The Wind of Thursdays

We come down and we wait, then go back and pretend to be Norwegian. I eat chips and talk about cloud formations only to beguile your Belgian acquaintances.

Sometimes I am a strawberry.

Is this how your goat makes speeches, wearing a pink tutu and eating candyfloss?

I have smelt the Wind of Thursdays.

How do you keep this up? Is it a gift, a knack, or all those days spent in the bathroom with your trousers around your ankles painting pictures of Doris Stokes on your inner thigh using various shades of nail varnish?

I could, so easily, have been the speedboat of your nightmares, or the werewolf of your dreams, but my desires for the dark side of accountancy led me down to this river; the river of twelve million, fourteen thousand, two hundred and forty-seven small pebbles. One day, I promise, I will count all the rocks - both semi-submerged and completely submerged. Then we will - at long last - really know true freedom.

I must go now - for the hamsters are howling at the full moon, calling my name.

The Promised Roads

Not ever having suffered from the illusion – or delusion – of religion I never expected some act of magic that would turn me away from this twisting lane I stumble down onto some golden road that leads straight to some distant city of the soul, where all that ails my existence would be cured and set right. The more I thought about it, though, the greater a lie it seemed to me; a false promise to those easily led by those that want the ease of leading the gullible.

I found the act of believing to be too great a leap over some great pit of probability for it to be anything I could even force myself to do. It always seemed to be the denial of too much of what is real, rather than the meek acceptance of some greater force. A turning away from the world, rather than a turning towards anything that lay out there beyond that one reaching finger on the ceiling.

So, when those people, standing at the occasional crossroad I come to, promise the path they show me will lead to that golden road and on to that invisible city, I simply turn away, without saying anything, and carry on down this twisting lane. For I know that anything they say to me will be as meaningless as the sound of the wind through the leaves, and that anything I could say to them will be dismissed for lying too far beyond anything they could ever reach for. This is because it seems that a belief, a religion, is like the bars of a prison that closes, shuts down, the lives of those inside them. All except for those lucky few who manage to escape and run free into this marvellous world that lies outside those cold high prison walls, for what they want to show me is not some great invisible city but a prison of the mind.

Ice Ages

Sometimes it seems so still as though the moment is frozen solid, as though time has become an ice-age glacier that hardly creeps at all. Something solid, hard that seems to exist outside of its own movement, but still somehow moves on, taking all that tries to stand up to it with it. We are trapped here inside this ice of time unable to free ourselves from it, only able to watch as the time glacier moves on though this world. Unable to break free from it, all we can feel is its slow long passing.

Other times though, there is a sudden thaw, the ice age is over, and this slow glacier becomes a raging torrent of a river, carrying us down, still helpless as it pours across the landscapes of time. It rages on, carrying us with it, unable to swim for the shore unless we want to drown in time. All we can do is watch as our lives speed by, just so much flotsam we try to hang onto as the torrent drags us forever onward. We are unable to stop, even pause to catch a breath as our lives floods on past us, leaving everything behind as we race on down towards that infinite sea where time is lost in the depths of so many other waters.

Slow and Creeping

It comes slow and creeping out of the night, following every step taken as though it is some kind of shadow creature that crawls from dark place to dark place. In the night, in the dark, it creeps out from the shadows and curls itself around your dreams. Although it is a creature of the dark places, it is not malevolent, it is not there to rip your soul out through your dreams, rather it is there to guard you, watch you while you sleep.

It is there to watch over those places where your dreams and reality meet. There to watch those places where the dangerous things can creep in to tear your dreams, rip them into nightmares and take you down deep into the dark places of the mind, deeper and darker than the shadows they haunt in the worlds that lie just on the edges of possibility.

There is this creature though, that guards your dreams, a large shadowy wolf-dog, from the dreaming times long before there was much of a difference between wolves and dogs. It too is a creature of the dark places, like dogs, back before they were dogs, were once creatures of the wild untamed places. Now though the dogs sit guard for us, keeping us safe while we sleep and the dream creature too, once wild but now tamed patrols the edges of your dreams keep them safe for you too.

The Perfect Woman

She had all the wine gums any one man could desire, and the casual attitude to nudity and deep curiosity about some of the more advanced sexual deviations that almost made it worth waking up for in the mornings, even in February. She could drink like a fish and swim like an inebriated dolphin, which although not much use was fun to watch, especially with her casual attitude towards nudity.

