Pose

Pose

We have photographs, but they do not speak
of anything, except certain moments
frozen into meaninglessness.
A gesture of a hand, caught in motion.

Would it have become a caress or a fist?
Could that open mouth be speaking of love
or does it spit out sweet sour hatred?
Why are all eyes turned to beyond the frame?

Is someone running by dressed in nakedness
or is some mongrel pissing up a lamppost?
That faded auntie on the very back row
of your favourite wedding photograph,

is she caught - mouth open - wishing the couple the best
or complaining about her brand-new shoes,
maybe even questioning the bride's taste in dresses,
in bridesmaids, or even her choice of man?

I Knew Everything

Back then, I knew everything. I could look into the eyes across a room and see all the secrets they contained. I could see all her hopes, all her fears and I knew I could weave the magic with my fingertips that could satisfy all her desires. I was a poet who knew the secret language that ears like hers longed to hear. I could tell the stories she had dreamt of since she was a small child. Right back to the time she wanted to be a princess and dreamt of princes riding out to take her away to those magical kingdoms that are the birthright of all such true princesses.

I knew too, that it had been a long time since she had dreamed of magical princes and high towers with banners blowing in the breezes. I knew now that she had other dreams these days and I had the keys that could unlock all her secret boxes where she kept her dreams safe from prying eyes and unwelcome attention.

I knew everything and I knew what she wanted, even when she dared not admit it to herself. I knew too what she saw when she looked around at those other boys and men and found them all wanting.

I knew everything.

I knew how to say all the things she longed to hear. I knew how to do all she wanted someone to do to her. I knew all her secret desires and the spells, chants and keys that would unlock them all for me.

The only thing I did not know was how to say those few words that would get her to give it all to me, because I knew I could never allow myself to tell her how much I loved her.

The Winter After the Gods

This was such a cold place for so long. The winds blew us around, turning every corner into an ordeal of gritted teeth in the face of the howling storms. The snows and the cold rains reshaped the landscape around us; the fogs and mists came down and stole our world away. Making this land we thought we knew into some strange foreign landscape where nothing was the same or familiar.

We huddled together, hiding under furs and as close to the stuttering fires as we could manage, eking out a living from the frozen ground and the few animals that – like us – managed to survive.

We thought it could not get worse. We knew either we had abandoned the gods, or they had abandoned us. Of course, in places like this, far from the centre of the Empire, the gods do not have a hold on the people they have where the priests can enforce compliance. Our last priest died a long time ago, even before the coldest of this long winter began. Some laughed and said the gods took him before the worst of it. The rest of us laughed because we saw it proved there are no gods and there never were. Those that doubted were soon persuaded as the winter tore everything from their frozen hands: everything they cared about and all they held dear, taken by the cold and the dark.

But now… now the spring returns, slowly and tentatively. Even the snow no longer falls as the days grow longer and we wonder if the gods will return. Now the roads are passable once more, we wonder if the capital will dare send us another priest to make us recant the error of our heathen ways.

The Time of Inadequate Underwear

It just so happens, well, sort of…. I don't know why it does that. Maybe it likes you, or maybe it is your warm hands, I don't know. Anyway, I'll just go and get a tissue… or a cloth… er… maybe a mop and bucket would be best.

You must admit though, it does look impressive in a certain light, and from the correct angle.

No?

Oh, well.

But, enough of all that let us talk of other, moister, things. I see from the way you adopt the stance of a Trainee Supermarket Manager, that you are new to these parts. Come on in, take your clothes off and partake of a sheep, a goat, or even a duck or two, if you are of a mind to. There is no need to worry; this is a very informal place. After all, very few of the photographs taken of you and the farmyard animal of your choice will be used for the purposes of blackmail. Then only used in a pure spirit of common siblinghood and for my own personal financial enrichment.

Soon will come The Time of Inadequate Underwear. We, brothers, sisters and ruminants must be ready for that day. We know the tribes of feral Estate Agents are gathering deep in the midst of the jungles just outside Walsall. Soon, only too soon, we will hear their war drums and our local free press will be weighed down with all their advertising.

But, will we be ready?

Such a Small Word

Perhaps: such a small word, that holds so much of possibility within itself. Perhaps you will step out into one particular morning to find the world has unfolded itself as if just for you. The world will be there, waiting, with its petals open to the sun for you to take that morning for your own. A world created just for you to walk through.

