It Should Have Been a Dream

It began, as these things do, there, first thing in the morning. It is strange how we know when we are dreaming and when we are not dreaming. I woke up, there not in my bed, not in my bedroom and the woman sleeping next to me was not my wife. It should have been a dream, something I woke from back in my normal life, but I didn’t and it wasn’t.

I knew I ought to be dreaming. The room I awoke in looked so much like the 17th Century coaching Inn we were holidaying in. In so much and as far as I could tell, it was the same room. But everything else about it was different. Even then, I knew this was not something I was going to wake up from.

The bed itself, which my wife and I had laughed about, was a four-poster still, but newer, not antique. The room was roughly the room we’d gone to sleep in. But the bedlinen, the room and the décor were all different. The woman still sleeping next to me was not my forty-seven year old (dyed) brown-haired wife, but some raven-haired young woman, naked and spread out across the other side of the bed, sleeping the sleep of the exhausted.

Over across the other side of the room, where the TV had been when I’d gone to sleep, was a chair. Draped across it were clothes I’d never seen, or worn, before. Including what looked like a scabbard, containing a rapier, on a worn leather belt. Next to the chair were what looked like a pair of high leather books, with a leather coat that looked even more worn than a Hell’s Angel’s biker jacket.

What is more… the en-suite bathroom was no longer there and I needed a piss. Instead, I just lay there too scared to move in case this turned out not to be – even though I already knew it wasn’t – a dream.

 

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US).]

No Paradise

The stories we told were all the old stories that spoke of the world before this one. The stories of the paradise we'd lost. The Story Priests tell us tales of that old life we died and left behind, that place of paradise where life was long, easy and free. Stories of a time long before this one.

The Story Priests say that we are born into this life when we die in that paradise. Some ask: why – if it is a paradise – then why do we die? The priests respond that we must have done something wrong there, and so we are reborn here in this dark, grey, land as a punishment for all we did wrong in that old life.

The Story Priests then point to the ruins, now almost lost under the growing grass and heaping earth that almost buries them. They tell us the story of the Great Devil that arose in the Distant East. How it sundered this land from the paradise we once lived in and that now all those of us who failed in that paradise are reborn here.

Some, if not most of us, do not believe these stories, even though we learn of them from when we are young enough to listen. I look around the fires at night-time, watching the faces of the people as the Story Priests go through the rituals of the Telling. Each time I see eyes that do not believe, eyes that see this world and those ruins and wonder what kind of paradise this used to be. We sit, shivering in the rain and the cold, hoping the fire will last the night. We know – deep down – this, or any life before this, was never any paradise.

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US).]

Only for Myself

As the evenings grew dark and the cool of the night brought her close to me. I would sit there with my arms wrapped around her and tell her all the stories I knew.

I told her of how I'd made this world just for her. I told her of all the plants, animals, mountains and rivers I had spread across it for her to name.

I told her how I'd created a sun to shine on her and rains to wash away the dust of the day. I told her of the moon and stars up in the blackness of the night for her to wish upon and wonder.

I told her of all the birds I'd made to sing to her of the morning. The sweet fruits I'd grown for her long slow afternoons.

Then she'd turn to me and ask why she was the only one. I would look at her and smile, saying that every world needs a goddess. She would be that one, the one to make this whole world turn. I told her that soon she would have worshippers and priests, priestesses and followers all begging her to intercede and save their souls and lives.

But, until then I wanted her only for myself.

 

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US).]

The Same Old Life

Our world had grown familiar, safe and predictable. Each morning we woke up knowing what the day would bring with little in the way of shock and change. Occasionally, of course, things happened as they always do when life always hangs by what – at times – seems such a slender thread. People get ill, have accidents, grow old and die.

All that, though, happened around us. Occasionally, it came close to us, for instance, when Pauline’s estranged father died somewhere in Scotland and was dead and buried before the letter reached us. As we got older too, funerals became more common. We began to dread the phone ringing late in the night telling us someone close had died.

The children grew up and began leading their own lives and we carried on, joking with each other about what kind of pensioners we would become.

Then I got the friend request on Facebook.

Not that I ever bothered that much with it. My profile was years old and half-completed. I had only a handful of friends and a status rarely updated. Still, she found me. I could see it was her, even through all the changes of the years, remembering that long Christmas kiss back in the 70s when we whispered to each other about being together forever.

Then I went away and everything changed. Pauline came along and I never went back. Sue became just another one of those memories that slip into the mind when I sit there late at night alone with a drink and a few minutes peace and quiet.

Then Sue began telling me all about her life and how she’d recently moved too, to be near her children after the death of her husband. She was only a few miles from me now.

