Author: Ruth Powell

“I’m going to build a bridge” announced the Engineer, as he adjusted his hard-hat and bright orange vest.  “I’m going to build a beautiful big bridge that everyone will have a fondness for”.

“That’s wonderful” said the Architect “let me help you make it the most marvellous and adorable bridge in all the land”.

The Banker smiled and said “I think the bridge will make it much easier for the people Over There to travel to Over Here, and vice-versa for the people Over Here to travel Over There”.

The Banker became more animated “if it only takes a third of a year to build and costs 9, we will all be very happy!”  And he smiled and cheered.  They all ate raspberry sponge cake together, and spent the rest of the afternoon playing with balloons.

At first, Water too was delighted.

“Blessed be the gentle people” she said “because my serum lacks odour and colour, they are building an arch to protect me!  How kind they are, how thoughtful”.

But Tree was less impressed.

“My dear sweet girl” he said with his wizened old voice.  “I fear they may not be protecting you at all”.

“But why on earth not?” asked Water “I bathe them and I cleanse them.  I fertilise their crops.  I feed their young while they guzzle me.  Why would they not safeguard me?”

Tree said “I don’t know”.

“But you are in danger, my young friend, in great danger indeed.  I worry about the dust and the debris, the paint and cement.  Steel, iron, and stone are not good for you.  Even a floating bridge would bring you dangers.  Even timber itself”.

Water understood his concern and wanted to cry.  But she suddenly found that she couldn’t.

She scowled and said “I will ruin this bridge before the sun-sets on its first day!  It will take a third of a year to make, but only a second or two to break.  I will flood that bridge with my anger, freeze it with my lack of love, and rust it with rain.  I will make the land slide to cover it and we will never see it again”.

So Water set about the destruction of the bridge and the people were not happy.

 

 

 

Photograph:  Mohiuddin Kamal

For Luke Regan, there was nothing in the whole wide world as wonderful as the sound of the introduction to a Universal Studios film.  Nothing on this planet, could replicate the feeling of delight as the first few chords and the rise of the sun on the logo.  Slowly the world would come into focus as the giant letters in white overshadowed the green lands beneath. It was the tangible promise of good things.

Earlier that evening a few of the lads from the warehouse had asked Luke if he wanted to join them for pints but he said, “I think I’ll have an early one tonight, I’ll go straight home” and he clocked-out alone.  They made a show of sounding disappointed, but they weren’t Oscar winning performances; the boys were going out.  Out on the lash, out on the tear.  But he was going home and it was fine because Luke had a night of Universal Studio films ahead of him.

As soon as he returned home he was delighted to discover his landlords, Cynthia and Tom, were out for the evening and that he had the place to himself.  He read the note on the table quickly:

Dear Lucky Luke – lasagne in the fridge and some beers too – help yourself and we’ll see you in the morning – we won’t be back til late – Cyn 

Cyn and Tom were lovely people, but all three had somehow started a role-play in which they were the parents and he was their son.  Luke wasn’t quite sure how he had accidentally become adopted at 44, but there it was.  He took a beer from the fridge and went up to his room without taking his coat off.

As it was a Saturday, he would choose a film from the top five.  Usually he kept the top five for special occasions, but he’d worked hard all week, stacking and un-stacking shelves and so he felt that a reward could be given.  He looked at the five DVDs again:  Jurassic World, ET, Jaws, King Kong or Back to the Future.  He weighed-up the pros and cons of each one, and finally decided on ET.

The Universal Studios introduction began and he wrapped himself into his blankets and slowly drifted away.  Away from Dublin and away from it all.

Barsha Choudhuri was also enjoying a rare night alone in the apartment in Dhaka, near the Buriganga River.  Her cousins and their children were eating out for the evening, so she finally had some privacy and quiet, which she had planned to use to finish her assignment.  Her thesis was on cyclone shelters, flood protection and disaster risk reduction, but despite the importance of her topic, her mind was drifting elsewhere and she was distracted.  She was thinking of the river, of some new clothes for the summer, about ice-cream.  More than anything she was thinking about her husband and her children and how much she wanted to travel home down south towards to the Bay of Bengal and spend time with them all.  But instead she would have to stay in dusty old polluted Dhaka until spring, and until her assignment was complete.

She opened her laptop and read the last sentence she had written.

