chris the story reading ape
My Vibrating Vertebrae by Agnes Mae Graham
Working on My Vibrating Vertebrae by Agnes Mae Graham instantly became a labour of love for me rather than just another job. Some books will do that to you. It was special firstly in that it was the labour of love by Agnes Mae’s children, our much beloved Chris Graham and his lovely sister Lorna, to honour their Mum by sharing her delightful poetry with the world, and so they jumped in boots an all to the rather terrifying world of publishing for the first time.
Secondly Agnes Mae’s words really resonated with me so much that I instantly felt a kinship with her. She’s one feisty lady, but also so able to reach in to the well of emotions in all of us, with that talent so particularly given to truly great writers, and give a heart a firm squeeze. So I bow and tip my writerly hat to one prodigious talent – Agnes Mae Graham. Her words will live forever now, and rightly so!
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Nonsense Rhyme
Did you ever see an elephant in pyjamas?
Did you ever see a jackal in a coat?
Did you ever see an adder in a bikini?
Did you ever see a giraffe with a scarf around his throat?
Did you ever see a panther in white sandals?
Did you ever see a chimpanzee with short pants and a vest?
Did you ever see an ape with medals on his chest?
Did you ever see a hippopotamus in a corset?
Did you ever see a tiger drinking tea?
If you ever, really, truly ever did see any of these things,
then you’re twice as daft, no, thrice as daft as me.
If you need cover design, logo and image advice and creation, not to mention the most FABULOUS trailers for your books, zoom on over to Chris Graham for the best out there – I did!
Ode To The Librarian’s Cousin
This tiny tale is dedicated to Chris, the Librarian’s cousin, to thank him for his friendship, and also by way of snivelling apology for almost calling him a man, and getting myself into a pickle.
Washgale cowered under the gooseberry bush. He’d been innocently sipping a quarter of ale in the Dodgy Guitar, when a huge ma-, monk-, er, ape, had crashed through the window, clutching a terrified scribe under his arm. The patrons scattered, as you do when confronted with such pointy fangs. The ape found who he was looking for at the piano, mellowly humming along to the tune of A Crone Is Not a Crone Unless You Have Your Spectacles On.
Washgale had watched from the safety of the chandelier, as the cousins agreed that humans in general had been given enough chances to figure out the names. Then the battery began. The scribe was summarily inserted, upside-down, into a barrel of pickled turnips, her whining about deadlines and Twitter instantly silenced. Within minutes, every human started running for their lives. The gnomes looked on, picking their noses as always, and the fairies pranced in and out, poking an eyeball here, and pinching a bum there. It wasn’t often that they got to unleash their darker desires with impunity.
Finally Washgale took pity on the scribe. She had surfaced from the barrel, and was trying to remove the small turnip from her left nostril, while yelling, “Oi! I’ve got emails!” He looked at his only companion on the chandelier, who was laughing heartily at the scene below, and trying to hit the scribe on the forehead with beautifully aimed gobs of hot candle-wax.
“What are you?” asked Washgale, pinching his nose so as not to breathe in the ripe smell emanating from what looked like a cross between a really huge hairy rat and Satan. It looked at him.
“I am Nyami,” the thing replied, sipping its warm lager, “I am the Tokoloshi. My mother was a really huge hairy rat, and my father was the devil.
“Oh,” said Washgale, before suddenly finding himself under a gooseberry bush. He peered at the cottage it was growing beside, and realised that he was in Gummy Vamps back garden.
“Oh crap,” he said.
“Not under my gooseberry bush please,” said a reddish voice behind him.
Washgale ran as fast as his hairy legs could carry him, knowing that his chance of finding enough bananas to rescue the scribe was zero, when he ran headlong into a banana tree. He picked a hand, peeled one of the yellowly yellow fruit, and ate it.
“Hmmm,” he said, settling down under the tree to eat, ignoring the faint screams in the distance before the gurgle signifying a reinsertion into the pickle barrel.
“Facebook! I’ve got to get to Facebook!”
“Bloody scribes,” he muttered, “They’re all over the place these days.
Jo Robinson 