My Dear Cousin - A Poor Gift

20^th May 2021

 My Dear Cousin,

 

After (Yule) sold that car the family expected me to give up my third of a paid off home for the family offered me three gifts that were of no interest to me. This was not all at once but over a bit of time, perhaps a year or two, but I would accept none of them. I had learned what happens when I accept things from my family.

 

The first was a check from the old man for two hundred dollars. I was out of work when this happened. I was out of work, because the ordeal with the car had left me so depressed I could hardly get out of bed. What I honestly needed to do was contact the company I had been working for to be reassigned.

 

The check wouldn’t cover two days of the suffering I was feeling because of how (Yule) had harassed me over that car so I returned it to (Yule). He didn’t really react as far as I could see, but after I handed it back to him I just walked away.

 

My grandmother told me it was my fault, because I had given him the car back. I felt I had no choice, as no matter what I did they wouldn’t stop harassing me about that car. My family here in California tends to be the kind of people who will listen to nothing short of violence, and I didn’t want to get violent.

 

Two hundred dollars wouldn’t have replaced two days of lost work. It wouldn’t have covered the money for college I had been promised. It wouldn’t have even been the money the car that was supposed to have been a gift to me had been sold for. Keeping it would have been a deal with the devil, and them giving that to me as if it was supposed to mean anything was like having them spit in my face.

 

I never spoke to my grandmother again. I believe I spoke to (Yule) one more time. This was the first of the three gifts and it had told me once and for all that family was useless to me.

 

Best,

 

Richard Leland Neal

My Dear Cousin - I Refused to Speak

 19^th May 2021

My Dear Cousin,

 

It has been a few days since my last letter, but you never answered me anyway. Maybe my life is just too dismal to take. Well, I assure you that I need to keep writing regardless of your reading just to bleed the pain from my mind. A bad memory can be like a cyst; bleed it and it may scar, but leave it and it can get worse.

 

Well, a point I forgot was that before the wedding, and after I called the cops on (Pony Girl)’s husband to be I refused to speak to (Pony Girl) for about eight months. I don’t think you can blame me for that, talking had never done me any good so far.

 

(Pony Girl) brought this situation to a head when she started hounding me and calling me childish for not speaking to her. We spoke and that was when I learned that the car they wanted me to give up my house for was sold for four hundred dollars. They expected me to pay two hundred thousand dollars for it, and it was worth four hundred.

 

There were two points of this conversation. The first was that (Pony Girl) was to pay me back for the time I had paid bills for her when she was in college. The second was that she was to disclose the amount of money dad gave her for college.

 

She never fulfilled the second part of that promise. She knew how much it was but laughed out “I don’t remember” when I brought it up. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe I deserved the money, but only that she so loved steeling from me.

 

I remember once I got a sheet of stamps and put them on the old bulletin board next to were the landline used to be in my home. The next day they were gone and I asked (Pony Girl) if she had seen them. She admitted to taking them but wouldn’t give any of them back.

 

I overreacted to this, and was very upset, I should have just let it go. I recall my grandmother saying “maybe she needed stamps”. I explained that this was not all that true, but the old woman refused to believe that her family could ever do anything wrong. The whole family had a ‘turn a blind eye’ attitude to abuse.

 

I remember when I complained that (Yule) had given her and (Pickle) money for college and not me (Pony Girl) laughed out “You’re older now”. I had been in college since the age of eighteen and he didn’t give me money then.

 

It was just like that white car. (Pony Girl) decided that it was her car that I would pay for. When I didn’t like that she decided that I had to get rid of my other car. When I wouldn’t do that she tried to kick me out of my own home.

 

Well, for the second or third time at that point, but you get the idea.

 

Best,

 

 

Richard Leland Neal

 

Cotswold Way - Wotton-under-Edge

Having left Painswick, I crossed the Wash Brook up onto the Edge Common and stopped for a gaze back over the town. Heading in and out of woodland, I took the opportunity to slow down and admire the variety of trees and ponder their many benefits.

To that end, I aimed to work out the uses of some of the trees I was passing, starting with the Black Alder. This semi-hardwood tree can live up to 100 years. It is often used to fix soil erosion and nitrogen problems. It’s used commercially to make paper and has been used for dyeing and tanning. Because the leaves are sticky people put them on their floors to trap fleas. It attracts woodpeckers, warblers, and wrens.

Another significant tree found in, but not limited to, the Cotswolds, is the oak, an ancient timber that can live past 1,000 years. It was used to construct many of the historic properties in the region and the rest of the UK. As the national tree of England, it is woven into the fabric of the country. A great number of pubs are named ‘The Royal Oak’, it appeared on the round £1 coin from 1987-1992, and the leaves and acorn are on the National Trust’s emblem. Represented in mythology as a symbol of strength, nobility, and knowledge, this mighty English oak is home to many bird varieties. Barn owls and wood ducks like to nest in cavities formed by animals that pick too much wood from a tree.

