ago I felt bad for you and I worried.
    Now that I can read the whole thing I can only say that you are too hard on yourself. Much too hard. The noise you can hear in the background is me clapping loudly.

    SvarSlet
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    1. PS. I would love to have an Aunt Cleo (and yes she would probably scare me too) and to be able to drink from those beautiful cups.

      Slet
    2. Thank you so much!. And yes aunt Cleo was nice to have, but a bit larger than life.

      Slet
  2. You did a great job with those words!

    SvarSlet
  3. Aww! I just realized that Aunt Cleo is making an appearance for the first time here. In my off-line Unicorn Farm she is more present. I'll have to get that book finished. Please tickle Mark Koopmans until he spews forth some words more suitable for magic.

    SvarSlet
  4. As you know by now, I hate statistics too :D

    Great story with those difficult words, MotherOwl.

    SvarSlet
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    1. Thank you! I actually thougth of you when writing that last line ;)

      Slet

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