On Appropriate Trouserings

Don’t think this is easy, especially not in such inappropriate trouserings as those you are sporting at this moment. Certain trouserings are – as a matter of course – more appropriate than others at certain times and in certain situations. For example, remember that time you went on stage in Stockholm to receive your Nobel Prize for services to the Exceptionally Ordinary. You may have been dressed in a pair of football shorts, but normally such legwear is not considered appropriate for such formal occasions. This is especially so when paired with fishnet stockings and Doc Martens. But you like to see yourself as an artist, so I suppose certain allowances must be made for your increasingly desperate attempts at ‘individuality’.

On the other hand a wetsuit is not normally considered the ideal leg covering for our continued adventures in high-energy physics experiments. No matter who claims it helps keep the neutrinos out on a chilly day, as we all know subatomic particles can play havoc with the circulation in the legs, especially when accelerated to near light speed.

In Scotland, of course, the kilt has been traditionally worn when giving chase to the wild haggis. Even if only to give the lasses something to laugh at when the men take a tumble up on the crags and their sporrans take something of a battering. However, caution must be exercised if entering an area of the Highlands where feral bagpipes have been allowed to go native as an attack up the kilt by enraged bagpipes is no laughing matter, especially in the mating season.

So, in the interests of safety, both your own and that of other people in the vicinity always make sure your putative trouserings will be suitable for whatever you have planned for the day. Unless, of course, she has strongly intimated that such attire will be unnecessary, at least for a while.

 

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

Political Probity

It didn’t happen exactly like that, of course. Although, for a time, it convinced several of the more excitable tabloids that both the politician and the lady of marketable intimacy were both found naked together in the bath filled with strawberry Angel Delight at the party conference.

However, as the Minister for Intimate Probing of the Wrong Sort did later issue a statement to the press. In it, he claimed that it is part of his remit to explore other forms of crime prevention, hence the use of the handcuffs and the whip in that Angel Delight filled bathtub. As he said at the time as well, his wife was standing beside him at this difficult time, much to his obvious relief. Especially when it seemed during in obligatory tear-stained TV interview she would much rather be standing behind him holding her personal favourite from her selection of high-quality kitchen knives in her hand.

The lady of marketable intimacy, of course, sold her story to the highest bidder. Originally, she claimed she was from Eastern Europe (which she later amended to Liverpool) and was trafficked into this country with the promise of becoming a reality TV star. However, later investigation by a rival tabloid discovered she’d turned to prostitution when disappointed by her failure in a TV talent show audition. Consequently, she turned to her current career as one with more potential for personal enrichment than that of being some pop Svengali’s latest paparazzi target.

Still, in the end though the politician was forced out of public life which meant there was one less of them out there wasting taxpayer’s money, if only for a while.

So, in the end, some good did come of it all.

 

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

The End of Days

Unbuttoned Sex Cardigan askew, the High Priestess of the Quite Rude strode into the Fornicatrium with her handmaidens rushing to keep up with her.

The floor of the Fornicatrium was awash with lime juice, discarded orange peel stuck to the soles of their feet as the High Priestess led the way through to the High Altar. She stood for a moment in front of the altar, making the signs of obsequience. Then to the gasps of her handmaidens, she turned off the most holy TV set.

‘Don’t look so shocked,’ the High Priestess said. ‘It was only the local news.’

‘But the holy TV is never turned off….’ The Handmaiden’s Union Rep said. ‘Unless…. Unless it is the End of Days™!’ The handmaidens turned to one another, clutching their sex cardigans tight around themselves, their faces in shock.

The High Priestess shook her head, making calming gestures. ‘No, it is not the End of Days™… as you know none of the twelve true religions could get planning permission for any form of Armageddon.’ She looked away for a moment. ‘Could you imagine the parking problems alone?’ She shuddered, fastening a few of the lower buttons of her sex cardigan. ‘No, my holy sisters, the news is worse than that….’

‘Worse than Armageddon! Worse than the End of Days™, worse than the total destruction of the universe?’ The Union Rep glanced at her sisters. ‘Tell us.’

‘Tell us…. Tell us.’ The Handmaidens cried towards the High Priestess.

One handmaiden near the rear of the group tentatively raised her hand. ‘The national team hasn’t been knocked out of the World Cup again has it?’ She looked at her terrified sisters. ‘You remember what happened last time that happened, none of the men could perform the Holy Act of Fornication for several weeks afterwards. Remember…? We had to even put aside out knitting for a while to get them back to normal.’

The rest of the Handmaidens nodded, each remembering how many episodes of the holy soap operas they’d each missed as they tried to return the nation’s manhood to their former glory… well, state of almost adequacy.

‘No, it is far worse than that.’ The High Priestess wrapped her ceremonial cardigan around herself, wishing she could hold her knitting needles of office for comfort. ‘We… we have run out of chocolate.’

