This Blog Has Moved

This blog has moved to:  http://www.davidhadleyauthor.co.uk/

Sorry, but this version of the blog has now closed. 

However, I have not given up blogging - you don't get rid of me that easily.

From Monday (16/06/2014) my blog will continue at my David Hadley- Author website more or less as it has done here. 

New site RSS feed.

I hope you will join me at the new place, but if you find a better way of wasting your time, thanks for stopping by.

Bye (for now).

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Britain's Greatest Living Olympian

Splurge Debunker is probably the UK’s most famous contemporary athlete. Especially since her stunning victory and gold medal in the Freestyle Ladies Radiator-Bleeding final in London 2012. A contest where she won gold against some very strong opposition, especially from the Norwegian Sopwith Fjordbasker.

It was, of course the controversial decision by the Spanish judge to award Debunker 17 (out of a possible 9) points for artistic interpretation, which enabled Debunker to get through the semi-final against the Russian Expectyouto Diebondski. After the match, the Russian team complained against the ruling. However, later analysis of the slow-motion replay of the Norwegian judge’s calculations, carefully examined by the Olympic Federation’s own mathematicians, showed there had been no foul play and there was nothing illegal in his use of the calculator.

Debunker survived a doping scandal early in her career, when it was discovered her ability to bleed up to seven radiators a session was fuelled by excessive amounts of strong black coffee and digestive biscuits. However, the use of coffee as well as her aerodynamically-designed ergonomic radiator-bleeding key was ruled not in contravention of the strict Olympic standards for competitive radiator-bleeding.

Debunker’s radiator key itself was designed by the Olympic team also responsible for designing the ears of Britain’s gold-medal wining cyclists and high divers. There, the problem of wind-resistance against such protuberances can seriously diminish the scores of such athletes by an astonishing 0.000001%. Enough – at this level of competition - to have an almost discernible effect on both the athlete’s performance and their results. Or at least to make a suitably-adjusted graph look impressive in Olympic funding-allocation meetings.

So, Debunker herself is bound to go down in British sporting history as one of the all-time greats of competitive radiator-bleeding. There are rumours that their will be some recognition of her great achievement in the next New-Year’s Honour list. A recognition that is both timely and more than well-deserved.

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The Coming Apocalypse

When it began, we – of course – were ready.

Nearly.

As is the way of these things, popular culture had prepared us well for the threat. Everyone who’d watched a film or some TV, played a computer game or read any genre fiction was well-prepared for the immanent zombie apocalypse.

So, when word of the apocalypse spread, building rumour upon rumour, everyone was ready. We all expected the streets to be thronged with legions of the undead, thirsting for the fresh brains of the living.

Ah… if only it had been that easy.

Everyone had been wondering, well, quite a few people anyway, just why the world need quite so many celebrities. Of course, if is a well-known tenet of media theory that the world’s tabloids need a constant fresh supply of young ladies falling out of their dresses at various high-profile celebrity events. But that alone could not explain just why there were now so many so-called reality TV programmes churning out a constant stream of these new celebrities, most with the media half-life of a fatally-irradiated gnat.

But, as some conspiracy theorists pointed out, every army needs its infantry, its cannon-fodder.

Then everyone laughed at the paranoid imaginings of the conspiracy loonies.

Until it was too late.

No-one is laughing now.

Not now the brain-destroying celebrity hordes are on the rampage down all our High Streets. There they surround innocent people going about their own business. The celebrities then force the ordinary people to engage in mass inane conversations about trivia and banal minutia until their brains explode. Then the ravening celebrity zombie hordes can feed and gorge until it is time to seek out the next victim.

And people used to laugh when some warned of the dangers of celebrity culture for our precarious civilisation.

Who is laughing now?

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Contemporary mathematics

Spindizzy Legobrick is probably the UK’s leading contemporary mathematician. He is famous for solving both Goldfinger’s Postulation and the world-famous Cheese Imponderable first formulated by Gödel during a slow Wednesday afternoon.

