Daily Prompt: Seat Guru

You get to plan a dinner party for 4-8 of your favorite writers/artists/musicians/other notable figures, whether dead or alive. Who do you seat next to whom in order to inspire the most fun evening?

I don’t think so. Another daily prompt that you really cannot serve up again, the food gets cold, stale, and everyone falls asleep listening to the same conversations, so I decided to deck the table for some others. They didn’t all arrive at once, but eventually they all arrived and there were a lot more than just 4-8.

First of all I had to buy the food, in all varieties. Something to hang on the tree and something to fill the birdhouse. Of course, not all the guests like to hang on the tree and peck at the seed pods, they like to visit the house. The guests are also very sensitive to being watched. If you put one foot wrong they leave the dining table and sit in a tree, but they return when you have moved away: being shy is one of their characteristics. Who do I mean, why the birds of course.

Temperatures are falling, through the night below 0°, reaching -5°. This morning there was a layer of frost on the grass. It is no longer easy for the birds to find something beneath the icy layers and so it is time to lay the table and send invites. Actually they are not so fussy about receiving official invitations, the seeds have arrived, and so the birds arrive.

They have their conversations, like “move over, that was my sunflower seed”, or “did you see that finch, she is grabbing it all”. It is the sparrows that seem to be taking over with the organisation, but they do outnumber the rest. Now there is silence, the birds are sitting on the apple tree branches, a  tit is pecking at a hanging net packed with seeds surrounded by a fat layer, but there is one single bird. She always waits until the others have gone, she likes to eat alone, and not in the bird house. No, she is something special, our robin that visits every year. She approaches carefully and waits patiently apart from the others. Now she can pounce and take her meal, one seed after the other, it is now her territory.

Of course, the blackbirds also arrive, but bird houses are not their thing. They prefer to sit, or rather wander below, pecking their food from the ground. That is one of the reasons why I have three laid tables with food: hanging from the tree, in their private banqueting hall in the house, and on the ground. Blackbirds prefer oat flakes and peanuts, although they can be rather partial to the odd sunflower seed in between.

I noticed that I always have well fed birds in my area, but up to now none have fallen from the branch whilst attempting to fly away due to overweight, although Mr. Swiss has often told me I feed them too much. Invitations are sent from various neighbours and we all have a bird canteen in our gardens. Who needs to invited prominent people, they never really went hungry, their life was full of invitations for exclusive meals. My birds do not ask, they just wait patiently. 

“Hello Mrs. Human, we are back again.”

“Yes, same time every year.”

WordPress Daily Prompt: Seat Guru

You get to plan a dinner party for 4-8 of your favorite writers/artists/musicians/other notable figures, whether dead or alive. Who do you seat next to whom in order to inspire the most fun evening?

This was not a bad dinner party. As I was the photographer I am not in it, as usual. I almost have to get written permission to show a photo of Mr. Swiss and my two sons, but as they are not here at the moment I decided to go for it. Obviously these are not my favourite prominent people, but are my favourites all the same.

Now to the details and the bare facts: are there actually favourites that I would like to have at my dining table? I was thinking about that bloke guy that keeps turning up in a WordPress t-shirt with all sorts of fantastic ideas for my daily prompt. Ok, if he wants to come, I don’t mind, I am sure we would have some useful things to talk about, like the new grid, the pingback problem, and perhaps my Pulitzer Blog prize.

Charles Bukowski would be an interesting person. I would have to make sure that the bar was full, but I I am sure he would be the life and soul of the party. I read one of his books a couple of weeks ago “Ham on Rye” which was autobiographical, and decided that with such interesting childhood and school days, he would definitely keep us all entertained.

Just to keep it all nicely balanced we should have some politics mixed into the session. According to if he is busy with adopting a new country, I would invite Vladimir Putin to the table. Ok, I know he is not everyone’s favourite at the moment. We do not trust him, he has steel blue eyes, is a sly guy, but perhaps he feels misunderstood and lonely. Mr. Swiss does not like him and cannot understand what my strange fascination is for him. Neither do I to be quite honest, but I am sure he would get on with Charles Bukowski like a dacha house on fire. They could have a competition to see who drinks the other under the table first of all.

Let’s invite Mark Zuckerberg, he might be able to persuade Vladimir Putin to start a Facebook page. I would definitely make Vlad one of my friends. I would put Mark Zuckerberg next to the WordPress t-shirt man at the table. They could exchange ideas and soon we will be writing about “What Type of Blogger are you?”. We all know those silly questions that Mark is always asking us on his Facebook site. You have not seen that one? That is the only one I completed and it said (of course) “A Pulitzer prize suspicious winner”, how else could it be.

There is still room at the table, so I would invite my super blogging friend Marilyn Armstrong, although I hope she does not mind the other guests. We have decided we should meet up one day, but unfortunately a few thousand kilometres of water separates us and our days are slowly creeping into the phase where we are no longer spring lambs and hopping off to other countries without consulting our medical specialists first of all to make sure we would be able to take it all in our stride. I am sure we would have a lot to talk about, I just have the feeling that we would probably have too much to talk about and the super prominent people might come a little short with the conversation.

I was forgetting the music in case we run out of things to talk about, although that is very rare in my case. It would have to be something we would all appreciate, so I would invite Mr. Swiss and his group. They would be placed in the corner, playing some soft modern jazz, so as not to disturb the conversation.

I think the scene is set, although Count Dracular (Vlad Tepes), is sulking in a corner. I am not sure whether he is classified as being Dead or Alive. He says he is never invited to a social occasion, and an all-night party would be just his thing. He is not fussy about food, just a glass of deep red wine would do and perhaps a nice steak, done rare. He would have so many stories to tell about life in old Transylvania and is sure that somewhere along the line he must have met up with some of Vladimir Putin’s relations. Vlad smells so familiar, he found.

OK, now we have a full house. I will be taking photos and perhaps even a film just to keep the party in remembrance for the WordPress. It would be so nice if, as a special gesture, I could distribute WordPress t-shirts to the guests when they were departing as a token of appreciation.

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