Kitten Theory Revisited

 

As everyone is now aware the existence of the entire universe depends on the quantum fluctuations in the whims of the universe’s kittens. This explains why the strings in string theory often end up in such a quantum entanglement. At least until the kittens go to sleep. Or start chasing a few fundamental particles under the subatomic furniture.

As physicists announced only a few weeks ago, the hunt for the missing dark matter in the universe is now over. They recently found most of the dark matter in the universe underneath the universal fridge where the cosmic kittens lost most of it.

Some physicists are now confident that the rest of the missing dark matter is under the furniture in the cosmic living room. However, some of the more sceptical physicists expect to find more dark matter under the wardrobe in the bedrooms out near the edge of the known universe.

As for why so many black holes exist in the universe, most physicists and astronomers point to the lack of litter trays out in the observable universe and suggest the kittens do need somewhere to go. As we all know, cats do like to dig holes for this purpose. This latest addition to Kitten Theory has subsequently put off many physicists who once claimed we could use black holes as a form of fast - or even instantaneous - travel between parts of the universe. They now say - in the light of this new evidence – such a journey could become somewhat uncomfortable, but may be tenable if people remember to always wipe their feet on leaving the destination black hole.

Not a Morning Person

It was a morning, which was good, considering she'd just got out of bed and was preparing to go to work. Unreasonably, at least to her mind, was the insistence by her office that Shelly should arrive there each day at the start of the working day... in the morning.

Shelly was not a morning person.

She had been married – for a while – to a morning person. Steve had the annoying temerity to not only like getting up in the mornings, he also enjoyed being awake, singing like a star in a big budget musical as he made his smiling way through the early day.

The marriage had not lasted long.

Steve had tried to not like mornings. Shelly could remember him lying there in bed, stiff and awkward ass the birds began their third encore of the dawn chorus, both Steve and the birds keeping Shelly awake and increasingly angry with both of them. Up until then she'd been completely oblivious to the dawn chorus, but once she'd started to notice it.

Steve had to go.

So, he went – last she heard he'd started a farm, which Shelly thought would suit him - while she went back to hating mornings... until she got this job.

Just why everything had to start in the morning, usually at some hour she'd only ever regarded as theoretical, she couldn't understand. No-one liked getting up in the morning – apart from Steve – so she wondered why everyone did it.

Shelly thought there should be some sort of law, but politicians never cared about the things that mattered. So here was Shelly standing in the bathroom as another day – far too early – started around her.

It was only when she looked in the mirror and saw who... what... was standing behind her that she realised that this was going to be one of her very few memorable mornings.

Oblivious Dances

Oblivious Dances

The ancient brooding trees,
once more beginning to bud.
Another year wrapped around themselves
as they watch over all our lives

as brief moments disappearing
before they even notice we live.
And then we are gone, before
they learn or remember our names,

while these hillsides don’t notice us
or the trees, and our brief existences.
Meanwhile, up in the far skies beyond,
the stars continue their oblivious dances.

The Only Secrets Worth Knowing

There was a noise, something moving in the undergrowth. She turned, saw the bracken undulating as though they were the surface of some deep sea disturbed by what swam though it. It looked as though it was big... whatever it was.

Melody turned back to the path, picking up her basket of berries and herb leaves, including the precious leaves the old crone has insisted she get.

The woods looked too dark; forbidding and full of secrets that she would not want to discover. She had always been told never to step off the path, but the crone had laughed, her few remaining teeth dark in the cavern of her mouth.

'The only secrets worth knowing, all of them lie off the path,' Old Beth laughed. 'If no one ever dared step off the well-worn path, none of us would ever learn anything.' The old woman then looked up into the tall young girls eyes. 'If you learn little else from me, young one, remember that. It is only when we go beyond what we know that we ever discover something new.' She hobbled away to her shelf of mysterious potions in dark bottles, jars and jugs. She picked up a green bottle, tightly stoppered, with something indefinable inside it. 'Although,' the old woman turned back. 'It is always possible – if not likely – that we will learn something we never wanted to know.'

Melody, as she hurried back towards the path, was beginning to think that she had discovered – or it had discovered her – one of those things she would rather not know.

She sighed a deep sigh of relief, one more step and she would be back on the path and safe.

The sudden claws struck out, grabbed her ankle and dragged her back into its own deep darkness.

Pandemic Panic

It is a matter of great concern that, despite scientist and medical professionals devoting their lives to solving the problem, humanity is still greatly disfigured by the curse of politics.

However, recently there has been a breakthrough at the School of Political Diseases at the University of Luton. Here, sequencing of human DNA has led to the discovery that all humans carry a gene which, in the words of the leading investigative scientist ‘enables us all - to varying degrees - to talk absolute bollocks.’

Scientists see this discovery as a major key to understanding just how the disease of politics takes hold in a human subject. They believe it also goes someway towards explaining how and why politics is such a virulent communicable disease. For, as we know, it only takes one person spouting some political bollocks for the entire surrounding area to become infected with political ‘opinions’ which they spread like a plague through those without any natural immunity to politics.

Virologists have over recent years become increasingly concerned at the way the political disease spreads itself. This is especially troubling when so many mass outbreaks of the illness spreading rapidly around the world, often using social media as a carrier. For it only takes one person spouting some ill-informed political nostrum or utter bollocks for that outbreak to spread across the country, or - in some cases – around the world.

It is for this reason that worried scientists all cry out for more research funding. All despite the danger they will have to put themselves in when they - through no fault of their own – have to get into close contact with highly infectious politicians to secure more research funds.

We can all only wish them well and hope that one day the deadly curse of politics will be lifted from mankind forever.

The Twisting and Turning Streets

She knew the alleys and the streets. They were her home. She had grown up in the twisting and turning streets as they wove themselves around the buildings. She knew the dark places and the deepest shadows where it was safe to hide and those shadows too where it was definitely not safe to hide. She'd grown up on the streets and so had learnt to survive both the dangers of the days and the dangers of the nights. Otherwise, she would never have grown up at all. Just becoming another of those absences that are sometimes noticed and then - just as quickly -forgotten.

Sheena had no idea who her parents had been, or even how old she was when she'd first found herself out on the streets alone. All she knew was that she learnt to steal, to trick and well, just to survive by herself.

There had been others, other children, at various points, but they had come and gone, most disappearing in the long winter nights as mysteriously as they'd arrived on the streets. To many of the adults of these poorer darker city streets the orphan children were vermin, much like the rats, feral cats and packs of dogs wandering the streets. Just as much trouble and just as easy to dispose of. After all, the river was deep and there was always a hot fire somewhere where bodies could turn to ash.

Sheena was lucky to be alive, fortunate to have survived so long. But now, at the darkest heart of the night, as she made her way around a corner behind the Inn, she was about to make the biggest mistake of her short life.

The Still Point of This Turning World

Well, there you go… unless, of course, you are currently not in motion. Although, quite how you manage that when the rest of the universe is rushing about all over the shop is probably better explained by someone in a more physics-compatible stance than the one I am currently utilising. A posture which more resembles the stance of one caught by surprise next to a chest freezer by a Thomson’s gazelle concerned about the integrity of its vanilla ice cream supplies.

