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Noshed Nasturtiums

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 12:12:12 +0100

I love to grow nasturtiums
So clean and crisp and bright
But something comes and eats them
In the middle of the night

The leaves they are so green
And the flower colours glow
But as they eat them in the dark
The pests will never know

I'd put lots in my salad
They're just like watercress
But as something finds them moreish
I must make do with less

I eventually discovered it was cabbage-white caterpillars!

— • —

INDEX

Comments

From Insults to Injury

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 17:35:36 +0100

Describing a story as ‘semi-autobiographical’ can be misleading. People think you must be exaggerating as you convert possibly boring fact into hopefully entertaining fiction. However, there are certain cases where the opposite is true; such as in the following tale, based on a certain string of events in my own schooldays:

From Insults to Injury
Rise and Fall of a School-age Rebel

As a blond and blue-eyed toddler, I looked wide-eyed and innocent, some said positively angelic. In my defence, this was probably because I was already suffering from a short-sightedness which was not properly diagnosed until I was about seven. To everyone’s delight, my behaviour and disposition seemed generally appropriate to my looks. Presumably, if you can’t see the target, there’s no point in throwing your dinner at it. Life, it seems had cast me in the role of a perfect paragon, possessed of all the virtues.

Such a reputation is hard to maintain, especially for an inexperienced child. I became defensive, repressing my growing bent for mischief and where that proved impossible, learned the politics of deceptive innocence. Thus, crafty in the extreme, heavily armoured against misguided compliment and thinking this was the worst that life could do, I was unprepared for the discovery of disparagement and insult.

My first engagement with these new foes, was at the age of four and a half. At the time, I was attending a small private kindergarten, confident in my bright red uniform. It was towards the end of the spring term. My favourite teacher, Miss Marjorie, the headmistresses' daughter, had organised a school play to impress the parents. Her own adaptation of one of Enid Blyton's classics, in which my part was Mr Plod, the policeman.

It was during our first wallow through, what is now often considered the mire of Noddy's affront to political correctness, that the unexpected insult struck. I had two lines and a dramatic gesture during the arrest scene. I delivered my first line, tapped the Golly on the shoulder, paused for dramatic effect - and was prompted!

That was it! Gone were my precocious fantasies of painting water-colour flowers on the beautifully rounded cheeks of Miss Marjorie's twenty-two year old bottom. Since the other female teachers, at my tender years, seemed irredeemable wrinklies, my only course of action was to transfer my interests to girls of my own age. I came to the conclusion that teachers stunk, an opinion only slightly mollified by later experiences. In metaphorical contrast, I rapidly discovered that my female contemporaries were really rather fragrant. Although, to the misfortune of my innocently artistic ambitions, they failed to be fragrant enough to provide me with the necessary soft pink canvasses.

Insult number two took a vicious bite at my ego a couple of years later. I had bade farewell to those desolate scenes of my broken and disappointingly one-sided relationship with Miss Marjorie. I was wallowing in yet another mire, that of my first year at prep-school. The school was ‘Mono-posto’ as my best friend’s father, a motor-racing enthusiast, put it, that is boys-only, so my attempts at imaginative artistry had to be confined to paper. Once I had been persuaded that backgrounds did not necessarily have to be skin-toned, my paintings improved sufficiently to gain a regular spot on the art-room wall. The floral subjects disappeared, their places taken by galleons, tanks and motorcars, my transformation from romantic dreamer to rampant warmonger was complete. Soon gold stars were adorning the corners and when it came to representing the school, I was promised that my work would gain me a place on the team.

Eventually that moment arrived; the local council had announced a painting competition. The subject was to be a road safety poster, there were various age ranges and it was open to all the neighbourhood schools, both fee and free. The prize, apart from the dubious honour of taking part, was some small unspecified gift, plus attendance at an awesome event billed as ‘Tea with the Lord Mayor.’

Unlike the council schools, where every pupil in a class was allowed to enter, only we chosen few at the top of the art-group were given that privilege. At the time I was too young to appreciate this for the ploy it was; an attempt by the headmaster to keep the average quality of his school’s entries above that of the rest. So, the select team performed and a batch of carefully vetted submissions were made. My offering came third in its age group, from my point of view, a satisfying result for a first attempt at public recognition.

In due course, the day of the much anticipated ‘Tea with the Lord Mayor’ arrived. Proud parents delivered their winning offspring to the outsize bronze doors of the hallowed art-deco pile that was our City Hall. As they left, us kids, shepherded by vague officials from the Education Department, were taken up the processional staircase. I remember wondering, in all innocence, why they hadn’t trusted us to the lift.

We crowded at the grand entrance to the banqueting hall, the front ranks suitably hushed but with the usual rearguard still chattering and testing the echoes of the stairwell. Through the doors we could see the long table covered in starched white linen. The ‘Tea’, or rather its substitute, huge jugs of incredibly weak orange squash, were spaced infrequently along the vast expanse of tablecloth. Between the jugs were huge gilt edged china plates, their diameter quite dwarfing the neat heaps of tiny triangular sandwiches. To the right of the doorway was a group of adults, presumably teachers, councillors and officials involved in the road safety promotion. I assumed from the heavy gold chains, which we had been told to watch for, that the boring looking leader of this group and the nondescript woman standing at his side, were the Mayor and Mayoress.

More interested in the grandness of the building and the disappointing contrast of the so called ‘Tea,’ I managed to accidentally ignore the Lord Mayor’s outstretched hand, this time an insult offered rather than received. In fact, I was several paces past his paunch before he realised that one of his guests had alluded him. I was called back and playfully accused of flouting authority, while at the same time having cigarette smoke puffed over me by his wife and my hand vigorously pumped by both of them in turn.

With the politics of the occasion over, we were ushered rapidly to our seats and encouraged to investigate the food. I soon discovered that the sandwiches had been made with slightly soggy, thin white bread and filled with an almost invisible pink layer of paste accompanied by thick, hard flakes of bright yellow margarine. Having been brought up as a vegetarian, I did not recognise the taste and had to ask the second-prize winner sitting up-table of me. ‘Crab paste!’ I was horrified to learn.

For a moment, I considered refusing to eat any more, but having already embarrassed myself over the handshaking, I continued cautiously. A decision I was later to regret, when, some hours later, I discovered I shared my mother’s acute allergy to seafood. To this day I am convinced that I owe my survival to the meanness of the council's caterers, when their generosity might have killed me.

Once our ‘banqueting’ was properly under way, the Mayor and his cohorts rose from their distant thrones to batter us with patronising speeches and dole out the prizes. My turn came at last and I trekked round to the head of the table, expecting great things.

The Mayoress' palm again enclosed my hand while she repeated the same speech she had used for all the others and pushed a garishly coloured cardboard box into my chest. Dropping the lady's clammy hand, I took my eagerly anticipated prize, muttered a briefly rehearsed thank-you and began the long walk back to my seat. I daren’t look at the prize. Would it be a full set of professional quality water-colours, the sort that come in tubes? Something I had hoped might be the appropriate official acknowledgement of my artistic originality. I reached my chair, sat down and gazed at the box.... It was a Paint-by-Numbers Kit! I was horrified, I had never imagined that such abominations existed. When later, I recovered from the combination of the insult, the shock to my artistic sensibilities and the crab sandwiches, I complained to my parents. The uncomforting reply was simple, ‘You can't trust City-Hall.’

I threw away the canvasses with their stultifying discipline of blue lines, but kept the tiny plastic pots of numbered paints. My fantasies of decorating female rumps upgraded from delicate water-colouring to brash invigorating oils.

— • —

With these two major assaults on my respect for authority and many minor ones too numerous to mention, I became immersed in the appropriate opportunities for learning provided by the prep-school.

The major theme of my personal education at this time, consisted of discovering how to bait the prefects without getting caught. My gang of like minded contemporaries were good at that and I was pleased to be able to take a leading role in their machinations. Educational satisfaction was coming my way at last. Mischief took over from painting as my ambition in life. With my chosen learning process well in hand and enough native wit to cope with the school’s curriculum as some sort of annoying but necessary sideline, I sailed happily from term to term. Then we gained a new form-master, not a cheerful, pleasant humorist, as we were used to, but a dour, sour disciplinarian. Our original had led from the front, teaching for him was an invigorating swim in the sea of knowledge, a pursuit in which we gladly joined. The new one was no leader, he drove from behind and rapidly lost our confidence.

After the first end-of-term exams, we discovered his entirely different attitude to marking and his popularity dropped from poor to abysmal. A good try was no longer good enough, the answers had to be perfect and not just correct, but exactly worded as previously specified. Our reports reflected a failure to achieve this and made trouble for us at home as well as in the eyes of the headmaster. During the following term, the class was bent on vengeance, the foolhardy tried all the various standard ploys, mostly stupidly obvious frontal assaults, like wolf-whistling, dropping desk-lids with a crash and wanting to visit the toilet at the most inopportune moments. These failed, as they deserved to, fizzling to nothing under the rapid and accurate responses from his irresistible firepower. The queues outside the headmaster’s study began to grow, Saturday afternoon detentions became overcrowded.

With all that flack about, I had to cut back on my secret torturing of prefects. In the classroom conflict, I remained aloof, uninvolved, maintaining my long-term policy of avoiding trouble with the teaching staff, but there were insults in the pipeline which would change that.

Despite my obvious neutrality in the crusade against the form-master, I was summoned to the headmaster's study. Curiously there was no queue of miscreants, I wondered if I had come to the right place. I knocked and was ushered in to be told I was to receive one stroke of the cane. Coming from a family of lawyers, I politely asked for a list of specific charges. The answer was simple, but not to the point, ‘Boy,’ he grunted, failing to remember my name, ‘This has been coming to you for a long time!’

If that was not enough, the next outrage was to follow close on the heels of the unexplained caning. As well as corporal punishment, it was the policy of the school to indulge itself in intelligence testing. Looking back on it, I am sure their methods were intended to subvert the system, since we were always put through several weeks of intensive training prior to each term's exams. I still have the relevant report. Under the heading ‘Intelligence Quotient’ is the number ‘167’ double underlined, followed by a thick red question-mark and an equally red, biro comment from my hated form-master, ‘To be checked next term!’ it said. Naturally I felt insulted. Did they think I'd cheated in some way?

My honour still smarting from the implications of the red biro comment and my posterior from the decoration, applied not in water-colour, nor even oils, but in shades of bruise blue turning to yelp yellow, I fumed. The mood lasted all through the holidays. Then, just as the new term began, it dawned on me, I was innocent on one count, that of the caning, merely a victim of the school’s undoubted policy to give every pupil at least one taste of rattan. Of course there was still the matter of the IQ test, that other insult to my intelligence.

The prefects gained a respite as my secret campaign focused on the unpopular master. My fellow classmates’ dubious efforts had failed. They too had been caned, but almost certainly for good reasons. I checked and yes, they had been informed at length, just prior to getting the standard six strokes. My conclusions relating to the headmaster’s gift of that single stripe were almost certainly confirmed. Vengeance on the headmaster would have to wait, for the time being he was out of range, but the form-master was a different matter.

Feeling secure in my anonymity, I planned the attack with care. I wanted it to be original and subtle, I racked my brain, then I found a drawing-pin in the sole of my shoe. Have you ever tried walking on a drawing-pin? After a while it gets quite uncomfortable and when the head wears off, the tine works its way through into your foot. That was it. A suitably deceptive torture, particularly if constantly repeated. It also seemed extremely safe from detection, since boxes of drawing-pins are often spilt and as I had discovered, one can walk some distance wondering why the floor has suddenly become uneven, before discovering the truth.

On the fateful day of the prank, I entered the room before class began. This was against school regulations, but easily achieved since my form-room connected directly to the playground. I had already collected my armaments. Every notice in the school was now held in place by only three drawing-pins, each forth one resided in my pencil-case. There were nineteen notices, so I had nineteen pins, mostly the sort made of high quality brass with thick domed heads and sturdy shafts. I placed them like land-mines, point uppermost in front of the blackboard, then returned, unnoticed to the cover of the crowded playground.

The bell rang for classes to begin. We pupils entered first and sat in our usual places. The usual idiots at the back began their usual chatter. My desk was on the central aisle two rows from the front. The master bustled in, clumping down the short flight of red quarry-tiled concrete steps that led into the form-room, a conversion of the semi-basement sculleries of the original Georgian house. His eyes were targeted, as usual, on the back rows. Under his gaze, the conversation faded to silence. He approached the blackboard. His shoes were out of my line of sight, but from his general position, I was confident that he was within the minefield. Expecting him to notice either the pins on the floor, or their presence in the soles of his shoes, I held my breath, but there was no result.

I had failed to appreciate that the well worn floor was already uneven and that this might negate the effect. The pins remained undetected, I became perplexed, was the scheme a failure? Then, having set us the morning’s task, the master took the three paces necessary to reach the chair behind his desk, sat down, opened a textbook and stretched his crossed legs through the kneehole. His feet came into view. Poker-faced, I exalted, there were six of the domed-head pins in the heel of his right shoe and one of the flat-headed ones in his left sole.

During the remainder of the teaching session, I waited for him to make the discovery, but all that happened was that he collected two more of the smaller ones in the same heel as before. A bell sounded, break-time had arrived. The master rose to depart. Surely he should have noticed the unevenness of his tread? But no, he headed for the steps up to the door. He mounted the first step, the second, the third, then on the final broader one, a sort of mini-landing, he turned the handle of the door and stepped back from the door-swing.

Instead of dismissing the class and heading for the staff-room, as both he and we expected, his heel slipped and he took off, in a style unequalled by any comedians since Laurel and Hardy. But his landing, unlike those of such black-and-white heroes, was as bad as it looked.

The whole class sat still, both we and he were silent, nobody moved to aid him. This was not so much because of his unpopularity, but because we were conditioned not to stir until he gave the word. A word which was not likely to come, since it was obvious that he was either unconscious or dead. Eventually the boy nearest the door got up and keeping his back to the wall, warily worked his way past the crumpled body, as if it was some sort of dangerously unpredictable animal.

Matron was called. She phoned for an ambulance. The ambulance men investigated, announced he wasn’t dead and carted him away to the local casualty hospital. We didn't see him for a whole glorious week.

Next day, a notice was sticky-taped to the classroom door. It politely requested everyone to ensure that drawing-pins were kept under proper control and not allowed to fall on the floor.

I gained no pleasure from the undoubted success of the prank, nor from the fact that my guilt would remain undiscovered. I was piqued, it was just like him, the rotter, to spoil it by nearly killing himself. That was when I decided to reform, subversion was much too easy to perform.

— • —

INDEX

Comments

Ratatouille

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 11:57:33 +0100

Just add Olive Oil and Season to Taste

Ratatouille Lou
Lived where the sky is blue
And in the warm and fertile soil
A peasant plot and pleasant toil
was all the life he knew

Aubergines is what he grew
Red tomatoes, garlic blue
Onions with a golden sheen
Peppers in yellow, red or green
And Thyme the whole day through

Ratatouille Lou
Under that sky so blue
Oh would it not be wonderful
If all of us could be as full
Of those simple pleasures too

Comments

Champagne and Cauliflower

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 11:01:59 +0100

or
Mon petit dejeuner sur l'herbe et gross dejeuner avec l'Herbert.

It was like that impressionist painting of the picnic in the woods, except neither of the girls were naked, there were only three of us and I had forgotten my tasselled hat. What we did have was champagne, a large bottle of quality fizz much too good for breakfast at a Craft Fair. Misha was telling us, her friends, Jilly and me that is, how she had been forced to win it, when a pushy raffle-ticket seller had cornered her during a guilty moment at the home-made cream-cakes stall. I warn you, Misha had told them, more for mischief than in truth, It's always my number that comes up. Apparently they'd been most unpleasant when her prophesy had come true.

The tree strewn pasture, where we were camped behind our host's stately home, was easily as beautiful as Manet's Bois de Boulogne. The high summer morning held the promise of being a real scorcher. Thankfully, a cooling breeze was keeping the flies at bay, a service we hoped it would continue to provide inside the huge marquees where we would be spending the rest of the day.

Dotted around us, the other crafts exhibitors were also breakfasting, some outside their tents, others in their caravanettes or under awnings. Seemingly, many were taking amused note of our bubbly substitute for coffee. The three of us were old friends, mutual veterans of many shows, each with our own crafts and separate stands. Misha made clocks, Jilly silver jewellery and I was just a potter. The fact that we breakfasted together that day was mere serendipity, such was the social cohesion of the strangely cosmopolitan mix of people supporting the shows, the breakfast groupings could have been any of many possibilities. What made ours special in the eyes of the observers was the champagne and that only in the light of what happened later.

In those glorious days of the late-seventies, a well organised three day show such as that, with nearly four-hundred top-ranking exhibitors, would have attracted over ten-thousand people per day and more on the bank-holiday Monday. It was going to be hot and busy, so we would be trapped at our stalls by the hoards of punters. Being under such a siege was exhausting. Fortunately our over-heated bodies usually substituted sweating for urination, so, so long as you kept up a steady input of good clean liquid, preferably laced with energy-giving fructose, you would survive. I had two cartons of apple juice, but when I took them out of the van, discovered both of them had a manufacturing fault. The threatened leakage would be disastrous. I urgently needed containers into which I could decant them and immediately thought of the Champers bottle. Misha was about to bin it when I caught up with her. That coped with one carton and Jilly found me a scotch bottle for the rest. So with preparation complete, I manned my stand. We were in different marquees, so for the day our social groupings rearranged themselves. Mine was a corner stand by the entrance, something I paid extra for. Beside me were the candle-makers who always liked to be next to a potter, again we were old friends. The crowds, queuing outside since nine o'clock, were unleashed and mayhem struck. I reckoned to average a take of about ten pence per head of the gate, from an average sale value of two pounds fifty. Transferring that weight of pottery and cash meant action, fast and hard, the level of my small change and wrapping paper soon began to fall, as did the level of liquid in the bottles.

The morning was busy, but not so busy that I didn't have time to pour the apple juice from the scotch bottle into a plastic tumbler before drinking it. Apparently, to my fellow exhibitors who were still gossiping about our champagne breakfast, this looked like alcoholism gone mad. Of course I didn't realise what sort of impression I was giving, although I was getting a little worried at the odd way people were looking at me. By two o'clock they must have been expecting me to start slurring my speech and reeling around, especially as by then I was swigging directly from the champagne bottle. The candle-makers even went so far as to bring me a large mug of black coffee served with a silent sympathetic smile. Then the show was over and I suddenly found myself, rather than craft pottery, the centre of attraction.

You're still feeling OK? someone asked. I could never drink from the bottle like that, said another. Are you sure you can manage to clear-up all right? queried yet another.

Fine, thanks, I lost the glass, and No problem, were my answers.

Then Misha and Jilly came to the rescue, drawn by the crowd and spreading rumours.

He doesn't know! they gurgled to each other, We've got here just in time, a couple more minutes and they'd have been dragging him off to Alcoholic's Anonymous.

Look here, I said, Would somebody please explain. I've had a great day, lots of money, loads of happy customers and just enough apple-juice to see me through.

Apple-juice!!?? came the chorus, But... - Curiously, despite the exposure of the truth, I kept the reputation.

Notoriety, like rumour, travels on the wind and, as I was soon to discover, appears in rags and tatters hung on every unlikely twig. The exhibition was finished, the marquees struck, clearing-up complete, my van was loaded and I was heading for the gate joining our camp-site to the main-road. As I approached, Misha's van blocked mine. Jilly and I are going for a meal, like to join us?

Great Idea, but where shall we go? I replied.

Did you notice that vegetarian restaurant in the little town we passed on the way here?

You mean The Seven Brides for Seven Brothers who could miss it with a name like that? I s'pose it must have started out as a pub.

That's the one, shall we try it?

See you there, I agreed, following them out of the gate.

