She belonged to the Wild Woods

She belonged to the Wild Woods; she was a creature of the shadows and the sheltering trees. She moved through the green like a summer breeze, hardly disturbing a leaf as she passed, her feet as light as those of a deer or other woodland creature. Though she was not the prey, she was the hunter.

She hunted for food and for the furs that kept her warm in winter. She also hunted the folk who stumbled into the woodland. People who stepped off the paths, off the roads, were - the people of the Wild Woods thought - legitimate targets, prey. Just as the folk of the Wild Woods kept out of the villages and never went near the towns or the cities, they thought those people should keep well clear of the deep woods.

There were stories, of course, told around the fires of inns and the great houses of what the Wild Wood folk actually were, most did not think them human, or at least not human enough for serious consideration. Some brave souls even styled themselves as hunters of the Wild Wood folk, although, not many of them ever returned from their forays into the woods.

The Kings, Lords, Barons and other powerful folk were content to leave the Wild Wood folk be. Fear always helps the rulers, and people were afraid of the dark Wild Woods. So was I, until that day I stumbled and fell, only to wake hours later at the bottom of a wooded hill to look up into the most beautiful green eyes I had ever seen.

Registering a Complaint

Even then, it was not unknown for her to take a firm grasp of the situation… usually by the neck. Or, if she believed the situation warranted it, by more intimate regions of her interlocutor’s body. Either way it brought more tears to the eyes than the first shift at the onion-peeling table in a pickling shed.

Of course, back in those days it was all a far more hands-on experience than modern technology allows, especially in those regions of the person specifically excluded from all end-user agreements and product licences. Except, that is, for some of the more probing applications and devices, which have a tendency to intrude upon the personal, often in quite inventive ways.

What, you make ask, has any of this got to do with the matter in question? Especially with the country in the midst of whatever crisis the politicians have managed to make into even more of a cock-up than it was before they involved themselves with it.

And well you may ask….

Although, if you want an answer you will need to invest in the Pro version of the app as doing anything useful with it is not available in the version given away with only modest advertising support. Although, users should be aware that some of the goods and services in those advertisements are not legal in many countries, especially those countries which take concerns about animal welfare more seriously than others.

After all, erotic porpoises is NOT a misprint as some have suggested, and many more have hoped.

Still, be that as it may a personal visit to the Complaints Department, in particular by one with such an… er… forceful personality as hers, is not always the wisest course of action. Especially by those - again such as her – who believe complaining about such things should always be a much more hands-on and memorably forceful experience.

Still, it only took seven police officers to escort her from the premises once the Complaints Department had registered her complaint. Those members of staff not taken away in the ambulance solemnly promised her an investigation into her complaint as soon as possible… once everyone had recovered.

The Crystal Week

Each one of those moments was crystal in its clarity. Each day shone like some jewel. Each easily taken into the hand to place carefully in the box of memories we kept for those times when we sat together late at night, watching the flames dancing and listening to the tick of the clock. Kept for those times when time doesn’t matter.

That week though, the Crystal Week was the one we always turned to later when times were not so good, to remind us of what once had been and what – maybe – could be again sometime.

Times, though, cannot be recreated, made again. As Heraclites said you can never step in the same river twice, in the intervening period both you and the river change, so in that way we could never go back. All we could do was remember.

Or, at least, so I thought.

Marie always had a secret smile, something I associated with memory. She could – I often thought – remember much more than me: the details, the incidents, sounds, smells, textures. All the time she remembered past times, especially our Crystal Week, she had that smile on her face. I thought it was some trick, something like biting your lip, scratching your head, to help you remember. But that smile was different.

I remember when it all changed. After a fraught week at work, I sat with Marie, watching the flames, talking again about the Crystal Week, remembering. After a moment of watching the flames, I said ‘I wish I could go back there.’

Marie took my hand in hers, smiling that smile. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll take you back there.’

And she did.

The Room of Forgetting

These are the words that fade into the silence. This is what is said when there is nothing left to say. These are the hands that make certain half-completed gestures as if they, like the words have nothing left to say.

We turn, each back to our own silences and leave this room empty of everything except the slow dancing dust left in the sunlight to settle down, leaving this room emptier than it has ever been.

The silence grows, spreads out, blanching even the simplest words of meaning and context, turning them to dust that settles and lies undisturbed. A thin veneer left coating the surfaces of the lives that once filled this room.

We no longer have the energy left for the words, nothing except to turn away. Each closing our own doors on this shared room, leaving it empty, a place for the dust of memory to settle and wait until everything is forgotten.

One day this room will fill again with new lives, new words, people with something still to say to one another and the dust will dance again as it swirls and eddies around a living landscape.

Until then though it would be best to keep this doors closed and give the room the time to forget.

Haunted by Memory

Haunted by Memory

We walk back to the place they stood
as morning mists arose to let
the night escape the day and leave
us standing still, alone here, waiting,
for the tide to turn away revealing

a day so haunted by lost time
and memory, the fading footsteps
all left in dampened sand that tell
of someone here for a short while
who shared these haunted moments too.

