The hallway only extended the further she traveled down it. After walking for a few minutes, she realized that she had left her purse with her phone in it back in the room–but which room was it? Something about being separated from her phone made her feel frantic, and she began to push back the curtains as though she were looking for a lost child, when, in fact, she was the lost child. Without her phone, she wouldn’t be able to call for help if she needed it. Did she need it? She wasn’t in any danger. It was an endless hallway with an infinite number of changing rooms. There was nothing dangerous about that, unless she really couldn’t extricate herself from it, in which case, she might starve to death, but that would take days. Leave it to her to skip breakfast that morning. Was there even a restroom nearby? She found that the anxiety had caused her bladder to constrict. Could she simply relieve herself in one of the rooms? It would serve Pickler’s right for trapping her like this. Weren’t any of the associates tasked with checking to make sure nobody was stranded in the back of the store?

She searched for something that would cause an alarm to go off. Embarrassment be damned, she needed to use the restroom and retrieve her phone. Each curtain when thrown aside only relieved another mirror. Now, not only were the reflections in them not flattering, but they showed her something grotesque. A sweaty woman stared back at her:  Make-up running, hair unkempt, and in a get-up far too young for her. She refused to accept that this was her despite the minor identical details. She was not at her best in this moment, that was true. Still, that didn’t make her a monster. It was all about being a victim of circumstance. Once she knew where she was, she’d look sensible again. The mirror in her changing room would prove it.

After walking for nearly half an hour, she spotted a door at the end of the hallway. As though it were water in the desert, she ran towards it, nearly twisting her ankle with the sudden jolt of movement. When she reached the door, there was a red light above it, and she almost stopped herself from pushing on it. Despite having wanted to set off an alarm earlier, now she rethought her approach. If the other side of the door led to the inside of Pickler’s with its cash registers and helpful salesmen, then she’d be alright, wouldn’t she? She’d ask someone to go back into the changing rooms to find her phone and her purse, and she’d purchase every single item she brought in with her. Even the ones she didn’t like. It would be her offering to the store for not keeping her locked away in perpetuity.

The trouble was, if an alarm was attached to a door, there was no indication of how to open the door without setting off the alarm. Well, she thought, If it goes off, I’ll just apologize profusely to whomever comes running. I’ll play the Old Lady Act. Was it really an act though? Would she ever have gotten lost in a changing area twenty years ago? Or even five years ago? She pushed on the door and instantly felt a burst of cold air. Somehow, she was outside. Her initial concern gave way to relief. Who cares if she was outside? Outside was still a normal place to be. It still adhered to the rules of reality. Wherever she just was had no such stricture. If she had to walk back to the front of the store in her (now) shoplifted garments, then so be it. Perhaps they’d give her some kind of discount for having to endure such a horror on a Saturday afternoon.

Once her eyes adjusted to the lack of unnatural light, she saw that she wasn’t outside at all. She was in Pickler’s, but there was a draft coming in. Looking up, she noticed that the ceiling was gone. Had a storm come and carried it off while she was seeking out an appropriate mirror? How could she not have heard it? Nothing in the store seemed to be disturbed. Everything was in its place, but smaller items like perfume samples and receipts were blowing around in the wind coming into the store. She walked towards the nearest cash register, but there was no employee in sight. She rang a small bell that had been placed on the counter. There was no sign indicating where anyone had gone. Should she just try to make her way home? This was all very trying.

Giving the world a chance to right itself, she rang the bell.

As the sound rang out, she felt a sensation run down her back. There was the smell of men’s cologne, and a hanger from somewhere behind her rattled a bit.

It seemed as though the store was closed.

So why didn’t anyone tell her?

And why would they close when there was still so much time left in the day? Dispatching with a ceiling before ringing up every customer was extremely rude. She wanted to speak to a supervisor. She wanted someone to tell her what was going on. There was still time to shop. There was still time to try on a few more things.

Surely, it was much too early to turn off the lights.

When I was ten years old, I would wash car windscreens at the local shopping centre, because I wasn’t old enough to get a job yet. Sometimes the security would say we can’t wash windscreens there, sometimes they wouldn’t. It always depended on who was working that day.

I would usually ask people if they wanted their windscreens washed as they hopped out after parking.

One day, this middle-aged lady was walking into the shopping centre after parking her car. She had some interesting sort of digital clipboard thing clutched to her chest.

It was a really interesting piece of technology, and I hadn’t seen anything like it before. I kept looking at it as I asked her if I could wash the windscreen, even though my parents had taught me it’s rude not to look someone in the eyes when speaking to them.

She said she didn’t want me to wash the windscreen, then went in to go shopping.

