David Hadley's Blog, page 135

England's Greatest Detective

The inter-war years saw the rise of the great detective. When a mysterious death took place at some country house, it was often one of these detectives who would be called upon, often by a baffled police force, to come to everyone's aid and solve the murder.

The greatest of these detectives was, of course, Benjy the Duck, quite possibly the greatest crime-detecting waterfowl in the history of the world. It has always been well-known that ducks are amongst the best crime fighters in the world. Many sheriffs in the American Old West were – for instance – ducks, geese and in Dodge City, of course, a swan: the legendary Six-Gun Half-cock, known as the fastest draw in the west, able to put a bullet in the dead centre of a playing card at a hundred paces and able to outdraw some of the meanest gunfighters of the West.

However, Benjy was a completely different type of waterfowl, from one of the oldest Mallard families in the UK with their own river, he had graduated with a quadruple First at Oxford, as well as being captain of both the rowing and the punting teams, known for his first class mind and a very gentlemanly quack.

These days, of course, Benjy's most famous case remains The Mystery of Tosser Manor.

In those days, the aristocratic Tosser family was well-known throughout England. Often, the cry of 'Oh, look there goes another one of those rich Tossers' could be heard whenever they ventured outside the grounds of their Manor. However, when the body of the heir to the Tosser title, Wrist Tosser, was found in the drawing room of the Manor, Benjy the duck was called in by a baffled local police force.

The body of Wrist had been found by his father, Absolute Tosser, riddled with shotgun pellets, next to the family's faithful old retainer, the butler, Smegma, who was at the time, according to Absolute, holding a smoking shotgun.

Through the use of brilliant detective work, Benjy was able to prove – to the satisfaction of a jury at the Old Bailey – that Wrist had, in fact been killed by his own sister, Coin, who had been having a long-running affair with the family's under-housemaid. It was – of course – a great scandal in those days for a woman to have a lesbian relationship with anyone who was not an ex-school-chum, let alone someone from the servant class. Consequently Coin was desperate to keep the affair secret and was distraught when Wrist caught Coin and the under housemaid naked and dancing the Charleston, in a horizontal position, together.

At the trial, Benjy proved that Coin was outside the room's open window at the time, allegedly shooting peasants, and it was her, not Smegma, that fired the fatal shot, promising the butler certain undisclosed sexual favours if he would hold her gun for a moment whilst she changed for dinner.

Smegma, of course, later confessed that he'd always dreamed of the Lady Coin helping him to polish his decanters and so was more than willing to aid her.

Case solved, Benjy the duck went on to solve even greater and more mysterious crimes as his career progressed, some of which may be revealed here at some later date*.

 

*But probably not.

A Foolish Thing

It was a foolish thing to do. A mistake, we realise that now, now that it is too late. We should have realised that this small world we inhabit has no room for gods. It in a human world, we build it to human scales and concerns, we should not have invent those gods. We should have left it alone.

However, there are - it seems – people who want gods, people who need gods. They are, somehow, unsatisfied with the human, with our explanations for how the world began and why it turns, why the sun rises and the moons chase each other across our nights.

There are those who want stories and tales of supreme beings who use us mere mortals as their toys and playthings. They want creators at war with devils and demons.

That is the trouble with stories, with tales, especially tales and stories about gods. People will end up believing them. First they believe the stories, then they start believing in gods and then the gods grow out of those wants and need, becoming bigger and bigger as more and more believe, until there are gods in our skies fighting over who will rule over us.

And then....

Then it is too late, when we who create the gods are destroyed by those selfsame gods we thought we needed so much.

The Failures of Democracy

Of course, democracy does have a lot of problems, but by far its biggest drawback is that it does tend to cause politicians. In the past, this was not so much of a problem as it has since become as the proliferation of the media does seem to have enabled politicians to escape their natural habitats of government legislative assemblies and local council chambers to spread out amongst the population in general, infecting almost everyone without natural immunity with the belief that something must be done and politicians should be the ones to do that thing – whatever it is.

There was a time during the post 1960s global naivety outbreak when some of the more hopelessly naïve claimed that everything is politics. However, we now know that almost nothing is politics and that that is politics should be eradicated before the infection spreads to otherwise normal people.

In the past, this was achieved by keeping politicians away from normal people, who could be left to get on with things while the politicians bickered amongst themselves and – occasionally – with the opposing parties in order to find out the most expensive way of making things worse. Now, though, through the media, and other such carriers of the political infection it seems that politicians are everywhere and multiplying at an alarming rate.