Perhaps this life will twist and turn against you a whole sea of troubles turned tsunami, washing everything away that you cared about, flooding through your life in an instant, wrecking everything you have and have ever wanted.

Perhaps tomorrow will be just like today and all your yesterdays. Perhaps that is good; perhaps you live inside a world, a life that you don’t want to change in any way, except for maybe one or two little things… perhaps.

Perhaps your whole world is already a nightmare that scars your days and ravages your nights. It leaves you torn and bleeding on the floor of the morning, too ripped apart to even acknowledge it is another day, just longing for them all to be over.

Perhaps: such a small word, that holds so much of possibility within itself.

All Of These Nights

All Of These Nights

All of these nights hide our faces
from each other. We cannot know,
we cannot allow ourselves to see
the stains we leave on this world
revealed by the cold light of day.

We carry on as though these nights
have no consequences, as though
we stand on the outside of history.

We wait for partings at dawn,
longing for them to be over
and done with, while we stare
at the clock, hoping to freeze time
down to this one moment, forever.

The Endless Shore of Ordinary Days

She was there, down at the shore, near the edge of the sea of possibility, launching her dreams to sail across the waves to let the tides take them where they would.

She had turned her back on the dry inland and come down to the sea's edge to find a place to set her dreams free. Sending them out into the wider world, sailing far away from the narrow peninsula where her slow life lapped against the long beach of an endless shore of ordinary days.

She wanted to ride the waves and see the wonders the sailors saw when they were far from land and free of the ropes that tied them there. She wanted to see foreign shores and walk along streets of strange languages feeling the dangerous comforts of being alone and far from home.

She wanted to find somewhere new, where she was not known. A place where she had nothing expected of her and nothing to live up to. She wanted to find a place where the people had not turned their backs on the dreaming sea to search for treasures amongst the flotsam along the tide-strewn shore.

She wanted to sail to some faraway place where no-one can watch and tell distorted stories of how you come down to the beach each morning to set your dreams sailing free. Before turning to go back to your narrow peninsula life and the expectations that weigh you down so you are always nearly drowning on dry land.

All-Nude Alfresco Lamp Post Fondling

Be that as it may – and it may as well – it is not often you see something like that out on the highways and byways of this once-great nation; at least, not during the hours of daylight. Well, not outside the security fences that separates most of us from those who would engage in such activities at the drop of a hat. That is, if they do have a hat to drop at the time, which – considering their state of undress when the incidents have a tendency to occur – is not all that often.

However, once upon a time, back when the world was black and white, there was a propensity for the devotees of football clubs to wear a bobble hat in their team’s colours – possibly even a scarf too. These days, though, such is the general lack of clothing worn by the devotees of this particular pastime that, even dropping a bobble hat would turn the event into an occasion, or one would hope so.

However, such is the nature of all-nude alfresco lamp-post fondling, that even wearing a hat of any kind looks like cheating, and not entering into the spirit of the sport. The sport’s many devotees claim its satisfaction lies in disporting oneself against the lamp-post of one's choice whilst wearing no clothes whatsoever, except perhaps a pair of wellies, or a silk scarf.

Just why the sport’s adherents regard these acts as an exciting – or even an interesting - way of passing the time is shrouded in mystery.

The use of a shroud, mysterious or otherwise - one often feels - would be a better way of undertaking this pastime for most of its adherents, rather than the all-nude version we are forced to witness. Thereby forcing us to muse upon why it is so often the case that those who enjoy removing their clothes in public are the very ones we – the rest of the populace – have no interest in seeing naked.

But then mysteries are an inherent part of the human condition, unlike - at least so often in these cases – a useful quantity of underwear.

It is Something

Yeah, well…. I have to admit, it is something…. Although, to be honest, I’m not sure what that something is. I mean, I’ve seen some things in my life. Quite a few of some things, as it happens. That, though, is not some thing I’ve ever seen before.

You only have to look at it to see it is something. I don’t know what it is about it, but there is something there that says quite simply and quite obviously that it is not from around here.

When I say not from around here, I mean not just around her, not just the Black Country, not even England or the UK, Europe, even. I mean it is something not of this world.

There is something alien about it.