She was – of course – almost the perfect woman, with total disinterest in the offside rule and a disdain for shopping, especially for shoes and handbags, that made her the object of every man’s desire.

Of course, in the end she went away, far away, to explore that side of her sexuality that kept all the men she once knew suddenly waking, hot, sweaty and occasionally a bit sticky, in the deep heart of the night.

Last I heard she was working as a late-night hot dog seller on the romantic mean streets of Doncaster, where every hot dog she sells is handed over with a suggestion of what tricks she could – if she so desired – do with each drunken man’s own hot dog. Up to and including the fried onions and mustard, were she not so devoted to her trade.

One day, soon, when I am feeling not quite so sticky, I will go in search of her again, taking with me a whole packet of wine gums. All to see if I can win her back with romance, wine gums and the promise of a life the like of which she has never known, up to and including some sexual practices that are still illegal in several American states… and Grimsby.

Then I will bring her back home, here, with me. Mainly because in the years since she has been gone quite a pile of dirty crockery has built up to the point where even entering the kitchen has become something of an extreme sport. Consequently, I need someone, someone like her, to do some washing up; otherwise, I’ll never again have a clean mug for my essential early morning cup of tea.

The Sun’s Healing Fingers

It is slow, like something emerging from winter, a tentative bud on the otherwise bare twig. Barely perceptible, it is the merest hint of green against the dull dead grey of winter.

We wait, patiently, because we know it is coming and we know that it will grow in response to the sunlight and the warmth.

We wait, impatiently, because we long for life and colour after the long slow winter.

We are eager to feel the sun warming our cold fingers, feel the heat of the day spreading through flesh that has lain hidden under clothes and blankets for too long. We need to feel the sun’s healing fingers touching us, bringing us alive like the flowers and the trees.

Soon our whole world will turn green again; already the blackbirds are out gathering nesting material as the grass grows lush around them.

Back when we were younger, we took all this for granted, hardly noticing the changing seasons. Now, though, as we feel our own seasons beginning to tumble towards our autumns, we notice more, want to get closer, feel the need of the spring to bring us back to life again.

For now we know, deep down, there is a limit to the number of these springs we’ll see and – we know – each time we live through one, it draws our very last one ever closer.

New Anti-Nuclear Fears

Following the increasingly desperate attempts by sections of the world’s media to whip up hysteria about the post earthquake and tsunami problems at a Japanese nuclear power station, anti-nuclear campaigners have started issuing warnings about what they say is ‘a much graver danger’ that they believe could threaten the whole world.

As one anti-nuclear campaigner, Hetty Dummkopf, said:

While everyone has – quite rightly – gone hysterical about the nuclear plant in Japan and how it is going to kill us all, it seems the nuclear industry has been keeping quiet about a far greater danger to all of us on the planet.

Some people may not know it, but I’ve been told that the Sun – yes, the one in our sky – is, in fact a great big nuclear power plant, producing massive amounts of radiation every day… and even some at night too, apparently.

Furthermore, there is growing proof that this radiation has caused – not in the UK obviously – a lot of people some severe sunburn. It can also cause cancer, sometimes fatal, cancer, which of course is very scary indeed. It is also possible that it has caused some mutations in people, maybe even in their skin colour.

Obviously, this nuclear plant – they have given the cute harmless name of the Sun, to make it seem somehow natural and good – is extremely dangerous. There is even a chance that it could explode. Some scientists – obviously in the pay of the Big Sun power companies – say it won’t happen for many thousands of years yet, but I’m sure none of us really trusts anything scientists say, not anymore anyway.

Asked by our reporter what alternatives to the sun there were, Ms Dummkopf answered:

They could – at least – invest in some alternative sources of energy, instead of relying on this obviously very dangerous, old-fashioned and out of date technology. They could replace it with something eco-friendly… perhaps a wind-powered sun, or maybe one powered by solar energy… that’s green and environmentally-friendly too.

However, when our reporter pointed out that solar and sun are the same thing, Ms Dummkopf responded angrily:

Hah… do you think I’m some kind of gullible idiot? You’re only trying to confuse the issue with your male-dominated scientific industrial military hegemony jargon. I bet you are in the pay of the Big Sun companies who want to continue with this deadly industry until it kills us all! Typical!