A Tale of the Unexpected.

The last chocolate biscuit in a glass bowl

Yesterday afternoon's meeting of the "Six ladies and one gentleman reading in English group" got off to a good start.  We sat on garden chairs with freshly washed cushions, on the balcony at B's house, where we drank English tea and ate lovely strawberry flan and tasty chocolate biscuits.  In a temperature of 28c,  the biscuits were in danger of melting and needed to be consumed  quickly. That was not a problem for us, and we were all happy to oblige!   We read aloud, "The Way up to Heaven" by Roald Dahl, a short, macabre story with a final twist.  I had never read the story before, so hung on tenterhooks waiting for the end, and was even tempted to advance a couple of pages, just to see how the story resolved itself.  Although I guessed that something dreadful had happened to the poor man,  I had not "twigged"  the method of his demise, although I had been given all the clues.   Very clever!

What an excellent short story of the totally unexpected, although the tale comes from Dahl's collection of short stories entitled  "Kiss Kiss."   Clicking the link below will give an analysis of the plot.   ITV television produced a series of Dahl's  "Tales of the Unexpected," from 1979 to 1988, some of which I remember watching.

RoaldDahlFans.com - Short Stories - "The Way Up to Heaven"www.roalddahlfans.com/shortstories/wayu.php

The photo above shows the print out of the story and a book of parallel text German short stories.  This book has stories printed in German on the left side and in English on the right.  This is a useful way of learning a language without constantly having to refer to a dictionary for the definition of unknown words. A last chocolate biscuit can be seen lying in the glass dish, which I finished off later, well can't leave it to melt can you!

Then the unexpected!   When we ladies stood up we discovered that the cushion covers had dried, but not their foam interiors.   We all had wet trousers, and Marlis below found a novel way of drying out our trousers with a hairdryer.  I had sat in a small chair with a smaller cushion, so was not soaked to the skin.  Maybe there's a plot for a story here, I'll add it to my memory bank for future reference.  By the way, all the strawberry flan and chocolate biscuits had been eaten before the great, "Wet Trouser Saga."

Chris standing left,  is dried out by her sister Marlis.