No doubt, it is wise for a creature from such a warm climate to have some concern about whether or not someone is attempting to steal its ice cream. This is especially the case in an area famous for the diversity of its wildlife and especially some of the more rapacious hunters and scavengers… as well as an inordinate amount of TV naturalists. Particularly when the naturalists would be more than eager to capture such dramatic footage of a distraught gazelle standing next to its pillaged freezer.

After all we all – no doubt – remember that award-winning footage narrated by David Attenborough in his last TV wildlife extravaganza. A piece where a herd of zebras returned home from a day’s busy grazing to find their once so neat vegetable racks in complete disarray. Finding no sign whatsoever of the spring cabbage they’d bought only that morning from the Serengeti Tesco.

So, like I said – there you go… unless of course you are at the still point of this turning world. In which case, you won’t.

To the Rescue

His name was Stormrider and he rode a steed called Betty. He came from the land of Steve on the far side of the mountain called Bert. He wore the flat cap and string vest of the warrior and was deadly with both the pea-shooter and castanets. There were rumours back in Steve that he’d once poemed a man to death with some of the most lethal stanzas ever deployed in a poem fight.

He saw the peasant, busy outside his hovel updating his Facebooke page. He drew back on Betty’s reins and cut her ignition. He wound down the driver-side window. ‘Any Princesses around here need rescuing, my good ma… woman?’

The peasant considered for a moment, wishing he… she had such a fine and fancy tractor as Betty. ‘Not really,’ he… she said. ‘Although, tell a lie, we do have one up the tower who does like a wandering knight such as yourself to rescue her from her knickers.’

Stormrider nodded sagely. ‘Right.’ He turned Betty’s key and the mighty engine coughed itself back into life. ‘So,’ he said, ‘this tower, where is it exactly.’

‘Well,’ the peasant said. ‘If I was you I wouldn’t start from here. ‘’Specially not as it is Wednesday.’

‘It is not Wednesday,’ Stormrider spoke with the authority of the true knight.

‘Isn’t it?’ The peasant glanced down at his… her laptop. ‘Bloody internet connection’s buggered again, I’ll have to get a witch in.’

‘Well?’ Stormbringer said.

‘I dunno… the witch said I should sacrifice a goat to the demons of the internet, but you know how messy that is and these are my best rags… well, my only rags and….’

‘No,’ Stormbringer said. ‘The Tower, where is it?’

‘Oh, just get on the ring road, just past the supermarket, you can’t miss it.’ The peasant pointed off into the distance. ‘Oh, can I clean your windscreen for you, while you wait for the lights to change?’ The peasant pulled an even dirtier and tattier scrap of rag from under her… his rags.

‘No, thanks… er… what lights?’

‘Bloody wizards, they said we’d have traffic lights, traffic calming measures, pelican crossings and all sorts…. You wouldn’t believe what it is like here at rush hour… sometimes we get as many as two or three travellers a week, what with them and the bullock carts delivering all the on-line shopping…. It’s chaos here sometimes, and I’ll tell you another thing, that Lord of the Manor, I could tell you some stori….’

Hastily, Stormbringer wound up his window, cutting off the peasant in mid-flow. He put Betty into gear and drove off to look for adventure and a princess needing rescue from her knickers. ‘All in a day’s work,’ he said as he steered Betty towards the ring road.

Doing Nothing

We sat there, letting time pass us by. It felt good not having to worry about the time going by. We did not have to be anywhere, we did not have to meet anyone and we did not have to do anything.

I looked at Charlie and she looked at me.

We smiled.

I made a small pile of sand with my bare foot, building it up with my toes. Charlie was watching some children further down the beach busy discussing the sandcastle they were creating while their parents sat in chairs nearby.

I looked across at the cliff at the side of the beach. I could see the outline of a path snaking its way up the cliff until it disappeared amongst the trees halfway up the cliff-side, then re-emerging up higher, beyond the tree line. I'd seen a few people go along the path from the beach and disappear into the trees, then minutes later appear on the path above the trees. The path apparently led to some sort of monument, or statue at the top of the cliff. I was beginning to wonder what it would be like to take the path, see the statue, or whatever it was, and see the view from up there.

'You're bored.' Charlie looked at me, sheltering her eyes under the palm of her hand.

I shrugged. 'I never really got the hang of doing nothing.'

'Why are we here then?'

'I thought you... you said we needed a break.'

Charlie shrugged this time. We'd known each other long enough to not need words. There were times, out on a job when we hardly ever spoke to each other. We were used to silences, maybe we were too used to them.

I glanced towards the cliff path.

'Do you want to go up there?' She'd seen where I was looking.

Turning to her, I also knew that she knew what I'd been thinking about where the path disappeared into the trees. She grinned, her tongue flicked between her lips. 'You think maybe somewhere along that path there is a quiet... secluded place?'

'I was wondering that, yes.' I could feel the arousal beginning.

Charlie noticed that too, she glanced up into my eyes from where she'd been looking down at my crotch.

She stood. 'Come on then,' she said. 'Let's go fuck.'

Here and There

Here and There

It takes time to get there.
It takes time to get here.

Distances are measured.
Time is measured.

These times are made of numbers.
Our lives are made of numbers.

Our days are numbered.
Life comes and life goes.

Time is here
then it is gone.

You are here.
You are there.

You are gone.

In the Time of Drought

Even then, it was not as we once hoped. The days were full of time that we used as though we had all the time in the world. We could let the minutes pour away into bucketfuls of hours and not have to worry that it would all one day run dry. We had rivers of years flowing past, we could dive into and swim through and out into a sun-filled valley where the bad times poured past us like springtime rains.

We did not ever think that river would dry up. We thought it would flow on past us, through our valley, forever.

Now, I walk this cracked dry riverbed alone, no longer waiting for rain that will not come again. I do not want the rains to come. Unless they come as floods to pour down and fill this empty valley from side to side, drowning all these memories of her running through thick green summer grass to dive into that river of time.

I cannot forget that boat that came one summer morning and took her away, sailing on down the river away from me. Leaving me here to watch the river dry up and die. Where the only rain that falls are a few solitary tears while I wait for the flood to come and drown me.

Inspiration and Interruption

'How is it going?' she said, coming into the room behind me.

I sat back in the chair, letting my hands fall from the keyboard. 'Not too well.'

'Oh, why not?' She put her hands on my shoulders.

'I just can't seem to get going.'

She peered past me, at the computer screen, kissing my check as her face brushed mine. 'What is it about?'

'It is about this writer who can't write any more.'

'But if he's a writer who can't write, is he still a writer?'

'I don't know. That was something I wanted to find out. But he can't do any more.'

'Oh, why not?'

'Because he keeps getting interrupted.'

'Oh?' she came around in front of me, pushing the keyboard out of the way and sitting on my desk in front of the monitor. Her legs hung down either side of where I sat.

I glanced down at her thighs and the point where they disappeared under her short denim skirt.

She peered back over her shoulder at the screen. 'Why does he keep getting interrupted, then?'

'Because this woman keeps coming into the room when he is writing and distracting him.

'Oh....' she looked at me and began unbuttoning a button on her blouse. Several were already unbuttoned and under this one I could see the lacy edges of a pale lilac bra. 'This woman... what does she do?' She unbuttoned the next button and began pulling her blouse out from where it tucked into her skirt.

'Just as he thinks he's got an idea, she comes in and starts undressing either him or herself.'

'Really?' she pulled off the blouse and dropped it in my lap. 'That doesn't sound very credible.'

