Barnaby's Shorts (Volume Four): Barnaby's Shorts, #4

By Barnaby Wilde

Ten more coffee break sized stories from Barnaby Wilde. Including another tale from the Vertigo labs, a boy and a bear in the woods, a winter's tale of murder, and a true story from Crete. A touch of romance, a hint of sci fi, a portion of mystery, a morality tale and a thread of humour.
Stories that are just the right size to read in bed, on the train or in the bath.
What happens when a man gets the wrong coat after the Opera? Why does a man find himself marooned on a featurelss plain wearing an orange jumpsuit? Can there really be a bear loose in the Surrey woods? What actually happened in the Tunnel of Love? Who will be the last man standing?
Answers to these questions and more in Barnaby's Shorts (volume four).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnaby Wilde
• Release date: Feb 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301305698

Barnaby Wilde

Barnaby Wilde is the pen name of Tim Fisher. Tim was born in 1947 in Hertfordshire, United Kingdom, but grew up and was educated in the West Country. He graduated with a Physics degree in 1969 and worked in manufacturing and quality control for a multinational photographic company for 30 years before taking an early retirement to pursue other interests. He has two grown up children and currently lives happily in Devon.

Book preview

Barnaby's Shorts

(volume 4)

A collection of short stories

by

Barnaby Wilde

Copyright 2013 by Barnaby Wilde

Barnaby Wilde asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Published by Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover picture: Barnaby's Shorts, original self portrait by Barnaby Wilde

Other published works by the author available as ebooks.

I Keep Thinking It's Tuesday – a Tom Fletcher novel

A Question of Alignment – a Tom Fletcher novel

Every Which Way but East – a Tom Fletcher novel

Animalia – a collection of quirky verse with an animal theme

Life… -- a collection of verse on a vaguely 'life' related theme

The Blind Philospher and the God of Small Things -- more verse, with a philosophical theme and bad puns.

Not at all Rhinocerus – a collection of verse with almost no mention of rhinoceros

A Little Bit Elephant – a collection of very quirky verse which is only slightly elephant.

Tunnel Vision – a collection of longer verses featuring flying saucers, dining tables, whales and shoes, with puns and jokes as usual.

The Well Boiled Icycle -- 35 New 'quirky' poems featuring Clockwork Wellingtons, Goldfish, Jugglers and Gingerbread Men, but not necessarily in that order.

Barnaby's Shorts (volumes 1, 2 and 3) – ten coffee break length short stories in each volume, to suit all tastes.

Flowers for Mercedes – Parts one to three of the Mercedes Drew Mysteries.

Free Running – Parts four to six of the Mercedes Drew Mysteries.

Visit www.barnaby-wilde.co.uk for the author's blog and more information about the world of Barnaby Wilde.

Barnaby's Shorts (Volume Four)

Table of Contents

Cool Running – Winters were much colder when I was a boy.

Three's a Crowd – Emily plants more man beans.

A Small Dilemma – A tru(ish) story from the island of Crete.

John Reynolds – The story of a man who went to the opera.

Fossicking* - * to rummage or search around, especially for a possible profit.

And Then There Were None – Who will be the last man standing?

The Best Birthday Ever – A romantic tale of a trip to the fair.

The Women Furies – A pub quiz team with an unusual name.

Onwards, Upwards and Inside Out – Another tale from the Vertigo Labs.

An Indefinite Period – A man in an orange suit marooned on a featureless plain.

Other works by Barnaby Wilde

Cool Running

Of course, the winters were much colder when I was a boy.

You think I'm making it up? This isn't just the ramblings of a senile mind, you know. I'm not that old, yet. The winters were colder. It's a fact. Some of them anyway.

Nineteen forty seven for example. The year I was born. That was the snowiest winter in the last hundred years. It began snowing in the January, right after I was born, and it snowed every day until the middle of March. Not everywhere, of course, but it's a fact that snow fell somewhere in the United Kingdom every day from the twenty third of January to the seventeenth of March. Some of the snowfalls were over two feet in a day. There were even seven inches of snow in the Scilly Isles that January and they don't normally see any snow at all.

Of course, I was much too young to know anything of this. I only know what my mother told me. She said that temperatures fell to minus twenty degrees in some places and there were snow drifts up to twenty feet deep.

I know that isn't much for some parts of the world, but for England it was pretty exceptional.

I do remember that, when I was a boy, we used to get snow pretty much every winter and we did the usual snowmen, snowball fighting and tobogganing that every kid does when he gets the chance. These days we hardly seem to see snow at all, apart from last year, of course, when we did get one big snowstorm. It's all down to global warming apparently, but if that's the reason, it doesn't seem to be doing much for the summers. That's all I can say.

