Augusta's Day Out
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#1: Augusta's Day Out Author: AbiLocation: Alton, Hants PostPosted: Sun Jun 20, 2004 11:18 pm


A nice, compact little Augusta story that wheedled its way into my head...


When Augusta went home the day after the fiasco of the Christmas Play, she took Mollie with her. Mollie’s father was in the Navy and her mother was performing many Good Works such as raising money for the Spitfire Fund, knitting socks for soldiers and organising Christmas parties for evacuees, and was quite happy to be relieved of the presence of a lively twelve-year-old for the first half of the holiday.

Augusta introduced Mollie to her friends at home, who, Mollie was relieved to find, were of a relatively normal disposition. The main one seemed to be a tall, serious looking girl with large spectacles and a prominent nose, which made her look rather like an owl. She apparently rejoiced in the name of Claire-Victoria Mortimer,

“But we call her Clip,” explained Augusta. “You see, if you say Claire-Victoria very fast through a mouthful of flannel someone who was a bit deaf might think it was Clip.” Mollie shrugged her shoulders and accepted this. She seemed to fit naturally into the little group and very soon they were all happily engaged in the creation of an ant circus. One, christened Leonardo by Clip, showed a remarkable aptitude for walking the tightrope, while two others performed a passable acrobatic routine, encouraged by skilful prodding from one Nathaniel (known to his fellows as Flannel). Augusta tried to educate a fourth in the art of tap dancing although it seemed more keen on displaying its talents as an escape artist, while Mollie maintained that the first thing to do was to teach them their names. To this end she experimented on twinn ants whom she called Daisy and Maisy. Maisy appeared the more intelligent of the two, but as her sister followed faithfully in her footsteps the lesson was fairly successful.

The next day Mrs Fraser undertook to drive anyone who wished to come to the Zoo. The invitation was accepted with alacrity by Mollie and Clip, although Flannel refused, asserting that he did not want to “drag round all day with a bunch of women”. So Mrs Fraser, Augusta and Mollie went off to pick up Clip from her own home. They had the first inkling of the sort of day it was to be shortly after they entered Matilda.

Matilda was the car. She resented anyone manipulating her delicate works except Mr. Fraser, and when Mrs Fraser attempted to drive her she showed her displeasure very markedly. Although she had moments of mischief, merriment or melancholy with her master, compared to her behaviour with his wife she was the embodiment of decorum and sedateness with him. In the hands of Mrs Fraser, atilda became a bucking broncho, she was dashing and high-spirited, casting her sober responsibility to the winds and developing an irrepressible urge to wreak havoc in any way she could.

On this occasion she pretended to be having a good day. Except for a half-hearted sally towards the hen-coop in the Frasers’ garden and a brief detour round a tree on the way to Clip’s house, her behaviour was exemplary. Until they turned the corner at the end of Clip’s road. With stunning suddenness Matilda rushed up a small bank and attempted to crash through the hedge crowning it. Finding this impossibleshe backed down rapidly, went to have a look at a particularly attractive lamp-post, then in a fit of frustration began to shudder violently and sat down in the middle of the road refusing to move. Mrs Fraser smiled apologetically at her passengers.

“So sorry, Mollie dear,” she said, “she does tend to do this sort of thing when I’m driving her. I really don’t know why, because when my husband’s here she behaves perfectly marvellously. You couldn’t have a better car. But somehow, when…”

“Mother!” interrupted Augusta, aware that her mother was quite capable of continuing in this strain for half an hour or more.

“Yes, dear? Oh, the car.” She pressed down on all three pedals rapidly and indiscriminately. Matilda gave a yelp of protest and set off down the road at a pace she had never bettered. As they shot past a modern red brick building set behind a large but very tidy hedge Augusta created further confusion by yelling,

“That’s Clip’s house, Mother!”

“I’m sorry dear. I can’t remember which one the brake is,” said Mrs Fraser, swinging into the drive. However, even as she turned Matilda decided to stop of her own accord. A moment later Clip was safely ensconced in the car, and Mrs Fraser tried to start it. Matilda, it seemed, was exhausted by her previous activities and had no desire to exert herself again. Mrs Fraser sighed and looked pathetically at Augusta, who was experienced in the vagaries of Matilda. She climbed out, went round to the front of the car and gave it a resounding kick. When Mrs Fraser tried again to start Matilda, the car leapt as though she had been stung and shot forward into the shrubbery. Mrs Fraser reversed her out and she backed slowly and deliberately into the holly bush by the gate.

