Sticky review of 2015 － 2015年のネバネバしたレビュー －

The time of year after Christmas and before New Year is a strange one.  It’s a bit like being in an airport lounge.  You are comfortable enough.  There are plenty of snacks and cheap entertainment to keep you occupied.  But there is a sense that you are stuck between where you have just been and where you are going.

Many people try to fill the time with lists and reviews.  Do a quick internet search for “Review of 2015”, and you’ll quickly come across a whole range of reviews of the year from different perspectives.  In the first few pages I found the following:

ABC News - The Thirteen Biggest News Stories of 2015

The UK government’s  Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015

Best dishwasher of 2015 reviewed

From these, I have been reminded that:
1.
“From start to finish, many of this year’s biggest news stories were centred around violence, terror threats or a general sense of fear.”

2.
“The Uk will work with the rule based international order and help strengthen multi-lateral institutions.”

3.
“High-tech dishwashers effectively remove build-up from your dishes and leave them sparkling clean.”

I don’t know how I could have forgotten these things.

Well, if everyone else is filling in time by compiling lists, then so will I.  Here are links to my favourite three blog posts from the last year.  Relive the sticky, hard to remove blog build-up from 2015.
 

Do you like to kill people? Check A for Yes, B for No an C for Maybe... －人を殺すのが好きですか？A：はい、B：いいえ、C：もしかしたら・・・－ 

 

Better value for sumo passengers?　－ 力士のお客さんの方がお得？ －

 

 

 Getting older, getting better －年をとること、上手になること－

 

Happy New Year.  Best wishes for 2016.

Does Santa really like Christmas? －サンタさんは本当にクリスマスが好きなんですか？－

What do we really know about Santa Claus, otherwise known as Saint Nicholas?

1 - He lives at or near the North Pole.

It must be pretty cold up there.  There’s no public transport.  The cinemas play nothing but “It’s a wonderful life” over and over again.  Even if you go to the beach it’s too cold to swim, never mind the fact that you have to watch for polar bears. 

In short, Santa Claus probably isn’t satisfied with his work location.  

2 – He lives with elves or, some say, dwarves

Who are these magical helpers anyway?  Do they make good dinner companions?  Do they keep Santa company when he’s not flying around the world, giving presents to children?  Wouldn’t a healthy red-suited, red-blooded man rather spend time with rosy cheeked women, perhaps chatting over a newspaper and a cup of coffee?  And, as comedian Bill Hicks once pointed out, all of these are available for sale on the streets of New York.  In comparison, the company of magical “helpers” at the North Pole doesn’t seem like a great deal.

3 – On Christmas Eve, Santa manipulates time so that he can travel to the home of every child in the world in only one night

What a hard job!  Does he get paid overtime for this?  Have the elves got Santa on a zero-hours contract?

Honestly, imagine having to experience the excruciatingly long and boring task of visiting every child in the world, checking their names against some kind of good kids/ bad kids check list and shoving a Nintendo DS in their stockings, when you can’t even get electricity in the Arctic.  Then when a seeming eternity of work finishes, you find that the elves or dwarves or whatever they are, have used their magic so that only 24 hours have passed.  At 6 pounds and forty pence minimum wage, that’s not even going to cover your heating bill for the night.  And after that the elves make you go through a body search, unpaid, to check that you’re not stealing any of the presents!

I don’t think that Santa is getting a good deal at all.  I think those elves/ dwarves are keeping him up at the North Pole working under conditions of slavery!

Neil Gaiman agrees.  Here’s an extract from his very short story, “Nicholas was”:

“Once every year [the dwarves] forced [Santa], sobbing and protesting, into endless night.  During the journey he would stand near every child in the world, leave one of the dwarves’ invisible gifts by its bedside.  The children slept, frozen into time.  He envied Prometheus... His punishment was harsher.”

Merry Christmas to the good kids and to the bad kids, and to the overworked and suffering everywhere. 

