Kat's Tic Tocc number 6. by mooncake lizzie 723 words

I have no idea how to transfer drawings, etc to some form that can be uploaded so am sticking to writing. I will ask someone how it's done though maybe for next week.

• Meanwhile, for three letters I pointed ( while looking elsewhere,) to pages in a book, B, A, M.

• Three words came to mind; Bird, Animated, Men.

                                          THE MARVELOUS ALMANAC

“I like this almanack, Alphonso. It would look very attractive in the dressing room. You see, it is unusual in that it has coloured images, a different one for each month? Imagine, if we can bring ourselves not to peep, how exciting it will be each time on the First, to turn over a new image!”

“Indeed, it is a curio. Rather different from Old Moores' almanac, or the small advertising billboard that the grocer sends out at Christmas under the pretext of honouring our custom, in such a condescending manner.”

Mary glanced at Alphonso, he was twisting his moustache in a way he had when he was interested. She had already leafed through the almanac and seen flashing impressions of beautiful images from the Far East, reminiscent of japanned boxes in her old employer's study.

Of course, Alphonso would not hear of the almanac going upstairs in the dressing room, as they liked to call the little back bedroom in their two up two down cottage. This was merely a starting point, a roof over their heads. One day they would be rich and important, Alphonso was sure. He already planned to invite his chief, Mr Rogers at the Bank round for afternoon tea; the almanac would seem a fortuitous talking point. Mrs Rogers would be bound to comment on the fine art work within. It would go up above the mantelpiece in the parlour.

Alphonso and Mary were thrilled to buy the beautiful object so cheaply. Perhaps the shop had mispriced it? But it was not their place to suggest such a thing. They paid and slipped it into the basket almost guiltily.

At the weekend all was frenzied preparation in the attempt to look as if they had not prepared. Mr and Mrs Rogers would think that they lived like this all the time. Cultivated, controlled people with good taste and exquisite manners. Alphonso would be considered worthy of promotion, his wife the perfect hostess. The almanacks turning pages would mark, as surely as the earth turned around the sun, their progress into the Upper Middle Class.

Mrs Rogers looked at the almanack closely, Mary didn't want to spoil her own personal surprise and sat opposite, smiling and nodding as Mrs Rogers described Animated birds; cranes and swallows and men fishing with cormorants. It gave them an immediate talking point as Alphonso had predicted. After twenty minutes Mary felt she would be able to engage in any form of discourse with Mrs Rogers once invited back to their home. The journey had begun, assisted by the wonderful almanac with its evocative glimpses into lives of another race hitherto undreamed of, but perhaps symbolising their own evolution, as Mr Newton would have said...

Mrs Rogers sighed with relief as they climbed into their motorcar (the only one in Connaught Avenue.)

“Heavens! Dont take me there again! I had to look through last years calendar all afternoon it seems!”

Mr Rogers looked sideways down his long nose and she continued,

“I had Ruby put it on top of the dustbin on Boxing Day but she saw some urchin take it off immediately. He must have sold it to the Curiosity shop in town. I knew it was ours because it still had some notifications written on it for last December; your appointment with the Surgeon for your gout for one. That ridiculous man Alphonso must have thought we'd be impressed.”

“Well, I was thinking of promoting him, but a fellow that can't tell one year from the next is not the type I want in the firm. I think I'll give him his marching orders instead.”

He signalled to the boy, who cranked the starting handle. The engine juddered into life and the boy walked in front, waving the red flag as they chugged back to Connaught Avenue, Alphonso and Mary's beautiful images of another world quite forgotten.