David Hadley's Blog, page 112

The Marmalades of Yesteryear

But then, what is this time?

What is this place?

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

It Should Have Been a Dream

It began, as these things do, there, first thing in the morning. It is strange how we know when we are dreaming and when we are not dreaming. I woke up, there not in my bed, not in my bedroom and the woman sleeping next to me was not my wife. It should have been a dream, something I woke from back in my normal life, but I didn’t and it wasn’t.

I knew I ought to be dreaming. The room I awoke in looked so much like the 17th Century coaching Inn we were holidaying in. In so much and as far as I could tell, it was the same room. But everything else about it was different. Even then, I knew this was not something I was going to wake up from.

The bed itself, which my wife and I had laughed about, was a four-poster still, but newer, not antique. The room was roughly the room we’d gone to sleep in. But the bedlinen, the room and the décor were all different. The woman still sleeping next to me was not my forty-seven year old (dyed) brown-haired wife, but some raven-haired young woman, naked and spread out across the other side of the bed, sleeping the sleep of the exhausted.

Over across the other side of the room, where the TV had been when I’d gone to sleep, was a chair. Draped across it were clothes I’d never seen, or worn, before. Including what looked like a scabbard, containing a rapier, on a worn leather belt. Next to the chair were what looked like a pair of high leather books, with a leather coat that looked even more worn than a Hell’s Angel’s biker jacket.

What is more… the en-suite bathroom was no longer there and I needed a piss. Instead, I just lay there too scared to move in case this turned out not to be – even though I already knew it wasn’t – a dream.

 

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

No Paradise

The stories we told were all the old stories that spoke of the world before this one. The stories of the paradise we'd lost. The Story Priests tell us tales of that old life we died and left behind, that place of paradise where life was long, easy and free. Stories of a time long before this one.

The Story Priests say that we are born into this life when we die in that paradise. Some ask: why – if it is a paradise – then why do we die? The priests respond that we must have done something wrong there, and so we are reborn here in this dark, grey, land as a punishment for all we did wrong in that old life.

The Story Priests then point to the ruins, now almost lost under the growing grass and heaping earth that almost buries them. They tell us the story of the Great Devil that arose in the Distant East. How it sundered this land from the paradise we once lived in and that now all those of us who failed in that paradise are reborn here.

Some, if not most of us, do not believe these stories, even though we learn of them from when we are young enough to listen. I look around the fires at night-time, watching the faces of the people as the Story Priests go through the rituals of the Telling. Each time I see eyes that do not believe, eyes that see this world and those ruins and wonder what kind of paradise this used to be. We sit, shivering in the rain and the cold, hoping the fire will last the night. We know – deep down – this, or any life before this, was never any paradise.


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

Only for Myself

As the evenings grew dark and the cool of the night brought her close to me. I would sit there with my arms wrapped around her and tell her all the stories I knew.

I told her of how I'd made this world just for her. I told her of all the plants, animals, mountains and rivers I had spread across it for her to name.

I told her how I'd created a sun to shine on her and rains to wash away the dust of the day. I told her of the moon and stars up in the blackness of the night for her to wish upon and wonder.

I told her of all the birds I'd made to sing to her of the morning. The sweet fruits I'd grown for her long slow afternoons.

Then she'd turn to me and ask why she was the only one. I would look at her and smile, saying that every world needs a goddess. She would be that one, the one to make this whole world turn. I told her that soon she would have worshippers and priests, priestesses and followers all begging her to intercede and save their souls and lives.

But, until then I wanted her only for myself.

 

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

The Same Old Life

Our world had grown familiar, safe and predictable. Each morning we woke up knowing what the day would bring with little in the way of shock and change. Occasionally, of course, things happened as they always do when life always hangs by what – at times – seems such a slender thread. People get ill, have accidents, grow old and die.

All that, though, happened around us. Occasionally, it came close to us, for instance, when Pauline’s estranged father died somewhere in Scotland and was dead and buried before the letter reached us. As we got older too, funerals became more common. We began to dread the phone ringing late in the night telling us someone close had died.

The children grew up and began leading their own lives and we carried on, joking with each other about what kind of pensioners we would become.

Then I got the friend request on Facebook.

Not that I ever bothered that much with it. My profile was years old and half-completed. I had only a handful of friends and a status rarely updated. Still, she found me. I could see it was her, even through all the changes of the years, remembering that long Christmas kiss back in the 70s when we whispered to each other about being together forever.

Then I went away and everything changed. Pauline came along and I never went back. Sue became just another one of those memories that slip into the mind when I sit there late at night alone with a drink and a few minutes peace and quiet.

Then Sue began telling me all about her life and how she’d recently moved too, to be near her children after the death of her husband. She was only a few miles from me now.

I agreed to meet her, encouraged by Pauline who thinks I’m too happy with my own company.

After that, well… things could never ever be the same again, no matter how I tried to put the clock back, put everything right and get my old safe, predictable life back once again.

 

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

Hence the Castanets

So, there we were, posed upon the very cusp of the edge of the start of the beginning of the commencement. She, of course, had the bag of grouting mix all ready, as well as the flippers and a rather fetching pair of... castanets. I, it goes without saying, had the grouting trowel and the balaclava. Although, for various other reasons, the salad spinner was unavailable.