This lady came out a little bit later, and wanted to speak to me again. She had a stern look on her face, and she said something along the lines of

“I wanted to talk about your behaviour before. When you asked to wash the windscreen, you weren’t looking me in the eyes… you were looking somewhere else. You need to learn that that’s unacceptable, and it’s particularly offensive to women”

She didn’t let me get a word in, and I don’t think she even would have believed me if I told her I was looking at the clipboard. But I was ten. I wasn’t even interested in girls like that yet, and if I was, I would have been crushing on girls my age, not women in their late 50s.

I was so embarrassed I apologised to her, then packed up all my supplies and went home. I can’t believe she went off at a ten-year-old and accused me of being a pervert like that.

You will see the difficulty with this unspoken stance, and how carefully all conversations on the matter were conducted. It is true that one in six women will meet with violence or coercion in their lifetimes, but is also true that one in sixteen men meet with the same – and Francis Plumier was of that number. It was widely known in the Chamber and in the broader echelons of society that this handsome, principled Member of Parliament, who had the steady knack of being liked even by those who disagreed with him, was an abused husband.

She was a person, (and both sexes have their culprits), who completely intimidated everyone within their purview. Her children were immaculately dressed but largely catatonic. Nothing they did was ever right, and in this hothouse environment they, unlike the orchids, failed to thrive. Her staff were bullied to tears and invariably left without references, and she in all ways conducted herself in the manner of an unhinged dowager duchess in a gothic penny dreadful. Even the Prime Minister had been known to make a hasty exit on her stately entrance to a function, and it was widely known that Francis would have been a cabinet minister long ago were it not for her.

There was not even the mitigation of beauty, which might explain how Francis had put a ring on her finger. She was built like a Welsh dresser without the ornamental embellishments. Friends suggest that she literally bullied him into it after he got her pregnant, although they wonder how he even managed that. The only conclusion was that she did come with plenty of money and a large parcel of land, and even pleasant MPs are not immune to such enticements.

The day of her disappearance was investigated with a broad-toothed comb, (an afro comb as opposed to the ones you use to get rid of head lice or to brush up suede). Two decades ago there were no cameras in the car park, although it was known that she drove away, because she sat on her horn whilst an elderly couple attempted to cross the road. Two miles from town, her car was found abandoned in an access road surrounded by muddy, low-lying fields where the only witnesses were the crows and/or other corvids who, if they had the ability to speak, would probably have kept silent when it came to Charlotte Plumier.

The driver’s door was open. The shopping had slipped from the back seat. There were traces of hessian in the footwell suggestive of a bag being placed over her head. There were no traces of blood or other violence. If a drug had been used, the open door and the chill day had dissipated its smell. All four tyres were punctured, which meant that a stinger, or spike strip, had been deployed. It was a classic kidnap scenario, and the authorities awaited the ransom note.

None of this stopped Francis from being the main suspect in his wife’s disappearance. He was speaking in the Chamber of the House at the time, to which at least eleven snoozing MPs and Hansard could attest. The subject matter was whether a publicly shy great-crested newt should have the amphibian effrontery to prevent a new housing estate on greenfield land. Francis, because it was grass within his own constituency, believed that the newts should prevail, and argued eloquently in their favour. The estate was never built. But that didn’t preclude the obvious possibility that he had paid someone to do it – because quite frankly, very few people who had met his wife would blame him if he had.

Smartphones were largely unknown when Charlotte went missing, but the police requisitioned all of Francis’ private and governmental devices, and could find no evidence of any collusion. He had a solid alibi and a sainted reputation. All he had was motive, and it could be argued, (and it was), that thousands of married couples could own the same.

Body language experts were deployed by the police and the media, but none of the tells were telling in Francis’ case. There was no rapid blinking, no self-comforting, no glancing away at the shame of a lie. Liars are acutely aware of their calumnies, but Francis displayed no such attempt at guile. A week after Charlotte’s disappearance, she was being spoken of in the same breath as Lord Lucan and the racehorse, Shergar, although she had never murdered a nanny or won the Epsom Derby.

At home, the children flourished. No longer Charlotte’s mannequins, they became a rambunctious tribe of feral children. They would straighten out given time, but in the immediate giddy joy of their mother’s absence, they had a lot of catching up to do. She was never mentioned, as though they feared the invocation of her name would suddenly transport her back from wherever she had gone. Francis, free of dodging plates and applying makeup to his face, became more handsome and desirable than ever before. Like his children, he too flourished, and although a lost wife was as much an impediment to a cabinet position as a found one, he had been given assurances that once the matter was resolved, he would gain his promotion.