 

Vocabulary:

“It’s a wonderful life” – The title of a famous movie from the 1940s, often shown at Christmas

red-blooded – Of a man, manly; masculine

to manipulate – to control; alter; operate

a zero-hours contract – An employment contract which does not guarantee a salary.  The worker is only paid for the time which they actually work.

excruciatingly – extremely painfully

to shove – to push something roughly

to sob – to cry

Prometheus – A god from Greek mythology, who was punished for giving fire to man by being chained to a rock and having his liver eaten every day by an eagle 

Good news for grumpy people －イガイガする人に良いニュース－

“My favourite shows on tv have 12 minutes of advertising.  I can’t get behind that kind of time!”

“I can’t understand why the price of gas suddenly rises when oil goes up but takes months to go down long after oil falls.  I can’t get behind any of that!”

William Shatner and Henry Rollins on the very grumpy song, “I can’t get behind that”

I wrote a couple of weeks ago that I am entering the grumpiest time of life.  Having just passed my 35^th birthday, I can confirm that I am at least 10 per cent grumpier than before.  Why is cheese so expensive in Japan?  Are cows in Hokkaido given a daily massage and a personalised fitness regime?  There’s just so much to be grumpy about!

Still, it’s not all doom and gloom for us curmudgeons.  How many times have you heard that it is important to keep a positive attitude?  How many times have you heard that stress kills?  Urban legend would have it that viruses run away from a friendly smile.

Nonsense!

A massive study carried out by academics at the University of New South Wales and Oxford University has found the opposite.  They studied nearly 1 million women to investigate whether there was a link between being unhappy or stressed and increased rates of death.  The study tracked 700,000 women for 10 years, during which time 30,000 of them died.  The women were asked to rate how happy or stressed they felt.  After adjusting for lifestyle factors such as smoking, drinking, and levels of exercise, the study showed that unhappy women and happy women died at the same rate.

Previous studies which had suggested that there was a link between unhappiness and early death had been confusing cause and effect.  People who were unhappy or stressed were more likely to smoke or engage in unhealthy behaviour.  This could then kill them.  Alternatively, people who were already ill or dying were obviously more likely to be unhappy and stressed.

Smiling doesn’t keep away viruses after all.

Hang on a minute.  This study only examined the effects on women!  Maybe grumpiness does kill men after all.  Damn!  My grumpy wife will be moaning into her nineties and I might choke to death on my grumpiness any day.  It’s just another example of how the world is so unfair!

I’m off to pour myself a drink and light a cigar. 

 

Vocabulary:

to get behind something – to support something

gas – In British English, we would say, “petrol”; fuel which powers your car

a regime - a method of organising something

an urban legend – a common belief passed from person to person, which is not based on science or proper research

to track something – to follow or check the progress of something

to hang on – to pause or stop for a moment

to moan – to complain in a nagging way

to choke – to find it hard to breathe or to suffocate

a cigar – something which is smoked, it is larger than a cigarette and contains tobacco

 

 

 

How to mock friends and irritate people – The Donald Trump guide to success －友人を嘲り、人をイライラさせるには ～ドナルド・トランプの成功ガイド－

“Nobody would be tougher on ISIS than Donald Trump.”
Donald Trump

 

“When Mexico sends its people [to the USA]... they’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems to us.  They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists.  And some, I assume, are good people.”

Donald Trump

The top story on the BBC news this week is Donald Trump.  He is campaigning to be the Republican Party nominee for US President.  He suggested this week that all Muslims should be banned from entering America.  I don’t know what to make of him.  Does he really think that he could be elected President with such divisive and controversial statements?

I have another theory.  He will say more and more controversial things and be criticised and talked about all over the world.  He will ultimately lose the nomination but will then use the huge publicity to sell something.  Since everyone is amazed at how successful his unusual campaign has been, a good option would be to sell a self-help book.  Here is a suggestion for the title: “How to mock friends and irritate people – The Donald Trump guide to success”. 

The title is of course based on Dale Carnegie’s famous self-help book, “How to win friends and influence people.”  His book was first published in 1936, has sold over 15 million copies, and remains popular today.  Almost 80 years on, perhaps his theories need to be rethought for the current generation. 

And what if Donald Trump is the man to do it?  Below, I’ll compare some of the things Dale Carnegie wrote with what Donald Trump could write. 

Topic: Fundamental techniques in handling people

Dale Carnegie:

Don’t criticise, condemn or complain.