As most mathematically-literate people are aware Goldfinger’s Postulation claims that each number can be written with either straight lines (such as 1 or 7), or with round curvy bits (such as 6 and 8). 2 of course features both a curved bit at the top and a straight bit at the bottom, and 5 has the straight bits at the top and the curve at the bottom as Legobrick proved.

Gödel’s Cheese Imponderable however is not so straightforward to resolve. As first stated Gödel’s contention that in an infinite universe there must be some chesses that are not very nice does seem uncontroversial. Especially to those who have not performed any in-depth mathematical analysis of not only the cheeses that do exist, but also of the cheeses that could exist in an infinite universe.

For example, even though it runs counter to common sense, in an infinite universe it would be possible to make cheese from all manner of ingredients. Ingredients from car tyres through to geography teachers. Surely, Gödel argued, in his paper introducing the subject, some of those cheeses would not be very tasty. By using certain equations that go beyond the scope of this article he proved – at least to his own satisfaction – that a cheese made of 17th century wardrobes fittings would be very nasty indeed.

There the subject rested until the invention of computers. With computers of a significantly powerful processing capacity such as today’s supercomputers Legobrick argued it would be mathematically possible to model several million cheeses. A sufficiently-powerful computer, he argued, could find many – but not all - palatable cheeses made from a whole gamut of ingredients in the time it takes to make a decent serving of cheese on toast.

This paper, by Legobrick, was presented to the Proceedings of the World Mathematical Cheese Society early this year and met with both wild acclaim and peer approval. Straight away, several mathematicians with access to such computers rushed off to see if they could come up with a cheese made from ingredients that contradicted both Legobrick’s thesis and were still quite tasty.

However, as this article goes to press it seems that Legobrick’s contention that most – if not all – such cheeses made from ingredients not usually used in cheese making only a finite quantity of them would indeed be edible still stands uncontested.

It will be interesting to see if cheese mathematicians of the future ever do come up with a non-standard cheese that is as tasty as a nice bit of Stilton and thus disprove Legobrick’s solution to Gödel’s great Cheese Imponderable.

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The Birthday Present

Then – suddenly – there it was!

‘Oh,’ she said.

‘Is that all you can say?’ I was a bit put out, especially after all the trouble I’d gone to. Eye of newt is not that easy to come by, not around here.

‘We’ll I’d expected… well, something a bit more….’ She made one of those vague-shaped gestures that are not easy to interpret.

‘What is that supposed to mean?’

‘Well, you know…?’

‘What?’

‘Magic and all that?’

‘Yes…?’

‘I’d just… I suppose… expected something a bit more…?’

‘A bit more what?’

‘Well, magical… basically.’

‘Oh.’

‘Not that I’m complaining,’ she complained. ‘Another thing?’

‘Yes.’ I realised I was tapping my arm with my magic wand. I remembered what that had done to the handsome prince… well, toad now, of course, and stopped. ‘What other thing?’

‘It smells of pumpkin.’

‘Right. What do you expect it to smell of?’

‘Well… I dunno… leather, metal… that new car smell.’

‘It smells of pumpkin… because… well.’ I gestured in the air with the wand, making sure I’d turned it off first, of course.

She sighed. ‘Typical.’

‘What?’

‘I never asked to be the daughter of a wizard. Other dads on their daughter’s birthday…. Well, you know, they at least go out and buy something… not this.’ She pointed down at the car. Maybe bright pumpkin orange is not the right shade for a teenager’s first car, but I’ve seen worse.

‘I bought the pumpkin,’ I protested.

But by then it was already too late. She had already stormed off.

‘Don’t slam the…!’ I yelled as the door slammed.

‘Well, that went well,’ her mother said in her I told you so voice.

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘At least I didn’t have to tell her about having to be home by midnight with it.’

Kids, eh?

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The Superhero Saves the Day... Probably

Then… suddenly…!

No… hang on….

Then with all the haste and alacrity of a Public Inquiry she strolled into action.

He trembled in terror. Well, there was a frisson of irritation. ‘Yet again,’ the supervillain, Upstart Naughtyman, snorted, looking down. ‘Yet again have you thwarted my plans for world domination. Curses!’

