David Hadley's Blog, page 137

Spring Lamb

Once there was a time when all of this was fields, but enough about databases, especially those home to large herds of sheep roaming the hillsides and causing excitement in the shepherding community unheard of since the last radical redesign of the wellie.

Let us go, ewe and I, now the evening is spread out against the sky and do not let us talk again of mint sauce and new potatoes 'ere the morn lifts its tired eyes above the horizon as I tell tales of great sheep of yesteryear and the tale of the tail of the golden fleece.

We were young once and gambolled like lambs, well, you gambolled and I stood there with my shepherd’s crook grasped firmly in my hand. We were young and in love and you knew knew little of the world, even though the older, wiser rams told you horror tales of the best end of neck, chump chops and just what scrag end really entails.

Such a life was not for you, though, my love, for there is nothing that gets an old shepherd like me feeling himself again like the sight of a mature sheep ambling fully-fleeced over the hillsides in the dawn's early light, or the late twilight summer evening when the sky promises those such as me so much delight, especially when you see I'm wearing my best wellies and have a handful of that special grass you like so much.

Let us go, then, you and I, and spend the autumn of your years together on the hillside for one more brief summer.

Vital Local Government Services

Engelbert Thermopylae was the UK's leading Local Government Toad Recognition Officer, performing this vital role – despite harsh spending cutbacks for almost three decades in the wild untamed jungles in and around the unexplored Walsall area.

Not only that he also won Toad Recogniser of the Year at the London O2 Arena in seven out of the last ten years, including the tense 2009 final when his 7 hour battle in the final with Uruguay’s Uplink Nailfile went down to the wire with neither of them daring to decide which was the toad and which was the zebra right up until bad light stopped play on the first day's play.

However, far away from the glamour of the international Toad Recognition circuit, Thermopylae was devoted to the art – and, some say, science – of toad recognition out in the wild. After all, in the heat of the moment how many of us have – in all honesty – confused a toad with say a crocodile, a geostationary satellite or a Post Office delivery van*?

Anyway, Thermopylae was so adept at recognising toads that he was correct a staggering 32.7% of the time, which - considering he was employed in local government - was a staggering rate of success, which – inevitably – caused a great deal of jealousy and resentment amongst his colleagues and resulted in disciplinary action by the local branch of the Toad-Recognisers and Allied Trades Association for bringing the trade close to dangerous levels of competence and thus putting the livelihoods of the other members of the union at risk.

Some say it was his own fault for venturing out into the wilds of Walsall on his own without backup. Others talk of darker conspiracies: some of trouble and dark words at the last union meeting, others of Uruguayan undercover agents infiltrating the Walsall area with booby-trapped toads (and a wired-up zebra, just to be on the safe side).

All we know is that, one day, Engelbert Thermopylae disappeared off into the Walsall jungle as normal with his lunch box, his net and toad bucket, and his Big Boy's Book of Toads and was never seen again.

*I know I have and what an embarrassing party that turned out to be for me. My wife still has to go to all the local wife-swapping parties on her own – well, so she says, anyway.

The Black Economy

But then – even back in those wild and heady days – no-one would have dared to start a sentence with the word 'but'. However, little did she care for the stuffy old rules of grammar and usage, she was wild and free and had little interest in what others thought grammatically correct, as well as having quite an interesting theory about the use of underwear, which she regarded as even more strict and constricting than the use of punctuation.

A couple of facts that made both her and her frequent love letters more than a little interesting.

We met long before this country was ravaged by the horrors of the VAT inspectors, waging their campaign of terror across this once-free land as invoices and cash books fell to their mighty onslaughts while we – the poor and the dispossessed - trembled and huddled in fear.

Then, things changed

It was a time of revolution, not just in the use of semi-colons and underwear, but in how we lived our lives and the uses to which we could put a watermelon. I had the flippers and the snorkel and she had the ukulele, so we would spend many a summer evening together up on the hillside, well away from the gangs of prowling VAT inspectors as they rampaged from village to out-of-town retail emporium.

Still, though, we were young and wild and free – although she was not that free, but – as away of avoiding the dread attentions of the despised VAT Inspectors was always willing to demonstrate her revolutionary approach to the wearing of underwear in return for cash in hand.

The Weasel Hordes of Indifference and Ingratitude

We all know that the weasel hordes of indifference and ingratitude sweep majestically across the wide-open plains of the car parks of this once-proud nation. We forget that in days of yore this country had chip shops that were the very envy of the world.

And… yet.

And yet….

Still, I feel as though something throbs, something pulsates deep in the darkest recesses of the underwear of our souls. There awaits something that will grow once again to stand tall and proud, but only if we can find those gentle ministering fingers that know how to take hold of its uncertainty, take it in hand and stroke all these cares away.

If only.

If only.

But she is far, far away now, strolling alone, head bowed across the existential beach of her dreams while the sea of eternity slow creeps ever closer, even now beginning to lap around her ankles. Her thoughts are gone, way past those dunes where once we lay together through those long naked afternoons watching those languid clouds chasing each other across skies of deeper than forever blue.

And I?

I can only wonder if when she returns she will bring those thoughts back home with her.

Or – at least – come back with a bag of chips.

A Cure for Human Stupidity

Well, not that any of us has any choice in the matter, now that it is all long over and done, as Harold pointed out at the time, though, they were very dangerous things and could easily have someone’s eye out if they were not careful where they were pointing them.

Still, that’s history for you – but it is all in the past now. After all, we are living in the future now and things are… well, they are better in many ways, but no-one – as yet – seems to have found a cure for human stupidity.

Which, for most of us, is lucky.

Otherwise, how else would we make a living?

After all, this is the only species on the planet that has invented TV, shopping malls, religion, cheese that tastes more like plastic than the plastic wrapper it came in, collectable plastic figurines and computer operating systems.