Crime of the Century

It was one of those cases that baffle the police force and force them to hold informal discussions in front of the coffee machine. Not only that a maverick female officer – who some thought promoted beyond her abilities in the name of political correctness – had to confront a junior officer in the male toilets. She also had to act in direct contravention of her superior’s orders to make an arrest of what turned out to be the least-likely suspect.

Anyway, after one of the longest stake-outs in UK police history the squad were able to track down the perpetrator. As one police officer said, ‘We had to sit there for hours in front of Twitter, just waiting for someone to say something even slightly disparaging. Someone did call the leader of the Opposition a gormless twat at some point. But the CPS said we would never get a conviction on something as factually accurate as that.’

In the end, though, police formally charged a middle-aged woman from Manchester with calling someone from Huddersfield a ‘soft southern poof’ with malice aforethought in a Facebook encounter over the relative merits of Coronation Street versus Eastenders. The Manchester woman was sentenced to five years in a maximum-security prison for the heinous offence of ‘Having an On-Line Strop’. An offence under legislation brought in by the current government in a frantic attempt to appear relevant and to address the grievances of the easily-offended.

However, this attempt to court popular opinion has made absolutely no difference to the government’s poll ratings. In fact, it caused a massive drop in the already negative approval rating of the government when the UK population discovered it is now illegal to call the government ‘a bunch of useless incompetent wankers.’

At No Other Time

What else was there left to say?

We stood, both with heads bowed, foreheads touching as I clasped her hands in mine. Around us, people with places to go bustled around the station while an amplified voice burbled incomprehensibly from speakers all around us.

‘I’ll have to go,’ I said, not moving.

Emma nodded slowly, her hair brushing against mine.

‘I’ll be back,’ I said, wanting to believe it. I didn’t know though, whether I would be or not. That was the thing about time travel. Something we had discovered back at the Institute during the first live experiments. The past is as much a fluctuating possibility as the future. Just as we can’t travel forward in time – yet - because too many possibilities exist in an uncertain future, the past too is uncertain; always balanced on a knife-edge of competing possibilities. I knew that if I did manage to get back to this time, then it more than likely would not be to these possibilities. It could be a world where Emma did not exist, or one where we had never met, or even a world - as had happened to Freeman – without the human.

As my professor said, before he disappeared – possibly – somewhere in the middle of the Battle of Hastings, ‘every visit to the past is a throw of the dice.’ After all, it is always possible he did come back to a future, just not the one he left, because every future we come back to is different from the one we left. We do not even have to step on a butterfly to change the world we hope to return to.

So, eventually I got on the train and Emma disappeared from my life. I couldn’t help thinking about her, each moment of that journey back to my leap point. Each minute I resolved to turn back, stay there in that time – even though I knew what was coming as 1939 dragged on towards its inevitable climax – stay with Emma and see her through what was to come. Even so, I knew I had to try to get back, return to all I’d left behind in a lifetime yet to come.

Falling into the Dunes

We fell together into the dunes, sliding down the sand into each other's arms, our mouths locked together in a kiss.

'We shouldn't,' Suzie said and kissed me deeper pulling my face on to hers. We broke apart, grinning at each other.

'This is wrong.' This time Suzie's hands were moving down my body. My shirt was open and I was wearing only shorts. Already she was unbuttoning, unzipping the shorts. 'We shouldn't.'

I kissed her shoulder, saying nothing, easing off the strap off her bikini top, untying it at the back and letting it fall.

Suzie was kissing down my chest, my stomach. I knelt up and let her carry on. She had my cock in her hand, she looked at it, kissed it and then lowered her warm wet mouth over it.

I arched back, seeing over the top of the dune towards where the rest of our families sat on the beach. I could see Martin, Suzie's husband, digging a sandcastle with a couple of our kids. My wife, Jenny, was down by the sea, Suzie’s baby in her arms and her free hand holding the hand our other daughter paddling next to her.

Suzie looked up at me and I pushed her back down into the dune, pulling her bikini bottoms off with one hand before parting her legs. She tasted of sea and sand and suntan oil, at least down as far as her bikini bottom, then, from then on, she tasted of Suzie. A taste I still remembered, even after all the years since I'd last tasted her.

'We shouldn't,' Suzie said again, pulling me on top of her. 'Come on, Pete, fuck me… now!'

A Song of Fish and Chips

‘I am Doris Drizzleborn, mother of poodles and auntie to labradors.’ She stood, proud defiance in every bone of her body, plastic mac rustling in the wind.

‘I am the Mighty Bert, ruler of all the chip shops in this land.’

‘I come seeking battered cod,’ she said as her mighty war poodles strained against their leashes.

‘Do you?’ He stepped back from the counter. ‘Want any chips with that?’

‘Do I look like the sort of woman who eats her fish without chips?’ The scorn in her voice made her war poodles tense and skittish.

‘I do not make chips for just any stranger who enters my shop.’ He folded his heavily-muscled arms across his batter-stained vest. ‘Are you worthy?’

She tensed, shortening the leads of her war poodles as they tried to investigate the strange smells of this far distant land. ‘You ask Doris Drizzleborn if she is worthy? I have eaten chips in all corners of this land.’ She stepped forward. ‘I would even dare try your mushy peas!’

Behind her the queue of regulars, as one, stepped back, away from her. None dared speak, or to rush forward to defend the honour of their Lord’s mushy peas.