Give honest and sincere appreciation.

Arouse in the other person an eager want.
 

Donald Trump:

Criticise, condemn and complain.  Mexicans, women and Muslims are particularly good targets.

Give entertainment and an enemy for people to blame.
Arouse in the media shock and disapproval.  People hate the media, so this makes you look good.

 

Topic: [3] ways to make people like you 

Dale Carnegie:
Remember that a person’s name is, to that person, the sweetest sound in any language.
Be a good listener.  Encourage others to talk about themselves.
Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.

Donald Trump: Remember that your own name is the sweetest sound in any language.  Name a tower after yourself.
Be a braggart.  Talk about how great you are.
Make yourself seem important – speak about yourself in the third person.

William is going to finish his blog now.
p.s. I am great.  

Vocabulary:
 

to mock – to make fun of; to laugh at the expense of someone
 

to irritate someone – to make someone annoyed or angry
 

ISIS – The [so-called] Islamic State in Syria, a terrorist group
 

controversial – something which divides opinion
 

ultimately – finally; in the end
 

fundamental – most basic

to handle someone – to deal with someone
 

to condemn – to express complete disapproval of
 

a braggart – someone who brags, or praises him or herself or his or her own achievements
 

the third person – in speech or in writing, not referring directly to yourself (I, me etc.), and not the listener (you etc.), but another person (he, she, Donald Trump etc.)
 

When gourmets take to junk food －グルメがジャンクフードを楽しみ始めると－

I saw a BBC news article today which said that a ramen restaurant in the north of Tokyo has become the first restaurant of its kind to receive a prestigious one star rating by the restaurant guidebook, Michelin.

Ramen is a popular dish of noodles in soup, originally imported from China.  It is generally regarded as being cheap and unhealthy, somewhat akin to a fish supper or a late night kebab in the UK.

I live in an apartment a little removed from a busy road on which there is a ramen restaurant.  You can walk to the restaurant from my apartment in about one minute, by cutting through a narrow, dark alleyway.

About a year ago we started noticing a splatter of vomit appearing at the foot of our steps once a week.  The mess was always full of the mangled remains of chewed, swallowed and regurgitated ramen noodles.  Presumably, some binge drinker had gotten into the habit of drinking too much at a bar, getting peckish for ramen, and then realising that he couldn’t keep it down.  Hurriedly paying the bill, he looked across the street and found an inviting dark alleyway.  Stumbling quickly down the alleyway, he spewed his ramen gift at my doorstep before catching the last train home, happy with his evening’s entertainment.

Luckily, the binge drinking ramen eater has stopped his activities around my apartment.  Maybe one day he couldn’t make it out of the door in time and he vomited inside the ramen restaurant, forcing him to look for another quiet little corner of Tokyo to decorate.

Anyway, this experience is what I think of when I think of ramen.  It doesn’t seem like a gourmet dish to me.  Some ramen restaurants stew the bones of pigs in order to make the stock for their soup.  You can smell those places from several streets away.

Presumably, Michelin hasn’t awarded a one star rating to one of these noodle shops.  It would be only one step removed from giving a one star rating to a branch of MOS Burger.  It’s not that I don’t like fried potatoes...  I just don’t associate them with gourmet dining.

The BBC article didn’t give much information about the ramen restaurant which won the award.  They did say that you can get ramen noodles in a red wine sauce with rosemary barbecued pork.  It certainly sounds more appealing than pigs’ bones.  They also said that the restaurant has only 9 seats, and that a bowl of noodles costs between 7 and around 10 US dollars.  That would make it about 1,000 yen.

Perhaps one ought not to be prejudiced about food.  Just because ramen is cheap and has a reputation to match, it doesn’t mean it isn’t delicious.  I was thinking about what I would want for my last meal on Earth.  Rather than bother with an Italian restaurant serving lots of different courses, truffles and tiramisu, I might prefer something simple like natto and tuna donburi (meaning on a bed of white rice).  Besides being tasty, you can eat it quicker and get started on the alcohol sooner!

