Christmas Wines of 2013

I'm going to do a minor edit of the intro I did for this year's blog entry from a few days ago and then add a word or three at the end of it. Here you go.

This is the story that goes along with the wines we made for this year. I haven't had the opportunity to download the images of the labels or of the pamphlet because of, well, the ice storm which hit a few days ago. I did have power for most of the time (thank Gord) but no heat and, more to the point, no internet access. I'll come back and add all those nice touches later on.

Anyway, this is the story we came up with.

Colin


So here it is me back to do some nice touching. I said 'nice' right? I can't decide if that sounds dirty or not. I'll add all the pictures and flourishes and, well, stuff, followed by the full story with pictures added.

Here's an example of the stuff.

Ralph and I did a bit of travelling this year, not together mind you (which would have been nice but just didn't happen), we each did our own trip and went to different destinations. Each place became a theme for one of the labels, and here they are.

And...

And because the story that I was working on (from ideas furnished by the both of us) was getting very long I decided, as per our want, to produce a brochure that would accompany the gifts of wine. I'll show the full pages first then add each panel solo because it's easier to read.

The panels...

And now it's time, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, for a little story...

The Campbell Brothers: A Cautionary Tale

Reading in the outhouse, before ripping out the sheet for, um, personal hygiene, Ralph came across an article in the ‘Who’s Not Who Anymore’ section of the newspaper. It said that one of the Lairds of Campbell had recently died and that the Scottish barristers Underhill, Underhill and Overprice were waiting for his heirs to make themselves known in order to process their inheritance. A small picture of the ex-Laird was included with the item.

Wiping himself with the next page and quickly pulling up his lederhosen, Ralph ran from of the outhouse looking for his brother. He stumbled up to him panting and handed him the page pointing at the article and the photograph, saying, “Look, isn’t this that weird Uncle Rufus, the guy that came to visit that one time? Well, he’s croaked. And who would have known, it says here that he had an estate, a whole estate. We could be royalty or something.”

“Wow, you know this could be the best shot we ever had, well, for money, for influence, for respect, for anything.”

“We’ll have to scamper to Scotland then. You’re right, we could probably get ourselves in line for some cash at the least, or something, like a title,” Ralph prompts again thinking to himself, “King Ralph the First”.

“How about co-regent?”

“Only if I get to sit on the throne first.”

“But how are we going to get there? We have no money.”

“We could mail ourselves. Plaster ourselves with stamps and jump in a mailbox.”

“Nah, takes money for stamps. We have to find a cheaper way.”

“Fed-Ex?”

“Same thing only even more expensive.”

“How about shipping ourselves C.O.D?”

“And who’s going to pay for us at the other end?”

“We could bill us to Uncle Rufus’ estate.”

“And be in storage for months maybe. No, we gotta’ find another way. And on the cheap.”

So it’s midnight at the docks. Two lumpy shadow figures somehow manage to get through a chain link fence (after much low voiced discussion and cursing), past a security guard (sleeping) and into the huge warehouse.

Colin says in a whisper, “Now there has to be stuff going to Scotland. All we have to do is find something big enough for us to fit in.” They separate and begin to look. The light from their small flashlights darts across the interior. After several minutes of search Colin, stooping to read a tag, calls to his brother, “Ralph, over here.”

Ralph appears by his brother’s side and peers at the tag being illuminated by the flashlight beam. “Glasgow, Scotland”. It’s attached to a big old steamer trunk. Another trunk sits right next to it.

After having a squabble about who gets which trunk the brothers dump most of the contents then throw in corn chips, pop, beef jerky and assorted snacks for survival. Colin was going to put in something green and had two cabbages. Ralph tossed them in a high arc out of the warehouse window into the water. Then they climbed into the trunks.

As they’re getting settled Ralph asks, “Hey, Colin, how do we go to the washroom?”

“Depends,” his brother replies.

Then they shut the lids. The steamer trunks became two steaming trunks once they had closed themselves in.

Early that morning the trunks were loaded onto ships. That’s right, two ships. One trunk did indeed go to Scotland but, since they hadn’t bothered to check both of the tags, the other trunk headed for points south.