“Planting sunflowers is highly recommended as they thrive in saline waters and can be used to protect the shore line from the floods”.

What her heart knew as facts, her head couldn’t support with evidence and she had less and less references and more and more words.  She was slowly losing interest and patience, and she felt as if the laptop itself was conspiring against her.

In frustration she closed the document and mooched around her library looking for re-creations.  And there it was.  A Universal Studios film she adored and hadn’t watched in months.  She pressed play and breathed in and out slowly, waiting in delightful anticipation for the moment soon to come.  To Barsha Choudhuri, there was nothing as wonderful, in the whole wide world, as the sound of the introduction to a Universal Studios film.

Isabelle liked to observe.

She liked to watch the women selling mangoes and the men playing chess and drinking coffee on the corner of old Dar-es-Salam road.  She liked to watch the Massai coming into town to buy credit for their mobile phones at the weekend.  She liked to watch the cars driving past Morogoro, or the trains on their way to Malawi.  She would buy a juice after class, at Rick’s Café, and correct her students’ papers while watching the world at the same time, the people and the things.

Thomas Ray O’Hara felt uncomfortable when Isabelle stared into nothingness, but she liked the detail and he himself had taught her the phrase, “the devil is in the detail” so he shouldn’t have minded at all.  He wasn’t a qualified teacher, but what he lost in facts or knowledge, he made-up with in good intentions.  “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” was another of the proverbs he taught her, this time driving out of Morogoro and into the countryside towards Mikumi.

She liked accompanying him on their drives into the countryside and it was there she could observe him the most.  They left for weekends, staying at the safari lodges for tourists for the first few times, but afterwards they had to stay in motels for truck drivers.  It seemed, that all teachers, even the foreign ones, had to economise at times.  She enjoyed sex with him more than she thought she would, it was different than with other men, more natural and less filmic.

Only good things come in detail, not the devil.

Thomas Ray O’Hara, an American with Irish ancestry, was the new guy in Morogoro.  He told the other teachers that he was from Tampa, Florida and that was one eighth Irish.  Americans always liked to tell you exactly where they came from and where their great grandparents before them came from too.  She was from Morogoro, as were her family before her and for as long as time could be.  Apart from three years at Teaching College in Arusha, this is where she would always be.

She liked to look at his hands.

He moved his hands around his face and hair dramatically when he spoke, or taught his classes and while at first she found this to be slightly unhygienic, in a short while it became hypnotic.  She liked the shape of his finger nails, especially his thumb nails which were so neat, and rounded and clean.  She liked the sound of his voice and his confident vocabulary and the way he made everyone listen to him; his students and the other teachers.  Even when he didn’t have anything particularly interesting to say, he commanded a crowd.  And she liked watching him play the guitar, sometimes he sang at parties even though his voice was neither strong nor melodious.  She couldn’t imagine any of her Tanzanian male friends enjoying walking and climbing and cycling or acting as child-like as he.

Most of the volunteer teachers from America were young, but Thomas Ray O’Hara was a man in his forties, although his hair was still black and the lines on his face simply made him look kind.  When she first met him she felt a tenderness towards him, and she noticed almost immediately that she didn’t like it when he gave the other, younger teachers his attentions.  She liked him to talk to her in the school, and to give only her the benefit of his teaching observations.

Once he’d seen her teach he approached her after her class and said “you’re a good teacher Isabelle”.  From this compliment she spent even longer preparing her classes, going over her lesson plans, making sure all corners were covered and ideas explored.  He liked her classes more and more, and even suggested that some of the younger teachers watch her teaching, instead of him.  She became his regular assistant.

The only thing she didn’t like about him was his lack of apology.

One Sunday evening, after a weekend in a motel near Mikumi, he was packing his things into his small rucksack so that they could drive back to Morogoro.  As he did so he dropped his t.shirt onto the ground and down fell Isabelle’s reading glasses.  The lenses were fine and not scratched at all, but the frames were weakened and bent and they needed to be fixed.  Thomas Ray O’Hara simply picked them up and put them back on the bed without saying a word.  He finished his packing, took the car keys from the coffee table and said, “you ready to leave?”

She said that she was and they did.

