What is the most annoying sound you have ever heard?

My extended family is quite... extended if you forgive the pun. My mother had two sisters, but numerous cousins and my father has six siblings and myriads of cousins. Still I was never close to most of them. To be honest, I hardly know most of them. The only one which could be said to be my real cousin, is my godmother's daughter. She used to live near us, almost in our home. She is four years older than I am. It all started when she got engaged...

Oh yes... I need to point out that I come from a poor family. This means that growing up there was no money to be spent on books or vinyl discs (yes I am old too). On the books front I was pretty lucky because my mother is educated and came from and educated family, so apart from our home her dowry included a book case full of books. I am not really certain children at the age of seven should copy excrepts of sociology books, pretending they are university students, or use tracing paper to copy famous paintings from books about famous painters. It seems a bit unnatural, still having those books as my only diet for a lot of years gave me a weird well to draw water from. Drinking virtually unchecked from literature and psychology and astronomy and mythology and world history and anything that was on those shelves exposed me to the wonders of the world and to the horrors of the world. Also taught me to treasure books. To finish this huge parenthesis, mother also had a small collection of vinyl records both LPs and singles (33 1/2 rpm and 45 rpm). The collection was mostly classical music and introduced me to one of the greatest loves of my life. But this is neither here nor there. All I wanted to say was that my musical education was a bit narrow.

... when my cousin got engaged and eventually separated with her fiancée, there were certain things of his that she no longer wanted and I ended up with. One of them was a cassette. It was a home made compilation of songs by the Rainbow on one side and Black Sabbath on the other side. I fell in love with the Rainbow side and especially with the very first song. Sixteenth century Greensleeves. It was epic enough to be near to what I was used to in music and the lyrics were mysterious enough to fit in with Ivanhoe and Robin Hood. I played and played that one side of the cassette over and over again till I learned the order of the songs and the lyrics by heart. Listen... Rewind... Listen... Rewind...

So I think you can understand where this is going.... Even the best quality cassette players needed frequent cleaning and cassettes were fragile things. How easily did that magnetic tape become loose enough to go behind the roller and backtrack and pull off more than it should and bend awkwardly creating permanent creases. When the tape got munched up the sound went all strange and elongated. It was the nightmare of everyone with a cassette player during that era. Thousands of people reeling in munched up tape, using a pen. Crick, crick, crick, went the spool. And then there was that little metal thing with the sponge behind the tape right in the front. If you lost that because you unscrewed the cassette case to repair the spools, you were to put it frankly, fucked.

The question you asked had a caveat. One non-musical annoying sound and one musical. The musical one is such a disgrace I am not going to expand on. I will just give you the link to see for yourself. I hate that voice. I hate that singer. I can listen to anything, through gritted teeth yes, but I can listen to it. He makes me want to run screaming away. Hideous and over acting and fake intellectual.

I am done.

Describe the most outrageous thing anyone has dared you to do

It was improbable that anyone had ever dared her to do anything. For one, one look in her eyes would show the inner flint. Unbending and unyielding. There was no way to make her do something she didn't want, for good or for bad. For another, dares are usually products of familiarity. "I dare you throw that rock at the window" or "I dare you walk through the cemetery at night" carry much more gravitas when uttered from a friend, from someone you do not want to lose face in front of, instead of a stranger or just an acquaintance. Yes, dares depend very much on the fear of losing face in front of someone important. Not seeming like a coward to them. And that brings us back to the first point. She was flint inside. That meant few friends, and less than few trying to make her lose face. It seemed like no one had ever dared her do things like children do and that carried on to when she became an adult.

… and there the story ends.

or not…

If the story ended here it would be a cope out; very comfortable for the author, to not have to delve into darker matters. Say it never happened and since a story is based on what happens end it here. Pshaw! Lets get on with it.

The only way to make her do anything was to make her want to do it. Mostly out of love, either love of the other or love of herself.  It’s time to get into the sordid details now. 

Once she wanted to become an author. It was a fervent desire. Since she was practical, she decided to take lessons on becoming an author. She found a teacher in her city and dutifully went to their office once a week. She composed her assignments and presented them in printouts on A4 pieces of paper, printed on one side only. Then she read them aloud in class and dutifully wrote down all comments on her own copy, in the white margins, spiral upon spiral of words, engulfing her printed texts with sloppy handwriting, back and front. She liked the routine of organised learning. Carry out your assignments; accept the feedback graciously – though that was a sore point with her sometimes – then note down the next assignment and so on and on.

Then the teacher had a brilliant idea. “What if we put up a play, consisting of some of your best work?”, he said to the classes. Well, that was the easy part. She fished through her pile of work and found three texts that had gone down well with the assembly. She submitted them and left it at that. Next class, the teacher announced the passages that would appear in the play. One of her own made the grade, passed the mustard, was chosen…

“The people with passages in the play will need to come on Sunday, so that we can discuss about the play”. Sunday came, she went.

In the office there were ten of her fellow students. “Since we are amateurs, you are going to appear in the play yourselves.” No, no , no, no…. NO.  The table was dismantled and set aside. The chairs put up against the walls. Everyone took turns walking to the centre of the room and improvising something.  No, no, no, no…

Better and more willing volunteers were chosen.  She sat on one side and watched them turn her text into part of a play. And she was happy.

Fast forward a few weeks.  The play had grown from the texts submitted; the actors had explored their psyches, to bleeding point sometimes.  She went to the premiere and got goosebumps when her text was read to the – paying – viewers.  Then on the last performance…

“I can’t make it on Friday” said one of the actresses.  “I have to be in Cyprus, then.”

“It’s our last performance. It’d be a pity to cancel. What to do… what to do…”

Then the teacher had a glorious idea. “We will replace her with two people! A man and a woman! One of the male actors and … and… you!”

