Cooking up a Storm

It was, as many media commentators subsequently attested, all rather splendid. Although, there was some carping later about the amount of vegetables, especially the leeks, damaged and wasted during the proceedings, most of us involved in the event were more than satisfied, despite the higher than usual incidence of later-reported bad backs, or the tendency to snigger whenever anyone brought a parsnip into the near vicinity of any of us during the following few days.

Still, it brought a smile to her face and that is always good.

Unless... of course, it is one of her dangerous smiles.

In which case it is best to be in – at least – distant foreign climes until her storms pass.

Anyway, the incident itself was not all that unusual, despite having to don the storm-proof coats and sou'westers as well as the more traditional wellies. Some of us further back in the queue as well as those in the audience had to hang on to the rigging for a while during some of her more tempestuous moments, especially during some of the more frantic activity with the wooden spoon and the loss of two serving wenches in the maelstrom.

Still, though, as she always says, once satiated, there is nothing better than home-made soup.

The World's Greatest Crime-Fighting Superhero

So, even though you keep your helicopter in the darkest corner of your tool-shed and feel it only the cabbage of the gods as a light pre-flight supper, you are not quite that civic-minded as your assumed and self-proclaimed super-hero status would suggest: is it… Staying-in-to-Watch-the-Telly Man?

It may be one of the finest superhero costumes ever to grace this world but not many would know that, would they, Staying-in-to-Watch-the-Telly Man?

After all, you costume itself is in pristine condition, except for a few takeaway stains and some shiny worn patches from where you have been sitting, assiduously watching the telly in it. As for your artificially-intelligent crime fighting helicopter, it still sits forlornly in the back of your tool-shed, nibbling on its cabbage storks and dreaming its cyborg dreams of fighting crime, if only... if only... there wasn't something good on the telly tonight… yet again.

However, though, the streets tonight will be safe, clear and deserted of all the criminal elements, who once stalked those very streets to bring fear, disaster and mayhem to the ordinary people of the great metropolis, because all the criminals now live in mortal fear of Staying-in-to-Watch-the-Telly Man, his fearsome crime-fighting abilities and his deadly, cabbage-eating, robot helicopter. So, instead of rampaging through the city on a crime-spree, the criminals of that great heaving metropolis now all stay in and watch the telly instead.

Holiday of a Lifetime

There were some things about it that didn’t seem right. It did look like a normal hotel; that was true. But there were some odd things. At first, it just seemed as odd as any new place we’d never been before. But rather than fading away back to the normal, the ordinary, things started getting stranger.

The hotel itself was old. It was a coaching inn, dating back to about the 1700s. It was the typical white and black of the era with exposed beams in the roofs, heavy wooden panels on the walls and uneven floors and ceilings that undulated as though caught as a frozen sea.

The inn itself was in one of those small out of the way villages that find themselves – through happenstance and the vagaries of landscape - as a place people will go for holidays.

Now Cathy and I were older, without a herd of screaming children in tow, we no longer had to make the annual pilgrimage to the seashore. Cathy has never been that fond of flying – not since that summer of 1978 anyway, for what I suppose are obvious enough reasons. She says still has occasional nightmares about the flaming plane skidding along the runway in the dark and the rain.

Anyway, I think I first noticed something was not right about the hotel when we were ambling back to our room from a rather pleasant - and very filling - long dinner on the first evening. There were pictures along the wall, climbing up the wall alongside the rickety and creaky staircase. Some were drawings and paintings, as well as some from seemingly all stages of the history of photography.

What struck me, though, were the faces of many of those who stood in awkward poses outside the hotel for the formal photographs, and those caught by the painter or sketch artists. Many of those people in the pictures looked the same in each picture, not just as in a family likeness, but the same as though someone had inserted themselves into the historical pieces at a later date. It reminded me of something: some film, or book where someone had done something of that nature, inserting themselves into old photographs of significant events for some reason I was not sure of.

Then, as I noticed this, I also noticed that the stairs and the corridors of the hotel seemed to shift and alter with staircases not ended where you’d expect and corridors leading away from where you wanted to go, instead of towards it. I put all this confusion down to it being a strange place and the unfamiliar wine - and other alcohol - with the meal.

But, as I said, these confusions did not ease as the holiday progressed, they became worse – then it stopped being a holiday altogether and became something very different.