Points South

Ralph, sits at a bar talking to three sailors, one being the captain of a ship in the harbour. He was pouring out drinks for them from a skin that he had. “I found myself on a cargo ship, dere I was. Somehow the crew found me.” Actually Ralph happens to be allergic to himself and being confined in close proximity to, well, quite literally, himself in the trunk he kept sneezing and banging his head on the lid. Between the bangs, the “ows” and the “%*#@%!!”’s, the crew naturally and easily zoomed in on his position. “Then they chucked me overboard and sailed away. That wasn’t very nice.”

He washed up on a shore, like a beached whale, barely alive. Natives found him there, took pity on him, and carried him back to their village. There they let him dry out for a couple days on a rack constructed in front of the headman’s hut. Amongst themselves they called him the big white whale man. They thought he was a gift from the gods. They never questioned which ones.

When Ralph got dried out he started wandering the area. He took to walking through the trails near the village. Ralph, always so nimble and spry, slipped, fell, crashed, clogged, and broke his way through many of the paths, knocking over trees in his path and destroying whole ecosystems. Usually narrow and hard to find, these ways became known as ‘Big White Whale Ways’, the native equivalent to superhighways.

The island, Ralph learned, was called Bogas.

On one of his hikes Ralph found a weird looking fruit lying innocently on the beach. It sort of reminded him of one of those monarch butterfly caterpillars but only really big and bloated. He asked the natives what it was and with hand gestures and miming and a few words of English they seemed to be saying that it was called the vomit fruit. If a plant could be pissed off this would be the one.

Morinda Citrifolia

In a ceremony around the fire that night Ralph was told about the sacred brew made from this fruit that helps them reach their inner selves. But, he was also told, the fruit was a vengeful spirit returned to life. Morinda Citrifolia (that was it’s actual name) had to be tamed and the spirit appeased. It had to be prepared in a very particular way or there were serious consequences.

The ceremonial brew was made and passed to the tribesmen. The natives passed out and dreamed the gods.

It didn’t work on Ralph quite the same way. He didn’t pass out and he didn’t dream gods. I guess he was used to a bit stronger brew. This stuff just made his head hurt and his tongue numb. ‘It needth a bit more kick to it’, he thought.

He saw a big lizard swallow one of the bloated caterpillar fruit once and after a second or two it got an odd look on its face and then exploded. Sometimes life is like that.

Ralph decided to make his own.

Almost immediately Ralph ignored how the natives said to make the brew and improvised. This made the god(s) very angry and as he held up the large lizard skin filled with the stuff, he was struck by lightning. This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened to Ralph, the gods always seemed to be taking pot shots at him. He’s been hit by lightning 4 times already. Anyhow, this electric stimulation somehow improved the toxicity of the brew.

To show his gratitude to the tribe for saving his life he wanted to make them a real Campbell meal. He took chunks of the fruit and some other plants and, for good measure, added in the more tender bits of what used to be a large lizard, and made chili for them. After eating and drinking their fill, after almost an hour, the combo hit. The natives spent the rest of the night vomiting behind the bushes, and they all got cases of the dire rear. The whole village stank like…you know. Ralph, who was getting a lot of sick but killing looks from the natives thought it might be a good time to hit the road, or the beach, or whatever. He took the rest of the concoction in the skin, a couple ripe fruit, and made his escape.

He ‘borrowed’ one of their dugout canoes and paddled away from shore. Because Ralph’s personality was bigger and heavier than the tiny boat could handle, not far from the island it swamped and Ralph got dumped into the sea once again. He was left bobbing in the choppy waters clinging to the partly inflated lizard skin that seemed to float quite well. It was hard to drink from though.

Time passed, currents carried the brother onward. A cabbage floated by. Ralph sneered at it.

Eventually he ended up at a further other different island called Nowhere Atoll. True to his unerring sense of direction he found a bar. It was named the Blue Bottle Fly Bar. And yes, there were several in attendance.