I agreed to meet her, encouraged by Pauline who thinks I’m too happy with my own company.

After that, well… things could never ever be the same again, no matter how I tried to put the clock back, put everything right and get my old safe, predictable life back once again.

 

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US).]

Hence the Castanets

So, there we were, posed upon the very cusp of the edge of the start of the beginning of the commencement. She, of course, had the bag of grouting mix all ready, as well as the flippers and a rather fetching pair of... castanets. I, it goes without saying, had the grouting trowel and the balaclava. Although, for various other reasons, the salad spinner was unavailable.

At a certain age and at a certain point in a relationship... well, in other people's relationships, of course, sometimes there is a need for something a bit new. Or at least a bit different.

So both of us were glad...er...slightly interested when we received a copy of a How to Do the Sex Properly manual as a Christmas gift. The wife was very impressed by the male model in the copious illustrations. Although, I was puzzled by the lack of a TV remote in his hands and his use of the domestic furniture for purposes other that watching the footy. However, I did – rather grudgingly – have to admire him somewhat for attempting the various activities and positions illustrated whilst, at least, looking sober.

The woman in the illustrations however was another thing entirely. Even so, every time I glanced at her, however, fleeting, the wife pointed out which parts of her were – obviously – another thing, usually silicone-based. I was also made to agree that the female was heavily photo-shopped. The wife did – eventually – have to agree that the photographic studio where the male model was disporting himself must be much, much warmer than our rather chilly house.

However, the text of the book, obviously machine translated. Apparently going through at least three other languages before arriving in the near vicinity of something almost totally unlike English. This made deciphering it more than a little problematic, something which the illustrations tended to obscure rather than clarify.

Hence the castanets.

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US).]

What You Dream

What You Dream

So this is what you dream of?
You told me you did not dream,

But I saw your closed eyes
and I saw them moving

as you lay, sheets thrown back
and the sweat beaded across

your naked back like endless rain,
or like the tears of the lovers

we had once been, before these days
where all I can ever do is watch you dream

of those times before we fell
away from each others arms,

leaving you lying there
while I watch over you

afraid to get too close
in case I discover the name

of who it is you are dreaming of,
scared it could be someone new

or, in case it is the man
I always used to be.

New Found Land

It was slow, tentative as though we were learning the language of each other. We made gestures towards understanding. The touch of fingertips on skin and responded to, while the words we used to each other were little more than murmurs. Neither of us understanding the words of the other, but understanding each touch of body against body.

She was slow, lithe, undulating against the touch of my hands as they explored. Small light kisses on my face as my travelling hands discovered the secrets of her unmapped body until I found the treasures that made her whispered words sigh into moans and mutterings.

Her hands moved down my face and down across my chest before her arms wrapped around me, with one of her long sinuous legs as my fingers discovered her secret treasures. She nibbled my earlobe and told me something urgent in a language I did not know. She clung to me as I explored more of her body until the waves began to storm her body. The waves crashed and broke and her moans murmured down to a hesitant whisper in my ear as me fingers ceased their exploration.

Then she took me by the hand and led me to the new world of her bed where once again I became an explorer in her new found land.

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US).]

More Than Just Words

'Where are you?' she said.

'I am here.'

'That is not you. Those are just words.'

'That is what I am. I am only words.'

She was expecting something more. She thought there would be something here, something more than just words.

She had wanted to meet me since she had first read the words a few months before.

One day, the words had appeared on her screen, one much like this one, and she had read them. The words said something to her. Something that she thought mattered.

So the next day she was there, back in the same place, waiting for the words to arrive.

Then, when the words arrived, again they spoke to her of times and situations she'd thought unique to her alone. She thought that, after so long of searching, she had – at last – found the one who understood her.

She would be there every day from then on, waiting for the words to arrive. Each day they told her something new; told her something about herself she had not known before, told her some truth she thought she needed to know.

One day she'd asked if she could meet me.

Of course, I made excuses.

She kept on though. The more the words spoke to her, the more she wanted to meet me. I tried to explain there is no-one, nothing, behind the words; that all there is, is the words, but she would not believe me. She insisted there must be someone there, someone who lived like her, someone who had experiences like her and someone who could speak to her in a way that no words had ever spoken to her before.

So, in the end, I agreed to let her come here.

Now, she knows.

Now she knows there is one greater truth beyond all my words had told her, now she has learnt the greater secret beyond all those secrets of hers I held up for her to see her true reflection in.

Now she knows there are only these words and there is no-one here writing them.

When the Revolution Came

When the revolution came – in the end – more than a few of us were ready for it. For years, almost beyond recall, so many of us had suffered under the brutal tyranny of the regime. We had longed for the day when we would break free and out into a bright new dawn of freedom.