‘How dare you impugn the quality of my mushy peas!’ The Chip Master cried. ‘Leave my shop forthwith!’ He lifted his serving scoop in warning. ‘And take your filthy curs with you.’

Doris Drizzleborn stood for a moment, trying not to show the bitter taste of defeat that filled her mouth. She stared back impassive. Her war poodles tensed on their leashes, ready to strike. The rest of the queue moved back, out of range of the deadly dog breath.

There was silence.

Doris Drizzleborn eyed the Chip Master’s hand as he reached for the vinegar. She knew only too well – from the tragedy that had taken her brother – what too much vinegar on her chips could do.

‘Come,’ she ordered her battle poodles. She turned on her heel and left the shop. In the doorway, Doris Drizzleborn turned and faced the Chip Master. ‘One day Mighty Bert I will return with an army and we will eat every chip in your shop. You will be on your knees begging for us to leave you a few battered scraps.’

Then she and her war poodles were gone.

All Done For Her

It took time to shape the world I wanted to create for her. I wanted everything to be just right, just how she had always wanted it. It meant doing some research, finding out about her: about what she liked and disliked, loved and hated, wanted and disdained. This meant I had to follow her around as she went about her life. I had to go to the places she went to, see the people she saw and visit everywhere she visited.

Of course, if you have the talents I have, such things are not hard. All I needed was something of hers I could use. Some way through to her so I could, albeit at one remove, see what she saw, talk with whom she talked with, ate what she ate and experience all she experienced.

She knew – somehow – that something was wrong. When I wormed my way into her life, her thoughts, her experiences, she sensed something was not right, as though there was something there. Often, when she thought she was alone, I’d catch her, spinning round trying to catch sight of whatever it was that was watching her. Then telling herself she did not believe in ghosts and wondering if she was turning paranoid, or if some shadowy government agency had – somehow – put her into one of its files by mistake.

Whatever it was, I knew she thought, she would one day break free of it. But she was wrong, I had decided that she was mine and that one day I would take her away from all she’d ever known and keep her for myself in a world I’d made especially for her.

I could hardly wait to see the look on her face when she realised all I had done for her.

The Slow Times Come

The slow times come and take us by the hand, leading us – one by one – out across these plains away from the cities, where we fell, and out into the space and quiet of a land of possibilities. There were times when we shaped our lives around these cities, building them up as high as the buildings that reach towards the skies. Busying our lives as frantic as any rush hour street, racing from somewhere to somewhere else.

Then the times changed; we grew older and our lives slowed down. The city turned away from us as our lives shrank back down and returned to a slowness that made the city become strange, alien, unfamiliar. Those streets that we once saw as safe and familiar as the face of some lover, grew cold and strange, distant, as though the lover had turned away, leaving us alone.

Then we too, turned away from the city, walking those roads we had not taken that led away from the, now turned cold, heart of the city. We headed out away from the high buildings, the crowds and the faces turning away from us.

We came out here to where the slow river flows past as though all the time waits for us to decide how we want to live again.

Give Names

Give Names

You want to give names
to all the nameless things.

You want to create shapes
from this shapelessness.

You want to carve your name
across these indifferent skies.

You want to come to me naked.
You want me to hold you tight

and say it is all still out there
waiting for you to take hold.

(Almost) The Beast on the Moor

In the end, or at least at one of its ends, it was not quite the fearsome creature the legends speak of. Still, it was – the local guide insisted – the very beast of so many stories and tales told in those parts. Even though, in the end, what was meant to be some kind of large black cat the size and ferocity of a panther, turned out to be a hamster.

A poorly-painted hamster, at that.

Times, though, are hard all over these days; even the tourist industry is feeling the squeeze and having to look for more diverse sources of income. Which is why the recently renovated medieval castle at Silage on Severn does not much resemble the medieval fortress it supposedly is. Despite this, the guidebook claims it was built to keep the rampaging Welsh on their side of the border. However, to the untrained eye, it looks a lot like a former fish and chip shop, fallen into disrepair, even if the local guide swears the crenulations were there yesterday, but they fell off.

What is more, the picturesque market town of Puddle on the Squib now has a fully-restored and historically accurate branch of Woolworths opening soon. The shop is completely and lovingly restored to recreate the heady shopping experience of the ancient times of around 10 years ago. Even specially trained local children engage in the historically accurate spectacle of nicking the pick ’n’ mix for tourists to witness.

There is talk too of a museum in the former industrial heartland of the North-East that is – we are promised - going to put on an exhibition of some genuine rope from the last century, all for a very competitive entry price.

So, please visit these attractions soon and give generously to keep this great island’s heritage alive.

The UK’s Most Pointless Politician

Now regularly televised by BBC3.142, these days the title of The UK’s Most Pointless Politician is a hotly contested field. In fact, such is the competition for the title that the award has – over the last few contests become divided into several categories. This enables the judges have some chance of picking winners – or more accurately in the spirit of the competition – losers.

Obviously, the UK has a long and distinguished history of championing the useless and pointless. Hence the undercurrents of national suspicion and unease whenever a British person is good at something, especially sport.

For, as every British school-age potential worker drone is well aware winning is for losers.