And that’s where he met the captain and crew of the tramp steamer Jordan Harbour, and after getting them all mightily droned (that’s drunk and stoned) on the Morinda concoction, convinced the captain that he had the keys to the locks of the Panama Canal and could get them through on the sly. And the captain believed him.

So with much stumbling and falling over and clinging to one another they boarded the ship and somehow managed to cast off and head for open water. Unknown to Ralph a couple of the Morinda seeds dropped out of the pocket of the grass skirt and fell into the planter of the cook’s herb garden.

That night Ralph got hammered. Okay, even more hammered. He was tired, he was pissed, he was still squelching from his last soaking, and in the cabin he found the lockbox (‘If I can open it, it ain’t locked,’ he said to himself.) with the ship’s rum supply, so he drank it and crashed.

When he finally woke up midmorning the next day and climbed on deck he found that all the crew was gone except, for some reason, several left boots. The Morinda seeds had not been idle. They had not only sprouted but had rooted, had grown, had blossomed, seeded, spread and taken over the ship. The plants were everywhere on board. They were eating through everything including the metal of the hull, which is not really a good idea on a ship, particularly one at sea.

So I guess it was fortunate that the ship ran aground on Red Frog Island. Ralph hopped ashore and, as per his usual activity, went looking for a drink.

The Jordan Harbour

There was a village at the other end of the island where he stopped for a while (he had by this time lost all count of days). Ralph, waiting for some sort of ship to come, kept himself busy. He figured out a way to make a still using bamboo for pipes and gourds for jugs. He went back to the ship and harvested the now fully ripe Morinda and started a fresh batch. He still wouldn’t remember the proper way to prepare the fruit. ‘Oh well’, he thought, ‘at least it’s impotent’.

One day, sitting under the thatched beach umbrella of his new venture, Ralph’s Open Air Bar And Grill, trying to sell gourds of Morinda to unsuspecting passers by (of which there were none, the villagers learned early on to avoid him, his bar, and the stuff), he saw a sail in the distance. To signal the boat he set fire to the bar.

Ralph's Open Air Bar and Grill

It started to approach and soon had moored itself just off shore. Two people came ashore.

So that was how Ralph met the pair of smugglers Tom and Cyndi DunneHyphenDunne. After a couple ‘free samples’ of Morinda he learned in the following conversation that they usually made their living by smuggling assorted novelties - snow globes and fake doggy doo doo - which they traded to the natives for decorative gourds and grass skirts. Ralph talked them in to giving him a lift off Red Frog Island and doing the crossing to Scotland. In return they could have most of the Morinda he had made. They loaded the gourds into the boat.

They let Ralph set up shop in the basement of the sailboat. He found it a bit dark and very damp but it seemed to have plenty of room. He pulled a pin out of something and hammered it into the wall so that he could hang up his skin and some of his other stuff.

The pin happened to be part of the steering mechanism connected to the rudder.

For some reason the boat would only turn left now. They kept sailing, doing starboard tacks (Ralph wondered if you got those in a hardware store) in larger and larger circles, spiraling ever southwards. Tom and Cyndi couldn’t figure out what was happening.

And Ralph soon realized that he had been had. His room was in fact underwater and he was rapidly running out of breath. He grabbed his stuff off the wall, mainly the lizard skin skin, pulled the pin out and went on deck. When Tom saw the pin in Ralph’s hand he knew immediately what had happened.

Words were said. Voices were raised. Fingers were pointed. Ralph was stranded at the next port.

The land of the Scots.

Colin, having survived his long trip, was eventually exposed when the lid of the trunk was thrown open and several women, in various stages of undress, peered in at him. Colin squinted up and smiled. The women did not share in the smile.

He grabbed the edges of the trunk and began to pull himself out.

The women glared at him and at the clothes he was wearing, which were theirs.

He started making his excuses, hands up to protect his face from the lipsticks, compacts, and other throwables ready to hand that were now being hurled in his general direction (he was glad this wasn’t a kitchen), and then fled through the dressing room door now at his back, into the hallway of the old theatre’s backstage, and out through the stage door.