Asking Your Opinion

It was not quite the new dawn of all our hopes, more along the lines of yet another dull drizzly start to one more day of the daily grind, with the remote possibility of a brief escape up the steepening slopes of tedium towards the summit of the mundane where all the dreary landscape of an ordinary grey life would be spread out at our feet for several yards until it too was subsumed into the murky mists of mediocrity that wrapped around us like suffocating blankets.

On the whole though, we thought, it could be worse.

Then came the sound of ominous thunder through the gloom, a dread sound like thousands of takeaway menus falling through the letterbox at once. Not quite as terrifying as the prospect of a local by-election achieving national significance, but still a time to be wary of stepping out of the door, lest we be accosted by those who haunt the streets, lanes and byways of this drear land searching – mostly in vain – for that most holy of holies in our nation's slow struggle through the sloughs of despond.

Soon the streets and market places were full of rumours and quick talk, strangers regarded with suspicion and fear. Everyone went about their business as quickly as they could and hurried home to huddle in fear at the sound of footsteps on the garden path and the doom-laden tolling of the doorbell.

Those made of sterner stuff huddled together, pretending to be out, even going as far as turning the TV off, or - for those less brave - muting it for a while, until the intruder gave up and turned away, searching for more victims.

Some, though, would overcoming their fear and clutching their most holy TV schedules to their hearts to ward off the evil would with trembling fingers and thumping hearts open their doors, only to be confronted by that horror of horrors:

'Hello, I represent a company that would like your opinion on several current topics of interest.'

Some of us – even now – still awake in the heart of the night hearing those screams that once echoed all around us until the dread beasts slaked their thirst for opinion and moved on, no doubt in search of some new unsullied place where fresh unexpressed opinions awaited, ready to be plucked from innocent minds.

Spring Lamb

Once there was a time when all of this was fields, but enough about databases, especially those home to large herds of sheep roaming the hillsides and causing excitement in the shepherding community unheard of since the last radical redesign of the wellie.

Let us go, ewe and I, now the evening is spread out against the sky and do not let us talk again of mint sauce and new potatoes 'ere the morn lifts its tired eyes above the horizon as I tell tales of great sheep of yesteryear and the tale of the tail of the golden fleece.

We were young once and gambolled like lambs, well, you gambolled and I stood there with my shepherd’s crook grasped firmly in my hand. We were young and in love and you knew knew little of the world, even though the older, wiser rams told you horror tales of the best end of neck, chump chops and just what scrag end really entails.

Such a life was not for you, though, my love, for there is nothing that gets an old shepherd like me feeling himself again like the sight of a mature sheep ambling fully-fleeced over the hillsides in the dawn's early light, or the late twilight summer evening when the sky promises those such as me so much delight, especially when you see I'm wearing my best wellies and have a handful of that special grass you like so much.

Let us go, then, you and I, and spend the autumn of your years together on the hillside for one more brief summer.

Vital Local Government Services

Engelbert Thermopylae was the UK's leading Local Government Toad Recognition Officer, performing this vital role – despite harsh spending cutbacks for almost three decades in the wild untamed jungles in and around the unexplored Walsall area.

Not only that he also won Toad Recogniser of the Year at the London O2 Arena in seven out of the last ten years, including the tense 2009 final when his 7 hour battle in the final with Uruguay’s Uplink Nailfile went down to the wire with neither of them daring to decide which was the toad and which was the zebra right up until bad light stopped play on the first day's play.

However, far away from the glamour of the international Toad Recognition circuit, Thermopylae was devoted to the art – and, some say, science – of toad recognition out in the wild. After all, in the heat of the moment how many of us have – in all honesty – confused a toad with say a crocodile, a geostationary satellite or a Post Office delivery van*?

Anyway, Thermopylae was so adept at recognising toads that he was correct a staggering 32.7% of the time, which - considering he was employed in local government - was a staggering rate of success, which – inevitably – caused a great deal of jealousy and resentment amongst his colleagues and resulted in disciplinary action by the local branch of the Toad-Recognisers and Allied Trades Association for bringing the trade close to dangerous levels of competence and thus putting the livelihoods of the other members of the union at risk.

Some say it was his own fault for venturing out into the wilds of Walsall on his own without backup. Others talk of darker conspiracies: some of trouble and dark words at the last union meeting, others of Uruguayan undercover agents infiltrating the Walsall area with booby-trapped toads (and a wired-up zebra, just to be on the safe side).