Oh no, I’m starting to sound like the mysterious Tokyo Ramen Vomiter.  It wasn’t me, honest.  I’m British.  After a night of heavy drinking, all I can think of is late night fish supper.  Yum! 

Vocabulary:

to take to something – An informal phrase, meaning to get into something; to start enjoying something

prestigious – highly respected, desired or valued

akin to – similar to

a fish supper – a British junk food speciality, consisting of fried fish in batter and chips (thick fried potatoes),

to cut through (an alleyway) – to go somewhere via a shortcut

an alleyway – a very narrow street, often at the back of houses or only accessible by pedestrians

a splatter – the mess left when something soft or containing liquid is messily spread over a wide area

to mangle – to break something up into a complete mess of many pieces or parts

to regurgitate – to vomit; to bring back food you have eaten

a binge drinker – someone who drinks a huge or excessive amount of alcohol in a short time

to be peckish – to be (slightly) hungry

to spew – an informal way to say “to vomit”

to be prejudiced – to have a biased or unfair view of something

 

The time of life to be grumpy －イガイガの時期－

“I charm you and tell you of all the boys I hate,
All the girls I hate,
All the words I hate,
All the clothes I hate,
How I’ll never be anything I hate,
You smile, mention something that you like,
How you’d have a happy life if you did the things you like”
Lyrics from “The dark of the matinee,” by Franz Ferdinand

“The 35 to 54 year old group of men is the grumpiest of any in Britain today: Grumpier than their parents, who survived the war and felt lucky to draw their pensions; Grumpier than their children, who seem perfectly happy taking a lot of drugs and spending all night on the internet.”
From British tv series “Grumpy old men”from 2003

Curmudgeon is a lovely sounding word. But that is not reflected in its meaning. A curmudgeon is a bad-tempered or surly person. Someone who is always grumpy or complaining about life is a curmudgeon. If you go to a flower viewing party and complain that there are too many people, and that there aren’t enough bins, and that those people over there are talking too loudly, then you are probably a curmudgeon.

The thing is, no one likes a young person who is bad tempered. There is a sense that you should be enjoying the prime of your life. But it is kind of acceptable for older people to be curmudgeonly. If you worked hard when you were young only to see the younger generation laugh at you because you struggle to use a smartphone, then perhaps you have a right to be grumpy. If you’ve got various aches and pains which come with old age and you see youngsters running around without effort, maybe it is understandable to be a little envious.

I realised last week that I am taking my first steps towards being a curmudgeon. I was in Kamakura with my wife. We were slowly inching our way up a hill near a famous temple. We were holding onto one another for support and trying not to look too tired from the climb. Then a group of kids came screaming and running down the hill beside us, full of slightly idiotic energy. I spent much of the rest of the afternoon getting irritated by their over enthusiastic displays of energy.

Oh, well. It is my 35^th birthday in a couple of weeks. According to the tv show “Grumpy old men,”which I have quoted above, I am entering the perfect time of life to be a curmudgeon. It’s time to start practicing the phrases I’ll need:

“It’s not like it used to be in the old days.”
“Why do they have to have the music on so loud?”
“Oh, not a party!”
“Why are those kids still awake after 9 pm, anyway?”

I feel a little better already. Being grumpy seems to suit me.
 

Vocabulary:

grumpy – bad tempered and sulky

to draw a pension – to take out or receive money, usually in old age, after you have retired

the prime of one’s life – the best or most important time in one’s life

to inch one’s way (forward/up/down etc.) –to move at a very slow pace, advancing by inches (a few centimetres) at a time

 

Surviving minimalism －ミニマリズムから生き延びる－

My wife recently discovered a smartphone app which allows the user to sell things directly to other people with the same app.  It’s a bit like taking your old things down to a second hand shop and cashing them in, except that you don’t physically have to go anywhere.

My wife is not a woman who does things by halves.  Every night I am disturbed by the sound of a smartphone camera clicking as she photographs more and more items to put up for sale on line.  She has sold old skirts and dresses; knick-knacks and souvenirs from Scotland; antique mugs and more.  She seems to have become obsessed with the idea of minimalism and downsizing.  She is like a black hole, ripping through the apartment and sucking into oblivion anything which is not firmly attached to the floor.