He passed a poster as he was accelerating out of the alley and just had time to read that this was triumphant return of ‘The Glaswegian Burlesque Revue’.

‘Bloody ecdysiasts’, he said to himself. A skimpily clad mob followed.

That was how he ended up threading the streets of Glasgow dressed like a harem girl with major issues. What’s worse, having run through the crowd at a soccer pitch and across the playing field, had picked up a larger retinue of people intent on harming him: a soccer team and most of a bagpipe band.

Colin, in his haste, had crashed into the piper as he was playing the team’s anthem. They both went down in a wailing, screeching tangle. The bagpipe burst and the piper nearly did as well as Colin landed on the bag. As the silence and the shock still had the moment suspended, Colin, never one to miss an opportunity to get out alive, quickly got up - parts of pipe still tangled around his legs - and continued fleeing.

After a lengthy run headlong and lost and after several zigs, a couple of zags, and a hop, skip and a thump, he took an opportunity both to catch his breath and to look behind to see if he was still followed. He kept moving backwards because he’d learned early on that distance is often the true key to survival, at least for him and Ralph. He wondered then, not for the first time, where the hell his brother had gotten. Then, still not paying attention and still walking backwards, he fell off a bridge and onto the top of a train. Fate had smiled at him it seemed, but the smile was a crooked one.

He made himself as comfortable as he could on a train car roof and hoped he was heading in the right direction. In actual fact, contrary to most Campbell expectations, he was. He saw he had a run in his stockings. It started to rain. It got dark.

The train entered a station and the sign read ‘Stirling’. ‘Wow’, he thought, ‘I’m here’. Cold, soaked and shivering, he climbed down (fell) from the train and exited the station before anyone else could give chase. He got another run in his stockings. Once clear of the immediate area he snoozed in the comfort of a trash can.

In Stirling the next morning he looked up the phone number for the lawyers. It took several tries, a handful of begged coins, and some pleas for help from passers by to figure out how the phone contraption worked and finally make the call. The receptionist seemed happy to hear from him, as did the barrister - a Mr. Overprice - who picked up on the line shortly after. Colin told the lawyer who he was and also that his brother would have been there too but had gotten lost in shipping somehow. Colin was told to meet up in front of the law office in an hour. Together, they would make their way to the old Campbell place in the town of Dollar, 20 kilometers away, and there the will would be read. He cleaned himself up as best he could and found his way to the lawyer’s office.

In the car, after some polite conversation, Colin asked who else would be there, and who else was in line for the inheritance.

The lawyer’s response was, “Besides possibly your brother it would seem that no one else was willing to accept the offer. You are the sole benefactor”.

They approached the town and then began the drive up through a glen. Colin gets a glimpse through the trees to…, “Is that what I think it is, a real castle?”

Castle Campbell

“Indeed it is. Castle Campbell.”

They park, walk the short distance up to the castle, and through the entrance gate. Colin saw that he was stepping into a ruin. All he could think to say was, “Wow, must have been one hell of a party. This place is a ruin. What happened here?”

Mr. Overprice responded, “A revolt. Normally though it is the townsfolk who are revolting, this time it was the other way around.” He laughed dryly.

Colin didn’t get the joke.

Much of the place was indeed a ruin except for the big stone sticky up thing in the middle, the keep it was called, which was intact, well mostly intact. And in the keep, after the formality of the reading, Colin was taken to a drawing room where, behind a frayed tapestry, there was a massive iron studded door.

The lawyer continued, “As I said the estate is worth somewhere in the neighbourhood of two million pounds, minus a few minor details, the personal debts of the last laird, which are behind that door.”

Colin, still in the state of shock from the reading of the will, opened the door and immediately disappeared under the avalanche of paper that spilled out. When he swam to the surface he sat there a moment and then skimmed a few papers off the top and looked at them. There were bills - for everything - going back years. I mean decades. And many of the amounts due were in weird currency too… tuppence, thrupenny, whuppence, comeupence, farthings, groats (‘Groats,’ Colin thought, ‘they got groats, anything else, sheeps maybe?’). He couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

On the advice of the lawyer, he hired an accountant; one that was familiar with all the olde currency who could do the number crunching. Colin sure couldn’t do it. Mr.Overprice recommended a certain Mrs.Olivia Orkney (actually related to the barrister although Colin didn’t know that). Mr.Overprice went to pick her up in his car.