All the way home she watched the trucks and the mini-vans heading towards Dar-es-Salam and realised that at the end of the semester, Thomas Ray O’Hara would return to Tampa, Florida and she would stay where she was.  She put her head out of the car and felt the rush of cool air on her face.  The dust from the road rested on her hair and eye-brows and she smelt the fully grown maize plants from the fields.   They would need harvesting soon, it was almost time.

 

 

 

 

Yesterday I felt old.

As old as the calligrapher, who lives in the castle, on top of the hill, in Ljubljana.  As old as the terracotta tiled houses that the castle looks down on, or the shadows of the alps that surround them.  Yesterday I was as old as winter when it leaves; replaced by sunset dances of spring hares.

Yesterday I felt disillusioned.

Not mature and venerable, versed and seasoned, but grizzled and grey haired and tired.  As tired as the wood chopper taking branches from his oaks.  Incapable of empathy, prostrate with bleakness, and weakened by my own dullness.

Yesterday I felt old.

As old as the calligrapher’s font, on the squishy pulp, that once breathed in high forests, in Ljubljana.  Not trusting my veracity or the perfection of my memory but rootless and wavering and clouded.  There was nothing in my basket that could liberate me; not even sunset dances of spring hares.

 

Elizabeth of Denmark wears clogs in her garden where she tends to her flowers. The soil slips into her apartment, where it meets the smell of freshly poured coffee, buttery toast and Cuban cigars.  She listens to Maria Callas on the radio, and when visitors come, she turns the volume up.

Sometimes after autumn, she floats away from her garden towards the North Sea.  She follows the seagulls and the otters and she splashes her feet in the icy water.  When her shoulders dip right under, she shudders with delight and she waves at the tourists close by.  She drinks a warm whiskey, enjoys the stunning wild blue sky and she smiles.

“The seasons help us remember” she tells you one Sunday afternoon, and it’s a phrase that you’ve never forgotten.

Bethany of Cambodia sits in the market place weaving textiles.  She is shaded from the sun by the iron rooftop of the restaurant.  She wears a single silver ring on the toe of her right foot, while her left foot keeps the loom working, moving in motion to the rhythm of the day.  Decades of this hand-work make it unnecessary for her to watch her creation, which is why she and her bare-feet have time to look away.

Sometimes after autumn, she walks away from the market place towards the forests of the north and the cool damp grass beneath her.  She runs like a young girl, slowly and unsure of her limbs, but gaining in speed.

Gaining in magic.

She skips through the jungle, jumps through the trees, splashes through the water-fall and when the morning dew cleans her face, she says to you, “the seasons help us to remember”.

And it’s a phrase that you find, that you cannot forget.

“I’m sorry” says Elizabeth, “we didn’t take great care of it, and for that I apologise.  We knew it was broken but we turned away our blind eyes, danced and ignored it.  We left the lights on for far too long, and we kept the windows open”.

“It’s alright”, replies Bethany, “while there were sins there was decency also.  You worried about your loved ones.  You listened for opportunities and protected your young. You held the hands of the weaker ones, and you valued the moon. 

Your compassion isn’t finite and your kindnesses are not full.  We live together in this tiny ocean, this baby tapestry, wound-up in the same string, and our paths cross constantly.  You can feel sore and sorrow, and those seasons will, one day, help us to remember”.

 

 

 

Remember Killyon, last July?  Remember how the day peeped through and the water droplets, outside the house, kept us inside and warm?  Remember there were others in the kitchen, drinking the last of the whiskey, and we could hear laughter in the hall?

You asked me if I loved you and when I said that I did, you asked me why.

And I said “I love you for your comical brilliance, your effortless sparkle and for all of your kindnesses.  I love you as a diversion from realism, as an interlude from concreteness and as a lantern at daybreak.  You are the bolts of my substance, my solidarity with vivacity and the base of my fabric.  You are the tangible verisimilitude of a sunrise at Killyon, and I love you”.

Earlier this summer, I was resting from the sun in the shade of a bar in northern Cambodia, after a long day of sight-seeing in Angkor Wat.  It was the first day off in what felt like a long while, and I was enjoying the quiet of a beer in a place where fishing nets and wicker baskets were the main decorations.

I was waiting for my fish and rice dish to come and was enjoying the second drink of the evening, when suddenly, and out of nowhere, I felt contentment rise to meet me.  The unexpected sunset view from the rooftop was pleasing and even the songs on the radio matched my mood.  I started to smile when a woman from across the bar smiled back at me and asked “are you loving my country?”  I nodded and told her that I was indeed, loving it all.

