Links to Chapter One and Chapter Two
Edmund slipped and shivered through the snow until he eventually found the Witch’s castle. It looked quite creepy, but bolstered by thoughts of Turkish Delight (oh, his Saracens – and the Scarlets were his favourite Welsh side), he crept through the imposing main gate.
He found himself in a courtyard filled with statues. They had snow settling on them, and they all looked very sad. Near the gate, there were a couple of magnificent Lions, and then he spotted a statue that looked very like Lucy’s description of Mr Iknus. There was a collection of stone rugby balls, and what looked like a few referees. (“Those referees probably deserved it,” thought Edmund.)
Suddenly, Edmund was rooted to the spot by a chilling low growl. He turned his head to find himself staring into the eyes of Maugrim, chief of the Witch’s Very Secret Police.
“Come,” said Maugrim, “Her Majesty is expecting you.”
* * *
“What!” said the Witch, not at all friendly like the last time, “Have you come alone? I told you to bring the Daughters of Maeve and the other Son of George.”
“B – b – but,” stammered Edmund, afraid of her icy stare and stern manner, “I couldn’t get them away from the Beavers. They were all talking about the return of Paulan to Narnia.”
The Queen turned even paler, if that were possible.
“Paulan!” she muttered to herself, “No, it cannot be possible. My spells are strong.”
Before Edmund knew what had happened, she had crossed the room and spear-tackled him with one strong arm. “Tell me all,” she said, preparing to drive his head into the ground.
Edmund, quaking with fear, told her all that he knew.
The Witch released him with a thump on the floor, and clapped her hands to summon her minions.
“Harness the springboks and prepare my sledge immediately! Get my dwarf! Maugrim: take the swiftest of your wolves, go to the Lodge, and kill the children and the Beavers. If they have already gone, then proceed to the Stone Stadium.”
In the twinkling of a drop goal, the sledge pulled up, driven by a dwarf who looked suspiciously like a scrum-half. Edmund was bound, and unceremoniously dumped into the bottom of the sledge. There wasn’t even any Turkish Delight.
* * *
“Susan,” said Peter, “Where’s Edmund?”
“I – I don’t know. Now that you mention it, I haven’t noticed him for a while.”
“Ah, children,” said Mr Beaver, “I’m afraid he’s gone to see the Witch. We must be on our way quickly.”
“What?”, said Lucy, “No, surely Edmund would never betray us.”
“Daughter, I’m afraid he has the look of one who is in the Witch’s favour. How long that favour lasts is another matter.
“Did anyone notice when he left? Did he hear that Paulan is on the move?”
Nobody was quite sure.
“Then we must be off at once. Mrs Beaver, please pack us up as quickly as you can.”
Mrs Beaver – for of course it’s always the females who are prepared for anything – had already got nearly everything ready for travelling. She had a pack ready for everyone, and they were off in less time than it takes to reset a scrum.
* * *
They had a long, cold and weary journey, and stopped after some hours at a safe hiding place, where they cast themselves down on the floor, covered themselves with the blankets kindly provided by Mrs Beaver, and fell asleep immediately.
They were awakened at dawn by some faint voices, which became clearer as they drew closer.
“Ho, ho ho! Go left! It’s on!”
“I’m straighter than that throw-in.”
The children rubbed the sleep from their eyes and looked in confusion at the Beavers.
“It’s Father Jiffy and Father Nige,” beamed Mr Beaver. “The Witch’s magic has kept them from Narnia for so long, but her enchantment is fading. The voices of rugby have returned to the land.” They rushed outside to find a volley of rugby balls flying through the air, and the snow at last melting.
Ovally Balls 
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I’m not a huge fan of microsoft and some of their business practices regarding small innovative companies, but…. I just read this
“Imagine being Bill Gates right now
You spend 30 years of your life and $50 billion of your own dollars supporting humanitarian causes. You directly save hundreds of thousands of lives in South East Asia by providing anti malaria netting to half of a continent, you drop infant mortality rates throughout the entire developing world by funding vaccine programs including vaccinating 40,000,000 children for polio, and, amongst a plethora of philanthropic endeavors, you fund free educational platforms like Khan Academy so people can have free access to high quality education.
Then after donating half of your wealth to charity and pledging 90% of the remainder to charity in your will..
Arguably doing more to better life on earth for humanity than any other human being to ever live.
You then hop on the internet only to find a million scientifically illiterate fucking imbeciles that are using the very computers you pretty much invented in the first place to call you a child murdering arch villian antichrist because they watched a YouTube video made by some other yokel with the comprehension of a fucking potato.“
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OT – so you like lots of jokes about dogging?
Got my eye on you son.
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Ticht – do you (/does it) mean the anti-vax crowd?
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Aye, Thaum, the anti-science crowd as I prefer to call them
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Or morons.
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“In Kent we have pig racing.”
And in Gloucester they have…
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Cheese rolling
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That’s the one!
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In Joburg we have zol-rolling. It’s therapeutic. It’s now quite funny, in a masochistic way, that Marijuana is legal, sort of, but cigarettes are completely legal but if you’re caught with an unopened packet, you face a fine or arrest. We’re living in a Kafkaesque version of Waiting for Godot.
