Since you read A Coventry Wedding–wait, you DID read A Coventry Wedding, right? Along with the first book, A Coventry Christmas? I’ll assume your answer is yes to both.
Since you read A Coventry Wedding, you are probably somewhat familiar with the reality of marauding guinea fowl. Today I was at the post office, because of Batch 4 (including the last two international cards)…
This leaves only one last batch of cards, and I will have shocked myself beyond all belief by emailing these before Valentine’s Day, my birthday in March, or Easter in April, as in years past.
As I stood at the counter adding the postage I bought for those two international cards, I heard a dreadful clacking noise. Some part of me knew, KNEW, what I was hearing, and I looked fearfully toward the door, where a gang stared in at me.
“Yeah, no,” I said. “I’ve tangled with your kind before. I’ll stay here in the post office all day as a masked volunteer helper before I walk out that door into a vicious confusion of guineas. (No joke, a group of guinea fowl is called a “confusion.”)
After I finished my mail and dropped it in the slot, as I was walking to my post office box (your card arrived, Mark, thank you!), a man came in and said, “Did you feed them?”
“No,” I said and thought, not bloody likely.
“Well, they’re happy somebody did!” he said.
I looked outside, and they’d left the door to peck around on the ground, probably looking for remaining fragments of the bones of their dead enemies. I made my escape while they were distracted.
Huzzah! Glad it arrived in time for the big day.
I have read the Coventry books, but there are overdue a re-read.
Do Americans say ‘Bloody’ – or have you been reading me for too long?
It’s funny you should ask, and I wondered if you’d notice. Yes, you do influence me!
On the drive to the post office, I was thinking of certain characters I’m writing and what their accents are. I was driving Tom’s car and didn’t want to mess up his music settings, so the ride was silent. To entertain myself, I began speaking aloud how I thought some of them might sound, including a British brother and sister. I’m not sure if my mind was still there, but as soon as I typed “bloody” in this post, I was all, You can get out of character now. It’s not like you’re Mark (as in you, Mark) or Christine McVie! Then I wondered, Do Americans really have a word that conveys quite what “bloody” does? Maybe a part of me harks back to my English forebears. So I kept it. =)