Bassim
VIP Member
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2008
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- Bosnian
- Home Country
- Bosnia Herzegovina
- Current Location
- Sweden
I wrote this text as comic reportage. Would you please correct my mistakes?
More than two years after the first appearance of a plastic bag with nails, the people of the village of Cheswick are still baffled and bewildered. It all started in the morning of the New Year’s Day of 2017 when Diana K opened her house door to go out with her dog Fido. On her doorstep sat a plain, white plastic bag. Her curiosity was quicker than Fido’s reaction, and she snatched the bag before the dog sniffed it. She opened it and saw a few handfuls of brand new nails, all of the same length. Her ample body started immediately to burn as if someone had thrown her in a furnace. Her rage was directed at her next-door neighbour, Robert, with whom she was in conflict since he had installed his new roof. Its new eaves are longer than the previous one and without a gutter. They intrude about 20 centimetres into Diana’s property, which clearly contravenes building regulations.
When it is raining, which happens so often in this part of the country, all the water splashes down onto her sensitive plants, stunting their growth and destroying them. Diana, a widow since a few years back, had asked her neighbour on many occasions to do something and shorten the eaves or at least install the gutter, but he had just ignored her and called her “old fat cow”.
After all frustration and anger that had accumulated inside her in the past weeks, Diana’s reaction was not surprising. She strode over and demonstratively laid the bag at the neighbour’s door, convinced that he was the culprit. She had hardly walked down the street, when Robert opened his door to take his mastiff Rex out for a stroll. Seeing a bag with nails, he understood the message and knew who the messenger was. He was boiling inside, but being an Englishman and brought up to keep a stiff upper lip, he put the bag back at Diana’s door, without batting an eye. Besides, he was recently retired from the army and didn’t fancy another argument with his neighbour. About 30 minutes later, Diana waddled back home and, without showing any emotion, she returned the bag to his door. This toing and froing went on the whole day, under the watchful eyes of their neighbours, who peered behind lace curtains without even touching them, as it is the English custom. The next morning there was no trace of the bag, to the relief of everybody.
But when Tara L went to the only shop in the village to buy some groceries, at 9am, she was visibly upset. She told the shop assistant that she found a white bag full of nails on her garden table. Tara, who had recently recovered from breast cancer, took it as a bad omen. There was always a thought at the back of her mind that the cancer would go into remission. The shop assistant told her that she couldn’t understand what a bag of nails had to do with her cancer, but superstitious as she was, Tara was shaking. She came back home, grabbed the bag and tossed it into the dustbin, and immediately called her GP to get an appointment. Later, she would discover she was as healthy as a horse.
When 85-year old John found the bag on his driveway, he was as happy as ever. He likes to occupy himself with repairing all kinds of things and a bag of nails might always come in handy. He only wished they were in different sizes, but as the saying goes, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
Soon, the bag appeared everywhere. Every morning, people would find it in different places: on their doorstep, in the garden, orchard, windowsill, on the ploughed field, on the pavement, by the bus stop, by the traffic sign, in a parking spot, in the playground. People found it amusing at first, and they tried to understand the meaning, the message and the logic, but were none the wiser. They believed that an oddball somehow had access to a large amount of nails and a lot of free time, which he used to annoy people in the village. They were convinced he must have been a weirdo and a stranger. Surely, nobody in their village would be capable of doing such stupid things.
TO BE CONTINUED
More than two years after the first appearance of a plastic bag with nails, the people of the village of Cheswick are still baffled and bewildered. It all started in the morning of the New Year’s Day of 2017 when Diana K opened her house door to go out with her dog Fido. On her doorstep sat a plain, white plastic bag. Her curiosity was quicker than Fido’s reaction, and she snatched the bag before the dog sniffed it. She opened it and saw a few handfuls of brand new nails, all of the same length. Her ample body started immediately to burn as if someone had thrown her in a furnace. Her rage was directed at her next-door neighbour, Robert, with whom she was in conflict since he had installed his new roof. Its new eaves are longer than the previous one and without a gutter. They intrude about 20 centimetres into Diana’s property, which clearly contravenes building regulations.
When it is raining, which happens so often in this part of the country, all the water splashes down onto her sensitive plants, stunting their growth and destroying them. Diana, a widow since a few years back, had asked her neighbour on many occasions to do something and shorten the eaves or at least install the gutter, but he had just ignored her and called her “old fat cow”.
After all frustration and anger that had accumulated inside her in the past weeks, Diana’s reaction was not surprising. She strode over and demonstratively laid the bag at the neighbour’s door, convinced that he was the culprit. She had hardly walked down the street, when Robert opened his door to take his mastiff Rex out for a stroll. Seeing a bag with nails, he understood the message and knew who the messenger was. He was boiling inside, but being an Englishman and brought up to keep a stiff upper lip, he put the bag back at Diana’s door, without batting an eye. Besides, he was recently retired from the army and didn’t fancy another argument with his neighbour. About 30 minutes later, Diana waddled back home and, without showing any emotion, she returned the bag to his door. This toing and froing went on the whole day, under the watchful eyes of their neighbours, who peered behind lace curtains without even touching them, as it is the English custom. The next morning there was no trace of the bag, to the relief of everybody.
But when Tara L went to the only shop in the village to buy some groceries, at 9am, she was visibly upset. She told the shop assistant that she found a white bag full of nails on her garden table. Tara, who had recently recovered from breast cancer, took it as a bad omen. There was always a thought at the back of her mind that the cancer would go into remission. The shop assistant told her that she couldn’t understand what a bag of nails had to do with her cancer, but superstitious as she was, Tara was shaking. She came back home, grabbed the bag and tossed it into the dustbin, and immediately called her GP to get an appointment. Later, she would discover she was as healthy as a horse.
When 85-year old John found the bag on his driveway, he was as happy as ever. He likes to occupy himself with repairing all kinds of things and a bag of nails might always come in handy. He only wished they were in different sizes, but as the saying goes, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
Soon, the bag appeared everywhere. Every morning, people would find it in different places: on their doorstep, in the garden, orchard, windowsill, on the ploughed field, on the pavement, by the bus stop, by the traffic sign, in a parking spot, in the playground. People found it amusing at first, and they tried to understand the meaning, the message and the logic, but were none the wiser. They believed that an oddball somehow had access to a large amount of nails and a lot of free time, which he used to annoy people in the village. They were convinced he must have been a weirdo and a stranger. Surely, nobody in their village would be capable of doing such stupid things.
TO BE CONTINUED