The screams of the handmaidens could be heard for miles around the temple and the people of that nation knew that their world would never be the same again.

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

The Perils of Celebrity

Spangle Trimphone became world-famous little more than five years or so ago now. Surprisingly enough, it was not her record-breaking score on the then latest quiz show phenomenon Name That Cheese! ™ that gave her this coveted celebrity status. That did initially demonstrate her rare intelligence when she successfully identified a rather tricky Sage Derby hidden under a tiger in a dense jungle. However, it was more that as she danced around the studio in victory it became increasing apparent she had mislaid her underwear before appearing on the show.

After that, it was increasingly obvious that Trimphone’s real talent lay not in naming cheeses, despite the inherent mass appeal of such an ability in the entertainment world. It became increasingly apparent her true mass appeal lay in her ability – or rather her inability to remember to wear any underwear when out in public.

Soon Trimphone was so famous that she didn’t need to go to any hip happening club, party or award-ceremony as other celebrities do. All she had to do was when getting out of a car – anywhere on the planet – jump up and down a bit until every photographer there had enough photographs of her lack of underwear, and then Trimphone could go home.

However, her fame turned fleeting when a jealous ex-lover revealed that at home, Trimphone always wore underwear. He clamed too that sometimes she strutted around at home even without any other clothes to cover the underwear up. He claimed too that Trimphone had accounts with some of the world’s most exclusive lingerie retailers in the world and had more pairs of knickers than the entire female population of Ipswich put together.

Not only that, her fall from grace was complete when a tabloid newspaper revealed that she didn’t even like cheese. A disgusted populace turned away from her in droves. Soon she had no choice but to return in defeat to the tawdry comedy quiz show circuit to earn the minimum necessary for her to remain a celebrity, despite her fall from grace.

 

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

The Magical Device

Lord Arsey Bumstrangler strode across his great hall towards the tower. He climbed the narrow winding stairs to the room at the top of the tower. He opened the door to see his wizards as they struggled futilely with the magical device. One of them appeared, at least to Lord Arsey, to be doing something distasteful with the entrails of a frog… or what used to be a frog.

‘Does it work yet?’ Bumstrangler looked down at the magical device, split open on the wizard’s cluttered workbench.

The head wizard bowed, the tip of his obligatory beard weaving a short trail in the dust on the floor. ‘No, sire.’ The Master wizard held up a yellowing sheet of paper, surprisingly small for the vital importance of the magical device. ‘The runes,’ the wizard muttered, ‘are somewhat ambiguous.’

‘Really?’ The Lord sighed with all the enthusiasm he could muster for the workings of magic.

‘Yes,’ the wizard fumbled under his beard and brought out a pair of eye-lenses. He wiped a layer of dust off them and settled them on as much of his nose as was visible between the rim of his obligatory wizarding hat and the beginnings of his official wizarding beard. ‘It is – to the untrained eye – written in the language of the magical runes, but not really in a way that makes any sense.’

The Lord harrumphed and turned to leave. ‘Hurry,’ he said. ‘I need the magical device soon. He glanced up at the hourglass above the workbench. ‘It is almost time for kick-off and the telly is stuck on one of the wife’s channels. If you don’t get the magical device working in time then I won’t be able to change the channel in time for the footy.’ He turned, glaring, to face the wizards as they cowered in front of him. ‘And you know what that will mean for you!’

He turned and left the wizard’s room, slamming the door behind him, wondering what the point of being the Lord of all he surveyed was if he couldn’t even change the channel on the telly in time for the footy.

 

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

As They Say… Or Not

This is the thing….

Well it was, until it stopped working for some yet undiscovered reason. Still, as they say….

Er….

Well, they would say, if folk wisdom and its pithy apothegms had kept up with the modern world.

Really, when you look at it though, folk wisdom is not keeping its end up. Where are all the modern saying akin to ‘going off half-cocked’, ‘a flash in the pan’ don’t count your chickens’? Where is the modern equivalent ‘don’t count your digits before a stack overflow error’, ‘An app needing an upgrade’, ‘Going off half-recharged?’

It makes you wonder where all the folk who come up with the folk wisdom are…? On ArseFaceTwatBook+ probably, swapping pictures of cute cats doing cute things with cute captions… possibly, instead of getting their collective fingers out and providing us with some sayings we can use to describe the modern technological world and its failings.

Instead, we have these eggs, baskets, haystack, misfiring muskets, brass monkeys, – whatever they are/were - and a multitude of other sayings from a bygone age which none of us connect with any more.

You would think that by now there would be something at least about life being somewhat akin to an Austin Allegro in its multiplicity of disappointments. Or, there only ever being one piece of paper left on the toilet roll holder each time you enter the pondering room. Or, the fallibility of operating systems and everything wanting to upgrade itself every time you try to use it.