All we know is that, one day, Engelbert Thermopylae disappeared off into the Walsall jungle as normal with his lunch box, his net and toad bucket, and his Big Boy's Book of Toads and was never seen again.

*I know I have and what an embarrassing party that turned out to be for me. My wife still has to go to all the local wife-swapping parties on her own – well, so she says, anyway.

The Black Economy

But then – even back in those wild and heady days – no-one would have dared to start a sentence with the word 'but'. However, little did she care for the stuffy old rules of grammar and usage, she was wild and free and had little interest in what others thought grammatically correct, as well as having quite an interesting theory about the use of underwear, which she regarded as even more strict and constricting than the use of punctuation.

A couple of facts that made both her and her frequent love letters more than a little interesting.

We met long before this country was ravaged by the horrors of the VAT inspectors, waging their campaign of terror across this once-free land as invoices and cash books fell to their mighty onslaughts while we – the poor and the dispossessed - trembled and huddled in fear.

Then, things changed

It was a time of revolution, not just in the use of semi-colons and underwear, but in how we lived our lives and the uses to which we could put a watermelon. I had the flippers and the snorkel and she had the ukulele, so we would spend many a summer evening together up on the hillside, well away from the gangs of prowling VAT inspectors as they rampaged from village to out-of-town retail emporium.

Still, though, we were young and wild and free – although she was not that free, but – as away of avoiding the dread attentions of the despised VAT Inspectors was always willing to demonstrate her revolutionary approach to the wearing of underwear in return for cash in hand.

The Weasel Hordes of Indifference and Ingratitude

We all know that the weasel hordes of indifference and ingratitude sweep majestically across the wide-open plains of the car parks of this once-proud nation. We forget that in days of yore this country had chip shops that were the very envy of the world.

And… yet.

And yet….

Still, I feel as though something throbs, something pulsates deep in the darkest recesses of the underwear of our souls. There awaits something that will grow once again to stand tall and proud, but only if we can find those gentle ministering fingers that know how to take hold of its uncertainty, take it in hand and stroke all these cares away.

If only.

If only.

But she is far, far away now, strolling alone, head bowed across the existential beach of her dreams while the sea of eternity slow creeps ever closer, even now beginning to lap around her ankles. Her thoughts are gone, way past those dunes where once we lay together through those long naked afternoons watching those languid clouds chasing each other across skies of deeper than forever blue.

And I?

I can only wonder if when she returns she will bring those thoughts back home with her.

Or – at least – come back with a bag of chips.

A Cure for Human Stupidity

Well, not that any of us has any choice in the matter, now that it is all long over and done, as Harold pointed out at the time, though, they were very dangerous things and could easily have someone’s eye out if they were not careful where they were pointing them.

Still, that’s history for you – but it is all in the past now. After all, we are living in the future now and things are… well, they are better in many ways, but no-one – as yet – seems to have found a cure for human stupidity.

Which, for most of us, is lucky.

Otherwise, how else would we make a living?

After all, this is the only species on the planet that has invented TV, shopping malls, religion, cheese that tastes more like plastic than the plastic wrapper it came in, collectable plastic figurines and computer operating systems.

It sometimes seems that despite all the arts, sciences, fish and chip shops and all the other great advances of humankind, up to and including all those… er… interesting sexual practices, none of them ever, no matter what we discover, make or create - or even find new erotic uses for the strawberry and the croquet racquet - will ever eclipse the seemingly inexhaustible natural human need to make utter arses of ourselves.

Which, for most of us, is lucky. I – of course – speak as one who knows….

The Sky Enfolds Us

The Sky Enfolds Us

(Chaucerian Roundel)

We see the sky enfolding us
Around our lives like blankets tight
Through day and tight through every night.

Horizons tuck the ends in thus
To keep the sky and world just right.
We see the sky enfolding us

With nothing now we can discuss
As reason itself takes to flight
Towards a sun that shines so bright
We see the sky enfolding us.

Battle-Ready Marmalade

Now the No First Use Of Battle-Ready Marmalade Treaty has been signed by the world’s leading powers, the hope now is that it will see the end of those small battle-ready catering portions of marmalade that cased so much trouble and frustration during the now infamous battlefield breakfasts of both world wars.