'You'd be surprised,' I said. 'Reality is often stranger than fiction.'

The bra landed in my lap.

I let the blouse and the bra fall off my lap onto the floor.

Then, she slipped off the desk and onto my lap and....

Gingerbread

It was dangerous, we knew that, those paths through the dark woods have been in so many of the tales we'd heard as youngsters for us to be aware of the dangers.

We were older now, though, and we thought we were both brave and immune to danger.

Little did we know though, as we set off along the path, that things were changing.

We saw the girl ahead of us on the path. 'Hey, isn't that...?' Pete said, pointing to the girl.

'Don't be stupid – that's just a stor....' John peered up ahead at the girl.

I looked too, she was strolling along, carrying a basket and, yes, she did have a red cape with a red hood. She was – though – much older than we'd expect from the story; more of a young woman, more our age or a bit older, than a girl.

But she did look like the girl in the story, so I did the obvious thing and looked around for the cameras.

'What are you looking for?' John said. 'The big bad wolf?'

They all laughed.

'Git,' I said. 'Can't you see – it must be something they're filming. A film, TV or an advert or something like that.' I took a closer look at a suspicious-looking tree. 'Unless...?'

'Unless, what?' Pete sidled closer to see what I was looking at.

'Unless it is one of those prank TV shows... y'know they get this girl to piss about in the woods, pretend to attack her with a wolf or something. Then some unsuspecting twat comes along to rescue her and gets made to look like a tit on national TV... or YouTube... or something.'

Feeling smug, we watched the girl head off down the path. A few minutes later, we found a branch in the path and – on a whim – we turned to the left. Then a couple of minutes later we saw it.

'It's a fuckin' gingerbread house,' Pete said.

He was right it was and there was an old woman in the doorway, gesturing for us to step inside.

Government and Secret Service Conspiracy

Conspiracy theorists claim that new evidence is emerging that the British government and its secret services: MI5, MI6 and GCHQ all colluded together in a Top Secret operation back at the end of last year.

Various departments across the UK government had to appear to make substantial cuts in their budgets. It became apparent to those charged with oversight of the secret services that things could not go on as before in those services. As – almost – everyone knows the James Bond-esque myth of high living and dinner-jacketed casino trips with multibillionaire supervillains does not - at all – bear any resemblance the way the secret services actually operate. Their day-to-day business is more akin to endless surveillance from the disused flat above a rancid takeaway on a run down High Street. Still many politicians looking for media exposure on a select committee believed the secret services could make some substantial savings in their massive – but secret – budgets.

Therefore as a sop to the politicians and to discourage the media from finding out what they really spend the overtime budget on, the heads of the three services got to gather. They decided to see if they could give the illusion of making some economies.

In the end, there was only area they could see where they could make substantial savings. If the three secret services got together and organised – rather than three separate ones - a joint staff Christmas party. Even then, at that initial planning stage several voices were raised in opposition to the idea. Especially if any bad publicity resulted in the almost inevitable punch up in the car park between the field agents of MI5 and MI6, with the GCHQ operatives standing on the sidelines screaming at both sides to leave it.

However, as the planning became more involved, it became clear that because of the numbers involved, the only suitable place to hold the event would be on an actual brewery’s premises.

It was at this point the politicians involved themselves in organising the event. They set up several committees to oversee the arrangements, a white paper and a budget oversight committee and a substantial allocation of funds.

Inevitably, the result was utter chaos with the event going massively over budget and – in the end – costing twelve times as much as the original separate Christmas parties would have done.

After the failed cover-up which resulted in the media feeding-frenzy that followed the discovery of this colossal waste of public money, there was no alternative but to order a public inquiry.

Eventually, the public inquiry into the whole fiasco came to the only possible conclusion. That is that the UK government is incapable of organising a piss-up in a brewery - a result that came as no real surprise to anyone.

These Hands Can Touch

These Hands Can Touch

These hands can touch, but cannot describe,
these hands do not have the sensitivity
to describe, without the confirmation
that only seeing can ever bring.

Even though we move together
through the darkness of our night
to hold each other against the cold
as the winds blow outside these walls

as if they wanted to destroy everything
and turn our own small world to dust.
Just because we have turned our backs
on the night and the world waiting outside

to take these precious moments into our hands
and offer them to each other before the day
comes to take this, our only night, away
leaving us with nothing for these hands to hold.

Here Now

I remember her name and I remember the way she looked at me across that crowded room.

I waited and she came to me, eventually.

'Hello,' she said and smiled as I turned. 'I'm Claire.'

Hello, Claire.'

'Aren't you going to tell me your name?'

'You know it already, don't you?'

'Yes.'

'I saw you looking at me from over there.'

'Why didn't you come over?' She half-smiled, lowering her head to look up at me through half-closed eyes.

'I didn't need to. You’re here now.'

Claire glanced behind herself, but made no move away. 'So....' she said. 'I've read your poems.'

I nodded and she moved closer.

'I liked them.'

'Good.' I touched her arm, moving her away from the crowd.

'You don't say much.'

'No.'

'I could...' she waved her arm back towards the rest of the crowd.

'No,' I said. 'You've read the poems, there isn't much more to say....' I looked into her eyes. 'Is there?'

She shook her head.

'Take your knickers off,' I said.

'What!' She glanced around and then back at me.

'You heard.'

'Why?' she said, putting her glass down before checking we were out of sight.

'Why do you think?' I stood between her and the rest of the crowd.

A few seconds later, she placed some warm delicate material into my hand from behind.

I turned back to her, holding them to my nose and breathing deeply. I put them in my pocket.

She was wearing a long evening dress. My left hand was raising it up as my right hand was pressing, holding her crotch.

One the dress was up high enough my right hand slipped under it and I held her. She was already wet.

She looked up at me. 'You haven't even kissed me yet.'

'I know,' I said, and then, as my finger slipped inside her, I kissed her for the first time.

The Game of Takeaways

He stood tall and proud, surveying his kingdom. From there he could see his entire fish and chip shop from the counter to the doorway. Everything was gleaming clean, the chrome fittings shone like brightest silver and the tiled floor, still damp from mopping, reflected the sun shining in through the window. He was lord of his chip shop and everything was good.

Quitting the sanctuary of his place behind the counter, Bert strode over to the window. He looked out on the High Street before him. There were pizza takeaways, Chinese takeaways and Indian takeaways out there as well as two other fish and chips shops. All were potential threats to his realm and his place on the throne as King of the takeaways. Bert knew though that he, nor anyone else, could ever rest easy on that throne. There was always someone else out there waiting, wanting, scheming and planning to bring down the king so they instead could sit on that throne and dominate the High Street.

It had changed though in Bert’s lifetime. In his father’s day, when he sat on the throne, the takeaway realm was small indeed, just two fish and chip shops on the High Street and a host of other shops from a cobblers to a ladies’ hairstylist or two. All of them were gone now, even the supermarket and the ironmonger. All that remained were the takeaways, the charity shops and a betting office.

His kingdom was ravaged, war-torn. Still, though, the invaders came. There was talk of a Thai place opening soon, another one with free delivery. Bert turned from his window wondering if the days of the fish and chip shop were over. His own son ran an internet business these days and his hirelings wanted him to install a kebab machine.

Bert looked up at the sky above what was once a Woolworths shop. ‘Winter is coming,’ he said and turned back to care for his realm.