But, what makes it worse is that as the number of politicians increases so does the number of things that they believe are any of their business. There hardly, these days, exists any sphere of activity that has not got some politicians or others sniffing around it trying to find some way of infecting it with legislation that will create the ideal habitat for the breeding of yet more politicians.

Of course, we all take the usual precautions of hygienically disposing of election leaflets as soon as they come through the door, and of turning the TV off when party political broadcasts appear. Unfortunately, however, this is no longer enough as politics worms itself into more and more of our daily lives.

Some did hope, in the past, that the sheer incompetence of politicians would – ultimately – bring about their own downfall through some form of natural selection. But, such is the widespread nature of the political infection now, it has caused some evolutionary scientists to question the whole idea of survival of the fittest, developing a new theory of the survival of the incompetent, claiming that once a certain level of politics infects a society it becomes self-sustaining and almost impossible to eradicate.

However, we must never give up the fight, or one day – horror of horrors – we may see our own children or grandchildren themselves infected with this deadly and debilitating disease, thus bringing about the end of humanity as we know it.

Rule Britannia

Still, it was lucky we happen to live in a country where – it seems – there are so many people who think they know what’s best for us, so we could – quite easily – have all those troublesome decisions about how to live our lives taken for us whilst we sat down to see if there was – for once – anything good on the telly.

Perhaps, I mused later, as the remote control surfed its increasingly weary way up through all those mysterious shopping channels that sell everything no-one has ever wanted to buy, that this is why the country is in the state it is in. After all, during my formative years it was generally agreed that Britain had the finest TV in the world. So, we as a country got used to sitting around and leaving the rest of it all to those who liked to interfere.

Now, though, well….

Perhaps it is too late; perhaps we left them all alone too long; let them have it all their own way for too long. Perhaps we will never be able to grab control back, especially as the TV watching habit has now become far too ingrained, despite the quality of the programmes declining to such a pitifully low standard that, these days, even some American TV is better than the home-grown stuff.

Still, though, all is not lost. We can still do a decent computer game every now and then. Not up to the standard of Manic Miner, Lemmings, Sensible Soccer and Elite, but still far better than going outside and discovering what is really going on out there.

From the Shadows

Sometimes it seemed as though there was a way through, that the cold distances that separated the stars were no more than a convenient fiction, which made the idea of distance appeal to us as a way of keeping apart.

She lived her life and I lived mine, not that what we have can be called life, as such. We are beyond life as we are beyond time and distance. She is the Lady of the Light and I am Lord of the Dark. Together, we create the shadows and from the shadows all possibility emerges.

It was from one of the shadows of our last union that this universe that you - and all the creatures of your, and other, planets - call life sprung from. We create these shadows of time and matter and possibility and from this the universes come into being.

It is a kind of love and from it there is a kind of birth; although neither she nor I wish to be parents. We certainly do not want to be Gods, and certainly not adored or worshipped. For us, you are less than the dust that coalesces into planets; we do not consider you and we are far beyond what you would call gods anyway.

We could create gods if we wished, but we do not see the point as species like yours would only worship them, or blame them, for all that happens as your lives begin and end in less than a blink of our eyes.

Technological Innovation

It was not quite what we were expecting, even so, some of the more recondite attachments hint at a world of possibility yet unexplored through this medium of the humble domestic appliance.

Still, having said that it does seem to need recharging every ten minutes or so, or five minutes if the GPS function is enabled, which does seem to somewhat mitigate its claims to be portable, especially as you are advised to employ the optional three Sherpas needed to carry it, at - what seems to the casual user - a somewhat rather high annual fee, as well as the cost of the yak's milk needed to keep the Sherpas in tip-top form.

This does tend to make the GPS function rather surplus to requirements as you can never get far enough away from familiar ground - without it running out of power - to get lost, for even the most geographically-challenged do tend to know where the other end of their own street is... more or less.

As for the attachment for getting the stones out of horse's hooves – the manufacturer's claim this is mostly to maintain backwards compatibility with the Swiss army knife, is these days little more than a conversation piece – that is if you are ever unfortunate enough to be trapped into a conversation with someone who takes an interest in such obscure attachments.