At a certain age and at a certain point in a relationship... well, in other people's relationships, of course, sometimes there is a need for something a bit new. Or at least a bit different.

So both of us were glad...er...slightly interested when we received a copy of a How to Do the Sex Properly manual as a Christmas gift. The wife was very impressed by the male model in the copious illustrations. Although, I was puzzled by the lack of a TV remote in his hands and his use of the domestic furniture for purposes other that watching the footy. However, I did – rather grudgingly – have to admire him somewhat for attempting the various activities and positions illustrated whilst, at least, looking sober.

The woman in the illustrations however was another thing entirely. Even so, every time I glanced at her, however, fleeting, the wife pointed out which parts of her were – obviously – another thing, usually silicone-based. I was also made to agree that the female was heavily photo-shopped. The wife did – eventually – have to agree that the photographic studio where the male model was disporting himself must be much, much warmer than our rather chilly house.

However, the text of the book, obviously machine translated. Apparently going through at least three other languages before arriving in the near vicinity of something almost totally unlike English. This made deciphering it more than a little problematic, something which the illustrations tended to obscure rather than clarify.

Hence the castanets.

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

What You Dream

What You Dream

So this is what you dream of?
You told me you did not dream,

But I saw your closed eyes
and I saw them moving

as you lay, sheets thrown back
and the sweat beaded across

your naked back like endless rain,
or like the tears of the lovers

we had once been, before these days
where all I can ever do is watch you dream

of those times before we fell
away from each others arms,

leaving you lying there
while I watch over you

afraid to get too close
in case I discover the name

of who it is you are dreaming of,
scared it could be someone new

or, in case it is the man
I always used to be.

New Found Land

It was slow, tentative as though we were learning the language of each other. We made gestures towards understanding. The touch of fingertips on skin and responded to, while the words we used to each other were little more than murmurs. Neither of us understanding the words of the other, but understanding each touch of body against body.

She was slow, lithe, undulating against the touch of my hands as they explored. Small light kisses on my face as my travelling hands discovered the secrets of her unmapped body until I found the treasures that made her whispered words sigh into moans and mutterings.

Her hands moved down my face and down across my chest before her arms wrapped around me, with one of her long sinuous legs as my fingers discovered her secret treasures. She nibbled my earlobe and told me something urgent in a language I did not know. She clung to me as I explored more of her body until the waves began to storm her body. The waves crashed and broke and her moans murmured down to a hesitant whisper in my ear as me fingers ceased their exploration.

Then she took me by the hand and led me to the new world of her bed where once again I became an explorer in her new found land.

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

More Than Just Words

'Where are you?' she said.

'I am here.'

'That is not you. Those are just words.'

'That is what I am. I am only words.'

She was expecting something more. She thought there would be something here, something more than just words.

She had wanted to meet me since she had first read the words a few months before.

One day, the words had appeared on her screen, one much like this one, and she had read them. The words said something to her. Something that she thought mattered.

So the next day she was there, back in the same place, waiting for the words to arrive.

Then, when the words arrived, again they spoke to her of times and situations she'd thought unique to her alone. She thought that, after so long of searching, she had – at last – found the one who understood her.

She would be there every day from then on, waiting for the words to arrive. Each day they told her something new; told her something about herself she had not known before, told her some truth she thought she needed to know.

One day she'd asked if she could meet me.

Of course, I made excuses.

She kept on though. The more the words spoke to her, the more she wanted to meet me. I tried to explain there is no-one, nothing, behind the words; that all there is, is the words, but she would not believe me. She insisted there must be someone there, someone who lived like her, someone who had experiences like her and someone who could speak to her in a way that no words had ever spoken to her before.

So, in the end, I agreed to let her come here.

Now, she knows.

Now she knows there is one greater truth beyond all my words had told her, now she has learnt the greater secret beyond all those secrets of hers I held up for her to see her true reflection in.

Now she knows there are only these words and there is no-one here writing them.

When the Revolution Came

When the revolution came – in the end – more than a few of us were ready for it. For years, almost beyond recall, so many of us had suffered under the brutal tyranny of the regime. We had longed for the day when we would break free and out into a bright new dawn of freedom.

Still, when the day came it was a surprise. None of us had ever dared hope that it would happen, not within our lifetime. Perhaps, some of us dared hope; our children would have children born free of the dread heavy hand holding us down. Little did we think, though, that we would be the ones that would be thee first to taste the sweet air of freedom and liberty from the oppressors.

It began as just another ordinary day, a day much like any other. There was little feeling, little awareness, no taste of revolution in the air. Even then we knew that all revolutions end in failure and the aftermath of a revolution is almost invariably worse than all the revolution meant to overthrow. We were ready, though, willing to suffer all manner of hardships if only we could be free.

Then it came, the longed-for announcement we waited so long for. It was the sign that not all our suffering had been in vain and the time had come for us to reclaim our humanity, our dignity, our freedom.

The thing was, though, that none of us really had any real idea what to do with it when we – at long last – got it.