Room 2D

Story from Janus 49 by R.P. Forrester The past is another country . L.P. Hartley? Yes. And certainly that idyllic spot, that little village set in the sparkling mountains that I wandered into as a young man is another country. A country which then had not known the ravages of war and post-war; a country now only of my mind. It was just before the war, 1938 I think, but as yet in that remote mountain-ringed region of Central Europe there was no hint of what was shortly to come. I was walking, with a rucksack, occasionally taking a lift on one of the rare vehicles, studying the language (or telling myself I was) which was a dialect of German (I suppose now it is Russian they have to speak). At any rate English travellers, indeed any travellers, seemed to be very rare birds and perhaps that is why I was treated with such friendliness. And allowed such intimate insights in that household. I simply wandered in along the dusty road one sunlit autumn afternoon. I stayed for fou...

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The concluding part of an original story by Culver . PART TWO Alf Mossmere, senior steward at Steeplehurst Botanical Gardens, is part way through punishing nineteen-year-old Lucy Valewood. Earlier he caught her picking a fritillary for her flower-pressing collection, a serious breach of garden rules. Now he’s got her in the education centre, well before opening time. Having already hand-spanked the girl, he’s about to give her a birching. No resemblance between fictional characters or settings and actual persons or places is intended or should be inferred. 3rd August (continued) Conspicuous in the sunlit room was a giant, stylised seed pod, its smooth, elliptical form carved from laminated timber and finished with a satin sheen. It was partly exhibit, partly a functional seat and partly a play object. Alf told Lucy to lie face down over it. He instructed her to stretch right across the smooth surface and raise her bare bot...