Still, as they say….

Or… maybe they don’t.

 

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

Monsters of the UK

As monsters go, it was not that impressive. However, it could give you a nasty nip on the ankle. Unless, of course, you wore rather thick socks, which was something that the residents of the area did with increasing regularity as the word of the monster spread.

It was not long, though, before the national media heard about the phenomenon. However, they decided that it was not quite enough for them to leave the London Metropolitan area for, despite the possibility of travel expenses and a chance to see what the rest of the country looked like.

The media decided to wait until the Annoying Little Bugger of Cleethorpes actually killed someone, or – what could be worse – one of their rivals attempted to get an exclusive deal with a suitably traumatised victim of the Annoying Little Bugger.

Exobologists were more than keen to get a glimpse of the fabled creature, even though it wasn’t as fearsome as some wished. ‘Still,’ as one camera-festooned amateur exobologist said, ‘…a nip on the ankle can be quite sore, sometimes.’

Eventually, when a victim managed to get a camera-worthy wound as well as some shaky out-of-focus smartphone footage of an actual attack, the popular press grabbed their chequebooks and rushed off to investigate.

However, several years of staff cutbacks and time spent mostly in the office recycling press releases meant there were few reporters with the necessary skills to investigate such an elusive phenomenon.

The police too were hampered by health and safety legislation and Police Federation rules that forbid any police officer to do anything more dangerous than fill in a diversity-awareness form without specially-trained backup. As there were no officers trained in dealing with irritating miniature monsters, there was nothing they could do.

And so the attacks carry on, despite a local philanthropist offering a reward of nearly five whole pounds for the capture of the beast.

 

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

The Old Order Changeth

HullKingston Pysse-Basetard who died last week at the age of 103 was the last of the once-noble Pysse-Basetard family who came across from Normandy with William the Bastard in 1066. Motorcade Pysse-Basetard was Duke William’s most trusted courtier. He was usually charged with carrying the Duke’s shopping list. He also had the honour of being one of the two loyal noblemen charged with standing either side of their Duke whenever he used a public urinal.

The Duke of Normandy commended Motorcade Pysse-Basetard for his loyal and brave service at the battle of Hastings. The Duke also praised him for not running away or soiling his chain mail at first sight of the Anglo-Saxon beards facing them on Senlac Hill. Consequently, William the Conqueror awarded the Pysse-Basetard family, in perpetuity, a wide swathe of what is now Shropshire.

However, it is his conflicts with English rebels, resisting the Norman invasion that Pysse-Basetard is best remembered, especially the now infamous Battle of Tesco car park, just outside the now-historic town of Ludlow. It was there that Pysse-Basetard ended any hope of the English removing the Norman conquerors. The battle is still commemorated each year by a local re-enactment society. They stage a recreation of the famous last stand at the checkouts by Edward Hugebeard and his followers as they fought to the last man against overwhelming Norman odds. Heavily outnumbered, the Normans forced the English to forgo several two for the price of one offers as the English warriors were unable reach the special offer shelves through the massed ranks of Norman men-at-arms.

Therefore they had no choice but to flee the aisle leaving behind their battle shopping trolleys. Some of which contained the vital supplies of ale that fuelled the Saxon fighter, without this essential beer the English army had no choice but to give up and flee the battlefield.

Although, they lost many men that day a few survivors did manage to return home, some in time for Match of the Day. Thus, the survivors turned what could have been a massive disaster into a tale that could be told to the credulous for many a year to come, or at least until the next war with the Scottish was due.

 

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

Stepping Through

There was a world waiting for me out there. I could feel it. I could feel the pull of the life waiting for me beyond the portal. I was nervous, of course. None of us knows what that life will be that pulls us out of this world and into a strange alien place. The past is far more alien than we ever realise, that is, until it pulls us into a life, to find ourselves there in a world that – more often than not – bears little or no relation to this one.

Then we find ourselves living a life that we have to learn as we go along. Always trying not to make stupid mistakes, trying to get along with the people we meet there and trying to make sense of the age we find ourselves in.

No-one – as yet – has been able to discover whether the lives we inhabit when we are pulled do actually exist. After all, these are the lives of ordinary people. At least, they have been so far, not one of us has found ourselves pulled into a life of someone famous enough, or – luckily – infamous, enough to make the pages of history.

Usually, it is the life of some ordinary person, some lowly peasant, Roman soldier, Renaissance merchant, puritan layperson, Scottish crofter or some other such ordinary life.

Neither are we sure what it is about those lives that pulls one of us in. We just see the portal’s pulsations alter as it changes frequency – and colour from green to a deep blue – and one of us feels the urge to step forward. Then we go on walking until the blue envelops us and we step on through to a completely new world, a new life.

