Why is it Wrong to Read Novels in the Morning?
Occasionally there was a certain amount of logic to Great Aunt Andrea answers; a stopped clock, as the saying went, would still tell the time twice a day. However, the girls were reasonably certain she was usually telling them the first daft thing which popped into her head. They didn’t mind at all. In fact, the girls felt somewhat responsible. They knew they were driving Great Aunt Andrea round the twist. They’d be stationed with her for the entire summer whilst Mother and Father traipsed all the way around the world on a big, fancy boat.
Two months was an awfully long time. The girls were feeling the drag of it. They imagined Great Aunt Andrea was equally ready for September to roll in. The poor woman was almost eighty and not used to having little girls about the place. Hence there was nothing for children in the house. Not so much as a picture book or a packet of crayons. And as for other children, well there wasn’t a child to be found in any direction for a distance of several miles. The girls spent their days climbing trees or running wild around Great Aunt Andrea’s kitchen garden and, in the evening, pestered the old woman with dozens and dozens of nonsensical questions.
Why was this? And what was that? And when did the other? And how come? Great Aunt Andrea felt for them. Girls of their age required occupying and there was nothing to hand with which to occupy them. At first, she’d earnestly answered every question, doing her best to provide them with a satisfying response. Now, when they sat down next to her on the sofa and looked up at her with their big brown eyes, she took a deep breath, steadied herself and prepared to spend the following hour, batting their questions away like bothersome fruit flies. The girls knew they’d get semi-sensible answers for the first five minutes or so and, as the mad answers were much more entertaining, had learnt to save their best questions until the end.
“Why is the Earth round like a ball?” they asked, fully aware of the correct answer.
“So, it can spin around the sun,” Great Aunt Andrea replied.
“Do fish rise or sink when they’re sleeping?”
“Neither. They hover somewhere in the middle of the ocean. This is due to gravity.”
“Are ghosts real?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course, they are.”
“Who will take over when the Queen stops being the Queen.”
“Whoever’s head fits best inside the crown.”
“Why is it wrong to read novels in the morning?”
“Because your imagination is still asleep.”
“What colour is Heaven?”
“Why do guinea pigs exist?”
“How high is the highest tree?”
“How long is a piece of string?”
“Enough,” said Great Aunt Andrea. “It’s time for bed.” The girls were particularly annoying this evening. They’d been at it now for almost three hours, firing questions at her turn about until her head was ready to split.
“Please, please Great Aunt Andrea, just one more question we promise. Then we’ll stop.”
“Alright,” she said, “just one more question.”
They asked their question and Great Aunt Andrea answered to the best of her knowledge and was in the process of rising off the sofa to usher the girls up to bed when they started lobbing more questions at her. Why and how and when and what?
Later, when she’d finally got the girls settled and apologised for the umpteenth time, she’d lie in bed feeling dreadful and wondering what could have possessed her to be so mean.
“Why have mother and father been gone so long?”
“Because their boat sank and now they’re dead.”
Inspired by a line from Agatha Christie’s 1970 novel Passenger to Frankfurt