When our two vans reached the small town, it was about seven-thirty and the place seemed deserted. The restaurant car-park was empty and when we pushed open the door, so was the cocktail-bar and dining-room. The place had the air of being rather more posh than the outside had suggested. We suddenly felt rather out-of-place and had there been customers in evidence, we would probably have turned tail and looked for somewhere else. I was wearing cut-off jeans with fashionably frayed edges and a Suzi Quatro tee-shirt, the two girls were barefoot and minimally covered by brightly coloured shorts and loose fitting halter-tops. As a party we were sun-warmed fragrant, grubby and somewhat dishevelled. We decided to brazen it out, custom was custom and we certainly had plenty of cash on us.

A tall dark-haired man appeared out of the kitchen. He looked remarkably cool in his three piece suit with napkin on the arm, but to our surprise his welcome was warm and friendly. Perhaps it pleased him to indulge us, or maybe he was just desperate for human company and was prepared to accept us as a near substitute. The best table was offered, although I was amused to notice that it was also the one furthest from the window. We sat, the girls on one side, me on the other. Menus were distributed. The maitre offered the wine list, then withdrew it with the words, Mais non, if you are who I think, champagne would seem to be more appropriate. That set the bells ringing, did he really know who we were? And if not, who the heck did he take us for?

A carafe of house-white would be fine, called Misha, to the man's departing back. We looked around. The standard comment at that point would have been This is nice! but nobody made it. Companionable silence reigned as we scanned the menu. The peace of the moment was wonderfully welcome after such a hectic day. As our ears attuned, we became aware of a subdued argument coming from the kitchens, the maitre's voice pitched on the dangerous edge of defensive and an unbroken tirade from a female. They were obviously trying to hold it down and because of the thickness of the kitchen door the words were too muffled for us catch the sense.

Do you think we should leave? asked Jilly, just as the man returned, still cucumber cool, apart from a slightly haunted look behind the eyes, and playing the role of mine host to perfection.

A carafe was produced and our glasses filled without the standard formalities. Surprisingly, it was an excellent champagne, whatever was the chap playing at? Misha baffled him in turn by wanting to know if he was lucky in raffles. Then we attempted to place our orders and all went normally, until we came to the choice of vegetables. For some reason he seemed to want to sell us the cauliflower. Never have I heard such poetic descriptions of how it had been lovingly grown, nurtured, humanely slaughtered and steamed to exactly the right toothsome texture. I've gone off cauliflower, announced Misha, at about the moment he mentioned its slaughtering. Jilly muttered that it was possible to over-sell a good thing. I said, Carrots, mange-tout, new-potatoes, yes. Cauliflower, no, I don't think so.

We expected that to be the end of it. The maitre returned to the kitchen and the distant argument resumed. We were still in two minds as to whether to stay, or down the champagne and leg-it. But while we were silently debating the subject, by means of gesture and eye-contact, the food arrived. It looked and smelled wonderful, especially as the champagne had freshened up our appetites. The problem was that the portions of vegetables were minuscule. A lonely undersized potato, a finger carrot and half, yes half, a mange-tout seemed rather mean and this was well before anyone had thought of nouvelle cuisine.

I think we'd prefer larger helpings of vegetables, I said, with a grin. This was obviously some sort of joke, but by who against whom was yet to become clear. Perhaps the presence of the unseen, but obviously malevolent, woman in the kitchen might now be making itself felt.

I'll see what I can do, apologised the man, with a conspiratorial nod towards the service door. He left us looking at each other in amazement. If he had wanted to keep us guessing, he was doing jolly well, a wonderful air of anticipation was growing. What would be next? We should have known, all this was a build-up for the entrance of the cauliflower.

I'm sorry, this is all we have, the man was apologising again, as he produced a large willow-pattern tureen from under a white cloth with the practised flourish of a magician. Once in the centre of both the table and our attention, he removed the lid and stepped back. Misha dared the challenge, picking up a serving spoon she scooped a portion of the vegetable onto her plate and burst into laughter. Beneath the pristine surface, tucked carefully between the florets, were several large, plastic bluebottles. Misha's face was a picture and I thought the maitre was either going to burst or wet himself. It was the first time I had ever glimpsed hysteria behind such a poker-face.

I'm terrible sorry, he sobbed, still attempting not to laugh, It's the wife, you know!

You married a bluebottle infested cauliflower? asked Jilly, in all earnestness.

He did manage to collect our plates before his face broke and he rushed out. The angry exchange beyond the kitchen door resumed as soon as it had closed behind him.

What the Hell are they arguing about in there? asked Jilly, expressing our common feeling of intrigue. Were the food jokes his or hers? Was this an honest attempt at providing an entertaining meal or a calculated outrage. Which of the seven brides and brothers were we in the clutches of? Would we survive to tell the tale? Would he? Was the harridan in the Kitchen really his wife?

Within moments replacement meals arrived, generous and wholesome, there were even helpings of fly-free cauliflower and another bottle of champagne. After such a wonderfully orchestrated performance, what could we do but eat, clearing the plates of everything except the cauliflower. The maitre, as soon as he was satisfied we were taking it all good-naturedly, had faded into the, by then, strangely quiet kitchen - what had he done with the woman, I wondered?

The course complete, our entertainer returned with the sweets menu. In the calm of considering the choice between fresh-fruit salad or summer pudding, I began to think the show was over. Then I noticed the tears of stifled mirth in the girls eyes, the rat still had one last trick up his sleeve. The Herbert was standing behind me with two pudding spoons, holding them behind my head to make Bugs Bunny ears. It is a vegetarian restaurant, you know! Sir, was all he said as I turned and caught him in the act. I suppose I had to laugh, it was no more than I had been getting all day. Which made me wonder whether he had been stalking us since breakfast. Then he had the nerve to bring us a bill, which, since the champagne was charged as house-white, we paid exactly.

Don't I get a tip? he asked. Certainly, grinned Misha, who liked the old jokes best, Treat your customers with more respect! He smiled a sad smile, then held open the door for us as he sighed, Where does one have to go for true appreciation?

Jilly gave him a consolation kiss and we waved goodbye. He closed the door behind us. Then we saw the sign thrown down behind the low wall between car-park and highway. It was an estate-agent's board with a large red stick-on label, SOLD by Order of the Official Receiver it said. So he had nothing left to lose, that explained his peculiar behaviour, but we never did find out what the kitchen argument had been about.

— • —

INDEX

Comments

Doctor will See You Now

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 13:15:52 +0100

Embarrassing isn't it? Waiting at the doctor's with the sort of problem others find amusing. Even if your fellow patients don't actually know, you feel as if they must.

Sheer paranoia, I hear you say, Most of them will be too busy worrying about their own ailments to notice. True, but some problems are more embarrassing than others, ones relating to odd parts of the body, certain orifices.

On the day in question, mine was of the latter sort. I fudged round it with the receptionist. I just need to see the doc, I said and, since the problem wasn't obvious, managed to keep it secret throughout her practised questioning. Officialdom had been thwarted and wasn't happy.

I sat down, waiting to be overcome by boredom. It didn't happen. Inside me, tension was building; an irresistible, childish guilt at the possession of such an embarrassing problem. It wanted me to stand up, in front of everybody, and blurt out every horrid detail.

The waiting room filled, the urge grew, soon it was unstoppable. I desperately needed a compromise. My immediate neighbour looked trustworthy; a man who would smile tolerantly but still respect a confidence. I forced my voice into a semblance of normality:

It's not painful, I husked, My problem, that is.

So? he muttered, adjusting his position.

I need to tell someone about it.

Why me? he grimaced.

Please.

Well make it snappy. I rather think I'm next. - He wasn't, but I let it pass.

It's my nose. There's something up it.

What are you trying to tell me? he asked, anxiously, almost aggressively.

Not the reaction I expected. Maybe his ailment was aromatic; I couldn't tell.

No, I said, I really do have something up my nose, left nostril, a small rubber-ball.

He eyed me in disgust, I thought only silly kids did that, he said, Usually with beads.

My embarrassment flared; Er, I didn't do it deliberately.

You sure about that? How old are you anyhow? - I ignored that one and sighed. At least the urge to shout was fading, even if the colour in my face wasn't.

Seeing my discomfort, he relented, Go on then.

I continued gratefully, It happened while I was reading a book.

A book? What was it about?

What? Oh, some heavy paperback or other. It doesn't matter.

I like books, he announced, waving the thin volume he still had his thumb stuck in.

Oh, sorry. I didn't know you were trying to read.

In your state you wouldn't have noticed if I'd been nearly bleedin' dead.

Sorry, er, sorry. I'll shut up then.

The urge was back in the ascendancy. I wondered if the woman on my other side would be more sympathetic. Then, with a grunt, he removed his thumb from the book, replaced it with a comb and shoved it in his pocket.

So, how does a book give you Ball-up-the-Nose-Disease?

I said it was weighty, didn't I. Sort of book that makes you tired just holding it.

Ah, that sort, he grinned, Never read that sort. Makes your arm tired.

I just said that.

So you did. How thick? - did he mean himself, me or the book?

I plumped for the latter, Well over two inches, nearly two n a half, I'd say.

Yes, I'd say that was thick.

Sorry? I hadn't heard him over the raised voice of the woman on my other side. She was wondering, loudly, what had happened to the doctor. If this was for the benefit of the toffee-nosed receptionist, I admired her pluck.

A cough brought my attention back to the man. He looked offended, having given up a lurid novel for my tale of woe, he had every right.

Sorry, didn't catch you. The doctor is taking rather a long time, isn't she?

You'll get used to that! he muttered, expression clearing as umbrage gave way to grudging curiosity. But, I still don't get it.

What? I'd lost my thread; perhaps the nasal blockage was effecting my brain.

I don't get the connection between books and rubber-balls up the nose.

Oh, right! It's a matter of thickness. I thought we'd got that clear?

Thickness and rubber-balls?

Tiny rubber balls, small enough to go up your nose.

Not to mention being big enough to get stuck. Have you tried sneezing?

I tried blocking up one nostril and blowing hard. No good.

You did block up th....

Of course I did, I'm not a total idiot.

Never doubted you! - He was lying of course.

Look, I'm trying to tell you. It was my patent eight quid book-prop that did it.

Book-prop? A sort of holder, a Look-No-Hands, sort of thing?

Exactly. Trouble is, even at eight quid, it can't cope with thick books.

I know just how it feels!

You lean the book back on this sort of plastic lectern, with a pair of hinged wire things on the front. You hold back the pages with the wire things.

I see. These wire bits, got some sort of springs, have they?

Yes, that's the trouble. Rather weak ones.

Ah, he exclaimed, I get it now. Drives you so mad, you just have to stick little balls up your nose.

No, No, No!

I shook my head. Felt something move in my nasal cavity and panicked. Through the tears, the woman's face loomed in front of mine. She offered me her asthma spray. The man brushed her away, patted me on the shoulder, offered kind words.

OK, calm down. Keep snorting like that and the doctor will lose a job.

Or a patient, said the woman, taking a precautionary puff from her inhaler.

My breathing returned to half-sided normality, with the ball still firmly lodged.

Nasty things balls, chuckled the woman, bending double in her attempt to look up my nose, Are you sure I can't get you something, luv? Glass of water, corkscrew?

Have you been listening? I gasped.

We all have! came the chorus. I glared at the jumbled faces, they stared back.

The ball seemed to be growing, filling my head, the floor opening to swallow me. However, I was confident that the ball would save me, by then my nose felt so swollen that it would never pass though any normal hole in the floor.

Well then? Finish the story! - It was the bloke.

Err....

Get on with it! - That was the woman.

The d-damn pages wouldn't stay open, I stuttered, The wire bits were useless. Every time I tried, the book flapped shut and fell on the floor. I had to hold it on the stand.

So?

Makes your arms tired.

You might as well have chucked it, then, this book-prop thing. Written orf the eight quid and gone back on manual, like the rest of us.

I was going to, then I had an idea. Bulldog clips.

Bulldog clips, on the wire thing you mean?

On the pages, either side.

Sounds good.

Didn't work. The book spine was too stiff. Might have been OK if it had been hard-bound, but this was a paperback. Even with the clips in place, I still had to hold it.

There you are then! Wot I said before, chuck it!

I wasn't going to be beaten, not with eight quid at stake. I experimented, discovered you could trap the wire prongs in the bulldog clips as well as the pages. Magic!

Still no balls! said the woman.

It's all balls! said the man.

Just one I'm afraid, said I, pointing up my nostril.

So where did it come from?

Off the end of the wire bit. The book-spine was so strong it flipped them both off, one from each prong. The right one whanged over my shoulder and judging by the splash, depth-charged the goldfish. The other one…. - I hesitated, expecting mirth.

But no! Most of them were nodding sagely, murmuring in sympathy.

Then, from behind the counter, a choking sound caught our attention. As we turned to look, it broke into a terrifying squeal. The dragon-like receptionist was not, as first I thought, dying in the throes of sudden agony, but had erupted into sudden life and laughter.

W-with the things I hee-hee-hear, in hee-hee-here.... I've bee-bee-been wanting to explode for yee-yee-years.

It took her several minutes and half a box of pink tissues to muffle the hysteria. The patients remained seated, too shocked by the unexpected transformation to think of offering assistance. Soon everyone was talking at once.

No longer the centre of attention, I sat back calmly and waited. At last, fighting its way through the hubbub, came the long awaited buzz. Over the surgery door, the red light flipped to green. The intercom behind the counter asked what on earth was going on.

The receptionist, shedding most of her dignity and many of her apparent years, waved girlishly in my direction, stood up and, leaning though her window, scattered crumpled tissues, like rose petals along my path.

Doctor'll s-see-see you now, she giggled.

— • —

INDEX

Comments

Origami Seagull

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 11:35:49 +0100

It was November 1952, tomorrow would be Guy Fawkes Day. The box of fireworks was safely stored in the bottom of the airing-cupboard, away from the damp that pervaded the old house with its coal-fires and draughty door-frames. In the triangle of neglected kitchen-garden behind the back-lane garage, a pyramid of brushwood stood tall, awaiting only a priming of crumpled newspaper and the pyromaniac match. At the dark end of the afternoon, school had been out for half an hour and most of the children, like Rob, were already home. He should have been excited, rushing around with a torch, making final preparations, finding one more forkful of garden rubbish to thatch the bonfire, collecting long-necked squash bottles to launch the rockets and from somewhere in the attic, unearthing that old camping-stove to kindle the reluctant sparklers. But since returning home from school, the ten-year-old had not been well. His mother took one look at his flushed face, noted his listless collapse onto the old sofa in the alcove at the back of the breakfast-room, worried at the lack of clamouring hunger, then felt his forehead and sent him straight to bed. At five o'clock she went upstairs to check on him, carrying a tray with milk, biscuits and a saved copy of the Eagle, usually issued several days late as an incentive to be good. Rob wasn't interested, the bedclothes were scrambled, he could hardly speak. The room felt as if a three-bar electric-fire had been left on for hours. She checked his temperature - a hundred and two - then called the doctor.

The doctor got there after evening surgery and examined Rob thoroughly, listening carefully to his complaints of strange flutterings in the stomach and pains in his arms and legs, then dispensed penicillin directly from his black-bag - something they did in those days - and promised to return in the morning. Eventually the fretful and feverish night was over. The doctor repeated his examination, took samples and went away. For Rob, the day was a waking nightmare of burning fever, but, towards the end of the afternoon, his temperature dropped a little nearer normal and he rallied enough to show his disappointment at having to miss the fire-works. It is difficult to refuse a poorly child, especially when a little effort makes a satisfactory compromise. His parents decided that a limited Guy Fawkes celebration could be held. The bonfire, so far from the house, was out of the question, but there was space on the terrace outside the French-window, to let-off the smaller fireworks. Rob was carried downstairs wrapped in an eiderdown, then ensconced on the big old sofa and turned to face the window.

Vesuvius, represented by several different sizes of gunpowdery cardboard cones erupted in unnatural ruby-reds, traffic-light-greens and magnesium-whites. Roman candles produced either one more, or one less, soaring ball of light, than advertised on the packet. Crackerjacks jumped unnervingly at mother's skirts, Catherine's sparkling spirals whirred on the fence-post and impatient rockets tried to whoosh-off father's hat. Rob forgot his fever and watched the bright-eyed magic, but before the final rocket had flown over the oak-trees, he had fallen asleep. Later, when he awoke, he was back in his room. The doctor was standing by the bed, mother beside him, looking pale and worried. Father again wrapped him in the eiderdown and carried him downstairs to where an ambulance was waiting. The ride to hospital was strangely dreamlike. The vehicle swayed, Rob's mind seeming to catch up with each movement in time for its dizzying reversal. He didn't know who was with him, but there were comforting voices and a hand in his or on his brow. Then, when they stopped, there was a sudden burst of frosty air, jolting trolley-wheels and a sharp instruction to Hold the door. Bright light beat at his eyelids, turning the world a glowing red. Hands pushed under him and lifted him onto a bed. Then he was alone, the brightness gone, leaving a strange yellow twilight glowing above him He tried to move but found himself too weak. The effort brought back the fever and his mind floated deliriously free in a maze of lingering, fire-ball after-images.

They didn't let him rest. In the early hours, light blazed again, just one bright white fire-ball, hovering above his bed. He opened his eyes, but couldn't stand the dazzle. His momentary glimpse of white masks and coats would have been terrifying, had he been conscious enough to care. They pulled at him, pushed him from side to side, forced him to sit up and held him there, hit him on the knees and elbows, drew patterns on his stomach with sharp sticks, then did the same to the soles of his feet. They muttered and grunted among themselves, ignored his moans of protest and eventually, like demons of the light-bulb, left him shuddering in the dark.

For four days his only waking moments were when roused, either by the frightening white demons, or by a routine succession of nurses who helped him to drink or encouraged him to urinate. In Rob's mind, a universe of stars, the deeps of the ocean, billowings of sun-stitched clouds and the groaning depths below the mountains of the Earth, held sway. He soared high, tunnelled low, exploded with the galaxies or crushed himself to nothing under seeming tons of bedclothes. Reality was reversed, it was his waking moments that were nightmare.

On the fifth day, as night paled to dawn, he awoke. The bright stars of his delirium had become screaming seagulls wheeling against the grey sky beyond the window. For the first time he was able to see the detail of the strange room and the alien territories beyond his bed, the erstwhile domain of the light-bulb demons and land of starch encrusted nurses.

He lay, curled-up on his side, facing the glooming sky where bits of it had become trapped between the slender bars of the tall sash. Below the high sill, the space was filled with the massive cream-painted arcades of a cast-iron temple that radiated warmth into the sharpness of the air. Above it, the glazing-bars swam in the rising current, exaggerating the movements of banshee gulls as they skirmished, shrieking past the window, diving out of sight, then reappearing with loaded beaks and rising amidst battles for possession. To the left of the radiator, a huge rectangular china sink, with curious long-tailed taps, separated it from the door. A heavy, green-painted affair, with panels in the lower third and nine grey-sky-and-seagull-framing panes above. Whatever the birds were fighting over must be just beyond it. Sudden silence heralded its opening; a harsh grey woman, like a fragment of that November sky, hauled down and stuffed into a tight, dark-blue uniform, bustled into the room. It's your breakfast, they're eating! she announced, You should have been awake when we offered it to you. Rob, to whom these were the first words he had been consciously able to understand since the ambulance man had asked for the door to be held open, was frightened; he burst into tears. The ward-sister called for a nurse to, Sort him out!

The nurse, a wide-faced girl with fair hair and a pale-blue uniform, came in and sat down beside the bed. There was warm tea in a spouted feeder; she applied it with a smile. 'Can you manage to hold the cup?' she asked. Rob thought he could, that is until he tried and suddenly realised something was seriously wrong. His left arm would hardly move and there was no way his head would rise above the pillow. He struggled, trying to pull his right arm out from under him, but seeing his distress, the nurse relented and continued to help him drink. As soon as the routine was over and the nurse had left, Rob wanted to return to the warm, wonderful dreamland of his recent delirium, but his retreat had been cut off by the end of the fever, all he had now was the pain of discovery to fill his head and the sharp cries of the gulls for company.

