They had come up this mountain every wensday evening for the last three years, from the creation of there IOGT-lodge. The first one in this country and now there outdoor meetings was to come to an end. The lodge house was soon to be finished and there commo...   [Read more...]

When we reached the top, we were so dizzy from the thin air we'd forgotten why we had to climb and headed back down the mountain.

At the bottom, clear-headed, we remembered why we had to climb and headed back up the mountain.

This continued for the rest of our lives.

It was all a laugh. The lion hunting, being carried around by the natives, sweating on the African planes. Life was one big hurrah. We were, after all, the Empire. Not just an empire, but the Empire. Below the snows of Kilimanjaro, we posed for o...   [Read more...]

Not everyone knows this, but Kate Beaton is obsessive, the painterly equivalent of a Method actor. To create each new page of "Hark, a vagrant!" she recruits Swiss artists' models to dress in period clothing and pose in front of the Alps...   [Read more...]

"No. Seriously. More natural. It won't kill you.

"What? The camera. The wait, though. The wait might kill me.

"You, sit down. No, please. *Please* sit down. No, not you. Because you're in white...   [Read more...]

Rupert sat gazing at the majestic mountains, but the only thought in his mind was, "Why did I have to have so many girls?" He was surrounded by femininity, enveloped, cocooned, suffocated. The son he'd longed for had never materialized, a...   [Read more...]

Everyone was on board for the show. They had their fly gear and their hats. I, of course, forgot my sunglasses.
"No problem," mama said, "just squint!"
As we lined up, I squinted at the audience. It never ceased to amaze me that t...   [Read more...]

It was the last day.

General Richards was tired. Very tired. He had been walking for a long time, and there was still nothing in sight. No city of glass. Not even the path of golden bricks. They were nowhere to be seen.

He sat down in the...   [Read more...]

I knew it would be two foggy to see the dock from the top of Crescent Hill but Grandfather had insisted, and so we went. It took nearly an hour by carriage but we had a grand old time. Millicent Hedgegrove was with us. I knew that she had been swe...   [Read more...]

We waited for the curtain to go down, some patiently and obliviously to the palpable tension between Fran and I. Once again she'd tried to force me to go into the final act without the correct props. Once again she'd sabotaged, or rather tried to sa...   [Read more...]