A Conjurer of Tales

When it began, we couldn't really say. These things have no real beginning as such. You could say it began when we first met. But then we do meet so many people over the course of our lives. Not many end up as we ended up, here, huddled together, listening to the sirens drawing closer bringing with them the end of all we hoped for, bringing an end to our futures together.

She was married, of course. I wasn't looking for anyone. I had given up on all that, which is often – according to the stories – when it is most likely to happen, love comes when you don't expect it.

I, though, had given up believing in stories. I had written too many of them to believe in them any more. I knew how they worked. I was like some religious leader who knew how to manipulate happenstance into miracles to fool those who need to believe, I was the magician who knew the secrets of all the illusions.

Love too, I thought at the time, was an illusion, a trick we play on ourselves, or some trick that nature performs so life can go on living.

Anyway, there I was sitting at a desk at the back of a bookshop, a pile of my latest sitting next to me. There was a queue, for which I was grateful. After all, you cannot be a writer without readers, and I liked to think I was a writer, some magician who could weave the stories out of airy nothing. Not much of a magician compared to the greats who came before me and those yet to be, a simple conjurer, nothing more. I could do a few simple card tricks and pull the rabbit from the hat, but nothing beyond that. But, it seems people – well, some people – think that was enough. So the smile I smiled upon each and every one of those readers was one of genuine gratitude.

Or, at least, I like to think so.

You would think someone in that position, A well-established crime writer would be able to pull off the perfect crime, or as close to perfect enough for him and his beautiful accomplice to get away with it.

At least, we thought I could.

But, now, like the last pages in so many of my stories, the sirens are coming for us.

Time that Lasts Forever

All those slow times, those times when it seems moments hang there between us as if suspended. As if the next touch of finger on bare skin, or kiss against flesh could last forever and we could fall together down towards some place where all our tender moments would go on forever.

Time, though, never waited for us. Those moments were gone so fast, even as they seemingly lasted forever. Our time was over and the world pulled us back, apart, away from each other. It turned us out onto the dark rain-soaked streets to walk away, back to lives that seemed suddenly so empty of everything.

I watched you walking away. Already wanting you to turn again, run back to me, so I could take you back to that anonymous room where our time waited for us, ready to take us in its arms.

You never turned back though.

You said, some other time when we lay together in that room, that you did not want to look back, could not look back, because if you saw me there, you'd want to come running back and never leave.

Now, though, these days when I live so far away, lost inside a new life in a new town, I wonder if you ever walk those streets. If you ever glance across at that doorway that led to the anonymous little room that became our world and wonder what happened to those times we wanted to last for ever.

Close Encounters... with a Fridge

Not that I expected it.

Well, you don't, do you? At least, I didn't. After all, when you get up in a morning it is not the first thing you expect to see when your bleary morning eyes focus long enough to see what is in your kitchen.

At first, I thought it was the dog, but the dog was there sitting in the hall, looking guilty. Guilty for the usual reason, I thought, so I was watching the floor, being careful where I put my feet when I heard the noise from the kitchen.

It took me a few seconds to make sense of this, still staring at the floor ahead of me.

Then I thought, burglar?

I looked around for a weapon; I fumbled around in the nearby cutlery drawer and came up with... a spoon. All the knives were – apparently – in the dishwasher again. The dishwasher was – of course – in the kitchen. Briefly, I wondered what the penalties for savagely spooning a burglar in one's on home were, before another noise from the kitchen caused me to creep towards the kitchen door, trusty spoon clutched in my quivering hand.

I looked back at the dog for support, but he just whined and looked away, obviously embarrassed by the spoon.

In the film, the cartoons and all that usually the first words are: 'take me to your leader.'

However, the alien I met in my kitchen, rooting through my fridge, its first words to me were, and I quote: 'Where's the bacon?'

Shadows and Secret Places

Shadows and Secret Places

The morning, formal, stiff and cold, too dark
and distant, waiting there as though it lacks
the strength to dismiss the night and dissolve
its secrets and its rituals in shadows
all hiding at the edge of things and waiting
for darkness creeping back, embracing them
again when daylight falls away to night.

But now unwilling morning drags the dark
away, and pulling the reluctant sun
into the skies, while chasing shadows back
and drying dew to leave no trace of night
to spoil the heart of day with any dark
musings on shadows and the secret places
all best left in the darkness for the night.

Something for the Weekend - Free Kindle Humour: Choosing Headgear for Penguins

Choosing Headgear for Penguins

Available FREE for the next 5 days: here (UK) or here (US)

No doubt you have been wondering over the years about what is the most suitable hat for the various breeds of penguin: such as a deerstalker for the King penguins, or whether emperor penguins should wear a top hat.

Perhaps you have also wondered if Napoleon wore a basque under his uniform at the battle of Waterloo and the role that lingerie played in history.
Maybe you have long puzzled over the role of the Stilton cavalry in the English Cheese war.

Possibly you may have pondered who was The Greatest Prime Minister Great Britain Never Had, or who was The Fastest Jelly Baby Diversity Co-Ordinator In The West.

You could have even puzzled over The Fabled Lost Source of the Pork Scratching.
Choosing Headgear for Penguins is the book that answers all of these and many other questions you’ve never thought of asking as well as much, much more about such diverse topics as: Celebrity Extreme Gardening, Eroticism and the Intellectuals, People Staring At Walls, Raiders Of The Lost Car Park, The Latest Celebrity Sex Scandal, The UK’s Leading Adult Film Male Superstar and Weasel Defusing.

Available FREE for the next 5 days: here (UK) or here (US)

Some comments on David Hadley's humour pieces:

"Bloody Hilarious!"
"The hamsters of doom. Dammit, that's poetry. Well done"
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"Brilliant! made me howl..."
"I think I just broke all my vital organs laughing"

Available FREE for the next 5 days: here (UK) or here (US)

We Could Be Alone

It was a place where we knew we could be alone. We were not – it seemed – even then, much like other people of our own age. We preferred the quiet to the noisy, the contemplative to the rowdy. We preferred the quiet of a walk in the country to a night out at clubs and pubs.

I had never been that good at fitting in, never felt comfortable with other people. Let alone those of my own age, who often seemed more alien to me than those we were supposed not to understand, the older generations.

Miranda, like me was one who didn't fit in. She too, seemed born out of her time. She, though, went her own way, seemingly indifferent to those around her. Unlike all the other girls I'd known, she seemed indifferent to the approval of others, never needing the comfort of fashion or any of the other tribal signifiers and markers with which all our contemporaries displayed their allegiances.

For a while, I had thought about trying to fit in, trying to be like everybody else, but I was never issued with the code book they all used. They knew a different language, use words in a different way, to me. They had a code of dress and style and music and so many other things, which I didn't have, or even know about acquiring.

I lived, as far as I could tell in a parallel but overlapping universe, worlds that didn't quite intersect. So when Miranda and I met, we seemed not only to live on the same plane finding in each other something we both lacked. Then it seemed as though we'd both – at last – found a place we could call home.

The Glorious Revolution

So there we were, or at least most of us were. The rest of them had become bored and wandered off to watch a repeat of Downton Abbey. The one where the servants begin a revolution and storm the sitting room, gaining control of the cucumber sandwiches and the strategically vital posh frocks, just before the advert break.