By mid-morning, after another visit from the nurse, this time with the spout delivering orange squash, the door opened and a tall man strode in and stood by the bed. Rob, fortunately not recognising him as the leader of the light-bulb demons, looked up from the pillow in silence.
Hello, young fella, said the demon-in-disguise, the words more friendly than the tone of voice, I thought you'd like to know you're suffering from Heine-Maiden Disease, named after the doctors who discovered it. - for Rob, this was just another layer of confusion, another flock of feathers falling through the pillow of his mind. Whatever reaction the doctor had expected, Rob failed to give it. You might have heard it called Polio, poliomyelitis, that is. The man paused - the child still had nothing to say - and continued, I expect your parents will explain. Now all you've got to do is rest and recover - Rob got that bit, he managed a wan smile. Is there anything you'd like to ask? concluded the doctor, hovering a moment before hurrying out.

Ask? Well, no doubt there would have been, had Rob understood what had actually happened to him, there was the problem with his left arm for a start, and why couldn't he sit up. He was an intelligent, technically-minded sort of kid, nobody who had seen his Meccano set in action would dispute that. What he should have been told, was that polio effects the nervous system; that parts of the body work a bit like model cranes. That the bones are moved about their hinge-points by strings of muscle. If there is nothing to tell the strings to move, then nothing works. Polio attacks the cells that give the muscle-strings instructions; that was what had happened to Rob's arm and much of the nerve-structure down his left-hand side. Muscles which do no work, fade away and leave bones unsupported, so they become unbalanced and grow awry. Nobody told Rob any of that, in fact, apart from the junk about Heine and Maiden, nobody had told him anything, not even where he was. He thought it was probably a hospital; but the isolation ward looked more like a prison than a hospital.

The room, a cell about twelve feet cube, was divided on its two inner sides from other similar cells by five-foot of solid partition; the space above filled with glass. The only access was that outside-door, the one besieged by seagulls. Light came in through the tall window or from the single central light with its dazzling white-enamelled shade, or when he was alone, as a distant yellow glow from the glass-walled nurse's room, filtered through the intervening cells. Apart from occasional items, such as the door and the waste-bin, where the pre-war grass-green paint had been retained, almost everything was painted glossy-cream. Glossy that is, where it had been washed, the lower halves of the two solid walls were clean, but above that they were smutty, cobwebbed and discoloured. The junction between cleanliness and microbe laden squalor was wavy, graded and banded according to the changing stature of subsequent generations of cleaners. Apparently, the hospital's policy had been either to employ smaller and smaller people or supply them with lower and lower chairs to stand on.

With nothing better to do - he was alone and locked to his pillow by the debilitating illness - Rob observed his surroundings. Four walls, ceiling, red quarry-tiled floor, those portals to an outside world dominated by seagulls, a locker, the radiator, sink, two chairs and his bed, there was nothing else. Curiously, the bed, despite being closest, was the last thing he examined. It felt large, but that was because he was curled-up small. It was hard; under the mattress his hand discovered a platform of boards, not an inner-sprung divan, like at home. The ends were silver-painted metal tubes, a mixture of builder's scaffold and tiger cage. At each corner were sturdy posts carrying an overhead frame. Then he noticed something new, almost out of sight, hanging behind the grillwork of the bed-head. It was a set of headphones. He struggled a few inches across the acres of his pillow to get a view between the bars. It was a headset just like the ones in every black'n'white war film he'd ever seen. Beside it, in the centre of a metal plate, was a rotating switch, with Off at the top and four numbered positions. Here, at last, was a worthwhile target for investigation, he began to uncurl, take stock of his position.

Until then, the pillow had been his life-raft, something to cling to, as if he was slowly drowning in a rumpled sea of hospital sheets. The nurse was constantly complaining that whenever she came to tidy him up, all she could find was a heap marooned against the foot of the bed. In fact, it was from that position that Rob began to plan his campaign, and from there too, the bed-head was a far shore indeed. He scouted the distant coastline through a telescope of hollowed hand. The shore was defended by the breakwater of the bed-frame. Would that be help or hindrance? Behind the defences, a sheer and shiny, gloss-paint cliff loomed high, topped by the rolling landscape of part-washed grey hills supporting a filthy, smut-stained sky. Here, unlike the real sky outside the window, he must imagine the seagulls and the gathering tempest he needed to complete his plan. The mind-storm broke, calling up the breakers that helped him during the exhausting swim from the foot to the head of the bed. The final effort, pulling himself one-handed as high as he could onto the life-raft pillow, nearly sunk him, but at last, he had a hand against the cliff-wall. He walked his fingers up towards the knob, grasped and hung on, then clicked it one notch to the right. Suddenly his imagined seagulls had gained a scratchy, twittering voice, but they were too high and far away for him to hear the song. He subsided, satisfied and floated with the linen tide, as waves of crumpled sheets washed him back to his haven at the foot of the bed.

When Sister came in with her favourite question about the opening of bowels, she was annoyed that someone had left the earphones switched on; she turned them off, fussed with the loop of trailing flex and centred the headband on its bracket. There will be visitors, soon, she said, following that with her second favourite sentence, Sort him out will you Nurse. Visitors? Who could it be, he had asked for his mother, but had been told this was an isolation ward and epidemics must be contained. But, wonderfully, it was his mother. She had to stand by the door, not allowed to hug him; so she'd brought cheerful words, pencils, paper, heaps of comics and a jar of peanut-butter. When, too soon, Sister whisked her away, he read the comics. All his favourites were there: Beano, Dandy, Lion, Eagle, Film-Fun and Practical Mechanics.

The drawing-paper he folded into a seagull, an origami recipe he was delighted to find in the Lion. Now all he needed was some way to fix it in the smutty sky above his bed-head. Nurse, helpfully, stuck it to the overhead frame with shiny pink sticking-plaster; it wasn't what he wanted, but it would have to do. Later, Sister declared it both a collector of germs and an affront to tidiness, she ripped it down and dumped it in the bin. He was angry and showed it. She took away his comics, refused to switch-on the light and left. The shadowy frame above his bed threatened like prison bars. The gulls had already returned to the sea, leaving only a splatter of sleet and the mournful howl of winter's wind to rattle the sash. He lay there sobbing, his comic lifeline from the outside world torn away. Once more, he was alone, adrift in the frighteningly alien world of the mind. Outside the sky darkened into night. The distant yellow light came on in the nurse's office Nobody came near him and eventually he fell asleep. Almost at once, the origami seagull stirred and rose, whole and haloed white, from the grave-like hollow of the waste-bin. Rob watched as it circled amid the scarlet whorls of his unforgiving anger, trapped in the shadows of the room. The pale reflection of the gloss-paint cliff attracted it to the bed-head and there it roosted, to await its fellows.

Morning arrived, and with it, nurse and warm tea, bedpan, marmalade and toast - no sign of his peanut-butter. He left the crusts, but Sister caught him before the nurse had time to give them to the birds. She made him eat them, standing there, hip-handed to ensure obedience. The origami seagull watched from the top of the bed-frame, unseen by all but Rob. When Sister went to leave, it flew, beating strong, wide, wild, white-paper wings, then passed straight through the tall sash-window to rally a feathered squall of gulls from the high grey clouds of dawn. As the door shut behind Sister, he watched the ravenous seagulls dive past the window, knowing they would be dining well. Soon, screams and cries confirmed it. After that, he felt a little stronger, more able to make the journey to the bed-head, and solve the mystery of the headphones in time for Christmas.

— • —

INDEX

Comments

G-G-G-Granville - Listen to This

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 06:48:48 +0200

When I woke up in the middle of the night with this verse in my head, my first thought was that it would have been ideal material for Ronnie Barker in the character of Arkwright from the TV series Open All Hours.

B'Ber Burr Burr!
(Or the Berber Barbers of the Barbary Coast)

Now the Berbers of old
By their barbers were told
To grow beards was the right thing to do
Soon the Berbers they found
Their chins on the ground
From the weight of the beards that they grew

Said the Berbers of old
To their barbers so bold
We grew beards that are heavy as lead
But with chins on the ground
Burr burr went the sound
And nobody heard what they said

Then the barbers of old
Stole the Berbers' bright gold
And their treasure was rapidly spent
Leaving naught to be found
On the Barbary ground
But the Berbers all bad'ely bent

There's no more to unfold
Now the tale's been told
Of the Berbers, their barbers and treasure
But the burr burring sound
For which it's renowned
Is something to savour with pleasure

— • —

INDEX

Comments

Mourning Star

Sun, 29 Jul 2007 12:56:27 +0200

The darkness was complete. Seeing was a non-sense, a black velvet hole full of nothing. In the air a tang, a smart of coal-smoke with no breeze to clear it. My hands stretch in front of me, feeling only the warm graphite of the summer night. My ears stretch too, hearing nothing beyond the sound of black breaths drawn and the thrum of blood in the arteries of the neck.

If it hadn't been for the coal-smoke, I wouldn't have known the train had passed. I felt with my toe but the ground was clear of rail or sleepers. The line was not far, I knew that. It was somewhere within a few paces of the beginning. And yes it was a beginning, a mature birth, a springing alive and adult into a strange black world where there was no light, perhaps never had been. I did remember light and trains and coal-smoke, the war that had put so much urgency into every youthful courtship and hung black curtains at every window. I have knowledge aplenty, but no remembrance.

At this moment, the full span of my memories is a record of the few past minutes. First on the list: a spinal jar, the jar you get from your heel when straight legged you drop down an unexpected step; then more steps, but I was ready for them, after that nothing but the night, if this darkness was the night. I suppose, thinking back, the steps must have led me down from the platform. I'm guessing, but railway-lines seem likely to have halts and, assuming I'm still in a country I know, even the most rural halts have platforms.

You'd think it was a shock, suddenly finding yourself alone in the dark. It would be with memories, proper memories, personal ones, emotional ones. Without them it’s merely curious. How strange to be me, here I am, but where is here? The ground is under my feet. It is flat and smooth, like a tarmac road. I bend to touch it and it feels like a road. My fingertips smell of tar and rubber, so yes, I reckon it is a road. I know about trains, that they run on rails, that the rails have sleepers and coarse ballast between them, and - I remember doing it - bits of coal for the kids to collect. When I touch the sleepers my fingers will smell of creosote. When I touch the rails my fingers will taste of iron.

The railway crosses the road, at least it did when I was a child. On the railway, run the trains. I remember; there will be only one train tonight. The smell of coal-smoke means it's passed and gone, along with my memories. If trains run on lines, what runs on roads? That I don't remember.

I am walking, but I haven't found the edge of the road. What will it be like when I do? Will there be kerbstones? Am I in town? The sounds, of which I am the only present source, suggest not. There should be sounds in the countryside, and more in the town, but there are none here.

I change direction. The edge of the road must be attainable. In two directions there will be no edge to the road, only the far distant ends, that's logical. Every other direction must eventually reach the verge - a new scent has slipped in under the coal-smoke, a green smell, a smell of greenery. I am confident now, that when I reach it, it will be a verge. The tarmac begins to roughen, fall away, the green-smell gets stronger, as if it's preparing me for the discovery.

I can no longer discern the coal-smoke, it has become a memory. The warm darkness has gained a dry dustiness, the air a scent of hawthorn. The underlying green-smell is overpowering; the verge has been mown. I am elated. I have achieved the first target of my brief new life. Again I touch the ground. Yes, the verge is mown, I mowed the verge. Is that just speculation or a memory from my other life, the one that had light in it. No, I'm sure it was me that mowed the verge. I s'pose that makes me a verger. Now there's another milestone; I've cracked a little joke.

I'm cheering up, now. In a few moments my life record will be so long and complicated, I shall probably start forgetting things. If there was any light I could write them down. That would be nice, both having light and writing things down.

I do have pencil and paper. I can feel them in my pockets. A stub of pencil in my shirt pocket and crumpled paper in my trousers. I stumble. It's a mistake to walk in the dark without holding your hands out in front. You might run into things. Of course it wouldn't have saved me the stumble. That was my old friend, the verge.

Ambition strikes. I shall find the other verge. I even have a reason. It would be nice to know if I'd mown that one as well.

I can guess where it is, I have some wits about me. With my left foot I kick out at the familiar verge. There it is, just where I expected it. I turn my back on it, kick back with my heels a couple of times, to make sure it is directly behind me, then I stride confidently forward.

Eight good paces brings me to a new experience. It was a good job I had my hands out in front. This verge is vertical, rough and regular. It is made up of grooves and rectangles. I taste my fingertips. They are gritty.

A wall, that's what it is, a brick wall. Well I didn't mow that, and that's for sure. Things to remember are coming thick and fast. Perhaps I can write them down, even in the dark. I get out the paper. It is crumpled, but strangely crisp between the crumples. I am beginning to think it isn't just paper, anyway it smells. It smells of...? Yes money. I have money, that's reassuring. Could I buy some light with the money? That would be good, but who do you buy light from?

The train, the one that took my memories, must also have taken the light. I'm sorting this out rather well, I think. There's only one thing left to do, find the railway. Two choices, along the road or back along the road, unless it's behind the wall. I am undecided. Choices can be made by tossing money in the air. I do so. Nothing happens, except I no longer have any money. In disgust I throw away the pencil as well.

Ting, there is a sound, and it's not part of me or mine.

Which way did the pencil go? I am facing along the road, I know that because, even though I can't see it, I can sense the nearness of the wall on my right. The pencil must have landed somewhere in front of me. I set off. Ting means metal. Metal means railway lines. I speed up, hands out in front of me.

Ting means metal, so does Ouch! Ouch means a road-sign. It has to be a road-sign, lamp-posts provide light, and there's none of that around here.

My arms of course, went either side. I clasp it. Taste the metal running down my lip. Liquid road-signs? Not the way I remember them. Then I realise why I'm in pain. That's not metal, it's blood. Now I'm glad I threw away the paper and pencil; this is something I don't want to write down for remembrance. A broken lip is not a railway.

A new concept creeps into my mind. I've had Confusion. I've had Ambition. I've had Literary Leanings and I've even had Pain. The new one's Doubt. Do I really need to find the railway. I know the train's gone. I'm too late to catch it, if that's what I wanted, in that other life of mine.

Red! That was it, the last light was red. It was the light that the train took away from me. A victory; I have stolen back a memory from those that the train took away.

It wasn't much, that little red light. How should such a light illuminate the world? Were my other memories as insignificant? I think not. After all, it took a whole train to carry them away.

Coal-smoke! Away from the verge, it still lingers in the air. It is the only leavening to the graphite night, without it you would be able to grab the heavy night in handfuls and chuck it about. What sound, I wonder, does darkness make when it hits a railway line? Ting? I don't think so. Ting means metal, metal means road-signs, but what do road-signs mean. Sharp Bend, Junction, Beware of road-signs in the dark? Maybe this one warns of thieving trains.

I continue hopefully. This time my hands are fingers-spread and close together. The next object gets me in the stomach. And what's more it smells. I have discovered garbage and the rolling rattling container in which it festers.

It must be Tuesday, says some distant part of my brain. A peculiar thought, but it must mean something. Perhaps that's what the road-sign says, Welcome to Tuesday or Tuesday welcomes careful vergers. At least I know where I am. Strange place Tuesday, a place with no light and no sound.

No sound. No I'm wrong, there are sounds. Buzzings and chirpings, very tiny, very distant. The opposite verge is calling to me, I go. Grass, new mown, is better than brick-walls, bloody road-signs and garbage underfoot.

Halfway across the road, I stare down. There is a glimmer of paleness. A long narrow rectangle of something other than total blackness. Dawn is rising, but why should it do so through the road? Above me another glimmer, pale and broad. It is the sky. I am amazed that it's not red, and then I'm not. The train stole all the red light. Suddenly, I'm back in my old world. There are the railway lines, two thin silver reflections. But beyond that there's something else, a bright spark, something to focus my mind. It lies on the ground between the rails; can it be the pencil? Never! Pencils rarely sparkle.

I run to the railway crossing. Now I remember, I am billeted with the crossing keeper, I mow his verges, put out his garbage, help with the gates when his back is bad. By the crossing is the country halt. I run towards it.

There, at the top of five grey-brick steps is the platform, scene of passion, of farewell. I mount the steps, two at a time, and look down into a chasm of despair. Between the rails, a diamond ring winks back at the dawn. A grounded star, coruscating, orbiting my mind. It is sad and lost, this tiny, fallen star. I stoop, take hold of the platform’s edge and drop onto the track. Among the ballast and the jewelled jet of scattered coal, the ring lies cold and bright, mourning for what might have been.

I bend to pick it up, stare into its dazzling facets. The last veil of forgetfulness spins away from me. Now I know why the world fell out of my mind. It was not the light of the world or my memory that was stolen by the train, but a bright red-haired, hot-tempered, ring-throwing woman.

INDEX

Comments

The Forlorn Tree

Sat, 21 Jul 2007 17:42:43 +0200

I am a tree, broad and tall, standing forlorn in the wilderness. I am possessed with memories, but not possessor of those memories.

Unlike the creature of my memory, I see with my leaves: Above me, the sun, bright with fire. Here and there, clouds, bringers of rain, harbingers of storm. Around me, more trees, both large and small. Between them, the grass, protector of the soil, a blanket for the filaments of my foundation.

Unlike the creature of my memory, I feel with my roots: The soft community of sand-grains, who nonetheless support me with their strength. Between them, water, sweet, but with the bitter after-taste of minerals. Then hard buttresses, two massive shoulders of rock crushing in upon the vein of sand, themselves veined, in turn, with a web of my finest capillaries.

And there, between the bastions, is the creature of my memory, what remains of him, a curl of leather, coil of bronze and bundled bones. He, who was foster parent, nourishment and nursery for the acorn that I was.

Pan, Cernunuos, The Green Man? Perhaps, or any man seeking oneness with the Mother Earth. He is the creature of my memory. I know him well. How he withdrew from the community of others. Hard communities, unloving, followers of upstart gods, not soft and supportive like my friendly drift of sand.

I know how he sought the wilderness, this rare, forgotten wilderness, protected by the laws of nature, how he chose an acorn, me! And how he placed me on his tongue and burrowed in the sand. How he thought himself away from motion, from breath and eventually from life.

Now his memories possess me. I am a tree, but not just a tree, I am also the protector of his memory.

INDEX

Comments

A Muscle for Everything

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 10:07:54 +0200

Freddie and Keith were an item, I don't mean they were gay, they both had wives and families and the normal building-site male attitude to passing females. It's just that they were virtually inseparable, a condition which extended to their entire families. A boisterous dozen or so, of assorted size and sex, living an almost totally integrated life in a pair of large Council houses. Anthropologically speaking, it was as near to a cave-man culture as it was possible to get in the twentieth century.

As far as contact with the outside world was concerned, there were certain difficulties. For a start, they didn't believe in telephones, or maybe it was the telecoms that didn't believe in them. Neither could the post be relied upon and this was well before the days of texting and emails. I'd never known them answer a letter; a problem they blamed on the dog, who it seems devoured everything that came through the letterbox, except cheques, of course.

So, when I needed them for a job, I had to visit them at home. Sunday morning between eleven and twelve was a good time. The welcome was always friendly, the atmosphere cordial, but vaguely aloof. They were always About to go out, or Just come in, a statement belied by the inevitable half empty beer-glasses in hands.

On arrival, I would discover one house locked and apparently deserted, the other dancing to the tune of its own private earthquake. Wherever the noise was the loudest, there I would find Freddie and Keith, surrounded by sound-blasters, both electronic and human. The kids happily surfing the overwhelming breakers of sound, TV fighting with games machines and pop infested stereo.

I never did complete a count of their offspring, nor discover who belonged to whom. The same problem applied to their wives, grandmothers, grown-up daughters and divorcee aunts; one of whom would immediately appear, totally unbidden, with A cup of tea for the visitor.

Since the men and kids only ever used one house at a time, the females of the tribe must have used the other. I suspect that the whole thing was some sort of subtle matriarchy and that, far from the women taking refuge from the men, it was rather the other way round. Certainly numeracy and literacy, occasionally required for a written estimate, seemed to reside entirely on the distaff side.