It sometimes seems that despite all the arts, sciences, fish and chip shops and all the other great advances of humankind, up to and including all those… er… interesting sexual practices, none of them ever, no matter what we discover, make or create - or even find new erotic uses for the strawberry and the croquet racquet - will ever eclipse the seemingly inexhaustible natural human need to make utter arses of ourselves.

Which, for most of us, is lucky. I – of course – speak as one who knows….

The Sky Enfolds Us

The Sky Enfolds Us

(Chaucerian Roundel)

We see the sky enfolding us
Around our lives like blankets tight
Through day and tight through every night.

Horizons tuck the ends in thus
To keep the sky and world just right.
We see the sky enfolding us

With nothing now we can discuss
As reason itself takes to flight
Towards a sun that shines so bright
We see the sky enfolding us.

Battle-Ready Marmalade

Now the No First Use Of Battle-Ready Marmalade Treaty has been signed by the world’s leading powers, the hope now is that it will see the end of those small battle-ready catering portions of marmalade that cased so much trouble and frustration during the now infamous battlefield breakfasts of both world wars.

The disasters of the battlefield breakfasts of the First World War now seem obvious in hindsight. It is said of that war that tactics had failed to keep up with technology. This was certainly true of battlefield catering, especially the essential front-line breakfasts. Both sides suffered massive losses of toast and butter, and the British suffered heavily from not being able to get a nice cup of tea to the front line in time. Hence, in the latter stages of the war, the invention of the tank, this was meant to be a massive self-propelled tea urn capable of crossing those muddy battle-scared shell-holed battlefields to get tea to the front line while it was still hot. Both sides had experimented with artillery delivered toast with mixed results, often with the toast ending up uneaten, muddy and soggy in the quagmires of the western front.

However, by the time of WWII, many of the technological and logistical problems of the trench-based battlefield had been solved, leading many military strategists feeling that war between any of the major powers would no longer be possible.

However, the change of tactics in the Second World War to concentrate on movement meant that the marmalade needed to be ready for immanent toast application within minutes of an offensive being launched.

However, once the British boffins developed the shrapnel-proof biscuit, it was more or less all over for the Axis forces, especially when the might of the American War machine began producing overwhelming quantities of toast.

Once WWII was over, the cold war began with the ever-present threat of mutually-Assured marmalading. However, such was the West's overwhelming superiority in breakfasting technology – leaving aside the woeful under-substantial Continental breakfast, of course, - that after only 30 years of attempting to match the West's increasingly sophisticated range of marmalades, the Soviet Union conceded defeat when NATO produced its first intercontinental Three-Fruit Marmalade, ready for deployment. Only a few days later the Berlin wall collapsed and some claimed history had come to an end.

Another Wasted Day

It was slow, heavy and hot; one of those days where the hours seem to hang there as the minutes slowly drip of into the pool of another wasted day. She did not know what to do. There had been – once – a time in her life when she knew where she was going and what she would do once she’d got there. She’d had a life of possibilities and dreams. There had been a feeling that she would end up somewhere special, looking back on a life that had been full of chances taken and achievements made.

Now, she looked around the room, the breeze hardly shifting the hot heavy air of what once she would have seen as a summer of possibility. The wallpaper was old; yellowing and beginning to peel at the edges. The shelves were dusty and home to a mishmash of times she had just left there to gather a layer of dust of their own. The furniture was tired; defeated by the weight of the years it had stood, waiting for something to happen in this room.

She sighed and wondered if it was really worth it, really worth the effort - and the eventual disappointment – of trying to begin yet again. She remembered the story of Pandora’s box and that after all the bad things had fled the box, how the last thing left in there had been hope, and she wondered if that – hope – wasn’t the cruellest torment of all.

The River is an Endless Rope

The River is an Endless Rope

All through this slipping of time
The river flows sedately onward,
An endless rope pulled by the sea.
Sometimes, though, the river swells,
Swells in anger, as it tries to twist
Break free from the grip of the sea.
But the sea’s grip is too strong,
Holding tight onto this river’s tongue
For millions of long winding years.

In all that time, the churning sea
Has not let the river drop once,
Not yet, and - perhaps – not ever.
Days flow on, pouring into the past
Like water back into deeper seas.
The river ties the rain back home
To the deeper distant seas,
Connecting now to then to now
Like rain to water and sea.

I spend a great deal of time
Walking along by this river,
Watching its steps, marking its moods,
Taking every day it brings
And trying to hold on, like the sea
Holds tight to its own rivers
Pulling them back towards it
Fearing that too much freedom means
They will one day break free.

 

[Taken from: The River is an Endless Rope – poems by David Hadley. Available here (UK) or here (US).

 

 

The Breath of a Moment

But then the dreams we held so gently in our cupped palms were easily broken. It only took the breath of a moment to blow them away to shatter irreparably on the hard stony ground where we spent our days waiting for the night.

We wandered these bare, broken lands all through the unforgiving heat and light of the day, looking for shade, looking for shadows where we could sit with our cupped palms at the ready, waiting for a dream to creep into them.

The day dreams, though, were far less substantial than the night time dreams, easily torn apart by the dust storms blowing all around these ruins of what used to be our great civilisation, before we learnt the power of dreams.

Now, all we can do is tend the delicate day dreams, keeping them as safe as we can while we wait for the protecting night to cover us with its blankets, so we can – at last – open our hands and watch the dreams dance across the darkness of the night, weaving their way around these ruins and almost touching the stars that sit looking down on us, like the gods they used to be.

The dreams turn and twist, turning these ruins back into towers and palaces, letting the wasting river flowing in full flood as boats, ships and barges ply their trade in our bustling port, all while the slaves and servants busy themselves with our comfort, so we can sit back and dream.