The Lady beckons

I just realised that in the last chapter of "The Lady of the Ring" the Lady and her sister turn on the radio as they're driving along in the little red car, and the song which comes on is "Single Ladies."

As the song reaches its conclusion, the sister slowly raises her left hand from the steering wheel, and it looks exactly like Beyonce's robot hand with a huge diamond ring on the fourth finger. She waves it at the Lady and winks and then they both burst into hysterical, happy laughter.

You've gotta keep your sense of humour.

The Lady of the Ring reaches her destination

Firstly, concerning the Cleary Necklace:

Hey Jen, YES, you TOTALLY know this book:
Page 85 - "Nobody could expect a boy to enjoy the company of a girl who hadn't learned to like Chinese food, who couldn't even pretend enthusiasm, and who spilled things all over her clothes like a two-year-old. Her first grown-up date was ruined...."
Page 17 - "She knew that the Doggie Diner was a small business that delivered horse meat to the owners of dogs in Woodmont...It was just that she was so startled to have a boy appear from nowhere."

Hey Laura, the pages in my book are literally falling out as I flip through it now!

Hey Coffeelady, you crack me up....or are.you.serious???

Hey, Bablebabe, how is it possible I NEVER KNEW about Jean & Johnny? I think my childhood was not quite as good as it could have been. Damn!



NOW.......



This is where we last left the Lady of the Ring, and now the journey continues:


The lady and her fellow travellers soon returned to the carriage, some held hands as they ambled along, others enjoyed a moment of private reflection, staring blankly at their feet moving along the pebbled pathway. The lovely lady walked alone, staying at the back of the group and feeling decidedly unwell. You see, dear reader, it is one thing to embark on a journey, and it is quite another thing to reach your journey's destination. The lovely lady knew that she was a short carriage ride away from the place she was going to, and this instantly changed her memory of the place she had left. Suddenly, the place she had left seemed warm and comfortable, with its sun-filled rooms and curtained privacy and courtyarded birdlife. She yearned for her dear old ring, that truest of jewelled friends, that dependable polished circle which had illuminated so many years of her life. "Perhaps they were the best years of my life," she thought to herself, sadly.

As the carriage wheels began to roll forward along the dirt track, the lovely lady sat on her bench and looked out of her small window. She saw a flicker of green pasture, three tiny cows, a white picket fence, a flash of blue sky, and then an orange flash, followed by a vibrant red and a melancholy purple darkening to a deep blue velvet and then black. The lovely lady's tiny window was now a black square, and as if a tiny night-light had been plugged into the carriage by a devoted mother, little twinkling stars appeared in the window. The lovely lady smiled at the stars and felt a bit better about the future.

Then the carriage stopped with a jolt, and all of the lovely creatures turned towards the lovely lady and watched her gather her bags together and carefully make her way towards the door. The minute she stepped down from the carriage she heard the door behind her shut with a determined click, and she turned to watch the carriage continue on its journey. The round pale faces of her companions clustered around the windows and watched her with wide, unblinking eyes. She raised her right arm and waved at them, and as they saw her do that they all blinked at once, as if they were the many eyes of the carriage itself, and then they disappeared behind the curve of the road.

"Hello you," said a voice to her right.
"Hello sis," answered the lovely lady, "Were you here all along?"
"No, silly, I just arrived," and the lady of the voice pointed to a small red car parked beside the road, "Didn't you hear me beeping the horn as the carriage stopped?"
The lovely lady stood perfectly still and stared at her sister, her sister with the tiny red car and the cheerful voice and, and the bright, shiny, golden ring on the fourth finger of her left hand.

The Lady of the Ring goes out for dinner with friends

The Lady of the Ring and her beautiful bald man arrived at the restaurant to find the other couple already seated and waiting for them. As they greeted each other, the Lady noticed that each of her friends wore a simple gold ring. The beautiful bald man noticed that his Lady was noticing the couple’s rings, and he felt happy in the knowledge that this would be an enjoyable evening. You see, the Lady’s beautiful bald man understood only too well the importance of accessories. Many an evening had been spent in the past sitting in a restaurant opposite a couple who had no rings, or who wore mismatched rings, or who fought over their rings. Sometimes the couples they met in restaurants bickered about whose ring was the most beautiful and the most right, and that was a terrible conversation to listen to while eating dinner.

As they all ate their food and sipped their wine, the Lovely Lady noticed a strange glow gathering around their table. This glow was coming from her friends’ rings, and for a lightning-quick moment the Lovely Lady felt sad that her friends’ glow was so warm and strong, while she had left her glow at home. For as the Lady and her beautiful man had left their home earlier that evening they had argued about something, and that argument had taken hold of their rings’ glow and placed it in a tiny comment box on a shelf in the study, hidden underneath a disorganised stack of bills, receipts and to-do lists.

