Bron-3

By Ivan the OK-ish
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Continued from Chapter 2: Bron-2 | ABCtales
Chapter 3
Linda arrived home at six at the small flat, on the corner of Great Cumberland Place and George Street. Bron, unusually, was sitting on the small tattered sofa in the small kitchen-cum-living room, bare feet drawn up beneath her and wearing grey trackie bottoms and a white T-shirt. (Usually she hid herself away in the front bedroom, only emerging to microwave a carton of Tesco curry before quickly disappearing again.)
Linda was distracted, agitated even.
She sat down at the other end of the sofa.
“Oh, hi Bron. You know, I just ran into that old Mrs Bliedorf, the one who lives above us. She said at about eleven o’clock this morning, she’d heard a massive outburst of swearing coming from our flat. Really loud. Went on for at least an hour. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“Yeah. It was me. I was upset” Linda gave a start; Bron was nothing if not straightforward. “Probably was me, anyway. What sort of words?”
“Oh, you know: fuck, wanker, the C-word…”
“The C-word?”
“Yes, you know, er, c-u-n-t.” (Linda had taught maths in a Tottenham secondary school before taking up her job in finance and considered herself fairly broadminded, but you had to draw the line somewhere.)
“Oh … cont.”
“Oh, is that the Welsh for it?
“No, it’s the same. Must be my accent.”
(For most of her youth, Bron had been under the impression that it was a Welsh word. It was only on a school trip to Manchester and saw it spray-painted on the wall of the Arndale centre that she realised otherwise.)
“But why were you upset, Bron? Is something wrong?”
She was saved from answering by the sound of Chris’ key scraping in the lock. “Hi, honey, I’m home…Oh, hi Bron...”
“I’m just making us all a nice cup of tea,” said Linda, brandishing the huge shiny brown teapot. “No, don’t go Bron. This is your sitting room as much as ours, you know that don’t you?”
Bron stared at an ancient cigarette burn on the mottled grey carpet, fingering the end of her short, black bob, then repeatedly pressed the end of her blunt, slightly freckled nose, both gestures calculated to send men wild and which even Linda found endearing.
Chris took Linda’s place on the sofa, legs splayed and with his large feet pointing apart in their pale suede loafers. Linda sat down again and put the tea-tray on the small coffee table.
Chris leant forward and sideways to address Bron. “Er, Bron, I’m really sorry about this morning. Really, really sorry.”
“What’s this?” demanded Linda.
“Er, we plunged Bron into a swimming pool full of ice-cold water without her expecting it.”
“You did WHAT!” shrieked Linda. “You lot are INSANE! You’re all completely out of control! What if she’d gone into cardiac arrest?” She turned to Bron: “Oh you poor thing, no wonder you were upset - I hope you didn’t get hypothermia. Shall I get you a blanket? I’ll put the fire on…”
“No really, Mrs James. “I’m fine. Now.”
Linda turned again on her husband. “Chris, this time you lot have really gone too far. What on EARTH were you thinking of?”
“It’s a really seminal part of the film, and we had to get it right. Lieutenant Hinds ditches her plane in the ocean and barely escapes with her life…Actually, it was really Geoff and Mike’s idea, I’d no idea that they’d made the water so cold.”
“Now that’s really PATHETIC!” Linda exploded. “You’re supposed to be the fucking producer. You’re the one responsible you, you absolute – CUNT!”
Bron’s small pale red-lipped mouth blossomed into a rare smile.
Chris spent the night shivering coverless on the small sofa in the sitting room. Bron, in contrast, sweated under the weight of the two duvets that Linda insisted on piling up on her.
Continued in Chapter 4: Bron-4 | ABCtales
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Comments
Bron came out of the
Bron came out of the situation pretty well considering her outburst, I think its Chris that's going to be suffering. Bron is such a character.
Keep going.
Jenny.
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Naughty Bron
A school trip to Manchester sounds interesting. We only ever went to Hadrian's Wall. I've spent more time at Housesteads than Hadrian himself did.
I thought Christmas was the C-word and that's why we don't mention it in our house. I once heard Stephen Fry saying on the telly that your C-word comes from either the Old Norse or Anglo Saxon language and its use should be celebrated. My preference is the T-word which means the same thing but a lot of people don't realise that so they're not as shocked by it. It can also be used as a verb.
I loved Eleanor Bron in the Beatles' film, Help!
Turlough
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4 December 2025
Turlough - I was intrigued when you used your T-word as a verb in your diary entry of the above date:
"lads twatting each other with real swords".
I knew it as a noun, and its gynaecological significance (I think most women do), but I didn't know it could be used as a verb, and neither does Mr Spellchecker at Word.
When I had Knotty the cat, the C-word was Chicken. Nobody dared say it unless they wanted to be pinned to the ground by a large, hairy cat doing an Andy Warhol ("I want it all, and I want it now").
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The L-word
Ah now Kat, I think there’s a strong possibility that Mr Spellchecker at Word didn’t consult Yorkshire linguists when he was embarking upon his corrective mission. That would explain t’ omission of t’ T-word as a doing word.
Long, long ago when I was a kid in Ireland, we had a dog. When we were taking him for a walk we would say to him, ‘Go and get your lead’ and in a great frenzy of excitement he would run to the hallway and with his teeth he would lift it by the leather handle bit from the hook on which we kept it. Then we moved to Leeds where all hell broke out every five minutes until we decided that we had to say that we lived in the L-word.
These days our Bulgarian cats go a bit bonkers when we use the Щ-word.
Turlough
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Out of curiosity Ivan, is
Out of curiosity Ivan, is this set in a particular time or is it contemporary?
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Pick of the Day
Another wonderful episode, and it's our Friday social media Pick of the Day!
Please do share if you can.
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Story of the Week
This is also our wonderful Story of the Week! Congratulations!
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