It is something, all right. What that something is though…. I mean, at first glance even, you think there is something over there, some shape, some form. As you get closer though, you realise what attracted you about it, is that it has no form, no fixed form anyway. I mean it is as solid as everything else here, seemingly, but it shimmers, shivers, as though in a heatwave. It changes too, whenever you try to nail down what it look like. It senses somehow, as though it can feel your mind reaching out to grasp it and it changes, alters itself so you mind can’t get a hold on it. Almost as if its indistinctness is some form of defence mechanism. As if it is aware… alive.

The Morning After

So this was the morning after. Elsewhere it would have been just one more ordinary spring morning. There had been some rain overnight, so the ground was still damp. Here and there a few of the bare trees were showing signs of budding and there were still a few snowdrops around and some daffodils were in bloom, bright yellow on the slopes of the undulating ground. Lower down, amongst the bodies, the ground torn up by the feet of the fighters and their horse’s hooves. There were a few early birds, crows strutting amongst the bodies, loose clothing fluttering in the wind and the flights of arrows trembling as the breeze passed through them.

Stunned, those of us still alive staggered around checking the fate of those we had laughed and spoken with only a day before. We took what we could take from the bodies and muttered a few farewells to those who would not hear.

We left the bodies of the soldiers, once we had stripped them of what was useful, but our own we piled up and burnt in the usual way of such things. Back before the gods had gone, a priest would have spoken as the flames took the bodies. But now there were no priests left, at least no-one who would admit to being one... not now.

So we stood watching the flames in silence, a few people muttering under their breath, but whether those mutterings were goodbyes, or half-remembered prayers, no-one else wanted to know. We left one another alone with whatever thoughts they had, then we turned back to the road and wearily moved on.

Wait and See

It was not, although we felt it. It had shape, form. Or rather there was an absence – sensed in the air – where it would be if it was here. Many thought it was some presence from some other world. The more mystical thought it was from some world to come that had slipped through the barrier between those separate worlds; some devil or demon from the nether regions making itself manifest. Those that longed for the end of the world to bring some terminal certainty to their uncertain lives saw it as presaging the end of days. Even though it was not the benevolent creator god they’d longed and hoped for, they still welcomed it and hoped the promise of it smiting the ungodly, who sneered and laughed at them, would be kept.

Others, more rational, thought it could be some seepage from a parallel universe. Maybe one with malevolent intent to be sure, but perhaps something that lived in a universe unlike our own where our concepts of right and wrong, light and dark did not hold sway.

More thought it was some mass delusion, some spiritual yearning for something beyond the wonders of this universe they found too hard to understand, a yearning for the simplicities of good and evil right and wrong, goodies and baddies.

Many more, though, thought it was best just to wait and see what happened next.

An Obvious Elephant

It was not that unusual, at least for around here, but it was rather an obvious elephant. After all, this part of the Black Country is not as well-known as, say, Africa or India for its populations of large mammals. In fact there have been remarkably few sightings of migrating wildebeest on the local ring roads, even in the rush hour.

Although, after closing time there have been reports of several sightings of elephants. However, we can – mostly – discount these as rather unreliable as naturalist discovered very few wild elephants the particular lurid shade of pink common to all these reports.

Still, as for the matter of the penguins in our local government offices, I think we all know what than means. So, we have no need to investigate any of that, or at least that is what certain representatives of the local penguin community ‘suggest’. The number of bodies of influential people turning up at the morgue apparently flippered to death also suggests that too intrusive scrutiny into the doings of the penguin community as they now call themselves could meet with a similar fate.

That leaves the elephant.

Not that anyone is suggesting, of course, that in these days of diversity and equal access, there is anything wrong with an elephant shopping at the supermarket. It is just that some fellow shoppers feel the size of the shopping trolley used by the elephant does block up the aisles somewhat. This is especially so when the elephants often fill their trolleys with whole trees. This can be a bit awkward when there is a queue for the checkout snaking back up the aisle, which makes some of the more tempting bogof offers somewhat hard to reach through the foliage.

However, many feel that with the supermarkets now employing more lemurs and other more arboreal assistants, they will be able to assist customers with the more difficult to reach items. Perhaps then we will have to accept seeing a more diverse selection of fellow creatures in the supermarket on our shopping trips than has hitherto been the case.

The King is Dead

This is not a good world, a fair world or a just world. History does not remember many people when they are gone. Most people – if they are lucky enough to survive childhood - live a short uneventful life and then die. Only those in their village and – perhaps – a few others, if that, remember them. Some though, like me, are fated to be remembered by history. My name will go down in the line, like my father, my uncle, before me and like the son that will follow me.