Still, when the day came it was a surprise. None of us had ever dared hope that it would happen, not within our lifetime. Perhaps, some of us dared hope; our children would have children born free of the dread heavy hand holding us down. Little did we think, though, that we would be the ones that would be thee first to taste the sweet air of freedom and liberty from the oppressors.

It began as just another ordinary day, a day much like any other. There was little feeling, little awareness, no taste of revolution in the air. Even then we knew that all revolutions end in failure and the aftermath of a revolution is almost invariably worse than all the revolution meant to overthrow. We were ready, though, willing to suffer all manner of hardships if only we could be free.

Then it came, the longed-for announcement we waited so long for. It was the sign that not all our suffering had been in vain and the time had come for us to reclaim our humanity, our dignity, our freedom.

The thing was, though, that none of us really had any real idea what to do with it when we – at long last – got it.

Having it Come to Them

Well, you know… or, if you don’t, please consult the appropriate website and/or bloke down the pub for a full explanation and – quite possibly – numbered diagrams. This will go some way towards explaining just how the undercover reporters caught the politician with the – alleged – lady of employable fondness, the water pistol and the scuba gear in a hotel bedroom in Ludlow.

This is now a country somewhat immune to scandals of a sexual nature amongst those in the public eye. Even so, this has been one that still has aroused (if that is the right word) more than the average number of giggles in the British public since the affair has become public knowledge. However, the amount of laughter and general sniggering at the foibles of the great and good has been taken by some as a sign that the British people have at long last recovered from previous political sexual shenanigans. Including the trauma of both the John Major and Edwina Curie incident(s) and the shear horror of the thought that senior members of the former Labour government were actively engaged in sexual intercourse. Sometimes not even with each other.

Consequently, there have been calls in some quarters that a selection of civil servants, party workers and political appointees to that government should receive some sort of public honour or recognition. Mainly for their great courage in going beyond what would normally be expected of people in their positions, or even the favoured positions of those they worked under – as it were.

Still, there is nothing like a nice scandal involving a politician to warm the heart. It helps us realise there may after all, and despite much evidence to the contrary, be some sort of cosmic justice after all when we find them doing it to one another instead of doing it to us.

Fifteen Years

Henry turned towards Eric, glancing at the security monitors, which – as usual – showed no activity in the deserted building. ‘So?’

Eric pushed his cap further back on his head and scratched an eyebrow. ‘So….’

‘Right.’ Henry began unbuttoning his uniform jacket as he leant back in his chair.

‘I can't think of anything to say,’ Eric said, taking his cap off and giving the Security Guard badge on it a quick polish on his uniform sleeve.

Henry shrugged. ‘Neither can I.’

‘Sometimes, y'know….’

Henry turned back towards Eric. ‘What?’

‘Well, I mean. How long have we been together, here, now, H?’

‘Oh, years. Ever since I joined. That's… bloody hell! Fifteen years.’

‘Fifteen years?’

‘Yeah, fifteen.’ Henry shook his head.

Eric sighed. ‘A long time, H.’

‘A very long time,’ Henry said after a pause. ‘The longest I've ever done anything. I've known you longer than I've known my wife.’

‘So… I suppose it is not that surprising then.’

‘What?’

‘Running out of things to say.’ Eric twiddled the joystick that controlled one of the cameras. As usual, it showed just one long empty corridor. ‘I suppose we know all we need to know about each other.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘No perhaps about it, H mate.’

‘Maybe….’

‘All right then….’ Eric sat back in his seat and turned towards the other man. ‘Yesterday was Thursday. So you had steak and chips, and then a couple of pints while you watched that police thing on the telly. You took the dog for a quick stroll when it finished and then you went to bed. Yes?’

Henry sighed. ‘Yes. Exactly.’

The two men looked at each other for a moment, then turned back to watching the monitors in silence.

When She Sang

First, she sang me the song of mornings, giving the sun a tune to rise to. Weaving the words of the day around the early hours as the trees, hills and the day grew out of the morning mists. Then she sang us a love song, using up a few hours of the morning as each verse wrapped itself around us while we lay together, joined in the chorus of skin against skin.

Then she sang us a song of the rest of the day when we left the love song lying on her bed, waiting for us to return to it sometime soon. She sang of the morning, of the hillside and the cliffs and the long winding path down to the beach. Once down there, she sang the songs of the seas and the laments for the sailors who never came home. She sang of mermaids and flotsam found on beaches and tales of storms and ballads of the seaways.

Then, later, as the tide turned, she sang us songs of going home. We climbed back up that winding path as she sang a song to the fading day and a song of welcome to the stars and the night, and a song of what lovers wish for when they see the moon.