Last time I stepped through, I found myself sitting at a table in an Inn, sometimes around the Seventeenth Century, I think. The drunk woman sitting on my lap, looked up at me and mumbled something. I looked down to see my hand was high up her skirt, just resting there as I'd pulled through. She made it - rather explicitly - clear that she expected me to get back to doing what I’d been doing before the interruption made by the pull, not that I knew what I'd been doing, but I could guess. So as in all such situations, I improvised and judging by the way she looked at me afterwards, I'd done a far better job of it than she'd been expecting. I got a long deep kiss for my troubles too.

None of us know how long these pullings will last either, she was just about to kiss me and I was back in the blue, then back here. Other times, such as when I was a Roman centurion on guard duty at Hadrian's Wall, I was there for months, in the bitter depths of Winter, before coming back here less than a second after I'd pulled though.

All I know now is the blue is pulling me and I cannot stop myself from now stepping thr....

 

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

A Time Long Before Now

It was a time long before now. It was a time long before I brought this world into being. Back then, I was no god. I am not much of one now, but now I have this universe I created and this world. It has these creatures who look to the skies for someone to thank and blame for their lives and the awareness of themselves they have.

They blame me for all that is wrong with their world and their short, hard lives and they praise me for creating them and the world they live in. I did not ask them to worship me and I don't particularly like it, or the way they keep talking to me in their prayers and at their times of sacrifice, begging me to intercede on their behalf.

Although, why they think I will do anything for them, or to them, I do not know. I just made the world and they came into being on it. I did not want followers, worshippers.

They fight amongst themselves all the time too, each side claiming they are the ones that know me best and know what I want of the world and the people on it. I don't even know that myself, and they certainly don't. Anyway, they just like to fight one another and I'm one of the best excuses they've found.

Not that it matters much to me, like I said I never wanted to them to worship me. All I wanted to do was make something and see what happened. Sometimes, now I wish I hadn't bothered.

 

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

Going Home

The beach stretched out between the enclosing cliffs. The sand, a soft pale brown, curving as the sea lapped calmly at its edges. The beach itself rose slowly towards undulating dunes. The grass on the dunes whispered back to the sea. The waves calling and the grass responding as the breeze blew. The breeze, this morning, was stronger, blowing her long hair into her face. She could taste the salt on the breeze and feel it in her hair too, brushing against the bare skin of her face.

She walked on, down between the dunes and over the soft shifting sand at the top of the beach. Her feet borrowed into the shifting sand with each step, slowing her down, making her stride rather than walk. She had to lift each foot clear of the sand that poured into each footprint, covering her foot with every step.

Then she was out on the damp said, left by the retreating tide. This was hard for a while, then wet. Her feet sank in to the sand again, not so much this time. Now, though, each footprint filed with sea water as she placed her weight on that foot, sucking her feet into the sand.

She dragged her hair out of her eyes as she glanced back to the place where she’d left her clothes, even though she knew she wasn’t going back. She looked down at her naked body, down her long legs, to where the sand was covering her feet, washed every now and then by the sea as the waves finished against the shore in a slow trickle. She looked out to see, then back at the land.

She walked out into the sea until she could walk no more and her feet no longer touched the bottom. She waited there for a while, arms sculling on the surface of the sea, looking back at the land she’d left behind as the slow waves rolled over and past her.

Then she was ready.

She turned back to face the horizon and dived deep, her silver bright tail flashing, where her legs used to be, as she swam down deep back to her home.

 

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

An Issue of Great Social Import

Obviously, she blamed modern society in general and the media in particular for the crisis she discovered, if not invented, and put herself forward as the person able to rectify this problem no-one else had noticed or concerned themselves with.

What she did not acknowledge, lest it damage her chances of gaining substantial amounts of research funding as well as the academically crucial publications and conference invites, is that the media follows its audience, it does not lead them.

So her claim that there is a substantial existential crisis about the nature of British Cheese was more or less ignored. Although her thesis was later greeted with incredulous headlines in that selfsame media she condemned as creating the crisis one slow news day sometimes later. However, once that particular news cycle ended, so did her moment in the limelight without anyone else really noticing.

Surprised at the sudden loss of media attention she rationalised it as a conspiracy by the media barons to cover up their personal involvement in what she saw as the great cheese scandal. After all, Rupert Murdoch himself was once photographed eating some cheese at a reception he hosted for the government of the day. Obviously, she claimed, it must be a conspiracy – why else would the media baron hold the party and why else would politicians attend an event offering free food and drink and a chance to get closer to the media?

Consequently, it was not long before a bunch of ‘activists’ were at somewhat of a loose end since capitalism had – yet again - failed to collapse when they said it would. They decided that here was a cause equal to their campaigning talents, once she had explained the great conspiracy to them in simplistic enough language for them to fit on a placard.

