| Battery life |
| Mrs Periwinkle only switched herself
on every other Sunday when the grandchildren came to visit. Her battery was
running down and she wanted to try and conserve her energy reserves as much as
possible. Of course, she could get a refill at the local recharging station.
But her battery was holding less and less charge each time, and electricity was
so expensive these days. The grandchildren's visit was the highlight of Mrs Periwinkle's week. She would always make a chocolate cake for them, and buy some jam biscuits with her pension money. Much as she loved the two children, they were sometimes a bit much for her: the young twins Ninevolt and Nicad were always running everywhere at top speed. As her daughter Voltaic arrive she put the kettle on to make all them a nice cup of tea. Mrs Periwinkle knew she didn't have long left before her battery run out completely, but she always tried to hide it. She didn't let her family know that she had to keep herself switched off during the week. She would always make up stories about what she had done, where she had been, and how much she had enjoyed herself. She was fairly philosophical about her condition: In her youth she had taken long holidays in hot countries, which she had always know wasn't exactly conducive to battery life. Although she did wish now that she had taken a couple of holiday in cooler countries, to try and balance out some of the damage. She sat on her favourite chair listing to her granddaughter and her husband Alkaline talking about their jobs, and how hard it was for them to look after the children while working full time. It must be tough for them she thought, seeing that the parents had failed to notice the children having a full-scale crisp fight in her sitting room; the young twins had always been fairly exuberant with their food. As the crisp fight escalated into chocolate cake warfare, Mrs Periwinkle sighed, she would have to leave herself on for a couple of hours after they had gone, so that she could clean up all the mess. Two weeks later, as Voltaic was shouting at the twins in the back of car she sighed. Yet another afternoon of listening to her grandmother's stories; where she had been and all the things she had seen and done. Voltaic wished her mother would help out with the children more, instead of gallivanting about all over the place. However, once she reached Mrs Periwinkle's place she received a horrible shock. her grandmother was frozen still: Her battery had completely drained of its energy while she was trying to remove a particularly stubborn chocolate stain form the carpet. |
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© 2005 K. Denham