Still, though, the integrated hand whisk/TV remote does turn out to be of more use than we first expected, even though it does have rather an annoying habit of changing channels to QVC whenever the user attempts to whisk up a Yorkshire pudding mix.

However, the manufacturers have said they will be bringing out a hotfix for this in the next firmware update which should resolve the problem, as well as the device's tendency to emit an ultrasonic beep that annoys all dogs within a twelve-mile radius which can be somewhat dangerous, especially if you are halfway home from the butchers with a pound of sausages at the time. Although, it did give me a chance to test both the pedometer function and the stopwatch to prove I broke my personal best for the 200 metres, although we did – tragically – lose one of the Sherpas to the slavering pack of hounds.

Fortunately, though, the device was still under guarantee and so the Sherpa was replaced at no extra cost.

The Great British Tradition

Then there were several of them, all spread out against the sky like... well, lots of things all spread out. Now, perhaps the place where your regular hat-hanging ceremony take place is not so well-blessed as this, but it is a sight almost guaranteed to be noticed... sometimes.

Still, back in the day, or at least getting on for early afternoon on that day, there would come a time when they all began together and, on finding the bit in the greyness of a typical British day they would find which bit of that grey was the sky and then spread out against it.

It was a sight to stir the very cockles of the heart, to make every free-born Englishman stand proud - and his wife to look down and remember when she could stir him to such excitement – if ever – and wish for the days of yore to return to these benighted islands.

For, if there is one thing that made this country great, if there was one thing that separated the true Briton from the rest of humanity and from foreign parts, it was the British person's – seemingly-innate – ability to see some other British person standing somewhere and with that great British instinct go and stand behind them.

For there is no greater sight than the British people – no matter what their ancestry - getting together to stand behind one-another in that great British tradition of the queue. For it goes without saying that when ever there are two or more British people gathered together they will – by nature – line up behind each other, no matter whether or not there is actually anything there to queue for, they will still form one.

Some may mock, but many of us believe it is the queue that made Britain great and – we hope – that one day this great British institution will once-more form an orderly line that spans the globe.

Jet Packs… or Not

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This is the future… now. There were – we were told – meant to be jet packs.

Where are they?

How could a world, once so in love with the future, get it al so wrong?

Where are the robots?

There was a sense, back then, back when the future as a concept was invented that it would be a place of wonder, or progress, of marvels… and jet packs.

Instead, we have this… this so ordinary world.

Still it could have been worse. We could be eating pills off plates, or be at war with the robots.

Think though… we could be lucky.

Think this: drunks… with jet packs, so, every night at closing time, pissed-up blokes wanting a fight because you spilt their bird or stared at their pint… all fighting while wearing jet packs.

Coming home with the shopping with a jet pack and the shopping bags doing what they do and spontaneously biodegrading whist still full of shopping… at a hundred feet up in the air.

Think of this… jet packs and the bureaucratic mind. The health and safety would be a nightmare. It would probably be illegal to go any higher than six inches off the ground without encasing yourself in ludicrous amounts of safety gear.

Then – of course – jet packs and sex… in flight.

It may be an idea to invest in umbrella shares, and to buy a hat… just in case.

Something for the Weekend - Free Kindle Humour: The Sexiest Elbows I'd Ever Seen

  The Sexiest Elbows I'd Ever Seen

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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.

[….] Product Description

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
[....]

So, begins one of the greatest love stories of our age told here for the first time in ebook form for the Kindle.

This collection also contains several other stories of equal import, such as:
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'The Famed Vegetable Killer of Grimsby'. Murder most foul.

'The Dancing Sex Nuns of the Tenth Quadrant'. A story of one of the great mysteries of the far future.

'The man with the Golden Cheese Baguette'. The tale of Britain's greatest spy and his attempt to thwart an evil genius with plans for world domination.

'The Thing Falling Out of the Sky Incident'. Some claim there are aliens out there, waiting to invade Earth. Some say this has already happened.

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The Sexiest Elbows I'd Ever Seen

Available FREE this weekend here (UK) or here (US)

Giving

Giving

Watch how the slow rhythmic
movement of my hand
can make your body move
as your desire grows slowly,

spreading out from my fingers
like the strings from the puppeteer.
I feel no power, no control, no victory
although I could leave you suspended

between desire and its satiation,
between wanting and coming,
journeying, but never arriving.
But that is not what I want.

I only want what you want
and my need is only your need
and my satisfaction lies
in this gift given and received.