Anyway, those of us left manning the barricades decided too that we great heroes of the proletariat all deserved at least a two-week break in the sun once the revolution had been established. So the steering committee began at once to outline plans for a people’s travel agency in readiness for the next revolutionary council meeting. Someone suggested ‘something should be done about her from number 22,’ which, after a show of hands of the cadre present, was also added to the agenda.

That night we were expecting a counter-strike by the reactionary anti-revolutionary army. As usual they would – we assumed – commence their attack under cover of the peak-time viewing schedule when most of our forces would be settling down in front of something with heavy audience engagement.

Sure enough, just as the first dance-off began, the counter-revolutionaries began their artillery barrage. Unfortunately for them, they were relying on the renationalised Post Office to deliver their artillery shells to the guns at the front. Therefore, they only had two shells, one of which was a dud and the other caused only minor damage to a public urinal down at the far end of the High Street.

Consequently, their attack was desultory at best, only managing to take one of the town’s less strategically important takeaways, before our gallant comrades, all eager for a late-night curry, beat them back.

The glorious revolution continues and we fight on for another day!

Around the Centre of a Moment

The slow turning of a day around the centre of a moment holds us close to each other, never wanting to let go. We want; we need, time to stop here. Here and now enclosing us and enfolding us in this time that should never end. Here is perfect peace, perfect safety and perfect comfort wrapped around each other as our arms wrap around each other too.

Time should stop now, and not carry on with its seconds falling over one another and stumbling into the minutes, hours, days. All taking us on into that hazy and uncertain future, where we know that times like this must end for us.

It is the mortality though that makes these special times precious, if we had nothing to fear from the future, then these times would not have the importance or the intensity we feel when wrapped inside them. It is only because we know we do not have long, and there will - one day – be an end to all this, we feel this urgency of stasis; this need for the now to become eternal.

If it did become eternal, though, we would soon grow tired of it. We would then long for movement and freedom with the uncertainty the undefined and unknowable future would bring. It is only the knowledge that these times must end, so we can carry on, which makes us want to stay here holding each other close forever.

Take Me with You

'Take me with you,' she said.

'Why?' He looked down at the woman standing in the sodden field, half-covered in mud and a basket at her feet. The basket contained a bare handful of root vegetables, too muddy and scrawny for him to identify what they were.

'I could keep you warm at night.'

A couple of the other women, bent double over their own baskets in the field a few strides away, laughed without looking up.

'How old are you?' He had been about to remount, but he held the reins ready in his hand, wiping the rain from his hair with the other.

'Old enough.'

'You'd be a camp follower … a soldier's whore?' He half-smiled.

She looked around, behind her. 'It has to be better than this.'

He nodded. There had been a time when he'd been a farmer... for a while, before the barbarians came from their strange sea-monster boats in the night. 'You don't know anything about me.'

She nodded this time. 'I like what I see.'

'What you saw, you mean?' He turned his head towards the spindly tree he'd just pissed against.

She smiled showing white strong teeth. 'And that too.' She took a step towards him. 'I'd treat you right... if you treat me right. That's all I ask.'

He shrugged and hauled himself up on his horse. He looked down at her as she too looked down, at the mud in defeat.

He held out his hand. 'Come on, then.'

She took his hand, he hauled her up behind him and off they rode.

All Our Seasons

Then there were seasons. We had our spring and our long warm summer, but then came our autumn of fading days where the darkness of winter covered all our days with cold hard frosts neither of us could break through.

We had a long freezing winter of cold harsh days and lonely shivering nights when the bed turned us away from each other, rather than huddling us together under the heaping drifts of a thick warm quilt.

Then, one day, for reasons neither of us saw, the first day of spring broke through our long years of winter. There was green at the edges of our dull lifeless trudge through the harsh blizzards we had thrown at each other. There was birdsong again in greening trees once stark and bare.

I found a snowdrop growing up out of the cold bare ground and for the first time in years I took it to her and she smiled as though the long thaw began with that one single gesture.

Soon there were signs of spring everywhere, as our world began to bud and bloom again. The bed grew warm as we wrapped ourselves around each other, comforting each other whenever the memories of that long cold winter sent shivers through each of us.

Too Old for Those Dreams

Too Old for Those Dreams

I got there across wide-open fields
in early morning summer sunlight
when mists covered the dew grass.
When it was good, when I was young.

Now I grow older and this world
seems to grow too tired of me,
telling me I shall not dream again
and I am too old for that now.

But still those women come,
dancing through my dark nights
to take me by the hand once more
leading me out into that summer,

across the wide-open waiting fields
where morning mists cover the dew
and the day waits, there, just for us
to take and hold it close once again.

A Time When Worlds Were New

Once there was a time, long before this. A time when worlds like this were new and all things were possible. A time when the moments grew from one another, growing into strange shapes, strange structures and strange creatures.

I was there too, of course, shaping these growing possibilities into the shape of the world I wanted to make. Each morning, I would take the shape of the possible from the growing places, then twist them and turn them until I found the shape of the world I was looking for within them. Then I would let them grow on into that new shape.

Of course, I only suggested, formed, a tentative shape for the possible to grow into. I left the rest up to the various forces that were themselves growing into being to make this world grow out from a potential of an instant into millennia of growing and changing.

I remember the morning I found the shape of her waiting in the potential of the possible. It was not as if I created her, she just grew out of the formlessness I held in my shaping hands. It was as if my hands already knew the shape of her and the potential of the possible knew the shape of her too.

She grew there, in front of me, giving each of my new mornings a reason for being. Each day, I would hurry down to where she was growing out of the possible and I would sit back in wonder at what creation could make possible, make real, out of mere potential.

Of course, I never realised just how real she would turn out to be.

One morning I rushed down to look for her and she was gone. She'd grown and grown away from all that had created her, including me, and she gone off to discover just what was in this new world she'd found herself alive and free in.

Out of Distance and Circumstance

Possibility grew out of distance and circumstance. We moved away from all we knew into strange lands and strange times, looking for a place that could become a home. We had all lost so much, only memory remained, and memory, like the seasons fades away into loss... eventually. But these were still raw times; the memories of our loss burned and were sore.

There were some amongst us who had lost everything, except themselves. Lone survivors of families and the last of their name now, trudging through the winds and the blizzards. Alongside them, were those who still had remnants of family left, thinking they were the lucky ones, only to see those relatives fall and die by the wayside as we trudged on.

We were a weak and defeated people, making our stumbling way through hostile lands. Predators can smell fear, taste weakness on the wind. Not only animals: mountain lions, bears, wolves, but the wild humanity that prowls these thick forests too, the outlaws... they could sense we were easy pickings. Many of us died: taken in the night by animals, attacked at dawn by renegades, outlaws and slave traders. All eager for the easy pickings we – the weak – gave them.

It was a hard land and we too – eventually – learnt to be hard back, offering no mercy, no quarter. We became just as ruthless, just as savage as those that would prey upon us, but each day trudging ever onward, looking for that elusive place we could, one day, call home.

In the Parallels

The days passed as we moved on, further and further away from the familiar. It became apparent as we explored methodically, that the Parallels closest to what we still called Home Earth were different only in slight details. In some of the earliest Parallels, we could find no real differences. Perhaps the differences lay in something obscure like a slight variation in a species of beetle in the Amazon jungle or something like that, something none of our instruments – or any of us – could detect.

If it wasn't for our most useful instrument – the Parallel Worlds Detector – we would be hard-pressed to know whether we were on Home Earth or one of its nearby Parallels.

