rowanberries | (no subject)

Man, you know you're hungry when you absent-mindedly drink honey straight out of the bottle.

*Classiness personified*

I'll run and eat in a minute, but I haven't updated properly in a while, and I should do that, really. In between answering tags from the nightclub opening party (Jack Harkness and James Bond, guys.)

Mostly this week I have been goig to lectures, not going to lectures, and avoiding AIM. I don't know why. I'm on tonight, anyhow. Tomorrow my sister's coming to stay for the weekend, which will be awesome, although I do go worryingly maternal when I'm in sole charge of one of my siblings. I spent this afternoon trolling around Sainsburys looking for food that I'm pretty sure she'll eat (and that I will. Child likes anchovies, bleh,) getting momentarily fixated by some girl's hair (Pretty! Dark red, curlywispy! Pretty!) and wondering if at some point I should actually start budgeting my student loan.

My Magic and Superstition tutor finally redeemed himself (a little bit) by cancelling the two classes next week, since it's essay-assessed, not exam. Also, he told us a story (as reported/interpreted by a historian) and told us to find a way to retell it using the same basic events to make a different story.

During the late 1730s, a young worker related, he was serving his apprenticeship in rue Saint Severin, Paris. The two young apprentices were treated appallingly, or so they saw it; they had to get up before anyone else, do the hardest, dirtiest errands, and have nothing but their employers leftovers to eat, not at the Master's table, as they believed was their right, but after everyone else, alone in the cold kitchen. What made this an even bitterer pill to swallow, was that the cook, in secret, sold the leftovers, and gave the boys food meant for the cats, cheap, cold and often half-rotten meat. But the cats, those cats. The boys resented them because the Master and Mistress were especially fond of them as animals, particularly the Mistress' pet, la grise. This cat got the best, meat, the undivided attention of the Master and Mistress, and ate at the the table in the place the boys believed was theirs.

This went on, until one night, cold and angry, the boys resolved to right the state of affairs. The second boy had a remarkable talent for mimicry, and went up onto the roof to hide near the Master bedroom, and began to make a hideous caterwauling, like hundreds of noisy cats. The Master and Mistress hardly slept a wink, and this was repeated night after night. Finally, the Master could no onger bear it, and ordered the apprentices to kill all the cats around the shop. Except, the Mistress implored, for her beoved pet, la grise. The Master agreed that he has to be spared. But the gleeful boys went to it with a will, seeking out la grise first and foremost, stuffing it's body down a drainpipe, before going after all the others they could find with broomsticks, beating some to death, and holding a mock trial for others before hanging them, forsaking all work for the day to enjoy their joke. The Master was furious at the stoppage of work, but when the Mistress could not find her pet, she believed the massacre to be an attack on her, and drew the Master inside. The apprentices, for their part, fell about laughing and went about enjoying their day of freedom.

And that, more or less, is where Darnton's account stops. So we, in pairs, were given the change of retelling the story.

Once upon a time, there were two boy apprentices to a Master printer in la rue Saint Severin. These two boys were made to work from dawn till dusk, and the filthiest tasks, so hard and heavy that their backs were near bent by nightfall. Their Master and Mistress fed them only poor food, which the poor boys greatly resented, as they worked so hard, and this drew their attention to a curious thing. At the table - where by rights, as apprentices, they should sit - the Master and Mistress sat with a grey cat, feeding it the very best morsels from the own plates, and speaking to it, as if it could actually take part in a conversation.

Greatly worried, the boys discussed the possibility that first came to mind. Could their Master and Mistress be... witches? They are cruel, as all witches surely must be, and the grey cat as a familiar would certainly accord with the respect with which it is treated. But to go to the courts would be dangerous, as apprentices had such little power. They decided on a test. One of the boys, most talented in mimicry, crawled up to outside the Master bedroom window, and begain to caterwaul like hundreds of cats, calling them out to the Sabbat. If they come out, went the boys' reasoning, then surely they must be right? This went on for a few days before the Master and Mistress, tired and pale, ordered the boys to kill the cats - all of them except the grey one that ate with them at the table. They boys had a talk. They didn't come out to the Sabbat - but why such extreme measures for what was only noise? It must, they decided, be that they have guilty consciences about the acts of evil they commit, and see the noise of the cats as a sign.

But then, said the first, the Master's order to kill the cats gave them the perfect cover. They could kill the grey cat too, and claim it was mixed up with the others they were trying to kill, and they did not realise. The boys set to with a will, killing the grey the first instant they found it, before carrying on to destroy the others.

When she found out, the Mistress gave a horrible shriek, and disappeared indoors. The Master was furious, but could do nothing, and with the death of the grey cat, his power had disappeared. They apprentices breathed a sigh of relief, thanking God that good had triumphed over evil.

...Obviously, you have to imagine that being read in a melodramatic voice.

After all that, we actually found out that bloody Darnton missed out half the story, and the apprentices just got punished, and actually, it was a folk tail about how the printing trade didn't need to be regulated. But I still think my version was more fun.

And now, dinners!