History, though, will not remember me well. How could it, since I write these few last words here in this dungeon while I wait for my last dawn on this Earth? History will remember me, I know that. But I will be remembered as the fool who lost this kingdom. Not as I'd once hoped as the king that made life better, not for me and the landed families, but for everyone, including those that die and are then forgotten in the villages and hamlets.

I wanted to do so much. But in these few short years I did so little, apart from turning my own son against me. Then losing to him in another of those pointless wars that ruling families inflict on those who serve them. With each such war leaving thousands to die for no other reasons than the vanity and ambitions of those who see themselves as born to rule.

Yes, history will remember me, but only as a fool who threw his kingdom away because he tried to be an honest man in a court of schemers, plotters and liars, the greatest of which was my own son.

Long live the king.

Spring is in the Air

I was walking down the path in the woods. It was a fine spring morning, the sun was shining, the birds were singing... and the badger spoke.

'Er... excuse me?'

I looked down, somewhat apprehensive about conversing with a badger. 'Er... yes?'

A talking badger... and wearing a police uniform.

'Are you thinking of going down that path?' The police badger pointed with his snout.

'Er... yes... officer... why?'

'What?' The badger looked down at himself. 'Oh, I'm not a policema... police badge... police officer. Don't worry about that.'

'Then why?' I made a gesture towards his uniform.

The badger winked. 'Some of the female badgers they like a male in uniform... know what I mean?'

'Er....' I nodded.

'That's why I was asking, like.' The badger nudged up to me conspiratorially. 'Only today you know its the woodland mammals' special day.'

'What?'

'Well, you're a human of the world. You know what us animals get up to in the spring... don't you?'

'What you mean....' I tried to think of a gesture all-encompassing enough and gave up. I raised my eyebrows instead. 'You mean... the mating season.'

'Hang on,' the badger said, taking a step back. 'There's no need for language like that.’ He straightened his police uniform. 'Bit crude, but you get the idea.' He nodded down the path. 'Only it is all happening down there... y'know... in the clearing?'

'Oh, right,' I said, not really knowing what to do.

'Only you're not one of those naturalists are you?' The badger eyed me suspiciously.

'Oh, no....'

'Good... perverts I call 'em, always turning up when you and the missus fancy a bit of the old continuation of the species. There's something not right about them, if you ask me. Too much time on their paws, probably.'

'Anyway,' I said. 'I'll probably go the other way then.' I turned.

The badger nodded and set off down the path himself. 'Mind how you go,' he said, rounding the bend.

Frames

Frames

We take a hold of this world
and hide it in drawers and albums.

Keeping the past safe
and still within these frames.

Memory does not wither,
Immortality is all around us.

The past no longer dies
in silence and forgetting.
It is here forever to hand.

We do not allow ourselves
the luxury of forgetting.

We carry with us always
the weight of remembering
and never letting go.

A New Story

The doorbell rang.

I wasn't expecting anyone and, besides, I had work to do.

She stood there for a moment looking at me as I held the front door open. 'I'm Rosewyn,' she said, eventually.

'Who?'

'Rosewyn.' She spoke as if we knew each other.

'I'm sorry, But I don't kno....'

'Look, can I come in, at least?' she glanced behind herself at the dull grey day. There were a few desultory snowflakes in the air. 'As you can see I'm not exactly dressed for this weather.'

As she spoke, I noticed she was wearing jeans and a vest top with a loose check shirt over the top of it. 'But....'

'Listen,' she stepped forward through my front door before it occurred to me to try to stop her. 'I'm Rosewyn... I'm the new protagonist for the story you were just about to write.' She strode past me into the hall.

I shivered, noticing the draught from the open front door for the first time. I shut it and turned to her... to Rosewyn. 'You are... what?'

'I'm your new central character, the hero... the heroine.' She stood hands on hips in the manner I'd imagined her only a few minutes before. 'I only wish you'd created me in some more suitable clothing for the season.’

I glanced down and she pulled the loose shirt tighter around herself, buttoning it up, giving me one of those looks.

'Sorry,' I said.

'Well, at least your not one of those male writers who insist that we female characters have to have enormous ones.' She hugged herself.

'Are they... I mean... I could... if you want?' After all, I do know about subtext.

'No... they are fine...' she looked down at herself. 'Really. I just wish they weren't quite so noticeably sensitive to the cold, that's all.'

