Snoozing in the Rubbish Bin

Tensions run high in the pastoral paradise that is Chez Conley. My parents had several blistering (but generally short) rows about furniture, but now my mother refuses to go into the sitting room, where my father's asleep. She's sequestered herself in my erstwhile library, undoubtedly soiling my precious books with her filthy cancer-smoke and watching, tirelessly, as a monolith watches its charged landscape, re-runs of daft soap operas or well-worn, familiar sitcoms.

So here sit I, the remnants of a surprising winter gush of rain throbbing slowly outside. I poked my nose out during the height of the blazing damp, while lightning tore ragged through the sky, and sniffed about (also, I looked about). My thought, at that moment, was, one might expect me to write something rather serious and dramatic just now. As my computer was uncoupled from its heart's-blood (that is, the electrical outlet) due to surge dangers, I couldn't comfortably write much of anything.

As the tensions run through the house like streakers into the Channel come Boxing Day, I'm not sure that I'll get much writing done (depending entirely, as it normally does, on a sense of goodwill and humor to pervade it), though I'll try. I thought, to try and re-capture the mood, I'd post one of the several footnotes the story, tentatively titled "Bernard and the History of Crime," sports thus far:

Many highwaymen, or “gentlemen of the road,” as they often preferred to be called, might order their flunkies to open sensitive negotiations in just such a way – The Well-Mannered Butcher; Jacob Stanley, the Noseless; The Florenese Scrum, Esq.; and, most famously, Blind Old Tommy, the Archer were all well-known aficionados of the opening bevy of fletches.

This is the first footnote, found on page two; it references the firing of a crossbow quarrel before opening negotiations begin.