Contents

OWEN JONES

DEDICATION

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

1 MEGAN’S GRANDPARENTS

2 SATURDAY

3 SUNDAY

4 DEPARTURE

5 WACINHINSHA

GLOSSARY

THE DISALLOWED

Owen Jones

1 MR. LEE’S PREDICAMENT

Megan’s Grandparents Visit

A Spirit Guide, A Ghost Tiger and One Scary Mother!

by

OWEN JONES

Copyright © April 4th 2020 Owen Jones

Megan’s Grandparents Visit

By Owen Jones

Published by

Megan Publishing Services

https://meganthemisconception.com

The right of Owen Jones to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. The moral right of the author has been asserted.

In this work of fiction, the characters, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or they are used entirely fictitiously.

All rights reserved.

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Other novelettes in the same series:

The Psychic Megan Series

A Spirit Guide, A Ghost Tiger and One Scary Mother!

The Misconception

Megan’s Thirteenth

Megan’s School Trip

Megan’s School Exams

Megan’s Followers

Megan and the Lost Cat

Megan and the Mayoress

Megan Faces Derision

Megan’s Grandparents Visit

Megan’s Father Falls Ill

Megan Goes on Holiday

Megan and the Burglar

Megan and the Cyclist

Megan and the Old Lady

Megan’s Garden

Megan Goes To the Zoo

Megan Goes Hiking

Megan and the W. I. Cookery Competition

Megan Goes Riding

Megan Goes Yachting

Megan at Carnival

DEDICATION

This edition is dedicated to my wife, Pranom Jones, for making my life as easy as she can and she does a great job of it.

Karma will repay everyone in just kind.

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES

“Believe not in anything simply because you have heard it,

Believe not in anything simply because it was spoken and rumoured by many,

Believe not in anything simply because it was found written in your religious texts,

Believe not in anything merely on the authority of teachers and elders,

Believe not in traditions because they have been handed down for generations,

But after observation and analysis, if anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, accept it and live up to it.”

Gautama Buddha

––

Great Spirit, whose voice is on the wind, hear me. Let me grow in strength and knowledge.

Make me ever behold the red and purple sunset. May my hands respect the things you have given me.

Teach me the secrets hidden under every leaf and stone, as you have taught people for ages past.

Let me use my strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy – myself.

Let me always come before you with clean hands and an open heart, that as my Earthly span fades like the sunset, my Spirit shall return to you without shame.

(Based on a traditional Sioux prayer)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Thanks are due to the artist who did the cover for me,

Jacqueline Chavarria

1 MEGAN’S GRANDPARENTS

When Megan went down for breakfast, her mother put a cup of tea and a plate of bacon, eggs and sausages in front of her.

“We have a surprise for you, Megan. Your grandparents phoned last night and said they’d like to come down for the weekend. They will arrive tomorrow afternoon.”

“That’s great, Mam, I haven’t seen Dad’s parents for ages. How long is it? Two years?”

“It could be. It will be nice to see them again, won’t it, Robert?”

“Yes, it has been a while.”

Robert got on well with his parents, but they lived quite a way off in St. David’s, West Wales, so he had gotten used to not seeing them often. He had grown up on his parents’ farm, but had left the village to go to university. He didn’t like big cities, but he knew that he could never go back to the isolation of a remote farm again either.

With no other successors, they had sold their farm when they had reached sixty-five and could not be bothered to run it any longer.

They were not angry with him about it, although they were disappointed and he felt guilty for not following in their footsteps, but there it was. He had always justified his decision by telling himself that he had his own life to lead as they had led theirs.

They had done what their parents had done, which was to farm. They considered that that was normal for people like them, but they could also see that the world had changed since they were young and so had never tried to stand in their son’s way.

Robert phoned every week, but they didn’t write, except to exchange cards on religious holidays. Robert and his family had not gone to stay with them since the sale of the farm, because they simply did not have the room and this was the first time that they had ever asked to come to stay with them too, although when they had had the farm, they would not have been able to get away anyway.

He wasn’t worried about any tension, since he was sure that they would all enjoy themselves, although his parents were a little dour. They were Baptists, but not strict, they did believe that people should enjoy themselves, but they had forgotten how to do it since Robert had left home.