'I could...' I pointed in a general direction towards my computer through the open doorway. There was a blank page in there, waiting for me... for us. 'Shall we?' I said, indicating the open door. 'Sorry about all that, the cold and everything. I did... I was imagining you in the summer, lying in a sun-dappled meadow.' I walked through and sat down in my writing chair.

Rosewyn sat down in a chair, pulling it closer to the writing table. 'So,' she said. 'What happens to me next?'

She Took the Shape of the Night

She took the shape of the night, wrapping its waves around her. She disappeared into its cloaking folds where the shadows are the darkest. She moved through the night like something insubstantial. She became another of those presences felt in the darkness, but never seen, as she swam the seas of the night, diving ever deeper into the darkness, tasting its sharp secrets on her tongue.

She knew where she was going and how deep into the darkness she would have to dive. The night grew tighter around her; she knew those that dive too deep often lose their way back to the surface. Some drown in the darkness, choking on the black. Their bodies grow limp as the scavengers of the night smell prey and writhe and undulate through the thick dark to feast, to devour.

Others, though, she knew, learnt how to swim the darkness. They became like those older ancient predators that swum the night. They too learnt how to live, how to feast on the night fears of the unwary, caught in the dark currents dragging them deeper down to the places where the shadows fold their darkness in on themselves.

She knew her love was down here, somewhere. She knew she would not rest until she was deep enough; far enough down to take Kimberley’s reaching hand. Then swim with her, back up to the surface of the day.

Health and Safety Outrage

Well, it wasn't as straightforward as we'd hoped, but then again, that sort of thing very rarely is. For, such is the complex world in which our collective contemporary hat-hanging takes place, that what was once straightforward, and caused very little strain to the elbows and knee-joints, is – these days – fraught with all manner of caveats and complications.

Back in our younger days, when the world was black and white and daytime TV was invariably the test card, we had to venture outside. Mainly because fresh air was regarded as a good thing and character-forming. Consequently, we learnt so much about the dangers of the world from running into (sometimes quite literally) its pointier bits. A childhood without scars, scabs and frequent bandaging was regarded as no childhood at all.

Surprisingly enough, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune were not regarded as signs that the world was constructed thus as a way of causing harm to children, or even adults – but as something given and to be lived with despite the occasional catastrophe. Just get up, brush yourself off and wipe the blood off then carry on, rather than look around for someone to sue.

Soon, if this H&S obsession carries on, the rest of the universe will be illegal and we will be banned – in our own interest and for our own safety - from ever touching any of it and then – of course – we will never learn anything, thus becoming the ideal citizens of this new age.

This Means War

Then, as you are no doubt aware, it all began. This was a bit of a surprise as we were not expecting her to be ready before Wednesday at the earliest. But then she is one of those people who like to prepare for a night out… sometimes up to several weeks in advance. Even then, she sometimes forgets to load the shotgun and we discover there is very little left on the ammunition shelf. Then we have to have a last-minute rush to the late-night supermarket…. When we get there, there is always a two for the price of one offer on the hand grenades or extra loyalty points on surface-to-air missiles, or a new shade of night camouflage she just has to try.

Then, once we get out of the supermarket, we have to pack the shopping away in the armoured personnel carrier. By then we are already late for the battle and we have missed the early air strikes….

And, of course, it is all my fault… somehow….

So, by the time we get to our forward position, everyone else is already in their forward position. So, we have to spend what seems like ages on small talk, and the women complimenting one another on what they’ve done with their battledress, and so on, and how the kids are doing at the military academy. So, by the time we get into attack position the advance is already late. Or, if we are defending that evening, our forward positions are already overrun – and you know what that can do to property prices. That is another perennial topic of conversation in every battle; about how even the most superficial battle-damage can knock significant sums off the valuation. Still wars are never won without sacrifice, and if someone looses a few thousand off the asking price of a semi-detached… well, that is war.

The Marriage Arrangement

She stood at the wall's edge, looking out over the mist-shrouded lands that lay beyond the castle. 'We are to marry,' she said, not looking at me.

'Yes.' I stood beside her at the wall, noticing her bodyguards, at a discreet distance from us, tensed and their hands inched closer to their weapons.

She turned to look at me. 'Do you think we should try to get to know each other first?'

I shrugged. 'It is not up to us, is it?'

She sighed and nodded towards the ramshackle town that had grown up outside the castle walls. 'The people out there, do you think they marry without knowing each other, without having met?'