Not only is she selling her own stuff, I find my own pile of earthly goods getting smaller little by little too.  I have been encouraged and cajoled to get rid of a Braille writing tool (“You don’t use this any more, do you?”); fan goods to remind me of my favourite football team from back home (“You can’t go to the games while you’re in Japan anyway”); old audio books (“How many times can you listen to the same book?”) and more.

I have started to look for hiding places around the house for my things.  Otherwise I’ll be sitting on a bare wooden floor in my underpants.  It’s tough living in a minimalist household.

Or maybe one day she will point the camera at me and put my picture and description into her app.  If you see a Caucasian man for sale on line – second hand, a little worn but still serviceable – please give him a good home.

 

Vocabulary:

minimalism – The idea of living with only the smallest possible amount of material goods

to cash something in – To exchange something, such as a cheque or second hand goods, for money

 “[Someone] who doesn’t do things by halves” – [Someone] who commits 100 per cent effort to what they are doing; someone who doesn’t take half-measures

a knick-knack – A small, worthless object, such as a souvenir, office toy etc.

to downsize – To make something like a company’s scale, the size of your house etc. smaller

oblivion – Non-existence

to cajole – To persuade by persistent effort

bare – Empty; naked

Caucasian – Of a person, having a fair skin colour

serviceable – Of an item for sale, able to be used; working

Elephants in the clouds, elephants in the toilet －雲にいる象、お手洗いにいる象－

“Humans see elephants in the clouds instead of understanding that  they are in fact randomly shaped clouds that appear to our eyes as elephants.”

“Humans look for explanations even when there are none.”

“We see the winners and try to learn from them, while forgetting the huge number of losers.”

“{Some traders} eat like chickens and go to the bathroom like elephants.”

Last week an incident with my white cane reminded me of a book that I read some years ago.  The book is “Fooled by Randomness: The hidden role of chance in life and in the markets” (2001) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

The main point of the book is that the human brain is not good at dealing with randomness.  We like to pretend that there is order where there is only chance.  So we see elephants in clouds, or invent superstitions to explain why we were successful one day but failed the next.

We fool ourselves into believing that future risks can be pretty well judged by examining the patterns of the past.  Thus, we tend to under-estimate the impact of unique or rare events.  Taleb gives the example of a stock market trader who bets on the market continually going up year after year.  He might make small gains which build up for years.  And then if he keeps gambling because he has been successful in the past, he might lose everything if the market suddenly crashes.  He sums this scenario up with the amusing description of a man who eats like a chicken (taking in money in lots of small portions) and goes to the toilet like an elephant (when he loses, he flushes huge amounts of money down the drain at once).

Last week my white cane, which I use to feel for obstacles in front of my feet as well as to let other people know that I am blind, suddenly broke.  I had been using it safely for five years and when it split into four pieces it was completely unexpected.  When I first started using a cane, I worried that it might suddenly break if it collided with a bicycle or car and I used to carry a second cane with me, folded up and placed in a shoulder bag.  When it didn’t break for month after month and year after year, I started to forget about the danger and stopped carrying a second cane with me.  Like a chicken, I was happily eating my good fortune day after day and thinking nothing of any elephant-sized trip to the toilet I might have to make tomorrow.

Actually, I am glad to report that I was very lucky.  My cane broke when I was with my wife and father.  So they were able to guide me to a safe spot until we could find another cane.  If I had been out in the street by myself, it would have been a very awkward situation.

So I guess the moral of today’s blog is not to dismiss avoidable risks which seem unlikely but which will have a big impact if they occur.  Enjoy your chicken feed while it lasts.  There is a long queue for the toilet...

 

Vocabulary:

randomness – The lack of a pattern or predictability in events.

a superstition – A belief without a logical basis, such as luck, the supernatural etc.

to under-estimate - to make a guess about value, probability, cost etc. which is too low

a drain – A pipe or channel used to carry water away

a cane – A stick used to help people walk, or blind people to walk safely

to split – To break into separate parts

to collide – For two or more objects to hit each other

awkward – Causing difficulty; hard to deal with

to dismiss – To treat a theory or idea etc. as unimportant, impossible, unworkable etc.