The months wore on, and there was still no ransom note. Eventually, the gossip concluded that Charlotte had been taken by a person or persons unknown whom she had at one point offended or enraged. It was a wide field, and the police lost interest in combing it. The feminist press stayed at it for a while longer, until other feminists patiently explained that they clearly hadn’t met Mrs Plumier. More esoteric thinkers suggested that some people are fated, like underwear, to simply disappear without trace. The matter of the stinger in the road and the hessian sack fibres were conveniently dismissed as too corporeal.

A year later, Francis was passed a note by a lanyard-ed staffer in the House of Commons, who thrust it in his hand and swiftly walked away. With a vague thought to how successful Guy Fawkes might have been in the present day, he went to his small office and read the contents.

“The dust has settled. We have your wife and she is alive and well on one of the countless islands in the Gulf of Bothnia. There are five whalers on the island and Mrs Plumier has decided to be in love with Olavi Heikkinen, who likes whales and being hit over the head with iron pans. We now demand £15,000 paid in US dollars for last year, and the same amount for this year. Furthermore, we demand the same sum every year on the given date. Please see to it that the payments are anonymous and untraceable. If you do not agree to our demands, we shall return her to you.”

Francis put the note down and then picked it up again. He did this three times before allowing a smile to dimple his cheeks.

It might be a good idea to insert into this text, to remove all traces of doubt, that Francis Plumier was entirely innocent of his wife’s disappearance, and until that moment, had not the faintest idea what had happened to her. Of course, he had never wished that some physical or tortuous harm had come to her, but it is certainly true that the hole she had made in his life was copiously filled by the buoyant sense of relief, calm and serenity which was the consequence of it.

He called his accountant from the landline at home. Over brandy they discussed the note and the wider implications. ‘This is no time for coming clean,’ said his old friend, who had been his best man and had paid the local church to ring the death knell on the date of their wedding anniversary ever since. ‘The note clearly says she’s happy with the whaler, and I can easily organise the payments in a way that is not suspicious. In fact, the demand is relatively low. Charlotte spent that sum in Boden the tax year before last.’

In the twenty years since Charlotte Plumier got lost, the MP for Cromer Heath, (now on the opposition benches and a little greyer around the temples), paid the sum of £300,000 to whomever the entity was. Over time, he came to see her kidnap not as a criminal act but an act of compassion, and he fondly imagined the puppet master to be the Sultan of Brunei, on no evidence beyond recalling he had once met Charlotte and passed him a fleeting look of fraternal commiseration at the time.

After seven years, Charlotte was pronounced officially dead. Her money was released and put in trust for the children. Francis did not remarry, but he had a long-term dalliance with a striking widow who valued her independence and had a full set of crockery. He continued to receive notes from the Gulf of Bothnia, all of which assured him she was alive and well. He often wondered if the same could be said of the unfortunate whaler.

On the twentieth year of Charlotte’s disappearance, the notes stopped. Quite by chance it coincided with an article he had recently read in the National Geographic in which it made clear that there were no whales in the Gulf of Bothnia. There had been one sighting of a humpback, and the excitement that aroused was equal to discovering a reindeer in the frozen north with a red nose.

It began to dawn on the member for Crawley Heath that he had been played, but he was unclear on both the instrument and the player. Where was Charlotte Plumier?

During the course of the long Christmas recess, Francis became burdened with distraction. He felt that he ought to own up, to come clean. The whole affair marked him as initially blameless, but clearly culpable of deceit in the aftermath. His old friend the accountant urged less brandy and more caution. His children, on hearing his confession, urged the same. They did not want their mother back, arguing that although they were too old for her tempers, the grandchildren were certainly not.

To put his mind at rest, a period of intense and discreet internet sleuthing followed. No names were mentioned, but certain particulars were alluded to. The hunt was on for a broad-beamed Englishwoman with a violent temper, a tendency to reorganise, meddle and infuriate in equal measure. There was an avalanche of leads, from Rannoch Moor to Tuscan mule tracks and windswept Atlantic islands. Photographs of plausible suspects were emailed and dismissed. All trails led nowhere.

When the next instalment was due, Francis paid it, and he resolved to continue paying it just to keep on the safe side. He was often wedded to the truth, but in that matter of his lost wife he was prepared to make an exception.

And this is where it might have stayed, but in that year’s general election, Francis, much like a polo player, found himself unseated. With time on his hands, he began to slip into the kind of dwelling his old friend and family had warned him against. But just as he was on the point of wiping the slate clean by writing a memoir, a letter came through the post. The handwriting was immediately familiar.

“Dear Frankie,

Bad luck on losing your seat. Still, as often quoted, all political careers end in failure.

