Birma: Norah Christabel

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Entry posted by kkffoo · October 29, 2022

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Mayor of Birma, Norah Christabel

The ferry ticket website flashed red, all pre-booked places had been taken.
Myrtle was right, I do leave things to the last minute, especially when I’m not looking forward to something.
An appointment with Norah Christabel was not a situation I liked to contemplate. As a cub reporter on the now defunct Houston Herald, the fiery redhead had made me feel inches high on numerous occasions while reporting from government house.
I framed the words of my apology to my colleague as I wedged the portacabin door closed behind me, but the thoughts evaporated when I saw her in the front yard.
Myrtle was standing on one leg, with both arms raised. She then pivoted around, at the same time performing a body roll, before grabbing at the car roof for stability.
Muttering to herself, she then opened the passenger door, and attempted to enter the vehicle. Pausing for thought, she leaned in an awkward sideways manner, and adjusted the seat until it was as far back as the runners allowed. Throwing herself inside face down, she tilted the seat back until it was nearly horizontal. This seeming to satisfy her purpose, Myrtle then swivelled to face upwards, grabbed at the seat belt, and hissed ‘Hurry Up, or we’ll miss the ferry’.

It was unsettling to drive with my colleague stretched out besides me staring at the car roof. I said nothing though.
The traffic was as bad as always, and I was fretting about what to do about the ferry when a shout made me nearly jump out of my seat.
‘Black spots!! Can’t breathe, stop the car, STOP THE CAR!!!’

Worrying she was having some sort of seizure, I performed a screeching ninety degree turn off the road and into the closest available parking space, outside a retail outlet.

Myrtle kicked open the car door, and part ran, but mostly staggered towards a sign marked ‘Toilets / Restroom, customer use only’. I followed her as quickly as I could, and caught up with my friend in the Ladies’ facilities, clutching at her clothing desperately.

‘Get it off, GET IT OFF!!’.
The source of the trouble turned out to be a very tight elasticated corset. It was lucky that I had some nail scissors in my coat pocket. Once I’d made a few small snips the strained garment gave up, and tore itself free.

Myrtle gasped in relief and threw the torn corset into a waste bin.
‘Stupid home shopping cr*pola’, drop a dress size my ****’.
She carried on like this for a while.

As we had used the facilities we felt obliged to buy something in the shop, so as not to feel awkward. It wasn’t easy. Gustav's Knicknacks and Gewgaws is full to the rafters with plastic tat and the kind of simulated marble ornaments you wouldn’t inflict on your worst enemy.
‘We’ll get this, it’s got food in it’. Myrtle grabbed at a box, and conscious of the time, I fished a handful of coins from my bag and threw them down at an empty cashier station, there being no staff visible.
We left the car park in a hurry, trying to dodge the noisy freight trucks which habitually clogged the roads.

‘These Princess Fairycake cookies are not bad’, mumbled Myrtle, through a mouthful of crumbs.
The pink cardboard had been torn open, to reveal a luminous selection of iced treats, each one coated in iridescent glitter.

The car seat refused to return to its normal position, so Myrtle lay back like a roman emperor, ingesting the snacks as if she had been starving herself all week.
A fine sparkly cloud began to envelop both herself, and various parts of the car interior.

The queue for the ferry was long, and slow moving. By the time we approached the boarding gate my colleague’s face, hands and clothing had adopted a blueish reptilian sheen, and all the cookies were gone.

At last we reached the ticket booth. Lacking the necessary paperwork, and not sure what to do next I wound down the car window to speak to the attendant.
‘You can’t go on, boat’s already overloaded’.
Myrtle must have misunderstood. She is a little sensitive about her weight.

I won’t trouble any delicate readers with the details of what happened next. Let’s just say that the wrath of a glittery, crumb spitting woman rising unexpectedly from the depths of the hidden passenger seat caused the ticket booth employee to review his options. I threw some money into the stunned official’s hand and soon we found ourselves squeezed behind a Llama Ag manure truck, on the deck of an overcrowded ferry, sailing for Birma.