She said to me “my name is too difficult for you to pronounce, so please call me Suzi”.  And I said “well alright then Suzi, why don’t you sit here next to me and have a drink?”  So she pulled up a chair and she joined me.

I had been writing in my note book before she arrived and she pulled the book towards her, and read it without asking for permission.

She read the first two lines aloud:

“Up close the vision differs, from afar the light reflects.  And my dreams of Kampuchea star monks robed in saffron, a slow journey down the Mekong and poetry and song”.

She smiled and then asked me “what does it mean?  It doesn’t really mean anything does it?”

I tried to explain to her that it really didn’t need to, but she only closed up my note book and asked “what is your favourite part about today?  What do you love the most about my country?”  Yet before she allowed me to answer, she asked a further question…

“…and what is the difference between shadow and shade?”

I drank some of my beer, put my note book into my bag and thought about the answer.  I told her it was nice to be in the shade on such a hot and humid day.  Bu this didn’t appear to appease her and so she continued.

“I have a Masters Degree in tourism and business administration, I speak four languages and my parents own a guest house near the river, please note, my business card” and she presented me with her card.  I had nothing to give her in return, but I wrote down my email address on a damp serviette and she looked at it suspiciously.

She placed it carefully into her wallet and then said,

“But staying with business, what is the difference between shadow and shade?”

A series of small ants ran over my feet while a geko performed her acrobatics near the electric light bulb.  The wooden fan twirled while a tuk tuk beeped his horn outside and the moon rose over another evening in the north of Cambodia.  As I looked down onto the street, I saw a woman throw a basin of dirty water into the gutter, a dog bark at a child who was running, and a motorbike ride on the pavement.  The sweat of the evening drifted down over my neck and shoulders and into a lake on my back.

Suzi sat there, cool in her blue and yellow dress, and she smiled at me patiently.  Waiting for me to come back or to stay, with the business. But all I could say to her was “I don’t know Suzie.  I don’t know what the difference is at all”.

 

Mr Yous, the tuk tuk driver, collected me at eight and we agreed a price for the day.  I would pay him 10 dollars, and in return he would drive me around the city known as Phnom Phen.  Our first stop was breakfast at his brother’s restaurant where we ate boiled eggs with rice, and drank coffee and mango juice.  The early morning smog of the city was emerging while the people prepared for their days.

His brother’s daughter, a twelve year old called Chankrisna, was watching a TV show, it looked like a comedy, and she was eating sticky rice. She was dressed in a spotless white shirt and pleated blue skirt and I could see she wanted to join me.  I smiled at her and made a patting motion near the red plastic seat just next to me, and she came over.

“Hello my name is Chankrisna. I am 12 years old. I am from the Kingdom of Cambodia.  Chankrisna means a sweet smelling tree” she recited and I told her that her English was very good.  She put her hand over her mouth and started laughing.

“Where do you visit today?” she asked me, looking at my guide book on the table between us.  I said to her “I want to visit a temple, the river, the killing fields and perhaps the market” and she nodded in agreement, but she seemed still to be more interested in her TV show, or perhaps the adverts which were showing toy dolls.  Her father came out of the kitchen and said something to her in Khmer, so she skipped out front to hop onto her motorbike and she drove off to school.  I noticed Mr Yous had finished his breakfast, so I clambered less elegantly into our tuk tuk and we headed off in the exact opposite direction to Chankrisna.

Tuk tuk drivers are the contemporary dancers of south east Asia.  They weave in and out of traffic like gentle anarchists of the road, and they have sublime balance.  Mr Yous started telling me about his tuk tuk “it’s a Honda Dream with a 125 engine” he said and I smiled and I nodded.  He continued “it was 800 dollars so my brother gave me half of the money and together we drive the tourists around” and again I nodded and I smiled. I told him that I thought it must be very hard to drive in the traffic and the heat, but to this he made no reply.  And when I said I thought he was an excellent driver, he smiled at me in the rear view mirror and for some reason I felt embarrassed.