The disasters of the battlefield breakfasts of the First World War now seem obvious in hindsight. It is said of that war that tactics had failed to keep up with technology. This was certainly true of battlefield catering, especially the essential front-line breakfasts. Both sides suffered massive losses of toast and butter, and the British suffered heavily from not being able to get a nice cup of tea to the front line in time. Hence, in the latter stages of the war, the invention of the tank, this was meant to be a massive self-propelled tea urn capable of crossing those muddy battle-scared shell-holed battlefields to get tea to the front line while it was still hot. Both sides had experimented with artillery delivered toast with mixed results, often with the toast ending up uneaten, muddy and soggy in the quagmires of the western front.

However, by the time of WWII, many of the technological and logistical problems of the trench-based battlefield had been solved, leading many military strategists feeling that war between any of the major powers would no longer be possible.

However, the change of tactics in the Second World War to concentrate on movement meant that the marmalade needed to be ready for immanent toast application within minutes of an offensive being launched.

However, once the British boffins developed the shrapnel-proof biscuit, it was more or less all over for the Axis forces, especially when the might of the American War machine began producing overwhelming quantities of toast.

Once WWII was over, the cold war began with the ever-present threat of mutually-Assured marmalading. However, such was the West's overwhelming superiority in breakfasting technology – leaving aside the woeful under-substantial Continental breakfast, of course, - that after only 30 years of attempting to match the West's increasingly sophisticated range of marmalades, the Soviet Union conceded defeat when NATO produced its first intercontinental Three-Fruit Marmalade, ready for deployment. Only a few days later the Berlin wall collapsed and some claimed history had come to an end.

Another Wasted Day

It was slow, heavy and hot; one of those days where the hours seem to hang there as the minutes slowly drip of into the pool of another wasted day. She did not know what to do. There had been – once – a time in her life when she knew where she was going and what she would do once she’d got there. She’d had a life of possibilities and dreams. There had been a feeling that she would end up somewhere special, looking back on a life that had been full of chances taken and achievements made.

Now, she looked around the room, the breeze hardly shifting the hot heavy air of what once she would have seen as a summer of possibility. The wallpaper was old; yellowing and beginning to peel at the edges. The shelves were dusty and home to a mishmash of times she had just left there to gather a layer of dust of their own. The furniture was tired; defeated by the weight of the years it had stood, waiting for something to happen in this room.

She sighed and wondered if it was really worth it, really worth the effort - and the eventual disappointment – of trying to begin yet again. She remembered the story of Pandora’s box and that after all the bad things had fled the box, how the last thing left in there had been hope, and she wondered if that – hope – wasn’t the cruellest torment of all.

The River is an Endless Rope

The River is an Endless Rope

All through this slipping of time
The river flows sedately onward,
An endless rope pulled by the sea.
Sometimes, though, the river swells,
Swells in anger, as it tries to twist
Break free from the grip of the sea.
But the sea’s grip is too strong,
Holding tight onto this river’s tongue
For millions of long winding years.

In all that time, the churning sea
Has not let the river drop once,
Not yet, and - perhaps – not ever.
Days flow on, pouring into the past
Like water back into deeper seas.
The river ties the rain back home
To the deeper distant seas,
Connecting now to then to now
Like rain to water and sea.

I spend a great deal of time
Walking along by this river,
Watching its steps, marking its moods,
Taking every day it brings
And trying to hold on, like the sea
Holds tight to its own rivers
Pulling them back towards it
Fearing that too much freedom means
They will one day break free.

 

[Taken from: The River is an Endless Rope – poems by David Hadley. Available here (UK) or here (US).

 

 

The Breath of a Moment

But then the dreams we held so gently in our cupped palms were easily broken. It only took the breath of a moment to blow them away to shatter irreparably on the hard stony ground where we spent our days waiting for the night.

We wandered these bare, broken lands all through the unforgiving heat and light of the day, looking for shade, looking for shadows where we could sit with our cupped palms at the ready, waiting for a dream to creep into them.

The day dreams, though, were far less substantial than the night time dreams, easily torn apart by the dust storms blowing all around these ruins of what used to be our great civilisation, before we learnt the power of dreams.

Now, all we can do is tend the delicate day dreams, keeping them as safe as we can while we wait for the protecting night to cover us with its blankets, so we can – at last – open our hands and watch the dreams dance across the darkness of the night, weaving their way around these ruins and almost touching the stars that sit looking down on us, like the gods they used to be.