Soon though, the differences multiplied 'logarithmically,' as Sheena said, only half-joking. It did seem though the further we got from the familiar, the more unfamiliar it all got.

'Do you suppose,' Sheena said, some weeks into our journey. 'That ours... our home Earth is the real one, the one all the others are deviations from?'

'I doubt it,' I said. 'It was the old religions that saw Earth as the centre of the universe. We now know we are just one planet around one sun, one star among so many others. We know we are not the centre of the Universe, so why should we be the centre – if there is such a thing – of these parallel universes.'

Sheena nodded. 'Why then haven't we encountered any other travellers, explorers... scientists... like us coming the other way, from the other Parallels, then?'

A Significant Modern Artist

It is not all that often we get to see the full glory of Pointillist Etching’s full oeuvre in a major UK exhibition. This exhibition is a rare opportunity to encounter his most famous work Sardines – an opened tin of sardines placed at a precise 32 degrees from true north on a plain white dinner plate. As one critic said at its first public display, ‘this work is so profound in its unashamed exploration and condemnation of the lies of the Western military-industrial complex and their shabby moral vacuity’. This piece has not been on public view since its sale to a private collector for $456 million, three years ago.

However, the work displays the obvious technical skill of an artist of Etching’s calibre, whose 12 assistants worked tirelessly through the night to create this work. His team used a protractor and a laser – to make sure the sardine tin was at precisely the right angle to make his political point. The power of the political argument expressed through the work becomes so obvious to the discerning viewer, making the tickets to the exhibition a real bargain at only £1500 each.

On the Roads Ahead

It is never that clear, never so straightforward. These roads we walk on our journey - through this only life we will ever have - are full of twists and turns, forks in the road and crossroads that have no sign or indication where they will lead. We walk on, sometimes in company; sometimes alone, only ever knowing that one day, one of these roads we are walking along will come to a dead end.

There are things to see, things to do, though, along all these roads. It is just a matter of learning the art of looking; learning how to see. Our eyes track movement and they track colour. So often, though, we do not see what we notice, just things we pass by as we walk this latest road, looking for that turn to take us to some special place we have heard about.

There are so many tales, stories, myths and legends about the wonders that lie on the roads ahead. Sometimes there are those who run right off the end of the road they are travelling to reach for some wonder, some paradise, others have told them of at some weary traveller’s resting-place.

Others stand there, in the road, looking forward, looking back, peering over walls and under hedgerows. All looking for that one secret that will mean their road will never end, but it always does. Often while they were too busy looking elsewhere along the side of the road to see the end was here all along.

Never-Ending Winter

Never-Ending Winter

At times, it grows so cold and dark
as though the sun has given up
on this slow turning globe, a small

and insignificant blue world,
alone and lost against the distance
as though the universe has turned

its shoulder on us, leaving us here
in this a never-ending winter.
The days become half-night, so cold

and dark, all gone before they can
begin. We huddle close together
around forlorn and feeble fires,

in hope of heat, and warmth to bring
enlightenment, but now the flames
can only splutter and then die,

this dampness leaving only ash
and fading embers of the fires
that could have burnt so bright and hot.

Simplicities and Illusion

There was a time, or so we would like to think, when things were not so complicated. Eventually, we realise the simplicities of a more straightforward past are mostly illusions caused by the mind filtering out the awkward times that don't fit our golden memories. However, there is still this feeling there must have been a time better than this.

Of course, religions have taken such myths and – as usual – used them for their own ends, to speak of times before it was all ruined, of a Golden Age, of a time without sin and all such nonsenses. We would still like to believe in, even though we know such belief is only for those who look without seeing.

Marie knew too, that our own Golden Age was a creation of us looking back on certain selected instances. She still liked to think there had been a time when we were happier, even though happiness is such a nebulous concept, something that disappears like a magician's trick whenever you try to take hold of it. Nevertheless, she was still sure we were happy once.

Me? I don't know. I've never been that sure about happiness, what it is... or even if it is that desirable. Not that I prefer being unhappy, of course. Although, I suspect the puritan inside us all gets some sort of perverse pleasure from the denial of happiness, especially to those whom we believe have been dealt a better hand than us in this game of life.

Where I did agree with Marie was that you find happiness only when you do not realise it, discovered in retrospect when you look back. Trying to be happy in the future – to me, anyway – always seemed doomed to failure, as the future is something that lies always just beyond the grasp, something to reach for but never obtain. To me, happiness is in the places where you do not expect to find it, like a kiss in the middle of a rainstorm, or sunlight breaking free of a dull cloudy day. Moments, in other words, when the ordinary became – if only for an instant – extraordinary, like that smile Marie gave me after we kissed in the rain.

Political Funding

Anyway, until the public inquiry reports, there is not much that can be done. Although, obviously, until that report is published, members of the general public have been warned against too close a contact with any politician, either at a local or national level, without taking all the necessary precautions.

Obviously, as many politicians – if they have ever had anything resembling a proper job – have been either lawyers themselves, or have come into close contact with lawyers. Therefore, any ordinary person should make sure they do not allow the politician anywhere near their own money. All purses, wallets, piggy banks and under areas of mattresses should therefore be kept out of sight of any politicians you come into contact with. On no account should you share any bank account details with them. Especially in the politician breeding season during the pre-election stage, particularly if they sidle up to you and ask for a ‘donation’.

Scientists investigating the life-cycle of the politician and the best method of eradicating this menace from society believe that it is this ‘donation’ part of the politicians’ life-cycle that leads to their proliferation. Even people with strong stomachs naturally blanch at the thought of politicians breeding freely, especially out in the wild. Therefore, some scientists believe if these ‘donations’ can be cut off at source – by denying politicians access to money – then society can go a long way towards eradicating the menace of politics from our lives altogether.

Down to the Beach

All day, we walked along the coastal path, high above the sea far below. Once or twice, we'd thought about going down to the beach when we'd met paths that headed down that way. But we didn't have much time and we weren't sure if there would be any benefit. I pointed out too, that down there we would lose the height advantage we had. Up here we could see if there was anyone else about, any dangers.

'You worry too much,' Jacq said.

I looked at her. 'You should worry more.'

She didn't reply, just looked out at the distant horizon. The sea was blue, bluer than I remember it from before. I thought about saying something, but then I know that sometimes it was a mistake to remind Jacq about the before.

'Why?' she said after a while, after I'd thought she'd forgotten. 'Why should I worry?'

'Because you're a woman.'

'What...? You mean...?'

I nodded, not looking at her.

'A fate worse than death....' she laughed. 'You have a low opinion of your fellow man.'

'So, what do you expect? Nobility? Chivalry? The kindness of strangers?'

'Maybe.'

I made a noise and stood up. Sometimes I thought it was a mistake to care, especially about Jacq. I'd cared before and look where that had got me... nowhere.... Stuck out here on a coastal path with a woman I hardly knew and everyone that once defined me, made me who I used to be, lost and gone forever.

I stood watching the horizon. I felt rather than heard Jacq come up behind me. She took my hand.

I turned.

She smiled. 'Let's go down. Go for a swim. Let's pretend – if only for an hour or so none of that... the before... ever happened.'

I turned and I saw something in her eyes, a kind of pleading and I knew I still cared about her enough to try to make her happy – if only for a while - and so I said: 'Yes.'