Fixed-Penalty Notice Woman stood for a moment, arms crossed, as she glared down upon Naughtyman as he tried to find something in the sub-clauses of the fixed Penalty that would enable him to evade justice yet again. ‘It says here I have to pay a fine for attempting world domination without the necessary permits?’

‘Yes.’ She smiled to see him cower and tremble in the face of the notice. ‘There are…’ she added, ‘also some concerns about the health and safety standards at your secret volcanic island lair.’

‘What? How did you discover all this?’ Naughtyman felt his plans crumbling all around him.

‘You had to apply for planing permission for your secret island, didn’t you?’

‘Curses, foiled again.’ Naughtyman knew there must be some way he could complete his plans for world domination without some interfering superhero thwarting him. Last time it had been VATInspectorman and his sidekick PAYEboy who stopped him. Thwarting his plans to build a secret nuclear-missile submarine base in Tewkesbury, when they discovered inconsistencies in his VAT returns. Also that he’d been paying his horde of devoted minions less than the minimum wage. But, now this…. He looked up into the uncompromising eyes of Fixed-Penalty Notice woman and he knew he’d failed again.

‘My job here is done!’ Fixed-Penalty Notice woman said. ‘So, if you’d just countersign this receipt for my legitimately-incurred expenses. I can be on my way to fight for truth, justice and the bureaucratic way!’

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Undercover Policing and its Drawbacks

Of course, those that first met PC Splank Horology off-duty, knew little of his secret life as an undercover policeman. The persona he adopted, of Hotwire Treehugger, was part of an attempt by the police to infiltrate one of the UK’s most notorious extremist environmentalist organisations. The first such operation since PC ‘Stan’ Nark had posed as a dandelion to gain entry to the nascent underground Free Festival scene back in the early 1970s.

As the police eventually realised, many extreme environmentalist movements are far from being the benign force for good that a naïve glance at what they claims to be true would suggest.

Therefore the decision was taken to insert an undercover police agent into one of the more extreme sects of this proto-religion. A group then known as the Eco-Taliban. An extremest sect that even refused to walk on the ground in case they traumatised an earthworm. Only making an exception – of course – for their compulsory treks to the dole office.

Many of the sect’s activists attempted to overcome the crisis of conscience caused by the walk to the dole office by attempting to master the art of levitation. Something that even their shaky grasp of science and/or reality should have told them was doomed. Especially when one of their leading lights, Daisy Birchkisser, failed to levitate off the White Cliffs of Dover. Thus becoming a substantial source of nourishment for those very imperilled earthworms she’d sought to save.

This irony was not entirely lost on her followers. Two of whom also lost their lives whilst trying to erect a sustainable shrine to her in the very spot - just a few feet from the cliffs - where she’d failed to levitate above. They and their shrine did the same as Birchkisser, also failing to levitate. All much to the delight of all the - now morbidly-obese - earthworms in the vicinity of the area they plummeted to.

It was at this point that Hotwire Treehugger appeared on the scene. Arriving just as the Eco-Taliban were about to stage their most spectacular protest. They wanted to attempt to stop several local gardeners from mulching their allotments and thus – they believed - upset the karma of the local earthworms.

Treehugger warned against this action, knowing, though his experience as a local bobby, how handy several of the allotment-holders could be with a well-aimed dibber.

However, Treehugger’s reluctance was put down to cowardice and he was sent for re-education with one of the group’s wise philosophers and activists, Geoff Monobrow. Monobrow explained to Treehugger just why bunnies were so fluffy. Also explaining how everything would be eternal summer and wonderfulness as soon as the group assassinated every Briton with a car. Then they would turn the motorways back into ley-lines. Every motorway services would then become a place of sanctuary for local wildlife. A place where the birds and earthworms, the foxes and the newly-liberated domestic fowl could all live together in universal peace and harmony.

As this vision of bucolic nature living in harmony unfolded before him Treehugger broke down. He confessed that he was really PC Splank Horology and he would be resigning from the force the very next day to become a member of the Eco-Taliban as soon as possible. Thus enabling the worldwide eco-revolution to take the western capitalist world back to its rightful place in the Middle-Ages.