And so the great campaigning organisation UnCrackered was born. This mass movement took to the streets with demonstrations of up to nearly two demonstrators at a time. The organisation bore witness to some of the most egregious forms of capitalistic exploitation of cheese and other dairy-based produce wherever and whenever they could (excluding signing-on days, of course). For these activists know that it is only through direct action in the face of the general population’s apathy that great social change comes about.

We others, who only stand and stare, must also be prepared to put ourselves on the line to support these activists whenever we can. We must bravely step forward to both Like their F-Arsebook posts and to ReTwat their Twatisms no matter what the personal cost to use, lest we one day wake up to life without cheese.

 

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

She was the Dream

She was like the dream I had where she walked through the edges of my dreams and into my world, leaving that dream world on the pillow and coming into my life.

She was like the day; rising with the dawn to take me by the hand into the new world we built around ourselves. Each day adding another dimension to the world we discovered together, going deeper and further into a world neither of us had ever known before.

She was the song of longing I’d sung to the lonely moon as my nights grew cold around me and I stumbled off to my empty bed to dream that dream of the woman who would come to me one day.

She was the hand that reached out for me across these empty expanses. She was the one who came closer in the dark of the night for me to hold her and whisper the stories she longed to hear: about how she was the one who had come to me and how this world we found ourselves in would grow and spread until we had all we’d ever wanted or needed.

She was the night that came after my day and wrapped us together in those blankets as our summer fell into autumn and the cold winds began to tumble the dying leaves from the trees.

She was the warm in my winter as we sat in front of the fire and she sang the songs of the spring that would come and take us by the hand and lead us into another long loving summer.

 

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

History Lessons

History Lessons

The world is growing older, people come
along here all the time and have to learn
the lessons from what's gone before, each time,
as though its something new this time around.

It's all the same old stuff, each time the time
returns to dance its ageing dance again.
It looks so new to eyes all seeing it
this time, for the first time, the tale gets told.

There's nothing new, and nothing more to learn
and yet, the lessons never really learnt,
what's gone before is never understood,
as though we only learn these lessons well

by our direct experience and not
by seeing how the previous generations
all stumbled, falling in those muddy fields,
and fighting for the same lost causes, still,

and for the same dull visions as before,
while we prepare to fight for our mistakes,
delusions and so much we need to believe
to keep us marching on until it ends
and then we need believe no more lost dreams.

 

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

Growing Beyond the Ordinary

This is not exactly what we expected. Sometimes things carry on long past their time. It never really got anywhere. There was a brief time when it seemed as though this could become something. But it took too much time, too much effort, for something meant, at best, to be little more than something on the side, some minor diversion.

Sometimes it takes so little out of the rest of a life that it hardly seems to be there. The rest of the life carries on as if nothing has changed, and for most of it, most of that life, nothing has. There is just this one part that exists, almost completely separate from the rest of that life.

Other things, such things as this, though, are different. They may start out like those other ones, but they grow, like some out of control illness, until they take over a life completely. Like some alien intruder into some ecosystem that has no natural controls or predators, they just keep growing and growing until they take over.

She was just someone I met, going about my normal day, nothing of any great significance, just someone else to say hello to if we passed on the street. Then we met it other places: supermarket, pub, all the other places people like us, fairly near-neighbours meet is a small town like this one.

Then it grew.

Then we met at a party one night, one of those barbecues where friends and neighbours gather around to tell one another lies about their lives. We kissed at the bottom of the garden as night was falling. There was where it began.

Now, neither of us knows where it will end, or even if it will end.

 

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

A New Morning

So then I looked out of our bedroom window upon a world that was… well, not new exactly, but a slightly different one to the one we had yesterday. At least, that is what we normally presume. After all, a morning is a lot like the ones before and – we suppose – much like the ones to come, considering the vagaries of weather and season, of course.

Even when I managed to emerge from the bathroom and make my way down the stairs I did not think much had changed, even though there was something not right about the morning. I stopped on the verge of the kitchen door, wondering if I’d made a mistake and today was a Bank Holiday, when I realised what I’d noticed was how quiet it was out there. Ours is not a busy road, leading from nowhere to nowhere, only more of the same houses on the same housing estate. But, usually, there was some activity on a working week morning, no matter how desultory.

‘Quiet… too damn quiet,’ I muttered, making a note to myself to Google – once and for all – what film that quote was from.

The kitchen looked normal… well, normal for our kitchen, which at this time in the morning usually resembles the aftermath of an explosion in a busy restaurant.

The kettle didn’t boil and the radio didn’t work, though.

I assumed a power cut… again.

I trudged upstairs to tell the wife… she wasn’t there.

Nor were the kids.

Later, nor was anyone on the street… all the houses were empty and there was no-one on-line, and even with the remaining battery power in my laptop could I find anyone, or anything on-line… not even Google.
It was then I realised I was truly alone.