As in all such primitive communities it was the prime breeding males, Keith and Freddie, who did the hunter-gathering. Mostly, they made a healthy living as subbies, being the skilled part of a rather useful two-and-one gang. Brick and block-laying was what they preferred, but if asked nicely, they would turn their hands to almost anything. I once successfully collected a debt by merely leaving them slumped bullishly in the back of my car outside the defaulter's elegant offices. It only took a six-pack, forty cigarettes and two man-hours at Sunday rate. I suppose it was the tattoos that did it, or maybe the accuracy with which they flicked their fag-ends into the Georgian portico.

I never knew much about their history, but from the odd remark or two, it seemed motorbikes and leather jackets had played a serious part in their upbringing. Despite which, I always found them cheerful, honest and trustworthy and their housefuls of assorted kids seemed to worship the very carpet they spilt their beer on.

The third member of the team was Arfur, that was what they called him and when he had to sign for deliveries, that's the way he spelled it, using it as both first or surname according to context. He wasn't included in the Item element of the little organisation and I never saw him at his bosses' homes.

On site, however, they couldn't have managed without him. His role was that of psychic mainstay: Fred would call for mortar and Arfur had it ready, perfect mix, right amount, right place and exactly on time. Keith suddenly needed a specific screwdriver, Arfur would be at his side, tool in hand, the consummate builder's mate. His instinct seemed infallible.

Sometimes I tried to catch him at it, work out how he did it. I'd find an excuse to hang around where I could keep an eye on all three of them. Arfur, for no obvious reason, would casually wander across the site, pick up what seemed like a random object, say a carpenter's offcut, then on his way back to where he, himself, was working, pass Freddie just as he discovered the need for something to wedge under a warped scaffold-board. These were not isolated incidents, they happened all the time and never ceased to delight and amaze me.

If the mind-melding had been between Keith and Freddie, with their mutually accommodating lifestyles, I could have accepted it, but Arfur was only the labourer and never part of that relationship. Even on the site, except when Arfur was doing his thing, there was always plenty of distance between him and them. It was almost a class distinction, the brickies enjoyed their oxtail soup and bacon sandwiches sitting in the car, the labourer took his herbal tea and vegetarian wholefood pasty in the hut where he kept the cement. Once, when a plasterer was baiting him about this diet, I'd overheard him say, Rule is: Never eat anything you haven't killed yourself. - for some reason the plasterer had taken this as some sort of threat.

There were other differences, the brickies, well-built, medium-height, with their decorated forearms and beginnings of a beer-gut were standard building-site, Arfur was not. Stocky, weather-beaten, not obviously over-muscled, but extraordinarily tough nevertheless. He had unnaturally long arms, much exaggerated by his lack of height. In action he generally wore a quiet smile, sometimes broadening to a grin as he did his special thing or displayed casual feats of strength.

I always thought of him as a countryman, the sort one might see in a woodcut, illustrating the ancient art of ploughing. He almost dressed the part, leather Coalman's Jacket with no sleeves. In good weather, worn over a well matted chest, otherwise over some sort of thick-knit grey turtle-neck. The ensemble completed with cotton cord trousers, patched with leather and, on his feet, what looked like army-boots. In really bad weather he added a grey woollen bobble-hat, a sure sign that the wind had veered to the north-east.

Small and square, almost cubic, this man was seriously strong. Perhaps being short-bodied gave him a mechanical advantage not enjoyed by normal people. I often saw him carrying two full-size concrete paving slabs, one under each arm and on one startling occasion watched in disbelief as he lifted a full barrow of cement onto a waist-height scaffold.

Freddie and Keith, a constant chatter of football, darts and snooker filling the air between them, never seemed to notice any of this. I was never sure if they realised the amazing value of their asset. And their asset he undoubtedly was. We sometimes chatted, Arfur and I, sharing a brew among the cement-bags. He was not particularly talkative and liked to answer most questions with another, or drop some obscure riddle into the conversation. On being asked about his uncanny skill, all he would ever say was, Reckon, I must have a muscle for everything.

One thing I had found out for sure, and that was that Arfur had been offered other jobs, with other builders, even in a circus, but always turned them down. If the connection between Keith and Freddie was tribal, Arfur's relationship with them was lifelong loyalty. Sooner or later, all such relationships, however unusual, tend to be put to the test; theirs was no exception. In fact, I suppose it was my fault.

On the day in question, everything started well enough. Apparently, first thing in the morning, Freddie and Keith had tipped the kids toys out of Good-dog and hitched him to their battered estate-car, a dark-red sixteen-hundred of indeterminate age and well on the second time round the clock. Good-dog was a large trailer, built on the reclaimed rear-axle of some pre-war limousine and originally designed to transport pigs. The nickname reflected the delightful balance and exemplary temper it displayed when running happily at heel.

The site where I needed them was several miles outside the city, at that time most of my jobs tended to be rather rural and this one was more so than usual. There was site-tidying to do and a sizeable heap of sand to transfer to the next site, a couple of villages away.

With time in hand, our brickies set off. Arfur, as usual was waiting at a convenient ring-road roundabout. I don't know how they arranged this, or even if they actually did. Perhaps they relied on Arfur's infallible instinct to be where he was needed.

When they arrived, I was already waiting at the site, checking a few final details, ticking stuff off the client's faults list. I don't know if Arfur had had a hand in it, but there was very little left to do. I set them to it. Keith took the proffered tool-bag from Arfur. Freddie took the list and I wandered over to the sand-heap.

Should fill the trailer nicely, said a soft voice at my elbow. I hadn't heard their approach, but there was Arfur hefting a large shovel and Good-dog, tailgate down, ready and waiting. I stood aside.

An hour later, everything was finished, the few remaining jobs, the loading of the sand and the addition of the necessary ticks to the checklist. I bade them farewell and got in my car, Freddie, Keith and Arfur into the laden estate. Good-dog was full to the gunwales and piled high between. They pulled off the site, I followed.

The trek down the lane was uneventful; we met no pea-viners, combine-harvesters or other stubborn monarchs of the byway. At the junction, we turned left onto the winding B road. Again the way was uncluttered by agricultural traffic. We passed the Saxon church, where the road twisted round three sides of the graveyard, then turned briefly uphill. Here the road was straight, but visibility was restricted by the brow of the hill. Beyond the crest, I knew the road dived down a long straight, bottomed out at the narrow hump-back bridge, then climbed the hill beyond.

Freddie was driving the estate, when I'd given him directions, he'd seemed to know the road. A knowledge proved by his slow breasting of the ridge, a wise precaution with a ton of sand on behind. I say a ton, but seeing it then, I reckoned there was nearer a ton and a half, which meant the trailer was seriously overloaded.

Such a load gave Good-dog an unaccustomed clout and as soon as they started down the hill, he started chucking his weight about. The trailer lights flared. Freddie's first reaction had been to apply the brakes. I followed suit. Good-dog started to snake; I dropped back. Freddie changed his mind, touched the accelerator and brought everything back in line. I sighed with relief, muttering to myself, Nice one Freddie!

Unfortunately, it wasn't nice enough. The taste of power had got to Good-dog, he wanted to do it again and there was still plenty of hill to play with. Freddie was forced to add more speed. He had taken the top of the rise at under twenty miles per hour, by a quarter of the way down they were up to forty. Two more bids for trailer freedom and they were approaching the bridge at nearer sixty. A hairy moment was in the offing, but at that stage it looked more thrilling than dangerous.

Stage two was rather different. On the other side of the bridge, a tractor pulled out of a farm gate and turned towards them. The bridge was wide enough for two cars driven carefully. It was not wide enough for a tractor and an overloaded estate-car with a run-away trailer. Freddie tried the brakes again, briefly, but there was no way out of the problem that way. A puff of blue exhaust suggested he'd either accelerated or attempted to change down.

Stage three promised tragedy and it promised it within seconds. The bridge loomed in front of them. I could see their front suspension dip as they hit the bridge approach. Then they were between the parapets and cresting the hump. The last I saw of them was the underside of the trailer as Freddie launched them into space with all six wheels off the ground.

I skidded to a halt and was halfway out of the car, in white-faced anticipation, expecting the most horrific impact. What actually happened was more shocking.

The tractor came sailing over the bridge, as if nothing had happened. The driver looked casual, unconcerned; I waved him down. Even if the estate had missed him, I didn't see how they could have avoided a crash and, if they had come to grief, I was going to need all the help I could get.

The tractor driver didn't want to stop. I ran alongside, yelling at him until he did. Then, when I'd caught my breath and asked about the estate-car, he said he'd no idea what I was talking about; adding that I was the only idiot he'd seen since breakfast.

Stunned, I ran to the bridge, stared into the blind-spot on the other side. The road was empty. There was no sign of the estate-car or the trailer. True there were tyre marks on the bridge approach, but beyond the apex, nothing, not a clue, not even a drift of spilled sand. Just a fine long view of vacant tarmac.

Perhaps they'd gone on ahead, although even at the speed they'd taken the bridge, I didn't see how they'd have had time to get out of sight. I told the farm-hand to wait, rushed back to my car and hammered up to the top of the next hill. More empty road, they really had disappeared. I called the police on my mobile.

Eventually, with the tractor-driver becoming abusive and the local constable beginning to wonder if I was the one who'd committed an offence, I gave up.

The rest of the day passed in a blur. I visited both sites, twice, and the bridge even more. I combed the surrounding fields, got lost in umpteen byways, contacted Freddie's wife on a neighbour's phone, but got an earful from Keith's, who was in a right state after an exceedingly confusing visit from the police. By night-fall there was still no news. I looked-up Arfur in the phone-book, but couldn't find him and also drew a blank with directory enquiries. By that time, it was dark and I was too baffled to think of anything else, so I returned home and worried myself to bed with a stiff whisky.

At dawn, the phone rang. I shot off the bed, still fully dressed and fumbled it onto the floor. When I'd picked it up, got the handset the right way round and gasped Hello? I discovered it was Arfur: Could I meet him at such and such roundabout, on the ring-road of course. I tried to ask him what had happened, but his money ran out.

I was there as soon as I could find the car-keys. Arfur flagged me down, he seemed to be on his own. As I pulled up, he knocked on the window, peering in with the widest grin I've ever seen. I leapt out, intending to demand a full explanation, shake him and yell, I thought you were all dead! but he looked so damned smug. Suddenly, I felt foolish. Somehow I'd been had, but how? What had I missed? All I dared say was, You look pleased with yourself.

I've never done that before! he smiled, Taken anyone home with me, I mean.

Home? I asked, Who? How do you mean?

Freddie and Keith, I took them home, the place where I live. I think you'd call it the Late Neolithic.

What? - my jaw hit my collar. This was a joke, unbelievable, but Arfur was not a joker. I was used to believing him. If what he was saying was true, there was only one explanation.

Time Travel? You t-travel in time? I stuttered.

Fraid so. If he grinned any wider, his face would fall in half. I looked at him, it had to be a joke.

So, where are they?

That's the trouble, I don't really control it, you see. It just happens, has done for years. At first I used to be terrified, then I met up with Freddie and Keith. You've seen how they live; I understood them at once. They appreciated me, helped me adapt. Suddenly, the time-jumps stopped being erratic, gave me a chance for a bit of learning. Finally they settled into a useful pattern and I've never looked back.

You've left them in the stone-age?

Well they did seem to fit in. - That was a joke, I could tell. It pointed up the truth of the rest of it.

They can't get back? To the present, I mean.

Oh no, that's not the problem. They're hiding over there in the bushes. - as I looked where he was pointing, a naked arm waved at me. Judging by the tattoo, it was Keith. Freddie was showing a suggestive leg - perhaps that relationship was not the way I thought, after all.

It was their clothes that were the problem, said Arfur, Cheap synthetic rubbish, nylon stitching, nothing to get a mental grip on. Couldn't shift the estate either.

Wait here! I instructed, leaping back in the car and heading for the nearest Oxfam.

Once some semblance of normality had been restored, I took Freddie aside.

You're just after my leg! he grinned.

Eh, no. Don't get me wrong, but Arfur, how does he do it? Time travelling, I mean.

Badly! laughed Freddie, Not like him at all.

No, seriously.

Seriously? I don't know. One minute we were shitting ourselves, playing space shuttles, the next we were up to our axles in a stinking stone-age swamp.

I looked up, Keith was calling, pointing behind the bushes. I went to see what he was on about.

What would you like us to do with this? he asked.

I gaped. It was Good-dog, still full of sand.

Don't ask! I muttered, glaring at Arfur.

Said I had a muscle for everything! he grinned.

Well, almost! said Freddie, wagging his chin in the air as he pulled at his Oxfam collar.

— • —

INDEX

Comments

Full and Final Circle

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 09:28:13 +0200

The girl-child had been found wandering, bewildered and alone in a tiny Corsican bay. With the war recently over, Europe was full of displaced children. One more stray was not particularly remarkable, nor was the nightmare confusion in the eleven-year-old's mind. No official questions were asked of the couple who offered her a home.

Slim, dark-haired, dark eyed Catulla, which according to the child was her only name, grew up among the rocks and sheep of her adoptive parents' small farm. Their early times together were difficult, the child had terrible visions of storms at sea and was often inconsolable. They gave her love and support as if she had been their own, reshaped her curiously archaic speech and sent her to the local school. Thankfully, as she grew and the traumas faded, her new life became full and satisfying. The nightmares changed to dreams, becoming a web of personal myths, their threads interweaving with the wonders of growing up in a modernising world. The only lasting damage was her constant fear of deep waters and the sea.

Catulla was intelligent and quick to learn. By the age of seventeen she had progressed as far as Corsica's schools could take her. Her love of ancient history, with which she had a most unusual empathy, took her to university on the mainland, where she studied archaeology and the evolution of ceramics. That was how the fates were able to close the first circle of her life. At the museum next to the university, among the treasures hidden from all but the most diligent researcher, she found a baked clay tablet. It had been discovered among the fragments of a Roman trading galley excavated in a cove on the north coast of Corsica. With a sudden jolt of excitement, she realised that this was the tiny bay where she had been found.

Her hands were unsteady as she examined the writing on the tablet. For her, one word stood out above all others. A most familiar name, the male version of her own. The message had been addressed to Catullus, a Decurion in the Isle of the Britons. Once her natural calm had returned, she began to wonder why the tablet had been found in the wreck of a home-bound trader. The excavating team had deduced its heading from evidence of a cargo of barley from Britain and grain laden ships were almost always on course for Ostia. The message tablet was broken, one corner was missing, but under the microscope it was obvious from the disposition of ferrite crystals that the fracture was ancient, probably made within months of the original firing.

A week later, she was again back in the archive, investigating a different strand in the argument of her thesis. This one led her into the racks holding a mass of smaller finds, some ceramic and some metallic. There she discovered the Bacchus. She would have passed it by, since the catalogue didn't mention pottery, however the site-code seemed familiar. Checking her notes she found it was the same as the tablet, another recovery from the Corsican wreck. The shock, as she opened the tattered cardboard box, was shattering. A chubby, charm-sized god of wine with nothing threatening about it. Nevertheless, it brought back the visions she had not had for years. The box had been on the bottom shelf, she had needed to kneel to open it. Now she was frozen in that position, in front of her the statue seemed to swell, filling her mind. She imagined herself surrounded by the bones of a ship, like a strange wooden temple. Then she found herself listening to the voice of a golden god:

Close to the dock the Romans had built a large pottery, announced the soothing tones of Bacchus, Grain, you understand, like wine, is best transported in huge terracotta crocks and it is sensible to make them as close to the harvesting as possible. The potters diversified by making votive statues of the Roman's gods. For the anxious seamen, visiting the wharf, they did lucky dolphins and beakers for local wine. This work was overseen by the Decurion Catullus, who lived in a nearby villa with his wife and young daughter.

The daughter liked to play in the sparkling brook, a tributary to the river, where it passed through the woodlands upstream from her home. There she would swim and catch the flitting minnows or doddering water-snails. There too she met the golden boy, as she thought of him when they were not together in their garden of paradise. He was younger than her by a year or two. A blond cherub of a child, the son of a local artisan. They played and swam, climbed trees and confused each other with their contrasting native speech. He taught her the guttural language of the Iceni. She gave him a smattering of formal Latin. They laughed at each other's mistakes and he came to love her like an elder sister. She mothered him instead of her elegant Roman dolls. He was amazed at her prowess in the water and called her his wonderful mermaid.

The childhood idyll lasted all the year, then a baked clay tablet came to her father's villa. Its purpose was both as passport and official proclamation. The seaman who delivered it was unable to read, but since every Roman knew the shape of Augustus' seal, he appreciated the importance of his mission. Its instructions were to pack rapidly and return, promotion was waiting and a commendation for his tireless work. The nervous messenger dropped the tablet as he was handing it over. It fell among the warlike scenes of the mosaic floor and finished up between the feet of the image of Mars. Such an omen was most worrying and much contrition was shown by the clumsy man during his later career in the clay-pits. Sacrifices of grain-cakes and wine were made at the temple. Then Catullus and his family prepared to depart. The adults celebrated the Decurion's promotion with bacchanalian libation, but little time was left for the mermaid to say farewell to the golden boy. There were tears among the minnows during their last lingering swim.

- Here the narrative seemed to stop and Catulla saw for herself, as if through the wrong end of a telescope: -

It is the next day. Her golden boy, unusually, is mooching through the pottery, disconsolately following his father as he goes about his tasks. In the rubbish heaps, among breakages and failures from the kiln, the boy finds two tiny broken terracotta statuettes. One is the goddess Minerva, but the poor girl has lost her legs. The other is the rear half of a dolphin. The boy, delighted with his finds, imagination flying ahead of him, races to the woodland pool in the bend of the stream. There in the folded roots of a waterside tree he builds a miniature shrine. A bower of curled down leafy shoots with a flat stone for its base. Carefully arranging the two pottery fragments he creates a mermaid goddess of his own and worships it in Latin.

- There the dream faded, slipping behind the soft narration of the god. Catulla shook her head in consternation, but still the voice continued: -

Far away, on the stormy sea and bound for Gaul, the Decurion's daughter searched among her mater's jewellery. There she found a tiny golden Bacchus, a souvenir from some temple shop. Her mother laughed indulgently and gave it to her. The mermaid carried it away and in a nook of the rolling galley's passenger space she made a little house to converse with the sweet memories of her precious golden boy. The journey was long, once beyond Gaul the fragile vessel hugged the Iberian coast as it beat against the grey seas of the Atlantic. Then at last they passed between the Pillars of Hercules and entered the gentler Mediterranean ...

- But that was as far along that narrative journey as Catulla could go. Whimpering in fear, she curled herself into a ball on the dusty archive floor. Beating it with her fist and crying, But it wasn't gentle, it wasn't gentle ...

They came running, the archivist and his assistant, lifted her tenderly and carried her to their little cubicle by the door. Her friends were called and took her home to the student hospice. For two days she remained locked in her room, sobbing and shaking. Then the crisis was over and in the following calm, she discovered the Bacchus still gripped in her hand, where like a living mould, the raw impression in her palm carried every tiny detail. She put it down and stared at it for a while, willing it to scare her so she could be sure her ordeal was over. It remained a chubby pendant charm, its smile fixed and unresponsive. She wrapped it in her best head-scarf, the one she never wore, then buried it in her shoulder-bag. In sudden clarity, her mind hovered on the edge of a solution to the mystery of her early life. Emotionally sealed doors were opening with tantalising glimpses of understanding. There were other doors still closed, presumably the golden Bacchus did not open those. She wondered if there were yet more discoveries to be made.

It was another, the most common influence of Bacchus, which prompted the breakthrough in her reasoning. She was drinking wine, alone among her friends, soulfully alone in the midst of bacchanalian din. Her hosts, like many givers of student parties, were short of glasses, so Catulla had been honoured with a fine pottery goblet, too good for that event. When later, suffering from its over-use, she let it fall, the disaster made her weep. The archaeology of parties, she grimaced to no-one in particular, as she struggled to pick up the pieces.