Later, in a press conference, the Metropolitan Police denied all knowledge of either PC Splank Horology, or his alleged undercover pseudonym of Hotwire Treehugger. The fact that several lorryloads of documents had been shredded as soon as the news broke was, as the chief constable said, ‘Just one of those things.’

Meanwhile, it can now be exclusively revealed that Hotwire Treehugger is now living with a female rabbit and their kits in a hole just off the ley-line formerly known as the M6.

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Smoke on the Breeze

Shirena was weary; she'd been up late the night before with the old woman, treating a sickly calf. Now she'd been out wandering the woods since it had been light enough, searching for the herbs to replace the ones they'd used treating the calf.

Shirena dropped her basket to the ground and slumped back against a tree trunk. No doubt, she thought, the calf will be snuggled up against its mother, while she was out here in the morning-cold woods.

It had taken Shirena hours longer than she'd hoped to find the plants the old woman needed. There were none in the usual place, so she'd had to go deeper into the woods, further than she'd ever been before.

Now, she wanted to rest for a while before going back to the village.

She awoke, she didn't know how long later, smelling smoke on the breeze. She wondered if any of the men had ventured into the woods to hunt or gather building wood.

Sighing, she got to her feet, picked up her basket and headed back to the path that led to the village.

There was smoke and... well, little else of the village left when she tuned the corner out of the woods. Shirena just stared, her basket dropped and forgotten.

She ran for the village, stumbling over something, which turned out to be old Toma, the oldest man in her village. She had treated his cut hand a few weeks ago, and now as she looked down, a silent scream caught in her throat. She could see he was beyond her healing ability, beyond the healing ability of even Beena the old woman.

Nothing remained, except smoke and bodies, the bodies of the men and of Beena too. Shirena half-smiled to see the old woman had died with her knife in her hand, its blade bloodied.

There were a few strange bodies too, wild-haired men, their hair as pale as that of hers and her fellow-villagers was dark, lying where their drying blood soaked into the ground.

Then a hand grabbed her by the hair and dragged her away, screaming past more of the strange pale-haired men, laughing gangs of them, all taking turns picking out which ones they wanted from the women of the village.

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Politics in the UK

Pembroke Doolaly is probably best known to the UK population as one of the foremost exponents of riding the British political gravy train. He has been at the top of British politics now for almost forty years. Thereby surprising a great many of those who take an interest in politics by still being alive.

In his early days, as the son of the Earl of Doolaly, Pembroke, of course, joined the Labour party, anxious to be seen as one of the people. Providing of course, none of those people got too close.

He inherited the seat of Puddletown South in that great Labour tradition of nepotism from his uncle Bacillus Troutcock, who gave up the seat when he became Lord Troutcock. Troutcock entered the Lords pledging to work tirelessly to bring about the end of inherited wealth and privilege.

After serving in the Labour government as Secretary of State for Cabinet Meeting Chocolate Biscuit Provision, Doolaly saw the writing on the wall. He crossed the floor of the house to join the Conservative party in time for the rise of Margaret Thatcher. His constituents all bought their own council houses with money provided by Doolaly - which although technically illegal was covered by parliamentary privilege - and Doolaly’s natural aptitude for political blackmail.

In the Conservative party he rose to Chairman’s assistant in charge of buying stamps.

For a while when the Tory party waned through the Major years, Doolaly did consider joining the Liberal Democrats.

Instead, in a crisis of conscience and cash flow he rejoined the Labour party under Tony Blair.

While out canvassing in his seat, Doolaly saw real poverty for the first time. Pembroke was aghast to discover there were some households, after living for three or more work-less generations on benefits, who had TVs with screens that did not fill up an entire room. Some of them had been forced to choose between pay TV subscriptions and feeding their children. With some of those children reduced to eating as little as seven packets of crisps, and less than the national minimum of 14 litres of fizzy drinks, a day. ‘Some of the children weren’t even obese,’ a shocked Doolaly said on leaving one house where the woman and her 46 children had barely enough benefits to keep them comatose through ingesting cheap lager by the bucketful. The woman had even confessed she was forced to give her new born baby milk ‘like some savage in darkest France… y’know where the giraffes come from?’