Colin and the bills

Colin fought the temptation to set fire to the pile of bills.

Soon the old woman arrived. Colin had to carry the calculator and abacus from the car up to the castle. He put everything down on a table just outside the room with the bills. Then the lawyer left.

Colin spent several hours sitting at the huge table sorting paper and eating leftover haggis sandwiches (the only food that seemed to be available in the castle). The only sounds in the massive empty space were the sounds of the calculator clicking away, the clack of the abacus beads on the wires, and occasional sounds of the accountant tut-tut-tutting to herself as she toted.

Colin kept thinking to himself, ‘But I didn’t even do anything. This time it really isn’t my fault.’ Eventually it got to him. He had to get out of the accounting room; each click and clack was making his head pound. He lifted his face out of his hands, rose from the table, and said to the world at large, ‘I’ll be back’.

He wandered through the keep, checking behind doors and tapestries, looking in drawers; just generally being nosey. He couldn’t believe the mess in one of the rooms. It looked like an orgy had exploded. The bed was big though so he took it and had a nap.

On another foray he discovered ten barrels in the cellar containing something that, when he pulled the bung out and sniffed the contents, smelled interesting, faintly wine scented, fruity with an antiseptic undertone. Since he hadn’t had a real drink in who knows how long, he wondered if it was good (for a certain value of good) to drink. He siphoned off a cask of the stuff and carried it upstairs to ‘his bedroom’. The stuff, whatever it was, passed the time much better for him because it blanked out most of it. Sheep stomach sandwiches started to taste tolerable because he started dipping them in the stuff before consuming them. He started thinking of it as ‘the dip’.

By the time the cask was empty Colin had achieved what served him for normalcy. He grabbed a grubby robe from off the floor, slipped it on, and went back downstairs. Somewhat to his surprise the tally had just been completed. He was presented with the result.

There were, of course, the bills for the mundane stuff: electricity, water, privy cleaning, chimney sweeping, stonemasonry, blacksmithy, and all that kind of castle maintenance thing.

Then there came the not so mundane items: IOU’s (for mainly gambling debts), 10 barrels of scented sheep dip, a bill of several thousand pounds for several thousand pounds of haggis, bag pipe lessons, hookers (not rug makers), bag pipe playing hookers, and a whopping bill for a revolt from the people of Dollar.

And then there were the death taxes. He said out loud, “Wow, what if you can’t afford to die?”

Mrs. Orkney said nothing.

‘Okay’, he thought, ‘there’s still some money left, not a bad sum, surely enough to live if not regally then at least comfortably.’

Then the accountant presented her bill. Colin gulped.

‘Well, there’s still something, a few grand’, he thought.

After a phone call from Mrs. Orkney to the law office, the lawyer, Mr. Overprice, returned and presented Colin the bill for his services as well. He lived up to his name.

Colin, dejected, sat down hard on a chair. It broke under him. ‘Maybe I can still afford a pint of cider or something. At least I should have the title.’

As a parting gesture the barrister pulled something out of the inner pocket of his overcoat and dropped it onto the table. It was a scroll sealed with wax. The lawyer said, pointing, “That is a decree from the head of the Campbell Clan, the Duke of Argyle.”

Colin looked at the rolled paper but didn’t touch it. He’d never had a scroll before. It looked important.

Mr. Overprice continued, “Once the accounts are settled, as they now are except for the signing of cheques, your entire branch of the Campbell clan is to be lopped off, metaphorically that is, or rather historically, lock, stock and title. And just in case you are wondering what then is to become of you, you are either to be put in prison or put to work as a privy scrubber on the Duke’s estate, for life. Maybe both.”

You could tell that the lawyer liked to hear the sound of his own voice and was warming to his topic.

