Funny Short Stories
Skyelights - part 4
'I'm whistling while I work,' Skye declared, looking away from the monitor, rearranging her cramped shoulder muscles and feeling mildly alarmed.
Her own flat, utterly lacking in 'proper' furniture, decoration, clutter and mothers, was a real treat. The rent had been patently obscene, so she'd collected all the dress allowances her barmy parents had given her and bought it. Piranha & Frenzi, Estate Agents (established 2006), had seemed very willing to take £3,000 commission from the sellers for doing nothing. This was after they'd said they couldn't sell it since the owners were contracted to let it through Piranha & Frenzi. It's amazing the facility with which some people can change their tune. . .
It was good to be happy but whistling at work seemed way too close to 1950s movie land or maybe imitation of one's grandparents in Skye's opinion.
What the heck, no one was around to witness it, so she'd whistle at work. She thought of her mother and decided, apropos of nothing much, to whistle 'Bat out of Hell'. She briefly wondered how many laws she'd broken by airmailing money and designer clothes to and fro across the Atlantic. Briefly.
She added another note to her list of jobs, then headed towards the library for her free half-hour online session.
The phone would soon be connected to her flat, but she'd see at first hand what her buddies had been relying on. And she'd suss the dial up modem for Linux via the forum.
Skye marched home at a brisk 4 m.p.h. from the library feeling pretty darned pleased. She called at the Oxfam shop for a 2nd 'outfit' and then the grocer's shop for some laundry powder.
'What type of machine do you have, miss?' asked the grocer, a rather well built, genial, middle-aged gentleman in a spotless though rather tight-fitting white coat.
Skye did a double take. Is it Intel? she wondered, then she realised he was looking at the box of soap and caught on.
'These,' she smiled, displaying her hands.
'Good Lord,' he exclaimed. 'Well you may be better off with liquid. And some rubber gloves to protect your skin.'
'Good idea,' she said.
The shop keeper was surprised to see a Californian bank's name on the credit card, but the accent seemed to fit, and his machine accepted the card without fuss.
'On holiday?' he asked.
A nearly automatic rant, along the lines of 'Personal' and 'Private' was on the tip of her tongue, but Skye felt too cheerful, and the dear man did seem genuinely interested.
'Sort of,' she conceded. 'Working holiday.'
♥ ℑ ♥
I hope she's up, thought Urchin, as he marched along the pavement towards Wits End. His enormous boots acquired such momentum, once he'd got them moving, that he could march for hours – provided there weren't too many sharp corners. . .
The pavements were dusty and even the leaves of the plane trees were becoming dull after weeks of hot, dry weather. Urchin planned to arrive at Skye's flat by 7.30 a.m. before the day became unbearably clammy.
This must be the one, thought Urchin, and knocked.
'Come in!' was the instant response.
'Listen up Urchin,' Skye burbled, as soon as he opened the door.
'Yeah, right,' he improvised as she leapt from her seat, skipped across the room and grabbed his arm.
'Also a new very simple O/S that ignores the pornucopia of M.B.C. and thus downloads a whole educational plain text book in two minutes on dial-up,' she burbled, propelling him towards the PC monitor.
'You began with ''also'',' he said. 'Is that American, or did I miss something?'
'It converts pdfs on coloured backgrounds to plain text so they can be printed without taking out a mortgage for ink supplies. It'll dual boot with Linux for all their programs that do graphics and audio.'
'Good,' replied a wild eyed Urchin. 'I was okay up till 'simple', I think. What's an O/S?'
'Operating system,' gabbled Skye. 'I'm calling it Skyelights!'
'Bloody hell!' ventured Urchin, by way of encouragement. 'Er, what was M.B.C.?'
'meaninglessbollox.com.'
'Yeah. Of course. Silly me!'
Skye beamed and giggled for once. Indeed she biggled – a rare occurrence in one so rich who'd been educated to talk in code. 'What code?' you may wonder. Or even 'which code?'
Skye's architect uncle, Dick, was an expert at 'the code'. He had the habit of saying 'it's aaabsolutely imperrrative' whilst conducting imaginary (or invisible) minions with his finger. When she was very young Skye had thought aaabsolutely imperrrative was a drink taken before dinner, because Dick imbibed freely at the table whilst practising his conducting.
Nowadays she realised he'd meant 'Perhaps this is a good idea', and she formed the hypothesis that some people adopted such non-standard usage of the English language to give the impression that they, themselves, weren't standard. They were richer, or something . . .
By the time the hypothesis had formed, Skye was already using the code – the ''patois de fairly gross'' she thought. Finishing school, indeed . . .
Skye shook herself to dispel the memories.
'I could draw you a diagram,' she suggested. And she did.
'Your eyes look a bit tired,' observed Urchin. I'm a fine one to talk, he thought.
'Yeah, they are.'