Once more entering cabinet, where he claims he hid in a cupboard during the Iraq war discussions. He claimed he was out of the room fetching Gordon Brown a new mobile phone when all the wrong decisions were taken.

After that, he thought about joining the Conservative party again, but decided it wasn’t worth the bother of having to rejoin Labour at the next election after that. So, he decided to stay on the Labour backbenches in opposition and continue making money, where he remains to this day. He is almost as rich, wealthy and privileged as those on his front bench who taunt the Tories opposite for being rich, privileged and out of touch. Something that could never be said about Doolaly after his impressive parliamentary career, and his herd of libel solicitors held on retainer. He has promised to step down at the next election with his safe Labour seat democratically awarded to his own son, Trainshed Doolaly.

Truly, a fitting end to a glittering career in politics.

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More or Less

I don’t know.

There was a time back long ago when I thought I did know. I looked out on the world, out there, and I thought I understood it. I thought it made sense to me. I knew – at least, enough to get by – how the world worked. I understood, as much as anyone can, why people did what they did.

More or less… of course.

None of us really knows enough about the world, or about other people. But – somehow – we get by. That’s what I knew: enough to get by and that’s what I did – I just got by.

I had no great theory of the world, or the people in it. I just thought it more or less made sense, and the people – more or less – did sensible things. Although, any glance at the Evening News programme will bring some doubt about the latter.

Mostly though, even those people on the News in faraway places – more or less – lived lives like mine. They got up, went to work, looked after who they needed to look after and tried to do the right thing. Most of them did, anyway. They seemed just as bewildered to be on the News because of some catastrophe or cock-up as I would if I were in their place.

Then, though, she – Jeanette - came into my life. Then everything changed and things no longer made sense. I wasn’t even sure if those people I saw each day were human, not any more.

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One from Shelter 15

Everyone said those from shelter 15 were the best. I’d worked hard, got my promotions and saved every single penny from working as many extra shifts as I could. I knew I deserved the best, so only one from Shelter 15 would be good enough for me.

A lot of those on my shift, first when I was just another worker, and then as I rose up the supervisor ranks said I was a fool waiting so long. Others though, those who knew, said I was doing the right thing and one from Shelter 15 would be ideal for me.

Then I heard market day had been put back for a month. Even when I had the money and I could afford – finally – one from Shelter 15, it seemed the fates conspired against me.

I thought maybe those who prayed to the old gods were right and maybe I should learn how to pray too. But they didn’t seem to have better, or worse luck, than those of us who never prayed. Anyway, I’m not sure if their god would approve me praying for one from Shelter 15. From what I can see that god doesn’t approve of much and wouldn’t approve of anyone trying to buy some happiness.

Anyway, eventually the storms cleared and the word came down from the administrators that the Shelters had all agreed the next market day.

So, a week before the market day, I withdrew all my money from the bank, to smiles all around and people wishing me luck, I set off for the market green.

It took a few days for me to get there across the Nowheres.

It still amazed me to see all the stalls from all the shelters spread out across the valley under the bright purple sky.

Once in the market itself, I took a deep breath, took a tight grip on my money belt and strode straight over to Shelter 15’s stall.

‘Yes?’ the stallholder said, smiling because he knew why I was there.

‘I’d like to buy a wife please.’ I dropped my moneybag onto the table.

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The Entrance to the Lair

He prepared himself and took a firm grip on his lance, ignoring the smirk from the peasant. ‘Are you sure this is it?’

The peasant nodded. ‘In here… definitely.’

Sir Gawain studied the cave entrance. ‘It’s a bit small.’

‘Are you worried your lance is too big to fit in the hole?’ The peasant smiled helpfully.

The squire snorted and doubled over.

‘Squire!’

‘Sorry, sire… I… er… sneezed.’

‘You’ll do more than sneeze when you get in there.’ The peasant seemed to relish the prospect. ‘Go on, then.’

