Charlie and the Second Life - first bit

Charlie is about to meet Bob Marley in a park in Chippenham. Marley will warn him of the impending visit of three mysterious ghosts. You might have heard something similar to this before?

Once you become a father you realise that the miracle of life is indeed a miracle. After years of trying for a baby, we finally hit the jackpot and got one of each, twins, a boy and a girl. We are now an ideal nuclear family. Marianne and Charlie Parker the proud parents; Maggie the little princess and soon to be world famous artist, and Freddie the smallest scientist in Wiltshire. It surprised me just how much I loved them. In describing my love for them I compared it to my house, a three bedroom semi-detached in Chippenham. The upstairs rooms are my parents, my aunts and uncles and my departed grandparents. Downstairs, the hall and sitting room is Marianne, the kitchen is my friends. I didn't love anyone any less when Maggie and Freddie arrived, it was like rolling back the carpet and finding a door on the sitting room floor, I opened the door and inside I discovered a cellar as big as the Albert Hall. My new bigger love. 

It is easiest to describe me and Freddie at the same time. Me, Charlie Parker, half Indian half Jewish, blind wouthout my glasses, a bit shy, bookish. Freddie is a smaller version with the same glasses and spared the indignity of impending baldness for at least another thirty years. He follows me around the house and copies me. If I pick up a book, he picks up a book, if I sit on the sofa, he'll sit next to me and watch closely in readiness to copy a subconcious scratch of the ear or crossing of legs. He is my miniature me. Freddie Parker aged five going on forty and showing no signs of a career as a professional footballer.

Marianne, skinny with short blonde hair which she mostly cuts herself and usually wearing a pink tracksuit whilst looking for lost shoes or picking coins and hairclips out of the washing machine. She was the girl I met at college, the woman I fell in love with, and the mother who never succesfully changed a nappy. Organisation was never a strong point with Marianne, but she knew about wine and had brilliant taste in music. 

Maggie couldn't be more different from Marianne. Wild curly brown hair usually covered in paint, dexterous and busy hands usually covered in paint, and a taste for brightly coloured clothes, usually covered in paint. We used to have a fridge that looked like a fridge, and we long ago gave up any hope of having a home that resembled a Dulux catalogue. Instead of magnolia walls, our hallway was decorated with horses, frogs, elephants, castles, trees and flowers with a hint of sky peppered with birds and fairies.

Fairies. 

I wouldn't go so far as to say that my children were born because of fairies, but it was definitely some kind of magic, and for someone who takes pride in being rather boring I do seem to have a knack for having strange things happen to me. I have never in my entire life, ever heard of a man colliding with a low flying duck. But here I am. Lying on the tarmac in a park in Chippenham, next to an unconscious duck.

Author's Note

Follow up novel to Charlie and the Perfect Wife. All comments and suggestions gratefully received!

Reviews

[Jeffrey Crawford]

Haven't read the first novel, so just take what you can get from me. I was not intrigued until the last paragraph and saw no point for all that exposition leading up to it. If you're telling a story about an unconscious duck than do it. I actually wanted to see where that was going and didn't see why I needed to know so much about the family before the duck. Though, this is a sample, so maybe this is too harsh of a judgement. Other than that I feel you can be more creative in describing your people than lobbing out adjectives.