The dreams turn and twist, turning these ruins back into towers and palaces, letting the wasting river flowing in full flood as boats, ships and barges ply their trade in our bustling port, all while the slaves and servants busy themselves with our comfort, so we can sit back and dream.

MPs Call for Privacy Legislation

Even though not many people are aware of just how often the Houses of Parliament have been bought to the point of actually doing something useful for this country, the UK’s MPs have decided that they need yet another new law. This law: The ‘Mind Your Own Sodding Business Regulatory Powers Act’ will enable the government and MPs to prevent the general public, those journalists yet to be given a knighthood, and other busybodies from poking their noses into things that don’t concern them.

MPs, even before the last election, have long felt that it is rather unhealthy in a mature democracy for anyone outside the tightly-knit and incestuous political world around Westminster to have any interest in what MPs and the government really do on the people’s behalf, rather than what they pretend to do, or claim to do whenever it is time for yet another tedious election.

Therefore, the government has had no alternative but to create a new criminal offence to prevent anyone, especially those tiresome bloggers and journalists who refuse to mind their own business, to find out what is really going on in government.

After all, as several MPS have pointed out, neither the government itself, nor the MPs in the Houses of Parliament has a clue as to what they are doing, and – so – it seems deeply unfair and contrary to the business of the House for anyone, especially outsiders, to attempt to find out.

Less than Dust

Less than Dust

You told me that you do not dream,
But I saw your eyelids closed
To hide the sudden movements behind.

You lie there with sheets thrown back
And beading sweat across your face
Like some endless rainfall spring

Of unquenchable tears for a life
You have never lived, but live
Through each night until the dawn

Rises up through dark, to snatch it
From your tight-clutching fingers
Trying to hold onto the fading night

As your dreams dissolve into less
Than dust and vague dissatisfactions
You cannot name or place, except to know

That somehow the shape of this world
Seems to have too many hard edges
And numberless sharp corners

You do not discover when you lie down
At night and everything about your weary day
Is lost in the soft pillow when you find yourself

Taking these twisting verdant pathways
Winding through familiar dreaming landscapes
Back to this place you know is home.

Next-day Delivery

It was not what we expected, even though the illustration on the box matched the description on the website, when it finally arrived, from whatever alternative dimension the Post Office route their parcel deliveries though, it was not what we ordered.

Further enquires led us to understand that this in not that an unusual problem. The necessity for the Post Office to use alternative dimensions other than the normal space-time continuum we are generally familiar with does – they say – sometimes lead to some subtle alterations in the constituent matter of the parcels whilst en-route, especially when it comes to the re-entry point into our own dimension. This has something to do with having to use black holes to route their delivery vans through, apparently. According to the mathematical formula currently used by the Post Office to calculate routes, this involves a re-entry point into our dimension somewhere near the edge of the solar system, which means there are some rather tricky gravitational problems to resolve around the orbit of Neptune.

However, the public relations spokesperson at the Post Office did insist that the time savings – especially through using black holes as a form of time machine – and the reduced fuel costs of not having to use the British motorway system of near permanent contra-flow means they can almost always guarantee next-day delivery.

The only draw back – as we discovered – is that you don't always end up receiving what you ordered. Still, the – still somewhat bewildered - Thompson's gazelle will be something of a surprise for the mother-in-law on her birthday, we just hope it is a suitable replacement for the boxed set of Catherine Cookson novels we originally ordered.

You’re the One

There she stood.

I waited.

Time passed.

Then there was the moment when I could see the decision she made. She put down her drink on a nearby table and came towards me. She moved slowly, casually, as if she was just strolling through the bar, weaving through the crowd. She glanced to her right and left as she came towards me, looking for some excuse, some encounter that would sidetrack her, maybe even turn her off her route towards me completely.

Meanwhile, I waited.

‘You’re the one,’ she said. It was not a question.

I turned back to look at her. She was everything they’d said she would be. True beauty goes deeper than the skin, and I don’t mean just bone structure. She had the intelligence, the wisdom that gives beauty its depth.

I smiled and nodded.

‘You don’t say much.’

‘No.’ I agreed. I put my empty glass down on the bar. ‘Are you ready?’