‘Aren’t you coming?’ Sir Gawain fiddled with his visor.

‘No… I’ve got…..’ The peasant looked around the mist-shrouded landscape, what they could see of it. ‘It’s harvest time.’

‘What, this time of year?’ Sir Gawain knew little of farming. In fact the only thing he knew about agriculture was not to fight a battle in a field recently vacated by livestock… it was a bugger to get those sort off stains off armour. The latter thought made him wonder just how fearsome a dragon could be. He didn’t want to be trapped in a suit of armour with those sorts of smells on the inside.

‘Shall we go, then Sire?’ The squire helpfully stepped to one side holding her flaming torch up just inside the cave entrance.

‘Peasant. I order you to go first!’

‘Fuck off… I’ve got a harv….’

Sir Gawain swapped the lance to his other hand and drew his sword.

‘Oh, bollocks,’ the peasant said, grabbed the flaming torch from the squire and stopped into the cave. ‘Come on then.’

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The Land of Tears

It was not raining… for once. We came out into a dry morning. The clouds hung low in the sky, heavy and foreboding. But the rain had stopped.

Maybe we would manage to get back to our beds this time without getting soaked. Everything was wet; everything that wasn’t wet was damp. That which was no longer wet or damp had rotted away.

I smiled – for a moment – as I remembered Jed saying something about the rain in this country. Then I remembered Jed was no longer with us, and then I remembered how he’d died and I stopped smiling.

The woman saw my smile disappear and she ducked down under my arm. She gathered some wood and kindling out of the box we used to keep the wood dry. She was still struggling into her clothes – such that they were – as she hurried to light the fire.

For a moment, I wished I knew her language so I could ask her name. I’d heard her crying in the night, last night, as she lay with her back to me, her naked skin damp against mine. I’d thought about asking why she cried, then remembered she could not tell me even if she knew what I asked. Then I remembered about the cold, the constant rain and how Jed died. I knew I’d probably die the same way too before too long.

Then I’d wondered why I hadn’t asked myself why I wasn’t crying too.

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The Joker

Well. It is a funny way to make a living, especially when it turns from a lark to a job, then a living and then a career.

The first time I was a little bit drunk. I did it for a bet. It was an open-mic night at a local club.

The girl… Helen was her name… maybe. She said ‘I dare you.’

I wanted to impress her, get into her knickers… or, more accurately get her out of them. So I dared.

I was a hit.

They invited me back… several times.

Somewhere along the way, I lost Helen. But there were others, some who didn’t even wear knickers, at least by the time they’d come back to my hotel room as I toured up and down the country.

I won contests. I played bigger clubs. Got on TV panel shows and made a dick of myself. I got into the theatres and, over time, became the headline act.

Then, as mysteriously as it happened, it started to unhappen.

I was no longer on TV, no longer in the theatres.

So, here I was, with Suzie, my manger, crawling around the back streets of some northern town, looking for their local comedy club.

‘Is that it?’ Suzie peered through the rain-smeared windscreen. The windscreen wipers in my knackered old Rover only worked on intermittent, so I had to wait for them to crawl across the screen.

‘Looks like it,’ I said.

A few minutes later, we’ found somewhere to park the car, and ran through the rain, getting soaked to the skin.

Suzie pulled the door open.

Inside, music played, the lights were on and my name was on a poster on the wall, but we were the only ones in there.

‘Bloody hell, it’s the Marie Celeste,’ I said.

Then I turned to see Suzie, mouth open in a wordless silent scream, pointing at the bloodstain that spread across the dance floor.

I wanted to turn and run, but I didn’t because I could hear something breathing, breathing heavily, behind me.

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It was Nowhere

There was nothing there. At first it was just wasteland stretching as far as I could see. Stubby trees, brambles, weeds and grass, little more and all overgrown. There was something familiar about it though, even though I couldn’t place it. As I walked on, looking for anything that would tell me where I was, I realised it reminded me of the waste ground around where I’d grown up. Back then, there were many places where demolished houses and factories had been, with the site just left to grow wild. Great places if you were a kid back in those days when you were just let out in the morning to roam and explore.

