I'm pretty sure I must have cut and pasted most of Mumphrey's lines from somewhere, because I still have no idea what he's saying. It's a shame this one doesn't go anywhere, because it's a classic premise... but at least it's one that other people have covered with their own versions.

---

“Right…” Sir Mumphrey stated, looking over the assembled Legion and Juniors and guests on the warm, sunny fields of the Lair island. “It’s really quite simple… The fielding team disperses around the field. One fielder is the bowler. He takes the ball and stands some distance behind one of the wickets. Another fielder is the wicket-keeper… He squats behind the opposite wicket. One batsman stands behind each popping crease. The batsman farthest from the bowler is the striker, the other is the non-striker. The striker stands before his wicket, on or near the popping crease, in the batting stance. The non-striker simply stands behind the other popping crease, waiting to run if necessary. The bowler takes a run-up from behind the non-striker's wicket and when he reaches the non-striker's popping crease he bowls the ball towards the striker. The striker may then attempt to hit the ball with his bat. If he misses it, the wicket-keeper will catch it and the ball is completed. If he hits it, the two batsmen may score runs. The ball is considered to be in play from the moment the bowler begins his run-up until it is dead. When one bowler has completed six balls, that constitutes an over. A different member of the fielding team is given the ball and bowls the next over - from the opposite end of the pitch. The batsmen do not change ends, so the roles of striker and non-striker swap after each over. Any member of the fielding team may bowl, so long as no bowler delivers two consecutive overs. Once a bowler begins an over, he must complete it, unless injured or suspended during the over. Clear as day so far, right? Now, another possibility during a ball is that a batsman may get out. There are ten different methods of being out…”

“Er…” Visionary interrupted. “What was that middle part again?”

“So…” Hatman noted casually. “Softball?”

“Softball” Epitome agreed.

---

Later…

“We’ll take Donar” Hatman chose. “He comes with his own bat.”

“Fine… Dancer” Epitome countered. “Hello, batting averages.”

Later still…

“Fleabot” Hatman said. “Good luck finding the strike zone.”

“Knifey” Epitome decided.

“Aw, c’mon!” Visionary complained. “Knifey doesn’t even have any arms!”

“Never underestimate the importance of infield chatter” the sentient blade suggested.

“I knew it… I’m gonna be picked last…” Visionary grumbled. “It’s gym class all over again… only without any towering 5th graders to steal my lunch money.”

---

It just doesn't advance a plot in any way shape or form. These kinds of moments are fine as bits between actual plot, but there's no actual *story* there, just a recap of story that's already been told. I probably saved it for possible inclusion in another tale, but never found an appropriate place to use it. It would have been out-of-place padding in the stories that did get written, so it remained on the lists of edits.

Not much to go on here. Gotta love the title though. Who knows where it was going...:


Hatman and the chair of infinite possibilities.

The zero street mission. Every year about this time it is open almost 24 hours as a dedicated staff of volunteers arrange seasonal hampers for the poor. There are a few amongst the staff who have become regular features. The tall man with slick black hair – a touch of grey at his temples, dressed head to toe in black save for the white strip at his collar is instantly recognisable as the Reverend Mac Fleetwood.

Poor Visionary!

And I've never heard it referred to as a 'popping crease'. Just 'crease'. So Zod only knows where you got that from!

I just did a search for "popping crease" online and got some 50,000+ results, so it's not completely out of use, apparently.

"The odd name of the popping crease refers to the early history of the game of cricket, in that batsmen used to have to 'pop' their bats into a small hole that was located in the middle of the crease for a run to count. For a player to run a batsman out he had to pop the ball into the hole before the bat was grounded in it."

--From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crease_%28cricket%29


So regardless of where the original write-up came from, it sounds like "popping crease" is a term that someone like Sir Mumphrey is more likely to use.

I actually have a page of notes kind of like this as well, although mine are definitely for a story I never got around to writing about Zebulon as an agent of the Faire Queen in the mythlands. There's some really interesting ideas in there, and then there's some stuff that makes no sense to me any longer, as I've forgotten most of what I was thinking at the time I typed it out.

Every now and then I come across a hand-written page of notes like that, and they seriously seem like the ravings of a madman. Totally disconnected lines, plot ideas, and punchlines without the set-up having been written down. "Zebulon-- "That's why I never trusted ducks!" That kind of thing.

Sometimes I worry myself.

I found this bit tacked on under the story that actually got posted, where Hallie went and interviewed with the Dean in order to get into art school. Apparently, I had originally intended her to take my own track into the profession, which included applying sans portfolio and taking the basic art classes as electives, then transferring to the school of art based on the work produced in class rather than an outside portfolio.

I also recognize the professors...

---

There was a knock at the door, and three figures appeared in the doorway. One was a grey haired woman with what could only be described as a proud Roman nose and a tight mouth on the edge of a perpetual scowl. The second was a towering African American man with a smiling, pitted face. The third was a tall blonde man with handsome features and a casual stance. None of them looked as if they belonged alongside the other two.