We stopped at a Temple for a blessing.  There were two women sitting under an enormous Buddha statue dressed in saffron, but with very little else around them.  I sat down next to the women and they started chanting and they gave me two sticks of incense to hold.  They tied two pieces of wool around my wrist, which were symbols of the blessings, and these red and yellow bands would protect me while I was travelling.  One woman encouraged me to stand up and bow in front of the statue, to present him with the incense I had been given, and so I did.  I bowed once, twice, three times before setting the incense into the bowls beneath him and I silently said thank you.  I put on my shoes and went to find Mr Yous.

We left the temple behind us and headed towards the Killing Fields.  A tourist attraction of a grisly nature, yet one I had to visit as I’d promised my new Cambodian friends up north that I would before leaving.  But as we approached the gate I started to change my mind. I didn’t want to go in; it was dentist fear, exam day fear, first day in a new town fear.  I didn’t want to go in.  But in I walked and bought my ticket and a headphone kit with all the guided information in English a woman could ever want.

And so the voice on the headphones began…

“Welcome to Cheung Ek or The Killing Fields of Cambodia.  Perhaps it should be called “one” of the Killing Fields as there are still so many others lost in jungle, under leaves and beneath memories.  But Cheung Ek is the most visited and notorious because maybe it was the best one.  Sometimes the Khmer Rouge killed 300 people a day here”.

For the next two hours I walked around a piece of ground which marks the brutal site where thousands of Cambodians were killed by the Khmer Rouge in the early 1970s.  Where no one knows the exact number of deaths, because every year and after the rains, more fragments of bone and cloth are uncovered.  A place where, because the bullets were so expensive, the killers had to be resourceful and so they used bamboo sticks, the bark of trees and hoes to silence the enemies of the revolution.

Perhaps you stop counting deaths after a while.

The voice on my headset hadn’t finished telling me details, but I had to leave that place.  So I went outside to find Mr Yous and his tuk tuk.  He was there, talking to other drivers and eating some Durian.

“Are you ok, did something happen?” He asked me.

“No I’m fine, can we go please?”

“Of course.  Would you like some fruit or coffee?  Perhaps some water?”  But I said no and got into the tuk tuk and I didn’t look behind me.

I was still catching my breath when I realised that Mr Yous was driving me directly from the Killing Fields to Tuol Sleng on street 113.  He pulled up outside and smiled like a Prince and said

“Please observe my country a little more and then we will go to the market”.

So dutifully I did.  Tuol Sleng was a plain old secondary school in the early 70s before the Khmer Rouge realised that it would make an efficient torture camp.  Instead of chalk boards, paintings and timetables of school activities, the walls of this old institution are packed with photographs of every man, woman and child who spent time there.  And who then died there.  I started to think about the photographers of the regime who had to prepare film, buy chemicals for developing the portraits and write up the biographies to go with the shots.   They must have made choices only fit for the nightmares of the insane.

I sat on a bench under a tree and looked at the school from the outside.  It really did look just like any other school in the city, and I couldn’t process the information that I had been given.  So I stood up and left the place and found Mr Yous, waiting for me one more time.

He looked concerned for me and asked me if I was feeling well.  He told me that sometimes the foreigners felt sick from the sun or the food or the water, but I assured him that wasn’t the case.

Actually, as it was near enough to cocktail hour I asked him to take me to a bar.  Any bar.  Anywhere in the city.  But preferably somewhere far away from torture, genocide and death.  So he smiled and drove me straight to the Foreign Correspondents Club near the Mekong River and I headed straight for the balcony on the very first floor.  I invited him in to join me for a beer, but when he shook his head and said “no thank you” I felt embarrassed for the second time that day.

I asked the tiny waitress for a glass of white wine and she said “for you today, happy hour” so I relaxed and made myself quite comfortable.  I sat at the bar, watched her serve foreigners, laugh with her colleagues, and occasionally hit her arm or leg to keep mosquitoes away.  I smoked cigarettes and wrote three postcards home, ordered more wine and talked to a geologist from Minnesota about the dangers of ice-fishing.  I stared out at the Mekong River and watched the boats sailing and I watched the sun go down.