'Maybe.' I shrugged again, what the ordinary people out there did matter so little when you stood at the wall looking down on them. There was a good brothel, though, down there. So if she turned out to be an unwilling or unwelcoming bride, there was always Sharla, down at The Bed of Roses, I knew she would not forget me. There were also several high-born women who would relish the prospect of becoming my mistress. Something the Lady Roena had pointed out last night as she lay in my bed, her husband so far away leading my troops under the king.

I turned to look at my prospective bride; she lowered her eyelids, and looked down. 'Look at me.'

At least she obeyed, that was something, but there was some defiance, some anger there.

'I don't want to marry you either,' I said, even as I wondered what she would look like naked on the wedding bed. 'But that is the way it is.' I saw some of the courtiers come out onto the battlements, gesturing for us to return to the main hall. I heard snatches of music and the sounds of revelry where every, but us two, was celebrating the announcement of our marriage. I offered my prospective bride my arm. After a moment's hesitation, she took it.

We strode back into the hall arm in arm to cheers from the guests gathered there, all raising their glasses to toast us as we returned to our seats.

Spring Rains

Spring Rains

Going hand in hand, we need the nakedness.
We need the cold bright water to awaken us
Coming down from the mountain's height

Where it lives through deep wintertime as snow.
Spring will fill it with the warm promise waiting,
So we go down and meet it at the river.

Where we will see life begin again anew
Out of the darkness of winter and into the light,
Where the warming sun takes us by the hand

And into the still cold river, half ice
With the memory of winter still inside it.
To wash away the dark season and become clean

Again to taste the spring rains on our tongues
And to kiss like bees meeting the new flowers
To taste the nectar of their bright new year.

There Are No Gods

It was a long, slow winter. A time when it seemed the snow would stay forever. Some died, of course, the very old and the very young. Heads already bowed against the cold and the biting wind bowed lower in grief and forlorn hopelessness.

The midwinter festival was not the usual raucous revelry where people call on the drunken gods to wake from their long hangovers and bring about the spring. This time there was talk of the gods abandoning us, even talk that there was no such thing as gods. Talk the direst threats and tortures of the priests could not silence.

Soon, as the snows continued, the priests themselves ran for cover as the crowds in the increasingly bare market places turned on them. As I overheard one of my guards say to a serving wench, 'It is not often you see a thin priest.'

I – of course – have never had much time for gods and priests. I am more of a god than most of those the priests light the candles for and make sacrifices to. I have the power of life or death over some, but my Lord has that power over me. So perhaps it is easy to see that – to some minds – there should be someone, or something, that has the power of life and death over lords and kings and even over this world we walk through.

Myself, though, I have seen too much to believe in gods, both the worst and best that this world can do to people and the worst and best that people can do to one another.

No, there are no gods and no-one to blame for this winter that looks as though it will never end. We have only ourselves, one another, and this world and what we make of it.

Instead of Falling

It is often just a matter of getting through the next few minutes, finding the way through the shortest section of time. Taking each step, and then another one, without looking back, without wondering where the step after that will lead. Sometimes, it is like standing on the edge of some high cliff, knowing the next step is the one that will be on empty air, and the only way forward is to fall.

Sometimes, though, there is no falling. Sometimes that step into empty air is the first step towards taking off. Then, when you dare to open your eyes you find you are soaring way above that cliff, over the sea and far away from the hard sharp rocks you could have fallen on.

You are out there, floating free, flying, taking the updraughts that lift you higher and higher as you soar on up, gyre upon gyre, up towards a sky full of possibilities. A sky filled with the possible and limitless.

Looking back you can see the trail of worlds you have let fall behind you, right back to that place on the cliff. That place back before that one small step off into the empty blankness of the page, and knowing that – at least this time - you flew instead of falling.

Now is Not the Time

Of course, it was only a matter of time before something like this happened. After all, the human understanding of time hasn’t changed that much over the eons. Even after introducing more accurate timepieces and the chance to use clocks that are accurate down to fractions of a second, people still turn up at the most inconvenient times. It is still possible for someone to be late, or not to turn up at all, despite the accuracy and almost ubiquity of time-telling devices.

Consequently, certain physicists have begun to realise that time is not quite as rigid a concept as was previously presumed to be the case. Time itself is not really all that accurate and modern clocks are now more accurate than time itself.

Many of us are familiar with this problem with the nature of time. In the past it was assumed that when something that was meant to last longer is over in a fraction of the time, many people blamed subjective experience, while most of the women it happened to, blamed the man.

