Tevun-Krus #42 - Oh, and ANOTHER Thing...

How to Break the Universe and Get Away With It - A Short Story by @AngusEcrivain

It wasn't raining.

Now it may seem a little silly or pointless, even, to direct anyone's attention to the fact that water droplets were not falling from the sky, especially as there are always far more interesting things to talk about than the weather such as verrucous, genital warts and mutual masturbation, however if one were to suffix the above statement with, 'anywhere in the British Isles,' then the fact that it was not raining becomes an entirely different kettle of fish all together.

Fish, generally, aren't kept in kettles. At least they're not kept in kettles that boil water with which to make a nice cup of tea, coffee or hot chocolate or, indeed, any number of branded beverages requiring the addition of boiling water.

No, the kettle in 'kettle of fish,' actually refers to an elongated saucepan.

Odd D'Abbot-Doyle wished she had known that.

She knew it now, of course, it was common knowledge. Everyone over the age of ten knew that fish did not live in kettles, that despite the vast amount of occasions upon which adults said 'kettle of fish,' they were not actually referring to the kettle that was merrily bubbling away upon the hob or steaming up the kitchen nicely as it boiled beside the toaster.

Odd D'Abbot Doyle definitely knew that now because she was almost thirty and there have always been certain things that people who are almost thirty simply knew.

Fish don't live in a kettle. That was one of those things.

The look upon her mother's face, however, upon pulling a very dead Goldie from the very recently boiled kettle that still sat upon the stove as Odd D'Abbot Doyle, six and three fifths years of age at the time, looked on with tears in her eyes because even at such a young, innocent and tender age, Odd D'Abbot Doyle knew that if her mother was holding a fish by one of its fins and it was motionless unless she shook it, that it was dead, was something that she would never forget.

Odd D'Abbot Doyle thought about it every day. It was probably not fair to say the experience haunted her though she did have something that resembled a nervous tick; a slight, barely noticeable wrinkling of her nose, every time somebody mentioned going out for sushi.

"I'll pass," said Odd with a practised smile and slight inclination of her head and her nose gave its customary, involuntary, far from prominent wrinkle. "Besides, I have tickets to the Monster DeathRay concert tonight."

That was a lie. Odd D'Abbot Doyle did not have tickets to the Monster DeathRay concert that evening. In fact, if a band did, indeed, exist, and went by such a name, then Odd D'Abbot Doyle had never heard of them and even if she had, she suspected that the chances of her actually enjoying anything Monster DeathRay played enough to actually go to a live show, were slimmer than her mother's anorexic Care in the Community nurse.

"All right, well..." Gavin flashed her a smile. He had the eyes of a puppy that made her feel guilty for - not the actual eyes of a puppy. That'd be weird and gross and Gavin was neither of those things. He was, Odd D'Abbot Doyle thought, quite lovely - lying to him but as he'd offered to take her out for sushi, she felt perfectly justified in that lie. "...maybe next time."

"Yeah, maybe, " Odd replied, and headed out of the door.

It still wasn't raining. Now Odd was no meteorologist, nor had she ever studied meteors, but it was always raining somewhere in the British Isles. Always somewhere. The place was famous for it.

That's what any Briton will claim, at any rate.

And apparently meteorologist's memories were not what they might have been for after three weeks of no rain anywhere in the British Isles, one might well have been forgiven for assuming those reporting on the weather were doomsayers, heralding the end of All Things when in fact, Odd D'Abbot Doyle quite clearly remembered the summers of two-thousand three to two-thousand six, when it was not unusual for a month or more to pass by without there being so much as a cloud in the sky.