Making the most of the break from driving, I fished into my bag to try and find something to wipe up the worst of the twinkling pollution which was rapidly turning the interior of the car into a lurex upholstery nightmare. The three dried out sanitising hand-wipes I had found in the glove-box were definitely not up to the job.

Meanwhile Myrtle was singing a happy little tune while reciting the long list of complicated ingredients that adorned the reverse of the empty cardboard container.
‘Oh dear’, her tone changed, ‘No wonder I feel peculiar, these cookies are three years past their sell-by date’.

That news hit me just at the moment I’d worked out the reason why I couldn’t find the usual set of emergency cleaning supplies in my bag. The business-like leatherette briefcase, complete with pre-interview notes, and money wallet that I thought I was holding had been inexplicably replaced with the child’s straw basket that we kept under the office desk to store small assorted items that we couldn’t quite throw away because they might, some day, become ‘useful’.

The sudden panic that I’d become unknowingly senile, was replaced by an even worse realisation that we had been paying our way on the journey using mostly tap washers, and dead circular batteries.

A docking siren howled, and I sank down low into the driver’s seat in terror, fearing immediate capture by law enforcement agencies.
Increasing my anxiety further, I spotted the familiar form of Norah Christabel, arms crossed in fury, glaring in our direction from the port-side.

I needn’t have worried about security checks though. The impatient Mayor pulled us from the disembarkation line, shoving aside the officious man in a uniform who was threatening to delay our passage with his travel bureaucracy.

There was no time to celebrate this deliverance though. Norah’s rant started as soon as we exited the car. I’d planned to ask about her policies, the controversial bust-ups with near-by districts. I’d imagined probing queries about the relationship with her controversial father, ‘comrade’ Joe, then working my way expertly towards the well known and long standing feud between the Christabels and the long serving Mayoral Saige family of Farnham.
However, in my disturbed state of mind, I was unable to thrust any of these carefully rehearsed questions against the forceful torrent of verbiage pouring from the irate Mayor.

I must admit to tuning out most of the diatribe. Neil Fairbanks and his perceived deficiencies were the main focus, but she covered all the main government advisors in her wide ranging criticisms. As far as I could gather, the central cause of her current consternation concerned the fifteen families of refugees now living in the basement of her Mayoral home, after she had been guaranteed funding and temporary housing by the authorities. Of course, neither of these commitments had been fulfilled.

Mayor Christabel’s Home, allegedly housing refugees in the basement.

Myrtle, who had been spinning around absently on one foot until now, suddenly remembered her usual function in this situation, and lurched towards Norah, holding out a microphone. The sight of my colleague, shimmering bluely in the low autumn sun seemed to startle the Mayor out of her single minded focus, and the continuous flow of complaint slowed to an uncertain trickle. This interruption created an excellent chance to escape.

I dragged my bewildered friend back into the car, and drove briskly away from Birma’s main port , checking continually to see if we had been followed. The fuel tank was still half full, and with my emergency cans in the boot I calculated that, with careful driving, we could just about make it home the long way round. This would avoid the river police, and any awkward queries about fare dodging, or indeed, shop-lifting.

In the small hours of the night we finally pulled into the front yard of our portacabin. I threw a blanket over Myrtle, who was snoring in her glittery, reclined passenger seat, and fell into our office, tripping over the leatherette briefcase I’d left behind the door. I sat for a moment on our small sofa to think, and found myself waking up fully eight hours later, with numb legs from having slept with my limbs inadvertently propped up against the portacabin wall.

It was already mid-morning, and Myrtle, who seemed fully recovered from her stale cookie induced delirium, walked in carrying a box of doughnuts. She informed me that we'd had a phone call. From a man with a Scottish accent. How intriguing this seemed, but no work was allowed before breakfast doughnuts and our morning mug of Ovaltine.