This, though, looked bigger than those places, as though a whole area, the whole area, as far as I could see had gone wild. Then, looking around up on a small rise I had the feeling I was home.

There were none of the houses, shops, factories and all that. No roads, street lights and pavements. But looking around I realised that this was where I lived. There was something there, the place behind the buildings under the roads and pavements. It was where I lived, but everything human removed from it. 

Half-closing my eyes I could imagine all the human habitation given a place and a name. Eyes half-closed, I could see it all how it was only yesterday, back when everything was normal. Not like it was now, when I’d woken up and found myself here, either long before humans came to inhabit this place… or long after they’d all died and gone.

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No Stranger

We spent our last night together in that chamber above the main room of the inn. Downstairs we could hear all the others drinking, singing, carousing and having a good time. Up here, though, in a room lit only by a few small candles and the fire in the stone fireplace, we knew we only had these few hours together. Jenny knew that come the dawn I would be gone.

So we kissed and held each other. Neither of us wanted to say anything that would break the spell of our last hours. She held me close afterwards, lying on my chest, her hand wrapped around me and her leg thrown over mine, almost as though she was trying to hold me there. I could feel the flutter of her eyelashes against my chest as she tried to stay awake, even though both of us knew we needed the sleep; sleep that would not come for either of us.

But, eventually, in the end, we both must have fallen asleep at some point, because I did not see Jenny again for around 200 years.

I woke up again lost deep in some woods, not knowing where I was or when it was. Time had slipped by, that was all I knew. Eventually, using those tricks we all have to learn if we are to survive in this kind of life I managed to find some clothes I found I was back in the old country too, for once. But I still had no idea when it was. From the look of the clothes, I guessed sometime around the 17th century.

I walked out of the trees in the thick wood into a clearing. There was a merchant’s caravan there, stopped to camp for the night as the summer evening slowly turned into a warm summer night.

I walked up to the first camp fire. It had a pot of stew simmering over it and the smell of cooking meat and vegetables drifting towards me on the evening breeze.

‘Could you spare some food for a stranger,’ I asked the figure bent over the pot.

Jenny looked up at me and smiled. ‘You are no stranger,’ she said.

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

The Mystery of the Stick

‘Well?’

‘I….’

She put the object down on the desk between us.

I stared. I’d wondered what had happened to it. ‘What’s that?’

‘You know what that is.’ She folded her arms, standing up straighter behind her desk. She was still shorter than me, despite the heels and the power dressing.

I could see she took my tallness personally. ‘No, is it some sort of stick?’

‘No.’

‘It looks like a stick to me. Where did you get it?’

‘It was found….’

‘What, by the stick-finder general?’ I almost laughed at my own joke.

‘This is not funny.’

‘Well, as humorous sticks go, I can see it lacks a certain risible quality.’

‘We don’t like smart-arses here,’ she said it with conviction.

I reached out as casually as I could and poked my wand with my forefinger, trying not to react at the now-familiar surge of power. I could pick it up, one quick gesture and Maureen would be a newt…. I was so tempted. ‘It’s just a stick. So, what?’

‘It is a magician’s wand.’

I turned my shock into mocking laughter. I studied Maureen as carefully as I could while pretending scorn. ‘Does Paul Daniels know? If he’s lost it, there could be a reward.’

‘It is yours.’

‘What would I want with a stick, especially some conjurer’s toy?’

‘It was found in your desk.’

‘I… what?’

‘Hidden.’

‘Who’s been searching my desk, you have no right…!’

‘It is not your desk. It belongs to MalTech. We can search our property if we want, when we want.’

‘I didn’t put it there, it is not mine.’

‘Then you won’t mind if we dispose of it then?’

I shook my head as the rest of my body began to tremble. Molcur was right; the wand did now feel like part of me, a very intimate part of me.

‘Come on, then.’ Maureen snatched up my wand from her desk. I saw the look of distaste on her face as the magic reacted to her hostility.

‘Where are we going?’ I followed her to her office door.

‘To the incinerator.’

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