However, recent discoveries show it is time itself that expands and contracts depending on quantum fluctuations in the fabric of reality, mainly to do with what has become known as the Buggering-About Constant. This is a number that – despite its name – changes with pseudo-random occurrences, mainly dependent on just how many people are depending on a certain amount of time to last for that actual amount of time.

Just like in the quantum world where a the act of observation can change that event’s outcome, depending on a period of time to last for a certain amount of time can actually change that time period. Thus, things meant to last - say – several minutes can be over before she has even undressed properly. A train to arrive any time with a half-hour period both before and after it is due, depending upon just how many people are depending on it arriving on time.

Physicists are only now – mainly because of the uncertain nature of time in respect of applying for research funding – getting to grips with this new understanding the nature of time. Consequently, if there are any new discoveries made in this field they will be published here first, possibly sometime last week.

The Path Leads Down

As we walked, the path climbed steadily up the hillside. What had started out as a grey dull morning, earlier that day when we left the hotel, had turned as time passed into a warm summer day. Now the sun shone and – after a week of almost constant rain – it became a much more typical summer day.

‘Perhaps the weather is changing,’ Sarah said. She was glad to be out walking, she wanted the exercise, needed to be on the move. The last few days of watching rain through the hotel room window or over another cup of tea in some rain-soaked village café, had shrunk her; frustrated her. Now, today, out on this path, breathing in the air, brought back her willowy strength. She smiled at me as we walked. I, too, was glad to be out, feeling the walk putting life back in my legs, legs that had seemed tired and cramped the longer we waited for a fine day.

We came to a ruin, a wreck of a building of some kind. There was a wall built out of the local rough stone, more suited to dry stone walls than buildings. But there it was: a wall about seven feet on one side, the absence of a window then falling down to around ground level. We looked at each other and then sat down. I took the pack off and fished around inside it for a drink.

‘I need to…’ Sarah said, pointing off the side of the path to the bushes. I nodded as I drank, then put the bottle down on the wall as I waited for her.

‘Steve,’ she called. I picked up the bottle and the pack and followed her into the bushes.

‘What do you make of that?’ she said.

It was a path, stone steps heading downwards. I could just see a stream, tumbling over rocks, down at the bottom of the valley below. The steps had an old, very old-looking railing on the side, broken in places and overgrown with all manner of wild plants: from grass and brambles to some delicate things with tiny blue flowers.

I looked down towards the stream. ‘It looks interesting… shall we?’

Sarah nodded and off we went, just as the sun disappeared behind a dark cloud and the rain began to fall.

I remember thinking that I hoped the change in the weather wasn’t an omen, foretelling doom, but I was wrong. That was just what it was.

These Same Streets

These Same Streets

It is all lost now, and forgotten,
we still walk the same streets,
but it is no longer the same.
It is all over, and deep down

we begin to know it.
We have lost and can taste
the sourness of our defeat.
We walk these streets now

only to walk away from then
and all it promised us of lives
that would go far beyond
these narrow empty streets

and out into a world waiting
ready to take us by the hand
and lead us to places far beyond
all these shabby streets can show.

How the Story Began

She wore a summer dress the breeze pressed against her body. I could see through the light material that she wore nothing under the dress. I also knew, from the way she stood there, hand shading her eyes, as she looked towards me, that she knew I could see she looked naked under her dress.

She smiled. 'Good morning.'

'Good morning.' I walked up the dune towards where she was standing.

She let her hand drop, letting the warmth of the sun bathe her upturned face. As I drew closer, she turned to watch me.

'You always walk along the beach this time every morning.'

It wasn't a question, but I nodded. 'I've seen you here too, up on these dunes as I pass.'

'I've been watching you.'

'Oh?' I turned and walked back towards the sea, away from the dunes.

She pulled off her sandals and ran, sandals in her hand, to catch up with me. 'I wanted to meet you.'

I glanced at her, then turned to watch a seagull swoop down on some detritus. 'Why?'

'I've read your books.'

I stopped walking. 'Ah.'

'I liked them.'

'Thank you.' I took a few steps further.

'Especially Meeting on a Beach.'

I stopped, turned.

She was looking at me with that intensity again, eyes shaded with her free hand, the other holding the sandals at her side.

'You know,' she said. 'The one that begins with a man and a woman – two strangers – meeting on a beach.'