Suddenly she found herself sober and inspired. Sitting there, cross-legged under the table she knew what she must do. The key to her mystery was not in the destination of the Roman galley, nor at its final resting place. The Bacchus was merely a trigger, the broken tablet an incomplete clue; the truth must lie at the source of the wreck's golden cargo, among the ancient grain fields of Roman Britain. The following morning, she visited the archives and with no great difficulty, purloined the tablet, then returned to her room and packed.

Some research at the British Museum turned-up the three most likely sites. Ones, whose description best fitted her strangely personal recollections. Next day, she set off by train and bicycle, a primus stove for company and a ridge-tent for accommodation. Site one, approached in optimism, failed the test. Site two was also disappointing, then she came to Brampton, a hamlet by the Norfolk river Bure. She checked her copies of the records: In the Emperor Augustus' time the river would have been navigable. There was evidence of a Roman wharf, the remains of one hundred and forty contemporary pottery kilns, pits in the chalk for storing clay or more probably grain and most importantly the site of a villa.

As she approached along the winding country lane from the nearest station, her heartstrings said this place was hers. Turning off onto a piece of straight track, that could well have had Roman origins, she found the farmhouse and spoke to the owner. Yes she could camp, she was told, and yes, the villa was being excavated, despite having been under plough since before the first world war. It was the end of the long summer evening before she pitched her tent, set up the primus, made a simple supper and turned-in under a magnificent harvest moon. Her last thought before sleep was that the roundness of its disk represented the closing of a second circle in her life, just as the discovery of the tablet had closed the first.

The graduate students and volunteer spoon-wielders welcomed her at the dig; to them a beautiful young Italian who was also a trained archaeologist seemed like a gift from heaven. She asked for and was given a trowel, plastic bowl and a place in the trench. She didn't tell them how strange it felt to be digging in what might be her own home. There was an ache of anticipation in her loins, like an urgent desire for physical love, a tightness across the top of her lungs and tension in her fingers as she made the first shallow mark in the soil. Of course nothing happened quickly, the ploughing had scarred the surfaces, spread walls over floors, then churned them both together. Desperately needing to know where she was within the villa, she sought landmarks for her hidden memories, but none emerged. Then the student next to her found the seven marble cubes still in their original places. A fragment of tessellated floor, whose subject would be totally unrecognisable for anyone who had not seen the whole. Before she could stop herself Catulla exclaimed, Why, you've found the sword of Mars.

The others working in the trench turned to stare. The certainty in her voice was more startling than the excitement of the find. However can you know that? asked the finder, Might be anything, part of a fish, even foliage.

But Catulla knew. Her face burned, not as the others thought, from the embarrassment of blurting out an unscientific guess, but from the secret thrill of knowing. Three paces to her right was the spot the messenger had dropped the tablet. The certainty terrified her, but it was knowledge she must hide if she was to retain her credibility. Now she knew where she wanted to search. To get there she had to wheedle an exchange of places with one of the other diggers.

The disciplined pace of excavation became a chore. It took two careful days to find the wall, beyond which she expected to uncover a child's bed-chamber, but there she was stopped by the boundary of the trench. The lunch break gave her the opportunity to ask the dig-master for a divergence from the pre-planned phasing, but she got no more than a Maybe later.

It was a frustrated Catulla who returned to the excavation and prepared to continue the careful scraping. Then she saw the tiny triangular clod which in her absence seemed to have fallen into the trench. Since this might easily be another piece of the mosaic, she noted its position and the fact that it had been dislodged from a higher level, then picked it up. It wasn't a tessilla, it was the corner of a clay tablet. The world swam around her, could it be what she hoped? Her personal myth said it might be, but scientifically speaking that was just another pointless blurt. She wrapped it in the relevant page torn from her notepad and slipped it into her pocket. Now all she needed was her shoulder-bag from the site-hut and some privacy.

Excusing herself, she collected her things, wandered down-slope from the villa and took the fisherman's path beside the stream. Curiously the watercourse seemed less important than it should be, smaller, narrower and choked with reeds. The vision of a vigorous brook came to her, which despite her phobia for deep water, seemed friendly not fearsome. In the daydream the stream had a shingle bed, rather than silt and silver-sand, clear water teeming with fish, swirls and eddies digging away at every bend, making pools deep enough for swimming in.

Rounding the reality of a meandering modern bend she came to a broad marshy patch, surrounded by trees. Wondering how far she had come, she dug the OS map out of the pocket in the side of her bag. Curiously, the place was called Mermaid's Head and the stream itself was The Mermaid. Even in its clogged and overgrown state it seemed right for her private investigation of the new-found shard. She sat on the fallen trunk of a wind-blown elm and felt in her bag. The first thing that came to hand was the tiny Bacchus, who she propped in a crook of the fallen tree. Next she took out and unwrapped the tablet and its prospective corner. Before she could bring them together, the sound of rippling water called her attention to the stream. In her hands, the two parts of the tablet remained un-mated, yet suddenly she saw the pool as it must have been.

Haloed in the low warm light of an ancient sunset, a naked child stood sobbing on the far bank, a once familiar nine-year-old with golden hair, preparing to dive into the pool. As the intervening centuries fell away from her mind, she cried out, but he didn't seem to hear. Then she noticed the miniature shrine on the bank, with its tiny pottery mermaid.

The boy, treading water in the middle of the pool, began a chant; Latin words she understood despite the guttural accent. The chant spoke of sorrow, loss and news of death at sea. Then he called her name and cried out to his mermaid that he was coming to join her. As she watched, he stopped swimming, floated for a moment in front of the bowered shrine, then exhaled and sank, his hair like a broken sheaf of golden barley spreading among the ripples. What could she do, was this all imagined? A childhood insanity returned? Instinctively she jammed the two parts of the tablet firmly together, then, closing her eyes, crushed the phobia from her trembling body and dived into the water ...

On the grassy bank, the shoulder-bag with her passport and twentieth century impedimenta lay forgotten. A discarded head-scarf fluttered among the twigs. High above, in the crook of the tree, the Bacchus smiled. You could almost hear him murmuring, Full circle, Catulla, full and final circle.

— • —

INDEX

Comments

Termites' Tomorrow

Sun, 24 Jun 2007 13:07:14 +0200

[ This has always been one of my most popular Science Fiction Stories, when it has appeared in various small publications - I hope you enjoy it.]

— • —

TERMITES' TOMORROW

It all started when something unfathomable drew my attention to this innocuous card in an estate agent's window and, without thinking twice, I walked right into it, whatever it was:

Hillside Cottage
A secluded country residence of character, set in thirty hectares of mature woodland. Featuring an extensive dry basement with large external door, wide tarmac access ramp, new concrete flooring and generous headroom.

In a rich chocolate voice, she repeated the words on the card, quoting from memory, her expert fingers still flying through the particulars-rack. Ah yes! she continued, pouncing on the relevant tract:

Ref: 27034 - Cot-res-liv-din-kit-bth-4bed.
Offered with immediate vacant possession, under a special directive from the Ministry of Defence.
Reduced for quick sale.

Just what you're looking for, she finished, glancing up.

Our eyes met and, at once, I knew she was right. The beautiful Genevieve (according to her name badge) was well trained in the art of persuasion. But why did I feel like a rabbit in the headlights? After all, the property was displayed in the window. I'd almost decided to purchase before entering the property-shop; the culmination of a strange compulsion that had been dogging me for days. In fact, I could almost swear that this girl, this Genevieve, was the one who had visited the most vivid of my recent dreams.

Recovering from the impromptu reverie, I found the reality gazing up at me, expectantly. A flick or two of her lashes seemed to cover me in butterfly kisses. I imagined running my fingers through the silky chestnut curls of her long flowing hair.

I was hooked! Again she spoke of the cottage, her soft whisper reflecting the texture of her skin. Discarding years of hard-won business caution, I swam into those large brown eyes, murmuring, I'd love to see it, then basked, carefree, in the warm chocolate of her gaze. Her lashes applauded my decision. I sighed. Then, just as I was getting used to their delicate caress, she looked away. Suddenly I felt cold and alone.

Friday morning, ten-thirty? she enquired, urgently windowing her diary, Meet you there? her bright fingernails clicked on the keyboard, then hovered expectantly.

Yeah! I had a date - Er! Yes, that'll be fine, I stammered.

What was I thinking about? I was supposed to be buying a cottage with my illgottons, not playing emotional games with a professional cock-teaser, half my age. Nevertheless, when Friday came and I got there exactly on time, my cardiac condition was verging on dangerous. And it wasn't from climbing the hill.

This is Malcolm, she said, as I entered the hall, He's here to take any vital measurements you might need.

A chaperone, very wise. Not that Im any particular hazard to young ladies, however deep their brown eyes. I've got a tape, thanks, I grunted.

It had sprung into my hand, like a dueller's rapier. I drew a measured metre of slim silver blade to counter the few centimetres of chipped, yellow steel-tape, which Malcolm was cracking between his fingers. He rapidly retracted and re-holstered, rather sheepishly I thought. Round one to me? No, he was obeying a flash from those chocolate eyes.

With the pecking order properly established, Genevieve started the tour. The living area merged into the dinette, which in turn merged into the kitchen, then we were back in the hall. From there, she led the way upstairs; my fleeting fantasies and I followed the tight skirt. Behind me I thought I detected a snigger from Malcolm. The four bedrooms, with fitted wardrobes, were acceptable. The bathroom, complete with bidet, also included a luxurious outsize shower.

I grunted my approbation. She smiled. I glowed. Next we descended two flights, the normal one we had come up and the long, laborious one beneath that. After three more doglegs, we reached the featured basement. Yes, as advertised, it was dry, recently re-floored and, at one end, had a large external roller-door, easily big enough for an army lorry or even one of my refuse vehicles. In fact, the place looked as if a truck is what it had been designed to garage. Now I understood the length of the stairs. For a basement, it was certainly generous, but not what I would call extensive.

Is this all of it? I enquired.

Malcolm indulged in a second snigger, as if he thought me facetious. Genevieve bathed me in brown questions, but said nothing. I had the feeling she expected more of me.

Measure the floor thickness, Malcolm, she instructed.

He rattled open the roller-shutter and dropped down onto the tarmac drive, which as advertised, ramped up and away between tall concrete retaining walls. From his sudden loss of apparent height, I judged the recently added concrete floor to be almost half a metre thick. I thought it had been lucky for the former owners - hadn't the particulars mentioned the Defence Ministry? - that the door had been a type that could cope with such an alteration in floor level.

Genevieve's brown eyes were more quizzical than ever, what on earth did she want me to glean from this. You would need to alter the drive, add a concrete slope or something, if you intended to use this as a garage, she said.

Was this significant or was she just making sales conversation? Yet again, I found myself a hostage in her strangely hypnotic eyes. I'll take it, I said, somewhat to my own surprise.

She needed my solicitor's address. We shook hands and departed. I stopped on the road and looked back. The cottage huddled against the wooded hilltop, looking lonely, almost abandoned. I wanted to move in immediately, just to comfort it. A passing doubt dribbled into my head. Why should it hold such an attraction for me. It was miles from anywhere, nearly at the top of a hill and what would I do with that white elephant of a basement. Then I remembered Genevieve and the doubt dribbled out again, leaving a warm welter of chocolate fantasies.

I was stunned when the formalities only took a couple of weeks. The survey and searches came back virtually by return of post. Like a dream, the solicitors consistently agreed with each other. I almost felt cheated without the normal snags, delays and cock-ups to add a bit of drama to the purchase.

Then came moving-in day. On the way I caught up with a rattling pantechnicon grinding up the hill. As I overtook, I winced at the thought of what might be happening to my collection of antique china. Pulling up by the front door, I strolled in possessively. Somehow I'd been expecting Malcolm to be there for the hand-over, but it was Genevieve who welcomed me. We went into the kitchen to sign for the keys. The fitted fridge contained a beribboned bottle of champagne. She opened it, produced glasses and poured.

Your new cottage, was the toast, the sparkle in my glass echoed the sparkle in her eyes. Yet again, I couldn't help but dive straight in.

Where do you want this, this and this? nagged the removers dragging me ashore. I've never hated anyone so much in my life. From then on, for hours I was busy, arguing practical portering versus interior design. Why shouldn't I have all the heavy stuff upstairs? Miraculously, the china had survived. Then the lifters, grunters and complainers had gone.

Thinking myself alone at last, the proud monarch of my new domain, I staggered into the kitchen, a strong coffee was what I needed, but not what I got. Genevieve was still where I had left her, fresh champagne bubbling in the glasses.

You didn't know it, she cooed, kissing me on the cheek, But I come with house.

My brain reeled, I stood stock still in a chocolate silence. All I could say was, I hope the deal doesn't include Malcolm!

She smiled, Im afraid it does! He's in the basement with a hammer drill, but don't worry about him now. She put down her glass, stepped into my personal space and undid a couple of the pearl buttons decorating the cleavage of her soft silk blouse.

W-why me? I asked, taking half a step backwards into the angle of the work-top.

You bought the cottage, silly! And only you hold the keys.

But you already had the keys, I would have retreated further but she had me cornered.

Not those keys; I mean the ones to the future's problems. You're in rubbish, aren't you?

Waste Wranglers PLC, that's me. What's that got to do with it?

Termites thrive on certain sorts of rubbish. Malcolm's a termite.

Malcolm's a TERMITE? I repeated.

Well actually he was a termite, in the future.

In the FUTURE? I reeled again. What did she mean by was and the future?

I mean we come from the future. I'm a future man and Malcolm is a future termite.

You're a MAN? - Finishing every sentence in a shout was becoming a habit.

Please don't shout, said Genevieve. You're quite safe and it's all very simple.

A man! I groaned, chocolate dreams shattering like a cheap Easter-egg.

Well not really a man, not as such. - she sounded comforting - In the future there are no men, not men like you, that is. All humans are the same, they all look more or less like me. We dropped the wo bit when we gave up the womb.

I choked in disappointment, Well then, you won't need me, or anything I can offer,

She stroked my cheek. When I say we, I mean the human race, not me. I'm special. I've got everything you could ever want, including a very healthy desire to give it a test run. - she undid the rest of her buttons and continued.

You've got two things, no three, that the future needs: This cottage, rubbish and the lost gene. - her skirt slipped down to join the blouse on the floor - I'd like to collect some of the latter now, if you feel like it.

Her thumbs were inside the waistband of her panties, total exposure was imminent. My heart pounded as my eyes slid effortlessly over the exquisite peachiness of her body.

She had three navels. I fainted.

I woke in the bathroom. Somehow the place seemed full of cushions, then I realised my head was on her breast. We were sitting in the shower under a fine warm rain. She was naked and all I had left were my underpants.

There, there, she whispered, It's all right, moma's going to take care of you. She reached for my waistband. I struggled to my feet, desperately hanging on to my pants.

Im all wet! I complained.

You passed out. I had to bring you round.

If you needed water, there was plenty in the kitchen. Why bring me up here?

You were all sweaty from the moving and I thought this would be more fun than the kitchen.

She started soaping me down, whispering, I want that gene, but I want it clean.

Under such an assault, I had no choice but to remove my pants. She put her hands on my shoulders, I looked into her eyes, then at her lips, neck, breasts. I didn't dare look any lower; not after what I'd seen last time. Her nipples were chocolate too. I sighed, slid into her embrace and took charge of the soap. Which gene did you have in mind? I murmured.

Just give me all you've got, she whispered, moving in for the kill, I'll sort 'em out later.

Later, with my all delivered and graciously accepted, I got round to wondering where my rubbish and recycling business came in to it.

What about the rubbish? I asked as we dressed each other with an amusing assortment of unsuitable clothes from my upended suitcases.

We seem to be wearing it, she giggled, posing in front of the mirrored wardrobe. Now its time for Malcolm.

Hoping fervently that termites had no need of lost genes, I followed Genevieve's buoyant dance down and around the dogleg stairs. As we descended, we were deafened by the sound of serious hammer-drilling.

Once in the basement, it was obvious that Malcolm had an insatiable appetite for destroying concrete. The floor was littered with ragged drill holes. Here and there, the underlying original surface was showing through; it was checker-plate steel.

Haven't you found the hatch yet? asked Genevieve.

Sniggle sniggle, snot! grunted Malcolm, or at least, that's what it sounded like.

What are you looking for? I asked.

NATO HQ (Rutland) UK, she replied. Now abandoned and concreted over.

It's under here? I own it? was all I could manage.

Then - SNIG! The disguised termite had struck lucky. Malcolm, if that was his real name, threw down the drill and to my horror, stripped-off to reveal the almost humanoid evolution of the future Termite Race.

Looking like a sort of elongated, six legged Michelin Man in a rubber mask, he danced a little dance of triumph, then yanked off his face, the final vestige of human appearance. Flinging down the scrap of fleshy latex, he dived into his most recent excavation.

We rushed over and stared down at the rusty steel ladder disappearing into echoing darkness. Malcolm's multiple footsteps receded rapidly below us. The ladder clanged for several minutes, then fell silent. A distant engine clanked and roared. The shaft lights flared, apparently he'd found a generator. Again, the ladder clanged and rattled, Malcolm was on his way back to us.

The lift-shaft was the same size as the basement, except it looked at least a mile deep. After a few moments, the termite shot out of the hatch and started refilling all the abortive holes resulting from his search. My stomach was not pleased to note that he appeared to be using a masticated mixture of broken concrete and resinous spit. The sudden stench was appalling!

Genevieve watched him for a moment, her pert nose wrinkling, then turned to me and announced, We need wastepaper, garden rubbish, wood-pulp, old furniture and any other vegetable matter we can get our hands on. Everything that termites love to eat. This shaft, side galleries and empty missile silos must be filled. The future of the Races depends on it.

I don't understand, I complained. What races?

It's simple. I told you. The future's full of humans and termites, the two great Races. We love to think, plan and design. They love to work, manufacture and build.

You mean like old HG predicted? Eloi on the surface and Molocks under the ground? I said.

No, if the film version is to be believed, Mr Well's fictional future humans were uselessly pretty and his workers unpleasantly crass. Our two Races are flowers of civilisation and culture. The future world is like a global cathedral reaching out to the sky. Unfortunately, the termites are about to run out of food and raw materials, leaving it incomplete. To solve the problem, many of us have returned to this past to fill all the NATO bunkers with waste fibre, plastics, scrap metal and all the other things you are intent on dissipating as pollution. In our time, these bunkers are still sealed. When we know they will be full, we will return to that future and open them as treasuries of unbelievable wealth.

Where do I come in? I asked, watching her rummaging among the ex-Malcolm's clothes.

You've got the contacts, she said, handing me his mobile-phone, Waste Wranglers can get us the trash.

What about the lost gene? What will that mean for the future?

It uniquely survives in you, an accident of evolution. In my future our technologists will use it to fuse humans and termites in one glorious genetic unity.

I looked at Malcolm's pulsating pallid segments, then at Genevieve's delicious peach and chocolate loveliness. Somehow their mating, however impersonal, didn't seem right. Something snapped in my head.

I think I'd like my genes back, if you please! I growled, grabbing the drill.

— • —

INDEX

Comments

Dark Angel of Time

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 07:05:19 +0200

Uncertainly, she slowed the car and rummaged for a map. According to that and the scribbled notes, she was still going in the right direction, it just didn't feel like it. Then the car reached the gate and she was staring, in relief, at the sharply hidden turn, the entrance to a narrow overgrown track, bearing little resemblance to its image on the map.

She dropped the window and took stock. A mossy, unpainted wooden finger-post, almost invisible in the vigor of the hedgerow, read Church Only. So she was on course spacially, but what about temporally? She glanced down at her wristwatch, a tiny but elegant antique, her favourite, wonderfully reliable but totally unsuitable for workaday usage. She checked it against the clock on the dash, ancient and modern in agreement for once. So far so good.

With a couple of hours to go, the company's fat-cat celebrity would only just be sitting down for his free lunch. A smile crossed her lips, fat-cats might be predictable, but you never could tell with clocks. Collecting them, their histories and mysteries was her hobby. In fact, the possibility of uncovering such a riddle was just about the only thing that could have got her down this neglected country track. The scent of crushed greenery disturbed her, she closed the window and continued, jolting and swerving amongst the pot-holes.