Consequently, there are categories for both local and national politicians. There are also several categories for the political camp followers, groupies and other ‘professions’ of questionable value and limited virtue, such as political journalist, think-tank wonk and political researcher. There is, of course, as traditional, a category all of its own for civil servants.

The contest has several rounds, based on the old beauty contest model. In the first round, politicians are judged on their general incompetence, including an interview with the celebrity compere where they can detail their failures. This includes such things as failed business or academic career, their failed marriages and destroyed personal relationships and other such signs of general failure that left them with no alternative but to become politicians. Then there is the venality round where politicians must display just how corruptible they are. They are offered everything from a plain brown envelope stuffed with fivers up to executive board membership of companies guilty of supplying illegal chemical weaponry to despotic regimes. In the final round they are offered a seat at the cabinet table in return for their compliant acquiescence to the party machine.

Then, of course, there is the swimsuit round….

Moving on….

The winner of The UK’s Most Pointless Politician, of course, gets to become Prime Minister of the UK for anything up to three parliamentary terms. If incompetent enough at this the ex-PM goes through to the World Championship and the chance of winning a coveted UN Special envoy to the Middle East position.

Chasing the Wild Words

I can't be bothered, not any more. All those wild words once seemed so vital. There was an urgency about heading out there each morning, tracking them down, rounding them up, capturing them and bringing them back here to release them onto the empty white space of the page.

Once I had caught them and brought them here, they were mine – or, at least, so I thought. But the words never belong to anyone, not for long. Soon they have to leave, just when we think we are getting to know them, they are gone, out there for a new life beyond our control.

She was the one who brought me so many words. Each morning I would walk out there, into the unknown, into the dew and the mist and she would be there waiting for me. She would be ready to take my hand and lead me on, down to the valley with the stream where the words ran free.

She would bring the words to me; each given with a kiss or a caress and I would feel the love with every word she gave me. I thought then that she would be there, waiting for me, every morning, waiting just for me, ready to take me by the hand to the valley where the words run free.

I never expected it to matter if I missed a day or two, busy chasing after those other women that came to see the words I spread out on the page for them. Then, one morning when I climbed up her hillside through the dew and the mist, she had gone and now I no longer know how to find my way back to that valley of words.

That First Kiss

And then... we fell....

We moved through the air together and fell all the way down to the ground still locked in that first kiss.

It had started out tentative, unsure, those first few movements closer to each other. Our heads titling so lips could meet, then a slight movement away, as if there was some attraction pulling us together, forcing our lips to meet, that we were still uncertain of, still frightened by.

Sometimes there is no turning back, and both of us knew this. Sometimes what is done cannot be undone, ignored or wished away and both of us knew this too. Yet our bodies, our heads, our lips were pulling each other closer as though some force of nature was exerting itself and there was nothing either of us could do.

The grass was soft underneath me as I pulled her down on top of me, and she was soft too under her clothes as my hands found their way inside, in-between the gaps.

Angela's eyes closed. She muttered words of denial and refusal, even as her hands unbuttoned my shirt. Her mouth moved from mine down my chest, saying something about being a married woman. Saying this was wrong, that she shouldn't... and then my trousers were undone and she was kissing lower and lower.

I lay back, looking up at a sky that had seen this sort of thing so many times before. It may have been new to us as a couple, only our first time. But there was nothing unusual in what we were doing, even among people like us who had made solemn vows to be true to other people. At the same time, though, we both thought our situation unique, at least for these first few stolen moments.

Things Going On

At the time, well, none of us really knew what was going on. This, after all is not all that unusual. We usually find that if someone does claim to know what is actually going on, their claim – eventually – all revolves around either government and big business conspiracies, or giant invisible space lizards, and sometimes both.

The fact is that no-one knows what is going on, especially politicians. After all, politicians are a breed of people who can’t get a proper job and would have trouble finding their own arseholes with both hands, a map… and a sat-nav. So, to expect them to have any idea what is going on is a touch optimistic, to say the least. Obviously, the giant invisible space lizards would realise this as soon as they made contact.

Then there are all the nutters – religious and otherwise – who claim to have a direct line to god, the gods and/or the giant invisible space lizards. The conclusion to which is if the gods have chosen these people to represent them, then their claims to omnipotence are dodgy at best and for being all-wise and all-knowing… well. As for the giant space lizards, if they have really crossed light years, space and galaxies, then surely they should have more sense than to latch onto the first certifiable idiot they come across as spokesbeing for their case.

Consequently, the only philosophically sound response to any inquiry into what is actually going on is, and can only ever be: ‘Fuck knows.’

How to Shape the Sky and Curve the Land

It was out at the edges of this world. I was out there, creating some new land, some new world. I was alone, as I always am, out there. Not many people know about the edges of this world. They think it is seamless and complete, that it is -somehow - defined and enclosed by the physical, what we like to call reality.

I do not, of course, speak of heavens or hells, or any such mythological places. We know there are no heavens and there are no hells, except – of course – for those we make for one another, here in this ordinary reality. Those that once created the heavens and hells, of course, they may have glimpsed some idea of what I am referring to. They may once have touched the outer limits of the possible and learnt that it can be shaped. But they had more interest in inventing religions and for the same purposes some have always created religions, so they can to take some control over the lives and thoughts of others.

