Short Story: Imminent Retirement

Short Story: Imminent Retirement

Clarissa Fearmont Foxley had always believed herself to be good at her job. She knew that others thought so too, she had received many commendations at Council during her long career. Many times praise had been forthcoming from the highest levels about her strong record of achievement, about her extensive success rate.

Others would ask her for advice, look for hints and tips on how she did it. It's all about attention to detail, she would tell them. That was the problem with the younger ones in the Coven, these days. Too much now, now, now, always looking for shortcuts, always seeking to deliver the end result with the least input. For cauldron's sake, some of them were even talking about tweeting spells. At the last Council Annual Conference, there had been a five hour workshop dedicated to utilising social media, with full guidelines on how a coven might set up its own Facebook page to share spells and to promote business.

Clarissa had left half way through the session. These new ways were not for her. She much preferred the old way of doing things, when word of mouth had worked best for business. All her most spell binding work had come that way. A little love potion always guaranteed several lovelorn maidens following up in anxious enthusiasm to achieve the same happily ever after that Clarissa had procured for their friend.

And what about all those bumper harvests. A good many of them were down to Clarissa's work. Yes, those were the good old days. Clarissa did miss those times.

Of course, the Council had made the policy clear some years ago. Covens were expected to move with the demands of the modern world. The Council couldn't support old fashioned and inefficient spell making. Just not cost effective and no good for achieving economies of scale. Twenty first century witching was all about mass market volume, quick turnarounds and integration in the urban environments.

She had tried her best to cope. Really she had but let's face it she was getting old. Now that she was one hundred and forty ... three, well bits of her quite frankly were wearing out. Her hearing was dodgy unless it was a full moon; her sense of smell had never been the same since that last bonfire night when her incantation had turned a bit wobbly. Hmm, best not to think about that one!

It was her eyesight though that was proving most troublesome these days. Even with her magically improved reading glasses, it was hard to see all the necessary words.

She had been coping as best she could until last month when the annual reissuing of the Coven Spell Book took place. Segafredda Sedgely, voted Head of Coven, in Clarissa's view as a result of some dubious charm gifting, announced that they were going electronic. They were all issued with hand held computer books. Everything was to be looked up and, oh boiling frogs, did Clarissa struggle. She was simply not technically minded and she could not master how to make the small print bigger. Some spells it didn’t matter but the less common ones she just knew would prove as problematic as blending oil of bogwood with ground poppycock.

And that was why on the 27th May 2011, she finally realised that she was no longer any good at her job, that retirement was now imminent and unavoidable, her symbolic broom would be broken and her Coven Badge of Witches Honour would be removed.

After all there was no excuse for turning the Prime Minister of Great Britain into a Jack Russell Terrier. Even worse, she was at a total loss as to how to turn him back. It might well be in the electronic spell book but what use was that to her if she couldn't read the damn small print.

Her only consolation was that the country probably wouldn't know the difference in being governed by a yappy dog.