--- TALES OF FLASHOVER HOUSE
---
No 1. The Visitor
In the quiet backwaters of a small south coast town,
snuggling cosily within a veil of badly-hung wire aerials,
is Flashover House the home for aged and discarded radio hams. Some of the
inmates have been deposited in this home by unfeeling relatives at the end of
their tether, while others have been left on the doorstep at dead of night,
nestling in tea-chests half filled with old tuning condensers and QSL cards.
In charge of the home is a 20 stone female known
simply as "Matron". No one, so far, has dared to ask her real name.
She has no medical qualifications but she does have the ability no purchase
liquid paraffin and senna pods at trade price. It
takes a brave man to complain of constipation in this establishment!
All the residents have their own bed-sits (or
bed-shacks) with their call-signs on the door. Seniority is strictly by
call-book order, and the head man is a rather antique G2 who keeps an
assortment of resistors in his waistcoat pocket in case he meets someone who
wants to do a swap.
Angus the GM3 is a large man who seldom speaks and
works solely on CW. This is due to an unfortunate experience he had in the late
1940s. Apparently he said "Good-morning" to a complete stranger in
his home-town of
The one they call Weasel is a bit of an enigma. He is
a mid G4 and the others don't really trust him. They suspect that he enhances
his signal reports on incoming QSL cards, which offends the code of honour and
upsets those who hadn't thought of it first.
There is a communal lounge to which the hams retreat when the sunspots
are a bit thin on the ground. On these occasions they usually sit in a circle
and lie about DX. On a recent occasion, however, one of them had some
disturbing news.
"My sister is coming to see me" said Rees
Morgan, right out of the blue. "Not your sister Blodwen
from the Rhonda?" squeaked a terrified G2 from over in the
corner." "Yes" admitted
Rees Morgan.""But she is a tyrant"
complained the G2. "The last time she was here she made us all wash our
feet, and it wasn't even Christmas" said big Angus, the bitterness of the
memory causing him to break his vows of silence. Soon other voices were joining
in and expressing their anxiety.
"What are we going to do?" "Let's
pretend we're not in when she calls." "She will see us through the
window." "We'll hide under our
beds.""I have a bad leg." "then hide in
the wardrobe." "If we all
hide, Matron will let her in."
"I will take Matron to the pictures, that will keep her out ofthe way!"
There was silence and all eyes turned, with a touch
of reverence, to the Weasel, who had made that last remark. Surely, this type
of bravery had gone out of fashion with the charge of the Light Brigade. Weasel
basked in the adulation for a few minutes, then
brought them back to earth.
"I will need one and ninepence." "There is no such thingas
one and ninepence any more." said the G8 with
two suffix letters who knows all about financial matters "You will need
about œ4." "Make it a
fiver" said Weasel, ever the opportunist, "She might want a
choc-ice."
They looked in the paper to see which of the two
local cinemas offered the most suitable fare, and settled for a light musical
comedy in which, in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust, a multi-headed
creature from the sea-bed was roaming the earth devouring the survivors. It was
said to have some nice catchy tunes.
On "B" for Blodwen
day the plans all took shape. Weasel and Matron were despatched to their
cultural feast, a look-out was positioned behind the lace curtains and there
was a general air of excitement. When Blodwen was
sighted at the entrance to the drive, the signal was given,
they scrambled into their various hiding places and lay still.
She pushed aside the radials of a 10 metre vertical
to give herself access to the door-bell and gave a long ring. No reply. She
rang again and still no reply. The ancient hams were beginning to scent
victory, but twenty years on the road with the Kleen-Ez-E
Brush Company had equipped Blodwen to deal with this
sort of thing. She peered through the letter-box, and, when that revealed
nothing, she started on a tour of the windows. It was then that things went
sadly wrong. The senior G2 who was folded into a ball
under his bed, suddenly got cramp and shot his leg out of its concealment. Blodwen was on to this in a flash. "Come on, I can see
you in there, open the door."
Sheepishly they dusted themselves off and let her in.
"What do you think you are doing?" she demanded. "It is G2s
birthday party." said someone with a burst of inspiration, "and we
are playing hide-and-seek." "You should be ashamed at your age, and
anyway, if it is someones birthday, where is the
cake?" asked Blodwen.
There comes a time when the only logical course of
action is complete surrender, and this point had been reached. When Weasel and
Matron returned from their night on the town, they could hear, from the
kitchen, the sound of bowls being filled with hot water and, in the privacy of
their own shacks, the defeated hams were reluctantly removing their socks.
Stan
G4ITM