Upstairs, Downstairs and in her ladies' chamber ... I read this line somewhere in a popular site in the internet and I was not just reminded of a popular rhyme of the past... Just thought of this popular British series of old, starring Lesley- Ann Down aka Georgina Worsley and of course, the not so popular piece of children story I wrote.....
UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS
'Mr Tan awoke with a start one night. Someone was knocking on his front door. And it was way past midnight.
Mr Tan peered through the glass window. In the moonlight, he saw two very unlikely men. One was huge with a long, unkempt beard and disheveled hair. He was pounding on Mr Tan's door with his heavy fist.
When Mr Tan failed to respond, the man turned to his companion, a dwarf who was carrying a gunny sack twice his size.
"There's no one here," the huge man thundered in a gruff voice. "It's safe to dig."
The dwarf produced a spade and began to dig a very large hole in the garden.
The two men then unloaded the contents of the gunny sack into the hole.
They were unloading stones that twinkled in the moonlight. To Mr Tan, the stones looked like diamonds.
The famed diamond-hoarding fairies from the nearby forest have chosen to hide their diamonds in my garden, Mr Tan thought excitedly.
After the men had gone, Mr Tan immediately rushed down to his garden.
He dug out the diamonds and found them to be as big as mangosteens, but many times heavier! "I will be rich," Mr Tan exulted. He would not have to worry about anything in his life again!
But Mr Tan had to make sure that the diamonds were kept from prying eyes. He would keep the diamonds upstairs in his room in a big steel cabinet under lock and key, he decided.
He started to gather the diamonds in a big rattan basket, but had trouble carrying them up. The diamonds were just too heavy! He had to carry the diamond up to his room one by one, and there were a hundred of them!
Up and down Mr Tan plodded!
Upstairs and downstairs he went a hundred times!
By the time Mr Tan had carried in the last diamond, it was already dawn.
The cockerel in the chicken coop in the backyard was crowing.
"I had a funny dream last night of a huge man climbing up and down the stairs," Mrs Tan said as she stirred in her bed.
"There seemed to be thundering footsteps throughout my dream, as if someone was actually walking up and down!"
Mr Tan managed to suppress his laughter. .
"I have a big surprise for you, dear," he said nonchalantly as he swung open the door of the steel cabinet.
Was it a big surprise indeed!
"What is the meaning of this?" Mrs Tan yelled at her husband.
Suddenly, she became terribly fierce.
When Mr Tan swung open the door of the steel cabinet, wet, black soil had started to gush out from it. In no time, both husband and wife found themselves submerged to the knees with garden soil.
The diamonds which Mr Tan had painstakingly carried up the stairs had turned into garden soil!
Mrs Tan was further annoyed to find more soil on the stairs and in the living room.
She made sure her husband cleaned up the whole mess and would not listen to Mr Tan's strange tale of the diamond-hoarding fairies.
Mr Tan probably learned two good lessons that day: Don't be greedy, and avoid messing around with other people's properties, especially those diamonds of the famed diamond-hoarding fairies.'
I really wonder if people still remember the famous British series. We all know that time maketh people forget. While it's good to forget especially about those ugly and bad things, forgetting about something good... well, I think that's life's tragedy.
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