These Few Grains

These Few Grains

If all of this were no more
than the few grains of sand

you trickled through your fingers
on that one remembered afternoon,

staring out at a distant tanker
sailing slowly across the horizon,

while the gulls circled above
on the barest scraps of sea breeze,

before you turned towards me
smiling in that way you do,

then it would be more than enough
for me to hold cupped in my hands.

Secrets of the Dark Woods

So there it was, stretching out before us like some long green wall. The men looked at one another, as their horses grew restless. We all knew what was there; what the forest was said to contain. People from the villages had gone in there and not returned. Usually, what happened to the peasantry was no concern of those of us who lived in and served the Manor, but now we had a new Lord.

'New Lords is always trouble.' It was old Menich who said it, but the wise old heads in the barracks – and you don't get to be old in the barracks unless you have a lot of wisdom... or luck – all nodded their agreement.

Me, I didn't know anything. The new Lord had been away with the King on one of his foreign wars while I trained. I'd hardly ever seen the old Lord either. He had been too old to get out of bed most days and we left to ourselves most of the time. All of us carrying on the old day-to-day routines, more for want of anything else to do than for any other reason.

There had been the old Lord's young wife, but that was something I'd kept to myself. Now, though, as soon as the new Lord arrived, they'd packed her off to join the Dark Sisters, to live out her days long with all the other inconvenient women.

The new Lord had sent out a patrol with his bailiff, to do something called an audit. Apparently, a way of finding out how rich he was, how much the rest of us could pay in tax and how many sheep, cattle and wives each man in the Lord's new fiefdom called his own.

That patrol had gone – over a week ago – into the forest and never seen again. That was why I was here, newly promoted to captain and the first to be volunteered by the older – and wiser – captains to go looking for whatever remained of the bailiff and his men.

I sighed, took a deep breath and – hoping my men would follow me – rode off into the dark wood, probably never to be seen again... unless I was very lucky.

Sue and the Portal

So there it was. We did not know why or where we were, not any more. All we had was this unknown land spread out before us, and neither of us knew what to do.

Looking back, there was no way to tell how we got there. Worse than that though, we could see no sign at all of how we could get back.

Home suddenly seemed so far away.

I laughed and Sue turned.

'What?'

I could see the panic in her eyes... and the hope that my laugh was a sign I had discovered something redeemable about our situation.

'No, it's just that I've read so many SF and Fantasy stories that all begin with someone stepping through a portal.' I looked back to where the portal wasn't. 'I just can't believe I just did it.' I laughed again.

'This is no fuckin' joke.' Sue glared around at the landscape with her look that always suggested I take a quick trip to the pub. When she found out who was to blame for all this, I knew there would be hell to pay. I just hoped it didn't turn out to be me who was to blame. Although, according to Sue, it was all usually my fault – whatever it was.

I looked around and smiled.

'What now?' Sue stared at me, arms akimbo.

'Usually in the stories, just about now, the adventure begins,' I said.

'This is no fuckin’ story though, is it?' She glared.

'Oh, I don't know.' I pointed towards the horizon behind her.

She turned just in time to see the growing dust cloud I'd noticed resolve itself into a group of horsemen galloping towards us. 'Oh, shit,' she said. This can't be happening to me!'

'Why not?'

She turned back to me. 'Because I don't like bloody science fiction.'

‘But this is more like fantasy than SF,’ I said.

Sue glared at me.

I shut up.

Only Survival

There comes a time when there is no alternative. I had not asked for the role given me. I had not wanted to be anything in this world. But I was... I was the one whose word was the only law and I knew what I must do.

My word was the law, but it was more that the law was my word. I was just as constrained by circumstance and precedent as anyone else. I had no choice.

He knew I had no choice too.

It was – simply – a mater of him or me.

It was my family or his.

It was survival or death.

I had the upper hand. I had the weight of authority behind me.

I could see it in his eyes before he looked down at the ground just in front of my feet. He submitted now, but that was no guarantee. If circumstances changed - even if only slightly – to favour his family, then it would be me on my knees in front of him.

I could be merciful, of course. But there is a fine line between being merciful and being weak. There are many who see mercy as weakness and many who would exploit that weakness for their own ends.

My position, my survival and the survival of all I cared about - all I allowed myself the luxury of caring about - depended on me turning my back on such concepts as mercy, forgiveness, live and let live.

I had no choice.

I drew my sword as his neck was laid bare before me.

New Kindle Short Story: An Undulation of a Shadow’s Edge

An Undulation of a Shadow’s Edge

Available for the Kindle here (UK) or here (US)

[Short story: 7,500 words (approx)]

Dark creatures writhe in the city’s shadows, Claire has seen them and seen their hungry eyes watching her… and waiting.

Claire avoids the darkness and the shadows of the city’s nights because she knows what lurks there.

That was until the night she saw Henry, standing in the darkest shadows watching her, wanting her as much as she wants him. But he is as unwilling to leave the dark as Claire is to enter it.

Will Claire save Henry before the shadows and darkness consume him and he is lost to the darkness forever?

Available for the Kindle here (UK) or here (US)

Not the Droid We Were Looking For

It was not quite the droid we were looking for, as it didn’t have either the integrated MP3 player or the egg-whisk attachment. Nor did it have the optional City-destroying laser. But it did have the chest-mounted coffee machine and the chain gun. So all in all, despite some less than stellar customer reviews we did – in the end – plump for this one.

On the whole it is not too bad. However, it does insist we call it ‘Steve’, despite us already knowing seven Steves already. This does play havoc with its internal contacts directory. I have, of course, tried to reset its name from the default, but every automatic upgrade – for some reason – always sets it back to Steve. It even has the manufacturer’s Customer Services baffled. Although, as we all know, it never takes much to baffle Customer Services. They always seem so surprised - and puzzled – that you are not as head over heels in love with their products as their adverts suggest you ought to be.

Still, it does make a nice cup of coffee.

Although, for some unknown reason, the Coffee Ready light also usually sets off the chain gun. This does make retrieving your coffee without significant bullet damage to you, your favourite coffee-cup or you selection of biscuits sometimes a bit more trouble than it is worth. This – as some on the user forums have pointed out – can make neighbourhood coffee mornings somewhat problematic. Especially in areas with a more elderly demographic, as senior citizens are not as sprightly on their feet as they used to be. Their age and infirmity making it much harder for them to duck for cover behind the furniture.

Still, I’m sure – in time – these rather minor bugs will be sorted out in the next operating system upgrade. That is, of course, providing enough engineers can survive the inevitable chain gun strafing to perform the necessary upgrade.

Turn with the Turning World

And so it turned. The world turns and we turn with it. We turn to face each day that comes over the horizon towards us, neither of us knowing what the dawn will bring, or even if we will see another dawn beyond this one.

Everything beyond this moment is unknown, out of reach. The past is gone and no matter how far our fingers stretch we cannot touch even a moment ago. The future lies beyond the horizon, only a glow of possibility in the darkness, lighting up the possible.

I cannot turn back to a few seconds ago and undo any of those things that have left you here now, turning away, and I do not know how far your turning will go in the future. Maybe you will turn and walk away, turn away forever and leave me here with words of regret and an apology unspoken.

Maybe you will let it go and pretend nothing has happened, even though it did happen and always will have happened, no matter what either of us wants. The past is gone, out of reach. It will remain there always; something standing between us, a look in each other's eyes that cannot go away, no matter how far away the past slips or even if that one moment falls into forgetfulness.