‘You’re not going to offer me a drink?’ she smiled, pretending it didn’t matter. Maybe it didn’t, I’m no mind-reader. ‘Try to get to know me… you know… small talk and all that?’

I looked into her eyes. ‘Why?’ I said. ‘Do I need to know anything about you?’

‘I saw you from over there and I thought you looked interesting.’ She picked up her handbag; one of those that are too small to be any real use. ‘I thought you were the one….. Sorry, I made a mistake.’

‘No, you didn’t make a mistake. I am the one.’ I stood. ‘What is more, I’m the only one left.’ I took her by the arm and kissed her lips. ‘Are you ready to go?’

‘Yes.’ She said. ‘But only if you kiss me again, first.’

So I did.

I am Waiting

There are secrets, sometimes, that only two can share. There are things kept to ourselves we take to the grave, leaving the one who shared our secret alone and lonely, living in a world that has now become incomplete.

‘I am waiting,’ Alice said and I knew it was her, even though I hadn’t heard her voice for nearly two years. She still lived inside me, though, commenting on things as I went about my day. This, though, in the deep dark heart of the night was different. This was not the ghost of memory keeping me company through my lonely days.

It was her. It was Alice.

There she was, back in the bed beside me. I could see her clearly, despite the darkness of the night. She was as she had been in life, as she was before the illness changed her from the woman I’d married into someone I’d hardly recognised and who no longer recognised me.

‘I’m waiting,’ Alice said again, smiling that smile of hers which had once made everything in my world seem worthwhile.

‘What are you waiting for?’ I whispered, but I don’t know why. There had been no-one else in the house since they’d taken her away at the beginning of those long dreary months it took her to die; the longest, cruellest winter of my life.

‘I’m waiting for you, of course,’ she said. ‘You know I’d always wait for you.’

I nodded, lifting my head from the pillow to look at her. ‘I knew you’d wait.’ I said. ‘I suppose I’ve been here, waiting too.’

‘Are you ready, then?’

‘I’ve been ready for months, for all the time since that illness stole you from me,’ I said. I could feel the sharpness in the corner of my eyes. It was not much of a world, this world Alice had left me in after she’d gone, but still it was harder than I thought to leave it all behind.

When I looked back, though, as we stood there hand in hand watching it all disappearing, I knew I had made the right decision. We kissed for the first time in far too long as our old life faded... and then was gone.

The Romantic Night Out

It was – once – well known that a small woodland mammal was a necessary addition to any young person's night out in some of the more remote rural areas of the UK. Any young lady out for a night on the village without her own weasel was regarded as someone suspicious (or as in some parts of Gloucestershire – a witch) and a young lad without a badger would – more often than not – refuse to go out of an evening – which, of course, led to the invention of the home computer; without which such cultural high-spots as Manic Miner, Elite, Lemmings and Populous would be unknown.

However, in the more urban areas of Britain such things never really caught on, especially with the general paucity of wildlife in built up areas and the lack of any real understanding of woodland lore, which would have made – for example – the provision of a squirrel to one's paramour somewhat problematical, especially if the squirrel hunt was undertaken partway through a night out - as was the original countryside custom. The urban night would then have resounded with the sound of inebriated young men falling out of trees all across the country, not really the ideal background ambience for a night of romance under the stars.

However, once the mobile phone was invented there was little call for taking woodland mammals on an evening out, especially when very few of those aforementioned calls would be for the woodland mammal itself and thus made transporting the mammals more of an encumbrance than a way to inveigle oneself into the affections of any putative paramour.

Some people would – of course – call it progress, and despite the manifold advantages of the mobile phone over a (sometimes very) wild animal about one's person in the evening's hostelries, some of us cannot help but believe that some of the romance of a night out has been lost, perhaps never to return.

Words Waiting to be Spoken

There were words waiting to be spoken. There were things unsaid. There were so many words left unspoken. So many accusations left unmade and far too many unused denials left waiting.

Each of us charted our course through our lives around these things left unsaid as though we knew they were the reefs that would wreck us, each of us waiting for the other to flounder on the rocks that lay half-submerged under the shifting tides of the everyday.

Neither of us wanted to be the one left shipwrecked and alone, while the other sailed off into deeper, clearer waters, left to construct some crude facsimile of a life out of the flotsam and wreckage left behind.