Then we were back in her bed ready to sing again the songs that lovers sing before, she sang us both a night-time song to end our day.

Sundays

Sundays

Sundays everywhere were shut.
Closed up tight as a pious pew.
The stone smugness of the churches
with captured, captivated, congregations.

Sunday was a prison, confining,
conforming and confirming
through the conservation
of ritual and ritualistic thought,
constrained by tradition
and the weight of authority.

Sunday was a corpse, as dead
as the surrounding graveyard,
high on the hill above the village,
where the graves stood their ground,
sentries against the possibility of dissent.

No Going Back

It ended there. It was over and all we could do was walk away. I thought about turning back to see if she would turn too, but... well, I didn't want to look back, not any more.

There had been weeks of looking back. Months of searching for that point when we stopped creating the possibility of a future together and began to look away from each other. Each searching the horizon on our evening walks along the cliff path.

There had been a time, and it seemed so long ago now, when we would only ever look at each other on those walks. Then, when we did look at other things, like the porpoises in the bay, it was because one of us had shown them to the other. Almost as if we could only see the world beyond ourselves through the eyes of the other.

Now, though, we did not even turn to see each other leave. She went off, back to that cottage by the sea. I took the train to some new world. Something not bound by the sea and its horizons, but something seeming smaller than that constrained land where we had found something almost limitless, at least for a while.

I thought that maybe – one day – she would call and I would go back to find everything back to how it used to be. Deep down, though, I knew that we could never go back to how it used to be. Even when we return to places that once contained all we could ever want, on returning we find them small, constrained and limited. Far less than we remember, often with hardly any trace of why we once thought them so important.

So, when that call did come, I didn't go back.

Can’t Get No Satisfaction

Well… I suppose… but really, you had to be there. Or, at least, in the almost immediate vicinity. These occurrences – despite the proliferating social media, 24-Hour news and the pot noodle... especially the latter, are still better experienced in the flesh… as it were.

Although, that old saw about the flesh being weak is not really applicable in situations such as this, not with those arms anyway. She also has the kind of face, the look, that… shall we say… er… discourages the disparaging remark. That and the way she chews buses as a between-snacks snack.

At least, she has – on doctor’s orders – cut down on the double-deckers.

Still, she has what is known as a formidable presence and is the sort of person who doesn’t stay at the back of any queue for long. She does have what is best described, at least when she is in earshot, as having a somewhat imposing physical presence. This, apparently enables her to appear at the front of any queue she joins almost as if by a process of osmosis or magic. Maybe, though, it is some vestige of the primal that emerges in those in her vicinity. Who, consequently, somehow feel – deep down – it is best not to have her behind you, especially not with your back turned to her. No doubt this is what somehow encourages her towards the front of the queue.

Maybe it is just her sense of entitlement. One that also seems to entitle her to grab whatever she feels she wants, often on a whim. Which many, subsequently gingerly-stepping, men have discovered at closing time when her desires take an amorous turn. A time when she often reaches out a random hand towards any seemingly-satisfactorily encumbered pair of trousers.

Refusal is not an option, at least if the aforementioned grabbed articles are if not your pride and joy then at least something you would prefer to remain attached to.

Hence my attempt to sneak out quietly now at this time in the early morning. A time once only beloved by whistling milkmen, but now a bare deserted street. The quiet only broken by her earth-shattering snores as she – at last – sleeps the sleep of the finally satisfied.

Explaining the Spoon

We grow old… we grow old….

Which is a bit of a bugger.

There are times, especially when you are standing in the kitchen, usually holding a spoon, when you wonder why you went in there…. Then, inevitably, if you still have a cup of tea cooling somewhere about the rest of the house you may have overlooked. Especially so in your haste to get to the kitchen and get a spoon for….

Well, for whatever it was.

Of course, in your mind you are always that age you think of when you think of yourself. Usually it is an age when you were young and the world spread itself out for you. A time when every time you ended up in the kitchen holding the spoon you knew exactly why you were there and just what that spoon was for.

If there is no cup of tea in your near vicinity and you are fairly sure there is not one elsewhere in the house, perhaps you have come into the kitchen to measure something out with a teaspoon.

It is now advisable to check to see if you are cooking something in the kitchen… that could explain the spoon.

Not only does the spoon remains unexplained, but where has all that time gone? Only yesterday, it seems, it was the 1970s and glam rock was all the rage, but it seems the purveyors of so much of your musical youth are pensioners… or dead.

Not only that the clothes you are wearing are – apparently – back in fashion… yet again. Although, it has to be said that none of the musical heroes of your youth were ever famed as lead spoon player in your favourite bands. As far as you are aware too, despite your clothes being fashionable again, there has been no media article on this year’s must-have fashion accessory – the spoon.