We will still know that something, one time, changed and took us off into this still yet unknown direction.

Begin in Darkness

Begin in Darkness

Dreams always begin in darkness
moving towards the uncertain light.
We begin in darkness too, suddenly
learning all about the unexpected brightness.

Our beginning is lost to us, down back
along the twisting cords of history
to that beginning in new clarity
where we fall into a sharp new world.

But now we know too much about
the inevitable end that falls towards us
out of a tunnel of narrowing possibility,
until all we can do is stare into that final night.

Services in the Storm

It was one of those sudden downpours that is more like a tropical rainstorm than the usual run-of-the-mill British weather. The heatwave broke and the sky turned closer to black than grey. I could see the rain streaking the sky up ahead. I noticed a sign, half-overgrown, about some Services a few miles ahead. It was a surprise to me, the road itself, snaking through the moors, even though it was a dual carriageway, was very quiet and it looked little-used. It wasn't even a road I'd heard of before and my sat-nav doubted its existence, but with the roadworks on the motorway, I'd decided to risk this route. By then, I was beginning to regret having the second mug of tea at the last Services. The lorry driver I'd shared a table with had told me of this alternate route as we sat complaining to each other about the state of this country's roads and the uselessness of other drivers.

Now, though, I needed a piss, and with the storm getting worse, I decided it would be worth taking a break at these Services, no matter how poor their facilities.

Visibility was down to a few yards and my wipers were having trouble coping with this much rain, even on the fast setting. I could feel the car lurching too, as the wind blew and the road surface became slick, if not actually underwater.

I slowed at the overgrown turning, changing down faster than I'd intended as the feeder road curved off sharply to the one side.

I parked in an almost empty car park. I took a deep breath and ran for the shelter of the doorway.

It was only when I got to the door I noticed the lights were off.

I was under cover, out of the rain. I tried the door, surprising myself when it opened.

I walked into an empty, deserted, restaurant.

Not One of the World's Foremost Uses of the Mandolin

Still, it was not one of the world's foremost uses of the mandolin. Even if she did manage to express her artistic side in a manner regarded as most creative, especially by the jury of her peers as well as the investigating officers. However, as the judge himself was a self-confessed music lover, he felt he could not overlook the damage to the mandolin, despite agreeing with her that: 'they had it coming'.

After all, as he so wisely said, in court the day after her representatives met him in the underground car park and handed over a well-stuffed plain brown envelope, 'provocation is provocation.' and looking at someone 'in that way' whilst they are holding even something not usually considered as an offensive weapon, such as the aforesaid mandolin, is asking for trouble.

Especially if that mandolin-wielder is feeling a bit tetchy at the time.

Consequently, the presiding judge withdrew to his chambers to study the evidence she'd presented in her defence. This evidence consisted mainly in the form of a website where she offers professional services – with or without the mandolin – for all manner of specialised needs. Afterwards, the judge confirmed that – indeed – there were some doubts as to the validity of the prosecution's evidence and the defendants all looked like 'wrong 'uns'.

Therefore, as the case collapsed, the judge said she could go free without a blemish on her character.

Six months later, though, a tabloid newspaper published photographs of both she and the judge sharing an intimate moment in a beachside café in an exclusive Caribbean resort. Later the judge dismissed this as a mere coincidence, despite the evidence proving that he had undertaken an intensive mandolin-appreciation course in the weeks preceding this holiday.

Eventually, the authorities forced the judge to resign, but he did it with a smile on his face and clutching a brand-new mandolin. A mandolin presented to him as a parting gift by fellow members of the judiciary, several of whom subsequently have expressed an interest in taking up the mandolin themselves in the near future.

All Those Lies She Longed to Hear

Of course, she wanted me to tell her all those lies she longed to hear. I, though, didn’t want to lie to her. I had lied to too many women already, telling them everything they wanted to hear, so I could get what I wanted and leave them wondering what it was they'd lost.

She, though, was different. I didn't even want to ask her name, in case she told it to me. I didn't want to know anything about her in case I found some way of using it to get her to do those things I’d already had so many other women doing.

She was different.

I had thought I would never fall in love. I laughed at it, sneered at it. It was a trap for the unwary. A trap laid by the women to capture the men they wanted.

I was too clever for all that.

I took the stratagems, the tactics, the methods of the women. I took all the tricks they used against men; to trap them and to trick them. Then I used those tricks against the women, tricking them, trapping them into giving me what I wanted from them.

Such a small thing, an hour or so taken out of one of many of their days.

I could leave them with memories of something special, something unique, something they never had from any of the other men they tricked into caring for them.

I thought I was immune.

Then she came along and, without even trying, she had me trapped, pinned and imprisoned, with just one look.

The Day Her World Changed

When the day began, she was not expecting the world to change. Julia lived in a world that was much the same, each day much the same as the day before it and much the same as the day that would follow it.

There had been times, when she was younger, when she expected the world to become magical, full of all those wonders she read about in stories. She had thought that one day her prince would come to take her away to some magical kingdom.

Now, though, she was older and every prince she’d met had turned out to be either a frog – the good ones – or a toad – the rest. There had been no magical kingdoms and no wonder; no unicorns and no dragons.

The day the world changed though, was much the same as any other day. There had been a storm the night before, and the sea was still wild, still rough, as she walked along the dunes. The dunes hadn’t changed much, looking just as wind-blown and desolate as they’d always looked for all the years the family had been holidaying in this same place, year after year.

Then, she slipped and fell, ending up at the bottom of a dune where she found the trapdoor. The trapdoor she had never seen before in all the years of the annual holidays. It took her only a few seconds to open the door and in those few seconds Julia’s world changed forever.

Cathedral

Cathedral

And there, so deep inside the darkest woods;
a sudden clearing, bright in sunlight waits,
long after all the head-high bracken fades,
long after the entangled brambles unwind.
It is a refuge, silent hidden, a place
of sanctuary, safe for us to stay.

The sunlight streaming in, up where the trees
each open their green, reaching fingers out
into a canopy over our heads
beneath this bright forgiving sky above
makes it a sacred place for our devotions.

This soft green grass for us to lie and offer
our nakedness in, as the sun heals us.
This place is special and deserves our praise,
we're going to remember how we ought
to live in glory, love and time together.
This place will save us, make us whole again.

More of the Noise

Then there was this. We thought it could be an answer, but it wasn't. We thought it could be some new route through the noise to a place of quiet, understanding and contemplation, but it wasn't.

It was just more of the unanswered, more of the noise.

We thought about silence, but silence was not an option. There were things that needed to be said, even when no-one was listening… especially when no-one was listening, even when it became yet more futile howling at an indifferent moon.

We thought we could chase the creatures back to their homes in the dark places and shifting shadows. Instead, we found it was just another empty space where nothing crept and nothing crawled, just the lonely wind, looking for a home.

We thought we could run up the sun-dappled hillsides and see as far as horizons and see as far as our dreams would allow. But that too was just another bare landscape stretching out before us, too far away even to touch with outstretched hands.

So we look around these ruins and these fragments to see what remains of what we once wanted to build; our new great city out here on these plains. We find only half-completed buildings falling into dusty ruins, and plans all ripped and torn, blowing on that same lonely wind, and we wonder if any of it was really worth it.