There was just too much to avoid, times when it seemed easier to sail blind into disaster rather than spending all the time and effort changing course and plotting a safe route through to the calmer safe waters in the harbour of night time. A safe berth where both of us would lie together at anchor in the bed, listening to the waves of the other’s breathing lapping against the hours of darkness.

Then, the day came when she no longer came home. She had gone, sailing off without me to new found lands across oceans too deep for me to follow and I was left behind on these now-empty shores waiting for another ship to come sailing by.

Holy Book Desecration

Riots continued for the twenty-seventh day in a row yesterday in the strict Uttabollux country of Alfiesgoatstain, caused by the rumour that someone had desecrated the Uttabollux holy book – The Madeupstuff.

Rioting broke out in the holy city of Tourhisttrhap when a rumour spread through the fundamentalist Uttabollux city that someone had inadvertently read a few pages of the Uttabollux holy book.

Uttabolluxers regard The Madeupstuff as far too holy for anyone – including their religious leaders, known as the Dhaftghits, or any religious scholars - to actually read, especially ordinary lay Uttabolluxers. A religious scholar is only able to become a Dhaftghit if he can guess correctly what the other Dhaftghits before him have guessed about what The Madeupstuff contains, especially the forbidden verses about the goats.

A man was arrested in Tourhisttrhap, twenty-six days ago, and the religious police took the precaution of stoning him to death just in case he had managed to read a few pages of The Madeupstuff. As the first stones hit the blasphemer, he supposedly confessed to reading several pages of The Madeupstuff under the impression that it was the latest thriller from Dan Brown. However, the Dhaftghit of Tourhisttrhap pronounced a fatghit (religious condemnation) on him anyway.

Every Uttabolluxer must have a copy of The Madeupstuff, which they must only ever look at seventeen times a day while thinking about what it may contain, but must not – ever – take even a peak inside the covers on penalty of death.

Those Beyond The High Wall

It lies out there, beyond the edge of this world. Of course, everyone knows the legends; we are told them while still young children in our cots. Stories of those beyond the wide river, those beyond the High Wall: the creatures that come, take and destroy.

Even up until recently - just beyond living memory, it is said by those old enough to know - there were soldiers, guards patrolling the high walls, but since the last Winter Sickness there have not even been enough of us to guard the villages against wolves and the other predators that can sense our current weakness.

There are the Far Tribes too, but no-one knows whether they suffer from the Winter Sickness or not, some say they are immune to the illnesses that ravage the villages, especially here in the cold north where living is hard at the best of times.

All of us, though, must spend a few seasons here in the North as the price we pay for reaping the rewards of our lands. There are some even who seem to enjoy living up here on the edge of the known world, who seem to relish the challenge the climate and other dangers bring. They have scorn for those they call the Soft Southerners, who they treat with disdain and derision.

I came here many, many, seasons ago and now the people of the North treat me more like one of them than the Soft Southerner I used to be, back when I lived my other life.

I am here now though, and as each day goes by I become more and more convinced that those myths, legends and stories we were all told so long ago were not just stories at all, now I begin to think they are all true and something waits beyond the High Wall and it knows its time will come soon.

A Princess’s Disdain

A Princess’s Disdain

I’ve travelled all those far distant lands
Hiding inside your secret dreams.

I’ve seen all you ever denied wanting
Spread out on exotic rugs before you

As you watch with a princess’s disdain
While courtiers dance upon your every whim

And your failed lovers haunt these corridors
Of your fantastic palace, searching

For that one special moment that will allow
Them to spend even one more minute

In your presence, just to saviour the delicious hurt
Of seeing what they will never touch again

Before once again they are tossed aside                                                                 
Grateful to have been forgotten

And fearing you’ll remember why
They proved so unworthy to you

And how you can dispose
With a wave of one indifferent hand

All the hurts of this other world
You are condemned to live through.

Summer Again

Those were the times. They became these memories that sustain these dull days as they pass almost indistinguishable from each other. The world grows darker, closer, what once was distance and possibility is now a mist-shrouded horizon, close enough almost to touch. There were distant hills out there, back in those sunnier days. The possibility of distance opened up the world and there was a chance of some new unknown land beyond those distant hills.

Now, though, those hills are gone, lost in the dark of the ever-increasing night or hidden behind the curtains of mist, fog and rain that make us huddle here, waiting.

We wait and we wonder if the summers will ever return to this land.