Robert realised this and it made him feel guilty about that too, but he was pleased that they had sold the farm and received a good price for it. He hoped that they would start enjoying life again in retirement. He had mentioned a cruise several times recently, but they had replied that they were ‘not the kind of people who went on cruises’.

Robert insisted that they were exactly the kind – a retired couple, who now had more free money and time than ever before. He was hoping to get them to sign up to a cruise for their fortieth wedding anniversary.

They would arrive on Friday afternoon and stay until Monday morning, as they had nothing to rush back for, not even a dog.

All in all, everyone was looking forward to a family get-together, although Suzanne was also hoping that they were not coming to give them bad news, not that she had any reason for suspecting that one of them was ill.

They arrived in Feyton by train at four thirty, so Robert finished work early, picked Megan up from school and they all went down to the station to meet them.

They both looked older and greyer than Megan remembered them, but they still stood erect and looked fit. They thought that Robert looked tired and that Megan was a lot taller, which she was. Since they had last seen her, she had grown from a chubby eleven-year-old girl into a lanky thirteen-year-old teenager.

They greeted Robert and Suzanne as if they had last seen them a few days ago, but they hugged Megan as was their custom. Her day would come too, when they would not treat her like a child any longer. However, for the time being, Megan and her grandparents enjoyed the status quo.

She sat in the back of the car in between them and felt the warmth and the love that they thought it improper to show in public. It was the old style, the old Welsh style that Robert was struggling to break out of with Megan, although without much success.

He felt that he had let Megan down over the affair of the mayoress’ cat and so he had promised her and himself that he would not let it happen again. However, he was doing just that. Nothing had changed. He knew it and Megan knew it. Robert felt guilty again, but Megan was just used to it. Now he could see the source of his problems in this regard in the rear-view mirror. Tradition again, and the fear of what others thought, even when it affected their own family; and Megan, like her father before her, promised never to let it happen to her and her children when the time came.

“Do you want to go home first, Mam, and drop your things off? Then we can either go to the seaside for a coffee, or have one in the garden at home and go out for a meal later, or even both, if you like!” said Robert.

“What do you think, Pop?” she asked her husband. “Are you tired? Do you need a sit-down and go out later or are you raring to go?”

“I can go with the flow, Mud. I’m not tired, but I couldn’t run a marathon either. Let’s just put ourselves in Bobby and Suzi’s hands.

“What do you guys want to do, son? Did you have a plan for us?”

“No, not really, just a few rough ideas. Suz can cook if you like, or we can go out tonight if you’re not tired and she’ll cook at home tomorrow or we can have a barbecue and all chip in.

“Tomorrow, we thought we’d go shopping in the morning, like we usually do. It’ll give you a chance to look around the mall.”

“We have shops where we live too, son, but all right. Let’s do that then – eat out tonight and stay in tomorrow night and on Sunday night, we’ll take you out as our treat, OK?

“Let’s just go home for now then and go out for dinner in a couple of hours. We can have a cup of tea in your garden. How’s it doing this year?”

“Pretty fair, Dad, it’s just a hobby though. It gives us a few meals a year, but I only do it to keep me a little fit and get me out in the fresh air. We buy nearly all our food.”

“Shame, how about you, young lady, do you like gardening?”

“I don’t really know much about it, Taid, but I do like nature, so I suppose I would. I’m short on time really, school, you know.”

“Yes, Megan, everything is about time, but when you get older and you have less of it left, you realise how important it is to use your time wisely. You never know when you will be called up, so make use, full use, of every hour in every day, and I don’t mean just by working.

“If I had known at your age what I know now, my, how different our lives would have been. You have to work to pay your way, but some people work much harder than they need to.

“You can’t take it with you. I know you’re only thirteen and this all probably seems a long way off to you, but it isn’t, you know! Time flies! Your grandmother still seems only twenty to me, but the years and the toil have taken their toll.

“If I had my time again, I wouldn’t have worked so hard and I would have made sure that Nain hadn’t either. The time to have fun is when you’re young, not when you’re old and set in your ways.

“Not that I am saying that you should bunk off school and go to all-night raves, or whatever you call them. You need to set up your future before you go anywhere, but your Dad tells me that you are a bright girl and I think that he’s right.”

