In the last post: Thwarted in love and bitterly humiliated, Olive escaped to her dreams...

Dear friends, if you like a good chuckle, dim-witted heroes, and larger-than-life villains, then you'll love this fascinating series. On Tuesdays and Saturdays, I’m blogging nibble-sized chunks of new ‘Life in the Clouds’ stories. You can check in regularly and read them for free, or wait to buy the entire story when published.


Enchanter on the Roof ® James Field. Part 24

In the morning, as the first light of day crept into her room, Olive sat up in bed and rubbed her face. “You bloody fool,” she scolded herself.

She’d tossed and turned all night, thinking about her fiancé, Bert, and the wrong she had done him. The poor man had watched her make a fool of herself trying to make out with Dick Charmer, a scrawny self-digger fifteen years younger than her.

In the long run, if she had to choose between the two, she would settle for Bert any day.

Bert was such a strange, mysterious darling: six-foot-six tall and thirty stone. He was an ogre of a human being, with no neck and a bulbous head that properly belongs to a bulldog. His hands can crush cocoa-nuts as though they were ostrich eggs.

He might be the ugliest man she had ever met, big and menacing as he was, but beneath the flab he was as kind and gentle as a kitten.

Kids and animals loved him. And he loved them back. They saw through his hostile exterior to the maternal softness within. Above all, he loved her with such a possessive passion that her toes curled with the thought.

Such is his strength, that he won a bet once by tearing his way out of a straitjacket, although it's surprising they found one to fit him. His chest and belly resemble a massive fragmentation grenade, and if you were stupid enough to pull the pin, it was liable to detonate.

How on earth must he have felt, she asked herself, watching me flirt with Dick Charmer? An acute pang of shame ran through her and she pulled her knees into her chest. She remembered his look of hurt and disappointment at the disco, so deep that a shadow of self-destruction had hung over him; either that or the destruction of something or someone else.

Heavens, what a fool she'd made of herself. Worse, would the sweet giant ever forgive her?

She climbed out of bed and made for the bathroom. Whatever else she did today, somehow or another she would make it up to him.

To be continued…


The real world:

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Like to know more about Alf, Bert and the rest of the gang? You can read their chaotic history in What on Earth.
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