David Hadley's Blog, page 122

(Almost) The Beast on the Moor

In the end, or at least at one of its ends, it was not quite the fearsome creature the legends speak of. Still, it was – the local guide insisted – the very beast of so many stories and tales told in those parts. Even though, in the end, what was meant to be some kind of large black cat the size and ferocity of a panther, turned out to be a hamster.

A poorly-painted hamster, at that.

Times, though, are hard all over these days; even the tourist industry is feeling the squeeze and having to look for more diverse sources of income. Which is why the recently renovated medieval castle at Silage on Severn does not much resemble the medieval fortress it supposedly is. Despite this, the guidebook claims it was built to keep the rampaging Welsh on their side of the border. However, to the untrained eye, it looks a lot like a former fish and chip shop, fallen into disrepair, even if the local guide swears the crenulations were there yesterday, but they fell off.

What is more, the picturesque market town of Puddle on the Squib now has a fully-restored and historically accurate branch of Woolworths opening soon. The shop is completely and lovingly restored to recreate the heady shopping experience of the ancient times of around 10 years ago. Even specially trained local children engage in the historically accurate spectacle of nicking the pick ’n’ mix for tourists to witness.

There is talk too of a museum in the former industrial heartland of the North-East that is – we are promised - going to put on an exhibition of some genuine rope from the last century, all for a very competitive entry price.

So, please visit these attractions soon and give generously to keep this great island’s heritage alive.

The UK’s Most Pointless Politician

Now regularly televised by BBC3.142, these days the title of The UK’s Most Pointless Politician is a hotly contested field. In fact, such is the competition for the title that the award has – over the last few contests become divided into several categories. This enables the judges have some chance of picking winners – or more accurately in the spirit of the competition – losers.

Obviously, the UK has a long and distinguished history of championing the useless and pointless. Hence the undercurrents of national suspicion and unease whenever a British person is good at something, especially sport.

For, as every British school-age potential worker drone is well aware winning is for losers.

Consequently, there are categories for both local and national politicians. There are also several categories for the political camp followers, groupies and other ‘professions’ of questionable value and limited virtue, such as political journalist, think-tank wonk and political researcher. There is, of course, as traditional, a category all of its own for civil servants.

The contest has several rounds, based on the old beauty contest model. In the first round, politicians are judged on their general incompetence, including an interview with the celebrity compere where they can detail their failures. This includes such things as failed business or academic career, their failed marriages and destroyed personal relationships and other such signs of general failure that left them with no alternative but to become politicians. Then there is the venality round where politicians must display just how corruptible they are. They are offered everything from a plain brown envelope stuffed with fivers up to executive board membership of companies guilty of supplying illegal chemical weaponry to despotic regimes. In the final round they are offered a seat at the cabinet table in return for their compliant acquiescence to the party machine.

Then, of course, there is the swimsuit round….

Moving on….

The winner of The UK’s Most Pointless Politician, of course, gets to become Prime Minister of the UK for anything up to three parliamentary terms. If incompetent enough at this the ex-PM goes through to the World Championship and the chance of winning a coveted UN Special envoy to the Middle East position.

Chasing the Wild Words

I can't be bothered, not any more. All those wild words once seemed so vital. There was an urgency about heading out there each morning, tracking them down, rounding them up, capturing them and bringing them back here to release them onto the empty white space of the page.

Once I had caught them and brought them here, they were mine – or, at least, so I thought. But the words never belong to anyone, not for long. Soon they have to leave, just when we think we are getting to know them, they are gone, out there for a new life beyond our control.

She was the one who brought me so many words. Each morning I would walk out there, into the unknown, into the dew and the mist and she would be there waiting for me. She would be ready to take my hand and lead me on, down to the valley with the stream where the words ran free.

She would bring the words to me; each given with a kiss or a caress and I would feel the love with every word she gave me. I thought then that she would be there, waiting for me, every morning, waiting just for me, ready to take me by the hand to the valley where the words run free.

I never expected it to matter if I missed a day or two, busy chasing after those other women that came to see the words I spread out on the page for them. Then, one morning when I climbed up her hillside through the dew and the mist, she had gone and now I no longer know how to find my way back to that valley of words.

That First Kiss

And then... we fell....

We moved through the air together and fell all the way down to the ground still locked in that first kiss.