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@Thaum – but does she enjoy small children hitting saucepans with wooden spoons, that’s the question.
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Mrs CMW broke one of my maracas when we had the clap last week.
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Surely everyone enjoys small children hitting saucepans with wooden spoons?
Hmm, may have to work that into the next (overdue) episode of TLTWALL.
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Oh, c&p fail. Was sure that read ‘hitting small children with wooden spoons and saucepans’.
Hope your maraca is feeling better.
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@Deebee – My brother and I once got stopped and searched by the Chepstow police. Suspicion of intent to walk around at night I think it was. When my brother produced the first empty fag packet from his pocket the copper searching him was only too keen to have a good look inside to check for drugz. He wished he’d never started by the time he got to the last one which was maybe number eleven or twelve. Checking for unopened ones sounds a lot more efficient.
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I’d had that maraca for more than thirty years.
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@Thaum – it’s safer to hit them when they haven’t got wooden spoons and saucepans as you’re less likely to get hurt when they hit you back.
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ticht,
Frankie Boyle a couple of weeks back:
“This pandemic has been great for conspiracy theorists; largely men for whom the term “unattainable woman” is a tautology. There’s a real chance that soon 5G towers will be getting pulled down quicker than the Queen’s knickers on VE night. Using your smartphone to tweet your fears of being tracked by a sinister corporation is like sending “You go girl!” to Greta Thunberg via a skywriter.
“I bet the tech bosses can’t believe how cheap it’s been for social media to hijack our Stone Age reward neurology. Even pigeons would at least expect to get the odd piece of corn from it. Perhaps this ends with us all forcibly chipped like a posh dog, or maybe we’ll have to accept even greater infringements on our liberty. Maybe by 2022 we’ll have to roll around in giant Perspex balls like pet hamsters. The first sign of civil unrest and a van will screech up with a telegraph pole strapped to the roof, Ronnie O’Sullivan at the wheel, skilfully knocking ringleaders into strategically positioned restraint pockets. Of course, I can guess the motive behind Bill Gates’s vaccine. One minute you’re dropping your trousers in the chemist, next you’re coming round to find that you’re an Illuminati after-dinner centrepiece, bread rolls cushioning your knees from the tabletop, as you’re spit-roasted by two giant mechanical Paperclips. The last thing you hear before you pass out is the faint murmur of “It looks like you’re trying not to bleed to death through your rectum. Can I help?””
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I shall have to consider that point.
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That sounds like something worth reading. Really really worth reading.
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Frankie does have a certain way with words.
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From EPCR
As part of its future planning, and with the extraordinary circumstances due to the COVID-19 pandemic at the forefront, EPCR can confirm that a number of tournament formats are being considered for the 2020/21 season.
Ongoing discussions with EPCR’s league and union shareholders regarding new formats have included the possibility of a 24-club Heineken Champions Cup with eight representatives from each of Europe’s leading league competitions, played over eight weekends. If adopted, any new format would apply to next season’s tournament only on an exceptional basis.
In the meantime, EPCR remains committed to making every effort to conclude the knockout stages of the Heineken Champions Cup and Challenge Cup season subject to official advice and with the health and welfare of players, club staff, match officials, supporters and the wider rugby community in mind. It is hoped that the 2020 finals could be staged on 16 and 17 October.
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One morning, as Gregor Townsend was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous coronavirus. Once he’d learnt how to master his many legs, he rolled out the door to look for people to infect.
His neighbours, Estragon and Vladimir, had been in self-isolation for seven weeks. He crept under the door and listened in.
ESTRAGON: I can’t go on like this.
VLADIMIR: That’s what you think.
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There’s that book by Joyce’s boy Italo Svevo about the fags that’s good as well.
I like Kafka. i was down where he used to work the other day. The anti-Kafka might be Hasek who was around at the same time and in the same area. For me Kafka’s a funny writer – Hasek funnier but doing something different.
Beckett, though, he’s my boy. WfG is beautifully funny. I remember reading Endgame on a tram in RIga and laughing so much. Also, he’s one of the few writers to use my mother’s surname for a character so much respect to the boy.
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Eoin McNamee does as well. In The Ultras there’s an RUC Special Branch officer with the name. He’s very unsympathetic in a book full of very and very very unsympathetic characters.
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I’ve got a photo somewhere of a wonderful Kafka sculpture in Prague.
Agree on his humour; I also think Sartre’s and Camus’ novels are very funny. Especially La Nausée.
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“he’s one of the few writers to use my mother’s surname for a character so much respect to the boy”
Unnamable is such an awkward surname to work into most writing.
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I read The Metamorphosis and The Trial earlier this year (been meaning to read them for a long time). I agree there’s a lot of humour in them — very dark, but still funny.
Haven’t read any Sartre or Camus for ages — I remember enjoying Roads to Liberty a long time ago, , but can’t remember any of the jokes. I don’t think I’d laugh if I read L’Etre et le Néant, but I’m not going to, so we’ll never know.