So it can’t be that either.

Eventually, you know too that the wheel will fall off time’s winged chariot for you too. You know too, your sudden departure from this mortal coil will always be remembered for your final moment, remembered only as: found dead in the kitchen… holding a spoon.

And no-one will ever know just why you chose, at your moment of death, to go into the kitchen, or even why you were holding that spoon.

Waiting for the End

This is such a small place.

Once, I could roam free all over this land. It was my land then. I owned as far as I could ride in three days. Even then, I could sit astride my horse and look down upon lands that could be mine, and taken by force, politics or intrigue, if I wished. Some of those further lands connected to me by family relationships too. I could sit there on a hillside looking over all that lay around me, with my men at my back and feel as though I was someone substantial. Feel that my name would be writ large in my family's history. That my name would be the one name my descendants would remember far into a future that is too far to imagine.

Now, I am here, confined to this one room.

No, I am not under arrest, not imprisoned; not officially anyway. But if I dare to venture from this room, attempt to take the long curving staircase down to the land that used to be mine, then I find myself my daughter's guards accompany me. They do no order, or forbid, they would not dare, even now when I'm a frail old man, but there is reluctance, a growing reluctance, to allow me freedom of movement.

There are tales, stories and songs about young beautiful princesses imprisoned in towers, none about old men suffering the same fate, and I doubt any handsome prince, or even a comely princess, is out there now riding to rescue me.

Instead, I sit at the window, watching over the lands that were once mine. Like everyone else in this castle, that was once mine, I wait only for my death.

The Seas of the Night

All those dreams that sail by on the seas of the night, left in the port of the morning. We set out to stride into the heartland of day, leaving those dreams at the mercy of the tides of time and of memory.

She was one of those dreams I left behind as I made my way into the lands of my day.

I left her there to face the sea storms of time and face the battering by the winds of memory. I forgot about her as I went about exploring the hinterland of the day.

Later, I drew closer to the shores of that night. I again began to smell her scent on the sea breezes the night brought down to where I stood on the dark shore. I wait there for those dream ships to carry me far across the deep waters of the night. Those deep waters where so many were lost amongst the wreckage of their dreams. The night took them to itself, drowning them amongst the flotsam of their dreams. The mermaids of the night taking them by the hand, dragging them down to those sunken cities from which no sailor of the night ever returns.

That night too, I saw her waving to me from the night ocean’s swell. Waiting there for me to dive into my dreams and take the hand of my own mermaid. Letting her sing her songs of drowning to me in the darkness as the deep night washed over me and I took her hand to dive deeper than I had ever dived before.

She Could Take My Hand

This is how it could have been.

She could have been the one that took my ordinary days and carved them into jewelled moments. Taken the mundane life I fell into, and created a new world. Made something new out of this dry dust I stumble through as the dull dawn tries to break the hold of the night keeping me prisoner in this cold tower, waiting for the day to come.

She could have been the one that opened that dark door, led me along the corridor and out into the bright daylight. Taken me out into a world where the possible grows like the grass. A place where the trees, the flowers and the birdsong hints of something waiting around the next bend in the road that will make all those years of waiting worthwhile.

Instead, though, I turned away from my window when she came along, walking down that path on her way to bathe in the seas of possibility. I turned back to this desk and the papers. I was far too busy to go with her, despite all the promises she made and the tales she told me of the lands beyond this cold tower.

Instead, I turned back to my papers.

Then I began writing one more story about the woman who came looking for me, and why I turned away.

Lying Like Dust

Lying Like Dust

What can become of us, out here
where time goes on around us all?
What can we do, what can we say?

when there is time and there is stillness
right at its heart. The single point
where every second lasts forever,

if only we knew how to hold
on tight to it, so it does not
just slip away into the past

unnoticed and unused, then gone.
There's nothing else to say, not now
the words have all been used and lost.

Each spoken and then left to die
on breezes dancing dust around
the air between us. Every word

a mote that floats on through the light
until it's lost in silent shadows.
Lying like the heaping dust
on all forgotten memories.

The Route She Travels

It takes a movement. Hands poised above the body as though waiting for the duet to begin. The music of motion and the feel of touching skin against the fingertips, circling around the possible to take her beyond the here and the mundane. Taking her into that world she travels alone when my fingers open up the route for her.

My tongue can touch, hesitant, but sure, tentative but certain. Taking its time to trace the routes around, in and through which will set her off down that path she takes to that garden where it is always spring growing into summer. A place where those first hesitant sighs and shivers grow to take flower deep within her, far beyond this place of touch and skin against skin.