Anyway, the other really bad winter, and the one I can properly remember, came in nineteen sixty two into nineteen sixty three. It snowed on Boxing Day that year and it just kept on snowing. That was the coldest winter in the last hundred years. There may have been more snow in forty seven, but the sixty two/sixty three winter was colder. In fact it was the third coldest winter since sixteen fifty nine and that's when the records began.

That winter lakes and rivers were frozen over for weeks on end and even the sea froze in places.

The ice on the lakes was several inches thick and, naturally, despite all the warnings, everyone who could walked and skated and just plain marvelled at the beauty of it all.

I was sixteen that winter, as was my friend Sam Cottle. He was barely four weeks older than I was, born on Xmas eve, which meant he got to lose out on a lot of birthday presents, but I guess that happens a lot to people born around that time of year.

Sam and I were best mates all through school and outside school. We lived in the same street. We sat together at school, played together and got into trouble together. Sam always thought he was the leader, because he was older by four weeks and, mostly, I just let him think that way. He had an older sister, May. She was three years older than him, born during the war although she was too young to know anything of it. She used to mother Sam like an old mother hen, which was good, because his own mother didn't seem to care too much. I didn't have any brothers or sisters, so Sam was about as near to a brother as I could get.

We were like any two boys, I suppose, growing up. Trying to stay out of trouble, but somehow always seeming to be in the thick of it. The world was different then, though. It was a much simpler place. We were free, pretty much, to wander where we liked as long as we came home at intervals to eat and sleep and didn't do too much damage to our clothes and shoes. It was always Sam, though, that came up with the wild ideas.

He was the one who had the idea to try to light a bonfire at the top of a tree. He said it would keep us warm while we kept a look out, though I can't remember what it was we were looking out for. He had the idea to buy a whole load of penny bangers one November and tip out all the gunpowder to make one big one. We managed to blow a whole chunk of concrete off the culvert with that. We were lucky not to blow a whole chunk off ourselves. It was Sam who always came up with the next idea for a bridge or a raft or a fishing rod. Like I said, those were simpler days.

There were no computers and no iPods or iPads or electronic games, so mostly we just wandered about in the countryside amusing ourselves.

Sam could be moody, though, sometimes. There were days when he would hardly speak at all and he'd sort of retire into himself, like a tortoise withdrawing into it's shell. He never told me why, at the time, or maybe I was just too insensitive to ask. It all makes sense now, of course, but back then we were just two boys growing up together, one of us a whole lot more innocent than the other.

Sam's mother died when he was about ten years old. I forget now what she died of. May, his sister, had to take on the role of mother even though she must have been as lost as he was. Their father was an unpleasant man and, as far as possible, I tried to avoid him. Quite how unpleasant he was I didn't find out until that cold winter in January nineteen sixty three.

We'd been out, Sam and I, mucking about in the snow and on the ice. We'd built an igloo up by the lake and we would sit in it and talk about what we'd do when we grew up. My imagination didn't run further than getting married, having a family and working in a factory somewhere. Sam, though, had a million ideas about what he was going to do. One moment he was going to be a doctor, the next a lawyer or a politician, or else he was going to invent something and have his own factory. It changed every five minutes. There was no idea, then of instant fame or celebrity. No one expected to be an overnight success or a famous footballer. We didn't even have television sets in our homes. We had seen television, of course, but only in other people's houses. Whatever, Sam had big ideas and I didn't doubt that one day one of his big ideas would happen.

What actually happened was quite different and I was totally unprepared for it.

Around nine o'clock on that January evening Sam turned up at our house. It was dark outside, of course, and bitterly cold. No one with any sense was anywhere but at home in front of a fire, or maybe in the pub. My mother sent me to see who was at the door and I was surprised to see that it was Sam.

Come, he said.

Where?

Just get a coat and come.

But, it's bloody freezing outside.

I've got a car. It's got a heater.

I was dumbfounded. Sam had a car? We were only sixteen. Too young to drive. Even our Dads didn't have cars. Where had Sam got a car from? How did he know how to drive it?

Just get a coat and come, he repeated. He seemed somewhat agitated.

Come where?

Are you coming or not?

My mum won't let me go out at this time of night, I said, somewhat feebly.

Sam just looked at me. I thought you were my mate, he said, disappointedly, and with that he turned to go.

Hang on, Sam. I'll need my boots.

I'll wait in the car, he said. But be quick. I'm not hanging about.

I went back into the house to get my coat and boots. My gloves and hat were stuffed in the pockets. I remember my mum asking who it was at the door and I just muttered something unintelligible before ducking out. I knew I'd be in trouble when I got back.

Sam was sitting in the driving seat