 

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

The Opening Rounds

 

Although, it isn’t all that often she gets her hands on one. At least, not one that she finds meets her rather exacting standards. After all, she is a bit fussy about that sort of thing and only the ones that match her requirements will go through to the next round.

After all, these are not matters rushed into willy-nilly… as it were. She does have certain standards she would like to keep up as long as flesh is willing and so forth. She does, of course, as we all do, live in a neighbourhood where certain standards are expected and are adhered to, as much as is possible, anyway.

So, there she was with the measuring tape and the weighing scales, standing out in the front garden, with all the contestants forming an orderly queue back down the street. Many of whom had taken the day off work just to attend this initial selection round. After all, word does get around and that word – as far as she is concerned - is very good indeed. Especially that thing she does with the… er…. Well, obviously, if you live within a twenty-five mile radius of her house you’ll know all about that and the rather notorious court case that followed. The council still haven’t managed to fill in the pothole, even now, all these years afterwards. They claim - with some justification, admittedly - that it is now something of a tourist attraction, bringing much-needed revenue to the area.

There is some talk of raising a statue to her in the near vicinity. Although, there is much debate on precisely how a statue commemorating her achievements can be constructed without falling foul of the obscenity laws and several local ordnances concerned with maintaining a certain amount of decorum in the locality. There is also fear such a statue could also frighten the horses as well as those of a nervous disposition.

Anyway, the results of this initial first round should be out once she has tested all the applicants and the ambulances have carried the disqualified contestants away for much needed rest and recuperation.

So, we’ll be back here next week to hear the local major and – possibly – a major A-list celebrity read out the names of those qualifying for the next round.

 

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

The Word Harvest

So, if any of those of you gathered here this morning want to see just why there is nothing left to say, please make your way over to the word bucket. There you can see for yourselves that it is, indeed, empty.

That is apart from a couple of slightly dented conjunctions and an adverb with post-end-of-sentence-proposition shock.

Of course there was a time, long ago when this was all words as far as the eye can see. Back then, there wasn't just one word bucket, but massive word barns, filled to the brim with all kinds of words, harvested when ripe and lush and already forming crude sentences of their own.

Back then, the word fields were full of words growing strong through the summer, up above the height of a man's head some of them were. It was good in those days to be a word farmer with the fields all ripe and ready waiting for the start of the harvesting season.

There were people – poets and other writers mostly – who used to come out to pick their own words too. Usually for some special piece they were writing, or just for the feel of getting their hands dirty. They would pluck the words from the fertile soil with their own hands and carry them home in a basket at the end of a weary day.

Now, though, all that is gone. Times change and so they must. Now the field next door has a crop of lolcat pictures ripening in the sun. The markets are full of YouTube videos, and people are all growing their own selfies on allotments and in back gardens.

It looks as though it could be the end for these fields that were once so full of so many words.

Maybe we will miss them when they are gone.

 

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

The Approved Certificate in Advanced Mandolin Disporting

Ah, right.

So, if you could just hold this mandolin in the officially sanctioned manner, then we’ll get around to it shortly.

Of course, there are a relatively small number of Health and Safety forms you must complete before you are allowed past the gate. Especially if you have not received the correct training, nor do you have the approved certificate in advanced mandolin disporting.

Those within the acceptable range of diversity criteria mandated for the current level of public mandolin disporting should have an up-to-date certificate of competence. Then – in the fullness of time – there should be no reason whatsoever for the officials at the gate to take any request to go out in public with a mandolin into consideration.

This current government merely took over from where the last Laborg government got up to. They decided the only way they could avoid getting the blame for anything was to make more or less everything illegal – at least in public. As well as keeping a close eye on what everyone gets up to in private, of course.

Consequently, there has been a remarkable drop in unfortunate mandolin incidents out in the public areas of this country. This is hardly surprising, as some (now-silenced) critics said at the time, since it is now almost impossible for anyone to get the necessary paperwork completed in time before the shops shut. Providing the necessary minimum number of shop staff have themselves managed to get through the checkpoints at all the road junctions between their homes and their place of work without incident, that is.

However, much to these critic’s surprise the government has produced figures to show the current restrictions on what used to be - rather quaintly – regarded as individual rights and freedoms has produced an economic boom. Especially in the delivery services and – of course – in the record number of security staff and the bureaucratic backup necessary for them to function.

The supine acquiescence of the population in general has surprised the critics too. Most of whom seem quite happy to forgo the hassle of acquiring the necessary paperwork that would enable them to venture outside in safety. However, some say this general support for the policy could collapse if the government fail to live up to their promise of making sure there is something good on the telly at least once per evening viewing schedule.