Each whispered breath takes the tongue deeper, further down the road she's travelling, taking her there. Taking time and twisting it inside out. So she encompasses all of time within her as space expands to become an eternity that lasts for the forever. It takes her back to arch and her thighs to tense and then relax... before tensing once more as she now starts to run down that path, heading for a place that goes beyond mere home. It welcomes her into its strong enfolding arms and holder closer to herself than she would otherwise ever know.

Her hand reaches, pulls, entangles itself in sheets as her toes curl tight on tensing legs and her mouth opens in a silent moan. Then she arrives at the place the path has brought her to, and eyes screwed tight she encloses it all within herself in one long existence-affirming 'Yes!'

Something… or Other

As you were… but perhaps this time without the pogo-stick and the overly intimate contact with the wood pigeon, if you don’t mind, that is.

This… er… blo… load of bolloc… this… whatever it is… does normally operate a somewhat informal dress code. However, full-frontal nudity is not normally the mode of dre… undress usually employed by those perusing these words of wisdo… this… er… stuff. Especially not when utilising their hand-held in such a flamboyant manner and with such over-elaborate gesture control.

Still, anyway, if we could get around to the subject of the day, as you are no-doubt eager to get on with whatever it is you do. That is when not disporting yourself to all and sundry in such a manner whilst feverishly stroking your… like we said.

Anyway, Rome wasn’t built in a day, as they say. Although, why they should say such a thing is somewhat of a mystery. After all, it is patently obvious that no builder in the history of the universe has ever built anything in just one day; we will leave for a more historically aware missive than this one. This missive today, however, will be about… er… something… or other….

Perhaps….

So… .

Hang on….

I hope you don’t mind me asking, but… is it supposed to do that?

Oh, I see….

And the doctor assured you it was perfectly normal, did he?

Right….

Actually, I’ve just remembered I’ve got rather an urgent appointment… on a distant continent.

So, if you would excuse me…?

If you wouldn’t mind just stepping to one side a bit. After all, I wouldn’t want to get too close to…. Are you sure the doctor didn’t mention anything about it doing that?

Right.

Thank you. No, It’s all right, I’m sure it will wash off… eventually.

Bye!

When the Aliens Came

So, anyway, as it turned out, it was not what everyone had expected after all.

When the starships first appeared on the long-range detectors and orbiting telescopes, of course there was some initial panic about the alien invaders. Soon the first few score ships were in orbit around most of the outer planets of the solar system, with hundreds more on the way. There was a great deal of discussion between various governments about what would happen when the obviously superior aliens knocked them off the gravy trai… invaded. The governments did not know whether the aliens would kill, farm or eradicate the Earth’s population, or if we were all just in for a planet-wide intimate probing.

However, once the ships had begun parking in orbit around Mars and Earth, with a few smaller ships around the various moons, it became increasingly obvious that this was no alien invasion whatsoever.

In fact, the conspiracy theorists were all rather disappointed. The various world politicians and government officials were relieved that their cushy perks and privileges were safe. Apparently, the aliens had no interest in the Earth, or its human population, whatsoever.

However, a month the alien ships disappeared as suddenly as they arrived. Subsequently an amateur astronomer who’d intercepted some of the alien inter-ship communications released those communications onto the web. Further analysis revealed the aliens used our entire solar system merely as an overspill ship parking space for an important galactic wedding ceremony in a nearby galaxy. So it appeared the so-called alien invasion had nothing to do with Earth at all.

Good news for everyone, people thought. However, for a good many people on Earth it was almost unbearable to discover that – despite what their enormous friend count on social media implied - they were not the centre of the universe after all.

Health Warning

So, anyway….

There it was standing tall, proud and… oh, hang on. No….

Sorry, I was thinking of something else then.

Maybe one day I’ll tell you about it… when we know one another a little better and there is less chance of any misunderstanding leading to distressing legal action and/or 4-page picture spreads in the more excitable tabloids.

So, anyway, where was I?

Ah, yes. As I was standi….

The other thing?

No, you don’t want to know about that, especially if you are about to eat, or have just eaten. A commissioning editor on one of the low-audience Sharks and Shock Horror channels would even blanch and study the small print on his contract when asked to commission a programme about such a subject.

It is best you don’t know.

Trust me….

Oh, all right, then… don’t. After all, it is no skin off my…. No, forget I said that.

No, it has absolutely nothing to do with that… it was just a figure of speech.

No, I always look like this… and I do always stand like this.

I wish I hadn’t mentioned it now.

You are not going to shut up about this, are you?

….

…..

All right, meet me around the back of the blog in ten minutes… and bring a torch….

And a magnifying glass.