It had started out tentative, unsure, those first few movements closer to each other. Our heads titling so lips could meet, then a slight movement away, as if there was some attraction pulling us together, forcing our lips to meet, that we were still uncertain of, still frightened by.

Sometimes there is no turning back, and both of us knew this. Sometimes what is done cannot be undone, ignored or wished away and both of us knew this too. Yet our bodies, our heads, our lips were pulling each other closer as though some force of nature was exerting itself and there was nothing either of us could do.

The grass was soft underneath me as I pulled her down on top of me, and she was soft too under her clothes as my hands found their way inside, in-between the gaps.

Angela's eyes closed. She muttered words of denial and refusal, even as her hands unbuttoned my shirt. Her mouth moved from mine down my chest, saying something about being a married woman. Saying this was wrong, that she shouldn't... and then my trousers were undone and she was kissing lower and lower.

I lay back, looking up at a sky that had seen this sort of thing so many times before. It may have been new to us as a couple, only our first time. But there was nothing unusual in what we were doing, even among people like us who had made solemn vows to be true to other people. At the same time, though, we both thought our situation unique, at least for these first few stolen moments.

Things Going On

At the time, well, none of us really knew what was going on. This, after all is not all that unusual. We usually find that if someone does claim to know what is actually going on, their claim – eventually – all revolves around either government and big business conspiracies, or giant invisible space lizards, and sometimes both.

The fact is that no-one knows what is going on, especially politicians. After all, politicians are a breed of people who can’t get a proper job and would have trouble finding their own arseholes with both hands, a map… and a sat-nav. So, to expect them to have any idea what is going on is a touch optimistic, to say the least. Obviously, the giant invisible space lizards would realise this as soon as they made contact.

Then there are all the nutters – religious and otherwise – who claim to have a direct line to god, the gods and/or the giant invisible space lizards. The conclusion to which is if the gods have chosen these people to represent them, then their claims to omnipotence are dodgy at best and for being all-wise and all-knowing… well. As for the giant space lizards, if they have really crossed light years, space and galaxies, then surely they should have more sense than to latch onto the first certifiable idiot they come across as spokesbeing for their case.

Consequently, the only philosophically sound response to any inquiry into what is actually going on is, and can only ever be: ‘Fuck knows.’

How to Shape the Sky and Curve the Land

It was out at the edges of this world. I was out there, creating some new land, some new world. I was alone, as I always am, out there. Not many people know about the edges of this world. They think it is seamless and complete, that it is -somehow - defined and enclosed by the physical, what we like to call reality.

I do not, of course, speak of heavens or hells, or any such mythological places. We know there are no heavens and there are no hells, except – of course – for those we make for one another, here in this ordinary reality. Those that once created the heavens and hells, of course, they may have glimpsed some idea of what I am referring to. They may once have touched the outer limits of the possible and learnt that it can be shaped. But they had more interest in inventing religions and for the same purposes some have always created religions, so they can to take some control over the lives and thoughts of others.

No, I was out here, learning how to shape the sky and curve the land to meet each other in some new world I wanted for myself. I, by then, had had enough of this world. Enough of this narrow cold world where we bump into one another and against one another all the time, always stunting and closing off the possibilities that even we mere humans can create with just one expansive gesture.

Yes, I was out there alone just creating my own small world and then she came along and changed everything.

I Have Seen

I Have Seen

This Earth, it takes the time that turns
and moves as though the sky takes shape
around its form. We move on through
the air like things so out of place.

We know just how to fall, and tumble
all falling down from such stark heights.

I have been there, outside, I saw
the shapes of clouds, I've seen it all
and found the night so far beyond,
lurking hidden behind the lights.

I talked and then I turned to listen
and still don't know the way to turn.
My hands cannot shape this, unformed
into the real that shapes this world.

I do not touch to feel its weight
or to even understand it all.
I touch to remember, and walk away.

But, how can all this go beyond?
seeming far too solid, too real
to fade away. The world is hard
against us, drawing flowing blood

from careless lives. The stain will dry
a brittle brown before the rain
will come and wash it all away
We leave no trace behind. The world
will carry on about its business,
we neither here, nor there, and here

is everywhere, and everywhere
is nowhere, while we have no place
beyond and no more other time,
and only this, and here, and now.