In the past, when we thought those old gods mattered, when we believed they had the power to change things, we would pray: beg and entreat, the gods to intercede and to bring back the summers to this, their chosen land.

We know now that this is no longer a chosen land: now the winters grow and spread to steal the rest of the year. We know the gods do not look down on us any longer – if they ever did.

We know we are alone here, in this cruel, cold world and we wonder if any of us – not just the old, frail ones will ever see a summer again.

Never Wrong

It was not that obvious.... Something was wrong, that was obvious. Richard could tell there was something not quite right, but what that something was, he could not – yet, anyway - see it.

His days seemed much the same: up in the mornings, out to work, a workday passing slowly or quickly depending on what happened there, then home again and his usual evening routine of staying in or going out depending on Gemma’s moods and whims. It was not a bad life normally, about as glamorous and exciting as one of the more mundane fungal infections, but it was a life. A life, as Richard consoled himself, much better than so many of those he saw in the News each evening before switching off the day and going to bed.

It was not work that was wrong, it was not his home life that was wrong, it was not Gemma who was wrong – he’d known her long enough now to know that Gemma was never wrong, no matter what the evidence to the contrary.

Something was wrong though.

Richard didn’t know what was wrong, though, not until that day when he almost ran over the baby dragon as it scampered across the road in front of him. What he did not miss, or – rather – was not missed by, was the mounted and fully-armoured knight who jumped his massive warhorse over the bonnet of Richard’s car as he chased the dragon across the ring-road.

Richard just sat there - for what seemed like hours - staring at the ruined paintwork of his car bonnet where the horse’s heavy shoe had scraped over it, as – over and over again – he muttered ‘This is wrong, this is wrong.’ to himself.

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"
"oh my god....I just about died laughing reading this...it's genius! Pure genius! Especially the bit about the fluffy particle...too funny."
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Available FREE for the next 5 days: here (UK) or here (US)

This Changes Everything

Afterwards, we just lay there together, side by side. It seemed odd, strange… weird even, that the world was still there; all around us as if nothing had changed. Yet, there we were lying together and everything about us; everything we knew and thought had changed.

I looked at her face and she opened her eyes and looked at me. She smiled, tentatively, as though she was not sure either.

I leant closer to her, kiss her lips. ‘Well,’ I said.

She laughed and snuggled down closer to me. ‘Indeed,’ she said and took my hand in hers.

The rest of the world carried on as if nothing had happened. We, though, would never be the same again.

‘You do realise,’ I said, not taking my eyes from hers. ‘That this changes everything.’

‘Yes.’ She nibbled her bottom lip. ‘But I don’t care.’

‘Well, in that sense, neither do I. I couldn’t be happier. But, well, you know that sooner or later we are going to have to get up, get dressed and go back out there?’

‘I still don’t care,’ she said. ‘All I want I have here with me, now.’ This time she kissed me, pushing me back onto my back as she climbed on top of me. ‘Now, she said. ‘What happens next?’

‘I think you know,’ I said.

She leant forward and kissed me. ‘Yes, I do,’ she said… and she did.

The Bargain of a Lifetime

It was not one of those things. For a start, it was a little too purple around the one flange and the grommets were all metric and not the traditional imperial that has been used to make the authentic those things since time immemorial, or at least since the invention of colour TV and the beginnings of BBC2.

Still, though, it was one of the better of those things that are cunningly-wrought imitations of those things (original version), apart from the fact that the serial number was expressed as an irrational number and the lid had a habit of working loose, especially on tight corners, or when used in the presence of defrocked clergy.

Once, though, it had been used in an attempt to break the World Standing Next to a Stockbroker Record (currently at 33 days, 5 hours and 17 minutes exactly) by a team of Norwegian amateurs and so - almost inevitably – some of the crimping had worked loose when the savage stockbroker had gone rogue and bitten the knees of both Norwegian contestants before it was cornered in the Oslo stock-exchange and put out of our misery by specially-trained Norwegian police sharpshooters.

However, one of the sniper's bullets ricocheted and put a slight dent in the leading edge but that could easily be re-tuned and painted over and no-one would be the wiser.

So, if you've ever wanted one of those things, but have been put off either by the cost of purchase or the annual stabling fees, now is your chance to put in a bid on what could so easily turn out to be the bargain of a lifetime.

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, but so often 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 in order 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 that the end was here.