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Morning Brookter, nice to see you back by the way.
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It’s a long time since I read it, but I don’t think all these people reading The Plague will be finding many laughs. They may get a wee bit bored though.
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Waiting for OT to let me know whether or not I got TomP’s mother’s name right. I know she can’t be a Molloy or a Malone or anything like that or we would already have been told about her relatives in Oldham or Wigan who have represented Ireland at Rugby League.
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My backup guess is Clov, you don’t read about many of them.
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“I don’t think I’d laugh if I read L’Etre et le Néant, but I’m not going to, so we’ll never know.”
We haven’t got time for you to find your way out of Wordsworth’s Prelude anyway.
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Her surname before she married just to be clear.
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@cmw
TomP comes from good protestant Irish stock so she’s more likely to be a MacTavish or a Nesbitt or a MacDougall.
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Morning CMW — I hope you and yours are well. How are the young ones (and adults…) taking to home schooling? I imagine the lack of Real Cricket™ is a Real PITA™?
Got stuck half way through Book 7 of The Prelude on Wednesday and had a day off yesterday — the books are getting longer, which **just isn’t fair**. The first few are only about 6-700 lines long, but now they’re sneaking up to near 1,000 and there’s just no excuse for it. There’s a reason limericks are universally acknowledged as the supreme verse form.
Cat will also be glad to know that I been trying to listen to a Murakami (Killing Commendatore) for a couple of weeks. I gave up after about 20 Chapters (something like a 5th of the way through, apparently). In 19 of those chapters, nothing much happened and it happened in a drab way, then the story started to turn into bells tinkling at night under heaps of stones and the characters sat around thinking “Suppose someone is buried under there?” and “I once read a short story about an old monk who was buried alive for a hundred years and kept ringing a bell and it didn’t turn out well for the monk, I wonder if the same thing is happening here?”
It took them 3 days to think “You know what, if there’s a person under there, perhaps we should wait a couple of days and then dig them up,” and I thought: even Wittering Willy Wordsworth had a bit more get up and go than this.
There were some bewbs every five chapters or so, so perhaps that’s enough?
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‘How are the young ones (and adults…) taking to home schooling?’
Can I just butt in here?
dear dog, we’re all going to be in the nuthouse before long (yes, yes, beadleklaxon alert etc.) . These children seem to delight in taking it in turns to be a total nightmare while the other one gets on with their work. I’m not sure when these planning sessions occur but there’s a definite conspiracy.
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Seems to be a surprising amount of confidence about live sports starting up at the end of summer.
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I’m not sure when these planning sessions occur but there’s a definite conspiracy.
Definitely not 10 Downing St if they’re lucid, efficient and have the desired effect.
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Do not show me a young rebel,
whose eyes are bright
and whose tail is bushy.
Young rebels are fine and good,
but they are merely doing
what the young are meant to do.
Show me an old rebel.
One who keeps punching
when his hands are arthritic,
when her hair is white,
when his friends are all dead,
when her knees are shot,
when it hurts him to pee,
when her shoulders are so bad
that it would be much easier to punch down
than to punch up.
Show me an old rebel
who keeps standing up after being knocked down
over and over again,
year after year,
decade after decade,
who after the thousandth blow
merely spits out a tooth
and says “Son, you have no idea what you’re dealing with,
do you?”
Are you a young rebel?
Are you Sticking it to The Man?
Are you upsetting the gray brainiacs
and knocking over their word castles?
That is fine.
Youth will youth.
But show me a young rebel
who became an old rebel,
who stuck with it through the setbacks
and the beatings and betrayals,
who watched the hippies become yuppies
and the protesters become pundits
and still kept a fire lit
amid the monsoons of infiltration
and the hurricanes of heartbreak.
Who will close their tired eyes for a final time
without ever once having cast them to the ground
or peered up in imploring subordination.
That, my friends,
that is a true spirit.
If you are still a fiery rebel
even as everything is ripped away from you,
I will be humbled and awed by you,
because I will know that you will carry that with you to the grave.
And I will know that whatever you find on the other side
will be met
with that same defiant glare.
And I will sing your song when you are gone.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/05/15/show-me-an-old-rebel/?fbclid=IwAR1NmFaOuFaukYPoskri0TD07F8vG7X8R8gULn-9RT98GfNW8RKtMVg4Nek
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Soz, the formatting got lost in the posting.
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Note to self: zoom quizzes on school nights should end a few hours before 2am. Especially when some twat has put in an 8am meeting the next day.
Bleurgh.
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We’re behind you in this difficult time, craigs.
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Thanks Chimpie.
*offers fist bump*
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*still offers fist bump*
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Not sure where that fist’s been
Has it been disinfected properly? Has it been near any mutant Bloodborne pigs?
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You mean ‘elbow bump’ shirley? No hand-to-hoof* contact allowed under Lockdown.
Do llamas have hooves? Suppose they might if they are of a similar family to sheep and goats.
But no underwear.
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*underwear update for BB*
Wearing a pair of fairly average pants today.
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Getting a bit concerned with his obsession though.
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