The Toyshop Incident

Then there were the pomegranates. Not normally known as one of the more offensive weapons, that is true. But, in the right hands, they can be quite effective. She, of course, was more than adept at wielding fruit in an offensive capacity, though. In fact, she was capable of using almost anything as a weapon, up to and including a fluffy teddy bear.

However, that last incident, known even today only as The Toyshop Incident is still covered by the Official Secrets Act. There has, of course, been speculation about the incident. This includes three non-fiction books, two feature films, several TV documentaries, countless newspaper and magazine articles, a computer game and an oil painting. Yet, no one beyond those involved in The Toyshop Incident – those that survived anyway, can dare speak of precisely what happened. Although, one of the agents of a foreign power said to have some involvement in the incident still bears several tell-tale Lego brick scars on his chest. This alleged foreign secret agent was photographed on a beach in an undercover operation by a TV journalist, Hackwork Easydosh, who since died in mysterious circumstances under an avalanche of Barbie dolls in the Russian steppes. An area not normally associated with avalanches and especially not avalanches of Barbie dolls.

As for the incident with the pomegranates, all that can be said, without fear of repercussion, is that agents from a hostile foreign power will think twice about visiting the vegetable aisle of a British supermarket with hostile intent in future. It is through the dedication of this agent and those like her who must remain nameless that we Britons can shop safely in our supermarkets never once doubting that our cauliflowers are safe from hostile foreign machinations. For that we should always be grateful.

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Extract:

[….]

Twelve hours later, just as the TV station covering the event live went to an advertising break, there was an unearthly scream from the AntenDec beast as it stood on the tapioca-ignoring table, stripped off its clothing and dived heads-first into the now stone-cold tapioca dish on its left before smearing the contents of its other tapioca dish over its genitalia as it got up and strode towards the female celebrity judge, licking its lips and demanding perverse sexual favours, there and then, live on the auditorium stage.

Fortunately, the AntenDec’s keepers were able to throw one of their restraining nets over the rampaging creature before it got too close to the judge. They sedated it and took it away in a wheelbarrow back to its cage ready for the long journey back to the Geordie wilderness where it made its home.

This meant that Plenitude and I were through to the final.

That night we celebrated alone together in my hotel room, with Plenitude dipping those sexy elbows of hers in the champagne, they had presented to us for winning the semi-final, for me to lick off as she did that special thing she did with the castanets and the Shrewsbury & Telford A-Z Street Atlas.

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When we first met she was Emeritus Professor of Post-Colonial Marmalade at the University of Ffestiniog, and she had the sexiest elbows I had ever seen. We met at the Annual Ffestiniog Tapioca-Ignoring Convention, back in the late summer of ’83. At the time neither of us had a Tapioca-Ignoring partner, so naturally – once we found our handicaps were compatible – we teamed up for that autumn’s preliminary Tapioca-Ignoring Cup rounds. Of course, with both of us being amateurs we never expected to get to the finals.

Her name was Plenitude Cleavage and she came from the Welsh valleys, in fact she had quite a Welsh valley herself, never in my experience had I ever seen such a splendid example of nominative determinism in a woman’s body before
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Out of the Frying Pan

Still, as you may know, this is not quite the frying pan in question. However, it will do to illustrate this lecture as it is fairly close in style and type to the original frying pan – although, of course, without the obvious dent. This dent, though, was not an original feature of the frying pan. Thus, this similar pan could therefore stand in as the pre-incident frying pan. The dent itself was not – as some allege – already there in the frying pan. They claim – not without a modicum of justification – that the dent could have occurred there as a way of distinguishing this frying pan from a myriad of other similar – and often indistinguishable items. Perhaps in the hope of gaining some sort of celebrity chef endorsement.

However, the magical properties of celebrity names purportedly imbue any object given their imprimatur with the spirit of that celebrity. Thus implying a magical transfer of celebrity to the purchaser and subsequent user of the item takes place.

Such concepts, however, are beyond the scope of this article. This piece is more concerned with how the dent got into the frying pan in the first place.

However, as the defendant – hereinafter referred to as ‘the wife’ - got the dent in the frying pan is revealed – she claims in her sworn testimony - by a simple perusal of the above paragraph concerning celebrity endorsements. That paragraph she submits in her defence, along with a claim of unreasonable provocation at an unsociable hour and the stress of breakfast-time preparations.

Me…? I’m not saying anything. There is room for at least one more dent in that frying pan.