“Sorry,” gasped Mrs Fraser, “I’ll do it this time.” This time Matilda bounced with enthusiasm into the hedge and reversing out of this became inextricably entangled with a set of garden furniture. When at last she was steered erratically but triumphantly out of the gate she was festooned with streamers of ivy, rose, fuschi, box and holly, in addition to half a garden chair which hung drunkenly over the rear bumper. In the back Augusta sat placidly, gazing with mild astonishment at her two friends, who were clinging together and trying to restrain their uncontrollable hoots of laughter.

Matilda continued her sprightly passage down the roads. She investigated ponds and rivers, hedges and meadows, with insatiable curiosity. She had a contretemps with a recalcitrant gatepost. It won the argument and Matilda backed off, only to renew the battle with doubled vigour a moment later. She swept through a farmyard, scattering hens, ducks, dogs and small children, circled the barn three times, fought off a marauding scarecrow who was lurking behind the barn, peered coyly round the corner, then charged back through the farmyard pursued by the farmer, his wife, two stolid farmworkers and a screeching rabble of children who ages ranged from two to fifteen. As she plunged with determination through the barbed wire fencing Augusta leaned out of the window and shouted,

“Sorry! Mother never can remember where the brake is…” This apparently flummoxed the farming family, for they stopped and stared after Matilda, who jauntily proceeded on her way, still shedding foliage like confettii as she careered along.

In fact her experiences in the farmyard seemed to have sobered Matilda somewhat, and she confined her attentions mainly to the road. This did not, of course, stop her from investigating with commendable thoroughness the middle of the road, the right hand side of it, and on accasion the gras verges, trees, hedges or footpaths that bordered it. But there were no more major incidents and by the time they reached the Zoo Mollie and Clip were pretty much in their right minds. As they approached the entrance to the Zoo Matilda came to a sudden halt. Mrs Fraser pretended she had intended to stop there all along and they all bundled out of the car.

That day at the Zoo was one of unlimited pleasure. They gaped with breathless awe at the lions and tigers. They regarded the flamingoes with wondering expressions. They dismissed the world’s rarest horse as “boring” and Augusta informed Mollie with an air of deep wisdom that hippopotumusses laid eggs.

“Or it might be elephants,” she conceded when Mollie looked disbelieving.

“They must be big eggs if elephants lay them,” said Mollie doubtfully. Elephants, egg-laying or not, were outside her area of expertise. Augusta nodded.

“Oh yes, they’re enormous,” she agreed, “bigger than ostrich eggs, and they’re the biggest in the world.”

“But if ostrich eggs are the biggest in the world how can elephants’ eggs be bigger?” protested the learner in bewildered accents. Augusta’s method of reasoning was beyond her, and in any case she had had a vague idea that elephants laid their babies whole… Augusta, meanwhile, was considering this aspect of the matter, which had not occurred to her before. She did not like to seem ignorant.

“Well,” she said at last, “Peaople don’t generally know about elephants’ eggs, so naturally they think ostriches are bigger. Elephants sort of hide their eggs until the babies have hatched. They pretend not to have eggs at all.”

“But don’t people find the shells?”

“Yes,” Augusta lowered her voice, “but they pretend not to, in case the elephants stop laying them. They’re very shy, elephants.”

“So the elephants are pretending and the people are pretending? Don’t the people know the elephants are pretending? I’ll bet the elephants know we’re pretending.”

“Ah,” said Augusta, “they do. That’s why they only pretend to lay eggs.” Mollie blinked in confusion.

“But you said…”

“It’s their cunning, you know. Elephants are cunning. They could be plotting to take over the world, for all we know.” Her voice took on a sinister note. “Perhaps even now they’re creeping through the undergrowth, armed to the teeth…”

“Elephants don’t have teeth,” pointed out Mollie.

“That doesn’t matter, you fiendish idiot. It’s a figure of speech. What I mean’t was… oh, never mind.”

“You’re both idiots,” observed Clip dispassionately. “They have live babies, like all mammals.”

But when they reached the elephant house the were edified to hear a small boy questioning his mother shrilly.

“Where are the eggs, Mummy?”

“What eggs?” asked the lady, mystified.

“The eggs the elephants lay,” he answered logically.

