The Women Furies (Tales From The Poachers Inn)

By Barnaby Wilde

A humorous collection of ten tall tales about the Poachers Inn Quiz team, 'The Women Furies', and their rivalry with the Poachers darts team. Their banal discussions range from the origin of the bicycle to the ghost in the cellar, what happened when they got stuck in the snow and the kid in the woodshed, plus a bonus story from the Vertigo Research labs, when stairs go wrong.
Also included is a bonus story from the Vertigo collection of tall tales from the Vertigo Research labs, when stairs go wrong.
Each story is just the right length to read in your coffee break, on the train journey to work, or even in the bath.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnaby Wilde
• Release date: Dec 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463746240

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

The Women Furies*

(Tales from the Poachers Inn)

by

Barnaby Wilde

Copyright 2020 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 Barnaby Wilde at 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 your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover picture: An extract from the painting 'Friborg peasants at the bistro' by Francois Louis Jaques (1877 -1937). Public domain image.

* Some stories in this collected edition of tales about the Poachers Inn Quiz team have appeared as 'stand alone' tales in previous Barnaby Wilde collections of short stories..

Other published works by the author.

Humorous Novels

Out of Time

(The Tom Fletcher Stories)

I Keep Thinking It's Tuesday

A Question of Alignment

Every Which Way but East

Quirky Verse

Animalia

Life…

The Blind Philosopher and the God of Small Things

Not at all Rhinocerus

A Little Bit Elephant

Tunnel Vision

The Well Boiled Icycle

A is for Aardvark

Short Story Collections

Barnaby's Shorts (volumes 1 to 11)

Vertigo, tales from the Vertigo Labs

Chameleons

Love

Grow Your Own Man

Detective Fiction (The Mercedes Drew Mysteries)

Flowers for Mercedes

Free Running

Flandra

Smile for the Camera

Contents

The Women Furies Heavy snow in December

Of Proust, Joyce and Wilde A discussion about meringue

Running Stitches A dispute with the darts team

Reflections Four men talk about mirrors

The Dandy Horse The origin of bicycles

Things That Go Bump in the Night Ghosts at the Poachers Inn

Kim A new barmaid

A Pub by Any Other Name A grudge skittles match

Another Tall Tale A story about flooding

Remember, Remember (the firth of November) A penny for the guy

Bonus Story Onwards and Upwards (from the collection 'Vertigo')

When stairs stop working

About Barnaby Wilde

The Women Furies

Now, I know you probably aren't going to believe this story, but I'm going to tell it anyway. You can make up your own mind at the end, whether there's anything in it, or not.

Anyway, where to start? Where to start?

O.K. I guess I should explain who I am first. Well, it's me, Barnaby, Barnaby Wilde, hopeful writer of quirky verse and odd stories. Aspiring author, wishful thinker, eternal optimist.

Yeh. This story is about me and some of my mates. Well, not exactly about us, but about what happened to us a few years ago.

There was a group of us, four to be precise, who used to be mates. Well, we still are mates, of course. We've been mates for years. Greg and I were at school together, Ron is my brother in law, and Dave …? Actually, I can't remember where I met Dave, but it's like he's always been there. So, that's us, the four musketeers. And, no, we don't call ourselves that exactly. In fact I don't really know why I wrote it. It just seemed appropriate somehow, because we were, are, like four musketeers I mean. We look out for one another, have a few laughs together, yeh, and a few tears sometimes, like when Dave's wife left him or Greg's son got killed in a motorcycle accident. Dave's remarried, by the way. Lovely girl. Deborah, Debbie, or Debs as he calls her. Greg's OK, too, well, as OK as anyone can be who's kid gets killed before they've had a chance to live a decent life. He's got two other kids, not that I'm saying that's any consolation, I'm just saying he's got two other kids, that's all.

Actually, we've all got kids and wives. All four of us, but it doesn't have anything to do with this story. Not directly, anyway.

So, where was I? Oh, yeh, I was telling you about the four musketeers, only, like I said, that isn't what we called ourselves. We do have a name for our quartet. It's 'The Women Furies'. Yeh, I do know it's a daft name, but there is a reason for it. A sort of a reason, anyway.

It started as a joke. The name, I mean. We were doing a pub quiz, the four of us and we needed a name for our team. We do pub quizzes pretty much every week. There's a sort of informal league in the local pubs around here and we do a quiz most Thursdays, either at The Poachers, that's our local, or one of the other nearby pubs that share the same league. Anyway, we needed to come up with a name one week, and we were messing around with ideas. We didn't have a regular name then, we usually called ourselves something completely random like 'I Keep Thinking It's Tuesday' or 'A Question of Alignment' and when Dave suggested 'The Women Furies'. It seemed like another totally random suggestion and appealed to our rather quirky sense of humour so we used it that night.