No, I was out here, learning how to shape the sky and curve the land to meet each other in some new world I wanted for myself. I, by then, had had enough of this world. Enough of this narrow cold world where we bump into one another and against one another all the time, always stunting and closing off the possibilities that even we mere humans can create with just one expansive gesture.

Yes, I was out there alone just creating my own small world and then she came along and changed everything.

I Have Seen

I Have Seen

This Earth, it takes the time that turns
and moves as though the sky takes shape
around its form. We move on through
the air like things so out of place.

We know just how to fall, and tumble
all falling down from such stark heights.

I have been there, outside, I saw
the shapes of clouds, I've seen it all
and found the night so far beyond,
lurking hidden behind the lights.

I talked and then I turned to listen
and still don't know the way to turn.
My hands cannot shape this, unformed
into the real that shapes this world.

I do not touch to feel its weight
or to even understand it all.
I touch to remember, and walk away.

But, how can all this go beyond?
seeming far too solid, too real
to fade away. The world is hard
against us, drawing flowing blood

from careless lives. The stain will dry
a brittle brown before the rain
will come and wash it all away
We leave no trace behind. The world
will carry on about its business,
we neither here, nor there, and here

is everywhere, and everywhere
is nowhere, while we have no place
beyond and no more other time,
and only this, and here, and now.

The Toyshop Incident

Then there were the pomegranates. Not normally known as one of the more offensive weapons, that is true. But, in the right hands, they can be quite effective. She, of course, was more than adept at wielding fruit in an offensive capacity, though. In fact, she was capable of using almost anything as a weapon, up to and including a fluffy teddy bear.

However, that last incident, known even today only as The Toyshop Incident is still covered by the Official Secrets Act. There has, of course, been speculation about the incident. This includes three non-fiction books, two feature films, several TV documentaries, countless newspaper and magazine articles, a computer game and an oil painting. Yet, no one beyond those involved in The Toyshop Incident – those that survived anyway, can dare speak of precisely what happened. Although, one of the agents of a foreign power said to have some involvement in the incident still bears several tell-tale Lego brick scars on his chest. This alleged foreign secret agent was photographed on a beach in an undercover operation by a TV journalist, Hackwork Easydosh, who since died in mysterious circumstances under an avalanche of Barbie dolls in the Russian steppes. An area not normally associated with avalanches and especially not avalanches of Barbie dolls.

As for the incident with the pomegranates, all that can be said, without fear of repercussion, is that agents from a hostile foreign power will think twice about visiting the vegetable aisle of a British supermarket with hostile intent in future. It is through the dedication of this agent and those like her who must remain nameless that we Britons can shop safely in our supermarkets never once doubting that our cauliflowers are safe from hostile foreign machinations. For that we should always be grateful.

Something for the Weekend - Free Kindle Humour: The Sexiest Elbows I'd Ever Seen

 

The Sexiest Elbows I'd Ever Seen

Available FREE for five days here (UK) or here (US)

Extract:

[….]

Twelve hours later, just as the TV station covering the event live went to an advertising break, there was an unearthly scream from the AntenDec beast as it stood on the tapioca-ignoring table, stripped off its clothing and dived heads-first into the now stone-cold tapioca dish on its left before smearing the contents of its other tapioca dish over its genitalia as it got up and strode towards the female celebrity judge, licking its lips and demanding perverse sexual favours, there and then, live on the auditorium stage.

Fortunately, the AntenDec’s keepers were able to throw one of their restraining nets over the rampaging creature before it got too close to the judge. They sedated it and took it away in a wheelbarrow back to its cage ready for the long journey back to the Geordie wilderness where it made its home.

This meant that Plenitude and I were through to the final.

That night we celebrated alone together in my hotel room, with Plenitude dipping those sexy elbows of hers in the champagne, they had presented to us for winning the semi-final, for me to lick off as she did that special thing she did with the castanets and the Shrewsbury & Telford A-Z Street Atlas.

[….]

Product Description

When we first met she was Emeritus Professor of Post-Colonial Marmalade at the University of Ffestiniog, and she had the sexiest elbows I had ever seen. We met at the Annual Ffestiniog Tapioca-Ignoring Convention, back in the late summer of ’83. At the time neither of us had a Tapioca-Ignoring partner, so naturally – once we found our handicaps were compatible – we teamed up for that autumn’s preliminary Tapioca-Ignoring Cup rounds. Of course, with both of us being amateurs we never expected to get to the finals.

Her name was Plenitude Cleavage and she came from the Welsh valleys, in fact she had quite a Welsh valley herself, never in my experience had I ever seen such a splendid example of nominative determinism in a woman’s body before
[....]

So begins one of the greatest love stories of our age told here for the first time in ebook form for the Kindle.

This collection also contains several other stories of equal import, such as:
'Shropshire Smith and the Temple of Vegetables'. A tale of adventure and excitement within a forgotten temple of one of the world's oldest forgotten civilisations.

'The Famed Vegetable Killer of Grimsby'. Murder most foul.
'The Dancing Sex Nuns of the Tenth Quadrant'. A story of one of the great mysteries of the far future.

'The man with the Golden Cheese Baguette'. The tale of Britain's greatest spy and his attempt to thwart an evil genius with plans for world domination.