If you could get one of those paper bags they give you on aeroplanes too, that might be a good idea.

And remember, I did warn you.

A Time of Slowness

 

It was a time of slowness, when the days hang suspended in the warm sunshine and last well into the evening before a soft warm star-filled night lowered itself over us like soft bedclothes.

Each morning awoke with the dawn, unhurried as though the morning could wait all day for us to emerge out into the gentle green. The meadow sprinkled with the bright flowers as though some benevolent creatures of the night had spread them there for us.

Even the sea below the cliff was calm, clear and gentle as the waves whispered all the secrets of the oceans to the waiting beach. We would walk there each morning, along the already warming edge of the sea, lapping over our bare feet as we strolled hand in hand, in no hurry to turn towards the rest of the day.

It was one of those times we all think we would like to last forever, mainly because they never do. Humankind – as we know deep down – could not cope with paradise or any heaven. We cannot bear contentment, or even happiness, for too long. We know a life without the contrasts, the hardships becomes another load too heavy to bear.

So, in the end, after the holiday we looked at each other as I drove back down those roads we'd escaped along. Both eager to be free and each of us knowing we were glad to be going back to that life we'd yearned to escape from for so long.

Flowing Back

 

Flowing Back

Walking away from moments we once thought
always could last, despite the seasons changing
around us and despite the rain that falls.

We stood inside a bright eternal moment,
the briefest time that will last us forever,
a solid memory that will not crumble
and fall on down to dusty ground beneath
like many other lost forgotten moments.

We shared a time and then that time was gone
with only empty space around us both
as distances between us turned to loss.

But still that moment comes on back around
all flowing down on through the years between
and into memory, untarnished by
the times that passed and all the rains that fell.

Into the Day

These were the days that fell into our hands. We took them, as though they were something precious, and laid them out here in our hall of memories, saving them for times when the days no longer fell into our hands. Saving them for times when we no longer saw the dawn rise over us as though the day was there, ready to take.

We kept those times precious: like jewelled memories, as if they were some key we could use to open better times when those doors were locked against us. Those times the world turned us away from itself. Times when we could no longer face the slow falling of the days past our closed windows while we stared, waiting to find a way to unlock the door that kept us from stepping out into the day.

There were times when we walked together. Hand in hand, walking towards the possibilities those days held out to us in open palms. Those times when we thought there would always be more days wanting for us to step into them. Days that would take us forward into a future that would stretch as far as seeing goes.

We did not expect the world to turn away from us, to lock the door on the future and keep its days to itself. Now, we sit and wait for time to bring us a few meagre days that no longer shine and sparkle with promise. Instead, we turn away from our window, and the locked door. We walk these corridors back to that hall of bright memories, where the bright days wait for us to step back into them and remember.

The Fruits of History

As she said at the time, ‘You don’t get many of those to the pound.’ This is – I suppose - true enough, even in these days of metrication.

But, then, as Hemingway himself so rightly said ‘That’s the way it is with watermelons.’

Of course, – in the original edition - Shakespeare’s Macbeth so famously said ‘Is this a pomegranate I see before me?’ And – scandalously even for the Elizabethan period – the Bard had Richard III at Bosworth crying ‘My kingdom for a Cox’s.’ Although, recent scholarship has laid to rest the claim that he actually wanted a Golden Delicious, or even as some anti-Plantagenet propaganda had it – a Granny Smith.

Still we all know about Henry VIII and his plums, so any over-familiarity of royalty with fruit has become the stuff of myth and legend. The most obvious of course being Charles II and his attempt to squeeze Nell Gwyn’s oranges.

After all, would Julius Caesar have not crossed the Rubicon without the promise of a nice juicy Satsuma on the other side?

It is now well-understood the so-called Norman invasion of 1066 would have been little more than a day-trip across the channel. That is if it were not that Edward the Confessor had promised William the Bastard all the pears he could get his hands on.

As for the discovery of America, most historians now agree it would not have happened had Spain enough dates and figs of their own. Without Europeans wanting to find an alternative route to the Middle East, America would have lain undiscovered until at least the next afternoon. Thus those seeking quick access to some of the largest fruit and vegetable retailers in the then known world were responsible for finding a completely new continent and the eventual discovery of the pineapple.

Something for the Weekend - Free Kindle Humour: Grand Uncle Stagnant and the Summer of Love

Grand Uncle Stagnant and the Summer of Love

Available now here (UK) or here (US)

Yet more outpourings and ejaculations from Norbert Trouser-Quandary's notably upstanding organ, featuring more tales of the doings and goings-on in that most delightfully perverted of England’s rural villages: Little Frigging in the Wold.