No, no, no, no, no, no….

“Don’t worry! This is amateur theatrics! We will do one rehearsal right before the performance and you will be ok!”

One scene right in the beginning of the play. Exposition of the replacement.

One scene right on the end of the play. Reading her text herself.

No.. no…

She was scared. She was tempted. She was elated. She was panicky. She was scared.

She did it.

It took all of her strength to do it.  She almost fainted. She was gasping for breath. Nothing showed.

She did it.

She maintains that she messed up some of the finer points. Still it was a dare. A dare no one posed as such. No one but herself.

Have you ever seen a ghost?

Puts her tea and cake to the side...

Let me tell about that one dark but not stormy night in August. Well first you have to think back and remember what it was like to be ten tops thirteen years old... Can you? Just close your eyes and think back.  Don't just imagine it, slip into the body of your ten year old self and feel like they felt, see how they saw the world. What do you mean it's difficult? I know it's difficult and I am trying to tell a story here... All I am asking of you is just a suspension of disbelief and a bit of work. 

Sips her tea....

Now where were we? Yes. Please try to keep up. You should try to be that ten year old self of yours. The world is a bit fuzzy at the edges and a bit of a mystery... Well the last bit depends on what your childhood was like, but I hope there was magic left in your world by then. If not I am deeply sorry. Magic in our lives, the fuzziness of edges and doorways is something I dearly miss. It's a grand thing to hear horse hooves behind you and to think it might be a unicorn. It allows for the impossible in your life. You expect it, you make room for it, you lure it in... Not to be too modest about it, you create it. I miss my bit of magic. 

We are ten then. In a small village in Greece. Small as in maybe fifty houses all in all spread out on the side of a hill, surrounded by other hills full of pine trees. Other villages can be seen in the distance, or rather, the lights of other villages can be discerned in the distance as it is night. It is also summer so for it to be dark it must be maybe 9 or 10 pm. Nevertheless the sun has long since set and your illumination comes from lights set on top of long poles bearing one light bulb. They line up the main village road that crosses the village west to east. The places between the poles and in the village back alleys are dark. Pitch black dark.

The village cats do not mind the dark. They've began their nightly prowling for other nocturnal beings. We can heare the soft thuds of their furred bodies as they jump off yard walls and tree trunks. They move their ears around trying to locate the sound of scurrying feet. Oh they might look logingly at a passing bat, which circles the lighted poles before dissappearing into the darkness, but alas, they do not have wings. So on with the hunt.

We don't like bats, or dogs. Bats will swoop down into your face and grab your hair and hang on. We can feel the tiny, fuzzy bodies touching our face, feel their weight on our heads. Aaaah! Get away you filthy flying rat! Yes... we see you flying up there round the pools of light so high up. And this house has a dog that is always loose in the yard and it chases us whenever it sees us. Damn... Why did we have to stay late at aunt's again? Now we will have to climb the cement coated road up to our house in the dark. 

The dog is nowhere to be seen. Good! good... Walk by this house quickly then.. Move on... We heave a shigh of relief as we leave that house behind us. The road looks never ending. It goes up hill on and on and we are short and pudgy. Mom says so often. If we were more nibble we would be home by now. Stop dallying! Walk on!

Now on to the most difficult part. The old man's house! It's a small home painted green with the front door almost flush with the road side. No front yard to speak off, no yard wall, no fence. It's just the four walls, a slopped tile roof, the front door and two windows facing the road. There is no light in those windows. There never is. Seen by day it is a boarded up wreck of a home. Our cousin who is just one year older than us, told us all about the old man living there all alone, after the last of his family died. Then he died too. Too much death in this story. But what if the old man's ghost decides to appear to us? 

We must walk in front of this house on our way up to our house and then either continue on the main road, pass the closed village coffee-houses-grocerie shops and turn into the side road home or walk in front of the house turn left in to a side road and run up the dirt road along side it and then left again onto another earthen side road and then straight home. There are no lights on the side roads. And we can hear dogs barking and goats going baaaah around the village. So the main road it is, even if it's longer and a steeper climb.

We walk by  the old man's house hugging the yard doors on the opposite side of the road and we are safe. We pass the house and leave it behind us. A huge sigh of relief. We are almost home. Safe. 

But wait... What is that? There... Amongst the olive trees in the front yard of the coffee-house. Looks like... Keep walking now... You can't go back to the old man's house. Keep walking! But look! It's an old woman dressed in black, amongst the olive trees. It's late and everyone is at home, that can't be an old woman. But we see her. Look at her stooped form standing there. She can't be an old woman. She must be something else. A ghost or a demon or a fairy. Run you silly girl! Run!

So we run past the shop, we run as fast as we can and try to run faster. We run for our lives and our eternal souls.

Run!

Where the front yard with the olive trees ends there is the second coffee-house. There is a pole with a light on top there. We run for the light. We reach the front of the other coffee-house. Just a few more meters and we are home. At the light we stop to catch our breath, and we turn to look back. Oh yes we do turn to look back...

What was there is no more... All we can see are the olive trees, fully illuminated now by the pole light that is coming from the top and not from behind them anymore. Just the old olive trees, gnarled of bark and sparse of limb. Planted close to each other, creating pools of darkness under their branches. Ha! It was just the play of light and shadow under the olive trees.

We walk home now, feeling so much better. Relieved beyond telling. There! We have turned into the side road home. There is light coming from the windows. Mother is probably setting the table. A small stroll and we are at our front yard. Unlatch the iron door, pass through and good night.

Wait! What is that sound?

A black shape comes flying off the neighbour's yard wall right at us!

Run! Run!

Clang goes the iron door! Bang goes the front door!

The grey white kitty stands in the middle of the road, where it landed and licks it's front paws... Ah... Humans!