“I understand, Taid.” Megan used the old Welsh words for grandfather and grandmother because she knew that they preferred them to the English ones.

“Oh, get away with you, Pop. Don’t you fill her head with what you think. Bobby and Suzie are bringing her up not us.

“Megan, you listen to your parents not to us, they will see you all right.”

“It’s all right, Nain, it is so nice to see and be with you both again. I’m so looking forward to this weekend.”

“Yes, well, that’s another thing, child, don’t wish your life away by looking forward to things. Learn to enjoy what you’re doing at the moment, don’t waste your time thinking about what might happen. What will happen, will happen, whether you want it to or not.”

“Come on, Pop, give it a rest, let’s just enjoy each other’s company, so no lecturing.”

“OK, Mud, have it your own way”. They pulled up at their house and went inside. Megan and her father took the bags up to the spare room, while Suzanne and her mother-in-law put a few things together for tea, and Taid went out into the garden to see what Robert had remembered about gardening.

When the other four brought the tea things out, he said:

“Well, Robert, you have made good use of the space you have, but your potatoes have got a spot of blight. Otherwise everything is looking good.”

“Ah, like I said, Dad, it’s only a hobby, but I enjoy it and so does Megan, don’t you, love? And it puts a few carrots on the table, you know?”

Megan watched her parents and grandparents interacting. She could see that there was a great deal of love between them, something that she could not remember witnessing between her maternal grandparents, but she had been very young then, so she could not be sure. It was just that she could only remember her mother’s mother being angry and domineering.

She only knew her mother’s father from after he had died, but he was lovely too. This was the first time she was really seeing her father’s parents in more ways than one.

It seemed that her Nain and Taid were more spiritually inclined than her other grandparents. She didn’t yet know what they knew, but the few things that Taid had said made Megan suspect that he was deep and sensitive. Her grandmother, Nain, was the same and Megan hoped that she would be able to learn a lot from them over the following couple of days.

In the privacy of their back garden, they talked like the real family that they were and no-one would have guessed that they hadn’t seen one another for several years.

At some point during tea, Nain opened her bag and asked for quiet.

“This, Bobby, was your grandmother’s ring, and we, your Dad and I, have decided that it is a good time to give it to Megan.”

“Wow, it is so beautiful! A Celtic Cross. I love it and I love silver.”

Megan tried it on for size and could feel vibrations. It fitted the third finger of her right hand. She looked at it, flexed her fingers and stroked it.

“It is so beautiful, Nain, Taid. Thank you ever so much. It feels just perfect on my finger. What was she like, my great-grandmother?”

“She knew her own mind, that’s for sure. She spoke her own mind as well and if you didn’t like it, too bad. That sort of attitude from a woman in those days made her a lot of enemies, but she had more people who liked her than disliked her, that’s for sure.

“She was what you would call these days, her own woman. In those days, she was thought of by some as cantankerous, I suppose you could say.

“She knew instantly if she liked someone or not and she rarely changed her mind. Life was very hard back then and so was she, as hard as nails.

“Sometimes she had no time for someone and would not waste a moment on him or her, yet other times, she would. People said that she had the gift of second sight and could heal too.

“People in the village held her in awe, if the truth be known, or not, Pop?”

“Yes, I think they did, Mud. Mam was very capable. She frightened most people, but not her family, not ever.

“She was not the only person like that in those parts in those days, though. There used to be some fearsome women about, all dressed in black.

“You remind me of her, Megan, in your serenity and in your eyes. Your face too. It’s a shame we didn’t think to bring a photo of her with us. We only have one decent one, but maybe you can come and stay with us in the school holidays some time and we can show you all our old photos, things and places in the village and on the farm – I’m sure the new owners wouldn’t mind.

“It would be nice now that you are old enough to appreciate your family history. You weren’t last time we met, but I am sure that you are now – you have grown up such a lot since then. What do you think?”

“I would love to go and visit you again. I’ll go as soon as Mam and Dad say I can. I’d go back with you on Monday, if they said I could.”

“Yes, well, steady on girl, you have school on Monday, so that isn’t going to happen, is it?” said her mother.

