Dotty Wyndham (VILLAGE TALES EP 59)
Dotty was an eccentric every village would be proud to have. Her theatrical fantasies, her imagining she appeared in silent films and on the stage, and her relationships with the stars she claimed were friends were fanciful beyond belief. What did it matter if none of it was true. Except . . . Dotty Wyndham, had died some years before my arrival in the village but her presence lingered on in the use of her name as a comparison by those villagers who had known her. Someone was worse than, as bad as, or demonstrating some similarity. It was something that bonded the older inhabitants, as the incomers, of which I was one, didn’t know what they were talking about. It was their private joke. Dotty was presumed to be short for Dorothy, and it had entered the village lexicon as meaning eccentric in nature, which differed from its common meaning of being mentally unstable. Dotty may well have been that as well, but it was her theatrical fantasies that picked ...