It turned out not to be quite so random as we'd thought. That Dave's a clever bugger on the quiet and there was a hidden message in the name, but it would spoil the story if I told you too much now. Anyway, for some reason, the name stuck and we've used it ever since. Pretty much every pub round here now would know who you meant if you asked them about 'The Women Furies'.

I have no idea if we won the quiz that night. I don't remember. We did win quite often, but we also lost quite often, too. Probably more losses than wins if you counted them all up. Like I said, it was an informal league. No one kept any track of which team was the overall best as far as I know. Perhaps someone somewhere did and they just didn't remember to tell us.

Anyway, we'd been out one Thursday night, the night of this story, to a pub called The Nobody Inn. It's a bit out in the country, down one of those single track Devon lanes with high banks and passing places, but it's a popular pub nonetheless and people come from quite far to eat and drink there. Well, it was a bit of a wild night that night. The weather, I mean, not the pub. It's quite a posh pub as pubs go, but it was blowing a gale when we went in and raining hard. We did pretty well for once. We won a bottle of champagne, a box of chocolates and a bunch of roses in the quiz that night. Or maybe it was in the raffle, I forget exactly which. Whatever, it was a good result.

Anyway, when we came out the wind had dropped completely and the rain had turned to snow, which was a bit unexpected. I don't remember it being forecast, but I guess that happens sometimes. Something to do with a warm front meeting a cold front or something like that. It's not important. It's not important to the story, I mean. It's probably important to somebody at the Met Office.

Well, we were some of the last people to leave the bar that night, which wasn't at all unusual, despite the promises we'd all made to our wives to get home early. Somewhere at the back of my mind I knew I'd be in trouble when I got home, but, you know how it is, you sort of lose track of time after a few beers. Anyway, by the time we came out of the pub, there was a thick layer of snow covering the car park and it was still falling fast.

Now, I should point out that at least one of us was still sober. We all enjoy a jar or two, but we are responsible people, so one of us is always the designated driver. That particular night it was my brother in law, Ron. We take it in turns to be the designated driver and that night it just happened to be his turn. Now, I'm not saying that the rest of us were totally smashed, but we'd certainly had enough to take us over the legal limit for driving.

OK, I lied, actually. Three of us were totally smashed and Ron was a bit disgruntled at being the only sober one and anxious to get home.

Naturally there's only one thing to do when it snows and that's to have a good snowball fight, so three of us, at least, had a bit of fun behaving like kids again and pelting one another with snow. Ron was getting more and more anxious about driving home and trying to get us into the car, but every time he tried to usher us in that direction, he pretty much got buried with snow by the rest of us. He was the only one not enjoying the unexpected blizzard.

In point of fact, I was wrong when I said there's only one thing to do when it snows, there's at least two, though, I'm sorry ladies, this one's just for the men.

Just like that immutable law of gravity that states what goes up, must come down, the immutable law of beer is that what goes in must come out, which inevitably led us to that second activity, which was writing our names in the snow with warm urine. Yes, I'm sorry. I know that isn't very tasteful, but I'm trying to tell it how it was and that's just how it was.

Eventually Ron got us all on board and we slipped and slithered our way back up the lane. It was snowing so hard still that it was a real problem seeing the way ahead. All he could do, more or less, was steer midway between the hedges that lined each side of the road and hope for the best. We expected that by the time we reached the main road the gritters and snowploughs would have been out and the road would have been relatively clear.

We were out of luck, though. The snow seemed to have caught everyone on the hop. There were traffic reports coming over the car radio on the local station advising no one to travel unless their journey was essential. It seemed that the main trunk road, which we were planning to use, was closed due to abandoned vehicles that had been unable to negotiate the hill, and the abandoned cars and trucks were preventing the snow ploughs from clearing the route. As we approached the main road junction, we could see flashing blue lights and vehicles backed up right over the summit of the hill. There was no way we were going to get home in that direction.

Why don't we try the back road? suggested Greg from the rear seat. It can't be any worse than the lane we've just come up from the pub.

That made perfect sense to Dave and me, but Ron was reluctant. However, with three drunken voices urging him on and the only alternative prospect of spending a night in the car, he eventually decided to chance it.

It turned out that Greg was pretty much right. The back road was no worse than the lane from the pub. The problem was that it wasn't any better, either. The only good news was that our route home was mainly downhill.

The traffic reports kept coming over the radio advising people to stay at home, but it was too late for that, we were committed.

Ron was hunched over the steering wheel, grim faced and