'The Thing Falling Out of the Sky Incident'. Some claim there are aliens out there, waiting to invade Earth. Some say this has already happened.

Plus other stories, such as: 'Feeling Betrayed', 'The Aftermath', 'The Perfect Woman' and others the like of which you will never have read before.

 

The Sexiest Elbows I'd Ever Seen

Available FREE for five days here (UK) or here (US)

Out of the Frying Pan

Still, as you may know, this is not quite the frying pan in question. However, it will do to illustrate this lecture as it is fairly close in style and type to the original frying pan – although, of course, without the obvious dent. This dent, though, was not an original feature of the frying pan. Thus, this similar pan could therefore stand in as the pre-incident frying pan. The dent itself was not – as some allege – already there in the frying pan. They claim – not without a modicum of justification – that the dent could have occurred there as a way of distinguishing this frying pan from a myriad of other similar – and often indistinguishable items. Perhaps in the hope of gaining some sort of celebrity chef endorsement.

However, the magical properties of celebrity names purportedly imbue any object given their imprimatur with the spirit of that celebrity. Thus implying a magical transfer of celebrity to the purchaser and subsequent user of the item takes place.

Such concepts, however, are beyond the scope of this article. This piece is more concerned with how the dent got into the frying pan in the first place.

However, as the defendant – hereinafter referred to as ‘the wife’ - got the dent in the frying pan is revealed – she claims in her sworn testimony - by a simple perusal of the above paragraph concerning celebrity endorsements. That paragraph she submits in her defence, along with a claim of unreasonable provocation at an unsociable hour and the stress of breakfast-time preparations.

Me…? I’m not saying anything. There is room for at least one more dent in that frying pan.

All It Ever Did Was Rain

The rain was falling, Glift was not surprised. The rain was always falling. Sometimes he thought it was amusing that this was the capital city of the Sun Empire, ruled by the Emperor of the Sun, and all it ever did was rain.

It was summer now, so – at least – the rain was warm, but this early in the morning the sky was dark, not the dull grey – or sometimes if you were lucky - the light grey of daytime. It was even darker here, down in the warren of tunnels, alleyways and twisting passages which merged the Old Kingdom's origin castle with the Emperor’s palace and the town, the city that had grown up around it.

Glift knew his way, knew where he was going, or at least he thought he did. This was the danger, though, of venturing into unfamiliar parts of the Warrens. The geography, even what could with a certain amount of optimism be called the architecture, could change from one year to the next as those who inhabited the area changed the shapes of the walls and structures.

There was no planning, no organisation and very little in the way of rule of law the further one travelled from the - relatively – civilised areas around the palace. But Glift had his sword, and he knew how to use it and he could still walk the stealthy walk of the assassin he used to be.

Even so, when he turned the corner, the gang was there waiting. Glift's hand tightened around the pommel of his sword and his feet took up a defensive stance as his eyes searched the gang and picked out its leader.

'My, my, what do we have here?' The big one in the centre said as all faces turned to him. 'Are you lost, rich man?'

The gang all drew swords and knives – five of them – and spread out as wide as the passageway allowed all creeping towards Glift as the rain poured down.

Beyond the Human

It began under the darkest skies of winter when it is almost possible to believe there is something out there beyond the human, beyond the natural. Of course, we were too old, too used to the way the world works to believe in such figments of the imagination as ghosts, werewolves, vampires, spirits, gods and demons.

But still....

There are times when the shadows grow deep and dark and the cold winds rattle against all that we believe is solid and strong. Times when we start to feel just how puny we are against the forces that lie beyond our control. There are times when the dark seethes with malevolence and we huddle against the light and the warm as the dark and the cold draws ever closer.

We could see it in each other's eyes, a feeling that we had made a mistake, moving here deep into the heart of the country, away from the bland safety of the city. It seemed funny that we'd escaped what we thought were the dangers of the city, only to find that this bucolic paradise was neither bucolic nor a paradise.

It was cold and damp, and just as noisy as the city, the wail of the sirens replaced by the cries of foxes and badgers. All going about business just as grisly as what those city sirens were a response to. Except the bodies I saw on my morning walks were not the human victims of robbery and murder, gangland fights, but small furry creatures that I could not identify or name. Only a spread of blood-splattered feathers across the path remained. Even Jeff our Labrador, a city boy himself, seemed nervous of the blood and gore we met every few days down on the paths along the meadow and into the woods. He looked back at me with sad eyes as though he too had nightmares that were coming true.

Still though as I breathed the clean air on those sharp frosty mornings I told myself it could only get better... but I was wrong.

The Dating Game

Well, as you know, people do not often utilise these items in such a fashion. At least, they do not on a first date and not in a small room with the curtains drawn whilst a choir sings a medley of late 1970s disco hits.

At least, not around these parts.

However, use of the egg-whisk on first dates, if only as a conversation piece, is a growing phenomenon. One the traditional media, in their increasing desperate bid to stay relevant, has latched onto in the hope of creating a lucrative moral panic. Consequently, there have been many lurid ‘investigative’ stories in the tabloids about so-called ‘egg-whisk parties. Events where – the tabloids claim – several teenagers of both sexes gather in small becurtained rooms, after having a whip-round to hire the choir, of course, and frankly display their own egg-whisks, often to members of the opposite sex.