When the Lovely Lady and her beautiful bald man returned home, they both ran into the study and raced towards the shelf where the little comment box was hidden. They rummaged through the scraps of paper impatiently, but soon realised that the box was missing and in its place was a little handwritten note saying: “Hello Mum and Dad, please come into my room even if I’m asleep. Thank you.” So they went into that room and looked down at the perfectly round little brown-haired head of a little girl who was lying in her bed fast asleep. One of her arms was tucked under a soft, pink blanket, while the other arm lay stretched out above her head, and clutched in her little dimpled hand was the tiny comment box. The Lady prised the girl's fingers away from the box and opened it, and as she did so a soft warm glow filled the small bedroom and pulsed around the room.

“I’m so tired,” said the Lady.
“I know,” said her man.
“I don’t have the energy to argue any more,” said the Lady.
“Did we argue?” asked her man.
“Are you being sarcastic?” asked the Lady.
“You’re just tired,” said her man.
“You’re right,” said the Lady, with a sigh.
Then the man plucked the box from his Lady’s outstretched hands and opened it. Inside the box was the tiniest pearl; it was the pearl of wisdom. He picked the pearl up with his delicate fingers and put it in his mouth and swallowed it. The Lady of the Ring looked at her man in dismay.
“You are completely mad,” she said to him.
“I’m mad about you,” he answered.
The Lady laughed and laughed and brought her lips closer and closer to his, until they touched each other in a jewel-encrusted kiss, and the glow which flowed from their kiss enveloped them in its sweet scent of the wisdom of two decades.

But that wisdom is a secret.

A friend pops by for a cup of tea

A friend of the Lady of the Ring drops by for a cup of tea and a chat. “I have the most exciting news,” says the friend as she takes her left hand out of her trouser pocket and holds it out for the Lady to see. “I don’t think I understand,” says the Lady tentatively, wary of saying the wrong words and spoiling her friend’s happy mood. “Oh,” says the friend, giggling nervously, “it’s the ring, silly. It’s a new ring.” The Lady takes her friend’s newly ringed hand in her own two hands, and squints down at the gold band and its sparkling jewel. “It’s the new me,” says the friend, “it’s a ring that fits so much better than the old one, and it makes me happy to look at it.” The Lady pours another cup of tea, sipping slowly and staring out at the green depths of the garden in which they are sitting.

Soon they finish their tea and the friend says goodbye. Her new ring seems to twinkle in farewell, and the Lady could swear that when she held her friend’s hand she could feel the ring say something in a French accent, and she could feel someone kiss her on each cheek, three times. “It’s so different, isn’t it?” whispers the friend as they stand by the front gate, “It’s from Europe, you see. European.” At the very last minute, just as her friend is about to drive off, the Lady whispers to her through the open car window, “But what about your other ring? You know, the old one?” “Oh Pfft....” answers the friend, “I put it away. It just wasn’t right for me any more, it didn’t make me happy. But the kids still take it out and play with it occasionally.”

The Lady spends the rest of the afternoon sitting in the garden and watching the sun set. As the stage set darkens, the mosquitoes begin to hum around her garden seat, but she remains there, unmoving. Soon, a short bald man arrives at the back door of the Lady’s house, and the light which falls from the open door illuminates the Lady in a strangely theatrical manner. The man laughs and says, as he walks towards his Lady, “Oh, I see, it’s going to be a dramatic evening.” He sits beside her and asks how it is possible that she is not being eaten alive by mosquitoes. She sits beside him and asks how it is possible for her friend to have found a new ring so quickly.
“What?” exclaims the man, “She has a new ring? But...What happened to the old one?”
“Ah...well...apparently the old one is occasionally given to the children to play with.”
“To play with?”
“Yes, you know, pretend games...dress-ups...that sort of thing.”
“But that ring was real before, how did it suddenly become an imaginary plaything?”
“I have no idea,” replies the Lady, “But it’s going to take me a bit of time to get used to this type of magic.”
“All right,” said the Lady’s beautiful man, “So can we go in and have dinner now?”

Cave of Jewels

The Lady of the Ring remembers the cave of jewels which she had discovered 20 years ago, and is incredulous at the excavating, cutting, shaping, polishing and setting which she has accomplished so far.

The Lady of the Ring watches the New Year's Eve fireworks on her fortieth birthday

She had buried the jewels in her backyard, and she had dropped the jewels into the sea, and with that she hoped never to see those pesky jewels again. No necklaces, bracelets or earrings would adorn her body any more. Her days of being trapped at home with the ring were behind her, and after a while even her friends stopped asking what had happened to it. When she visited other women in their homes and saw their rings, she felt a little sad for them. "Poor little darlings," she thought to herself, "So much work ahead for them, so much ring work to be done, so many jewels to put away every night and take out every morning. All that hateful polishing to be done."

But sometimes, very rarely, when the moon was just right, and the tides were big, and the finches hopped onto her windowsills of fantasy, she would miss the jewels. And missing jewels, dear reader, is an extraordinarily heartbreaking feeling, especially when you know that no matter how far you dig, or how deep you dive, you will never find them all again.

But she was a clever lady, this ringless lady, and she knew what to do to relieve the aching sadness of an empty jewellery box. She looked up.

"I almost forgot," she whispered to herself, "to look up."