When I finally left the bar Mr Yous was in his tuk tuk, waiting to drive me home.  But when we arrived at street 322 I could only find a 20 dollar note instead of the 10 dollars we had agreed earlier that day, so I told him to keep the change.  Now it was his time to look embarrassed and while he tried to give me change, I refused it, and I headed inside to my air conditioned room with the clean sheets and soft pillows and I fell asleep immediately.  I had expected to dream of the people from the black and white photographs, but instead I dreamt of Chankrisna. She was swimming in the Gulf of Thailand together with turtles, bannerfish, seahorses and dolphins.  And she looked as happy as children swimming often do.

The next morning, I went downstairs to the reception and there on the counter was a small envelope with my name on it. There was a crisp 10 dollar bill inside with a few neatly written words in English on the inside of the envelope.

The words simply said “Thank you.  From Mr Yous, the tuk tuk driver”.

A day I remember was the beach street party we had in the summer of 1978 in a small town in south Wales. Our street was alive with activities surrounding a small inflatable paddling pool on the concrete pavement outside the terraced houses of Alexandra Street. Women were sitting on deckchairs, the ice-cream van was parked outside number 35 selling cones with chocolate flakes and rasberry syrup and even the dogs were on holidays.

All the children were wearing their shorts and t.shirts or some in swimming costumes and David Jenkins was wearing a snorkling mask and flippers. Some one had brought a record player outside which was shouting out old 33s…Boney M’s “Brown Girl in the Ring” receiving the most play time. Two or three of the men were in the shade sharing beers and cigarettes and only one neighbour, Mrs Williams from number 12 didn’t join in. She kept her curtains closed and cancelled the sun and said “I’m not going to no beach party in the street. It’s senseless.”

The summer of 78 was a tiring time for me. I was starting to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up and it was all consuming. I was deliberating between being Nadia Comaneci, a waitress, a vet or a princess and it was exhausting. I practised my gymnastics religiously and my floor routine consisted of a hand stand, two roly polies and a star jump to finish. I would make my mother do the live commentary throughout so she would say things like “and here’s Nadia Comaneci on the floor again and isn’t she amazing…” My father’s role was to award me perfect scores of 10 and to present me with a medal at the end. On other days I would practise waitressing by clearing up the cups, washing out the ashtrays, moving plates even before my parents had finished with them. Practising vetinary science was more problematic, although we had a cat so she endured some treatments and examinations regularly. While trying out my princess skills involved a lot of waving.  It was endless.

78 was also the summer I experienced grief for the first time. Two close friends, Alvie and Suzie died in quite violent accidents. Alvie and Suzie were my imaginary friends, who lived on the mountain opposite our house, and they had been a very important part of my life. But they both met with early deaths that summer, Alvie by falling down the toilet and drowning and Suzie by falling into the back of the old black and white television in our living room. These deaths concerned me, but they didn’t interupt my gymnastics, waitressing apprenticeship, vetinary or princess skills.

But on this day in 1978, we didn’t think about fallings, ambitions or worries, we just enjoyed the sunshine and the music.

“Brown girl in the ring, tra la la la la…”

My father had a polaroid camera and he documented the day. Faded colours of people smiling, dancing, talking and having fun. It didn’t finish until well after mid-night. Some tired children had found sofas or their own beds, but I wasn’t sleepy at all and I stayed awake the longest. The sun had long set, but like those July nights of the 70s and my own memories, it still wasn’t really dark yet and you didn’t need a jumper.

David Jenkins’ father was the first to start clearing up. He emptied the water from the inflatable paddling pool into the street gutter and he put the empty beer cans and plastic cups into a bin bag. He said to me “it’s late, you should go to bed now” but I didn’t want to. I liked hearing the grown-ups talk in their funny drunk voices and I wanted it to go on forever. But in the end, my mother took me by the hand and we walked the few paces to our house. I fell asleep quickly to the sound of the last of the adults laughing and to the rhythm of Boney M.

“Brown girl in the ring, tra la la la la
She looks like a sugar in a plum
Plum plum”.

Dear all signs

Elaine Benbury used the pen-name “Mysterious Maggie” when she started writing horoscopes for a popular women’s magazine in the spring of 1972. The magazine, which had a small but loyal readership, was called “Women – hey!” and was filled with cookery tips, interior design techniques, fashion and some real life stories of hope. For almost forty years Mysterious Maggie contributed to the star sign page, and she never once failed to file her work before, or on the deadline of each issue.

For her first three horoscopes of 1972, she wrote mostly vague predictions which gained little or no attention from the readers of “Women – hey!”