 

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

Something for the Weekend: Free Short Story – Twisting the Night Away

[Twisting the Night Away - Free for the next five days - here (UK) or here (US)]

Twisting the Night Away

(Short story – 5,000 words approx.)

If you want to get an ex-girlfriend back, what could be a better way of impressing her than a magic carpet ride through the night to a romantic evening together in some alternate dimension?

[Twisting the Night Away - Free for the next five days - here (UK) or here (US)]

[…]

I looked at my hands, they didn’t look that powerful. I had trouble opening a new jam jar with them, let alone creating a world out of nothing.

Morgan took my right hand in his, holding it just below the wrist. ‘Relax,’ he said.

I tried to relax as he manoeuvred my arm around, outlining some weird shape in the cold night air.

I felt something in the air change, as though the air around us had grown thick and heavy, then an instant later the feeling was gone. He jerked my hand back with a short sharp tug and let my arm drop.

‘Ah…’ he said.

The duck quacked.

Up until then there had been only the two of us standing up on the cold damp roof.

Now there was the two of us… and a duck.

The weather may have been suitable for ducks, but the duck itself seemed far from happy. It quacked and stared up at us.

‘That….’ Morgan said. ‘That doesn’t usually happen.’

I was staring at my hand. It had done a lot of things that hand, sometimes some very strange things, but this was the first time it had produced a duck out of thin air. I didn’t know how I expected my hand to look different, just that I was disappointed it didn’t.

Meanwhile, Morgan was walking around the duck with the cautious air of someone half-expecting the waterfowl to explode. He glanced up at me, keeping half an eye on the duck ‘It’s definitely a duck,’ he said.

I raised my eyebrows….

‘Sometimes a duck is not a duck,’ Morgan said with a tone to his voice that suggested his caution about the possibility of the duck exploding was based on some personal experience.

I took a step back. ‘What are we going to do with it?’ I said, watching the duck carefully. ‘Can’t we send it back?’

Morgan looked at me. ‘Back where?’

‘Back where it came from?’

‘Do you know where it came from?’

‘No… I thought….’

Morgan raised a hand, while he stroked his chin with the other. ‘Tony,’ he said in a universe-weary sounding voice. ‘It is not that simple.’

‘Oh….’ I said, knowing it wouldn’t be…. Nothing ever is.

Morgan stepped back from the duck and moved his hand in a gesture that seemed to slip sideways out of this universe and into some other place.

The duck looked at him. ‘Quack?’

‘Bugger…,’ Morgan said. ‘I thought that might be it.’

[…]

[Twisting the Night Away -

Free for the next five days - here (UK) or here (US)]

The New Alien Overlords

That was, of course, the way it happened, even though – at the time – there were those who pooh-poohed the whole idea. Many of them disbelieving something like that could happen nowadays without at least some activity on one or another of the now-ubiquitous social media.

However, a spokesbeing for the alien’s PR Company insisted that it was not so much an alien invasion, certainly not in the traditional sense, as more of an acquisition of a failing planet.

The alien’s PR company spokesbeing then went on to outline various schemes and ideas they’d come up with to get Earth, as they put it, ‘back on the road to civilisation’. Then going on to suggest that until humanity carried out significant improvements in the so-far woeful attempts at human civilisation then the Earth would continue its exclusion from the Galactic Federation. Thus forgoing all the benefits that entailed, up to and including some very tempting Special Offer vouchers redeemable in some of the finest HyperMegaMarkets in the known universe.

Of course, as soon as they realised the Earth was under possible threat from potential alien invaders, the Earth’s politicians leapt into action and demanded to know what was in it for them.

However, after a few of the less significant politicians (mostly MEPs as it turned out) were ‘accidentally’ caught in the beam of an alien disintegration ray, the remaining politicians suddenly became much less vocal. Especially so when the new alien overlords revealed the new Whole Earth Senate the aliens set up for the politicians on one of the smaller moons of Jupiter. The aliens also promised the politicians could take as many of their more nubile ‘research assistants’ with them to the new facility.

Then the alien overlords announced everyone on Earth could take the next week off work on full pay. Thus was their mastery of Earth and its inhabitants made complete.

 

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

The End and the Beginning

She stood at the window, wrapped in the sheet pulled from her bed, drinking from a cup of black coffee held gripped between both her palms. Occasionally, as she stared out of the window she brought the mug up to her cheek as though she gained some comfort from its warm touch.

Outside the window it was a warm, early summer morning. The window was slightly open and a morning breeze shifted against the curtains, making them shiver rather than moving them.

She sighed and let the sheet drop, feeling the cooler air brush her naked skin. Glancing down, she could see goose pimples covering her skin and her nipples hardening. She smiled at some memory. Then she drained the last of the coffee from her mug, looking up as a seagull screamed and dived over the edge of the nearby cliff towards the sea. She took a deep breath, tasting the salty sea air on her tongue. She turned away from the window, glancing down at the bed that – this morning – seemed far too big for just her.