“Let me give you a little explanation. You see we needed a sacrificial lamb as it were, in order to have someone directly related to your uncle pay for his actions in life, for the sake of the citizenry of the town who demand it and for the nation, which, quite frankly, could use a little pruning of the more warped branches. You, with the way you dress, the way you behave, are definitely that person.

“Having murderous cutthroat ancestors is one thing, that just gives a place colour, a sense of history, but your deviant branch of the Campbells…”. He made a noise of disgust.

“Finally, since your uncle has indeed passed on, your family has lost the protection of powers that are, shall we say, higher up the royal food chain, including the Duke himself. Bob is definitely not your uncle anymore.”

Colin didn’t understand that reference either. The lawyer knew it too and chuckled to himself.

“You’ve earned his fate and our contempt,” and he threw in, for the first and only time, the words, mocking, “my Lord.”

“Now, as for the castle, it will be torn to the ground and then pissed on by the townsfolk. Oh we’ll keep part of a wall and maybe the top room of the keep. It is old you know. But in the main it will be made into a squirrel and bat sanctuary.”

He starts putting on his gloves. “Mrs Orkney and I will be here tomorrow morning with the cheques for you to sign. Oh, and likely the police as your escort to your new life. For tonight we’ll be closing the gate and locking it from the outside. We’ll be keeping the keys for your, um, protection. Have a good night.” They left. A hollow boom echoed through the largely empty space as the massive door closed. A heavy key turned in the lock.

Late that night, tossing and turning in bed (lumpy, uncomfortable, smelling of dust and dip) the answer came to him. Scamper. He sat up and looked around the gloomy room. ‘There has to be a way out’, he thought, ‘has to be’. He grabbed the old robe, checked all the usual exits (locked) and then headed up the stairs to the parapet near the bat room (there really was one here) and peered over the battlement.

There it was, about six feet over and four feet down from where he was standing, a drainpipe leading to freedom. He went to the bedroom and retrieved a couple of sheets, tied them together, then secured them to one of the battlements. He lowered himself down the castle wall somewhat and then started to swing back and forth until he could grab the downspout. There was a tense moment when Colin was left with one hand clinging to bed sheet and the other to the pipe, but he swung his leg around the drainpipe and got himself into a better position. He let go of the one and started to slide down the other. The drainpipe, unused to carrying the weight of a Campbell, had other ideas. About a quarter of the way down it broke away from the building. Colin fell backward screaming into disarray (actually a prickly bush). It hurt. It hurt a lot.

Luckily he didn’t break anything serious; it was all mostly scratches and bruises. He still had two good legs and he started to run. He didn’t stop running until he hit water and so with a big splash he fell into the Firth of Froth.

Something loomed close by. It was a ship. He dog paddled around it until he found the dock it was connected to and a ladder headed up. He snuck up the ship’s boarding ramp onto the deck and then hid himself under a tarp in a lifeboat. His stockings by this time were a shredded mess and the robe smelled like a wet sheep had messed in it.  Colin, exhausted from his efforts, passed out. Early the next morning the old hulk of a steamer headed out to sea.

Colin woke some time in the afternoon stiff and sore. He checked out his new surroundings and found emergency supplies left in the little boat: some sort of crackers and tins of Spam, a couple gallons of water. He munched on one of the crackers which was as hard as rock. ‘At least it doesn’t taste like sheep intestines,’ he thought. He managed to get it down with some sips of water. ‘Wish I had some dip.’

That satisfied him for a time. When it started to get dark he peeked from under the tarp and watched a couple of the seamen go about their duties. He’s starting to think that he might be able to sneak around a bit (not too many crew, not much activity) and maybe find the kitchen and some real food. He decided to wait for an hour or so.

That night, his torso emerging from the tarp, Colin reached out and grabbed a red painted handle intending to use it to lever himself up. The lever pulled down and the next thing he knows the lifeboat has launched itself over the side and into the water. Colin loses what little lunch he’s had all over the inside of the lifeboat.

So he sleeps for a while comforted by the rocking of the sea. Then he spends a week or so eating crackers and singing rude songs to himself.