Dear Capricorns,

This month something interesting will happen to you at work, something nice will happen in your social life and something else will happen at home.

Elaine had wandered into fortune telling unexpectedly and at first she felt a little uneasy in the world of tarot, palm reading and crystal balls. Elaine tried several occupations before the world of the semi-occult enchanted her, including tele-sales, marketing, child minding and nude portrait modeling. But none of them provided her with the satisfaction of deciding people’s futures for them. It was like playing with dolls, with lots and plenty of tiny little dolls, and Elaine had always loved playing with dolls when she was a little girl.

After her vague predictions of spring and summer ’72 Elaine started to discover that she could actually predict the future for strangers. When close friends asked her if she could actually see into the future, she would reply “probably” because the real mystery of it all was that she actually didn’t know herself. She knew from the fan mail from her loyal base that she was right at least 50% of the time, and to Elaine Benbury, this signified success. What she knew for certain was that every morning she got up, put on the radio and waited for a sentence or two to come into her mind. Once it came, she grabbed it, recorded it, wrote it down and kept it and that would be the prediction for that particular sign that month. Close friends would also beg her to tell their fortunes at dinners or other social occasions, but the fact of the matter was, she couldn’t do it live. She could only write it down.

At first she felt a little ashamed and thought that she ought to read up or study palm reading, tarot, shamanism or crystal ball reading. But no sooner had she put pen to paper than she realised that she could actually do this work without training or experience, and this pleased her no end.

Elaine went through many phases during her almost 40 years of predicting, eventually winning “Horoscope writer of the year award” for ten consecutive seasons, from 2001 – until 2011.

However she wasn’t always as successful. Her initial vague period of early 1972 was replaced by a floaty period which was met with very little interest from the readers of “Women – hey!”

Dear Aries,

There will be lively green seas surrounding your aura this month and like a gentle bull, you will need to pull away from the softness carefully.

This so-called floaty period, was replaced by an unwise Shakespearan era, which lasted until the autumn of 1982.

Dear Taurus,

Thou doth knoweth in thine heart, oh beloved Taurus that the future is like a sea unknown by all men, and their women folk neither. Hark, who cometh? Wait, oh prey that my love and your love endeth this night. Blessed be this night.

Elaine enjoyed an interest in horticulture, which also showed its face on her pages during issues in the late 80s.

Dear Leos,

You are a rose, and like all roses, tulips and daffodils, you are a delight. You grow Leo, tall and strong and regal and proper. Let those roots of yours stay as firm as they can be and let your soil feed your own energy and love feed your core.

Elaine also went through a cynical and bitter period during the summer of 1986 when her lover and best friend, the Slovak graphic designer Olga, left her.

Dear Sagittarii

Never trust a Sagittarian! You fucking two faced hypocritical sign from hell. Why don’t you just throw yourselves off a platform into an oncoming train? Hey? Just like Ana fucking Karenina, another two timing fucking whore.

Which was itself replaced by a mellow, yet existential phase until the early 90s

Hey Geminis,

There’s no point to it all really is there? Not when you think about it rationally.  So why don’t you just leave your job, tell your lover your moving to Reno, and forget to feed the cat, I mean who would really care anyway.

But after several meetings with the editor of “Women, hey!” Elaine finally found her form in early 91 and wrote consistently to all her ladies from there on inwards. Women liked her tone and her humour and they felt, they really did feel, that she was writing to them and to them alone.

Dear Mysterious Maggie,

Last month you told me that there were waves of great change about to lap through my life and only last weekend I met a man who loves to surf!!! Imagine! You are a miracle and a wonder and I love you.

(name and address with held).

But then without warning or mention to her editor of 40 years, Elaine filed her last predictions recently in January 2015, with just one last future intention for all her readers.

Dear all signs,

You are about to loose a presence in your life that is similar to a mother, teacher, secret friend or nurse. Don’t be sad or concerned. Just try now to find your own unique answers to your own imaginative questions. The journey is long and you have to find your own way of reading the map, I could only ever help turn the style. Remember that the butterfly, who sits on the nose of a crocodile, is never in danger. And remember too, that I love you with the whole of my heart, and I always will.

Mysterious Maggie.

The January issue of “Women – hey” is said to be a collectors’ item already within the small community of Maggie fans, and a commemorative copy is available online.