Walking along the edge of the escarpment through Penn Wood, I emerged at Coaley Park, a popular picnic spot with an ancient burial site. The meadow is a kaleidoscope of colour during the flowering season, with purple sainfoins, mauve or white flowered clover, and delicate buttercups.
 

Passing a disused quarry, the trail led me through more woods, into a valley, up a nice steep climb with amazing views and then through farmland to the market town of Dursley. Climbing up steeply onto Stinchcombe Hill, I could have taken a perimeter walk around the Stinchcombe Golf Club but keeping an eye on those flying golf balls is not something I wanted to worry about; hence I carried on straight over the hill and marched on to Tyndale Monument, a tower erected in honour of William Tyndale, an early translator of the New Testament into English. I climbed the 120 steps to the top of the tower for fabulous views of the Berkeley Vale.

Continuing on, the route flattens out a little through grassland and wooded terrain to Wotton Hill. Here, an enclosure of stone and iron fence surrounds a cluster of trees planted in 1815 to commemorate the Battle of Waterloo. Following the hill down, I went straight to Wotton-Under-Edge. First mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 AD, the town has several notable buildings such as the Ancient Ram Inn dating back to 1145, a public house now used for ghost tours; and the Newark Park, a Tudor hunting lodge from the mid-1500s. Newark was given to the National Trust in the mid-20th century, who, together with American architect Robert Parsons, restored the property to its former glory.

A stop at the Royal Oak Inn for a feast was a must and there’s nothing like a Sunday Night Roast with offerings of pork belly and crackling, roast beef and stuffed chicken wrapped in bacon with side servings of Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and of course, a drizzle of gravy.

PS. Experience our virtual challenges in real life - The Conqueror Adventures

 

The team at The Conqueror Challenges
https://www.theconqueror.events

 

 

My Dear Cousin - My Novel

  

                                                          16^th May 2021

My Dear Cousin,

In my previous letters I covered the falling out between my family, and I and my refusal to attend my sister’s wedding. I believe the next point to be noted is an incident between Uncle Allen and I.

 

For all my life I wanted to be a writer and, well, the major obstacle in that department happens to be nerve damage I received, most likely, at the hands of (Pickle) and (Pony Girl). They had a game when we were children where they would pull me off the couch and make my head hit the floor.

 

This happened over and over and over again until I started having headaches and such. Well, mom couldn’t afford a sitter and it wasn’t like my old man wanted to look after his children. This left me with difficulty reading and interpreting letters.

 

Around two thousand and nine I wrote a novel about a society fighting off an alien invasion on a world neither of them belonged to. Allen volunteered to read it for me and help with editing but, well, for one his feedback was full of insults, and for another he had trouble understanding that I have nerve damage.

 

Part of me wants to believe that old Allen was a fool, part of me thinks that he was intentionally sabotaging my writing so that I would need to spend the rest of my life dealing with my mentally ill brother. Allen said he had just been joking, but I don’t know. Insults tend to be malicious.

 

I guess it doesn’t matter. I didn’t get help with my novel, and I was plenty angry at Uncle Allen, but that’s water under the bridge now. Family was never of any use to me before, and it was still rather useless.

 

Best,

 

Richard Leland Neal

 

My Dear Cousin - The Wedding

15^th May 2021

My Dear Cousin,

After all the letters I have sent, I suppose this brings us to (Pony Girl)’s wedding so many years ago. She had gotten money for college and I hadn’t. Now the old man was giving her thirty thousand dollars so she could move out and start a family.  I hear she found thirty thousand too little and then had him give her another thirty thousand on top of that.

Needles to say, after all the money she had cost me and all the pain I did not go to my (Pony Girl)’s wedding. This was a big deal to Uncle Allen at the time, he called himself Sid then, and he protested.

I hadn’t seen the man in more than twenty years, and he said he wanted to catch up, so I went and got my old high school yearbooks. (Pickle) and I, Allen and his family, all went to a pizza place, and he spent the time trying to get me to go to (Pony Girl)’s wedding.

I had been told to leave and never come back. I had been told that I would never get my part of my mother’s estate which was a fully paid for home in California not far from the heart of Los Angeles. Here was this woman trying to steal two hundred thousand dollars from me and I was supposed to go to her wedding?!

Old Allen held his guns till the end. He did everything he could to get me to go, but family was over for me. I remember my (Pony Girl) leaving a Hawaiian shirt, the dress for the wedding, for me if I changed my mind.  

(Pickle) would never forgive me for him having to pay another utility bill and my (Pony Girl) wouldn’t pay her part of the property tax for more than another ten years. Still, the family was far from done cutting into me. There is still more to come.

Best,

 

Richard Leland Neal