After a while, probably not as long a time as it had seemed, the track took a final right-angle, revealing for the first time a view of the promised church. Rowan grunted in surprise, it was supposed to have been disused for years, but it certainly didn't look it. The churchyard had been mown and its surrounding wall maintained. Tall junipers, dotted among the tidy graves, were even then in the process of being clipped. The single jarring note in the whole idyllic scene was the brand-new, bright-blue cabinet of Booster Four, brutal and ugly in its shiny chain-link cage twenty metres beyond the east-end of the church.

The booster's domed top, sporting a punk hairstyle of outsize cooling fins, seemed to leer into the churchyard, giving Rowan the weird feeling that here was some robo-hooligan bent on mischief. She parked on the narrow verge by the wrought-iron gate and got out to hail the gardener, but she was too late. As soon as he'd spotted the car, the bare-chested young man had dropped his shears and dissappeared round the end of the chancel. Never mind, she would start by inspecting the booster station. Picking up her case, she crossed the churchyard and swung over the wall into the field.

It surprised her that the blue monstrosity had been sited so close to the ancient building, on the layout plan the gap had seemed much greater. With a grin, she noticed that she was not the only one to have remarked on the unpleasant contrast between booster and church. Somebody, she guessed it must have been the gardener, had been attempting to bury it in grass-clippings. Technically, she didn't suppose it would matter, so long as the radiant surfaces were clear. She thumbed the fact into her report text.

She prepped the four small foil covered test packs and hung them on the mesh. To set them going, all she had to do was be there at the right moment and pull the tabs. The next thing was to position the magnetometer about ten metres from the booster. She vaulted back into the churchyard, found a suitable site and pushed its support stake into the earth. There was a slight reading coming vaguely from the direction of the church, but as the iron railings round a nearby grave were the most likely source, she zeroed it out, waited for the readout to settle, then left it recording.

Continuing her walk north of the church, she came to another gate in the boundary wall. Beyond that, partly hidden among a forest of lilac and laburnum was a small vicarage. She opened the gate and approached the door, but before she could knock, it opened to reveal the gardener from the churchyard. Presumably he hadn't realised she was there, since, after one startled look, he started to close it again.

Hey! Hang on! she exclaimed, If you're Allen then I'm Rowan. I've come about your great uncle Henry's watch. She noticed, ruefully, that he was now wearing a rather loud check shirt.

What? he exclaimed, hesitating.

The watch, I've come about the watch.

I do beg your pardon! he said, going red in the face, It was the colour of your car. I thought you were from the bloody bright-blue power company.

That too. I'm afraid, she replied, noting, with a wry smile, the return of his previous irritation. But, don't worry, I'm not here to complain about the way somebody appears to be trying to convert the booster-station into a compost heap.

Rowan? Rowan Matabele? On eBay? Wanted, mysteries surrounding clocks and watches, that was it, wasn't it? I'd never have replied if I'd know it was one of the blue bastard's plots.

But it's not. It really isn't, insisted Rowan, That's just a coincidence.

Allen's hostility seemed to be wavering, perhaps the mystery of the watch was more important to him than his protest at an insensitive corporate colour choice. Either way he invited her in and was obviously about to put the kettle on when he noticed her looking at her watch. Of course, you must also be one of their so-called Safety Officers here for the switch-on. If the thing's safe why do you need to check? That's what I want to know.

European directive, that's why: All new power distribution technol...

Yeah, Yeah! I know all that. I also know you have to deliberately overload that sort of super-conductor to get it started. A thousand percent overload, I'm told.

But only for a split second. They've tested them to twice that. It's absolutely safe.

Twice the voltage or twice the time-span? asked Allen. That's when she realised he was no fool, despite being caught gardening in a disused churchyard.

I can't tell you that, it's confidential, she said.

Well then, why should I trust you with my great-uncle's family secrets.

Sorry! It was her turn to apologise. Can't we call a truce, say until switch-on time?

That gives us nearly an hour, confirmed Allen, simmering down as he returned to the kettle, Henry's watch is over there. He was waving at the table, where a scuffed leather pouch was lying between the uncleared breakfast plates.

She picked it up and drew out a well worn gold half-hunter. The hands were stopped at two o'clock.

That's odd, she said, It's showing the exact time when the power-line will come on. Is that some little deviousness of your own?

No, I haven't touched the setting. It's not even been wound up recently, he replied.

When she turned it over, there was an inscription, in copper-plate script it said:

Presented
to Reverend Henry Brown
on the occasion of his first service
at St. Anselm's Church,
May 3rd. 1873.

Very nice! said Rowan, gently stroking the words, But what's the mystery?

The Angel of Time, that's the mystery. That and the Missing Hours, You'll see them tallied in his diary.

That was also on the table, calf bound and almost as elegant as the watch. She picked it up, a frayed silk ribbon marked the place. Only another seven minutes missed today, my Angel has lost her appetite. The sum is now exactly three scores and five. She looked for earlier entries, there were a number of similar ones, showing how the account of missing hours had risen, tick by tick. Beyond the bookmark the diary was blank.

What happened? she asked, taking the proffered teacup.

He fell ill, with consumption, TB that is, and died along with over half the village. As you will have noticed, the place never recovered. Apart from some occasional campers, I'm the only inhabitant. If you look at the diary you will find that there are exactly sixty days between his entry about unblocking the door and the point where it goes blank. According to family rumour he died five days after that. Personally I think it's a rather tenuous connection, why hours for days and why not apply the number to some other period or event.

She turned back to the entry Allen had mentioned and read it. What does he mean by the Angel of Time and what door did he have to unblock?

For that we must visit the church, answered Allen, sipping his tea. We can do that later after you've had a chance to play at safety officers.

I'm sorry, but the data I take has to be back at the lab as quickly as possible.

Can't you just text it, or post it online?

Not possible. The safety checks are biological, sort of bacterial litmus papers. They start to decay as soon as they are exposed. All useful data is lost within two hours and the lab is fifteen miles away. I shall have to rush. She downed her tea, Let's go.

OK, but there's a lot more to tell.

They left the cottage and headed for the church. Allen opened the small north door of the chancel and they went in. What we've just done doesn't worry you? he asked.

You mean entering a church through a Devil's Door? Doesn't worry me, but it does make me curious. Surely somebody would have bricked it up yonks ago? But, of course! Now I understand, it's the one he had to unblock! But why?

You read it, For the Angel he says in the diary. Look, here. Allen was pointing at the end of the altar. And there she was, The Reverend Henry's Angel of Time, in bas-relief, a dark angel, carved out of the dull black stone. In her right hand she held an hourglass and in the other a hoe. She was gazing, longingly, directly at the reputed Devil's Door.

How beautiful, exclaimed Rowan, checking her watch - she would soon have to get out there and prime the tests - But what's an angel doing with a hoe and egg-timer?

Great Uncle Henry spent most of the last years of his life trying to answer that. It was he who started the tradition that only a Brown should maintain the churchyard. Probably did a lot of it himself, my father continued in his memory, now it's me. That was how he interpreted the hoe, you see. He reckoned that if she had been an Angel of Death she would have had a scythe, so he needed an alternative explanation. When he took up the living, the grounds were neglected and overgrown. Being a romantic, he fell in love with her forlorn image in the stone, so he did the hoeing for her.

And opened the doorway so she could see what he had done. That's so sad, he must have been very lonely. But where does the watch come in?

At first he couldn't explain the hourglass, except that it must be something to do with time. Then to regulate his service, he placed the watch on the back of the altar, where he could see it during mass. Within seconds, it had stopped, as frozen in time as its parallel in stone.

When the service was over he took it back to the Vicarage, where a slight shake restarted it. After that it was never reliable, especially when it came near the altar. He never corrected its setting, but wrote in his diary that She has taken from me a gift of time. How shall she feel if I recall it?

It became an obsession of his to keep track of the cumulative time that it lost. The total must have had some strong significance for him, but unfortunately for us, he never confided it to his diary. The family's interpretation came later. That's the mystery, an unreliable pocket-watch, an obsessed vicar and a stone angel. So what do you think?

Rowan was staring at the stone. I think we're in trouble, she announced, picking at it with a fingernail, Your little angel is carved out of magnetite. In fact I think the whole altar is one massive lodestone. Perfectly capable of stopping a watch by displacing the hairspring. Here she looked at her own watch. According to that, there was still plenty of time before switch-on, in fact, the same amount as there had been earlier. She held it to her ear and, yes, it had stopped.

What's the time? Quick! she yelled. Allen consulted his own wristwatch, it was still working because it was digital. In Washington it's.... But she didn't let him finish. Grabbing his arm and giving it a twist, she saw that the moment was almost upon them. There were only seconds to go. They couldn't stop it now.

Exactly where does the new power-line run? she asked, her voice full of urgency.

Right under the church, despite the Bishop's protests, he replied, They used a laser guided mole.

My God! she groaned, The one thing we had to avoid at all costs were large areas of geological magnetism. That's why they ran it through here, where there's plenty of nice safe chalk and clay. We never thought we'd need to check out all the medieval altars along the way.

Is it serious? grunted Allen, as she barged him out through the Devil's Door. They sprawled among the graves, listening to the mega-voltage crackle of the rising current. Phased feedback! she howled above the noise. Then the booster reached full charge.

The overload should have flashed down the exactly measured straight-line length of the conductor and bounced, thus creating the necessary standing-wave, before dropping to working voltage. It didn't, it hit the magnetic field of the alter and backed-up instead.

Booster Four didn't like it! It expressed that dislike by changing from cold blue to hot red. Rowan and Allen watched in horror, as a pulse of fire tore a channel through the ground towards the east wall of the church, penetrated the footings and exploded up through the altar. It wasn't the end of the world, but it felt like it.

Afterwards they staggered back to the vicarage. They were bruised and bloody from flying debris, but still alive, which would certainly not have been the case had they remained in the chancel. Allen crawled to the phone, hit the nine button and kept on hitting it until he got through.

Rowan, fighting off an imminent collapse, dragged herself to the table, compelled by a desperate desire to take another look at the Reverend's watch. She hauled herself onto a chair and pulled it from its pouch. Somehow it didn't surprise her that it was ticking happily. Perhaps it had been an effect of the shock-wave, or just another curious coincidence, but her last serious thought before the delayed reaction got her, was I bet it keeps perfect time from now on! - and of course it has.

— • —

INDEX

Comments

The Butter Bet

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 17:43:14 +0200

My mother liked butter, good creamy yellow farm butter, "Butter's better" she used to say, "Bet on it" - She liked marble too, so this is for her:

THE BUTTER BET

When the churn gives up its gold
The pats will last the better cold
Jugs with ale or cyder filled
Give of their best when slightly chilled
So do not pine for softwood planks
Bracketed in rising ranks
Please use marble in the larder
Nothing's smoother, nothing's harder
Makes the pastry nice and cool
Helps preserve the gooseberry fool
Persuades your apple jam to set
Yes marble is the butter bet

Copyright The Mundesley Hermit ©2004. All rights reserved

INDEX

Comments

Orac and Blakes Seven

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 19:20:52 +0200

Can't remember, have I done a verse about my brain... er?

The retro-futurist ORAC computer from Blake's Seven.

— • —

What? Sorry? Pardon? - I need Orac!

Oh efficacious youthful brain
How you used to take the strain
Your memory was so retentive
You had the future as incentive
But now your time is nearly done
You think forgetfulness is fun.

Copyright The Mundesley Hermit ©2007. All rights reserved

INDEX

Comments

Boy, Pike and Dappled Dace

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 18:40:21 +0200

In the middle of the river and on the outer side of the bend, the channel ran where the clear water flowed. Its floor was of shingle laid in beds and rolls by the rain-rush of Spring. Between the rills of shingle were long drifts of silver sand, carved by the daily flow and sharp edged in a way that the sculpting water wasn't. Where sunlight slanted down it bathed the sand in brightness and picked out thumbnail pebbles of quartz, marble and amber against a background of otherwise grey and brown shingle.

The moving stream, a river within the river, brushed here and there against the margins of the open channel; against almost intangible boundaries defined more by colour than substance, a tattered screen of greenish grey, olive and sage; great banks of finely particled mud and viscous cliffs of what looked like caramel jelly, held in place by rush roots and reed stems. Cliffs where a touch of the hand or the snout of a sudden darting fish would break off slivers as if it was made of glass, which would then dissolve to leave no more than a drift of smoke in the waters. A cloud that would at once be caught up by the flow and in moments disperse as if it had never formed.

Over the sun-speckled casts of shingle, fish followed the shade of reed tops and ripples, a few dapples of dace, a brace or two of bream, a trio of trout. In the shallows, minnows darted between the larger stones and a stickleback bristled as he protected his bower among the reed stems.

The boy slid silently through the water, his skin shadowed and striped by the greenish light glowing through the leaves of the water-lilies that colonised the calm beyond the eddies. His hands at his sides, toes moving gently to counter the errant currents as the calm pool slowly rotated. This was the swimming hole, a place that boys came to swim while their sisters and their friends' sisters sat on the bank and discussed whatever it was that sisters discussed.

Today the boy was alone in the water, the coven of sisters had climbed an easy tree and set up their dolls' world among its branches. The pool was quiet, no splashing, thrashing about or showing off, just one boy meeting the fish for the first time. He rose to the surface, turned his head just enough to take a breath, then sank back into the dreamlike magic of the river.

It was then that he saw the pike, three feet long and, like him, exerting just enough effort to remain on station. At first the pike's attention was only for the dace among the dapples on the river bed below them. Then that cold eye swivelled to meet with the curious ones of the boy. Something shocking and primeval passed between them. There was a sudden flurry in the water and the boy was alone, no pike, no dace, no bream nor trout, no minnows nor stickleback in view.

He waited a while, rising and falling with his need for breath, but their patience was greater than his.

— • —

INDEX

Comments

The Momentary Aberrations of Maude and Mundo

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 11:45:29 +0200

These anecdotes are set in Munzly-on-Sea. A fictional version of the real Mundesley as it would have been in the not too distant past. And don't be surprised if, like me in the verse below, Mundo tries to add to its attractions.

Munzly Pier

There were no seagulls on the rail,
Nor round its legs a seaweed trail,
No breakers strove to wash away.
The theatre with its seasonal play,
Or snap the strings of coloured light,
That add such romance to the night,
When e're I walk by Mundesley Pier,
For as you know, it's never there.

— • —

Note: For those who've never been there, neither modern Mundesley nor its virtual version have such an attraction as a pier. Nor never had one neither!

— • —

Munzly, Village of Culture

Apart from some minor concessions to mid twentieth century modernity, Maude and Mundo's cottage was exactly as it had been for the previous two generations, as was much of the village. Culture, of course, was another matter:

Today, I fancy a visit to the opera said Maude, whose well-spoken granddaughter had just sent her a long and beautifully written letter from London, Is there an opera house handy?

Corse thar is grinned Mundo, in appreciation of her putting on her 'posh voice, Munzly-on-Sea hev jus' about eva'thin'.

So how, may I ask, do I get there? said Maude, the light of anticipation burning in her eyes.

Yew goo down th' rud as far as th' lite 'ouse laughed Mundo, Tarn left onta th' pier. Then yew weart at th' end for th' Queen 'Lizabeth an' arsk for Sidney!

Thas wot I thort say Maude, slippin' comfortably back inta har Norfolk voice.

— • —

Maude and the Betamax.

Oi’ve set th' new video, say Maude, slammin' th' back door.

Wot we goin' ter miss, then? say Mundo, checkin' th' latch.

Ow shud Oi know, say Maude, Thar wunt be nuthin' orn'ut 'til we git back.

— • —

Maude's Birthday.

Oi'm orf t'th' Pust-Orfice say Maude, mearkin' a big thing a'lookin' at th' calendar, Ena'thin' speshul yew wunt?

Mundo, he think abowt't fer a while, then he say, Noo. Thanky.

Ar'yer shure? say Maude, putt'n orn har oldest hat wi' a big sigh.

Wot wud Oi wunt a' th' Pust-Orfice? say Mundo.

Hint yew got suffin to buy? say Maude, in har most insist'nt voice.

Nut s'far as Oi know say Mundo.

Oi wunt go then say Maude, Oi'll stay a'tum fer me birfday.

Wull say Mundo, duckin' owt t'th' shud, Thas wot yew allus dew.

In Maude's sitting room at the back of the cottage, the silence has a sort of buzz about it. Maude is turning a bed sheet. She has cut it in half lengthways and is now sewing it back together with the less worn outer edges turned to the middle, thus almost doubling its useful life. She always finds a bit of thrift most soothing when she's angry.

Just as she completes the task and removes her sewing glasses, Mundo spuffles in from his shed, where he has been muttering away to himself for the last ten minutes.

Thussear's f'yew, say Mundo, puttin' a gret owd parcel in Maude's hands.

Wot'tizut? she say, An' wossit fer?

Thas a parcel he say, Fer yer birfday.

Thas a bit leart! she say, My birfday start'd at brekfust toime, thi'smornin'.

Thet wunt' ha'bin sich'a s'proise then say Mundo, Ena'kearse, thet wunt redda.

Wudga meen? say Maude, Wunt redda?

Why duntcha open'ut? say Mundo, bu' jus'as he dew thet, th' lettabox start rattlin' away loike th' pustmun got hiz hed stuck inn'ut.

Yew betta see whut thet dullar is orl abowt say Maude, puttin' har glarses back on.

Mundo opens the front door with difficulty. Normally this is a door visited from either side but rarely passed through. Today, however the most frequent visitor to its outer side is demanding the attention of the most frequent visitor on its inner side.

Fer gud'nss seark say Mundo, Thass nOo need ter bust'a gut.

Yew hetta sign fer'ut say the Pustman, Reg'a'learshuns.

Oi arsked yew ter keep a hush fer th' d'liva'un', say Mundo.

Wull, Oi did say th' Pustman, Thas in yer shud, loike yer sed.

Oi know thet say Mundo, Oi jus' giv'ut t' har wen yew start puttin' dints in moi frunt door.

Yew meark yer mark on thiss'ear bit'a'pearper say Pustman, 'An Oi'll gOo.

Thar! say Mundo, signing in a nice copperplate hand.

Hare's the rest'a'yer pust say th' Pustman, handin' Mundo a rare ol'heap a'cards.

Oi'd say Ta if Oi cud hare myself speak say Mundo, Arta orl thet door rattlin'

Maude has opened her parcel and Mundo has handed her her cards. You'd think she'd be pleased. Unfortunately, Mundo's parcel contained a hat.

Wuss this? say Maude, inspectin' th' hat frum orl angles.

Thass'a chappoo say Mundo, A Parass'at.

Frum Parass? say Maude, A hat fer yer hed?

Frum Norridge say Mundo, Parass afor'thet, they tel'ma.

Thas a bit funna say Maude, Nut loike my owd wun a'torl.

Dew yer loike'ut? ask Mundo, wi' a worried look.

Dunt know yet say Maude, Thet'll tearke toime t'git usta'ut.

Open yer cards say Mundo, Thass wun frum Lunnon.

So thar'iz say Maude, An thas a pik'cha a th' Queen warin' moi hat.

Thas on'y wun queen aroun' har say Mundo, Menna happa r'tarns yer Maj'sty.

— • —

Riparian Rights or Rite of Spring.

I nivver told yer, say Maude, But moi leart feartha wunce bought a run of fish'n water.

NOo, yew nivver did, say Mundo, who liked a bit of fish'n, Ware wuz thet, then?

Nut far frum hare, say Maude, Along th'Munzly Beck by thet ol'ook tree.

Who der thet b'long tew now? say Mundo, his eyes lighting up in anticipation.

Wull, say Maude, I spuz he musta left thet ter me.

And yew nivver told me, say Mundo, rolling his eyes in despair.

He left me a lotta things, say Maude, I can't be 'spected ter tell yer'em orl.