“But they don’t, darling. They have babies.”

“But the girl said they laid eggs!” His voice rose in righteous indignation.

“Well, she was wrong, Percy.” The little boy did not take kindly to disillusionment. He screwed up his face and his voice rose in a howl.

“Wanner see the e-e-e-e-eggs!” he wailed, “Wannerseethee-e-e-e-eggs!” His mother’s protests were almost inaudible through his bellows and at last she bore him off. They could still hear in the distance, “wannerseethee-e-e-e-eggs” for some time afterwards. Clip blinked at Augusta and Mollie through her thick spectacles.

“Now look what your idiotic babble’s done.” Augusta snorted, but said nothing.

At last, sated with pleasure, they made their way back to Matilda, who awaited them with a deceptive air of innocence. They piled into her, Clip and Mollie with breathless anticipation. Perhaps Matilda was feeling tired; in any case, she behaved fairly well on the way home. She did rouse herself to action – or rather, lack of it – shortly before depositing Clip at her home, when she came to a suddenhalt that was apparently meant to be final and indefinite. After ten minutes of tinkering, kicking and other remedies which had no effect except to draw the occasional low moan from the suffering machine, they began to fear that they would have to walk home. In desperation Mrs Fraser seized Matilda and shook her so violently that she rattled like a swarm of angry snakes. However, the treatment had the desired effect: Mrs Fraser only just had time to dive into the car and slam the door before she shot off down the road. She grabbed the steering wheel and Matilda swerved wildly, narrowly missing a small, garish-coloured sports car, whose driver (a fat and pompous youth with bright orange hair) sent a stream of invective after Matilda that would have shocked her occupants had their vehicle been quiet enough for them to hear it.

Clip thanked Mrs Fraser for her day and stood at the front door to see them off. Matilda unaccountably rushed backwards for a few yards, circled the opposite driveway three times and set off the wrong way down the road. A few minutes later she came past again, now sporting a long tendril of ivy which streamed out like a banner, inextricably entangled with the remains of the garden chair at the back. In the front Augusta and Mrs Fraser were waving enthusiastically at her through the passenger window. Matilda tentatively mounted the pavement, thought better of the venture and returned to the road, then sailed off into the distance.

 


#2:  Author: AnnLocation: Newcastle upon Tyne, England PostPosted: Sun Jun 20, 2004 11:24 pm


*giggling wildly*

I love Gussie, she's fantastic! Abi, your talents for writing comedy are peerless! More Augusta soon please!

 


#3:  Author: VikkiLocation: Possibly in hell! It's certainly hot enough....... PostPosted: Sun Jun 20, 2004 11:40 pm


*rolls on the floor, sobbing with near hysterical laughter!!!*

Thank you Abi!! Just what I needed!

 


#4:  Author: LesleyLocation: Rochester, Kent PostPosted: Sun Jun 20, 2004 11:50 pm


I want a Mathilda!!!

Wonderful, thank you Abi! Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing

 


#5:  Author: Kathy_SLocation: midwestern US PostPosted: Mon Jun 21, 2004 12:19 am


Thank you, Abi!

Hurrah for Augusta & Matilda!

 


#6:  Author: NicoleLocation: New Zealand PostPosted: Mon Jun 21, 2004 7:30 am


*having a mild case of hysterics*

You've got to love Augusta! Very Happy Very Happy

 


#7:  Author: Carolyn PLocation: Lancaster, England PostPosted: Mon Jun 21, 2004 9:23 am


Matilda sounds suspiciously like our car!!! Laughing Cool

I love this, you have such a wonderful talent to cheer us all like you do.

 


#8:  Author: NicciLocation: UK PostPosted: Mon Jun 21, 2004 10:11 am


Abi, as wonderful as ever.

If I hadn't already named my new car I would honestly name her Matilda in honour of you and Gussie and of course, Matilda herself!

 


#9:  Author: KathyeLocation: Laleham PostPosted: Mon Jun 21, 2004 11:52 am


That was great Abi...

Loved the car.... mine isn't quite that bad, but I swear it is alive and understands me when I talk to it !

Hope a longer Gussie story is just around the corner Wink

 


#10:  Author: SusanLocation: Carlisle PostPosted: Tue Jun 22, 2004 3:03 pm


Wonderful story Abi, very cheering. Matilda is wonderful- though kind of glad my car doesn't behave like that.

 




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