This volume of tales from Little Frigging features the adventures of Grand Uncle Stagnant back in the summer of love where he hears about the concept of free love and – almost immediately – stops issuing invoices.

Other tales in this volume detail the history of the Hot Strumpets on Wheels service, the uses of high visibility fetish gear, Little Frigging in the Wold – the computer game, the appendage of a hands-free pole-vaulter, pancakes and perversions and the Great Fire of Little Frigging.

Grand Uncle Stagnant and the Summer of Love also contains many other intriguing events and happenings from the village and its environs, including the erotic use of the toolshed as well as pointers on the tactical subtleties of the Inter-Village Orgy match and much, much more.

Grand Uncle Stagnant and the Summer of Love

Available now here (UK) or here (US)

Further collections of tales from Little Frigging in the Wold can be found in: Little Frigging in the Wold and Sex, Pies and Sticky Tape.

Grand Uncle Stagnant and the Summer of Love

Available now here (UK) or here (US)

Some comments on David Hadley's writing:
“I think I just broke all my vital organs laughing”
“another one of yours I truly enjoyed, “Old Feebletrousers” love it!”
“Loved this piece. Very funny and energetic….”
“funny stuff!”
“that was brilliant!”
“on the one hand I’m so glad I decided to read the rest of this collection (funniest thing I’ve read in a LONG time) but on the other hand I wish I hadn’t done it during dinner as I just sprayed barely masticated tomato all over my keyboard from laughing too hard”

Grand Uncle Stagnant and the Summer of Love

Available now here (UK) or here (US)

Looking, but not Seeing

It was mostly ruins, some overgrown now, but still ruins. There were dips and bumps in the landscape too, amongst the shattered ruins of what had been buildings, graves and other distortions of a landscape. I'd been a farmer long ago, in what now seemed like another lifetime. So, I understood the land and how time shapes it. This was a landscape that had been at war. A landscape ruined by the power of armies to twist, distort and destroy all that stands in their path, including the land.

I was crouching there, at the edge of some ruins, feeling the soil, letting it run through my fingers. Jale was watching me. I could sense some impatience in her, but – as I said – I'd been a farmer and I knew how to wait.

'What's wrong?' she said, glancing around with the eyes of one who used to just looking and not seeing.

'There has been a war here,' I said.

She looked around. 'Here, but there is nothing, just these old ruins.'

I could feel the ash of something more than just wood in my fingers, I scraped at the topsoil and pulled out a bone, the mark of a blade on it.

Jale swallowed as she saw what I held.

'There has been a war,' I repeated as I stood up. 'You know what this means?'

She shook her head. 'No.'

'There will be work here for me. Come.' I walked back to the road and she followed, still looking but not seeing.

Blowing Away the Days

All of this could be written on the wind, here and then gone, blown away like the days are blown away by the unceasing wind of time. You and I, we have stood here on our high hill, watching the valley below as the wind scours everything away, blowing away all those days we shared and stored as memories for the lean times.

We stood here as the rain fell and washed us clean of the dirty city that did so much to tear us apart. Just more discarded humanity left to blow around its streets and alleyways where no place is a home. Merely a refuge from the creatures that haunt the cold city nights, hiding in shadows and stretching the darkness with clawed talons until it devours everything that once lived.

Out here, we have the grass, the trees, the meadow, sweeping down from our high hill. We can see as far as seeing goes to horizons of possibility and the mysteries of what always lies beyond the limits of vision.

Even though the cold winds blow, we have each other and we hold on to this hill, gripped by our rootedness, bending but not breaking. We are like the trees that surround us, learning to live with how the wind behaves and turning each morning to face the new dawn, knowing we held on to each other throughout the long dark winter night.

When the Morning Came

The world looked the same out through her window. At least, that's what I thought at the time. I glanced back, watching her sleeping; spread across her bed, arms spread wide.

I smiled and looked around for what clothes of mine I could find. When we'd got to the bedroom, there wasn't much for either of us to take off. I picked up what I could find and crept out, so not to disturb her.

The landing in the small cottage was narrow and gloomy. I saw my shirt draped over the banister where it had landed when she'd pulled it from me. I picked it up and carried on down the stairs.

About half an hour later, I was dressed and ready.

I didn't know, though, whether I was ready to stay, or to leave. In the past I have done both at one time or another, and regretted doing – or not doing – both.

I thought again about the way she slept, throwing herself across the bed as though she was riding it through some wild dream like a raft tumbling over rapids.

I hesitated, my hand on her doorknob and turned to see her standing naked at the foot of her stairs, watching me.

'Well,' she said. 'Are you going or staying?'

I shrugged, letting my hand fall from the door handle. 'What do you want for breakfast?' I said.