Yew know'd how much I like fish'n, say Mundo, Kin we gOo teark a look att'ut?

Wull, say Maude, I spuz thet wunt dew nOo harm ter show yew ware he bought'ut.

Blust boy, say Mundo, when they got there, Yor dad sartenly bought hisself a luvly bitta river.

He dint buy th'river, say Maude, Just th'water! An by my reckon'n thas ten mile orf Yarmouth by now.

I shudda knowd, say Mundo, Thas th'Fust a'Hearprul, hint'ut.

Translations:
Nivver = never, moi leart feartha = my late father, wunce = once, nut = not, frum hare = from here, ol'ook = old oak, tell yer'em orl = tell you them all, Kin = can, teark = take, att'ut = at it, wull = well, spuz = suppose, wunt dew = won't do, sartenly = certainly, hisself = himself, bitta = bit of, shudda knowd = should have known, Fust a'Hearprul = First of April, hint'ut = isn't it?

— • —

Maude's Last Word.

Mundo allus tork ter himsel'. 'Speshla wen he's orn hiz own. He loikta spend hiz toime cuss'n' an' sware'n 'bou' nin'namate obje'ts and tellen'um how he wan'tum ter behave. Git'chew in'thar, boy! he say to the nail, wen he hit'tut orn th' hed wi' a lump-ammer.

Maude, she dunt dew thet. She on'y tork wen she's wi' Mundo. Git'chew in'thar, boy! she say, wen she hit'im on th' hed wi' a lump a'stale bred, An' dew th'dishes.

If yew arsk har 'bou'tut, she say, Wull, thas on'y fare. Wen He's orn hiz own he tork all th' toime. Wen we're tergitha, thas moi tarn!

A'corse, wen she say thet, Mundo he say, Rite'chew'ar'. Thass fare'a'nuff. Thet way we buth git th' charnce a'hevin' a'nin'tellagent liss'ner.

Allus hev t'hev th'las' wud say Maude, Dunt'cha?, but Mundo, he lay low and say nuthin'.

— • —

INDEX

Comments

The Destiny Tour - (A Joe & Sandra Story)

Mon, 09 Apr 2007 10:29:03 +0200

Joe locked the car, walked round it obsessively kicking the tyres, checking the boot-lid and doors, then followed Sandra through the archway into the shopping precinct. For a moment he choked in a gust of burning air, then it was past and he found his wife had been accosted by a tall young man in a startling lime-green suit, leaning against a matching stretched limousine. In his lapel an outsize badge read, Destiny Tours

This is your husband? queried the man from DT, his voice tinged with scorn. Sandra’s eyes flicked to Joe and seemed to say, For heavens sake get me out of this! Seing this, the rep was encouraged to continue, Excuse me, eh, Sir, my name is Mallory. I am your surprise guide for this beautiful shopping day and I have here an offer you can’t refuse.

What’s he want? asked Sandra, catching hold of her husband’s arm, just above the elbow.

Refusing! chuckled Joe, who spent much of his office day dodging uninvited salesmen.

In my hand, I have four-hundred and forty-four pounds, announced Mallory, waving a wad of twenties under Joe’s nose.

No you haven’t, accused Sandra.

All right, said Mallory, not in the least put-out by this rebuttal. He parked the wad in his teeth to search his pockets, then added the necessary pair of £2 coins. The money was now slightly damp, but complete, as advertised.

Now I have four-hundred and forty-four pounds, he announced, And they can all be yours. All you have to do is answer a simple question.

Which is? prompted Joe.

Would you like four-hundred and forty-four pounds?

No! said Joe.

No? queried Sandra, You always reckon four-hundred’n’forty-four is your lucky number.

Yep, but No! confirmed Joe.

And that is the Right Answer! cried Mallory, with a great show of false enthusiasm. You have won an Instant Destiny Tour.

Several more lapel-labelled tour guides appeared from nowhere and, before they knew it, Joe and Sandra were bundled into the back of the limousine. Naturally after such an event they found themselves trapped, with the doors apparently locked from the outside.

Help! Murder! Rape! Kidnap! yelled Sandra, wrenching at the door handle and banging on the inside layer of the virtually soundproof double-armour-glass.

This is one Hell of a car, said Joe, taking the whole thing with an unnatural calm. He sunk into the luxurious upholstery and ran a finger admiringly along the walnut trim, P’raps you’re right and my lucky number is working at last.

Never, answered Sandra, between yells, They're after my virtue or your money!

But we haven’t got any. No, it’s some sort of publicity stunt or practical joke, he muttered.

What? yelled Sandra, still battering the door.

A chauffeur got into the driving compartment; it was Mallory.

Please, not so loud, crackled the intercom, We at DT have your welfare close to our hearts at all times.

OK! So, where does a Destiny Tour go? challenged Sandra, squeezing Joe’s hand.

The Pacific Islands, announced Mallory, with an edge of uncertainty in his voice. To Joe, it sounded as if it had been the first thing to come into his mouth, not a thought to ease the mind.

What, all of them? asked Joe, but their guide was busy starting the limo. Even through the armour-glass, they heard the engine as it roared into life.

Then they were travelling. Apparently on a getaway run which would take them straight through the marble plated bank at the far end of the precinct. Joe wrapped his arms round an already screaming Sandra and closed his eyes in horror.

— • —

When they opened their eyes, they really were on what looked like a Pacific Island.

I’m hungry, complained Sandra, looking around in a total daze, Being kidnapped always makes me hungry.

When have you ever been kidnapped before? asked Joe, who was still working on the theory that they were in the middle of some sort of elaborate practical joke. This had to be a stage-set inside the bank. If he’d kept his eyes open he would no doubt have seen a door in it’s false front as they passed through. He started looking for telltale cracks in the azure sky, or something similar, that would confirm it as a backdrop.

The chauffeur’s gone, said Sandra, spilling out onto the sand, Oops! And the doors work.

Outside, the beach was idyllic. A lagoon gently washing against warm coral sand, occasional waving palms, the scent and sounds of the jungle behind the beach, all unbelievably convincing. They were alone and there didn’t seem to be any signs of habitation.

While Sandra stretched in the balmy air, Joe examined the vehicle. The key was still in the steering-lock. He got in and tried it. Not a sausage. I’ll look under the bonnet, he decided, fiddling under the dash for the catch. He found it, then got out and inspected the engine. A black plastic box had been left open, revealing an empty slot marked Engine management system.

There’s a module missing, announced Joe, looking round for Sandra. She was gazing out at the distant reef with a dreamy look in her eyes.

How much would a holiday here cost? she asked, kicking off her shoes.

Assuming that this is not a joke, the answer to that question is ‘Lots.’ Next time we get a win on the lottery we can come back and have one.

But, what’s the point of that? We’re already here; let’s enjoy it.

What’s that noise? asked Joe.

Noise? What noise? she sighed, All I can hear is the ocean copulating with the reef, coconuts giggling as they ripen in the sun, bananas wondering which one of them has farted.

For goodness sake! Stop burbling and listen, he commanded.

Oh! You mean the noise from the boot.

It’s a trunk, this is an American car.

Did I complain when you called the hood a bonnet?

Joe again got into the driving seat and found a second remote release. He pulled it and the lid shot open, its pneumatic stays rebounding against the stops. Sandra rushed to the back of the car and caught it just as it was about to fall closed. Joe dragged himself out of the vehicle and followed.

It’s another tour-guide, grated Sandra. For a moment Joe thought she was going to slam the lid on, what looked to him, more like a pretty female stowaway.

If she was a guide, she’d be in lime-green, said Joe, Not a flimsy polka-dot frock.

My name’s Angora, said the girl, slinging a lithe limb over the fender and holding out her hand for Joe to help her up. Sandra glared at the leg and stopped him. This was a tactical mistake, in attempting to struggle out on her own, the most attractive stowaway produced several prolonged flashes of her similarly attractive lacy knickers. Once clear of the confines of the boot, her first reaction to the beach, like Sandra’s, was to kick off her shoes. They had very high heels, looked expensive and in Joe’s opinion, as he watched Sandra pick them up and fling them into the lagoon, enjoyed excellent aerodynamic properties.

Well! smiled Angora, Now I know where I stand.

Joe stifled a chuckle. He’d never been fought over by two women before. Now hang on, Sandra, he said, What the Hell’s got into you. We’re all in the same boat, you know.

Sandra turned on him. He knew that dangerous sparkle, it was one of her most attractive features. Then she delivered the expected broadside, You can shut up, or I’ll make you retrieve them, paddling around on your hands and knees, like the lecherous dog you are.

That was it. An overpowering feeling of inhibitions-relaxed was starting to work on Joe. He picked up his wife and walked to the waters edge, totally ignoring her angry threats and vicious attempts to pull lumps out of him. Once there, he hesitated, enjoying a moment of anticipation and letting the gentle surf lap at his toes. Then he waded into the water up to his knees, took a deep breath and lobbed her as far as he possibly could. The splash was decidedly satisfying.

You retrieve them, is all he said, as he returned to the beach.

One flash of my panties and you think you’re Superman, laughed Angora.

I should say more like half a dozen flashes, all carefully orchestrated. You don’t fool me, young madam. Anyway, Superman was usually stupid enough to rescue his women, rather than... letting the sentence die away, he picked her up and a second later, Angora joined the floundering Sandra.

Joe turned his back on them, only to find that Mallory had returned, applauding as he jogged down the beach. The lime-green suit had been exchanged for a similarly horrific pair of initialled bathing trunks. Well done, Sir! he cried, See, DT offers everything to all its clients. Sun, sea, sand and especially, emotional satisfaction.

At first, still enjoying the buzz to be had from chucking girls in the sea, Joe thought that was great. What a policy! he said. Then the phrase All our Clients struck him, were the girls DT clients too and if so, what long awaited satisfaction awaited them and how would that effect him. Come to think of it, what emotional potentials had he stirred by his recent actions?

Delicious! cooed Angora, rising from the waters and waving at the tour guide. Hi Malsy babe! I bet you never thought lil' Joe here had it in him. Two duckings for the price of one. What great value we’re giving today.

So! The two of you are in it together, growled Joe, backing off, but that was the most immediate of his worries. Sandra was glowering her way out of the water carrying several large conch shells.

Sandra? he yelped, No! Sandra.

Peace children. It’s a wonderful day, said an unctuous Malsy, slipping between Joe and the promise of an imminent shelling from his stalking wife. What would you like to do next?

Kill the bastard! announced Sandra.

Later, Later, murmured Malsy.

What? she yelped, You mean I’m actually allowed to kill him?

Of course, ‘Satisfaction Guaranteed’ is the Destiny Tours motto. You want to dismember him, cook him over a slow fire, - tie his goolies round his neck, contributed Angora - or whatever else your imagination comes up with, then this is the place you can do it.

But all I got to do was chuck 'em in the drink, complained Joe.

That gives me an idea, grinned Angora, Let’s exchange partners, then we can hunt each other all over the island and finish up with a damn good killing or two.

You mean you want to murder Malsy as much as I want to murder Joe? asked Sandra, her amazement making her miss the partner-swapping element of the suggestion.

Naturally. Why not? He’s been a pain in the posterior as long as I’ve known him.

Hang on, I don’t really want to murder Joe. Agreeing to the idea was just a bit of fun.

Well maybe I don’t actually want to murder my little Malsy baby, either. I shan’t know until I’ve tried it a couple of times, shall I.

You mean they don’t stay dead? Where on Earth are we? What is this place?

At last! They are beginning to notice things again! glowed Malsy, clapping his hands. You’re here to fulfil the destiny you failed to fulfil during your life. Now I think we should all sit down and try to work out what it was, so you can get it over with and I can go home.

Sandra sidled up to Joe, put her arms round his neck and whispered in his ear, Why is he talking as if we’re dead?

Why are you taking as if we’re dead? asked Joe, glaring at Malsy, while holding his wife protectively.

Technically you are. Practically you’re not, at least not yet, said the guide.

I don’t understand, said Joe, holding Sandra even tighter.

It all depends on our destinies, said Angora, Yours and mine, maybe even Malsy’s.

So are we actually here or still somewhere in the shopping precinct? asked Joe.

Hang on a minute, said Sandra, gently disengaging herself from Joe, I’m beginning to get the picture. There was a blinding flash just as I went through the arch, - Gust of hot air! contradicted Joe, following her train of thought - Whatever, she continued, We must have been killed by some sort of accidental explosion, before our due time, or something like that!

So? What wonderful destiny did we fail to fulfil? asked Joe, Being elected joint founding presidents of the Galactic Federation?

Could be, said Malsy, I don’t know. All we can do is keep doing things until it works itself out.

He’s right, but why do I always seem to turn up in other peoples destinies, announced Angora, This is the tenth time I’ve had to put up with one of Mallory’s Destiny Tours.

Weird! Do you always arrive as a stowaway? asked Joe, the memory of her knickers still fresh in his mind.

Well, I’ve certainly found myself in some pretty peculiar places recently. Haven’t I Malsy.

How long does it normally take, to stumble on the right action, I mean? asked Sandra.

I once spent ten years in Pentonville with a traffic warden, said Malsy.

So what was their unfulfilled destiny? asked Joe.

Ten years in Pentonville, of course! laughed Malsy.

You’re joking, said Sandra, in horror.

Sorry, but no! replied their guide.

Does it have to be something important? asked Joe.

Not necessarily. So long as the event is significant in the pattern of history, it can be as simple as combing your hair in a shop-window, or running over a hedgehog.

Wouldn’t ‘Not Running Over a Hedgehog’ be better? grumbled Angora.

I’ve got it! exclaimed Joe, It’s obvious. We were supposed to have a wonderful holiday on a desert island. So let’s get on with it. Where’s the nearest bar?

Actually, this is one of the few times when I’ve had to choose the venue myself, said Malsy, Usually it’s all sort of automatic. So I don’t think where we are is particularly significant.

Why choose a Pacific Island? asked Angora.

It seemed like a good idea. I’ve always fancied being shipwrecked with a beautiful girl.

Malsy! How sweet and ordinary! grinned Angora.

Suddenly Sandra ripped a strip off the hem of her skirt and attacked the smiling girl. Quick Joe, help me, she yelled, I’ve worked it out.

What shall I do? asked her husband.

Capture Mallory. Sit on his head or something.

Joe did as he was told. A rugby tackle brought down the tour-guide and a knee in the back immobilised him. What now? asked Joe, as Sandra hog-tied their protesting victims.

We have to get the car working, she gasped inspecting her handiwork. Angora was trussed like a chicken and Mallory was jerking about and fuming as he rolled slowly towards the lagoon. Joe redirected him with a jab of his toe.

Sandra’s skirt, source of all the bindings, was now hardly long enough to cover her panties. Joe caught himself comparing them favourably with Angora’s.

The circuit-board! he mumbled, shaking his head to clear it of lacy visions, It’s probably with his clothes. He headed for the edge of the jungle, where Mallory had reappeared after the ducking episode.

— • —

They sat in the limousine, no longer beached on a distant shore, but standing close to their own car in the shopper’s car-park, back almost exactly where they had started. Through the windscreen the wreck of the bombed out precinct was still full of smoke and emergency services.

We would have been in there, gasped Sandra.

Joe, beside her in the limo’s driving seat, had turned quite white. Sandra lead the way to their own car. The emergency seemed under proper official control, there was little they could be expected to do except obey the impatient policeman waving them out onto the main-road.

How did you work it out, the destiny problem? asked Joe, a tinge of admiration in his voice.

You mean, that ours were not the paramount destinies? she sighed, It was Angora, of course. I knew when she said she wanted to kill him, that she had been predestined to fall in love with her Malsy.

So, if I accept that, what was Mallory’s contribution?

He was right about the destination, but wrong about the destinies. It was his that initiated the whole shebang. It really was his lot to finish up alone on a desert island with a beautiful girl. That’s where Angora came in. I guess fate had given her ten chances to get him.

You mean it was nothing to do with us at all? grumbled Joe.

No, silly! We were her tenth and last chance. She was lucky, we were the ones predestined to desert them on a desert island. Makes me feel all motherly. I do hope it works out for them.

— • —

INDEX

Comments

Noisy Recycling

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 21:09:31 +0200

Sometimes a problem is embarassingly insoluble. It's two miles to my nearest bottle bank:

Noisy Recycling

I have a problem, I can't sleep
I'm buried in a glazial heap
I save every bottle, every jar
I have, unfortunately, no car
I'd go by bus but bottles clink
I don't want them to think I drink

INDEX

Comments

Star Matter

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 16:59:24 +0200

Todays verses are a study of reality for those who've heard of the theory of Super-String. Back in 1997, when this was written, I was probably trying to be too clever to be very poetic - please be critical.

— • —

Star Matter

Here, is where we seem to float,
In swirling, super-stringy soup.
And the only certain fact,
Is that we tend to interact,
Like so many little pools
Of brightly dancing molecules.

Who builds these models of the mind?
Constructs of virtual, fractal kinds.
Do their properties mock reality?
Are they icons or banality?
Is this our highest resolution?
Has impatience won, not evolution.

Our minds, entrapped by neural nets,
Make complex nano-spider's nests.
There we seek some absolution,
A simple answer to the question.
Who and when and what we are?
We parts and particles of star.

Here and there we seem to float
Through worlds of super-stringy soup,
Filled with wild uncertain factions,
Careless, conflicting cross-reactions.
Unreal, unvirtuous, unstable and untrue.
I'm just a modem, what are you?

— • —

INDEX

Comments

Anacondom (a lewd but charming snake)

Sun, 25 Mar 2007 11:35:06 +0200

Bert, a hack from the local newspaper, had been sent to cover what had proved to be a non-existent story. Moreover, it had taken him to a part of the port town, where the airborne mixture of diesel, rusting iron, fish and salt had clogged his brain even more than his sinuses. Naturally the subsequent sight of a backstreet pub brought on an immediate and inevitable thirst.

He peered in at the window. The bartender looked friendly enough, as did the small group of regulars clustered around him. In a corner booth, a pair of young women were drinking some sort of coloured fizz. Satisfied that he wasn't going to get mugged, at least not in the bar, Bert went in.

The mahogany door with its etched glass panel, creaked once and slapped shut behind him, sealing in the beery fug with its underlying tang of yesterday's bar-snacks. He acknowledged the regulars with a non-committal grunt, bought a beer and claimed some territory of his own on a tall stool at the opposite end of the counter.

To pass the time, he gazed vacantly at nothing in particular and strained to catch the conversation round the bartender. He was just getting his ears attuned to some protracted and inane joke about Roll-on/Roll-off Fairies, when the street door swung open with a bang and a well-built, if paunchy, fellow stomped in.

The conversation at the bar stopped in mid guffaw, and the guffawees turned to gaze first at the new arrival, then stare at the girls in the corner. Bert too, took note of the sudden, if somewhat suppressed shriek. Which, he reckoned, had probably come from the wide-eyed fat one as her thin friend had a hand cupped to the other's ear and would have deafened her if she'd not been whispering.

Bert, a student of body language, came to the conclusion that the focus of their attention was the front of the man's trousers. However, although he could seen no obvious reason for this, it was rapidly dissolving the girls into twitching heaps of near hysteria.

“Hey lads!” announced the bartender, leaning across the counter to clap the two nearest regulars on the shoulder, “It's the Snake Charmer!”

“Oh for God's sake don't start all that again,” complained the man, “Call me Charmer if you like, but for fuck'sake drop the Snake crap!”

“Sure!” chortled the bartender, in a posh voice, “Snake Crepes are orf, Suzette!” Thus getting his pun in before the floodgate of standing jokes burst open, starting with “What do snakes use when they make love?” - “Anacondoms!” - “Groan!” and finally finishing, in unison, with that lewd rhyme about The Lady with the Rake.

Bert watched the Snake Charmer, as they had called him. The man just stood there and took it all with practised patience. A nudge from the reporter's conscience suggested that he should engage mental work-mode just in case there was a story in any of this.

The butt of the snake jokes took up a pose of studied innocence, or maybe it was insolence, while seemingly attempting to read the label of a certain whiskey standing on its head in an optic behind the bar.