“Ah, come in…” the Dean called to them. “Ms. Graham, I’d like you to meet Professors Castlinaggi, Hamilton and Duncan. Ms. Graham here would like to become an artist.”

“Really? Then what’s she doing here?” Prof. Duncan inquired good naturedly as he turned to regard her. “And did she choose to draw the pirate or the cartoon dog for her art test?”

“Quiet, you.” Dean Ensor warned.

“Gotcha. She might have money. Don’t make her wise up and go somewhere reputable.”

“Thank you so much for your help, gentlemen” the Dean replied dryly. “Actually, our admittance standards pose something of a problem for Ms. Graham here. She’s looking to enroll in the School of Art, but unfortunately has no portfolio to submit.”

“With the ink-bottle hair and the pale make-up, she’s certainly wearing the right camouflage to hide out in the halls for the rest of the semester" Prof. Castlinaggi snorted. “Although she’s certainly the first Goth freshmen we’ve ever had wearing Prada.”

Hallie’s hand went uncertainly to her face with the comments on her self-applied makeup and the interview suit courtesy of Samantha Bonnington.

“What, we have a dress code now?” Prof. Duncan asked pointedly. “Don’t mind her…” he said, turning his attention back to the uncertain young woman. “She’s been this way ever since that house fell on her sister.”

“Did you need us for anything, Dean Ensor, or were we just called in to listen to Malcolm’s older-than-dirt jokes?” the older woman asked.

“So you’re saying you heard them back when they were original then.”

“Yes, that will do” the Dean said with a sigh. “In any event, Ms. Graham here will need instructor approval to take your beginning drawing class, Mary, as well as figure and anatomy and basic design."

This one doesn't even have a title (the file is just labeled "Hallie talk"), but it seems like it would have been interesting...

---

“So…” Visionary began casually as the two of them walked under the moonlight shining down on Lair Island. “…you and Epitome, eh?”

“What?” Hallie responded, unruffled. “No “it’s a lovely evening”, or "how have things been going? Aren't we supposed to awkwardly dance around the subject for a bit?"

I'm not sure if I've read it before or not. Either way, if it turns out there's more existing somewhere, I say post it as if it were a new story. Recycling is good for the environment, and if you get free responses and praise, so be it.

>"Zebulon-- "That's why I never trusted ducks!" That kind of thing.

> Sometimes I worry myself.

That is kina worrying, yet at the same time it must now appear in a story! It just must!

And I would like to see more of Zebulon as the Farie Queen's agent too.

Get to it!

Al B.

The University's School of Art professors were all fairly interesting. Part of it was no doubt due to spending a lot of time with them in much smaller classes. (I could barely see my Organic Chemistry professor from my seat in the huge lecture hall with hundreds of other students, and I don't think he ever dropped by the lab while I was there, leaving that kind of thing to the TA's. Conversely, each art class lasted 3 hours a day, multiple days a week, and usually had under 20 students each.)

The basic drawing professor was a stern fellow (rather than a woman, in Hallie's case) who had a great deal of contempt for a great many subjects. He was definitely a High Art minded fellow. Conversely, one of my favorite lecturers at the school was a guy who stressed that pretty much everything was art these days, that unless you get completely away from society you can't help but be surrounded by design for art's sake.

I found it odd that they all tried to recruit for their own mediums... I had a drawing teacher, a painting teacher and a sculpting teacher all assure me separately that their medium was the only "true" art. Drawing was what you did before you actually went about creating the real piece, for instance. Or painting is just imagining things, while sculpture is actually making them exist. Beyond that, they would just try to steer you towards more specific arts. I had one professor ask me if I had considered printmaking as a career. I had not.

So at one point I was going to turn some semi-autobiographical stuff into Hallie in school stories, but I think I quickly realized that it was all stuff like the Vizh/Hallie mythlands scenes in that it made nice stuff to flesh out a story, but it wasn't actually enough in itself to *be* a story... and without a real story idea, I never got around to using any of it.

...just as Brap was one of my characters, and I think the Content Filler and LOL Internet came from CSFB!, so I think much of the list was just making note of new characters for that story in order to keep them straight. I don't recall the New Zealand team off the top of my head, however it was quite the sprawling story.




What's sad is that, at the time, I must have thought I had a set-up for that kind of punch line that would make it truly hilarious if I felt the need to jot it down. My mind often runs much further ahead in the story than I can type, and occasionally I'll break from where I'm at it jot down a line or two of dialog that I want to insert later. A lot of my stories have these extra lines below the part that got posted where I never got around to inserting the setups for them.




While not all of the notes made sense, I did refrain from posting them here because I really do like the ideas in them. The file name for the notes was "Gertrude's Folly", so maybe that story will still show up some day.

Al B.