Noisy Dog Lady

She tests Grump's patience this one... everything about Noisy Dog Lady makes him grind his teeth, clench his fists and shut tight his eyes in consternation and disgust. She has been annoying him for over a year now. Well, this morning it finally became too much and Grump feels he must now vent forth or have at her with a cricket bat.
Who is this latest Village loon? Only the skinniest, loudest, most ignorant woman in Christendom. She woke him up this morning. Again. Day off and he was perfectly enjoying a lie-in, resting after The Flower's whirlwind of scattered clothes, her roaring hairdrier, ozone-raping clouds of hairspray, banging of cupboard doors, and the heated babble of Radio 4. The Flower departs for work with a final slam of a car door and a crunch of gears. He sighs and settles back. Soon joined by Hector Hoob the family cat who curls up at the foot of the bed, Grump drifts off... Only to be rudely awoken half an hour later by a woman seemingly getting to grips with an amateur stage monologue for the Village drama group or suffering some schizoid episode and speaking to thin air. VERY LOUDLY. The rational part of Grump knows that this is a conversation between locals, not some lunatic working through some hybrid between 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' and 'The Archers'. Yet he can only hear one voice (as the other in the conversation from the road below is pitched at polite, neighbourly levels). And what a voice! Alternating between a raspingly dry bark and a Bedlamite's bellow. Talking about absolutely nothing of consequence. Platitudes pitched at a titanic volume: "MIGHT RAIN, DON'T YOU THINK"; "SO MUCH FOR SUMMER"; "HAD TO TURN THE HEATING BACK ON"; "HAH, HAH, HAH - NOT MUCH OF A DROUGHT, EH?". With fingers shaking in anger and the effects of too much of the grape the previous night, Grump eases the bedroom curtain aside and sees her.
Yes. It could only be the scourge that is Noisy Dog Lady. She stands there in a typical outfit. 7.30am and she is resplendent in baggy blue shorts, walking boots, a sort-of fisherman's vest (matching blue) and a plastic golfing visor! She is striking a pose, hand on hip, bellowing at a local retired type from the bungalows up Main Street. He hangs back, buffeted by the volume. She looks as if a medical student has dressed up a skeleton in Oxfam's rejects. These bizarre clothes hang off a tall frame that is painfully thin. She is all sharp edges and cruel angles. "DON'T LIKE THE LOOK OF THOSE CLOUDS," comes with a slash of her arm like a sword.
At her feet are two dogs - greyhounds, bony-looking things lounging and panting in the puddles, rib cages visible through sleek fur. One detects Grump's curtain-twitching, raises it's snout and peers up. It blinks slowly. It seems to smile cruelly. Noisy is ignorant of the scrutiny.
Five minutes later and she is away. Legs scissoring, head back and dark hair flying around a hatchett-face, pulled onwards by her hell-hounds. From Grump's window she is a scarecrow costumed by an eccentric farmer, brought magically to life and sent out into the world to scare off local children rather than the birds. She will be back at lunch. She will return again in the evening. Back and forth, back and forth.
Noisy Dog Lady. Oh my....

Field(s) of Dreams I

Grumpydoctor is nine. It is one night lost in a cloyingly sticky summer, and he is peering out of his open bedroom window in the Police House at East Bridgford, enjoying the breeze. Grump has been reading by torchlight and nobody knows he is still up. A current pile of books rests on the bedside table, some he still remembers fondly: Willard Price's 'Amazon Adventure', C. S. Lewis' 'The Magician's Nephew', 'A Comet in Moominland', Susan Cooper's 'Over Sea, Under Stone', Alan Garner's 'Weirdstone of Brisangamen', Ray Bradbury's 'The Martian Chronicles', an inprint of 'The War of the Worlds' that terrified him deliciously.... copies lost to age and taste, shamefully abandoned. Where did those go? His child's library has been carelesly broken up and scattered, disseminated by charity shops and secondhand dealers, those books brittle and faded now but still working their magic; creased and scarred by their journeys, owned by any number of strangers. He wants *his* books back. Feels a frisson of shame.

Palm against glass, Grump is staring across the lawns and towards a cornfield at the end of the property which shimmers under a luminous sky. That field haunts his childhood. Even now he hears it rustling, sighing, tall stalks animated by moonlight and a whisper of breeze. He wonders what might be hidden in the corn. What might move secretly along its dark rows. What multitude of monsters can see him - a small figure, hand stilling the restless curtain - there in the window? Almost every night, whatever the time of year, the young Grump will wake with a start and cross the room to peer behind the curtain. Something of a ritual. Has he heard something? Is he convinced that he will miss the passage of something extraordinary out there beyond his back fence? Something or someone he hopes to see and be defined by for the rest of his days?

Grumpydoctor just a few nights ago.... getting ready for bed:

Another village. Other fields. He is closing his bedroom curtains, not at all happy with their kitsch '70s vibe, and waiting for The Flower to finish her endless nightly routine in the bathroom. The only light is from the lamp his side of their sagging bed. There is enough moon for Grump to see clearly across the road to the stables and paddock where three horses stand, mournfully it seems, heads bowed. Then comes an incredible sound, incongrous in the stillness, the rushing, thundering passage of a late train along the Grantham to Nottingham line. Grump sees it, a darker than dark shape pushing on through distant fields, now passing behind the shadowy tree line. A horn sounds (not a whistle these days of course) and it is a rude, angry, unnerving note that punctuates the quietude.

And the first thing Grumpydoctor thinks of is Bradbury's 'Something Wicked This Way Comes'... Mr Dark's Pandemonium Carnival coming to town, arriving by train.

He remembers.