There have also been stories in some of the more easily excitable tabloids about the shock and horror of children as young as 11 engaging in these practices. The tabloids claim that sometimes youngsters send explicit egg-whisk wielding pictures to one another on their mobile phones and social network sites. Contacted by these tabloids, the social media websites such as ArseBook, Twatchat, kNeeTremblr and Uninterest have all claimed they remove any overly-explicit pictures of egg-whisks whenever they come across them.

Of course, this has enabled those politicians who like to get on the media as often as they can – in the forlorn home that the public will take any interest in them – to set up campaigns to ban these activities. The campaigners hope to make egg-whisks only available to consenting adults in strictly licensed ‘Kitchen Clubs’. They claim these strictly licensed clubs will ensure the whisks are only used in to prepare egg-based recipes and not for what one MP called ‘ulterior purposes.’

Most ordinary people though expect the whole thing to blow over in a few weeks. Something soon forgotten alongside all the other shock and horrors on the media’s growing list of moral panics that were long over before they ever really began.

Feeling at Home

These were the dreams we once shared. They do not amount to that much with the years packed in boxes, waiting for time to come and take them away. It was a life I didn't really expect and, although Mary said she was happy, sometimes I saw her looking around herself, especially in the latter years, as though she was trying to make sense of how she'd got there.

I don't think I ever wanted to be anything: a doctor, train driver, or anything like that. I even knew quite young that I would never be a professional footballer, or any good at any of the other sports. A few years later, my dusty guitar with the broken top E string told me I'd never be a rock star either.

None of it bothered me that much. I went out to work and the promotions came, seemingly in arbitrary stages, until I wound up here sitting in the manager's chair. Somehow or other the company survived all the various recessions, booms and slumps and I prospered without really knowing what I was doing that kept the place going. In the end I put it down to just not making stupid mistakes.

Mary had a few jobs, none when the kids were young and all we could afford was a week maybe two in a caravan in Wales, then part-time jobs when she was older and we didn't need the money. I think she did it more for companionship, to get out from being alone with herself. Like I said before, sometimes I would see her just sitting there, her book forgotten in her lap; as if she was wondering how she'd ended up here.

Of course, I wanted to make it right for her, especially towards the end. But, like us finally getting a comfortable life and standard of living, I was too late. Not long after we'd moved in her, to this what Mary called 'our dream home' she was diagnosed and a few months later she was gone.

Now, all I know is I can't live here any more and I'm not sure if I will ever feel at home anywhere ever again without her.

The Following Morning

When I woke up a bright sun-shining morning, but – at the time – I didn't really notice the weather outside the casement because one of the women from the night before was sitting astride me. She was naked and holding my cock in one hand. Meanwhile the other woman still slept, naked and warm beside me.

What a fine way to start the day, I thought, despite my hangover.

Only for a moment, though.

Because next thing I knew, Gwenda, the one sitting astride me, had a knife in her other hand. A very sharp knife, because when I looked down, I saw a thin red line appear where she pressed the knife's edge against the base of my cock.

'Move, call out for your guards, or anything and I'll cut it off,' Gwenda said. 'I grew up on a farm, so I've done this before.'

I gulped, nodded and gulped again. Whenever I turned up back at his Keep, my father often said that one day my prick would get me into trouble. But I'd never expected that I'd get it into so much danger.

'Get up, Mo!' Gwenda kneed the sleeping woman in the back.

Mowena muttered and grumbled in her sleep as the other woman's knee rocked her back and forth beside me.

I thought about reaching up and grabbing that knife while Gwenda was distracted. But she just glanced up at me, giving my cock a firm squeeze. I forgot the idea, deciding instead to lie still and wait for a better opportunity.

Gwenda shifted position so she could stretch out her leg. She kicked Mowena off the bed.

Mowena landed on the floor with a loud thump and some very original curses. For a moment, I thought the guards outside my chamber would come in to discover the source of the noise. But then I remembered about all the noise the girls and I had made in the night and realised the guards would just laugh and joke amongst themselves about what was going on behind the closed door. That is, if they weren't busy with the women they'd taken to the inn's other bedrooms.

So, I decided to wait, as calm as I could be with a razor-sharp knife pressed against the root of my cock, and see what happened next.

So, I did.

Dancing Alone

Dancing Alone

We cannot share the moment.
we can only stand apart alone
at the edge of the dance floor,
watching each illusion of togetherness

as each dances alone, lost in a world
they create complete around themselves.
Every other dancer becomes a cipher
for all those dreams of discovery

and of something growing from this tune
and these strobing moments, into a lifetime
of new beginnings and the illusions
of romance that will never die
for as long as this song is playing.

The Seas of the Forgotten

There are times when there is nothing to say. The world goes on around us, but neither of us remark upon any of it. Time passes unacknowledged and we do not turn – as we used to do – towards each other to mark a moment taken out of the river of minutes that flow past us into the seas of the forgotten.

