People of Few Words - Volume 5

By Swan Morrison

People of Few Words - Volume 5 is the fifth collection of work by contributors to the Short Humour Site from across the world. It contains one piece of 500 word 'Short Humour' by each of fifty writers, together with a brief biography of each writer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781326066253

Book preview

People of Few Words - Volume 5

People of Few Words – Volume 5

People of Few Words – Volume 5

Fifty More Writers from

The Writers’ Showcase of

The Short Humour Site

With an Introduction by

Swan Morrison

Copyright © 2014 by Brian Huggett

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the writer except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2014

ISBN:  978-1-326-06625-3

Further details can be obtained from:

[e-mail]

Dedication

Dedicated to:

All writers and readers of Short Humour

Introduction

Welcome to the World of Short Humour!!

The Short Humour Site – www.Short-Humour.org.uk – was launched in 2006 to publish any type of humorous writing of around 500 words.

In 2009, People of Few Words was published. This was a collection of work by fifty contributors to the Short Humour Site from across the world. It contained one piece by each writer, together with a brief biography.

In 2010, People of Few Words – Volume 2 was published. This was a second such collection and included work by fifty different contributors.

Further such volumes were published in 2011 and 2012.

People of Few Words – Volume 5 is the fifth anthology in the series.

Our philosophy has been to publish as many submissions as possible and not presume to be arbiters of what is funny as we believe that readers, rather than editors, should decide what they like.

All the books therefore include an eclectic mix of material – some of it by writers who have been published extensively and some by writers who appear in print for the first time in one of the books.

The books are also a way of saying thanks to the writers who have contributed to the Short Humour Site and who have, as one reader put it, made the world laugh in the process.

People of Few Words – Volume 5 is published via Lulu.com at virtually no cost, and no intentional profit is made by the Short Humour Site on any sales. Due to differential pricing between Lulu and other online booksellers, a small, accidental profit is sometimes made. This is all donated to the charity supported by the Short Humour Site: Friends of Teso (Uganda) - www.friends-of-teso-uganda.org.uk. Please look at that site to learn more and see how you might help.

The Short Humour Site makes profits from the writing of Swan Morrison. These are currently also donated to Friends of Teso (Uganda).

The Short Humour Site Team hope that you enjoy the work of the fifty writers in this book and laugh as much as we have.

Enjoy!!

Brian Huggett (AKA Swan Morrison) – December 2014.

Swan Morrison - Copy

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The Cover

The cover of this book contains a collage of photographs of the contributors to People of Few Words - Volume 5.

To date, nearly four hundred people have contributed pieces to the Short Humour Site. These contributors have come from (in alphabetical order): Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Dubai, England, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mexico, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Poland, Republic of Ireland, Scotland, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sudan, Switzerland, Uganda, the USA and Wales.

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Our Writers. . .

Biswajit Banerji – India

Biswajit Banerji is humorous and satirical by default and interested in all liberal arts. He has published poems in e-zines and several literary journals. He works in a Steel Plant in Bokaro steel city, India.

That he has to work for making a living remains the greatest disappointment of his life.

The Right To Put Things In Disorder

In any household, how many times a man is accused of using a thing and then not putting it back in its designated place? If on any occasion, the hapless fellow happens to be blessed and free from such accusations then it can safely be assumed that either he is a bachelor or he has, after due consideration, not taken the  trouble to ‘use’ a particular thing in the house which continues to remain in its hallowed place. If he is a bachelor, he already has a wanton license to merrily put things in disarray, but if he isn’t, then further agony awaits him in the form of jibes that he is a lazy, uncontributing specimen who does not care a fig about what’s going on in the house and how the poor wife has to manage everything singlehanded.

The satisfaction that comes from putting anything back in its original place after every use is beyond most men. Why the net displacement of any household object should be minimum and not maximum, post-utilization, is a moot question that has not been answered since the inception of mankind. For most men, the minimum displacement theory as propounded by the conspiring wives, is loathsome enough and deemed fit for summary rejection. Initially, keeping things in permanent disorder begins as a passion that soon assumes the regularity of a habit, finally degenerating into a fossilized dogma. At this stage no amount of good advice, persuasion or threat is going to have any effect other than causing visible irritation accompanied by occasional eruptions.

The other day I had to launch a massive combing operation in the house to locate my specs which had the irritating habit of disappearing when needed the most. All possible hideouts were searched including the most improbable and patently improper places like the shoe-shelf, refrigerator and even the commode flush-top. In my quest, I had committed the sin of ransacking everything that came my way until the house resembled one that was ready to be forsaken and set on fire. The whole exercise was excruciating and as I dropped into the drawing-room sofa, a sharp shooting pain, apparently originating from the damned piece of furniture, forced me to jump on my feet. There lay on the sofa, the spectacles in a state that reminded of artefacts excavated from vandalized ancient tombs. It seemed I had middled the ball perfectly well with immaculate timing to inflict the most savage damage. My first reaction was to curse my glasses for having mingled so seamlessly with the sofa as to render any kind of detection impossible. Then I blamed my friend for his phone-call that had caused me to rush out of the drawing room, leaving the poor glasses to fend-off the elements of nature. My wife, who has the gift of waylaying the most defenseless creatures, came around to say that I richly deserved whatever had happened and that it was a sound lesson. I mumbled something in apparent agreement but secretly thought that it was good riddance because the spectacle-frame was too backdated and a confirmed age-enhancer. Any celestial repercussion of my sacrilegious act has yet not been reported.

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Linda Barber – USA

Linda Barber is a former English teacher and realtor from the mountains of East Tennessee. She has published stories in Halfway Down the Stairs and The Philadelphia Review of Books.

She is currently writing her first novel, loosely based on her world famous tiger-taming great aunt, Mabel Stark.

War Of The Dishwashers

My husband is type A. I’m something else. We’ve been married since 1976, and we’ve always had a dishwasher problem. When we were at my mother’s house the other night, he insisted on loading the dishwasher for her. If I had loaded it, she would have been off to the den, but as John performed his magic, she watched his every move, gushed that she didn’t even think Jesus could load that many dishes in a dishwasher, and then kissed him on the cheek. I told her that she’s never kissed me on the cheek for loading the dishes. She said mine aren’t artistically inspired like his, and I don’t get all the dishes in there.  But I am blindingly fast!

I wouldn’t care if he loaded every dish in every dishwasher until the end of time, but he never stops there. He literally checks my dishwasher and reloads it. He takes every dish out just to get two cereal bowls in. Shifting a dish or two is one thing,