“No, but I was only saying how much I would like to go to Nain and Taid’s village again and have a look around. I was only a kid last time I went. Now I want to see it again.

“Can I, Mam?”

“Yes, of course you may, but not on Monday. Perhaps at half-term or in the summer holidays, if that suits everybody.”

“Thanks, Mam.”

2 SATURDAY

After a leisurely breakfast, the three ladies made some sandwiches and grilled a few dozen chicken portions and spare ribs, all of which they loaded into a hamper along with a few cans of beer and Coke in a polystyrene cooler box, two Thermos flasks, one of tea and one of coffee, the newspapers and a couple of books, while the men went out to do a spot of work in the garden and get some salad.

“So, how’s life, Bob?”

“OK, Dad. I’m slowly moving up the greasy pole at work. I think that Suz is still happy not to be working again just yet and Megan? Well, she’s doing well at school, although we just found out that she suffers a little from dyslexia. I told her what you told me, remember?”

“Sure, I do, just slow down the pace of your reading.”

“I told her that a lot of the Evans’ had it and said we called it the ‘Evans’ Speedy Brain Syndrome’, so if she mentions it, you’ll know what she is talking about.”

“OK, son, leave it to me.”

“There is something else too. She has become very pally with the mayoress after finding her lost cat. You’ll never guess how she says she found it.”

“Go on.”

“A tree nymph showed her where it was.”

Robert waited to see what sort of a response that would get from his father. He really didn’t know what to expect, but after a few more minutes of digging, he said:

“So, Megan is like that too, is she? Like your Nain. It has been a while since we’ve had a sensitive in the family. You should be very proud. Are you? You don’t look it.”

“Well, I am and I’m not. I’m truly happy for Megan’s sake and for my own, but it really upsets Suzanne.”

“Ah, that’ll be the Catholic in her.”

“Yes, I think that that is part of it, but it might go deeper than that too. I think that Suzanne had similar experiences as a child, but had them frightened out of her by her mother and now that they have resurfaced in her daughter, she doesn’t know what to do about it. Megan is getting these tendencies from both sides of the family and from what she tells me, she takes her spiritual beliefs rather seriously.”

“Well, that’s good, son. What is wrong with that? I could understand your moaning if she were drinking, smoking and chasing boys. She’s not, is she?”

“No, nothing like that. I don’t think she’s discovered any of those things yet, we’ve still got all that to come.”

“She seems a sensible enough girl to me. You are either doing a grand job of bringing her up, or she is a good kid, or both, and I reckon it’s both.

“So, where are you taking us this afternoon?”

“We thought either the Sandy Beach or the Great Park, either in the woods or on the Pebbly Beach. It’s up to you and Mam.”

“Let’s see what the ladies have to say about it, shall we, son?”

They changed their wellies for their shoes and went inside.

“Megan, that ring does suit you awfully well,” said her grandmother.

“Thank you. It feels so right on my finger that I don’t ever want to take it off. It’s as if it is being held there by a powerful magnet. When did she die?”

“Ah, let me see. Tony, when did your mother die? Thirty years ago?”

“Twenty-nine, dear, why’s that?”

“Megan was just asking, that’s all.”

“I see, we were wondering where you lovely ladies would like to eat all that gorgeous food you’ve been preparing. Oh, here are some greens out of the garden.”

“We were just talking about where to go too,” said Suzanne. “We thought it would be nice to go to Sandy Beach. It has been so long since we all went there together.”

“It looks as if it’s going to be a nice day and the forecast is good. I may even put my bikini on and go in for a dip. How about you, Megan?”

“Sure, I’ll go in the water with you, Nain. How about you, Taid?”

“Yes, maybe, it’s been years, but I saw my bathers in the case…”

“Oh, go on, Tony, get in for a swim.”

“OK, I will, if you will.”

“All right, that’s that settled then. Sandy Beach it is for a swim and a picnic,” said Robert.

“Do they still rent out deck chairs, Bob?”

“Yes, I think so. They do, don’t they, Megan?”

“They were still doing it last year, but I haven’t been over there this year yet.”

“Let’s take a couple of big towels, just in case.”

So, they loaded up the car and put their bathing costumes on under their