David Hadley's Blog, page 110

As They Say… Or Not

This is the thing….

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

Er….

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

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

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

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

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

Still, as they say….

Or… maybe they don’t.

 

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

Monsters of the UK

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

The Old Order Changeth

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Stepping Through

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

A Time Long Before Now

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Going Home

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

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

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

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

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

Then she was ready.

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

 

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

An Issue of Great Social Import

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

She was the Dream

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

History Lessons

History Lessons

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Growing Beyond the Ordinary

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

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

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

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

Then it grew.

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

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

 

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