Jack continues his pursuit of Wendy – –

After last week’s guest post I was asked where #3 was and had to admit to my very poor math skills, so it should have been #3. To avoid any further confusion this week’s post will continue as #5.

On a subsequent visit to Wendy in Newfoundland, I foolishly and rashly told Wendy I loved nothing more than a good hike. Delighted, she suggested that we go for one. Out on the cliffs overlooking the sea.

For those of you who familiar with Wendy’s storytelling career, The Twa Sisters is one of her signature stories. It features a murder by cliff push….

She drove us, in the now even more decrepit Toyota, to a parking spot where the hike started. The route was marked by orange tapes tied to branches and easy to follow. At first.

The wind was strong and it started to lightly rain; I was dressed in a waterproof jacket and jeans. Wendy had prepared sandwiches and had asked if I liked peanut butter. Up to then I loved peanut butter! Halfway through the hike we reached a large clearing with an enormous rock in the middle and the rain was now heavier and horizontal (my jeans were soaked). We hunkered down in the lee of the rock and prepared to eat our sandwiches – I opted for a peanut butter one. My idea of a PB sandwich is a piece of bread spread with butter, then PB, a sprinkle of salt and another piece of bread. But this had that plus fruit jelly, which apparently is normal in America. This was the first serious test of our relationship, as was the failure to see any orange tapes on the other side of the clearing. We thought we would have to  walk back the way we’d come – and then we found the forward path. It seemed like a good sign.

I have never eaten another PB sandwich since then, though.

Or ventured on another forest hike – –

By now, when we were separated, we wrote frequent long letters to each other. They were firstly handwritten but eventually we both had computers and typed them. The first time I tried it, as I approached the bottom of the first page, I wondered how I could start the second page. There was nothing in the instructions that said anything. In desperation I tapped on the ‘file’ button in the top left and saw a ‘new’ option. So my first typed letter was ten separate folders! Later I got an email address with AOL but it was ‘dial up’ with that weird sound when you connected. So there were letters, phone calls and emails going back and forward.

But there was also Ginger – –

Ginger was and still is one of Wendy’s closest friends from way back and my suspicious NfL resident gave her my email address. So a regular correspondence ensued between Ginger and me, and with hindsight I now realize that she was checking me out to see if I was ‘legit’. Apparently ‘Mrs G’ gave Wendy the all clear!

Next week the strange places where she stayed and the tale of the handsome firemen – –