"Torture" by Arthur Machen

1 year ago
5

Well, the title of this one will probably get it suppressed in the algorithm, but oh well, I didn't come up with it, and I'm not going to change it. And if the title doesn't bury it in the algorithm, the theme of the story probably will.

This is a very British-centric story. Pudding for dinner isn't the kind of pudding us Americans think of, it would traditionally be a boiled savory thing. Haggis and black pudding (blood sausage) are good examples. And then there's the reference to cricket; and the "form master", where a "form", in the British schooling context, is an educational stage or class. So very British!

The picture used is "A country lane, Hartley Green" by Stephen Pearce, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/).

For our British listeners, extra detail on this picture: This country lane leads to Gayton. The lane is circular so whichever direction you travel you will still arrive at Gayton, a small village near to Weston, Staffordshire.

I thought it looked very English anyways.

To follow along: https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Ornaments_in_Jade/Torture

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