Still under the canvas cover, he’s playing cops and robbers with himself with the flare gun he found in the emergency kit. He accidentally pulls the trigger. The flare ignites the canvas tarp, which starts to burn brightly (with a slight green tinge). The next thing to catch were the cracker wrappers (which Colin had not bothered to clean up), then the rest of the supplies. Colin tried to put out the flames but couldn’t. He singed his bathrobe. The boat itself was the last to catch.

“Oh, shit!”

Soon all that is left on the surface of a mildly undulating sea is Colin floating and holding on to this long paddle thingy. A cabbage floated by. Fortunately rescue arrived not long after, drawn to the location by the fire and smoke that was seen for miles. A waste scow headed south picked Colin up and then, a few days later, deposited him on the shore of an island.

Catching Up

Strange things always seem to happen to Ralph and Colin, well, like this. What do you think the chances are of two brothers just happening to meet at a small bar on an island in an out of the way location? How far out of the way? It’s so far out that it doesn’t exist on most maps, that’s how far. It is only a speck on some of the more detailed maps, an insignificant dot located somewhere in the South Atlantic Ocean closer to Antarctica than anyplace else.

The bar is the South Orkney Bar, the S.O.B., and it’s on, you guessed it, the South Orkney Islands (which, as I said, are bloody hard to find on the best of days). Colin walks into the bar and sees his brother Ralph already sitting at the bar and pouring a shot for the bartender from what appears to be a large wine skin.

They are naturally surprised to see one another at first. I mean, who wouldn’t be? After all the back slapping, the manly hug, and then the ritual sitting down and pouring of drinks, they get comfortable and begin to relate their stories to one another, the tales of how they ended up there. Colin was just finishing up telling Ralph all the sordid details of why they weren’t rich or royal or anything.

“But I didn’t even do anything. This time it really wasn’t my fault.

“And you remember, Uncle Rufus, he sponged on us like crazy when he came to visit, never paid for anything. Drank up all our booze, ate all our cheezies. I thought that he would think well of us with that death thing.

“All I got out of that was a massive headache and this really bad taste of sheep stomach in my mouth.” He pulled the robe closer around himself, took a sip of his beer and said, “At least we’ll be safe here for a while.”

A voice approaching from behind said, “You think so?”

Word really does get around fast, especially bad news like ‘Campbells are coming.’ This word certainly did. You almost might think it was some sort of telepathic link, except that long distance charges were later levied. Odd as in may seem this certain old accountant lady in Scotland had told her nephew, the local constable here by the way, in their weekly telephone call that this ill dressed and ill mannered Campbell person had run away before paying her.

So, an official delegation of, well, officials, approached the seated Campbells. The delegation was comprised of one rather pissed off constable and several large intimidating lads.

Getting right to the point the constable says, “You,” he points to Colin, “are not welcome here. I figure we can either send you back to Scotland or, and this is because I’m such a nice guy and hate doing paperwork, you can take the next ice floe heading north.”

The lads surround Colin. “But I just got here.”

“Too bad. You’re not staying here.”

The constable turns to Ralph, “What about you?”

“Me?”

“You haven’t done anything illegal that I know of, yet. You can stay but, and let me make this clear, only until you can book passage off our rock. Understood?”

“That’s no good.”

The constable bridled, the large intimidating lads assumed even more threatening postures, “You have another suggestion?”

“I’m going on the ice floe, of course, with my brother.”

So two brothers were put on that first ice floe heading north. “Well, for all the crap we went through, we ended up with nothing, absolutely nothing.” Colin absently stared out at the water and the fin zigzagging around in their wake. It seemed to be following them. He quickly took his hand out of the water.

Ralph feels the three seeds still remaining in his skirt pocket. “Well, buck up, we might have the main ingredient for our next batch of booze. I still have a couple of these Morinda seeds left. These things grow like weeds. Hell, they grow faster than weeds. They kill weeds, and wildlife, and most other stuff. Now if I can only remember the recipe…”

The scene fades as the brothers drift on.

Disclaimer: no actual fruit were harmed during the writing of this story, or lizards for that matter.



So there you have it, another tale of the Campbell brothers. I hope you enjoyed it.