She put the mug down on the dressing table, thought about looking at herself in the mirror but turned away instead, heading for the bedroom door.

‘It may feel like the end,’ she muttered to herself as she stroked her fingers through her long red hair. ‘But, actually, this is just the beginning.’

 

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

The World from the Tower

I no longer know, not any more. There was a time when I could look down on this world from this tower and see it all spread out before me. Back then I thought I knew what it would be like to be one of the gods, looking down on this world, on the people going about their lives. Not once, back then, did I ever wonder why the gods would have made us and set us down upon this world to go about our business.

Back down on the ground, as I went about my day in the temple below the tower, I would look up at the sky so far beyond the tower and wonder what the gods were doing. I knew, or at least, I thought I knew, that what I was doing would please them. After all, I am the High Priest and it is me they speak through to the people… or at least, they used to.

I don’t know what has changed. I am not sure if the gods are still there, and that they no longer speak to me. Or whether I imagined everything and there are no gods and they never spoke to me.

I can remember that first day so well. I remember the monk in the school falling to his knees in front of me as the voice came from somewhere both inside me and outside me at the same time, speaking the words of the gods.

Back then, as the monk himself swore, I did not know a single word of the High Language. I knew nothing of the language of the gods. Yet there I was, speaking the words of the books as though I’d been born speaking the language of the gods.

From that day on, for the rest of my life right up until a year ago today, the gods spoke to me, and through, me. But since that day, last year, they have been silent.

Still I do not know if it is me or them that are to blame.

 

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

Hands Pass Through

Hands Pass Through

The people are like ghosts,
all drifting through our lives,
sometimes all reaching out
towards this world beyond
almost here within touch.

Like ghosts, our hands will pass
right through it all, as though
there's nothing there to hold.

Our lives become a haunting
of empty air and place
as silence grows around us

filling all the times
between our births and deaths
with forms and situations.

We meet with only shapes
of other people’s lives
as some soft disturbance
of air can leave the dust
lying unperturbed and still.

 

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

These Walls

Walls.

I hadn’t thought about walls much before. They were just there, there to keep the cold and the rain out. They were the barriers my enemies were invariably on the other side of to me. Sometimes those enemies were inside walls and I had to get them out somehow, or – sometimes - I was behind the walls where my enemies could not get at me. Despite, this I hadn’t thought that much about walls much through my life.

That is, until I came here.

Now, these walls - all four of them - bound my life. One has a solid wooden door in it and one has the small high window with the thick rusted iron bars across it. The other two are as bare as my life now.

Oh, I do have a ceiling and a floor, of course. I also have a bed, a chair, a table and a hole in the corner of the room. But it is the walls that fill my thoughts. It is the walls I stare at all day and it is the walls I dream of at night.

I would’ve thought, before I came here, that it would be thoughts of what lies beyond these walls that would torment me. That I’d fill my waking hours with thoughts of all I’ve lost, lying beyond these walls. My dreams filled with the temptations of everything that now lies far beyond my reach.

But, no… all I think about is these walls. The large black bricks, slick with a dampness that never dries. The poor light fills this cell with deep shadows. All I can see when my eyes are open are these walls and all I see when I can no longer bear to see them, and close my eyes, are these same four walls.

But none of that does worry me. Because I know that when they do take me from here, which they will do soon, then that will be the last time I see the sky. It will be the last time I see these walls, or remember that I once had a life beyond them.

 

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

The Marmalades of Yesteryear

But then, what is this time?

What is this place?

Should we sit here around our campfires and talk of the marmalades of yesteryear, or should we, those of us still with the sturdy knees of youth, take arms against these outrages and bring about a revolution?

Or should we just have another cup of tea and see what happens?

That is the problem with popular revolutions, finding out just how popular they are. It is hard to tell exactly how many people of this once great nation are disquietened about the state of marmalade in these days of multi-diverse breakfastings.

There was a time when toast and marmalade was de rigueur (pardon my Fr*nch) on the hard-working breakfast tables of this nation. It is no coincidence the heyday of the British Empire was also the heyday of the proper English breakfast. There is nothing quite like a full breakfast to get you into the mood for some overseas conquests.

Try trudging your way through an unexplored jungle with hostile natives on just a croissant and see how far you get, as for ruling the waves on a bowl of muesli… well, that is just asking for trouble. More than likely followed by hunger pangs around mid-morning, just as the enemy fleet is sighted off the starboard bow.

It is a fact often overlooked by historians too concerned with mere historical accuracy that this country was made great by its breakfasts. Especially the central role that marmalade – for so long – played in those selfsame breakfasts. Therefore, we strongly urge the urgent reformation of the school history curriculum to rectify this matter before this country loses even more sense of its own history.

 

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