I expect you’ll want to know where I have been all these years. I was briefly sent to an island off the coast of Finland, but the small community there didn’t want me for any amount of money. There was talk of sending me to Brunei but the Sultan put his foot down, so eventually I was sent to an Albanian convent. After several weeks, the nuns decided that my reorganisation of the conventual library was a meddle too far, but I did enjoy the mountain air ….”

(Francis skimmed through the lengthy descriptions of all the places Charlotte had been sent to and removed from on closer acquaintance).

“The Finland ruse worked quite well until you left that National Geographic in the conservatory. As I often used to say to you, Frankie, never trust an accountant. It was your dear friend Robert who had me kidnapped – although they were very polite about it. My accountant, rest his soul, was equally devious. The money left to the children was a mere gesture on my part. I always was, and remain, a very wealthy woman. Your annual contribution to my upkeep was all rather irrelevant, and although I was initially put out by your ready acceptance of the reverse ransom, I came to realise the moral dilemma it put you in, and that amused me. By the way, are you aware that there is a Friends of Francis Plumier group? Your contributions were small fry compared to what they chipped in. I can’t say I haven’t lived well.

My name has been changed of course. As I say, my accountant was a clever soul who initially created the escape route for tax avoidance purposes. If only he’d have known how useful that decision would become. I am also a rather plain woman, and plain women can hide in plain site, don’t you think? Don’t worry, dear. I forgive you. It’s been an interesting life and I have been able to exasperate so many more people by being kidnapped. I shouldn’t bother looking for me. I am officially dead, after all. And although I wouldn’t have you down as a killer, I suspect you’ve dug a deep hole beneath the cherry tree just in case I turn up out of the blue.

There is no need to send any more money. You’re going to need it more than me now. I have a little hotel, right in the heart of the capital. London is always the best place to disappear, don’t you agree? I have a lot of cabinet ministers for clients, but you wouldn’t really know them, would you? And of course, high court judges. Certain men rather like a certain type of woman. It is a lucrative niche which doesn’t mind if you are fat and old and plain, because a good thrashing is all they really want.

Of course, I suppose I could have returned at any time. I was never ill-treated or imprisoned, but as I say, I rather enjoyed it in the long run. I think your accountant friend knew me better than I knew myself. Don’t be too hard on him. He loves you more than I ever did.

Charlotte”

Francis poured a brandy and walked into the garden, breathing in the redolent spring air. He came to the cherry tree, just losing its blossom. There was no hole there, of course. She clearly didn’t know him at all – to imagine he would think of such a thing.

The hole was under the walnut tree.

From my Picture collections

 

Why don’t Chinese ancient maps have the islands in the South China Sea if the islands are there belonging to China from the Tang Dynasty?

Anyone familiar with Singapore knows that the state-owned multinational investment company is called ‘Temasek Holdings Limited , 淡馬錫控股’, which is Singapore’s largest and most mysterious company that generally operates Singapore’s government overseas investment programs.

Temasek (淡馬錫) is the ancient Chinese name for Singapore. The name appeared long ago in the charts of Zheng He’s voyages.

After the Europeans colonized Southeast Asia, the names of the islands in the South China Sea changed several times, which is clear if you map the ancient Chinese ground against the English.

The only island in the South China Sea that has fresh water resources is Taiping Island, which is controlled by Taiwan, China.

In ancient times, the islands in the South China Sea were uninhabited due to a lack of fresh water, and even in modern times, many of the islands are still uninhabited. The reason is simple: there is a lack of fresh water on the islands, and fresh water needs to be transported by ship regularly, or desalinated from seawater, or rainwater is collected.

Ancient Chinese navigators and traders used the South China Sea islands as a transit point for short breaks and shelter from the wind.

Before the arrival of Chinese immigrants, Southeast Asians were like the Austronesians in Australia and New Zealand, all naked, without clothes to wear, and they did not have a unified country. If Southeast Asia had a unified country like China at that time, it would not have been so easy for Europeans to colonize there.

It was Zheng He who opened up the maritime trade routes and brought China’s advanced agricultural technology to Southeast Asia, and from then on they began to learn weaving and pottery making.

Before 1960, no neighboring country in the South China Sea disputed the fact that China had sovereignty over the South China Sea islands.

Why did the neighboring countries in the South China Sea go from being indifferent to uninhabited islands to suddenly becoming interested in uninhabited islands? Because oil was discovered in the South China Sea in the 1960s.

Why does the United States support countries like the Philippines in claiming sovereignty over the South China Sea islands? It is because American oil companies are trying to join in the exploration of oil in the South China Sea.