There were times when we would go together down to the river bank of time, taking handfuls of the sparkling moments to pour over each other. Then we’d go wading out to swim in the minutes that flowed past us. All washing away everything we regretted or wanted to forget until we could step out together onto the riverbank. Both just watching the minutes flow by as they became hours then days while we lay wrapped around each other as though nothing could ever part us.

These days, though, we both go down to that river alone. Each making sure the other is off somewhere else before we go to stand on the bank, watching the flood-swollen river tumble past, biting chunks out of the banks as it thunders past. Its minutes turned to hours in front of us. We stand watching the remains of our time slipping away. We both know that one day all too soon that river will wash us both away, each still alone as the river drags us both, helpless and lost, down to that sea where everything is forgotten.

A Nice Cup of Tea and its Geographical Implications

Eventually it was all sorted out. Unusually, in nowadays, it needed very few boxes ticked, the completion of almost no Impact Assessment Statements and caused little or no debate on the various social networks.

However, it did result in some slight bruising to an elbow and the total annihilation of several small countries. This – as none of us still alive here (by definition) do not live in any of those (former) countries, does mean that it counts as a success – more or less.

That is the nature of such experiments; certain drawbacks are always possible and must always be counted alongside the benefits. Obviously, the fact we managed to produce a very nice cup of tea from the whole enterprise does go someway towards its overall success. Making the loss of a handful of the smaller countries pale into insignificance when compared with the increased biscuit-dunking opportunities such a nice cup of tea offers to us all.

After all, geography has of late become far too complex. There are an increasing number of countries, appearing faster than we can reprint the maps, even with modern technology. Consequently, the loss of a few of them does make things a lot easier. If some of the side effects discovered afterwards are confirmed it will enable us to print over quite a large expanse of what are – for now – the blank areas on our maps with that good old stand-by of: Here Be Dragons.

We do have some idea of why such a nice cup of tea necessitated destroying a mere handful of the smaller counties. However, theorists have yet to explain just how the dragons manifested themselves in those selfsame areas.

Obviously, much more work needs to be done on the nature of reality. Especially how it all relates back to there central importance of making a nice cup of tea for the integrity of this universe (and – it now seems - a few other nearby universes as well).

Advertising Age

It was not what anyone expected, despite the intensive advertising campaign that had first irritated, then annoyed, then got on the tits of almost everyone in the country. Its constant repetition of an ear-bleedingly insidious jingle allied with the use of a cute cartoon character made it ubiquitous. Allying that with a catchphrase that had already spread out into everyday general discourse in – possibly – made it unavoidable in the most annoying way possible. It soon became impossible even to discuss the weather without some humourless tit shoehorning the catchphrase into the conversation in the forlorn hope of people taking it as witty, thus making them – in turn - hip to the zeitgeist.

Wars have started over less.

Still, though, despite the seeming ubiquity of the catchphrase and the way it was appearing all over the place, not much happened. Despite the cartoon character’s alleged endearing qualities and the advert winning all the awards they entered it for, the company behind the product still did not see any improvement in their market share. In fact, in-depth analysis of the figures revealed a loss of sales. The more the advert was shown, the more stuffed toys of their trade mark cartoon figure they sold, the more the catchphrase was discussed by dictionary compilers and professors of English on late-night news programmes, the less product was shifted.

All of which left the company with two options: they could either give up on the campaign, realising they were driving everyone in the country mad with this prolonged assault on everyone’s senses. Or, they could – as the increasingly desperate advertising agency implored, increase the intensity of the campaign and – thus – get even more attention. The latter would, the advertising agency decreed, eventually lead to more sales, if not total world-domination.

Of course, we all know what happened and why. After intense public lobbying, demonstrations and a change of government, action was taken. The new Prime Minister announced the introduction of the death penalty for anyone uttering the catchphrase, humming or whistling the jingle or found in the possession of one of the character fluffy toys.

Everyone agreed it was for the best.

Holding onto the Morning

Even then there were times when she seemed to hold the mornings in her hand as she slept, clutching them tight under the sheets, unwilling to let them escape out into freedom to create a new day around her.

She slept holding tight onto the sheets, keeping her mornings hidden away from those eyes she knew were watching her as she slept. Each one trying to find a way into her dreams to turn them into times of fear and dread. She knew all about the dark things that waited in the deepest, darkest parts of the night for her to let go. For her to leave a gap where they could worm their way in and rip all her bright butterfly dreams apart, leaving them torn and broken on her tear-wet pillow.

She knew about the darkness. She knew it would wait patiently. She knew she had to keep a tight grip on the tentative morning that could so easily slip out of her grasp and dissolve away into nothing, leaving her alone in the endless night. Waiting for those creatures that lurked, waiting, sharpening their teeth and their claws ready for when she let go of the morning.

They sent dark lovers to tempt her to let go of the sheets. To kick those sheets back to welcome the dark forms into her arms and between her open legs. Then wrapping herself around the darkness as it entered her, but she refused to even dream about the dark lovers. Instead, she preferred to run into some sun-dappled meadow with a new lover of the light, like her. One who would take her by the hand and lead her far away from the shadows to swim and wash away the darkness in some sun-rippled river.

Then, though, some new dark lover appeared. One who knew the secrets of the dark light she sometimes felt deep within her, calling to her. She knew he would be the one she could not resist should he reach out to take the morning from her easily-opening fingers.