Shhh! Scribbler at Work

Let's Face It

(prompt: 'approve' 3/8/2018)

"Wonder if he'd approve, you say? Who? Young McLarsen?" Despite his numerous years - or perhaps because of them - his voice turned out somewhat gruffily at the best of times. Arthur never heard the distractingly discordant notes he hit more often than not. Those who mattered; those who loved and prized him, could still hear him OK. In their ears he was in tune with the best of them... as ever.

He cared little what other 'inconsequentials' thought. IF they're capable of a reasonable progression of intelligible 'anything' in these trying times. And if he could've, Arthur would've shook his head with all the impatience and disgust he could muster.

"Approve!?!" he roared (if only in the depths of his once brilliantly working mind). Out loud, this translated to a single, somewhat jarring, "WHAT?!?"

Old Jens gathered every vestige of his strength to utter a resounding "NO!". It took a while before he could continue; before his thoughts could meld together to make other than one-syllable answers. As far as tone of voice went, Jens could still laugh at his nemesis (mostly to himself, it must be faithfully recorded) - supremely confident inside his ornately carved oak cask.

Not for him Arthur's sleek, black, modern lines. This younger generation! Jens' beauteous old face betrayed his disgust (but only if you knew how to read between the lines - especially here and there where a tiny degree of flakiness around the edges betrayed his longevity). You'd rarely hear Jens admit to the fact this so-called 'generational' superiority only consisted of a paltry five years in age in the particular case of these two strange bed-fellows.

Born half a world apart, in two oppositional hemispheres, neither suspected how far they'd roam across this vast land Downunder.

These days the pair were heard to become more garrulous as the night wore on, expressing their views on the so-called 'progress' of their world. Countless conversations began with "In my day..." and "Well, if you ask me..." and "... then there was the time when... ". Some deteriorated into arguments, but both Arthur and Jens found, as the years rolled by, there was more and more common ground they shared. But they didn't let a small thing like agreement stand in the way of a good discussion of current world events loud and long, each and every night until their old voices wore thin, and longer breaks were needed between their single-syllable rebuttals.

"NOT Young McLarsen," Jens continued after a long pause. "I'm talking about my creator. The one with music in his heart and talent in his fingers to tell the magic in his soul. He would have particularly approved my here and now." And Jens smiled expansively (even somewhat superciliously, truth be told). No mean feat given his normal rather fixed stare.

Grudgingly, his old mate had to admit it would have been an impossibility for even an artist with that man's depth of perception to have pictured his masterpiece surviving the rigours of the voyage to that little-known land a lifetime away, and a lifetime or two later.

"OK, old mate. I'll give you that one. Klaus, the clockmaker WAS one helluva craftsman. Even he could not have imagined you still belly-aching on in the 21st century!"