 

 

 

Don’t forget your credit card －クレジットカードをお忘れなく－

I usually publish my blog on Thursdays but my father is coming to Japan to visit from Wednesday, so I will be rather busy.  I will keep it short this week and publish a little early. 

I’m not sure if my dad reads my blog but just in case, here is some vocabulary inspired by his visit: 

To treat (one’s son) to dinner – to buy dinner for (your son).  It could be sushi, tempura...  Either way, you can use this useful phrase.

“It’s my round.”  You say this in a bar or pub when you offer to buy drinks for the other people in your party.  It could be whiskey, wine...  Either way, you can use this useful phrase.

“Don’t be silly.  Put your wallet away.” – This is a phrase used when you want to insist on paying, rather than letting someone else do so.  It could be in an electronics store, a furniture store...  Either way, you can use this useful phrase. 

I’m only joking.  I’m really looking forward to Wednesday, and normal blog service will be resumed next week.

Will

 

Chilied cricket versus steaming chicken feet －チリ・コオロギ vs 蒸し鶏の足

It can be hard for travellers to go to a foreign country and order food in a restaurant when they are not so familiar with the local language.

I have had a few disasters myself.  In Thailand, I saw a restaurant selling chicken feet.  I had never tried chicken feet before so I thought I would give them a go.  I pointed to a few which were sitting behind a glass counter.  I expected to get one or two as a side dish.  Instead, a while later the beaming chef produced a steaming plate piled high with chicken feet.  Tentatively I tried one.  It was rubbery and absolutely disgusting.  I didn’t think that I could eat many of them without vomiting.  I then ordered something else and played the old game of moving the feet around artfully to make their numbers appear smaller.  I switched some to my other plates, hid some under my rice and told the chef that they were delicious as I paid and left.

Britain is not generally known for exotic food.  The worst a tourist might expect is to order a hamburger and expect it to have any ham in it.

But perhaps that is all about to change.  It takes a lot of space and water to raise cows and pigs for human consumption.  So some environmentalists have suggested that we ought to eat more insects as a way of protecting the environment.  Partly for that reason, a new restaurant has opened up in the UK which specialises in cooking insects.

The owner of Grub Kitchen said, “We want to pioneer the Movement to normalise the eating of bugs on a day to day basis.  We are treating them as a normal food item, incorporating insect protein as an ingredient but using normal flavours we are familiar with and everyday food items we recognise.”

Sample items on the menu are chilied cricket cocktail and Pad Thai with worms.

I think it’s a wonderful idea.  I have never eaten an insect before but I think it must be a better way to get protein than farming intelligent animals.  Hopefully, the insects will suffer less than farmed cows and pigs.  And it will help the Earth too.

But I can’t help but wonder what will happen to unfortunate Thai tourists who come to Britain and find themselves in this restaurant without quite understanding what it is.  They might be feeling homesick and be hugely relieved to see Pad Thai on the menu.  Without knowing the word “worm”, they might guess that it is a cut of chicken.  Soon after, they’ll be hiding bits of worm under their napkins. 

Vocabulary:

a cricket – A type of leaping insect

to give something a go – to try something

to be beaming – To be smiling broadly

tentatively – Hesitantly; carefully and without confidence

to vomit – to bring up the contents of your stomach, for example when you are suffering from food poisoning

artfully – skilfully; creatively

an environmentalist – Someone dedicated to protecting the environment, or nature

grub – This is a slang term for food.  For example, “That restaurant has great grub.”

a grub – A type of insect

to pioneer something – to be one of the first to do something; to help to develop something new and make it popular, successful etc.

a bug – This is a slang term for an insect

to incorporate something – to take something in or include it as part of the whole

Pad Thai – Thai style fried noodles

a worm – An animal with a long, soft body which burrows underground

 

 

Monkey magic strikes again －モンキー・マジック、再登場－

Since it is approaching Halloween, it is not a bad time for a horror story. For the first part of the story, you can read last week’s blog. To summarise, an elderly couple living with their son come across a monkey’s paw with the apparent ability to grant three wishes. But it seems to do so in a twisted and evil way. The couple uses one wish to ask for 200 pounds. The next day their son is killed at his factory in a tragic accident and the old couple are given 200 pounds in compensation.