Since World War II, all the wars the United States has been involved in have revolved around oil, so it is not surprising that they covet the oil resources in the South China Sea.

2

It is often said that there are no giant insects because their exoskeleton cannot grow beyond a certain size? Why is this so?

Insects do not have lungs.

They therefore rely on air flowing through a series of openings in their body, known as spiracles , which connect directly to tissues that need oxygen.

That’s why the bigger an insect is, the more oxygen it needs to live in an environment rich in oxygen. And the level of oxygen in the atmosphere today is lower than it was in the days of the dinosaurs.

Hundreds of millions of years ago, giant insects were common on Earth, but they died out. Their disappearance was caused by natural selection.

The drop in atmospheric oxygen and the arrival of birds contributed to their disappearance. Larger specimens were too easy prey for predators and the drop in oxygen in the atmosphere no longer allowed these large creatures to breathe properly.

Little by little, the giant insects disappeared.

The largest insect ever found on Earth was a dragonfly. It lived in the Late Permian period, about 275 million years ago. These dragonflies had a wingspan of almost 75cm and an estimated weight of over 500g, which is similar to the size and weight of a crow.

But today, there are still some huge insects left:

Titan Dynasty

stick insect

atlas butterfly

Hercules Beetle

Queen Alexandra Ornithopter

100 Ways to Delight Your Family!
How to make aebleskiver your family will love!

Kitchen tools, gourmet foods, baking mixes, and hard-to-find baking ingredients mentioned in this article are available at The Prepared Pantry.

by Dennis Weaver

I guarantee your family will love aebleskiver – Danish puffed pastries. After all, we’re talking strawberry shortcake, salted caramel, and a hundred more.

We lived high on a hill overlooking the university and on to Fairbanks, Alaska. At night, from our dining room, you could see the lights of the city while northern lights rippled overhead.

I made Merri Ann one of those candlelight and white linen dinners that I was so much better at doing when I was younger. She loves steaks so dinner was easy. But the dessert- I always try to make something different and extra special for dessert. It’s my way of telling her that she is extra special and that I love her.

Aebleskiver are extra special but easy enough that you can make them often.

Make them from scratch or make them from a mix. Since they are called Danish Puff Pastries, they work as a snack or a dessert but often they are served for breakfast. They certainly beat pancakes. They’re great as your family’s signature breakfast or for a special occasion. Your family will appreciate you every time you make them.

They’re easy. They’re good. They’re fun.

See how easy aebleskiver are!

There are five basic steps to making aebleskiver on the stovetop.

Step 1: Heat the pan. Put a dab of butter in each cavity.
Step 2: Place a small scoop of batter in each cavity.
Step 3: Add a spoonful of filling.
Step 4: Top the filling with another scoop of batter.
Step 5: Turn the aebleskiver.

Serve then hot. Drizzle them with syrup or a sauce or add a dollop of whipped cream.

How to Make 100 Different Aebleskiver!

We thought we knew aebleskiver – until we bought this book by Kevin Crafts. He’s taken aebleskiver to a whole new level with recipes like pumpkin pie aebleskivers, strawberry shortcake aebleskivers, and molten chocolate lava aebleskivers. Now we can see hundreds of ways to make aebleskiver. Look at some of the recipes that he has in his book—over 40 in all.

crunchy cinnamon ebelskivers
honey-glazed buttermilk ebelskivers
streusel-topped ebelskivers
lemon-poppy seed ebelskivers
iced gingerbread ebelskivers
corn cakes with blueberry compote
cherry-almond ebelskivers
double-blackberry ebelskivers
raspberry jam-filled ebelskivers
jelly donut ebelskivers
ebelskivers with spiced apple filling
lemon curd-filled ebelskivers
strawberry shortcake pancakes
cream cheese-filled spiced pancakes
peanut butter & jelly ebelskivers
sticky toffee ebelskivers
chocolate truffle ebelskivers
pumpkin pie ebelskivers
molten chocolate ebelskivers

But you can create your own. Mix your favorite fillings with your choice of batters or mixes and top them the way you like. Explore the unlimited ways you can make aebleskiver.

Getting started!

Can you see dozens of aebleskiver that your family will love?

You can get started with only a pan. Mixes mean that you quickly whip up a batch when you are short on time. If you’d like to explore a lot of fun recipes, get the book.

We think your family will fall in love with aebleskiver – just as we have.

Dennis Weaver is the founder of The Prepared Pantry, a full line kitchen store in Rigby, Idaho. The Prepared Pantry sells kitchen tools, gourmet foods, and baking ingredients including hundreds of hard-to-find ingredients.