oggbashan
Dying Truth seeker
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2002
- Posts
- 56,017
Time
(Just because I could)
Joanna groaned as the grandfather clock in the hall struck eight which didn’t mean that it was eight o’clock because that clock gained five minutes a day and she only wound it up on Sunday mornings so she had to think what day it was; was it Sunday, yes it was, and since she hadn’t wound it up yet that meant that it wasn’t eight o’clock but was possibly seven twenty-five in the morning which was far too early to be awake after a Saturday night of incautious celebration she thought wondering, not for the first time, why she hadn’t had the clock adjusted to keep the correct time as she had kept asking Brad to arrange but he never did which was one of the reasons why she and Brad were now totally independent people and why she was feeling as if she had overindulged at their joint party to mark the occasion of their divorce becoming final and why hadn’t she herself asked the clockmaker to correct the clock now that she was her own mistress so she made a mental note to phone the clock shop on Monday and rolled herself up in the duvet for some more sleep which was interrupted by the tinny clatter of her alarm clock’s bell that she hadn’t reset from its normal weekday position so she reached out and hit the off button and tried to regain the blissful sleep recently interrupted but the village church’s bell started to ring summoning the villagers to early communion as it had done for hundreds years yet sounding as if the bell regretted the necessity for calling so few parishioners unlike the congregation that had filled the church as recently as the Nineteen Forties but Joanna wouldn’t be answering that insistent summons since it had been Brad who had been enthusiastic about complying with the outward appearances of the village traditions and had dragged her unwilling every Sunday morning to attend communion that he believed in even less than she did but he had considered an essential part of their belonging to the village, not they would ever actually belong since they had only come to the village in the Nineteen Eighties and villagers who had come to live there when the railway arrived in the Eighteen Nineties were still referred to as ‘them newcomers’ and some locals expressed reservations about families who had joined the community after the canal had been built in the Eighteen Twenties, but Joanna rolled back to realise with a start that she wasn’t alone in bed and there was Brad sleeping beside her as if their divorce hadn’t happened, yet how was it that Brad was here, Oh yes it was because she and he had drunk too much last night and he wouldn’t drive and the local taxi firm firmly shut its doors at midnight to remind the villagers that there was a finite limit even to revelling on Saturday nights and she and Brad had drunkenly decided to continue their celebrations in bed together for a final farewell fling which had been the fiasco she had known it would be because a inebriated Brad was invariably an impotent Brad and after a few minutes fruitless fumbling they had settled down to sleep together instead of ‘sleeping together’ that had been their intention but now it was morning she ought to get out of the former marriage bed before Brad awoke and decided to consummate their non longer extent marriage which might have been an acceptable idea in the euphoria of last night but in the grey dawn of a village morning seemed as unattractive as Brad had become to her over the last few years so Joanna climbed out of bed to realise with a start that only five minutes had passed since the inaccurate grandfather clock had struck eight o’clock when it wasn’t.
648 words (excluding title)
Passive sentences 0
Reading ease 0.0
Grade level 12 (probably 99)
Follow that. Or just groan.
Og
(Just because I could)
Joanna groaned as the grandfather clock in the hall struck eight which didn’t mean that it was eight o’clock because that clock gained five minutes a day and she only wound it up on Sunday mornings so she had to think what day it was; was it Sunday, yes it was, and since she hadn’t wound it up yet that meant that it wasn’t eight o’clock but was possibly seven twenty-five in the morning which was far too early to be awake after a Saturday night of incautious celebration she thought wondering, not for the first time, why she hadn’t had the clock adjusted to keep the correct time as she had kept asking Brad to arrange but he never did which was one of the reasons why she and Brad were now totally independent people and why she was feeling as if she had overindulged at their joint party to mark the occasion of their divorce becoming final and why hadn’t she herself asked the clockmaker to correct the clock now that she was her own mistress so she made a mental note to phone the clock shop on Monday and rolled herself up in the duvet for some more sleep which was interrupted by the tinny clatter of her alarm clock’s bell that she hadn’t reset from its normal weekday position so she reached out and hit the off button and tried to regain the blissful sleep recently interrupted but the village church’s bell started to ring summoning the villagers to early communion as it had done for hundreds years yet sounding as if the bell regretted the necessity for calling so few parishioners unlike the congregation that had filled the church as recently as the Nineteen Forties but Joanna wouldn’t be answering that insistent summons since it had been Brad who had been enthusiastic about complying with the outward appearances of the village traditions and had dragged her unwilling every Sunday morning to attend communion that he believed in even less than she did but he had considered an essential part of their belonging to the village, not they would ever actually belong since they had only come to the village in the Nineteen Eighties and villagers who had come to live there when the railway arrived in the Eighteen Nineties were still referred to as ‘them newcomers’ and some locals expressed reservations about families who had joined the community after the canal had been built in the Eighteen Twenties, but Joanna rolled back to realise with a start that she wasn’t alone in bed and there was Brad sleeping beside her as if their divorce hadn’t happened, yet how was it that Brad was here, Oh yes it was because she and he had drunk too much last night and he wouldn’t drive and the local taxi firm firmly shut its doors at midnight to remind the villagers that there was a finite limit even to revelling on Saturday nights and she and Brad had drunkenly decided to continue their celebrations in bed together for a final farewell fling which had been the fiasco she had known it would be because a inebriated Brad was invariably an impotent Brad and after a few minutes fruitless fumbling they had settled down to sleep together instead of ‘sleeping together’ that had been their intention but now it was morning she ought to get out of the former marriage bed before Brad awoke and decided to consummate their non longer extent marriage which might have been an acceptable idea in the euphoria of last night but in the grey dawn of a village morning seemed as unattractive as Brad had become to her over the last few years so Joanna climbed out of bed to realise with a start that only five minutes had passed since the inaccurate grandfather clock had struck eight o’clock when it wasn’t.
648 words (excluding title)
Passive sentences 0
Reading ease 0.0
Grade level 12 (probably 99)
Follow that. Or just groan.
Og