Be careful what you wish for. And be careful of giving your wife everything that she asks for…

 

An edited extract from “The Monkey’s Paw” by W.W. Jacobs, part 2 of 2:

In the huge new cemetery, some two miles distant, the old people buried their dead, and came back to a house steeped in shadow and silence. It was all over so quickly that at first they could hardly realize it.

 

It was about a week after that the old man, waking suddenly in the night, stretched out his hand and found himself alone. The room was in darkness, and the sound of subdued weeping came from the window. He raised himself in bed and listened.

 

"Come back," he said, tenderly. "You will be cold."

"It is colder for my son," said the old woman, and wept afresh. Suddenly she cried wildly.  "The paw! The monkey's paw!"

He started up in alarm. "Where? Where is it? What's the matter?"

She came stumbling across the room toward him. "I want it," she said, quietly. "You've not destroyed it?"

"It's in the parlour," he replied, marveling. "Why?"

She cried and laughed together, and bending over, kissed his cheek.

"I only just thought of it," she said, hysterically.  "Why didn't I think of it before? Why didn't you think of it? The other two wishes," she said, rapidly. "We've only had one.  We'll have one more.  Go down and get it quickly, and wish our boy alive again."

The man sat up in bed and flung the bedclothes from his quaking limbs. "Good God, you are mad!" he cried, aghast.

"Get it," she panted; "get it quickly, and wish--Oh, my boy, my boy!" 

The old man turned and regarded her, and his voice shook. "He has been dead ten days, and besides he--I would not tell you if I didn’t have to, but--I could only recognize him by his clothing. If he was too terrible for you to see then, how will he be now?"

"Bring him back," cried the old woman, and dragged him toward the door. "Do you think I fear the child I have nursed?"

He went down in the darkness, and felt his way to the parlour, and then to the mantelpiece.  The talisman was in its place, and a horrible fear that the unspoken wish might bring his mutilated son back seized upon him.

Even his wife's face seemed changed as he entered the room. It was white and expectant, and to his fears seemed to have an unnatural look upon it. He was afraid of her. 

"Wish!" she cried, in a strong voice. 

"It is foolish and wicked," he faltered. 

"Wish!" repeated his wife.

He raised his hand. "I wish my son alive again." 

The talisman fell to the floor, and he regarded it fearfully. Then he sank trembling into a chair as the old woman, with burning eyes, walked to the window and raised the blind. 

***

"What's that?" cried the old woman.

"A rat," said the old man in shaking tones--"a rat."

His wife sat up listening. A loud knock resounded through the house.

"It's Herbert!" she screamed. "It's Herbert!"

She ran to the door, but her husband was before her, and catching her by the arm, held her tightly.

"It's my boy; it's Herbert!" she cried, struggling mechanically. “What are you holding me for?  Let go. I must open the door."

"For God's sake don't let it in," cried the old man, trembling.

 

"You're afraid of your own son," she cried, struggling. "Let me go. I'm coming, Herbert; I'm coming."

 

There was another knock, and another. The old woman with a sudden wrench broke free and ran from the room. Her husband followed to the landing, and called after her appealingly as she hurried downstairs. Then she raised her voice, strained and panting.

"The bolt," she cried, loudly. "Come down. I can't reach it." 

But her husband was on his hands and knees groping wildly on the floor in search of the paw.  If he could only find it before the thing outside got in. Knocks reverberated through the house, and he heard the scraping of a chair as his wife put it down in the passage against the door.  He heard the creaking of the bolt as it came slowly back, and at the same moment he found the monkey's paw, and frantically breathed his third and last wish.

 

Vocabulary:

a cemetery – a graveyard; a place where people are buried after death

to be steeped in (shadow) – to be filled with (shadow)

subdued – quiet or dispirited

tenderly – affectionately; lovingly

to be aghast – to be filled with horror or shock

to regard – to look at

to be mutilated – about a living thing, to be badly disfigured or cut to pieces

to falter – to lose strength or momentum

to reverberate – of a loud noise, to repeat several times as an echo

frantically – desperately