“Never attempt to read anything upside-down unless you're a newspaper vendor,” said Bert, as an icebreaker.

“What?” said the man, failing to understand a word Bert had said.

“I said you look like you needed a drink,” lied Bert.

The man, surprised by a voice not concentrating on the humorous qualities of serpents, eyed the reporter with some distaste. Bert waved a banknote at the bartender and suggested a double scotch. The man, left with a choice between the company of one idiot or many, chose the idiot with money. Then pulled up a stool and joined Bert at the less populated end of the bar counter.

Having lost their victim's attentive pretence of inattention, the pack ground to a halt. Somebody wanted to know what “Snake creeps” were. Somebody else said “Crap,” and the bartender sniggered.

“Thank God, that's over for today,” sighed the man, “I think they're getting worse.”

With drinks purchased, Bert introduced himself, but without admitting to being a journalist. Then in an offhand conversational tone, asked what it was all about.

“Look, there's a booth free over there,” muttered the “Snake Charmer”, apparently eager to talk.

Once they were seated, the man explained that that his nickname was relatively new. He had recently been relocated from being part of the large crew of an oil-tanker to the small one of a North Sea rig-tender. Unfortunately constantly pointing out the differences had so bored his new crew-mates that they had decided to take their comic revenge.

Alcohol was not allowed on the boat, so it was the crew's habit to tank-up the evening before sailing. The next of these outings had, at first, run its normal course, then unknown to the Charmer, somebody had started spiking his beer with double vodkas, and after a few of these he'd not have known the port from a lemon. Seeing their victim ripening nicely, a visit to a house of ill-repute was suggested and as he was in no state to refuse, they set off across town at a trot.

Rather than the promised brothel, they took him to a friend's flat, where as a result of climbing three flights of stairs, he had passed out. The girl, a tattooist by trade, was then invited to provide Charmer with something cosmetically embarrassing of the sort he couldn't show his mother. With the help of a pair of fire-tongs and gales of encouraging laughter, she had pricked out upon his prick, two little red eyes, a forked tongue and lots of green and blue zigzag patterning. Then his mates, falling about at the monstrosity of what they had done dragged their still unconscious victim back to his berth on the boat.

At this point in the narration, Bert and Charmer's attention was momentarily diverted to the pair of girls from the corner booth as they flounced past on their way to the toilets.

“When did you find out what they had done?” asked Bert in fascination.

“The girls?” said Charmer as he followed them with his eyes.

“No, your ship-mates,” answered Bert.

“Not 'til much later,” said Charmer, “The boat sailed on the morning tide and the bastards deliberately let me over-sleep. When I finally climbed out of my pit and staggered to the heads, I was too hung-over to notice the tattoo. In fact thanks to this,” here he patted his beer-gut, “It was three days before I spotted it.”

By now Bert was finding it difficult not to show his amusement by laughing out loud. Charmer went on to tell him how his mates had denied all knowledge of his little problem. Their story was that he had “gone off with some tart or other” and had not been seen again until they were at sea. At that moment, the narration came to a complete halt, as the two girls returned from the bogs.

As the bog door flapped shut behind her, the thin one peered over the back of the pew behind Charmer and with a nasty leer, stuck out her tongue and wriggled it about. Bert could see that she had drawn two eyes on it with some sort of a marker pen. His self-control gave way and despite his promise not to laugh, it was with tears in his eyes that he erupted.

Through the tears he could see that the Charmer was mortified, but there was nothing he could do about it. Then Charmer turned and saw the girl. She rapidly withdrew her tongue, leaving a dribble of marker ink on her lip, and made a dash for the door.

Her chubby friend was there already, holding it open, but seemingly reluctant to follow her friend's shrieking exit, she stuck out her hip and blew a kiss in their direction. Bert's first thought was that his luck had changed, then he realised it wasn't aimed at him. The fat little Eve's garden of Eden was in need of a certain charming snake.

“Well,” announced the Charmer, getting up, “Have to be going. Mustn't keep customers waiting.”

“Hang on a minute,” said Bert, “How? What ...?”

“Don't tell the humour brigade!” grinned Charmer, hoiking his thumb at the crowd by the bar, “But their little joke was the best thing that ever happened to old Sid, my not so little trouser-friend. He's never been so busy.”

I'm amazed,” said Bert, “Absolutely amaz...”

“Why not get one yourself,” said Charmer, “A garter-snake, maybe a grass-adder, or better still an anaconda, the serpent of the water-hole.”

— • —

INDEX

Comments

Not so Nostalgic

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 18:32:31 +0100

Now that I'm a grandfather of two fine girls, I can listen to the complaints of the intervening generation with a delightful feeling of "revenge at last!"

Those Wonderful Early Days of Parenthood

Your mind's locked in bone
You don't answer the 'phone
Your spouse says "let's talk"
Then a child learns to walk
Why can't they just leave you alone?

Copyright The Mundesley Hermit ©2007

INDEX

Comments

The bar in the Willage Inn

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 12:58:52 +0100

Our church, it has a tower
The chapels, they have none
But I don't care
For you'll find me here
At the bar in th'willage inn

The church it has a font
Some chapels hav'em too
But it is said
They wet my head
By the bar in th'willage inn

If you're baptised with barley
Like this ol'Norfolk boy
You'll grow up strong
With a thirst as long
As the bar in th'willage inn

And wherever I shall wander
Among the cities of the world
It's the barley's kiss
that I shall miss
From the bar in th'willage inn

Copyright The Mundesley Hermit ©2004

INDEX

Comments

Windy Bin Day

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 08:46:39 +0100

Actually we now have wheelie-bins for our household rubbish (trash), but here on the North Norfolk coast a year or so ago, things were rather different:

WINDY BIN-DAY

Steel or plastic, see them fly
Lids like saucers in the sky
Bulging bags go rolling by
Trails of trash affront the eye
Litter swirls, both low and high
It's a windy bin-day. Let's all sigh!

Comments

Daddy Daddy Daddy

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 16:09:03 +0100

The kids have borrowed my brain
It happens again and again
It's never returned
And when found, it's been spurned
Or left rotting on top of a drain

Comments

Bando and the Spoon (or An End to Fat)

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 18:02:25 +0100

Just in case you ask, there is nothing autobiographical about this story

Bando enjoyed being perverse, particularly about tea. A beverage that had to be served frequently, black as asphalt, sweet as syrup and stirred with his favourite tablespoon. A large sturdy implement he had acquired from some works canteen during a shortage of teaspoons. Conveniently, a tablespoonful of sugar was his choice amount of sweetening and a mug big enough to receive it was his choice of container.

Derek Osythe Bannerman, now retired with a decided paunch and a full set of false teeth, had been an engineer. Not the sort who tend to tell tall tales about how they designed all the motorway bridges north of Watford Gap, nor the sort more recently found on the foot-plates of wheezing tank-engines at preserved steam-railways, but one of those guys responsible for designing the chugging intestines of washing-machines.

At school in the Fifties he had been the fourth bearer of the Bannerman name to grace the blue and white uniforms of the local grammar-school. Ahead of him in the hierarchy had been Bannerman Major, his brother, then to confuse the issue, his cousins, Bannermans Minor and Minimus. A situation, which left our hero with no distinguishing ‘M’ word to call his own.

Classical scholars among you will appreciate that 'minimus' is what one might call a superlative diminutive. So, when such case arises, it is traditional to fall back on the use of initials; hence D. O. Bannerman became Bannerman Dee-Oh. A label which the staff retained in full, but his class-mates lost no time in reducing to ‘Bando’ - a nickname he accepted with enthusiasm.

In those days his nature was merely contrary and his sweet tooth confined to the addictive use of Penny-Chews, Spangles and Refreshers, as available at the school tuck-shop. His form-masters, a series of disciplinarians with noses highly attuned to the artificial scents of boiled sweets, were constantly telling him to 'Come up here and spit it out, you horrible little boy!' Other annoyingly incessant admonishments were, 'What do you call this? Work or wastepaper?' and - addressed to the class - 'We all know who's going to fail his exams, don't we?'

The latter, fortunately for Bando, acted as a stimulus. Not to his general class-work, of course, that would have been against his philosophy, but when the threatened exams arrived, what could he do but pass with honours?

After that, his astounded father tried to insist he went to university. Bando, in whom contrariness was beginning to harden to perversity, applied to the local technical college.

With that behind him and an HNC in mechanical engineering in his pocket; he set forth into the world of work. His mother, despite the subject on his certificate, wanted him to work in a bank. Naturally he took the first low-paid factory-job he was offered.

The foreman, who thought him a clever-dick, told him he'd never amount to anything. A tactical mistake that eventually saw the poor fellow back on the production-line and Bando in his former job. In the Sixties, it was amazing what becoming a shop-steward could achieve.

By then Bando was bored with being devious on the factory-floor and in need of some more entertaining awkwardness. He found this by returning every drawing that came down to him, traced, altered and improved. Again his perversity paid off, the manager was impressed by the changes and moved him to the drawing office.

Difficult as ever, when they told him to design parts thicker - because they tended to break too easily - he made them thinner, changing their shapes from solid, stolid chunks of iron to slim slivers of pressed steel with canny calculated curves. This got him into trouble; until someone in Accounts pointed out there were savings to be made. That gained him friends among the directors and in the Pressing-shop, but not in the Casting Department.

So, as far as his career was concerned, perversity had served him well. This was not so true in the matter of his health; he still liked his tea with a tablespoonful of sugar, but had exchanged his addiction to sweets for one to cream doughnuts. Soon his colleagues started to tease him about being overweight. He ignored them, pointedly flaunting his battered EPNS tablespoon at every tea-break.

Then came retirement. Within a year, his wife was demanding a new lounge-suite on the grounds that he'd broken all the springs in the old one. This upset him so much that he took to sulking in the garden shed, in the bad company provided by a blackened old kettle, a teapot, a biscuit tin of sugar and, of course, his faithful tablespoon.

Eventually, despite various warnings from his doctor, he table-spooned himself into a minor heart-attack. After that the specialist insisted on a diet. It must be said, this time he did try to restrain his natural instinct, but it was much too firmly ingrained. A second heart-attack was inevitable. The shock of recovery, something he really hadn't expected, finally changed his mind. For almost the first time in his life, he attempted a compromise; he forsook everything fattening, except sweet tea.

His weight remained the same, which was an improvement on the steady gain he had been used to, but still family and specialist despaired of him. They called him a Sugar Junkie; told him he must give it up, or die!

For a while he was perverse enough to want to die, but then, at last, he decided to blame the tablespoon. Un-sugared tea needed no spoon and left him mooning for his old friend. Saccharine, offered as the obvious solution, nauseated him; he vowed he'd never use it.

Despair was advancing fast when, suddenly, a thought struck him: He had a psychological problem, it needed a psychological answer. He retreated to the shed to look for one. Staring at the kettle reminded him of the illustration in his school science-primer, James Watt discovering the power of steam. It reminded him that he, like Watt, was an engineer not a psychologist. Perhaps he should really be looking for an engineering solution.

In the subsequent trance he almost put sugar in his tea. The comforting old spoon was in his hand before he realised what he was doing. That was it, of course! A combined solution - psychological and engineered. There were tools on the bench, why not re-jig the spoon?

Ten minutes later, he laid aside the brazing torch and looked at his ancient friend, the bowl now held less, a mere pudding-spoon's worth of granulated death. He made tea with his usual 'one' spoonful of sugar. It felt wonderful. Suddenly, there was hope!

A week later, he reduced the spoon again. Obviously, after all those years, it was the ritual that was important, not the amount of sugar. As the weeks passed, he reduced it to teaspoon size, then egg-spoon, mustard-spoon and finally salt-spoon. Soon he had virtually weaned himself off sugar altogether. His weight began to fall and his health improved dramatically.

His doctor was pleased, his wife was pleased, even Bando admitted being chuffed, but what satisfied him most was that the path to success had turned out to be so delightfully perverse.

— • —

INDEX

Comments

Pet Hates

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 11:45:08 +0100

There are moments when my mind slips a gear and out pops some sort of silly verse

The Hate is a popular pet
Comes as a collectable set
Some are bald, some are hairy
Some demon, some fairy,
but never in need of the vet !

Anyone care to supply an illustration or a better last line?

Comments

Mini Sagas and other writing exercises

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 18:23:45 +0100

A high proportion of the original writings on my Poppycock blog are responses to writing exercises that my creative writing group indulged in around the end of the last century. No doubt, if you are a writer you will have come across numerous of these. I particularly like the mini-saga format, as described in the following verse:

Please Count Them
A Mini Saga must have fifty words. Yes, fifty, no more, no less.
So far this effort has scored twenty. Where will I get the rest?
Now I have a dozen more and these make thirty seven.
If I can add but thirteen here, I will reach that writer’s heaven.

In fact, they don't have to be in verse. The only rule is that they must tell a complete tale in exactly fifty words. Some people include the title in the fifty, just to make it more difficult.

Here's another, on a more sombre subject:

Hiroshima August 6th 1945
The condemned pacifist sat on the floor beside the door of his solid stone cell. Suddenly the dark room filled with burning light and a white hot keyhole was branded into the opposite wall. He didn’t know when hearing returned, for sound had ceased. Perhaps he would survive after all.

Go on, pick a subject and try one

Comments

Just a dream

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 22:00:22 +0100

The Novelist’s Dream

The plot was fine
The word-count grew
The muse was mine
The ideas new
The hero stood
The villain fell
The flow was good
The book would sell

Just a dream I'm afraid ...

Comments

Sublime Selfconfidence? (or Do you talk Dog?)

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 10:02:46 +0100

We opened the small gate in the garden wall and stepped straight into the large meadow behind the converted farmhouse. In front of us, cow-cropped grass, scattered with wild flowers and the occasional scumbled heap of brambles, sloped gently down to a shallow stream. The field stopped short of the watercourse by four paces or so; its boundary marked by three strands of rusting barbed-wire, strung between rounded posts. The exact location disguised by stands of tall nettles, the remains of a hawthorn hedge and more of the rambling blackberries. Beyond the stream the grass-land rose towards the sandy warrens of a low hillock crowned with gorse and silver-birch. The day was ripe for a walk, the sky bright and sunlit, its blue deepened by what looked like a scattered flock of high-flying sheep. We had plenty of time for the half-mile stroll to the pub, a couple of pints and a leisurely return before Sunday lunch; anyway the dog, Ned, my host’s boisterous black'n'white collie, needed the exercise.
The womenfolk had, as usual, refused the offer of a meal at the pub, they had things to cook up, the lunch, some fresh angles on the other villagers' reputations and a few fruit pies for the vicar, I suppose it must have been the weekend before Harvest Festival or some such event. We men were in the way, as usual, and so, as usual, it was just Jack, Ned and I, who took the footpath angling down-slope between the tussocks. We were heading for the stile in the far corner that led to the board bridge over the stream. Ned, also as usual, was roaming the entire field, for him the journey would measure more like ten miles. We men chatted about the usual things, cars, beer, work, the weather and our womenfolk. The dog kept us informed of the state of the meadow, or would have done had we understood what he was barking about. As compensation for our lack of appreciation of his conversation, we occasionally threw a stick for him, which he retrieved and then forgot as the scent of another cowpat wafted by on the breeze.

I asked if Jack ever understood what Ned was talking about. Jack thought about the question for a few paces and then said, ‘Actually, I do know the dog word for "Bluebottle" or maybe it's a dog sentence about catching flies. Watch him and listen’ - here he suddenly opened his mouth from the lips-closed position, using only his jaw muscles and making a sound like a sort of wet click. Ned immediately rushed to the nearest cow splatter and started to snap at its flying fan-club. The demonstration was most convincing and one I have since repeated on other dogs with more than just an occasional success. By the end of the experiment and the inevitable disputation on what the dog-word really meant, we were over halfway to the stile and again taking more notice of the view than we were of the dog. It was then that we noticed the crows. Three wheeling black shapes in the clear air above the warrens on the opposite slope. Without thinking, I said, ‘Must be a dead rabbit.’

Of course it wouldn't have mattered if Ned had not been within earshot, patiently waiting for another doggy incitement to chase flies. It was the word ‘rabbit’ that did it. Ears pricked up and bluebottles, however fat and juicy, lost their immediate interest. There was no doubt that, for him, rabbits were more fun, easier to catch and much more satisfying. He stood tall, on his hind legs, scanning the field with ears, eyes and nose. I don't know what gave him the right direction, the birds in the sky, a sound, a scent in the air or the knowledge that, around here, there was only one likely place for rabbits. Whatever it was, he looked across the shallow valley towards the warrens, then with confidence displayed by every erect hair on his body, headed directly for the spiralling crows.

Between Ned and his target was half a field, the barbed-wire fence and the stream. For us to get to the warrens we should need to follow the path, well to the left of the straight line, climb over the stile, cross the stream and veer off to the right onto the sandy slopes. Such a course did not occur to Ned, his tactic with rabbits was to close the separating distance as quickly as possible and that meant a silent, straight-line sprint. We watched, envious of his energy, as he headed down-slope, gaining speed with every bound. The brambles and wire were stretched across his path. There were no obvious gaps and certainly none at ground level. We expected him to stop at the hazard, bouncing and barking in foolish frustration, but he seemed oblivious of the problem. Our admiration changed to anxiety as he approached the point of no-return.

‘Can he see the wire?’ I asked, knowing that dogs are not renowned for their eyesight. There was no reply and when I looked at Jack, his eyes were shut. ‘Does he often do this sort of thing?’ I added, and this time I was answered. ‘Yes, but I never look!’ - he crossed his fingers.

Confidence between man and beast? Well perhaps, but not much. Self confidence? Well, it looked like Ned had that, for sure. The fence loomed. The dog jumped, just a faster, longer bound in his series of long, fast bounds. There was no way he could clear the obstacle, he was much too low. A vision of torn and bloody fur flashed into my mind; I expected the next thing I saw would be a ragged body hanging on the wire.

Then, unbelievably, he was through, between the top two strands. Another bound and he was over the stream and hammering up the opposite hill. Sand and crows sprayed in every direction. Within moments, we saw him shaking the corpse of the poor dead bunny. Jack whistled. The dog stopped, dropped the rabbit and looked in our direction. His master yelled for him to stay, to wait there for us, but to no avail. Ned began the return journey. We could see him hurtling down the long face of the warren. We ran for the wire, perhaps if we were close to it he would stop short on the other side and not venture the leap. We loved the dog and I don't think either of us ever wanted to see him try that trick again. The success of his first jump might have been luck, or the workings of some unreliable canine guardian angel.

We didn't realise it at the time but the real problem was one of communication, or maybe just semantics. If ‘Stay’ meant anything to Ned, it meant stay where his master was pointing and to see where he was pointing, he had to be next to his master.

We reached the wire. Jack was still shouting ‘Stay!’ I glanced at him, again his eyes were closed. I stood in the long dip that ran along our side of the fence and stared through the horizontal slot between the top and middle wires. The gap was so narrow that I would have hesitated to put my head through it, for fear of catching my hair. On the other side, the black'n'white streak of the hound-dog express was heading for death or glory.

I was still watching when Ned took off, clean and sharp, from the other side of the stream, briefly touched down, between watercourse and fence with a double beat that I felt vibrating through the peat, then launched himself at the gap in the wire. I watched as he streamlined his body. Nose straight out in front, ears flat to his head, forelegs back along his belly, tail and hind-legs trailing behind. I stood aside, there was nothing I could do to stop him; the dog was committed.

For Ned, it would seem, this was all in the day's play of a conscientious collie. I wanted to close my eyes, but like the rest of me, the lids were frozen. For a split-second the tension was heart-stopping, then Ned flashed past my face, dead centre in that slim slice of safety; a furry arrow, flying straight and true.

Once I had my breath back, I could have, perhaps should have, applauded that sublime example of sheer self-confidence. To be honest, I would have, except for one thing - from the moment of take-off, just like those of his master, the dog's eyes had been tightly closed.

— • —

INDEX

Comments