I nodded.

'Her name... the woman in the book, her name is Maria... my name is Maria, too.'

'I know,' I said.

Then I held out my hand to Maria. After a moment's hesitation, she put her hand in mine and then our story began.

The Particle Theory of Dinner

Semblance Dromedary is – of course – these days a name well-known to almost everyone with even the slightest interest in the sciences, especially in the highly specialised field of high-energy particle physics. In particular, Dromedary’s area of expertise lies within the branch of contemporary physics concerned with making what scientists call 'a nice bit of dinner'.

Of course, it was the Ancient Greeks, especially Plato and Heraclitus, who first theorised that somewhere out there, there must exist the original ideal of a nice meal. Plato himself perfected the idea in his Theory of Forms. Stating that somewhere out there lay, not only the perfect mashed potato, light and fluffy, and without any of those mysterious lumpy grey bits so beloved of downmarket restaurants and cafés, but there was also a perfect lump-less gravy.

The epicureans too, through there must be some ideal meal out there, and so many of them devoted their lives to sampling as many meals as they could in their local area in search of the ideal meal.

Later though, it was Einstein himself who first came up with the two concepts that defined modern-day Dinner Theory with his concepts of General Good Food and Special Good Food, immortalised in his famous quote: 'God doesn't make lumpy gravy.' However, Einstein, right until his dying day, refused to accept the possibility of the existence of the yummy particle, as theorised by Niels Bohr.

The Large Lunch Collider brings meat and vegetables together at the speed of waiter service. It exists underground at one of London's leading restaurants. Recent work at this facility, run by Semblance Dromedary himself, produced tentative experimental data suggesting there is – indeed – a 'yummy' particle.

Consequently, although, it is too early to be sure, Dinner Physicists are quietly confident that they will confirm the existence of the yummy particle. Thus, mankind could finally be well on their way to a Unified Theory of Dinner at long last.

Strangers

What else is there?

There is this world and there is nothing beyond. Even the stars are out of reach now. There used to be a belief in some afterlife, some life beyond this, but now we know those were just deluded dreams. We are here now, and then we are gone. Even our pasts and any possible futures disappearing off into the mists of tomorrow and yesterday have something unreal, something imagined about them. After all, only a fool would believe they could foretell the future and everyone knows our memories reinvent the past, changing in it subtle – and sometimes not so subtle ways.

I look at you and see a stranger while you stare back at someone you’ve never met. We wonder how and why we spent so much time together when we are such strangers. None of us can ever know what others are thinking, or even if they think of us at all.

I have memories of you and your words and your body seems as familiar to me as my own. Yet we live so far apart, even though we share so much of the same space. Sometimes it does seem we are all strangers to one another and – quite often – even strangers to ourselves.

The Seasons of Our Lives

 

The Seasons of Our Lives

And the disappointing spring becomes
warm seasons like the summer rains
that bring the promise of autumn fruit
and fading like the winter sun.

The seasons of our lives pass so easily,
like the dawn becomes the day, then sunset
before we have done any of those things
we promised each other as the night

fell away and sheets were pulled back,
ready to face a brand new day.
We grow older quicker than we know
and find strangers stare back from mirrors.

Someone that could be our parent
watching us like a stranger, wondering
whatever happened to all those seasons
and all those days and all those schemes

and dreams that filled our young days.
We were not going to end like this,
just one more faded face in a mirror.
We were going to change this world
so it stayed spring for ever more.

Something Taken and Used

It was as if something was taken and used, leaving us bereft. Somehow, we were not expecting it. We expected our life together to take root and grow, bloom into possibility. Maybe, though, the earth of our time was too stony, too coarse for the early fragile roots to take hold. Our love, when we transplanted it to this new life, to this new marriage and new house, withered and collapsed.

Even the water of possibility, did little to revive it. We lay there together on opposite sides of a bed suddenly far too big, no longer entangled around each other and growing towards the sun of the future. We turned away from each other. She looked out of the window, the curtains blowing in the breeze like some invitation to escape, while I turned to watch the slow hands creeping around the clock until it was safe to get away.

Neither of us ever knew what had gone wrong. We just knew what had once been as familiar as our own reflections in the mirror was now a stranger staring in silence back at us from across the other side of the table.

We never knew what had gone wrong, what had poisoned this new life and left it dying, all we knew was that it was time to dig it all up and start again somewhere new, apart and alone.